Camille Becerra Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. I'm the founder and editor of Cherry Bombe Magazine and each week I talk to the most interesting women and culinary creatives in and around the world of food.
Today's guest is Camille Becerra, chef of As You Are, the restaurant at Ace Hotel Brooklyn. Camille has had the most interesting career, from cooking at a Zen Center to competing on season three of Top Chef very early in the Top Chef history, to making a name for herself on the New York dining scene. Chef Camille's cuisine is innovative, thoughtful, bright, seasonal, all the things you want in a dish. I've admired Camille for a long time and I'm a big fan of her food, so I'm thrilled to chat with her today. Stay tuned for my interview, which took place at Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in New York City.
Thank you to OpenTable for supporting this episode. Some of you know we've been touring around the country with OpenTable for our Sit With Us Community Dinner Series. Well, our next dinner just happens to be this Saturday, November 11th at Chef Camille's As You Are. You can snag a ticket by going to the OpenTable app or website, look up As You Are and open the experiences tab. Come solo and sit with us or come with some friends. I'll be there and look forward to seeing some of you there as well. Also, that day at Ace Hotel Brooklyn, we've got our third annual Cooks & Books Festival. It's going to be a great day of talks, panels, and cooking demos with your favorite authors, folks like Zoe Bakes, Chef Karen Akunowicz, Hetty McKinnon, and the legendary Jessica B. Harris. We've even got a panel called Mom's the Bombe with Chef Camille, Sohla El-Waylly, and others about motherhood and hospitality. All tickets are $20. Visit cherrybomb.com for the full schedule and tickets. Thank you to Wegman's and FOH Worldwide for supporting our event.
One more thing, Kitchen Arts & Letters, the great bookstore, will have a pop-up shop at the hotel lobby that day, and it is open to the public. Come by for some signed books, they make great gifts. Magazines, zines, and treats from Chef Camille and her team. I'll be running around the hotel all day, so if you come by, please say hello.
Now, let's check in with Chef Camille. Camille Becerra, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Camille Becerra:
Hi, Kerry. Thanks for having me.
Kerry Diamond:
Why don't we start at the beginning because you have an interesting culinary background. You were born in San Juan?
Camille Becerra:
Yeah, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Kerry Diamond:
When did you leave?
Camille Becerra:
We left when I was two. We moved to Newark, New Jersey, and then soon to Elizabeth, New Jersey. And then I grew up in a single parent household, but a lot of community. Elizabeth at the time really had, it was really a microcosm of so many different immigrants. I went to school with a lot of great different families and got to experience food like that. My best friend was Italian. I had a lot of Portuguese and Brazilian friends. I think that was my original connection with food.
Kerry Diamond:
Who cooked at home?
Camille Becerra:
My mom. And it was always very typical. Rice and beans, a protein salad every day, rice and beans, protein salad.
Kerry Diamond:
And did you start to cook at a young age?
Camille Becerra:
I didn't.
Kerry Diamond:
No? Really?
Camille Becerra:
No, no. I mean, I learned how to cook food from Puerto Rico, but no, I had no idea. I always had a very sensitive palate. I was always picky. I never liked processed food. That flavor, the smell was really so off-putting for me, and I would always just love the summertime when we had really delicious peaches, and so I always had a sensitive palette in the sense that I only wanted delicious fresh food.
Kerry Diamond:
You do decide at one point to go to culinary school. How and why did you make that decision?
Camille Becerra:
Well, I really had no idea what I wanted to do, and so I took a gap year, which at that time was not really a thing you did unless your parents were wealthy and you got to go to Europe or something like that. But I met a guy and he was my boyfriend and we traveled around for a bit and we were staying at some friends of his in North Carolina and there was a farmer's market and I started working at restaurants. And that was the first sort of experience with farmer's markets and I started cooking. I had gotten the “Moosewood” cookbook, which was vegetarian and-
Kerry Diamond:
Iconic.
Camille Becerra:
Yeah, and then started working in restaurants, and then that September, I went to culinary school.
Kerry Diamond:
Farmer's markets must have been such an awakening for you, knowing your cuisine today and the kind of food that you cook, I can just imagine you discovering that.
