Ivy Knight Transcript

Ivy Knight Transcript

Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe. I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. 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 Ivy Knight, writer, filmmaker, and fierce advocate for those who work in the restaurant industry. Well, not everyone in the restaurant industry. Ivy is a champion of the hardworking, decent back of house underdog. If you are a rich restaurant owner or a tweezer and truffle loving fine dining chef, or part of the patriarchy, chances are Ivy has skewed you @allezceline, her Instagram account known for having the best and most biting memes about the restaurant world. If you are not following @allezceline, go take a look before listening to the rest of this episode. You can find the link and our show notes and give @allezceline a follow while you're there. Please note today's interview does include some strong language and sensitive content. Ivy will join me in just a minute, so stay tuned. 

The new issue of Cherry Bombe's print magazine is now available. You can subscribe via cherrybombe.com and receive Cherry Bombe direct to your door four times a year. Or you could pick up a copy at your favorite bookstore, magazine, shop, or culinary store. You can find Cherry Bombe at Book Larder in Seattle, the Petite Shop at The Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Maine. And for our international friends, We Are Ferment in Vienna and Under The Cover in Lisbon. For more stockist locations, head to cherrybombe.com and click on the magazine tab. Thank you in advance for supporting our print magazine.

Now let's check in with today's guest. Ivy Knight. Welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.

Ivy Knight:
Thank you for having me. This is so exciting.

Kerry Diamond:
I am so excited to talk to you. Allez Celine, is that an alter ego of yours? Is that a person?

Ivy Knight:
Yeah, it's funny. It is an alter ego. It became one because I have my own Instagram account, so if I'm telling my husband about like, "Oh, somebody contacted me," that's me. But then if somebody contacts Celine, then I'll say, "Oh, somebody contacted Celine." And there I go, saying it both ways. You can say it however you want. So yeah, I refer to her as Celine.

Kerry Diamond:
Okay. And tell us Celine Celine. Allez Celine is just how someone in Canada or who is a French speaker might pronounce it. Right?

Ivy Knight:
So if you're French, you would say Celine Dion, and I'm French Canadian, but I don't speak French, so I don't have the exact pronunciation. But most people would say Celine and I chose the name based off of Iron Chef when they kick it off saying, "Allez Cuisine." So it is Allez Celine.

Kerry Diamond:
There we go. Now we know. I had absolutely no idea. Anytime I tell someone about the Instagram account, they look at it and they say, "This person must have worked in the industry." And you have. You spent a decade in restaurants starting as a dishwasher, correct?

Ivy Knight:
Yes.

Kerry Diamond:
What led you to restaurants and how old were you?

Ivy Knight:
I was 18, I think, when I first started as a dishwasher at a fish and chips place. Then I turned 19 and was promoted to fry cook. They didn't like me as a dishwasher because I was really short and spindly and I could barely carry anything and I couldn't reach anything to put dishes away, so I was terrible.

Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, you have to reach those drying racks. They're pretty high up sometimes.

Ivy Knight:
Yes. Yeah, I was in kitchens from teen years. There was no plan. I just ended up there, and then I never really knew what I wanted to do, so I kind of stayed, but I didn't take it seriously until a little bit later after I'd spent some time in Texas.

Kerry Diamond:
Oh wow. Okay. What kept you in there initially was you were kind of trying to figure out what to do with your life.

Ivy Knight:
Yeah, I was just looking for a job and beer money basically.

Kerry Diamond:
How did you wind up in Texas?

Ivy Knight:
My husband is a retired rowing coach, and he was hired as the head coach at the Austin Rowing Club. So we moved to Austin in '99. So we were there in the early 2000s, and I was, for lack of a better word, I was a housewife. I was really bored and I was watching Food Network, which was very new at the time. I decided I wanted to cook, and my husband had worked in a restaurant in Kingston, Ontario called Chez Piggy, which is really well known in Kingston where Queens University is. He called the chef there and said, "Ivy wants to learn how to cook," and the chef said, "Send her over." So I got on a Greyhound bus from Austin, Texas and had an epic crazy tour across America back to Canada, and I hopped into the craziest kitchen on Earth. To me, it felt very crazy at the time, but I soon learned that it was very typical. Tiny, cramped, slammed all the time. So it was a great kitchen to learn in. Then I went back to Texas and worked under the table in Austin at a restaurant there.

