Finding Your Gastronomic Voice
A journey in my writing development
When I first started writing as a child, I immediately noticed how much a book could influence my style.
This only happened whenever I liked the author’s writing style: my voice got influenced, and my wording and sentence structure changed slightly to match this new writing persona inhabiting my brain, mixing with myself.
Growing up, I learned how to keep these intruders at bay. As my style and self developed and grew stronger, I could read others without being wholly influenced, as if a ghost was taking over my writing.
I still could not with some authors for a very long time. Reading anything MFK Fischer made me write just like her, and reading anything remotely Fitzgeraldian or written by Saul Bellow or John Steinbeck drowned my prose into their own.
Nowadays, at my adult writing age, I enjoy reading other authors and writing independently, without influences.
Be it in Italian, my mother tongue, or in English - which is the language I chose to master, and in which I think most of the time, I recognize my style.
What makes you, you?
To prevent my refined Italian from deteriorating due to lack of practice, I like to do crosswords and rebuses. For one year, I even subscribed to “La Settimana Enigmistica,” but I could not keep up the pace, so now I will wait for all the accumulated numbers to be filled in before subscribing again.
Writing in English is, on the other hand, easier.
Words flow, and the technological tools available to correct spelling or grammar mistakes make revisions easier. No wonder I can write better in this language, as all the worries about editing are outsourced to a semi-intelligent machine.
Still, there is a recognizable me in every text produced, and I struggle whenever I have to silence this writing personality. I realized how difficult it was to write journalistically when I worked as an apprentice journalist in Italy.
I cannot believe the patience of Simone Casalini and Enrico Orfano, my bosses at the time, to this day. I was not made to be a journalist. I soon realised I was meant to be a writer, so I continued studying after my gap year.
Working as a journalist made me understand that I wanted to tell stories, but I wanted to use my voice and tell the stories I wanted.
No constraints.
A better writer
At some point, I hit a wall. I could write, of course. But I was not improving. On the contrary, I was verbose and dull, and I needed more time and words to convey ideas. When the movie Ceremony came out - a mediocre film with a completely out-of-place Uma Thurman and a wobbly storyline - I bumped into its written version. A screenplay?
But of course. Screenplays are depurated writings based primarily on dialogue and descriptions, and all bullshit is cut off. That is how I decided to study Screenwrtíting with capital S in the Factory of Dreams.
California, of course.
It may have been a futuristic endeavour then, but UCLA offered online courses in various time zones to cater primarily to foreign students.
My class had a crazy Finnish guy who wanted to write, direct and produce a movie about a hipster Hitler, a Colombian who is now the CEO of a film production company in London, a dazzling Australian screenwriter, an up-and-coming Dutch screenwriter (he knew it), a firecracker Irish screenwriter and camera operator, and a super talented Egyptian screenwriter.
We usually met on Wednesday night and worked into the wee hours of the morning. On Thursdays at work, I was constantly a zombie, and my colleagues were saints for putting up with my brainless body for one entire academic year.
It was a brilliant year. We were such a fun, enjoyable group. We read many screenplays and had to discuss our own; we met (online) to watch movies occasionally and comment on the screenplays.
We learned all the trade tricks and some more, and we worked with absolute stars Brian Price (who worked on Melrose Place and is also a Yale lecturer) and the late John Sweet. He will never be forgotten. He taught us to “hold the stupid stick”, to ask questions when we felt unsure, and to trust ourselves and the writing process.
I came out of this course a way better writer than before.
Talk to me about the food
In gastronomic writing, there are many voices, including many unique voices, and some of them are so loud that they manage to trickle down in endless copies. As I said at the beginning, it is hard for weak writers not to be influenced by more powerful and better ones.
I am a polyglot, so I am lucky to be able to read and understand many languages. If you are not, Google Translate is your friend.
Do as follows:
Copy the text you want translated into Google Translate and select an output in English. GT translates way better into English than into any other language.
If you cannot consume materials in English, pass the English translation of the text into Word or, better even, into Grammarly. Adjust the translation (fix any spelling, grammar and syntax errors).
Pass the improved text back to Google Translate and select to translate from English to your mother tongue.
I have a series of recommendations for you.
