My Interview with Diva Foodies
Diva Foodies sat down with me to talk recipes, roots, and the kind of food that brings people back to the table.
I’ve known Toby, the voice behind Diva Foodies, since my first restaurant, Union Hill Kitchen in Chamblee, Georgia. We met back in the Twitter days, when a hashtag could still turn into a real friendship. She has spent years championing food people and telling their stories well, so when she asked to talk about my cookbook, Conversation Starters from the Other Side of the Stove, I was glad to say yes.
This interview gets to the heart of why I wrote the book in the first place. Yes, there are recipes in it. But the recipes were never the whole point. I wanted to tell the stories that came with them.
We talked about Cuban lunches, an open-door kitchen, and the path that led me to culinary school after my other half filled out the application for me. We even talked about Prince, legacy, storytelling, and how all of that finds its way into the way I cook and the way I write.
There is some practical talk too. How you take restaurant food and make it make sense for home cooks. How I learned to shoot my own food in natural light when a stylist was not in the budget. And yes, we got into a few recipes, including Fried Chicken with Sriracha Glaze and the Piedmont Club Buttered Crackers, which are as dangerous as they sound.
If you’d like to read it, here it is.
And maybe tonight is a good night to set a few extra places at the table. You never really know what stories will show up once the food hits the plate.
— Chef Alexis Hernandez