Camille Becerra:
Yeah, very much so. Also, vegetarian cuisine was so wow to me. I can't believe this is an actual thing, and when you stripped down vegetarian cuisine at the time, it is very worldly. You have hummus, you have borscht, you have all these Asian influences. So I think that was really exciting to just travel through food.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. You go to culinary school in Cape May?
Camille Becerra:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
In New Jersey. Cape May is beautiful for folks who haven't been there.
Camille Becerra:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
All those old, what are they, gingerbread houses?
Camille Becerra:
Victorian. Cape May is the oldest resort town in all of America. And they've maintained it and there's farms and there's beaches, and there's a beautiful old tennis club. You could only wear white. It was very traditional and beautiful and fun. We would go crabbing. It was really nice.
Kerry Diamond:
What was culinary school like?
Camille Becerra:
It was a small community school outside of Cape May. It was new and they had just shipped all these French teacher chefs, so it was fun, just-
Kerry Diamond:
Was that code for guys?
Camille Becerra:
No, well, yes, it was all men, but there were just these quirky old dur French chefs, retired French chefs that just came to America and they were just weird, but cool and fun.
Kerry Diamond:
Were they good teachers? Did you learn a lot?
Camille Becerra:
Yeah, I did. I did. They were fun. As long as you could understand what they were saying, right?
Kerry Diamond:
After culinary school, what did you think you wanted to do with your culinary school training?
Camille Becerra:
I wanted to work in a restaurant. I came up in an environment where there wasn't a lot of opportunities within publishing or anything exciting, so I just went to culinary school and I was going to become a chef.
Kerry Diamond:
Folks didn't go to culinary school to work in food media back then?
Camille Becerra:
No. I mean, I didn't even know there was that opportunity, so yeah, no, I started working in restaurants immediately.
Kerry Diamond:
In Manhattan?
Camille Becerra:
I first moved to Philadelphia, which was the closest city to Cape May, and I started working in a vegetarian restaurant because I was young and new to it and really wasn't getting a lot of jobs anywhere else.
Kerry Diamond:
Were the kitchens closed to women? Did you not have the experience they wanted?
Camille Becerra:
I think both. I think both. Plus I was from New York. I had sort of a personality that people maybe didn't understand. I was very styly.
Kerry Diamond:
You have to explain-
Camille Becerra:
I mean, I'm a Puerto Rican girl from here, I-
Kerry Diamond:
Wait, wait, wait, I'm going to stop you. You had a personality that people didn't understand?
Camille Becerra:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Explain.
Camille Becerra:
I think Puerto Rican girls can tend to be fiery and they like to crack jokes, and back in the '90s people were like, "Oh gosh, get her away." Especially back then, they wanted people that... I don't know. I don't know what it was, but it took me a really long time to get into a fine dining kitchen.
Kerry Diamond:
Kitchens are about following the rules.
Camille Becerra:
Which I'm down to learn and follow rules for sure, but I also like to have fun, but I also like to be respected.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, the good news now is you run your own kitchen, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but okay, continuing back then, the '90s, so you do find a home in the city's vegetarian restaurant scene.
Camille Becerra:
I'm working in Philly at this restaurant and the chef there also cooks macrobiotic food, so I learned a lot from him. I start getting antsy and don't really want to be in Philadelphia, and they offer this position in New Mexico where there's a Zen center and they host retreats and they were looking for a cook. I was so excited because the idea of the desert, New Mexico was all very intriguing, and so I just hopped on a flight. I went to New Mexico and it was a Zen center and they had their own garden. They practiced vegetarian cuisine, so we were making tofu and granola and yogurt and-
Kerry Diamond:
Tofu from scratch?
Camille Becerra:
Yeah, and vinegars. They had a garden, we're composting. It was by a stream. There was hot springs on the property and they're like, "We would like for you to participate though in our daily practice," which was meditation. It was wonderful. And I still meditate to this day.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you?
Camille Becerra:
Mm-hmm.
Kerry Diamond:
What advice do you have for folks who would like to have a meditation practice?
