Follow Giulia’s writing: https://www.giulia-ak.com/
Watch Giulia's Third Space video series: instagram.com/giulia__ak
Also: tiktok.com/@giulia_ak
Subsequent to this interview’s publication, Giulia became a video editor and Associate producer for Modo di Bere.
- Auto-generated transcript. (Please excuse errors.) No Bev is I think an iconic New York saying like even if you're just getting like You know a zebra cake at the deli you should go get an Arizona with that as well Our Arizona is still 99 cents if they aren't that should be legal, but When Arizona's were 99 cents, it's like there's no excuse. I'm enjoying this New York deli pairing a lot actually I'm to try that It's a great pairing And this This also feels very Italian and you even made a little Italian hand when you were describing it in this uncivilized state of having wine or other drinks or food by themselves. Welcome to Modo di Bere, the podcast about local drinks and local saints. I'm your host, Rose Thomas Bannister. (upbeat music) I'm super excited about today's interview and not just because I have a cocktail in my hand. Before we start the interview, I wanna remind you that this is a listener -supported show. And if you'd like to become one of those supporters, you can take a moment to visit Patreon.com/MododiBere, sign up as a patron for $5 a month and unlock bonus content. Since my guest today is a social media phenomenon, I should also mention that you can follow @MododiBere on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, and you should. Giulia Alvarez Katz is a food writer, producer, and novelist with a degree in food science and a passion with the local culture of New York City. She recently concluded a series of 30 videos for the blog Righteous Eats on the subject of New Yorker's Third Places. Giulia, welcome. - Thank you for having me. This is terribly exciting. - What is a third place? - Third place is defined as simply as possible. It's a place that you spend your time that is neither your home nor your workspace or workplace. People operate on different definitions. A big critique I got was that third places should be free. And broadly, I agree with that. They should be. It's just we live in a country where there's not a lot of political incentive to do that. So we make do with what we have. So what I decided to cover in third places for righteous eats, as I'm sure you can guess from the eats portion of the title, is restaurants because restaurants in the third places, not always, but often. - I mean bars come to mind. - Yeah, yeah. - I mean, I think like the guy who coined the term, he had like a sort of an abridged list of like examples and what he had said was like bars, coffee shops, barber shops, parks, libraries, like that sort of place. So yeah, I kept it like pretty broad, but I had to make sure that there was some food being and maybe not just on the premises, like if there's food nearby to a third place that you can merge them together, I would do that as well. - So it's like where you work or go to school and then there's your house and then there's the place you hang out. And that's your third place. - The leisure area. - My dad likes to talk about kind of the really local boroughs, the bucket of blood, but I think that would be– - That's a great term. - Like a third place category. I think that's true, yeah. The haunt would be one as well. - Yeah, I actually love this concept so much. I dusted off my skills as a retired mixologist and invented a cocktail in honor of Giulia's series, of which I'm a big fan. So the new local drink we are enjoying together is called the third place. - Mm. - Mm. - Woo. So, it's a variation of the classic cocktail de bechu, which means jewel in French equal parts, gin, sweet remove, and green chartreuse. My version has a local gin called "Ode to Babel," which is produced by the women -owned Black Ounce Social Club, Ode to Babel. It's distilled in Green Point in Brooklyn, an Italian herbal spirit from Piedmonté called "Chentum herbists and a Corsican wine aperitif with quinine called capcorsica. It's stunningly delicious. We were talking about it, it's kind of like a chartreuse negroni, served up. Chartreuse, this liqueur made by monks and it's like not available, widely available right now, which is kind of an interesting story. They just decided not to scale up for the global market, they're just gonna keep doing their monk thing. So, which is great because it actually led me to encounter a bunch of new products. So Giulia, what is a local saying that you have to start the show? Okay, I had another one, but honestly, it's kind of lame. I want to bring up the one that I brought up before. You can do as many as you want. No, Bev is, I think, an iconic New York saying for a very specific age group. If you hear no Bev and you know what I'm saying, You know like and it's really just about like why would you eat without a beverage? And also conversely, why would you have a beverage without eating? The two go hand -in -hand there? You know, I guess that's why I'm here. This is a no Bev situation. Yes. Yes. Yeah, I refuse to know Bev So here I am with a Bev New York is all about maximizing Making things efficient efficient and fun as easily as possible. - So wait, no Bev is when you're not drinking anything? - Yeah. - So eating without drinking? - Yes. - Yeah, so what's the opposite? - No snacking. I don't remember how you were supposed to pronounce it 'cause it was an online thing for a long time. - 'Cause it's spelled. - It was spelled N -O -N -O, obviously, S -N -A -I -N -G. And then there was sometimes like stylized with like a space in between snot and INC. Sometimes with a hyphen, but you know, it's loose slang from the streets of New York City. So it's hard to really nail down a particular spelling. Describing this uncivilized state of having wine or other drinks or food by themselves. Yeah. Like even if you're just getting like, you know, a zebra cake at the deli. You should go get an Arizona with that as well. Are Arizona still 99 cents? If they aren't, that should be legal. But when Arizonas were 99 cents, it's like there's no excuse. - I'm enjoying this New York deli pairing a lot. Actually, I'm just gonna try that. - It's a great pairing. - This also feels very Italian and you even made a little Italian hand when you were describing it in looking for this drink because, you know, we were just, I was just a fan of your internet work and your writing. The only thing that I really know about your background is the flags that you have on your Instagram page. So I realized, okay, I think this is Cuban flag and it's definitely the Italian flag. So I know a