Kerry Diamond:
And when you say under the table, explain to people what that means. You weren't literally under a table.

Ivy Knight:
No, I was not. Under the table, just means I didn't have a work Visa. I did, I had a work Visa, but the dishwasher took my picture and her boyfriend laminated it.

Kerry Diamond:
So what was it about that experience up in Canada that made you want to keep doing it?

Ivy Knight:
Oh man. It was so insane and so intense and scary. It was really scary, but it was also so fun and the friendships that I had, because I worked in that restaurant at Chez Piggy just for a summer, and a lot of the people in the kitchen only came in for the summer because once their patios closed down, they became a much smaller restaurant. For the summer, there was a huge crew of us. We were all like 20 and we were all working our asses off and then just getting so wrecked after work and having so much fun. So it was the most fun summer of my life, and I loved the comradery, but I also loved the intensity of it. I loved food, of course, and learning how to cook all these things. And there were a lot of Vietnamese chefs working in that kitchen. So it was all new to me, and it was just so exciting.

Kerry Diamond:
So you get back to Austin, you stay in the industry. How did you balance that lifestyle you just described with being a housewife as you said you were earlier?

Ivy Knight:
Oh, that's just a joke. We didn't have kids. We had a dog. It was easy. I just threw myself into cooking. It became my life. I became everything that I read about in “Kitchen Confidential,” because I think when I started in my second kitchen is when I first read that book and felt so seen and felt so legitimized in this rock and roll lifestyle and was totally in it.

Kerry Diamond:
You mentioned Bourdain when I was reading up on you. Bourdain comes up a lot. You've interviewed Bourdain. It was clear you really liked Bourdain, and I had written down that your experience seemed to mirror everything that Bourdain wrote about, the idea of pirates and a sense of lawlessness. You did appreciate what he was writing. You saw yourself in that.

Ivy Knight:
Oh yeah. I totally saw myself in that. I've always been tomboy and drawn to the things that guys get to do that girls don't. When I was little, they had introduced a football team to my grade school. I think I was in grade four, and I wanted to try out for the football team, and the coach just laughed and said, "Girls can't play football." And I was like, "Why not? Rudy plays football on the “Cosby Show.” Why can't I play?" Anyway, I never got to play football, but I always wanted to be in those spaces. So it was a thrill to be in those spaces, but it was also a fight. It was a constant fight. And to be one of the guys and to swallow what they were dishing out, but also to hold my own, it was tough. I had to ignore some parts of myself.

Kerry Diamond:
Bourdain's an interesting character in that respect. So many people in the restaurant world love him, myself included. But he was hanging around with all the guys who got taken down. I know he was a champion of women, but at the same time, he certainly palled around with those guys and supported what they were all about.

Ivy Knight:
He did, and he regretted in later years having inadvertently started chef bro culture. But I have a bit of understanding because my first real break into writing was with Vice, and I started writing for Vice before they launched Munchies. When I was part of Munchies, I was part of the machine that turned these toxic into celebrities to some degree. I was writing puff pieces about these pricks knowing how bad some of them were, but just had to hold onto that little space that I had in Vice. I couldn't let it go. I couldn't walk away from that. It was important.

Kerry Diamond:
You were not alone in that. The whole industry was propping them up.

Ivy Knight:
There's also this I idea of like, is he so bad if every other guy that I've ever worked with is the same to some degree? What I focused on with Bourdain, like I hosted a book launch for him and the experience of that and the way that all came about was really beautiful. But also the other thing is before we lost him, he was the first big celebrity to denounce Weinstein. No other man would say anything. He was the first man to say something. So for me, I don't care what you did before, that was beautiful.

Kerry Diamond:
He absolutely came out swinging about that. You dropped in that you had started writing while you were working in restaurants. I read a piece you wrote, I forget who you wrote it for, but you talked about going to events with food writers who had almost no real experience with food, aside from being eaters and how much that seemed to get under your skin. I'm curious how it felt knowing that these were the people making decisions about what food and chefs got coverage.

