Camilla Marcus Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and 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.
Today's guest is Camilla Marcus, the activist, mama of four, and first time cookbook author. Some of you know Camilla from past episodes and from the pages of our magazine. Camilla had a restaurant in SoHo called west~bourne that was a laboratory for her ideas about sustainability, tipping, or rather no tipping, and childcare. She even worked with a childcare provider in the neighborhood to offer night care, something crucial to hospitality workers, but something you rarely hear about. Camilla closed west~bourne during the pandemic and pivoted her brand to a package goods company. Today, west~bourne is known for their avocado oil and their sustainable packaging. Camilla's passions are evident in her new book, “My Regenerative Kitchen: Plant-Based Recipes and Sustainable Practices to Nourish Ourselves and the Planet.” She'll be here in just a minute to talk all about it. Stay tuned.
Today's episode is presented by Kerrygold. Have you noticed that butter is having a moment? I've seen handbags sculpted out of butter, little couches made from butter pats, tiny butter cherubs, even butter colored nail polish and fashion. The world is butter obsessed. But you know who loves butter more than most? The folks at Kerrygold. They've been perfecting their craft for decades, using milk from Irish grass-fed cows to create their famously rich, creamy golden butter. There's a reason Kerrygold is beloved by everyone from home cooks to the world's top culinary creatives. It's just better butter. Kerrygold salted pure Irish butter has a butterfat content of 80%, while the unsalted version has a butterfat content of 82%, and that beautiful yellow color, it's thanks to beta-carotene found naturally in milk from grass-fed cows. Want to get in on the fun, get yourself some Kerrygold and whip up some flavored compound butter, fill some fancy butter molds, or sculpt one of those gorgeous butter mounds for your next dinner party or get together. Visit kerrygoldusa.com to learn more, get recipes, and find a stockist near you.
Today's guest, Camilla Marcus, is one of the speakers at our Jubilee Wine Country, happening this coming weekend, October 26th and 27th at the beautiful Solage Resort in Calistoga, California. It's two days of food, drink, special activities, and entertainment, plus talks and panels featuring some of the most amazing women around, including Chef Dominique Crenn, Chef Tanya Holland, ice cream entrepreneur Jeni Britton, Une Femme's Jen Pelka, wine trailblazer Amelia Ceja, and many others. For tickets to the entire weekend or for Saturday night's Wine Women and Song event, visit cherrybombe.com.
Now, let's check in with today's guest. Camilla Marcus, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Camilla Marcus:
Hi, so glad to be back.
Kerry Diamond:
I just spoke at Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine conference, the Shine Away conference, and I interviewed a woman named Asma Khan. She's a chef who has a restaurant in London called the Darjeeling Express, and she was talking about things like childcare. I mentioned you and I said, no one talks about night care, and I had never heard the term night care until you mentioned it. Tell us what you mean by night care.
Camilla Marcus:
Well, traditional childcare right in this country, I can't really speak to other systems, but here in The States, it's very 9:00 to 5:00, but the irony is no one in hospitality works 9:00 to 5:00. That timeframe just doesn't exist. The structural systems and the ones that get government rebates and tax incentives to, quote-unquote, "take care of our children" doesn't really apply to our industry. And the biggest problem with that is we're the second-largest employer in the country next to healthcare, which ironically also is not a 9:00 to 5:00 job. It's sort of ironic that this massive business that's meant to support other businesses really is structurally failing in many ways, but first and foremost in hours offered.
Kerry Diamond:
Why did that become an issue that was important to you? Because you started talking about this before you even had children.
Camilla Marcus:
Way before, and honestly, I saw it when I was working in restaurants. The first decade of my career was in and around restaurants in all different capacities, and you just saw this huge shift from the corporate team to the restaurant operating teams, and people who were on the rise, the second they had children, things started to really fall apart, and it was heartbreaking to watch someone who had so much potential, you wanted to see their career really get to that next level and flourish, and this thing that seems like we talk about a lot, childcare, and seems that it should be helping and supporting them was, again, just really falling through the floor.