Camille Becerra:
Just do it. Start 10 minutes a day. It's a real reset for your brain. I mean, our brains work so hard. Even when we're sleeping, they're growing off. So to meditate and just really quiet down, I think it's such an important practice, especially in New York City, but really anywhere. We're always thinking. And especially this world that we live in.
Kerry Diamond:
Can you go back and explain what macrobiotic cuisine is? It's not a term you hear that much these days.
Camille Becerra:
It had its kind of heyday in the '70s, '80s and '90s. The person that introduced it was called Michio Kushi and he was a Japanese man and basically, it's a way of healing the body. It's about food, but it's also about a meditation practice. So there's a lot of components to it. Eating in your season, in your area, because your body's acclimated to that environment and to that weather, et cetera. A lot of miso soup, a lot of fermented. It's very deep, but people do heal themselves from chronic illness when they turn their life around and start meditating and start eating well.
Kerry Diamond:
So the Philadelphia and the New Mexico experiences, that was before you even got to New York?
Camille Becerra:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
So how did you wind up in New York then?
Camille Becerra:
Well, I went to LA for a little bit and then soon came back to New York and I moved straight to Harlem. My friends had this loft there and I roomed with them and I always knew I wanted to be in New York, and so I was putting it off because I knew I would live here for a long, long time, so I always put it all... Well, in my earlier years I put it off just because I knew I would end up here.
Kerry Diamond:
And what did you do in New York?
Camille Becerra:
I cooked. I cooked. I started cooking around mainly again, vegetarian restaurants. At that point, that was what I wanted to do and I also wanted and also felt comfortable because I had all that experience. But then it's hard to live off a vegetarian cook salary in New York City. And I knew I wanted to open a restaurant, so I started working on the other side in front of house.
Kerry Diamond:
You did know why did you want to open a restaurant?
Camille Becerra:
That's always a dream, to have your own place. So I started working in front of the house and I was making more money, I was understanding more the business aspect of it. And I worked with more wonderful women. I mean, I've only ever worked for women. I worked with Leslie at Angelica Kitchen. I worked with Amy Sacco at Lot 61. I worked at the coffee shop with Carolyn, always with really strong women. I feel so fortunate to have, especially Amy, wow, she's such a powerhouse.
Kerry Diamond:
So you have all those experiences. You want to open your own place. You finally do. You open Paloma?
Camille Becerra:
Yeah. We moved to Greenpoint. We put our money together and opened this little restaurant in Greenpoint. At the time, Greenpoint was nothing like it is now. We opened a small restaurant, does well, it's a small neighborhood spot. From there I kind of drafted to go on to “Top Chef.” My friend who was still working for Amy, doing the door at probably Bungalow 8 mentioned that there was a show that works with chefs. At the time, I had not heard of it. It was very, very new. Plus I never watched TV, but he did and he noticed them and he was like, "I have somebody for you, you should meet." And they're like, "Great, have her call us." So he calls me at 3:00 in the morning and I was like, "All right." I go meet them, it went well, and a month later I was in Miami shooting this show that I had known nothing about.
Kerry Diamond:
Which season were you on?
Camille Becerra:
I was three.
Kerry Diamond:
You were three, right?
Camille Becerra:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
You know I know and love you, but you definitely do not give off I want to be a reality, food TV star vibes.
Camille Becerra:
No, but I did understand the importance of building some sort of recognition, having sort of a little folder in the press filing cabinet.
Kerry Diamond:
The show could not have been bigger back then.
Camille Becerra:
It started off not so, and then by the third season, it had gained a lot of popularity. I remember coming, because they separate you before the show starts. You do meet who you're going to be working with, the moment they start filming is when you meet. And I just remember walking into that space and seeing all these cool chefs and let's be honest, chefs were not cool. They didn't know how to dress.
Kerry Diamond:
Back then.
Camille Becerra:
Back then. They were not cool at all. And then I get out of this car and it's all these cool people. And I was just kind of really excited and I was like, "Wow, food just got cool." But it wasn't for me.
Kerry Diamond:
How long did you last?
Camille Becerra:
Three or four episodes. I couldn't. I had a restaurant and my daughter was three or four at the time. To be sequestered like that was something that I had never known of and did not at all.
Kerry Diamond:
Psychologically, it has to do a number on you.