little bit about your family background just from family members that you mentioned on your videos. But why do you speak Italian? It's a bit of a story and a lot of like people moving. It starts in the 60s, my grandma who is Italian, that's like the reason broadly, but she was getting up there in age for the time. She was like 30 and unmarried, which was a problem. And she just wasn't feeling for Italian boys. She goes to Spain with her girlfriends, meets my grandpa who is this like tiny, 19 year old scrappy little British kid, But he's like really swarthy because he's Jewish. And so she's like, oh, this beautiful Spaniard, he's going to like come sweep me off my feet. And my grandpa tells her a whole bunch of lies. He says, like, I'm really rich. I'm from England. Do you know anything about England? She's like, no, because I'm a country girl. And he's like, huh, it never rains there. Are you kidding? Yeah. Because she really was very– She believes him. She was so ignorant at the time. She, like, just didn't know much because she was really, like, from the from the boondocks and You know one thing led to another she got pregnant with my mom. They moved her to the United Kingdom She learned English in like ten minutes But of course because she was learning English as she was raising this child my mom learned Italian and Then my mom when she was pregnant with me read an article in like the New Yorker or something That said that bilingual children were smarter or more accomplished than regular children. And she was like, "Wow." - She wanted to do right by you. - Yeah, of course. So that's why. And I just– - So she was playing like Rosetta Stone to her belly. - Pretty much, yeah. And also just like, yeah, insisting on like the house being like, you only speak Italian in the house. She's gotten looser with it over the years, but when I was pretty young, it was like, if you spoke English in the house, it was a problem. - I mean, I'm probably glad now, but when you were a kid, was that annoying to you? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. 'Cause also because I felt like the vocabulary I had in Italian was so limited by the fact that I only spoke it with family and it got even worse when I lived in Italy 'cause there's so much, you know, there's a lot of things you would not speak about with your family, like ever. Right. So only speaking it with your family, you just never learn. Like there's so many words I didn't know, I didn't know how to, like, buy weed. I didn't know what the word for nipple was, like, and, you know, you don't think that this is going to be important information until you're stuck in a situation where you're like, well, fuck, it would have been nice if I knew and I didn't. So I found it really annoying when I was a kid and I wanted to describe something that was happening to me in a largely English -speaking world in Italian and just not having the words at all just being like I don't know what it's called a computer in Italian like I don't know what a I don't know bus is right right well aside from vocabulary though like I feel like that speaking at home thing is just I mean I can't think of a better way to game flu we get fluency yes like like just that naturalness the accent the sort of the sonic universe of it all Yeah, hearing it definitely was helpful. And then also like the fact that it wasn't just like my mom was also like my grandma and my grandpa, you know, over the years, he learned really good Italian, like enough to conduct business in the country. So like he's also for the most part using Italian, even though he's British. And like, I think it was great for fluency. Uh, and it made me feel like I was part of like this cool group because like in New York there's always like these are split in school between like the kids who speak other languages and the kids who don't honestly and this maybe is not the case literally everywhere else but like in New York if you're the kid that only speaks one language you're kind of lame. I love that actually. Like if you're the kid who's like if you speak like Spanish at home it's like okay cool like awesome if you speak like you know, French, that's like slightly more interesting, a little more like unusual. If you speak something like Swedish or like Thai, it's over. You're the coolest kid in school. Yeah. Like it was so interesting. So, you know, you get so much of it, you got to create hierarchies somehow. You speak Spanish also. Yeah, a little. I'm less proud of it because I think also I feel like in Italian, you get to practice and it's way lower stakes here. If you practice in Spanish, like in New York, you're first of all, you're most likely talking to like a Dominican or Puerto Rican, and they already talk in a way that's very difficult and fast. And like, if you're not super tight with your Spanish, it can be hard. And also there's like, you know, the no sabo kid thing. Some people are really mean about it. I don't know what that is. Oh, so if you're within like the Latin American world, there's this term called no sabo kid, which refers to like a Latin person, a Hispanic person who grew up in the US and who doesn't speak Spanish or who speaks like a shitty Spanish. And it's used not in a nice way. It's like kind of a, I wouldn't call it derogatory. That's like a little serious, but it's just get an unkind thing to say and it makes people feel insecure like myself. It's just not a very nice thing to say. Oh, you know, I agree because there's so many people who have another language or culture just one generation removed that just simply didn't have the experience that you had of speaking the other language at home, you know, maybe because their parents wanted them to assimilate or there's this huge connection that a lot of people feel a lot of grief and even shame about. And I feel so sad when people feel shame around language. That's kind of the whole point of this project, really. And I've always found it really hard to understand why people jump to, like, sort of denigrating the no -sabo kid. Because it's like, you know better than anybody what it meant not, like, maybe not now, like, in New York City, but, you know, not very long ago, if you were, like, a Hispanic person in, like, New Jersey, speaking Spanish was like a stain. And like my dad was discouraged from speaking Spanish anywhere outside the house because it was like just, you know, it didn't look, you know, it didn't sound right, didn't look right, created more problems than it solved. And that's only recently changed. So I feel like, you know, people should give a little more grace. I know. It's a bit, it's funny to just jump straight