Kim Severson on Spoon Fed, food and storytelling

Kim Severson of the New York Times

The first time I saw Kim Severson, she held an audience of food bloggers and photographers in the palm of her hand, critiquing story ideas and acting like the editor we all needed. She even told one brave writer, after dismissing her story idea, “I’m tearing you down to build you up.”

That was in January at the FoodBlog South conference at Woodrow Hall in Birmingham, where she was the featured speaker, the big draw in a weekend program that included noted cookbook authors, food stylists and photographers. Severson was the author we waited all day to hear. Some, like me, had read her memoir, “Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life” (Riverhead, 2010) and were looking forward to tales of her food writing career in San Francisco, where she worked at the Chronicle, and New York, at the Times. I think we were all a little surprised, and happily, when she gave a perfectly nice speech about her book, then removed the microphone from the stand and, pacing across the stage and walking into the audience, she questioned us and presided over an impromptu editorial meeting.

“Spoon Fed” is a collection of profiles of eight female cooks, some of them writers, whom Severson has known throughout her life and career. She begins with Marion Cunningham, best known as the writer behind the revised Fanny Farmer Cookbook, (she was also James Beard’s assistant). Other chapters are devoted to Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, former Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl, Italian cookbook author (and authority) Marcella Hazan, Southern cooking legend (and late-in-life Georgian) Edna Lewis, New Orleans restaurateur Leah Chase, Food Network’s Rachael Ray and Severson’s mother, Anne-Marie Zappa Severson. As Severson tells their stories, her own life is revealed - struggles with alcohol, teenage experimentation with drugs, failed relationships, coming out to her family, career insecurities, spiritual questioning, and ultimately acceptance and a successful relationship with her partner, with whom she has a young daughter.

Severson is out of the daily food writing game – since November, she’s worked as the New York Times bureau chief in Atlanta, on the national desk. During this time, she’s written about the lack of internet access in rural Alabama, abandoned civil rights buses, and, memorably for Atlantans, the recent controversy over Chick-fil-A’s contribution to a conservative marriage workshop. Yes, the Jesus chicken story. I spoke with Severson by phone a few weeks ago and we talked about her switch from food writing to hard news and telling the story of her life so far.

A Cook’s Question: Do you miss writing about food? How do you like working the national desk?


Severson: Even though I’m writing straight news, I’m putting food in my stories. I include food because it is part of our lives. And I do see straight food writing in my future.

A Cook’s Question: Before you worked at the New York Times, you were a food writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. This seems like a foodie’s dream job. Was it intimidating to taste and give your opinion?

Severson: I keep wondering why I leave these great jobs! We had these smart young interns from the culinary school cooking great food that we got to taste.

[In the tasting] You would hold back at first; it takes a rare and brave person to step up and speak first. After awhile, you start speaking up and find your voice. It’s a freeing thing. It is just food, after all.

A Cook’s Question: I noticed in your stories from “Spoon Fed” and also in your work for the New York Times, an affinity for old people. For example, the Spoon Fed stories about Edna Lewis and Marion Cunningham, and the NYT piece you wrote about Chef Thomas Keller and his aging father.

Severson: You know, I see my own parents aging. You think they don’t know anything and then you realize that they know everything, and that ok, life is complex. As a writer, I have an obligation to capture stories before they pass on. For the Thomas Keller story, it was writing about someone at the top of his game and seeing another chapter in his life. (The piece tracks the reunion of Keller with the father who abandoned his family when the chef was a child, and their relationship until the end of his father's life.)

A Cook’s Question: "Spoon Fed” traces your relationship with eight cooks, one of them family, the others famous women in food. Along the way, you tell your story. Did you intend to tell your life story, too?


Severson: The book I started out to write was to make a record of these women who influenced me. They have a big role in how we eat today. But I learned lessons along the way - people come into your life when you need to learn something.

A Cook’s Question: Were you uncomfortable about telling so much about your personal life?


Severson: My editor told me that to tell a good story, you have to tell the truth. For about two weeks (after she’d sent in the manuscript), I was in agony. It was much more personal than I intended. I thought “Oh my God, what have I done?” Then my friend Frank Bruni (current NYT reporter, former Times restaurant critic), who had just written his memoir of growing up fat, “Born Round,” told me, “You took the check, you wrote good work, now put on your big girl panties. And so I did.”

A Cook’s Question: How did you like the transition from straightforward journalism to memoir? Can we expect more books from you?

Severson: I realized that I was my own resource and it was freeing. I liked it after awhile. I may write fiction in the future. And right now I’m working on a cookbook with my friend Julia Moskin.

Further reading: Each chapter in "Spoon Fed" includes a recipe - I attempted Gumbo Z'herbes from the essay on New Orleans' Leah Chase.

Atlantans, note: Severson will be the guest author at Restaurant Eugene’s seventh author dinner on Tuesday, May 3. The evening will begin at 6:30 p.m. with a cocktail and hors d’oeuvres reception. Chef Linton Hopkins will prepare a four-course menu, with pairings, inspired by the cooks in “Spoon Fed.” Severson will attend to read from her book and sign and answer questions. $100 per person, includes a copy of Spoon Fed. Reservations are required, call 404-355-0321.

Text copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.
Images are from KimSeverson.com.