Ivy Knight:
It was frustrating initially, but it was all that there was. I kind of didn't care at first. You read someone like Calvin Trillin, I don't care where he came from, he's so amazing. I love everything he writes. And there's just so many great writers out there. And I love everything in “Martha Stewart Living,” even though that kind of wasn't part of my rock and roll personality, but I just was a fan. Then when I started to write, I felt like I was given permission by Bourdain's book. I know that my initial writing was terrible. Thankfully it was all online for a blog that no longer exists, but it was a blog that was widely read in Toronto. So I had a lot of people who would get in touch with me to tell me how much they loved my writing, not because it was great, but because it was the first time they'd read anything by someone who actually cooked for a living and was actually working in restaurants while writing.

Kerry Diamond:
So tell me how the writing came about. Because you already had a job.

Ivy Knight:
I have always been a writer since I could think in sentences. I've always been stringing them together and trying to sort of craft something. That's the way my brain works. So I wrote a lot of fiction, and then I was working in a kitchen and we had a terrible service. I swear to God, gremlins were in the kitchen that night. Actually, some of my mise en place was on the pass because my line was so jammed with mise that some of it was on the pass and there was no one around, and it fell over and landed in my mise en place in the middle of service.

One of the things was a nine pan of salt, so my station was destroyed. It was the most brutal service ever. At the end of the night as we were closing down, I was complaining and freaking out over how terrible it was, and my chef at the time came over and basically told me to put a sock in it and was like, "Shut up. We don't need to listen to this. We all had a bad night, and if you want to bitch about this job, go home and write about it. You're always telling me that you're writing stuff. Why aren't you writing about this?" And I was like, "Because I only write fiction." He said, "Who cares? You've never been published."

Kerry Diamond:
Damn.

Ivy Knight:
I was like, "Yeah, that's true."

Kerry Diamond:
Wow.

Ivy Knight:
And I took his advice because I was like, "Why not? I know this world. Why not try to write about it?" So I did.

Kerry Diamond:
Wow. When did you leave restaurants behind full-time? Or did you?

Ivy Knight:
Yeah, I did. On February 8th, exactly 10 years to the day from when I started, I quit. Because that first restaurant, when I took the Greyhound bus, it was in February. I started there February 8th, but I didn't really work. They didn't really give me many shifts until March. Then I was there for the insanity of the spring and summer. So I quit on February 8th, 10 years later because I had gotten a job on a Food Network show. I gave notice and I took off on the road on this traveling Food Network show. But I wrote steadily from year five. I was in kitchens for 10 years, and in year five is when all of that went down. I also realized I never wanted to be a chef. That was the only place to go in my eyes was to be a chef, and I didn't have the mentality for it. I really had a terrible temper. I had no example. That the example was just scream and yell and terrorize. So no.

Kerry Diamond:
What was the Food Network show?

Ivy Knight:
Oh, it was a Canadian food network show called “Pitchin' In With Lynn Crawford,” who's a wonderful chef. She actually used to be the head chef at the Four Seasons in New York City. We just would go across the country and the idea was that we were often on farms, an avocado farm in California or a cattle farm in North Carolina. So she would have to do farm work and then the farmer would teach her how the ingredient was made, and then she would go in the kitchen with the farmer and try to teach them how to cook. So it was really fun.

Kerry Diamond:
Got it. “Pitchin' In?:

Ivy Knight:
It's like pitching in, but with no G.

Kerry Diamond:
“Pitchin' In.” Got it. Got it. “Pitchin' In.”

Ivy Knight:
So it's more folksy.

Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely.

Ivy Knight:
“Pitchin' In.”

Kerry Diamond:
Super folksy. Tell us in your words what Allez Celine is all about.

Ivy Knight:
My favorite picture of her is her doing air guitar. So that's the profile picture. But the account is really just if Celine was able to work in a restaurant and then in between being on international tours, made memes in her mansion about that time in restaurants. That's really what the account is.

Kerry Diamond:
I did not know she actually owned or maybe still does some restaurants in Canada.

Ivy Knight:
Yeah. I don't know if she still does either. But yeah, she has had her paws on a few restaurants.