to the judgmental -ness. You know? Yeah. Okay, you're judgmental if you speak a language besides English. Okay, now we're being judgmental if you don't. I mean, come on, can't people just exist and try to learn things outside of that stressful, judgmental environment? Yeah, absolutely. So the Caribbean connection comes from your dad's side of the family. That whole side of the family is very straightforward. They're just Cuban for as far back as anybody can remember. Yeah. I did a DNA test, sorry. And turns out there's like a big population of Cubans in Cuba who are originally from the Canary Islands and I'm one of them. Didn't know that detail about Cuba. I kind of knew what the Canary Islands were, but I didn't know where the hell they were. Didn't realize they were that far south. Why does Spain have it? Have you been there? No, I really want to go now though. They have amazing wine. I've heard. I was really looking into like all the food in the Canaries and they got this whole thing of like these different kinds of like spicy fruit jams. It's like a big thing there. They sell them at all like the tourist shops. They found this weird store out of somewhere like Mallorca or somewhere that was selling just like weird Canarian imports. I just found it so interesting. I was like, what are you guys doing over there? Like, what's going on? They're so far away from like so many things. I would really like to go to the Canary Islands. It's pretty high on my list. What I really feel through your work is your love for New York City, specifically the multicultural glory that is New York. You guys can find Julia's videos on her Instagram, Julia AK, but I just wanted to talk about some of my favorite videos in the series to kind of get people excited about To understand why I asked you to come on the podcast and what is so fun about it First of all, I can totally relate to the subway as a third space. I love that you've added that There's something about it for me Even when it's hell it can be restful. - Does that make sense to you? - Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I find the subway a profoundly comforting place. I do not understand or relate when people are like, "I get so scared." Like, sure, I get why you might be scared, realistically, like I'm sure there's like, but I mean, like you measure risk every day when you get up, like it is what it is. But I've always found the subway really comforting, the noise of it, the smell of it, even when it's stanky, like the vibe, there's just like something about it. I find it very moving and very, it's very important to me. - I was really sad when they gave us Wi -Fi. - Because that liminal space situation where you had to like read a book or kind of rest or be alone with your thoughts and get transported somewhere else, then you're just kind of plugged into the same thread the whole time without that sort of break. - Yeah, I mean, I rarely look at my phone on the train other than to like play music. Like I'm very big on like, I mean, generally outside I need music in my ears 'cause otherwise it's just a little overstimulating. But on the train, it's really just like tunes and like my own thoughts, I like let my eyes cross and I just like think about something random, have a wildly vivid daydream, or I also like looking at people. I mean, like, okay, listen, when I say looking at people, I mean like staring, like we're not doing staring or not like making people aware that you're looking at them. Yeah, it's just like a glance when they're not looking, the second they look at you, you look away, like have some respect, but that's also one of my favorite things, 'cause there's so many cool people, so many great faces, great like energies and expressions and like ways of moving and sitting down like an incredible outfits. Yes, my God, the outfits. And combinations sometimes, like sometimes I'm just kind of lost in my own thoughts. And then I suddenly look around the train car and just see how everybody's bringing it in their own way. And yeah, yeah. And there can just be some like, it's random, right? I mean, you know, people are going to a certain neighborhood at a certain time for a certain reason maybe, but there's also this randomness. And as the times you just look around and it's just this glorious little slice of humanity that you just got thrown into. - And you just, and the best part is when you get to witness it as like a grouping as a unit, and then you like split it up and you're like, okay, that guy maybe like has a wife, Has a kid got divorced like you could there's so many like possibilities for the way that like any individuals life could go could have gone and if you spend even like a half second just thinking like this is a very complex fully formed person and we're just all in the two together like it's so funny but also so magical and cool I just like I can't live without it it's really like that's that's why I stick around So speaking of staring etiquette, another etiquette thing that people love to talk about on the train is what to eat on the train. And I loved how you brought food into there by demonstrating good subway eating technique. I think you ate like beef turkey or something. Yeah, it does not smell or spill. Yeah, I was thinking like, I've seen some people eat crazy stuff on the train. Oh, tell me some examples. I once saw somebody, you know how like when you go to a seafood place you can get like those plastic bags of just like a crab boil or something with like the corn the potatoes like all the seafood like he had one of those and was just like it was the summertime so we just had a tank top on he was shoving like his arm like elbow deep into this big bag of seafood and just like sort of snapping open crab claws and just kind of like suckling it off his it was bizarre it was so dramatic the messiest thing I can almost imagine eating on the train. Taking up an entire like chunk of the train just because it was like spraying sauce everywhere. He had like a splash zone. And then the corn squirting. It was just like, and you know, part of me, I remember at the time thinking I shouldn't judge him too hard. We're on the train from Coney Island, but then in retrospect, well, like why? Why should that make it okay that we were on the train from Coney Island and he's got this bag of seafood. Like, that's crazy. What's the weirdest thing you've ever eaten and or spilled on the train? Oh, or was there a moment when you were like, oh, I'm that guy. I dropped a bottle of blue Bill Berry kombucha. Oh, no. Unlike a morning rush hour. Oh, no. It I mean, it didn't explode and like hurt anybody, but there was an