Info

Racist Sandwich

The Racist Sandwich podcast serves up a perspective you don't often hear: food – how we consume, create and interpret it – can be political. Journalists and radio producers Stephanie Kuo and Juan Ramirez interview chefs and purveyors of color, tackling food's relationship to race, gender and class in their bi-weekly podcast that pushes the boundaries of food media.
RSS Feed Subscribe in Apple Podcasts
Racist Sandwich
2020
April
March
February
January


2019
December
November
October
February
January


2018
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2017
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2016
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May


Categories

All Episodes
Archives
Categories
Now displaying: Category: Episodes
Oct 19, 2016

Episode 13 is here! Charley Wang, the CEO of Josephine, an up-and-coming food tech company, explains how his version of the sharing economy can bolster home cooking, empower small-scale entrepreneurs, and combat gentrification. He believes that food tech can do more than simply provide a product in an ultra-convenient and commodified way, and that there's room for food justice and labor rights, too.

This is a sprawling and fascinating conversation about food justice, the tech world, empathy, and gentrification. We also drag Blue Apron and Soylent a bit. (A lot.) 

Oct 5, 2016
On this episode, we talked with food writer and cookbook author Nicole Taylor about popularity of Southern food, and its roots in black history that are often erased in a trend-driven food landscape. We also delve into the homogeneity of food media itself, by talking through actionable steps we need in order to move the race and food conversation forward. 
Sep 21, 2016
Or, #NeverPhogetNeverPhogive! Soleil embarked on our first OFF-SITE INTERVIEW and caught up with comedian and writer Jenny Yang this past weekend. She produced and starred in "PBJ is the New Grilled Cheese," a brilliant send-up of that pho video that everyone's been talking about.  (AKA the food media's regularly scheduled announcement that they don't give a fuck about us!) Soleil and Jenny talk about community, staying in touch with one's culture, and what it means to respond to racism with art.
Sep 8, 2016
For our tenth(!) episode, we talked with Abel Hernandez and Jaime Saltero. They are, respectively, the head chef and owner of Tamale Boy in Portland, Oregon. Abel and Jaime shared their stories about starting their restaurant, designing the space, and making dishes that break American stereotypes about Mexican cuisine. They also dropped some serious knowledge about the history of the tamale, and its close link with indigenous cultures in Mexico.
Aug 25, 2016
Anyone in Portland can tell you that we've been experiencing a huge increase in restaurants and bars this year. What we sought to find out in this episode was whether that same increase has meant more opportunities and financial stability for food service workers—the people who form the backbone of our growing service economy.
Aug 10, 2016
On this episode, we explore food from a slightly different angle. We talked with Amy Lam, associate editor at BITCH Magazine and co-founder of the group "Portland Creatives of Color" — which is the reason why we met and started this podcast in the first place. Amy talked to us about her relationship with food, and how the gendered expectations she was raised with shaped the way she sees cooking. From there, all three of us share what it means to be writers and children of immigrants at the same time.
Jul 28, 2016
For our Filipino food episode [E7], we asked our listeners to call in to our Google voice number to talk to us about their relationships with Filipino food. And y'all really rose to the occasion! We got a lot of voicemails, so we put our favorite ones together. The messages form a really beautiful narrative about the cuisine and the place it has in people's hearts; one that we think everyone can relate to in some way.
Jul 28, 2016
For years, we've been hearing from the food media that Filipino cuisine is the "next big thing;" that it would only be a matter of time before it "arrived." To hash that all out, we talked to a bunch of Pinoys! First, our producer, Alan Montecillo; then we patched in Sarahlynn Pablo & Natalia Roxas of the website, Filipino Kitchen. They all walked us through the history of Filipino cuisine and the meaning it holds for Filipino Americans today. And of course, we went back and forth on the question of whether or not validation from Western society matters all that much, in the end.
Jul 13, 2016
We start with a brief conversation about Pokemon Go, #BlackLivesMatter, and the place of politics in food media. Then we interview Emiko Badillo, one of the owners of Food Fight, the first vegan grocery store in Portland. She also started Vegans of Color and is a COOL LADY DRUMMER! She talks to us about lifestyle veganism vs. political veganism, the "double trouble" of being a racial as well as a political minority, and how human-centered social justice can have a place within veganism, too.
Jun 29, 2016
Dr. Kate Cairns, an Assistant Professor of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University, joins us remotely to share her research on how foodwork—the researching, buying, and preparation of food—plays into modern ideas of what it means to be a good, responsible woman. She talks about what she learned after interviewing more than a hundred women for her study, and about how race and class inform the way people moralize women's food choices for themselves and their families. Food and Femininity, the book she coauthored with Josée Johnston, came out last year via Bloomsbury.
Jun 1, 2016
Zahir and Soleil are back! In our intro, we discuss the food media's new obsession with poke, Anthony Bourdain in Vietnam, and chaat. After that, Portland chef Kusuma Rao of Ruchikala talks to us about the pop-up life, growing up Indian in Tucson, dudebros and the sexualization of food, and identifying as "miscellaneous brown.
May 18, 2016
Han Ly Hwang, the chef and owner of Portland's Kim Jong Grillin food truck, joins us in the studio to talk about the Korean-American food revolution, being on Chopped, what it means to cook your own food, and the Sisyphean task of gaining parental approval.
May 4, 2016
Our podcast begins with a discussion about the difficulty we often have connecting food to the broader issues of race, gender, and class. Bertony Faustin, an Oregon winemaker and documentarian, joins us in the studio to talk about breaking into the wine industry and defying expectations as the first Black winemaker in the region.
1