Kerry Diamond:
Restaurant owners are one of your favorite targets for Allez Celine. Any intel on whether she was a good restaurant owner or not?

Ivy Knight:
No, no Intel. I doubt that she was very hands-on. I think she was just the money. I know a ton of independent restaurant owners and they know that when I'm making fun of restaurant owners, I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about people with wealth. Like the images I use for restaurant owners are usually Elton John in full regalia or Queen Elizabeth.

Kerry Diamond:
You are a fierce critic of the older white male establishment in restaurants. Why does Allez Celine delight in skewering them? And is delight even the right word? Do you take delight in this?

Ivy Knight:
Oh yeah, totally. Yes. It's all fun. This is all fun. When it gets political, it's not because I'm sitting there with my political agenda front and center. That's just part of me. And I'm doing this for fun. And when it gets political, it's just part of the fun. It's not tactical. But making fun of these guys because I had to write glowingly about them for a long time until I made changes, I like to be able to take them down a peg because it's all such bullshit. I've hung out with these guys, hung out with them more than being in their restaurants. I have seen behind the curtain, and they're all just a bunch of dicks. Even if they're nice guys, it's not like true genius, not to the point where we can ignore rape or assault or racism. Come on, you're making sandwiches or you're cooking for... I don't care. It doesn't matter. It's just food. It's art, but it's just food. And you shouldn't get to get away with this.

Just like Daniel Humm and how much he paid for his condo. I'm sorry. It makes me sick. So I like to make fun of it. The first time I made fun of Dan Barber, I was nervous because I had been told that he is very litigious, but I made a little meme about him. I don't even remember what it was. I think it was about him worshiping a carrot. Not me. Celine got so much mail from followers laughing their heads off, and so many people who worked for him, and so many people telling what it was really like to work for him. When that story came out, I wasn't surprised. I'd been hearing about this stuff for years. When there's feedback on the memes, it just makes me want to dig in a little deeper.

Kerry Diamond:
When did the blinders come off for you? I mean, you talk about having had to write glowing profiles of these folks, and I remember when I first got in the industry, and I'd come from this woman centric world that I had been part of women's magazines and fashion and things like that with its own complications, but at least women were running things more or less there. Then I got to this world, I would've been one of those restaurant owners you made fun of. I got into the restaurant business and I had no business being in the business, but I did. I was immediately shocked at just how women were treated in the industry and got to pay more attention to food media. And I was like, "Wait a second, women are running food media." And I would see these reporters slobbering all over these male chefs, and I was just like, "Ew, why is this industry like this?" And that's what ultimately led to Cherry Bombe. But for you, when did the blinders come off?

Ivy Knight:
That's a tough question. There was no parting of the clouds. It was gradual because I still have PTSD. I mean, I spent 10 years in kitchens with no power and often the only woman, or if there was another woman, then there was one other, right? We were never the majority. I'm not proud of who I was back when I was in kitchens. I've forgiven myself for the most part, but I did a lot of things that I wouldn't have done, but I did because it was the only way to survive. I used to protest, because I've always been this way, but I used to protest in one restaurant where the habit was that they would get us to... If we got really slammed and we went through everything, they'd be like, "Okay, we're wiped out and tomorrow night we're overbooked, so everybody has to come in early tomorrow to prep, but don't punch in and until your scheduled time."

So everybody in that kitchen, they were all guys, we're all young, all these young guys, and they're like, "Yeah, yeah, of course, Chef. We chef, we chef." Right? And I would say, "No, that's illegal. Just pay us. Just pay us. We're not going to come in and work for free." I would get so much shit for that, and it would just be like, "Who do you think you are? Do you think you're the shop steward?" That was my nickname in a few kitchens. And if I didn't come in and work for free, then I wasn't part of the team. So I put my head down and I did what I had to do. That was the way it was.