entire bottle of Bill Berry kombucha foaming and running along the floor. Trying to think, oh, I know exactly what it was. Eighth grade, I had just left a Starbucks with my friend on the upper West side, and we were going to head downtown to meet some boys. And we had gotten these, like, what is the biggest size at Starbucks? Is that a grande? Venti, venti. We had a venti size frappuccino one each. And we were, it was like a super crowded train, and I got jostled by some guy, always a fucking 42nd Street. And the Frappuccino, I barely sipped it because it was too cold, and I had teeth sensitivity at the time. And so I was holding on to it, waiting for it to like dilute a little bit, and then the whole thing went, like the way that it had fallen to was so comical. It went down the length of the train. - Yes, my bilberry kombucha did that too. - All the way down. - So you could just be shamed for the entire slice of the entire boggle container of humanity. - Exactly, everybody saw, and then as the train was moving and it had diluted a bit, the frappuccino was dripping, it's gross like– - Was it like a strawberry - Frappuccino or a coffee? - No, it was like a chocolate one. - Chocolate, oh. - Or like a java chip or like something like that. - Oh no, there were chunks. - Yeah, yeah, it was awful. And I, I mean, I don't think I bring drinks on the train unless it's something like really contained or like something okay, like a coffee. (gentle music) Another one of your videos that I really loved was the dim sum video. I've only had dim sum a few times and I found myself just feeling like I didn't know what was going on. So I really appreciated your video which was saying that you've eaten dim sum your entire life and you still don't know what's going on. Yeah and you said something in there like expertise is lonely because you don't have to ask questions anymore so you don't have to talk to anyone. -Damn, I forgot I wrote that. -I thought that was really deep. -Goddamn. -Yeah. -Shit, I guess it was. -Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It spoke to me. It spoke to me because, you know, I'm diving in, learning about Italian wine and trying to learn something about all the dialects and, you know, the whole world and, you know, if you're, if you feel like you need to be an expert or that you can sort of conquer a field of knowledge, I think that is lonely. Yeah, also sounds frankly to me a bit boring, like as much as I respect and really like admire people that are incredibly good at just one thing, like they know everything about just one thing. I never understood that because I'm like, how like don't you, like is there nothing else like that you want to put in your big honking brain like thing? Well, nobody knows everything about something. And if they could, then it's probably kind of a boring thing, right? That's true, yeah. I mean, I guess the things that I like are the things that, you know, are just vast. But everything's vast. Yeah. I mean, for me, when I learned something, this whole other level opens up and I'm just like, it's like a tree or a nerve system or something that just keeps splitting off and going on and on and on and you didn't even know that there was another whole level, but there's always another level. And then always different trails to choose. Oh, I also love to your, speaking of third spaces that aren't restaurants, I love to your concept of Union Square as a waiting room. That's literally how it's always felt because it's like, I think it being that much of a transit hub and such a spot where just like shit goes down. It's a really interesting place to just kind of meet up with somebody. And I always end up seeing some amazing stuff, doing amazing stuff, never because I meant to go there. Like I never sat there and was like, let me go to Union Square today. So I was like, I gotta meet up with somebody they're meeting us at Union Square. - One of the things that I liked about your series was really describing how New Yorkers do third spaces. I mean, we have our watering holes in our bars and stuff, right, for sure. But a lot of times it really is a deli where you were just standing for a little while and then the place that you can sort of fold yourself into or lean against in order to eat something out of crumpled paper. And that is like our moments of pause. And I was thinking when looking at some of your deli park combo type videos, one of my favorite sort of funny little part -time jobs I've ever done in New York was packing toys in my friend's toy warehouse storage unit in East New York. Yeah. And there was just like, I mean, this was just me, you know, coming here and belatedly discovering Dominican steam tables. But just this, the food, I mean, come on, but just also just the crowd of people would come in every day and just be like more gravy more grateful gravy and just you know just kind of stand there and we really do just kind of stand around and stuff our faces we appreciate pretty much eating so much. Something that I never did or like mentioned in any of the third places videos but that kind of felt present throughout every single one that I made was the sense that like you don't really like you're a third place, but it doesn't really choose you either. It just kind of happens. Like, it's a convergence of a lot of unrelated things that need to happen all at the same time for it to do that. But once it does it, it's doing it. And there's no going back. There's no changing the way that you relate to it, the way you engage with it. It's so much less choice involved. Or what choice there is, is like subconscious and vague and like hard to pin down like you know you go to a restaurant just because you want a given type of food or like something at a price point or whatever there's all this choice all this choosing happening you like have to make a decision I actually kind of hate deciding what I'm supposed to eat I kind of hate it it's stressful so third places I think was really nice to me because it was especially once I got other people involved in like suggesting theirs, there was this sense of like, they, like so many of the people who would tell me this was their third place were like, you know, kind of take it aback by that fact. Like once they learned what the term was, they're like, "Oh, that's what it is." And they're like, "Oh, yeah, I guess that's what it is." Do you think the third place is a place where you have a really hard time making yourself or order anything different? You always get the same thing. Yeah. I ended up just developing a much deeper relationship with a local deli. After on the very first interview of this