So I think for me, it was really just seeing people get knocked back so far in their career over something that should be controllable, that wasn't in their control. It just really devolved a lot of their career, and it feels like that shouldn't be the choice. And then when I really started to research, seeing that it was structural, seeing that it was, I hate to use the word bias, but I really do feel very biased against our industry, an entire massive workforce that sort of has to suffer because no one's thinking about them. I mean, even there's a lot of talk around obviously parental leave and in some regards, childcare, even big advocates in the public sphere like Reshma Saujani, she has a big movement around parental leave, she tried to get it into the presidential debates, with that really has to be childcare.
And again, so many of these large organizations that focus on this issue, they don't have any representation from our industry. So to me, that's still the uphill battle is frankly to even get in the room and to get into the conversation sort of systematically being left behind and excluded. And again, it's kind of wild when you think about the majority of the workforce, the function of the employers that don't have the ability to really participate themselves, right?
Office buildings have excess space to some capacity. Every inch of a restaurant is used. No one has even one square inch to save to provide on-site care. So it's interesting for me, even today seeing everyone pushing parental leave, and I've been very vocal about this maybe less popular opinion, and I get sort of the cold shoulder from folks when I say it, but unfortunately it's not really about parental leave, that actually has to come after, because even if you get parental leave, it's really a red herring. So you get X amount of months or X amount of weeks. Yes, we're very far behind the modern world in The States, but then what happens? What if the country does support that and pay for that, but you can't actually go back to your job because you don't have proper care for the hours that your job requires? That to me then also becomes a really wasted piece of the system and a huge amount of capital that's so only a piece of the puzzle.
So to me, they have to go hand in hand, or we're, again, just really setting someone up for failure, and that, I think, is even worse is that we're really pouring a lot of attention and capital into one part of the solution. Unless it's really solving both, I personally think it's a problem.
Kerry Diamond:
You actually had trouble getting traction for this conversation...
Camilla Marcus:
I still do.
Kerry Diamond:
... when you worked in the restaurant world.
Camilla Marcus:
I still do. Most of these large organizations, like I said, they focus on parental leave and childcare, do not have a single person on their leadership board that represents the hospitality industry. And trust me, you know me, I'm very persistent, I'm very bold. I don't know. My mom always said, "If you don't ask for what you want, you're not going to get it." We're still not getting it despite the pressure.
Kerry Diamond:
Why do you think it's just not something that people want to talk about or tackle?
Camilla Marcus:
The number one feedback I get, and look, we heard this through the pandemic and the Independent Restaurant Coalition. Hey, team, hey, fam. We pushed really hard and finally broke through, but the number one feedback I get is hospitality and restaurants is too niche. And I say to them, "You think the second-largest employer in the country is too niche?" I find that absolutely mind-boggling, and I think largely because it's a disaggregated industry, so it is a collection of small businesses, but collectively it's anything but a small business.
But that's a very hard mental shift for most people, and I think it just, for a very long time in this country, has been an industry that just hasn't been considered, unfortunately, compare it to Europe, right? Even the nature of the job, it's so much more considered an esteemed career and something long-term as a profession, and I think there's this unfortunate fallacy in The States. We still see it as a gig. It's still seen as a stepping stone, and it's not, and it's not economically, it's not when it comes to employment, it's not when it comes to the fabric of the communities here. We're still not given our fair due.
Kerry Diamond:
We'll be right back with today's guest.
The fall issue of Cherry Bombe's print magazine is finally here, and guess who our cover star is? It's Jeni Britton of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, the artisanal ice cream company that changed the game. This might just be our coolest cover yet, and I can't wait for you to read all about Jeni and her entrepreneurial journey. Also, we have a bonus cover. It's the delightful Abby Balingit of the Dusky Kitchen and the award-winning cookbook, “Mayumu.” This issue is dedicated to the creative class, and highlights innovative and imaginative folks in and around the world of food, including fashion designers, artists, photographers, and of course, lots of pastry chefs. If you're a subscriber, your copy will be in your mailbox very soon. If you aren't a subscriber, head to cherrybombe.com to snag a copy or check out our list of retailers to find Cherry Bombe's print magazine at a store near you.