In Spanish and Portuguese
An incredible writer of our time is a Spanish author,
.She happened to be my teacher for the Masters in Gastronomic Writing. Her style is unique. It is a suffering style; every word is chiselled, polished, and sharpened with anguish and a struggle emanating from the page. It is poetic and timeless and reminds me of Sylvia Plath (minus the oven).
I will never forget her piece about sisterhood. It hits like a punch:
You hate not her calm but her indifference. The thickness climbs your oesophagus and reaches the bell like a cold ship. You want to slap her out of that naivety. Tell her that your father, that her father; tell her how he, before, sometimes; Where is the fear from, if you knew how to decipher it as well as you are at making a bechamel.
Some days, I wish I could write like she does, distilling pain into beautiful art and words, but we are all unique in our writing style and must defend our voices. That does not mean stopping to be in awe when someone else writes stunningly.
Another absolute favourite of mine is
. On the contrary, she is the most leisurely and straightforward read we can have. Her writing style never stops, and she takes us to dance like a mad Aquelarre. We, in turn, are enthusiastically drawn into her stories. She is writing a column for El País, showing once again that our Spanish neighbours have taken us Italian over in all arts, science, economics and social life:Any human phenomenon, small or large, has gastronomic derivatives, and everything gastronomic affects the landscape and the ecosystem in such a number of ways that controlling them is as possible as holding the water of a river with your hands. Wherever tomato plants continue to flourish, our gastronomy will continue to live in the face of gentrification. They are the last bastion.
With her too, I have this sort of benevolent envy I wish sometimes I could write in such a clean cut manner, no-nonsense and go on with my life.
The last author of this trifecta of gastronomic writing goddesses we should celebrate every day is my mentor and professor
who is the only person I know in gastronomy who can keep an entire room on their toes by telling a tale about hunger - I talked a lot about it already - but can also incredibly explore the paradigms of undressing strawberries:Six months later, in the privacy of my kitchen, the same one in which I write, I took up the knife and undressed her. The skin fell off with its seeds and left the heart inside. Undressing her meant losing something of her identity, her strength and bravery, to become something else, smaller, softer, sweeter. It was still strawberry, but not so much anymore.
The last one is my irreverent spirit guide,
who happens to have just published a book I am devouring, and he is the most irreverent writer of this generation - whatever it is. He does not have a fuck to give and writes with the belly, the hands, and the feet of a man that has endured long press conferences about nothingness and finds this contemporary gastronomy trop, but can write with a lucidity few have:So you see, the tasting menu that was born under the romantic - and false - premise that it was a formula that allowed diners to discover in a single stroke all the creativity of a chef, has ended up being the instrument through which investors , speculators and gastronomic advisors put their dirty hands - and their even dirtier money - into restaurants.
Last but absolutely not least, for me, it is
that in his mandatory read is exploring all Iberian gastronomy outside of the crowded space of stars, suns and any other fashionable event:When we only talk about restaurants with a star or those that are in some position in some ranking and when 80% of what we write is limited to a couple of large cities; When we only pay attention to restaurants of one style, usually in a price range, with a certain aesthetic, essentially of Western influence, if perhaps with some Asian or to a lesser extent American nod, we are leaving 90% of the image out of the photograph. of gastronomy. And it's a shame, because not only are we giving up a lot, but we are surely failing to understand things in their context.
In Portuguese
Among my favourite gastronomic writers is my husband, but he refuses to write more than sporadically, and yet it was through his writings that I fell in love with him, even before meeting him in person. He is, without doubt, the gastronomer I admire the most; his knowledge is unparalleled, and his experience is broader than anyone. Whenever he writes, he is sharp like a tool, harsh like a brush, and eloquent as a dictionary. Understanding his writing was the most significant push in learning Portuguese to a higher level than conversational.
I love how
writes in about his food and cultural memories. His heart is in Brazil, and his gastronomic development is taking place in Portugal, with all the love and contradiction that an expat can have towards his adoptive land, which also was a motherland for his ancestors. There is always a lot to unpack in his stories, and they are beautiful:In winter, eat raspberries without going broke; in summer, feel the elegance of figs. Wait patiently for the spring of blueberries and strawberries so vivid that they leave a trail of perfume on the street. On top of that in Coimbra, with a small town life, more time to think and cook all of this. The rule, then, has been to leave meat for very specific dishes, which usually involve a ritual of memory and Sunday. Oxtail, moqueca, chicken or sausage, from time to time
Another talented writer is
that in his newsletter is free from other editorial commitments can shine his specific style, and freely express his feelings towards the gastronomic circuses, gastro-colonialism and more:Since the continent's chefs decided to look to their backyards, a pulsating energy has taken over the kitchens of local restaurants. There is an essential rescue not only of products (tubers, grains, herbs, etc.), but above all of techniques. To learn from the native peoples who defined the culture of different countries in the region long before the arrival of European colonizers.