podcast, I was interviewing my amazing British friend who works in Italian wine and also with the wine and hip hop podcast. And she was telling me about some of their pairings and mentioned the chopped cheese as a sandwich that everybody knows about, but I didn't. No one had shown it to me. And I felt like honestly that had and being kept from me. And it turns out that they have really great chopped cheese just at my deli. You know, really, it kind of changed our lives. It's kind of hard to feed my kid because they're always getting chopped cheese, you know, right after school and then not hungry for dinner. - There is, that is such a New York ritual of being a kid as you go immediately after school. There's always a deli right next to the school. They know what they're doing they know what they're doing if they're if they really know what they're doing They're doing they got curly fries And they'll let the kids just kind of dominate it for like a half hour It's never a long but like you just if you're a regular person you just need to avoid it for that half hour Yeah, you just gorge yourself on like curly fries chopped cheese bacon. I can cheese sometimes like random stuff chips Arizona's and then you're not into dinner. You're like, "God, mom, I don't want dinner. I don't want that." Why are you cooking again? It's always cooking. "Why don't we get a takeout? God, I want a Chinese food." Yeah. Oh, my God, takeout. That's so wonderful. I know. I can't live without it. I'm so bad. I can't live without it. I'm so bad. New York is the best place. What's your favorite takeout? Oh, it really depends. It really depends. There's this one place that I keep just when I can't think of anything else I always go to them it's just like sort of Korean fast food joint called garlic to the chicken they mostly do like Korean fried chicken and smother stuff but the thing that I always want from them is they got this like box it's like a bento box where you can get like a couple pits chicken and then like rice and salad and like some kimchi And that's all. And it's really nice. And it's just like a simple little, like, it's like a TV dinner or like a lunchable. It's like a grown up lunchable. And it's Korean. So it's like a double whammy. And honestly, it's wonderful when I'm when I don't want to do anything. Speaking about language in talking about local culture, including food and drink, the first thing that pops out to me is this person's a writer. I'm looking at your stuff with the connections that you bring in, but I'm also curious to ask you because I'm a writer too, and an experience that I've had learning how to make videos for social media, short, super short format, does it make you better to have to write voice overs for very short clips? Yeah. It makes me need to be very thoughtful and less indulgent. In writing, when you're just writing like pros, you can like, I mean, like, you're always going to be editing yourself down, making yourself more concise, but you can kind of let it let it rip and just like go super hard with like a flowery or like really like just luxurious detailed paragraph, but you just don't have the time and neither does anybody else in a video context. So it makes you really dilute whatever you're trying to say or not dilute condensed whatever you're trying to say. Yeah, just still. Thank you. That's good. micro in a script. Yeah. I love what you do end up including though because you, you know, you could condense everything down and as some person could decide that everything that got left in that they thought was essential was just like boring, obvious stuff. But you know, you're like throwing in some obscure novel about clouds or putting in your stonerish thoughts about whether we've robbed pigeons of their right to work. That God, that was really funny. - Yeah. - I really enjoy a lot of your food writing. In the videos, peanut soup from Senegal that was neither overbearing nor anonymous. You know, it just really made me think about the peanut in a new way. - Yeah, no, thank you so much. I, one of the big critiques actually I was getting throughout my time at Righteous Eats is like, Cut it like pair it back. You're too much of a writer. It's too literary It's like too much that Which is really funny because I feel like in every other context I'd been in besides that it was the opposite. It was like it's too casual You got to take this more seriously. You got to like, you know, this is fancy good stuff. And right just eats They were like whoa whoa Like they loved those moments, right? Where it was like something that was like very much like right early. But I like what they taught me and what I needed to learn is how to like present that without like couching it in a bunch of other stuff that like alienates a huge swath of people that I've never like to be honest made much of an effort to approach because I thought like that's that's the mess as if I'm weird. - Right, so you felt like it was kind of a, you were making insider references or something like that. Yeah, well, I don't know. I'm glad that you didn't learn it too hard because it was so clear to me that you were the writer on the team and I was here for it. I just thought those third place videos were so special and I really loved them and I liked your writing and I liked the choices that you made and they're very funny, they're very rich. You know, it's obviously like so much more to give, but you managed to include a lot. I was appreciating that editing process as I was watching them, and I just think they're fantastic. That's so nice to hear. I love the third place video series. If you happen to be listening to this episode in real time in early 2024, I am teaching a bilingual wine class in collaboration with culture without borders, language collective. On February 17th for English and Spanish learners to learn wine tasting and meet conversation partners, you can get more information about the event on my Instagram page in my bio or by sending me a message on my website, motodbari .com. My website is a great place to sign up for my newsletter so that you can hear about stuff like this. Please consider becoming a paid supporter of my work by visiting patreon .com /mododbarrett, sign up for $5 a month, unlock bonus content. There's also a couple of great ways that you can help this podcast for free, telling a friend who you think would enjoy it, sending them a link to one of your favorite episodes, and also going on to Apple podcasts, rating the podcast five stars and leaving a written review does more than you think for helping more people discover the show and I really appreciate it. Feel free to take