Camille Becerra:
Yeah. And also the guy that wound up winning, I knew he was going to win. That boy was just darting around everything and all over the place and I was like, "Oh gosh, this is not me."
Kerry Diamond:
You just knew.
Camille Becerra:
Yeah. I'm like, "He can have it, I don't want it."
Kerry Diamond:
So Padma told you to pack your knives and go.
Camille Becerra:
She did.
Kerry Diamond:
You head back to Greenpoint.
Camille Becerra:
I do.
Kerry Diamond:
Tail between your legs or you felt good about the experience?
Camille Becerra:
Well, it's weird. It's weird because to people who now think I'm not a good chef or a failure, you do get a little bit of a weird tweak of I'm not good enough. But I was very content on leaving and to some extent, in a way manipulated my departure there because I was not liking it at all. And so I was okay. And what was weird is when I did get kicked off, I went back to the studio room and multiple people started crying and this just giant tough guy was crying and I was like, "Oh my God, no, don't cry. I actually want this." And so it was endearing. And I met great people from there. A lot of mentors and friends.
Kerry Diamond:
At least you got that out. That's amazing.
Camille Becerra:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
So what happens at Paloma?
Camille Becerra:
There was a fire. We had a fire. Place burned down. The owners then serves me papers. It was during the recession. I was so poor with a kid. I don't come from money, so all I had was a bunch of friends. And it's interesting when something like that happens and you turn around and you think you don't have anyone or anything and you turn around and those people, they are the ones that really are just so important. And really that's where the magic sat. It was the recession and I was like, "Why don't we just take over some empty buildings, empty restaurants and we'll do a pop-up restaurant?" And there wasn't anything like that at the time. And it was really exciting because we're just going in as myself and some club promoters and we're going in empty spaces and just taking them over and doing these restaurants. Not different than a challenge in “Top Chef” when there was the restaurant challenge. And so we started doing these and they were very exciting. People were really into it.
Kerry Diamond:
Were you able to make some money and stay afloat?
Camille Becerra:
Yeah. And then I started working. I went back and I started working with chefs that I really looked up to. And I just put my head down and started cooking and was a sous chef in many places after I did that and helped so many people open restaurants and worked with restaurateurs that I admired and chefs I admired and that was maybe four years of that, and then I opened Navy.
Kerry Diamond:
And I feel like Navy is where a lot of us really got to know you. What we now know as Camille Becerra cuisine started to maybe bloom or emerge.
Camille Becerra:
I always think of Navy as when I look back at my career, I am most proud of that time because I was really able to marry all the knowledge that I had learned from vegetarian cuisine and all my experience working downtown with such powerhouses. Also, a little bit of this fine dining stuff that I had picked up. At the time, the partners were just so supportive and so into everything I did. It was a scene and it was beautiful and everyone went there and it was always so fun and it was small. The place was doomed because it was so small. And we'd never had a liquor license. I mean, liquor is really the cream. If you don't have liquor, it's really hard to survive.
Kerry Diamond:
What are some dishes you remember from back then? What were you known for?
Camille Becerra:
The restaurant was a seafood restaurant and big in vegetables. And that was the start of these small plates with vegetable as the focus, and especially New Yorkers. We all like to eat really well and look really well. The menu changed all the time. That was the beauty of it too, is I would hand write the menus every day. It would always change. I was well-supported so I was going to the market being super creative. It was small enough where I could just change everything all the time and it was a fun time.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's take a big leap forward to as you are where you are now at Ace Hotel Brooklyn. You've partnered with Ace on so many projects, our cookbook conference, and several other things, so when they told me that you would be taking over the restaurant there, I was beyond excited. What made you decide to get back into the restaurant business?
Camille Becerra:
I took a break a little bit before Covid and I started doing events, big events for Apple and Google and it's so taxing. So then when Covid happened, I took some time. I mean, I was exhausted. I had been a single mom living downtown doing the restaurant thing. And I was really exhausted so I took some time off and then during-
Kerry Diamond:
Plus working on a cookbook, you're a columnist for Domino magazine, you had a lot going on.