Then when I started writing more, I started to work part-time in kitchens. So the last, I think, two years of my cooking life was part-time and I was doing a lot more writing and I was going on a lot of media trips and going to a lot more events. And just seeing the other side and seeing how humans lived and how humans interacted where they weren't yelling. I don't want to say any of the words. Just all these horrible words were not used in regular society, not even polite society, just like the real world. So it was gradual. Definitely Me Too was the big thing. And it feels to me how could it have been Me Too that opened your eyes? That seems so late. But I think it really was because it just didn't feel like it would ever be anything that could be questioned in restaurants. That's just the way it was. We all experienced it and I think it was just a huge thing, and we're still experiencing it and still hoping for change.

Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. Well, you are a fierce advocate today, and you do manage to do it through humor, which is remarkable. I want to talk about a few of the other targets and favorite subjects of Allez Celine. You said the chef bro culture was one. We discussed that. Restaurant owners. Brunch. Let's talk about brunch for a second. A lot of civilians do not understand why people in the industry hate brunch so much. Can you enlighten us?

Ivy Knight:
Sure. Yeah. Brunch. The last two years in kitchens, I worked brunch because prior to that I spent my whole career working nights, dinner service. So brunch is terrible for a number of reasons. First of all, if you're serious and you are in this business to be a chef or for any kind of prestige at all, then you have to work dinner. You can't work days. But then that's what I ended up doing when I was working part-time is I had to start working brunch. And oh my God, I was drinking. That was during my drinking career. Brunch happens on the weekend, and if you are someone who's just been a party animal for your entire adult life, then getting up at 6:00 or 7:00 AM on a Saturday is pretty brutal. So to start with, you're hungover.

No, to start with, you're doing a shift that has no respect, plus you're hungover, plus it's just an insanely brutal service. You're dealing with the worst customers in the world because if you are hungover, so are your customers and they're paying your salary. So they're the ones that have to be pampered, and you have to make sure they get everything that they need. And you're dealing with eggs and pancakes or all the beverages that people have to order or any of that stuff. But yeah, brunch was just this nightmare.

And then the dinner crew would come in and they would almost make fun of us because the kitchen would always be trashed, like destroyed. The dish pit would be floor to seal with stuff. And they'd be like, "Ha, ha, ha, had a hard service." And our numbers would be insane. And they just didn't care because it's like, "Well, you're not cooking chateaubriand and you're not doing filet of sole," or whatever the hell. "You're just doing eggs benny." Yeah, I hated it so much. But it was also really fun because cooking is fun and being in the trenches like that with your crew, God, you're so tight. So I love making fun of brunch because part of me loves it a little bit too.

Kerry Diamond:
Front of house versus back of house. Explain to the civilians what that's all about.

Ivy Knight:
Okay, so in the world of Celine, there are certain stereotypes that hold true. The front of house are beautiful and rich. The back of house are all kind of drunk dirt bags. All restaurant owners are evil billionaires. A long island iced tea is the worst thing you can order. The worst thing you can ever eat is penne. I'm not really sure. I think that sort of covers the main... Oh, and the best kitchen tool is an offset spatula. That's the most valuable kitchen tool. So in the world of Celine, that's how it works. But yeah, front of house makes way more money than back of house. But the trade off is that back of house, you are working towards a career. So you get more respect if you're at a dinner party and say, "I'm a chef," or, "I'm a cook," as compared to saying, "I'm a server." And also front of house, they get to wear makeup and they don't look like crap and they don't have to clean out a deep fryer at the end of the night. There's a bit of a rivalry.

Kerry Diamond:
Chef obsessions, that's another thing you love to make fun of. Tweezers, ramps, all those things.

Ivy Knight:
It's just fun because I also see a lot of people using the memes, making fun of ingredients to promote their new menus. So I love that. There'll be a restaurant in wherever Minneapolis saying, "Come in and try our all ramp tasting menu," or whatever. So it's fun to see that.

Kerry Diamond:
So it is fun. But through all of this, you've really established yourself as a champion and advocate, especially for back of house. You did this really poignant, I don't know if it started as a LinkedIn post or an Instagram post, but you have this incredible LinkedIn post that you wrote urging people to share their restaurant experience on their resumes. What was that all about?

Ivy Knight:
I had been asked to do some work for an advertising agency last year, and I'd never done anything in advertising. One of the strategists that I was talking to was telling me about... She had a little bit of a restaurant background and she was talking about transferable skills, how there are so many transferable skills from restaurants to advertising and how people don't put the restaurant experience on their resumes on LinkedIn because they're embarrassed, or for whatever reason they want to look more professional.