a moment to pause the show, explore some of those options. Julia and I will be here when you get back. Now in talking about food writing, coming out of music. I just remember being the girl who set up shows, being this concert promoter at a house concert venue for a while, and I would have to write on my own copy to promote the shows because nobody ever had anything useful online, so I ended up basically writing my own album reviews for almost every band that I booked because people would just have some pictures up. And I needed to tell people this is what this music will sound like if you come to my event, I just became aware early on that it's not an easy thing to talk about what music sounds like in a way that will translate to people. And I feel the same thing with writing about wine and writing about food and other drinks. As I was learning how to taste wine, how to do that whole thing, I was like, "Oh, this is going to make me a better writer." Because to describe how something tastes and smells and makes you feel and how it feels in your mouth, like, that is not easy. Yeah. And English is, like, surprisingly not as rich as I frankly would like it to be in flavor and texture words specifically for food. Also, like, action words were really, like, we are such a rich vocabulary in other ways, but, like, there I think are very poor in it, but also like, you know, from limitation comes great creativity. So there have been ways where I've described something where I know there's a single word for an Italian, and if this was Italian, I would just use that. But in English, I got to find my way around it. And I found some really interesting creative ways to describe these things that do not have necessarily a word. Can you think of an example? I'm thinking, I'm trying to think of one right now. Um, recently, Oh, so I was trying to describe like mantecate but like inside your own mouth like when you like kind of emulsify something just by like the action of processing it within the mouth and then by like doing that you expose more flavors right and I was and if this was a talent I just would have said like it was mantecato in the mouth and like pasta that's it like I did the job but in English, I like said something like, you know, you swish it around and feel the viscosity like sort of change. And then when that happens, like the flavor also changes and affects your mouth flesh in a different way. Yeah. So you needed like 40 words. Yeah. It wanted for like a whole sort of elaborate explanation. But I also like that in food writing. I find that a lot of food writing in English tends to like sit with these like very just, I mean, I hate the word basic, but like basic words like, you know, this was insipid or this was salty. This was delicious. Like, yeah, but like, give me, give me a little judge, like you're the professional, supposedly, I mean, I think you need a writer in these spaces. Yeah. As I was reviewing some third place videos, I had seen it before, but I found myself rewatching the video about the Ukrainian cafe that used to go to with your grandfather and just crying. Okay. I mean, you let us know at the beginning of the video that he wasn't around and that you couldn't go with him. But just everything about that story was so moving. Can you tell us about the process? Yeah. So like all of my best work, it came about because I was incredibly stressed and under very high stakes. I had somebody cancel on me super last minute and it was like labor day weekend or something. And I was like, and I was like going insane, not even in the city. Like I don't know what to do. And that place, I mean, I'm not a gatekeeper by nature. If somebody asked me where you go get your Ukrainian, I would have just said that place because that's the truth. But I also It's called, I think, Ukrainian Village Restaurant, or Ukrainian East Village Restaurant. It's just on 2nd Avenue, off Astor Place. I'd been kind of like not going out of my way to go there, also because at that point I had sort of relied on guests, and no one had suggested it, so I had let it go. But then last minute, I was like, okay, fuck it, we bought, we're gonna go there. I'm craving stuffed cabbage and like, let's go. And the whole time I was there and like filming it, I was thinking like, okay, well, I'm gonna have to like talk about him, but like I wasn't sure how. I was really like not in the business of trying to be like super sappy or like exploitative. 'Cause like, you know, I've seen that and you can always kind of tell when it's they're like leading into it a bit too much and it doesn't feel sincere. And so I thought, okay, if I'm going to do this, it has to be like really sincere and it's going to be as corny as it needs to be for that to be the case. And I'm just going to do it. And if they don't like it, then they don't like it. But if they do like it, then I think the sentimentality and this was being me being very cynical, which frankly, I think I would have really appreciated. He was a fairly cynical man. And I was just like, okay, like if this goes, it goes. And it did. And when I was writing the script, that was when I had the really emotional moment, which I think as a writer makes the most sense. That was like, it was intense, like writing that script was intense. For the people who haven't seen the video, can you, can you read it a little bit for us? So in that video, I visit this restaurant that I used to go to with my late grandfather who was a Cuban drag queen who lived in the West Village in the 80s. And so he got to know a lot of these like original sort of classic New York restaurants, including like, you know, places like the diner by the courts on Center Street, like all those types of places. And this Ukrainian spot was one of my favorites, because it felt like a secret, like you had to know to go down the spooky hallway to go in there and eat. I liked that the ladies, they were never nice. Like that's a big part of it also. I liked that every single time I'd gone in there, it was some other like it was always like empty except for one other table. But the other table was always somebody interesting. And I, you know, it definitely is the third place. And I talked about coming here with Going there with him when I was a kid, and then also growing to like it for myself as I went there on my own as an adult, ordering things that he would have never ordered and trying stuff out. Sitting at tables that he would have never sat at. He would have never sat at that corner table, I'll be honest, but I'm a corner table person. The restaurant where you spent time together almost feels like another member of your