Camille Becerra:|
Yeah. And I do a lot online and for Instagram as well, but when I was a chef I was always doing media. I was always working with different magazines, Instagram, so it was nice to just take some time for myself and they reached out. We had been talking for years, the Ace team and I, on ways to collaborate and work together and they opened that restaurant during Covid because they had opened the hotel and a restaurant isn't an amenity for hotels, but they opened it very quietly and they reached out and I was always going to gravitate towards restaurants.
It's how I came up, it's what I know the best, it's what I have the most experience with, but I knew that I was done with small bootstrap downtown restaurants because I had to make money. So when something like that came up, I was very excited and they're so supportive and we're definitely honeymooning still. The president's a woman, the head of food and beverage for all Ace Hotels is a woman. Our main boss is queer. It's just so balanced. Even though it's corporate, it's just such a beautiful way of thinking like, "Oh, this is how every industry could be, not just this one hotel."
Kerry Diamond:
Would love to know what's on the menu now. I went to your friends and family. I'm guessing you've tweaked the menu since then. So would love to know what's on the menu, what you're especially proud of.
Camille Becerra:
There's a couple of things that I had to take into consideration. I first had to understand the neighborhood. It wasn't my neighborhood, I've never lived there. And also take into account the Ace traveler that's coming from all parts of the country. And then just the traveler, when you travel, what are those things that you just really need sometimes? So we have a delicious chicken soup, and it's lemony and lots of herbs and we have it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Because also people are on different time zones. The main umbrella of it all is just really healthy, bright flavors, things that are nourishing. It's not overtly complicated food, but it's creative in its combinations. It has a lot of vegetable forward dishes. Clean, fresh, simple. That's how I like to eat.
Kerry Diamond:
So you mentioned the soup, which sounds amazing and I would actually love a bowl of right now. What is another favorite dish on the breakfast menu?
Camille Becerra:
On the breakfast menu we have this delicious quinoa potato hash. It's kind of a play on the McDonald's hash brown. It has that. But obviously with quinoa and it's so healthy and we serve that with deviled eggs and our house cured salmon that we cure with a little lavender, so it has a lot of nuance in it. The fruit bowl is always changing, which is exciting to people, I think. I'm a fruit in the morning person, and to come to a place and always have the fruit changing as the seasons change, I think it's-
Kerry Diamond:
That's special.
Camille Becerra:
It's special.
Kerry Diamond:
It's a little bit of a power breakfast scene there.
Camille Becerra:
It is. All my restaurants have had that. All the power girls would always meet for breakfast. After yoga, before work, or there was always this scene that had built up and I'm happy to see it back.
Kerry Diamond:
And when I say power breakfast, I mean the downtown Brooklyn version of a power breakfast.
Camille Becerra:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Not Upper East Side people from Bloomberg and things like that.
Camille Becerra:
Not the power lunch in Midtown. It's very different.
Kerry Diamond:
Exactly, exactly. All right, speaking of lunch, what's the lunch menu like?
Camille Becerra:
The lunch menu has some sandwiches. We have a hippie sandwich that is very California.
Kerry Diamond:
Hippie sandwich? What's on the hippie sandwich? Sprouts?
Camille Becerra:
Of course.
Kerry Diamond:
Of course.
Camille Becerra:
There's jicama, slices of jicama which are crunchy. Cheddar, avocado, fermented cabbage, like a cabbage pickle. And then we dress the sprouts, so it's super juicy sandwich. My bowl, my macro bowl that-
Kerry Diamond:
Camille is known for the bowl, people, in case you didn't know that.
Camille Becerra:
It travels with me.
Kerry Diamond:
What's in your bowl right now?
Camille Becerra:
It takes a lot from the dragon bowl from Angelica Kitchen, so an herb tahini, parsley, and sesames. I just love it so much. It's such a perfect combination. Grains that we cook in coconut milk. It's a macro bowl, so classic macro bowl has a grain, an orange vegetable, a green vegetable, a protein, which is beans in our case, a fermented component or a pickle, and then some fresh greens and sprouts in the dragon bowl, we make in-house lentil sprouts.
Kerry Diamond:
So you're just sprouting and fermenting and doing a ton of that in the kitchen?
Camille Becerra:
Yeah, but it's really not hard.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, you always did that.