So I just wrote that little thing just for the hell of it, because I was thinking about it and I was like, "There are a lot of transferable skills." But if you're in a kitchen, you're just in another world. You forget what the real world is like and you forget what it's like to do a lot of things that normal people do. Just have Mother's Day with your mother instead of cooking 5,000 eggs benny. Yeah. So I wrote that because I was like, "Yeah, let me just put into words all the different things that we do and that we learn because it's informed so much of my life." I wouldn't be who I am if I hadn't spent a million hours sweating it out over the flat top.

Kerry Diamond:
So post-pandemic, what is your take on how things are today for restaurant workers?

Ivy Knight:
It's tough. Because I don't work in the business anymore. Recently I was talking to two different male chefs that I know that I hadn't talked to in a long time. I used to cook with both of them a million years ago. And we were talking. One of them was looking for a chef for his restaurant, and I was recommending a woman that we both know and saying, "If you hire a woman as a female chef, you don't have to worry about harassment or anything like that." And he said, "Yeah, but will she be tough enough?" And I like, "Are you kidding? Did we just meet? Do you know who you're talking to?" And he's like, Well, come on. Everybody can talk about this and that and the other, and I don't want to upset anybody or say anything racist, but when you're in the service, there's no time to talk about this."

And it was just the same old lines that I've heard from 20 years ago, and it just was like, "Oh man." And I had a similar conversation with another guy and I'm not saying that every place is like that, but I just don't know that we're going to see much change until the next generation takes over and until more women are in positions of power. I feel like there has been change because so much of what we question now was never questioned before or talked about. And now it is. When I hear an owner or a chef talking about how this generation doesn't want to work, I love it because it's like they just don't want to work for you. They just don't want to work for this. This doesn't work. So you have to change this because you're not going to be able to keep going if you have no staff. And if you think that these things that cost no money to change have to continue, then you're going to be out of business. I hope that's what happens.

Kerry Diamond:
Are restaurants in Canada having the same trouble finding staff as they are down here?

Ivy Knight:
Yeah. But the labor shortage was going on well before the pandemic. I remember back in like 2015, I was doing these panel talks with people in the industry and everyone was talking about it then. I remember at Momofuku Noodle Bar here in Toronto, the chef was just talking. What he was saying at the time was groundbreaking, but he was saying, "We do everything in our power to keep our staff, because to us they're so valuable because if we lose them, I don't want to go through the training process again because it's very specific how we make everything here and blah, blah, blah." He had this incredible staff retention that everybody was jealous of because they were losing people to The Keg or Red Lobster because those places would pay a buck more an hour. So there's been a labor problem forever.

Kerry Diamond:
Would you ever own a restaurant one day?

Ivy Knight:
Never.

Kerry Diamond:
Why do you say that?

Ivy Knight:
Never in a million years. There's just no way. No. If anything, I would open a deprogramming center for people who want to get out of the industry and figure out how to use those transferable skills in another way. But no, opening a restaurant, I'll leave that to people who want to. I don't want to. I want to be a customer. That's it.

Kerry Diamond:
I don't want to leave having everyone think you're super down on restaurants because I know you're not, but do you think restaurants need to go away? Are they dinosaurs?

Ivy Knight:
Of course not. No. Restaurants are the lifeblood of a city. If we don't have restaurants, what do we have? Office buildings? No, I love restaurants. I love restaurants. I think even more now, having been through what I've been through and being a customer, it's such a thrill to be able to experience a city through its restaurants. Even my own city that I live in. It's just this constant cornucopia that we all have access to in one way or another. I mean, speaking of access, that's a whole other conversation. But in Toronto is a city of neighborhoods and each neighborhood, it represents another country or place on earth. I'm near Chinatown, and where I live is Little Tibet and around the corner is Little Poland and Koreatown and Greektown. I can experience the world within this city, and I know the same is true of New York. No, I love restaurants incredibly. And I've tried to get away from food writing and I just can't. I have written about other things for sure, and I do love to do that, but I just can't get away from food writing.