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. It's Jessie Sheehan, the host of She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe podcast network. I have big news for you. My new cookbook, “Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes” is now available. This is my first savory baking book, and I'm so excited to share it with all of you. It features a hundred easy-peasy baking recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and of course, snacking. From sage butter scones to smashburger hand pies and tomato za'atara galette. You'll also find six of my essential savory baking hacks, including how to make my magic melted butter pie dough and the quickest and easy caramelized onions. My cookbook tour is underway, and tickets are on sale right now at cherrybombe.com. Thanks to everyone who joined me in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. I'll be in Boston on Wednesday, October 23rd, and I hope to see you there. Thank you to Kerrygold and King Arthur Baking Company for supporting my tour. You can click the link in the show notes of this episode to order the book or pick up a copy at your favorite local bookstore. I hope you love “Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes” as much as I loved writing it.
Kerry Diamond:
One thing we love about you is instead of just talking about it, you did try to make some actual change. Can you tell us what you did when you had your restaurant, west~bourne?
Camilla Marcus:
We partnered with a company called Vivvi, and we worked together on extending hours and providing accessibility, sort of flex spend so that people could ad hoc drop in for night care, which again is part of it too. It's very hard to have something that's totally predictable. When you work in hospitality, if you want to pick up that extra shift, what do you do if you can't do anything with your kids?
I think a big conversation that we developed in the program was also centered around, again, you see the biggest shift from being sort of a, for example, a line cook to a sous chef is extra hours. Closing a restaurant is what happens when you're management, and weekends, events, those are all where your income really starts to grow outside of sort of what I would call sort of traditional everyday service hours. You need something that's flexible and extended hours, and so that was the core of our relationship and partnership with Vivvi.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you think this is something the restaurant industry can solve on its own eventually, or will this 100% take government intervention?
Camilla Marcus:
I think unfortunately it does take some government intervention because companies like Bright Horizon, they've had their chance to service two big industries and they haven't. They're probably the largest child care conglomerate in the country, sort of a chain, if you will, of daycare centers. They're 9:00 to 5:00, and they get a tremendous amount of government funding. So not unlike the farm system, you do have to follow the money, and a lot of these structural support systems are buoyed big time by financial support from the government.
It doesn't mean that I think it needs to be government run, but I think a lot of this, even a restaurant doing it on their own. In New York, one of the reasons that Vivvi does work well, they've figured out the tax structure. There are tax rebates for providing child care support as an employer, which actually does make it then net affordable. So when I say government, I mean more on the financial and incentive side, not like government run daycare centers.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you think enough restaurants know about those tax incentives?
Camilla Marcus:
No, I think that's part of the problem, and it's also state and city specific. It doesn't mean that it's all across the country.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you find some like-minded individuals as you were out there talking about this?
Camilla Marcus:
Some, some, some, but again, I think what we saw in the pandemic. Look at the tremendous uphill battle that we faced getting government relief for an industry that was arguably hit the hardest post-COVID, and in the wake of it, that took two and a half plus years to get any form of relief. That was with everyone really backing it. It does need to be a tidal wave of conversation change and a tidal wave of advocacy to get the help and support that we need.
Kerry Diamond:
Obviously, I don't know what every single person in this industry is doing. I know what you've been doing, but really the only other people I've heard talk about this have been Beverly Kim who had Parachute in Chicago, she's been doing some work on this, and Tracy Malechek who has Birdie's in Austin. It's a biggie.
Camilla Marcus:
They're former USHD alums. There are some restaurants that are doing self-care. There are some restaurants... When I was going through a lot of the research, a lot of restaurants are doing like, "We'll hire you a babysitter," but that has a lot of liability issues and obviously quality control issues. It's better than nothing for sure. A lot of restaurateurs are doing things on their own like providing support for babysitting. "Hey, we'll send someone to your house if you need to come into the restaurant."
I do think there's a lot of people in the restaurant industry that are trying to do it, particularly mothers, things always come down on the moms, but I do think, again, it's just got to be bigger, and I would like to see, much like with restaurant relief. The groundswell started with other industries and other advocates started to care. We can't do it alone. As anchors in communities, it's important that we aren't fighting these things alone.
Kerry Diamond:
Now that you're more or less out of the restaurant business, is that something that you're still advocating for?