In English
I have a crush on
by who is currently the only writer that can spark any whatsoever interest in recipe-reading, and he does so because he wittingly explores recipes through historical lenses, and because he seasons every writing with historical gossip, which is my weak point:I got the dressed and decapitated bird home, removed its nicely packaged innards, placed it gently in a large pot with roughly sliced turnips, carrots, celery, and leeks. I studded an onion with cloves and wrapped it in cheese cloth with bay leaf and tarragon, tied neatly with string and added it to the pot along with several stalks of parsley and a few cloves of garlic, covered everything with cold water, brought it up to a boil, reduced it to a simmer, popped the lid on, and ignored the whole thing until the timer on my phone went off an hour later.
Sarah May Grundwald is a talented writer who writes Contadina, a newsletter where agriculture, gastronomy and feminism blend into a pretty explosive mix. I like her writing style, and her posts are always food for thought:
Conquer what? Conquering is for colonizers. Conquering is for assholes. This language is so problematic in food and food media. It's that capitalist "girl boss" bullshit that teaches women that we have value when we accomplish shit that doesn't matter. I can't remember who posted it, but the words seared me. This language is why kitchens in restaurants are so fucking toxic. Food media is rife with assholes who don't seem to care about the food or the people who produce it unless it is part of their hustle. It is maddening to witness the narcissistic circle jerk, and to also feel that to make a living, I have to participate too. Do I? I lead and organize food and wine tours in Rome and Georgia, and I hope that by talking about the realities of food, food waste, labor, etc, while I am on tour, maybe I can change the mind of one person to what to be a part of a collective change when they go home.
One is Richard Olney - no one like him can describe how obnoxious the Child and Fischer were without risking becoming a joke. He pokes a lot of fun at his friends and Gastronomical France, but he can also make us fall in love with his relative solitude. He was an outsider to some extent, and those among us who are not invited to the galas and not asked to write critical journalistic pieces on the new opening feel exactly like him: observing from the outskirts, with some sarcasm and irony because we are not being asked to keep up our illusions and dreams and go with the flow.
Another talented writer I love to read is
who writes, and her intellectual style is a complete delight in a landscape dominated by “foodie” and “influencers” dancing around plates:of is another absolute talent in gastronomic writing, and I find solace and delight in reading here pieces, always so contemporary and so tangible you feel on your skin and in your nostril every sensation she is conveying. This piece, for instance, “Of Covid and Coffee”:As the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu observed, the taste of a luxurious food or drink, something outside the realm of our everyday necessities, causes us to conflate the taste of luxury with the taste of freedom. We then form lasting associations between the foods of the special moment and the specialness of the moment itself; its experience becomes, as Bourdieu says, “amor fati,” converted from optional into necessity.
Thinking about all of the ways that coffee has been a part of my daily life makes me nostalgic, so much so that it practically forces a craving. I started writing this while sipping green tea, while my husband brewed coffee for himself next to me in the kitchen, the comforting scent wafting into the air
In Italian
lives near my hometown in Italy and is a successful and published writer, focusing on slow life and comfort food - which is also the title of her Substack newsletter, . Her pieces are sneak peeks into her family life, intertwined with her gastronomic memories and the ones she is creating for her little family:Until my grandmother Irma discovered, who knows how, that I liked vinegar and from that moment, with marinades during the night, I started eating. He immersed practically everything in vinegar, cauliflowers, red beets, beef steaks, and then asparagus, beans, tomatoes and so on.
I just read the Nicolau piece. I would have never in a million years thought someone could write so beautifully about bowel movements and tomatoes!
I loved this issue. It exudes all your passion for food writing. And, frankly, I feel a profound envy for it. Positive envy, but still envy. It's great to see how hard you're working to build your writing space and professional career. You're such a talented writer. And, again, that's my envy speaking. 😄