family. That's the or like a setting for your family. I mean, it's not your house, but it has its own personality, especially the way you describe it. And the thing is like, I don't like that there's, at least, I don't know if this is the case in other parts of the world, but I think in the West we have such a separation between like work, house, and like other places. And it's not like just a literal separation, like we're better at building walls, walls, right? Like we're better building good doors that lock. But also like there's a kind of spiritual separation where like the home is like the private space where like private stuff happens, you have your important conversations in there and like recently there was this debate on TikTok where people were like, why would you ever have a serious conversation at a restaurant? Why wouldn't you? Oh my god, I was a bartender. I witnessed so many breakups. Exactly. And there's something about like being able to create a memory also like you know better to create a really painful memory and a Space that you are not committed to ever being in again Then creating a memory like like that in your own like bedroom. Oh, I'm here for this while you're on a lease like take Yeah, and I think restaurants are very important for that like you need another place where like Happy memories or painful memories can happen and it's like divorced from whatever else happens in your house because so much more shit happens there. You know, coming out of the pandemic, you know, a lot of people were feeling really, really lonely and had for also the additional reason that they had some of those places were lost. A lot of those places closed and didn't make it. And there's this grief when a place like that closes. Yeah. I mean, you know, the latest hot restaurant in the really difficult New York City cycle, for instance. I mean, you can be sad about it, but there's just something that grief that people feel when they share the news of a local closes. Yeah. I mean, that's also a big reason why I wanted to do the series in the first place. My approach to food and food writing has always kind of been a little more anthropological, a little more like how it's used and like how the people who go to it and work in it and like engage with it day in, day out, like what does that mean for them? But third places I think was the right vehicle for that because it was a sort of sweet, pithy way to describe this very broad, deep topic that I wanted to wrangle. But also it was a new topic for a lot of people, but an easy like way to approach these meta kind of topics when it comes to restaurants and the place that they have in a city. I can definitely relate and, you know, Motody Berry is about local drinks and local sayings and people telling me about local drinks and local sayings and that's what's being investigated and encountered. But it's really about local culture. So a big philosophical question, what does it mean to be local? Cool. So I did mention I have like so many hot takes about this as a New Yorker. I mean, I like many of my comrades as, you know, Native New Yorkers did for a very long time have like negative feelings about transplants. And I was like, you, I had all these like absurd metrics, like you're only a real New Yorker if blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like you've been here X amount of years, you've done X amount of things, you've been to XYZ however many times, like and the more granular I was getting because for every rule I would make, I would meet an exception and I would like have it thrown back in my face. Like I'd meet somebody who like, I could not like say that's not a New Yorker, clearly a New Yorker, no question about it, but like buy my own silly metric that I as apparently a genius New Yorker should like, you know, be the arbiter that, you know, just would fly in the face of that. So I realized that that wasn't working and I was probably not a smart way to go about it. And then my, that choice was really cemented when I started being the sort of public -facing person online. So many people saying like, "This is not a real New Yorker. She's or wherever the hell like I did. And you know what? It wasn't that I was insulted, which like maybe I was a little, but it really wasn't that I was insulted. I was like, okay. So clearly we're not very good at identifying. - Like who's the New Yorker? - People thought you were from Ohio. - They were saying you didn't seem New York enough. - Which is like, okay. So none of us are very good at it. - How do you say coffee? - Coffee. - Okay, all right. - Yeah, like, I mean, it all depends. I feel like the accent will like come and go on words like that. Like there have been times where I just say like dog. If you ask me to say dog, I'll just say dog. But if it's like within a sentence that ends up coming out like dog, like very intense. So honestly, I'm not from New York originally. I consider myself a New Yorker now. The non -accented example that you just tried to give sounded like a New York dog to me. Oh, there we go. I also, you know, I didn't realize I had a New York accent till I left America and suddenly strangers are coming up to me like, "Are you from New York? Like, how did you know?" And it's always the accent. But you were just telling me how things changed for you when people started to question your bona fides. How did that change things for you? It mostly just made me realize that there was no metric. There was no guaranteed way. There was no like thing that could be true about you that would unequivocally say like you are a New Yorker You aren't a New Yorker and then be on that Then that raised the question of like well, what do we even mean when we're saying this? Yeah, like I had a vague sense of what I meant, but then like plenty of people who like You couldn't question at all whether they're New Yorkers would not fulfill those like random metrics that came up with And then some people will be like, oh you have to be born and raised here. Do you know how many New Yorkers were not born here? I wasn't born here. Like they brought me here when I was an infant, like a lot of people and other people were brought here as adults or brought here. But you know what I mean? - Yeah. - I just don't think it's a good use of our time as New Yorkers, as a city population. I don't think it's a very kind use of our time because then you know what happens? Like the transplants that we have problems with, and they exist. But they're like teenagers. The more you say like, I hate you, I hate you, and you don't belong here, and you're bad, and I don't like you, stop it! Like, the more you do