Kerry Diamond:
I was going to ask about some of the other things you have done and are doing. You consulted on Season 1 of “The Bear.” How did that come about?

Ivy Knight:
That came about through my old buddy Matty Matheson. I've known Matty for years. When he got sober, he was a beautiful example to me of how to be sober in the business and still live life and be part of the scene. I told him years ago that I wanted to write for TV. I was like, "I think that would be really cool. I would love to write for TV." And then he got in touch with me before “The Bear” came out and he connected me to their executive producer, Josh. And Josh sent me all the episodes, and then we had a few sessions just talking about everything in the show. I was blown away by the show, and of course I thought it was going to be a hit.

Josh wasn't sure, which was really amazing looking back on it. I said, "I want to work on Season 2." And he said, "Yeah, yeah, we'll bring you in. We'll bring you in. But I don't know if there's going to be a Season 2. Who knows? We don't know if this is going to go anywhere." I was like, "It's going to be a massive hit."

Kerry Diamond:
What did you do as a consultant? What did that mean?

Ivy Knight:
We just talked about what they had done on the show, and if they had got... It was like I was an uncredited consultant and he just wanted to talk about what they had done and if they had gotten things right and what they had done wrong. And as a woman what I thought about it and just as a former cook what I thought about it, the authenticity. As far as I could tell, they only got one thing wrong. I mean, there were little things like the clock was always like, "That's a weird time for the clock to be showing." But the only thing they got wrong was in the first episode, I think when Carmy burns himself, he immediately puts his hand under running water and I was like, "No chef would ever do that."

Kerry Diamond:
What would they do? Ice?

Ivy Knight:
No, nothing.

Kerry Diamond:
Oh, they would do nothing. Okay.

Ivy Knight:
Because if you burn yourself, and I was told this early on, if you burn yourself, you do nothing and you deal with the pain and then the pain goes away. The pain will last for five minutes or less, and then it's gone for good. But if you put it in ice or in water, then you're dealing with the pain for hours and you can't work and have your hand in ice. You usually can't ice what you've burned. So in my career-

Kerry Diamond:
I had no idea. I always grab an ice cube in my home kitchen.

Ivy Knight:
Well, if you can deal with the pain, it'll go away a lot quicker. It is a miracle. And usually when you think, "I can't take this another second," then it goes.

Kerry Diamond:
Okay, good advice. What else are you up to? What else do we need to know about?

Ivy Knight:
I'm working on a bunch of things that are top secret, but I'm working on a book and developing a TV show that may go somewhere. I don't know. We'll see. But it's a fun process.

Kerry Diamond:
Well cross your fingers, everybody. Tell me more about Celine.

Ivy Knight:
Well, I just have a little story about her.

Kerry Diamond:
Okay.

Ivy Knight:
Because I used to think she was a joke. I was not a fan at all. And then when I was living in Texas, I was homesick. And I'm French Canadian and I heard her in an interview on MTV and just hearing her accent and hearing how weird she was and how crazy, I was kind of like, "Oh, I like her." I didn't like her music, but I liked her as a person. Then I found out about this story about Meatloaf that really made me interested in her music.

Kerry Diamond:
Meatloaf the singer or Meatloaf the thing?

Ivy Knight:
Meatloaf the singer. So Meatloaf the singer, his collaborator and songwriter was Jim Steinman, who wrote all those insane beautiful power ballads and rock anthems. Steinman had written a song that Meatloaf wanted to record, and Steinman told him no. And Meatloaf was pissed because they had done Bat Out of Hell together and all these platinum records, et cetera. And Meatloaf wanted that song, and Steinman was like, "No, it's got to be sung by a woman." And he agreed to let Celine Dion record it. And that was It's All Coming Back to Me Now. So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to go find that song and listen to it." Because I loved everything Jim Stein does. Then when the, "Baby, baby, baby," hits, it's just like, whoa, I'm on my knees.

