At the Table

The Chef’s Guide to Advocacy

Katherine Miller

© 2023 Lisa Katherine

Miller

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 2000 M Street, NW, Suite 480-B, Washington, DC 20036-3319.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023934536

All Island Press books are printed on environmentally responsible materials.

Keywords: Certified B Corporation; Chef Action Network; Chef Bootcamp for Policy and Change; Chefs Collaborative; environmental impacts of food; farm to table; farmworkers; food insecurity; Food Policy Action; food waste; hunger relief; Independent Restaurant Coalition; James Beard Foundation; National Restaurant Association; restaurant aid; restaurant industry; sustainable agriculture; sustainable seafood; tipped minimum wage; waitstaff

For Gracie, Tessa, Katherine, and Samantha: Use your voice.

by Chef Tanya Holland

As a young chef, I trained in a brigade system in which the head chef ruled. Working in near silence, I perfected mother sauces, learned to dress pheasants, and cut thousands of basil leaves into delicate chiffonade. In those days, professional kitchens were exclusively the domain of white men. We, all the students, wore the same chef whites, carried similar knives, and put up with militarystyle hazing considered part of our culinary training. As a Black woman, I was regularly harassed—sometimes with microaggressions, sometimes with more extreme and unique forms of abuse. Pitched as a way to bring order to the chaos of restaurant kitchens, the brigade system was—and still is—the prevailing way chefs are trained.

The only thing that matters in the old way of teaching is the preservation and proliferation of cooking techniques. Not until many years later did I understand that professional cooking didn’t come automatically coupled with jokes mocking my Blackness or with sexually explicit gestures. As I grew into being a chef, into being a leader—first in restaurants and then as the host of the first cooking show helmed by a Black woman and successful restaurateur, and now as a member of the board of trustees of the James

Beard Foundation—I was, and am, constantly processing and unlearning the lessons of the past.

It isn’t easy. Even decades after I first entered cooking school, I still often find myself the only woman (and certainly the only Black woman) at the tables where knowledge is shared and decisions are made. That’s because societal and cultural barriers block me, and others like me, from access to certain opportunities. It’s also because structural racism and white supremacy exist in every facet of our society and are baked into the policies that govern our food system.

Becoming more and more aware of the structural flaws that prevent change, I knew that I wanted to do something about it. I am not a shy person, and I have never been scared to use my voice. In the past, however, I wasn’t particularly successful at changing things. In some cases, I thought people didn’t hear what I had to say no matter how forcefully I was saying it. One chef accused me of “playing the race card” when I approached him about obviously being treated differently by the sous chefs who clearly had racial and gender biases. The old ways felt caked on, and progress moves too slowly for my liking. And my self-preservation and awareness were perceived as defensive and whiny.

Women chefs and restaurateurs, even after the MeToo years and dozens of programs designed to change the game, still earn less than our male counterparts. We still get less than 10 percent of investment capital when we open restaurants. Without outside capital, it is hard for small restaurants to grow and for our brands to grow. I was hosting my own cooking show on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network, but the only way to save my restaurant from predatory partners and financing was to shut it down.

The societal flaws that exacerbated the closing of my business aren’t new. The same racism and systemic bias exist in efforts to reduce emergency hunger programs such as the school lunch and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Lawsuits that blocked the Small Business Administration’s ability to prioritize restaurants owned by women or people of color for special loans during COVID-19 were similar to those filed against the United States Department of Agriculture to prevent Black farmers from accessing funds to buy farmland.

Today, I know that one of the most powerful things we can do is to fight for policy changes at the state and federal levels. As a business owner, but most importantly as a vocal constituent, I have experience that matters in the rooms where policy is written. My voice, connections, and public platform can help accelerate change in my community.

That’s something I always knew, but I never quite had the formula down until I attended a training program put on by the Chef Action Network and James Beard Foundation at TomKat Ranch in California in 2016. It was there I first met Katherine Miller, along with many other chefs from Northern California, including a few who worked just a few miles from my restaurant but I had never met. At this regional Chef Bootcamp for Policy and Change, I truly learned that with the right recipe, I could cook up change.

During those three days, we went through an early version of the “A Is for Advocacy” training contained in this book. We participated in role-plays on how to talk to elected officials, toured the farm, and cooked together. I built powerful relationships within the chef and restaurant community. Most importantly, I learned valuable advocacy skills that I still use today. The training also helped expand my appetite for change. I was so locked into fighting for equity and inclusion in the industry—and still am—that I hadn’t truly seen how connected our food system is to almost every other aspect of our lives. From who grows our food to who serves it, our individual actions can support—or bring down—the system that controls us.

At the end of that weekend, I started getting more deeply involved with organizations such as No Kid Hungry. Universal school meals are a human right, and we’ve passed a law that codifies that right in California. Climate change is threatening our very existence. Chefs across the United States are working to raise awareness about regenerative agriculture and healthy soils. Also, in my home state of California, we passed a law to provide new funding for farmers who use more cover crops and climate-friendly growing techniques.

Change can take a long time, but I saw how quickly policy can affect our daily lives when, shortly after returning from TomKat, I joined the campaign to implement a tax on sugary drinks and soda in Oakland. Sugar-laden beverages are proven to contribute to diet-related diseases—diseases that disproportionately impact the Black community. We passed our soda tax in 2016, and today it is considered a successful model for improving diets and reducing disease rates in the city.

There is nothing easy about these issues, but thanks in part to Katherine’s guidance, I can now translate complicated issues around food and make them tangible and actionable for others. It’s a skill that I have honed over decades of working in kitchens. It’s a skill I share with my fellow chefs. It is also, like all knives, a skill that needs to be regularly sharpened. The work I did with Katherine helped me develop an approach and strategy that worked for me. I feel empowered to impact change in my community.

The tips, tools, and tactics from that training stay with me and inform many of the decisions I make about what issues I’m going to take on and exactly how I want to work. I use the advice described throughout this book almost every day. I know you will find it equally useful.

I also need to say a word about Katherine. I entered that first training not knowing anything about her. Starting when she was the first vice president of impact at the James Beard Foundation, Katherine and I have worked together to strategize everything from launching my cookbook to the Farm Bill. After years of traveling the country with her, including to other trainings, and while walking the halls of Congress, I have come to respect her knowledge and experience about advocacy. This book is your chance to tap into her decades of experience crisscrossing food, politics, and policy and then apply what you learn to your own work.

Katherine also lays out some of the most pressing challenges we face as a culinary community— and as citizens of the world. The word chef means leader. Too often, it has meant being a boss or dictator. not a mentor or champion. That changes now. It’s time we’re known for more than delicious and precious food. What you’ll find in At the Table will help guide you and introduce you to new ways of doing business.

I look forward to seeing what you do with tools here and how you will change the world.

About Tanya Holland

Holland is a chef, restaurateur, podcast host, writer, and a renowned expert on soul food. The author of the recently released Tanya Holland’s California Soul, The Brown Sugar Kitchen Cookbook, and New Soul Cooking, Holland competed on the fifteenth season of Top Chef on Bravo, was the host and soul-food expert on Food Network’s Melting Pot Soul Kitchen, appeared on the HBO Max show Selena + Chef featuring Selena Gomez, and hosted Tanya’s Kitchen Table on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN Network. She is a member of the James Beard Foundation’s board of trustees and the esteemed Les Dames d’Escoffier organizations, as well as a senior advisor to the Stanford (University) Food Institute.