that, the more they're gonna behave badly. It's really teenager mentality. You gotta treat 'em like a teenager. And she's like, okay, honey, do what you need to do. You know I'm here if you need advice. And then suddenly they know how to behave. So, like, excellent parenting advice, I have to say. My view of New York is really thinking about, "Okay, you have to be here for so long." That's just the opposite of the way that I've always felt about it. I've just gone with the vision of New York as this nexus of reinvention and that anybody who wants to be a New Yorker can just show up and claim the citizenship in this type of city that's about that on day one. And that's what I did. I mean, you know, I came running here, you know, and, and, and that's what it was like for me. And it was really this place where I felt at home in a way that I had never felt at home before. And I think the way that this initially manifested in me was by hating on Boston, which I didn't realize was a thing. I just naturally came to it. I invented it. So, for myself. So, it was right after I arrived here, I went to Boston very shortly after and, you know, I'd been riding the subway for like a matter of weeks in New York City and I rode the, whatever they call the subway in Boston. And it was, people did not know how to move. They were all trying not to bump into each other. So, they all bumped into each other. And I was just like, "Hives mind, everybody goes where they're trying to go, and we just all work it out." And once you know this choreography, the second other people are not also like up to speed with the choreography, it's, it really feels like I don't, I'm not an angry person. I don't feel rage like that, but when I do, it's almost always because of people acting wrong on the train, like not moving correctly. Right. I had my things when I first moved here. I was like, "The garbage is just on the street? Where are the dumpsters? Why are they doing this? This is crazy." Or just, yeah, that fast walking thing, my sweetheart that I arrived to be here with, was walking so fast to catch the train. And I just felt like he was leaving me behind. - Yeah, my boyfriend still hasn't, my boyfriend's lived here almost 10 years now and he still doesn't get the speed thing. It's not like he's from a million, he's from Long Island. Like he should get this. Every time we're walking somewhere, he's like, "Why are you running away from me? I'm not running. This is a normal speed. I have long legs." Like, what do you want me to say? Like, I also can't walk slower. When I lived in Europe, I tried to train myself to walk at the pace of all these leisurely meandering Europeans. It was not working. I stopped paying attention. I spanned Yeah, yeah, no, it's you really have to catch a load gear. It's it's it's a conscious conscious thing You really notice how much faster you're walking than everybody else What are some of the local New York drinks that you discovered when you were out on your series that you want to tell me about so - Because I filmed a lot of the third places, like early in the day, I wasn't actually doing a lot of like drink drinking. - Oh, it doesn't have to be alcohol. - Yes, but I, you know, I never thought that you could classify New York by a given cocktail. I thought like, it's too diverse. It's too many different tastes. Like there's no way. And yet something I learned during third places, basically everywhere I went that had alcohol, had a margarita And it was good. Like it wasn't like a mid -Margarita. The thing is, every time I think about it, every mid -Margarita I've had in this city has been pretty nice. And my theory now is that the real drink of New York is a Margarita. But I did have an amazing morir soñando. Ooh, what's that? I think it's Dominican or Puerto Rican. It's one of those two. It's Orange juice like smoothied with milk sounds insane, but it's so good and it's like the name literally means like to die while dreaming like No, are you kidding? Yeah, okay. I need one of those right now. Amazing. I have had pretty good success finding it at like any of those Dominican steam table places if they got like juices, they'll have that. Those places are so great. But I've noticed a lot of Mexican places, at least now in Queens, they've started selling it themselves because they got all the stuff for it, and I think they just figured out from the local Dominicans, like, "Oh, that's the thing. Let me make that," because they got all the stuff. So Mexican places, definitely Dominican places, I think you could probably find it at a Puerto Rican place. I'd be really surprised if you didn't. Can you say the name for me? Morir soñando. Julia, we talked about your third place series, which which has now come to an end. It's been announced on the internets that you've recently completed a novel. I know you were a food journalist before collaborating with Righteous Eats. What's going on for you now? Or what are you interested in happening? What are your ideas? So I think top down the plan I think for just the rest of forever is just like put my stuff out there and in the hopes that eventually some will be like, "That's really good. I wonder what happens if we pay her." That's the hope. And listen, it hasn't not worked out for me yet. Find Julia's videos on her Instagram, Julia _AK. Is there anything else that you want to tell us? Any deep thoughts that you want to share? Or shallow thoughts? I hope that you are treasured forever in someone's heart, including your own. Oh, I like that. That's what I have to say. Well, I have a little motto, too, that I can use to close the show. Thank you so much. Julia is really fun. Thank you for having me. Really fun talking with you. This is great. We're also going to record an interview in Italiano si chiama Modo di bere Italiano if you're speak Italian or you're trying to speak Italian You can go over to Modo di bere Italiano and listen to the interview with Julia Alvarez cats in Italian to all of our listeners Wherever you go and whatever you like to drink always remember to enjoy your life and to never stop learning That's So gangster. I love that. Thank you. That's wonderful. Follow Modo di Bere on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok for even more unique and encouraging drinks and language content. Music for The cast was composed by Ersilia Prosperi and performed by the band Ou. You can purchase their recordings at oumusic .bandcamp .com.
Music composed by Ersilia Prosperi for the band Ou: www.oumusic.bandcamp.com
Produced, recorded and edited by Rose Thomas Bannister
Audio assistance by Steve Silverstein
Video version by Giulia Àlvarez-Katz