Since then, she's amazing as a person, as a performer, all of these things, as a Canadian, as a French Canadian, but also as this woman who we've watched grow up. We've watched her have her children. We've watched her lose her husband and share the mourning very publicly. We've watched her be a joke in the fashion world and then turn into this fashion slayer. She's just part of the world. I got to calm down. Anyway, I've seen her in concert twice, and the last time was in the final month of what might turn out to have been her final residency in Las Vegas. And the show went an extra hour. I'm sure she has a lot of things she talks about in the show that she talks about in every show, right? Just like canned. But there was so much that was a la minute that was just coming from the heart and there was so much that was just nuts. She's totally nuts. Doesn't care. Just lets it fly. We were crying and laughing and she's just amazing.

Kerry Diamond:
Is her metamorphosis a metaphor for what the restaurant world could be?

Ivy Knight:
The restaurant world could be as amazing as Celine Dion if only it would try.

Kerry Diamond:
If only they would listen to you.

Ivy Knight:
Well, I do put as many of her lyrics into my captions as I can.

Kerry Diamond:
Before we do the speed round, I do have to thank you for what you've put out there. You really are pushing and nudging and urging the restaurant world to be a better place via humor. And that's not easy to do.

Ivy Knight:
Thanks.

Kerry Diamond:
So thank you big time. All right, speed round. Ready? Coffee or tea and how do you take it?

Ivy Knight:
I'm a hot water and lemon broad. I don't drink coffee or tea.

Kerry Diamond:
Really? Okay.

Ivy Knight:
Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
No caffeine?

Ivy Knight:
No. I used to drink a ton of Coke when I was cooking and smoking, but none of it now.

Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Clean living.

Ivy Knight:
Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
Cookbook or food book you love or treasure?

Ivy Knight:
All of Calvin Trillin's books I love. All of Ruth Reichl's books, “Kitchen Confidential.” All of Bourdain's writing, I'm crazy about. I mean, his shows are fantastic, but his writing. That's the thing that I'm most sad about, that we won't get any more of his writing.

Kerry Diamond:
Favorite food movie.

Ivy Knight:
“Eat Drink Man Woman” is definitely in the top and “Big Night.” I love those, but it feels like we need more food movies. I hope some more are coming.

Kerry Diamond:
Favorite kitchen implement.

Ivy Knight:
The offset spatula, of course.

Kerry Diamond:
Snack food of choice.

Ivy Knight:
Oh, that's a good one. When I'm eating sugar, my favorite thing is the entire line of Vachon cakes, which I don't think you have in America. They're amazing. They're worth coming to Canada for and they have Ah Caramel, the Passion Flakie. But yeah, I think the Ah Caramel is my favorite.

Kerry Diamond:
Is this your version of Hostess cakes or Drake's Cakes?

Ivy Knight:
Yeah, they would be like Hostess, but they're way better.

Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Just another reason why I have to get up there. What is a song that makes you smile?

Ivy Knight:
“No Children” by the Mountain Goats, I think. That's on repeat always.

Kerry Diamond:
Okay. I'm going to have to look that one up. Something always in your fridge.

Ivy Knight:
Have you heard of coconut aminos?

Kerry Diamond:
Yes.

Ivy Knight:
I use it to cook eggplant, like sauteed Japanese eggplant with coconut aminos. I use it whenever I'm making any kind of Thai inspired anything that would call for rock sugar or cane sugar. Yeah. But grainy mustard, pickled shallots. Those are things that I like to not do without.

Kerry Diamond:
Yum. No ramps?

Ivy Knight:
I don't like ramps. I'm a fiddlehead lady.

Kerry Diamond:
Fiddleheads it is then. If you had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be and why?

Ivy Knight:
You know who I would pick because she's so hilarious is Helen Rosner.

Kerry Diamond:
That's a good one. You wouldn't run out of fun things to talk about, that's for sure.

Ivy Knight:
Yeah, and she's a great cook too, so she would have some ideas for whatever food was on the island.

Kerry Diamond:
Well, Ivy, thank you so much for your time.

Ivy Knight:
Thank you.

Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. If you are a longtime listener or a new listener and enjoyed this interview, I would love for you to subscribe to Radio Cherry Bombe on your favorite podcast platform. If you are on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen, just click the little subscribe button and don't miss a single future episode. Thank you in advance. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Joseph Hazen 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.