Goodbye Gourmet, and Ruth Reichl, Don't Forget to Write

The November issue, the final issue, of Gourmet is on newsstands now. I picked it up today to read at lunch, over a ham sandwich and Coke Zero at the bookstore. The Thanksgiving issue has always been the star of the Gourmet lineup, and editor Ruth Reichl has said in the past that as long as she's at the helm, a roasty-toasty turkey will be on the cover of the November mag. I guess then it's fitting that this Rockwellian turkey, bosomy and burnished, is on the cover of the last Gourmet magazine.

It's been a couple weeks since Conde Nast announced it will pull the plug on Gourmet and the issues already in the can will not see the light of print. Some media observers say the final issue marks a sad day for foodies. I say it's a sad day for all who love a perfectly written declarative sentence, the kind that my quirky journalism professor with the geek glasses (long before they were considered coolly ironic), reading aloud a student's work would proclaim "it sings!" With evocative photography and spot-on recipes, Gourmet was a hat trick of words, pictures and food. Words, pictures and food better and distinct from its competitors. Not the brain candy of Paula Deen (bless her butter-basted heart) and some other successfully merchandised chefs/cooks I could name. Not the effervescent entertaining how-to's of Gourmet's kid sister, Bon Appetit. Not the precise execution of Cook's Illustrated, with its clipped narrative describing recipe evolution from disaster to culinary dynamite. Not the idiosyncratic appeal of Fine Cooking, itself newly renovated, hardly a venue for stirring prose, and until recently, not much of one for photographs and design, either.

Gourmet and I go back two decades, when as a newlywed, I decided that the magazine would teach me how to cook. I recently came across a couple issues from those days, and was astounded at the advertising and page count - December 1987 tops out at 278 pages. (I bet the ad staff's Christmas party was a blast that year.) Inside, the much-missed regular feature, Gastronomie Sans Argent, and Laurie Colwin's charming "How to Make Gingerbread." Colwin was one of those writers with a knack for pulling you into her world and making you feel like a cherished friend, one who would serve a cup of Darjeeling alongside a plate of fresh-baked gingerbread, and scribble the recipe on the back of a receipt, apologize for not having recipe cards, and press it into your hand as you left. Colwin departed this world too soon, in 1992, but her books on food are still in print 20 years later. The Gourmet columns are collected in two volumes, "Home Cooking" and "More Home Cooking," and just like Proust, deserve to be pulled from the shelves and re-read every couple of years.

Now to Reichl, a writer I first discovered through an advance copy of her memoir "Tender at the Bone," a fine entry into the "memoir with recipes" genre along the lines of Colwin. Reichl has a similar gift for sharing her life's story through the food that she eats and cooks and it was starting to look like she would always helm Gourmet. Under her leadership, Gourmet brought in even more fine writers, and broadened the scope of its mission to include the politics of food, for example, publishing a story on migrant workers in the tomato fields of Florida; and farm to table issues. For a time, the letters column had a bit of the rant and rave feel to it. I remember a particular letter writer commenting on an issue dedicated to Latin American cuisines stating that they didn't care to get their politics from Gourmet magazine. I say to any party, Democrat, Republican or Flying Purple People Eater, if there's food, set a place for me at that table, that's my kind of politics.

TV viewers watch Food Network for their favorite chefs. Gourmet's readers thumbed the table of contents to find their favorite writers: Calvin Trillin, Ann Patchett, John T. Edge; and at Gourmet.com, scholarly Doc Willoughby, relatable new mom Lesley Porcelli, the enigmatic Francis Lam, (who we'll probably find out one day is Pynchon or Salinger or Harper Lee or some other reclusive novelist who desperately needs an outlet to write about food). Two issues of the past few years stand out: a slim but satisfying edition of food writing featuring the best from its quiver of authors, and the January 2008 tribute to Edna Lewis, the late doyenne of Southern cooks and writers (that issue also included a tribute to the town of my birth, Nashville, Tennessee, composed by novelist and hometown girl Ann Patchett.)

Two decades of Gourmet, and the one word that comes to mind is transcendent, that's my Gourmet experience. Sure, it's wrapped up in its own name-brand world, of Gucci and Baccarat and Rolex, Sotheby's and Chanel. That's not my planet and likely never will be. And maybe that was the problem all along, because magazines, no matter how excellent the editorial product, if they don't have advertisers, they've got bupkis. I've often wondered who the target audience of Gourmet really was, because the advertising, except for the promotions with Goya beans and M&M candies, is geared way out of my price range. It seems unlikely that the Louis Vuitton-wearers of the world would break a sweat over the origins of the tomatoes on their carefully composed salads.

I've always felt a little like the red-headed stepchild relating to this magazine. But I can't deny that the editorial product spoke to my soul. Maybe someday I'll eat a thin-crust apple tart in a bistro in whichever arrondissement one must tour, but for now, I'm content to make that scrumptious tart in my very own kitchen, thanks to the guiding hand of Gourmet.

So, Merci, Gourmet, for 68 years of good food and good living. And here's hoping that an influential someone, somewhere, realizes that Ruth Reichl was on to something important, essential, and life-giving and gives her another shot at culinary magazine greatness. Until then, I'll thumb through the Thanksgiving issue and be thankful for what we all had.