Camille Becerra:
I always did that. And it's not hard. A lot of in my book that's coming out, it's really about just making that all understandable so that it's not a big... It's really not a big deal.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, let's talk about dinner though.
Camille Becerra:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
What's a star of the dinner menu?
Camille Becerra:
That changes. It's changing a lot. We make our own pastas. We have a fish en croute that I brought back from my Navy days.
Kerry Diamond:
That sounds old school to me. Fish en croute.
Camille Becerra:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
What's the appeal there?
Camille Becerra:
It has a tart, sorrel, and creme fresh sauce. It's delicious. It's showy. It's pretty. It's Instagramable. We have a pear and Meyer lemon salad with shiso. Lots of herbs and dates. It's crunchy and crispy and really tart. Things are changing. We're four months in, we're still trying to understand who we are, but our focus really is vegetables, fresh, high acidity. We want to be known as that healthy place, but modern healthy, not hippie healthy.
Kerry Diamond:
And your beloved banana bread is available?
Camille Becerra:
Yes. Thank you, Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
You know this, I think it's the best banana bread on the planet. We begged you for the recipe for the “Cherry Bombe” cookbook, so it's in there. Tell us what makes the banana bread so special?
Camille Becerra:
It's kind of a carryover from Angelica Kitchen again. Only in that Angelica kitchen used to make this bread that was very dense and they made it with leftover rice and they coated the pan with sesame seeds and they would serve it with a miso tahini and it was just so good. So with this banana bread, obviously I wanted to do something that was gluten-free, but then I remembered about these seeds and how they would line the mold and it would be easy to take out the bread that was fairly dense and likely to stick. I think I started using flaxseed because I didn't want to copy too much and it's just an all around healthful delicious.
Kerry Diamond:
It's so good. Have you been experimenting over the years with different kinds of flour for it and sugar?
Camille Becerra:
We are not using white flour. We're using organic flour. We're not using white sugar, we're using organic cane sugar or maple or honey or anything else. If that's not happening, there's going to be a problem.
Kerry Diamond:
The banana bread, you've got a little coffee shop there. Can people get it at the coffee shop?
Camille Becerra:
People can get it at the coffee shop. And we have a wonderful baker, Danny, who we're working on newer things as well, like a breakfast cookie and his focaccias are so delicious.
Kerry Diamond:
Soup and cookies for breakfast.
Camille Becerra:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
I love it.
Camille Becerra:
And-
Kerry Diamond:
Wait, I have to ask you a question about the banana bread. I probably told you this, but I made it once in a super-duper non-stick pan because it was all I had and I tried to do the flaxseed. I just used coconut oil to grease the pan and then put the flaxseed. Holy hell, I made a mess. What's the solution when you have a non-stick pan to getting the flaxseed, not to just puddle in the bottom?
Camille Becerra:
This is what you do. You use either butter or coconut oil that's not liquidy, so at least that'll stick and that probably butter-
Kerry Diamond:
Get that batter in quick.
Camille Becerra:
Mm-hmm.
Kerry Diamond:
It was such a mess.
Camille Becerra:
In restaurants, we just don't use non-stick.
Kerry Diamond:
Really?
Camille Becerra:
Yeah, because we use big professional large size pans and they just are old school. They don't have the nonstick.
Kerry Diamond:
We are doing a fun dinner with you on November 11th. It's part of our Sit With Us series. Tickets are on sale right now and we would absolutely love to see folks. If you're out there listening and you're going to be in anywhere near Brooklyn on that date, Camille's working on a special menu for us for that evening and it's going to be a good time. If you come by yourself, you'll sit at one of the community tables, there'll be somebody from Team Cherry Bombe with you, and if you come with friends, we'll sit you together. And then also that day, it's our big Cooks & Books festival and it is New York City's only cookbook festival. It's a great day. It's one day. It's Saturday on the second floor of Ace Hotel and we've got talks and panels all day long. Downstairs will be a Kitchen Arts & Letters popup bookstore in a space and we'll have treats from the Ace Hotel team and that is open to the public so you can come to that. Everything else is ticketed. And Camille is doing a fantastic panel that I'm very excited about. It's about a topic that we really didn't talk about yet, so we can give everybody a little preview right now. It's called Mom's the Bombe, and it's all about being a mom and having a career in food. And it's something we really don't talk about that much, if at all.
