Carolyn Steel
It was a complete pleasure to speak to Carolyn Steel on a sultry August evening and hear so much about her life and its intimate integration with food and cooking. Carolyn is an architect and writer of food philosophy who has published two acclaimed texts: Hungry City and most recently Sitopia. Carolyn’s TED talk: How Food Shapes Our Cities has had well over a million views. “I write about food and think about food the whole time”.
Ritual, celebration and connection were at the core of Carolyn’s Five Memorable Meals. “Meals are moments when time stands still…I think this is what we all yearn for, I think that is what a great meal does, it just takes you out of time”. Carolyn’s fifth memorable meal was a timeless celebration of her time.
Carolyn’s food quote was from Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, French lawyer and epicure: “Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who/what you are” from the Physiology of Taste 1825. As Carolyn comments – extending Brillat-Savarin’s notion – “the conversation, the language, actually happened in the food”.
Simon Lewis – Midnight Kitchen, August 2020