Welcome to the Now List, them.’s annual celebration of visionary LGBTQ+ artists, activists, and community members. Read more from our honorees here, and check out the full list of winners here.
Food is and has always been a cultural product affected by the power divides of class, race, gender, and sexuality. But this has never been more clear in the 21st century than during the coronavirus crisis, which has revealed exactly how stark the differences are between those who order food and those who deliver it; those who own farms and those who work on them; those who own restaurants and those who are laid off from them; those who are celebrated for making “ethnic” food and those who are erased; and those who have access to food and those who don’t.
Long before the pandemic hit, this year’s Now List food honorees have long been dedicated to dismantling the American food establishment by centering their work in the history and legacy of the people of color who have made huge contributions to modern food culture — but have largely been overlooked and erased.
The first honoree, Krista Scruggs, is a Vermont-based winemaker and farmer who has been praised for making a splash within a white male-dominated world with her Zafa label, but mainstream food outlets have curiously shied away from recognizing the decolonial and sustainable philosophy with which she runs her operation. The second is Lazarus Lynch, a New York-based chef, media host, and musician who honors his family’s Black Southern and Caribbean culinary legacy through his brand Son of a Southern Chef; his debut 2019 cookbook featured punchy, colorful updates on the soul food classics he grew up eating, while his digital cooking shows highlight a diverse swath of chefs who also work in regional traditions. And our third honoree is Mayukh Sen, a food and culture writer who won a James Beard award in 2018 for his work illuminating the stories of lost food pioneers — immigrants, queer people, women of color, and those who encompass all those identities — throughout American history.
them. spoke to Scruggs, Sen, and Lynch during a Zoom roundtable in late May about how their personal histories are reflected in their work, their struggles in dealing with the food industry’s gatekeepers, and their visions for what they want the food landscape to look like.
them.: How would you sum up your philosophy towards food and drink?
Krista Scruggs: At Zafa, our motto is: “Wine is farming.” It’s my goal to educate people that wine doesn’t come from anywhere; it comes first and foremost from a crop. There also needs to be a focus on regenerative farming and sustainability. As we all know, in farming, migrant workers are usually the ones who are doing the work, yet are underpaid and undervalued. The deep root of my ethos and my company is not only providing above a livable wage and benefits, but also highlighting that I may be the face of my company, but there are a lot of people who are doing the labor for me and with me. It takes bodies to do agricultural work, and I’m doing the work of my ancestors.
Lazarus Lynch: So much of that resonates with me. Food is family. Food is love. Food is the music to my soul. So much of it is built on ancestry and the lineage of lessons and ingredients and ideas being passed down from one generation to the next. Food is often a sanctuary, but it’s also the social lubricant for having difficult and hard conversations. So many of my friends came out at the dinner table. It’s the entrance to tackling, dismantling, and understanding our experiences as human beings.
Mayukh Sen: As a writer, I think that food is a really rich tool to understand power and who holds it, especially within our capitalist society. I’ve tried my best in my short career as a food writer to use food as a way to examine who holds power in America and who suffers at the hands of it. When I got to the food writing world by accident, it felt so safe, anodyne, and not progressive in any way. I think that a big reason why that happens is because so many people do see food as kind of a distraction from all the world’s horrors, rather than like a window to the world’s horrors. It doesn’t all have to be doom and gloom, but a big part of my career as a writer has been trying to balance both truths: Food can be a sanctuary, as Lazarus said, but it can also expose who has power and who doesn’t.
Has working around food and drink helped you explore your own identity?
LL: For sure. I created Son of a Southern Chef, which is my moniker, as a dedication to the relationship I had growing up with my dad who was from Alabama and learned how to cook from watching his grandmother and mother cook, by virtue of passing down techniques and recipes orally. Never thought that I would be one day carrying forth the message and the legacy, writing the book, or any of that. I say my dad was as straight as a broom, but he loved me. He passed away from cancer. In my dad’s last days, I came out to him. It didn’t feel like this really scary topic. It felt like the cooking and the food had opened up a door and a space in our relationship where there was a lot of fluidity, and there was a lot that could be passed from him to me, and vice versa. The connection I had with him in the kitchen was a lot of the reason why that really scary topic was less scary to have with him.