You're on the panel. Sohla El-Waylly is on the panel. Camilla Marcus is moderating. Fany Gerson is joining us. Sam Seneviratne is joining us. If you are coming, tickets are $20. You can buy them on Cherry Bombe's website. And we're also telling everybody, bring your kids. I get so many DMs from moms who are like, "Can I bring my kid? Can I bring my baby?" And I usually say, yes, of course. But I don't feel like we ever explicitly make moms feel like they're welcome to attend with their kids. So I want people to know that they can, but I'm excited for this conversation.
Camille Becerra:
It's so important, Kerry, thanks for arranging it and thinking of it and really bringing all these great moms together. Because you're right, it's not talked about. I barely talk about it and I had it really hard.
Kerry Diamond:
Paloma was young when you had your restaurant.
Camille Becerra:
Paloma was young and throughout her entire life I was working in restaurants and I was a single mom. Luckily, I'm from here and her other side of her grandparents are here. So we had somewhat of support, but it's hard as a chef, especially... Horrible times.
Kerry Diamond:
If you don't have family or babysitter, I mean, there's no such thing as night care as Camilla Marcus who's going to be moderating the panel has talked about on Radio Cherry Bombe and written about in the magazine. The restaurant industry is just not structured to support working parents.
Camille Becerra:
No.
Kerry Diamond:
So you did it through a combination of relatives and babysitters?
Camille Becerra:
Yeah. I also lived twice with, I lived once with one of my dearest friends who helped, and then another time I lived with my cousin who helped. And then her dad would have her on weekends. It was hard.
Kerry Diamond:
And that's how you did it.
Camille Becerra:
I would work so hard, get home late, wake up really early, get her ready, make lunch, take her to school, come back, sleep, go to work. That was, ugh. I think sometimes, I died five or six times. It was that hard where I just hit a wall.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm sorry to hear that. I wish it was easier for parents.
Camille Becerra:
It was really difficult. But we made it and she's happy. She wants nothing to do with food. Although she has an amazing palette and is a great home cook, but we get along well and she's happy and social and knows food and we get along great. I mean really that's all we need.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, I'm happy to hear that. The panel was inspired, as some folks might know by Sohla El-Waylly who is on our cover right now. Her new book just came out and she's pregnant on the cover. But we had several pregnant people on the cover this year by accident. When we booked them, we had no idea. And it just got me thinking that things are different for women in the industry now, especially working moms. A combination of the pandemic and restaurants changing and women owning their own businesses and being able to make their own hours a little bit more. What do you see changing?
Camille Becerra:
I have no idea. I think for the most part I just want to offer this sort of, you're not alone and it all works out and family and friends are so important and they're everything when you're in a position like that. My spiritual practices, my living a healthful lifestyle, all that kind of contributes my sense of manifestation. Because it's very easy to just get down on yourself, be so spent that you just can't. You're just either have no money or no time or something happens with your child and all these things. And really I think that when you're pressed up against a wall like that and you learn to survive, that's where the magic is and that's where you can really just manifest.
And so I don't know what the answer is to people who are going through it outside of, hey, somehow I made it and evolved as a person from it. So these tests, while they may be hard, there is a lot to gain from it. I live in a building with a lot of children and I'm always offering to take care of them, especially women that are busy moms. That sense of community, it takes a village. I love that. And I love children. I do. I'm like a weirdo. I understand baby talk even before the parents do. I'm like, "They said this and that." No, I really do.
Kerry Diamond:
You're a baby whisperer.
Camille Becerra:
I am. And my friends do say so. I wouldn't just be like, "I'm a baby whisperer." But my friends tell me and it's true. I just love kids. I mean, I understand them in a way and I can understand what they're saying and we connect and they're so cute.
Kerry Diamond:
Before we let you go, I want to know about the cookbook and I feel bad even asking you because I know you've been working on it for a long time.
Camille Becerra:
Well, I have. I have been working on it. We shot most of the images in 2019. I will say that it's a testament to the book because the images are still current. And so I'm okay with it taking that long. It did become something bigger than what I was initially intending for it to be, which was just a cookbook. But it became this sort of tome of how I develop a recipe and how I work and how I develop dishes in restaurants and how I translate that into developing dishes for yourself at home, but also going through the seasons and not being attached to a cookbook and recipes, but having this beautiful pantry of sauces and flourishes and mixes where you can just eat because of what you're craving or because someone gave you these beautiful lettuces or you went to the market, et cetera. I'm really excited. It's been so long and we just approved the cover and she's ready to go.
Kerry Diamond:
That is so exciting.
Camille Becerra:
Spring.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, spring '24?
Camille Becerra:
Yeah, May.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, that's so exciting. Congratulations.
Camille Becerra:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's do a little speed round. Where do we even start with a speed round? Coffee or tea?
Camille Becerra:
Coffee.
Kerry Diamond:
How do you take it?
Camille Becerra:
Okay, so I usually just take-
Kerry Diamond:
There's no way it's a normal just cup of black coffee knowing you.
Camille Becerra:
No, I do it in the little Italian espresso stove top makers. If it was summertime, I put it over ice and if it's winter, I just add a little bit of hot water. But now I'm adding mushroom, which I love. There's this blend called Rise and I love it so much.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you mix that with the espresso?
Camille Becerra:
Well, it has coffee in it, but sometimes I just do a little shot of extra coffee in it.
Kerry Diamond:
And you feel like it makes a difference?
Camille Becerra:
I love it. I love it so much. I mean, we're in an age where we are getting all this valuable information of these super foods.
Kerry Diamond:
Song that makes you smile.
Camille Becerra:
A song that makes me smile. I don't know. I love music so much. That is my other thing. I love music. I love to sing. I used to be in a little band when I first moved back to New York.
Kerry Diamond:
Didn't know that.
Camille Becerra:
Yeah, I love Bad Bunny obviously right now because he's so cute and Puerto Rican and I love Rosalia. I'm really into Latin music right now, which has never really been the case. And also feel like I sing better in Spanish than I do in English.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, we're learning all these things that you still haven't told us a single song, but we just learned a lot about you, so let's leave it at that. Cookbook that you treasure.
Camille Becerra:
Obviously “Moosewood,” because that was my first one.
Kerry Diamond:
That's a good answer. Do you still crack it open?
Camille Becerra:
I do. I do.
Kerry Diamond:
Footwear of choice in the kitchen.
Camille Becerra:
I have these new pair of shoes called MISE. They're specifically for kitchen workers, which is-
Kerry Diamond:
Like mise en place or Mies van der Rohe?
Camille Becerra:
M-I-S-E, MISE. And it's the first brand that is just geared towards kitchen workers that are cool.
Kerry Diamond:
What color?
Camille Becerra:
Black.
Kerry Diamond:
What are you streaming right now?
Camille Becerra:
I do love “Real Housewives.”
Kerry Diamond:
RHONY? Salt Lake City? Which one?
Camille Becerra:
The ones I do watch are Beverly Hills. Miami is my favorite. I love Miami.
Kerry Diamond:
What's your snack food of choice?
Camille Becerra:
Those Asian pears. They're so crispy and watery. Oh, I love them. Oh, and the Asian pear with a little leaf of tarragon and salt and lemon. Oh, gosh. I'm obsessed with that snack.
Kerry Diamond:
Dream travel destination?
Camille Becerra:
Blue ocean, tropical, doesn't matter. Beach, tropical fruit. Salt. Fish.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, speaking of that beach, if you had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be and why?
Camille Becerra:
Martha, duh, right? Because she would know how to do everything. I would learn so much.
Kerry Diamond:
Camille, it's always good to see you.
Camille Becerra:
Thank you, Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
You're the Bombe, Camille.
Camille Becerra:
You are too.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. I hope to see you this Saturday at Cooks & Books or at our Sit With Us Dinner with Chef Camille on Saturday night. All the details are at cherrybombe.com. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Joseph Hazan is the studio engineer for Newsstand Studios. Our producer is Catherine Baker. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Thanks for listening, everybody. You are the Bombe.