Camilla Marcus:
Very much so. I'm very active member of the Independent Restaurant Coalition still. Hi, Erica. She's our amazing director. Absolutely. I mean, to me, even though I've shifted more on the CPG side, I mean, I'm still a chef, I still cook. To me, that's still my village and my family. Again, I think it's just important for our country. I mean, frankly I look at it as an American and a chef regardless of whether I own a restaurant or I'm in that business. So again, that's why I say I think everyone needs to be caring about these issues regardless of whether you own a restaurant or not.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you think it's something that's keeping young women out of kitchens?
Camilla Marcus:
Oh, for all time, for sure, for sure, and I think it's been very touching. I think since a lot of my advocacy work, I've continued to get really heartfelt and also disheartening messages from people saying, "I'm scared to tell someone. I'm scared to have a baby. I'm scared to have a second. How can I have a second and own a restaurant, work in a restaurant? How can I continue to cook at such a physical job?" I do hope that we have better solutions going forward, but I hope I try and at least help where I can and help people get resources and connect.
Again, there's all these all different kinds of cottage industry solutions that I would say that are cropping up in different cities and different areas and trying to help connect people still to this day and hopefully give them hope and see that it is possible, and also the more of us that are in it talking about it and pushing for solutions, the better off we'll be.
Kerry Diamond:
There are some good examples out there of women who are making it work, and we've had some of them on the podcast.
Camilla Marcus:
But unfortunately a lot made it with fear, and that's the shift that I'd like to see. They're still very much afraid of what it means for them economically, time, capacity, advancement, all of it. It just unfortunately feels still so fraught. I mean, at the last Cherry Bombe event that I spoke on, I mean, we talked to moms who are chefs and restaurateurs, and even years later people have adult children, you can still see sort of the PTSD is still there of being pregnant and trying to work in a physical job, having a newborn baby.
There was a author who was on her cookbook tour two weeks after she had a baby. It's hard. We have such a nonstop mentality as Americans, sort of this separation of personal and professional, and it makes it really hard during these years of building a family and having that feel to a lot of women, especially in our industry, feeling like it has to be a binary choice.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, I'm going to put this out there because like I said, I don't know what everyone is doing. If there are folks out there listening...
Camilla Marcus:
DM me. Love to help.
Kerry Diamond:
... who are doing things, who have created some solutions, who have some good advice, definitely DM me, DM Camilla because we would love to hear from you.
Camilla Marcus:
We'd love to connect people. I mean, I think, again, to your point, knowledge is power, and knowing about different opportunities and options only helps.
Kerry Diamond:
During the pandemic, you closed the restaurant, you move to the West Coast, you start your family out there.
Camilla Marcus:
It's called 52 card pickup when your whole life goes up and you decide to restart.
Kerry Diamond:
Is that what it's called?
Camilla Marcus:
I just call it that. I was like, I don't know. It's like throwing a deck of cards up and having to pick one up at a time. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. It's been a journey.
Kerry Diamond:
But not unlike other people who changed their lives during the pandemic and moved and worked on different projects. So you headed out West, you happen to be a native of Los Angeles. You moved back to Los Angeles. Did you have a plan when you moved out there?
Camilla Marcus:
I want to believe I did. I think-
Kerry Diamond:
Because you're a very action-oriented person.
Camilla Marcus:
Yes. I'm definitely a jump in the pool and figure out how to swim later, kind of get my bearings as I'm rowing the boat. I mean, the truth is I had a six-month-old baby, the world shut down. I felt really devastated about the conversations around working from home, and looking around and going, huh, 11 million people who work in the restaurant business can't work from home. So what happens tomorrow when rent's due, and what happens when you need groceries on day three? What do you do when your kids are out of school and you can't provide for anyone?
It hit me hard. I jumped really hard, as you know, into restaurant activism to help with restaurant employee and employer relief during that time, and then I kind of looked around at my own family and said, okay, we have a six-month-old baby. What do we do? There's no parks, there's no classes. People aren't getting together. I work full time. My husband works full time. What are we going to do? It just sort of felt like my life all of a sudden became sort of impossible.
To be honest, closing the restaurant was not the plan. We just really looked at our own family dynamic and thought, okay, two working parents having space, having easy access to nature just felt better, in some ways just sort of inevitable. And so we really decided within two weeks and we moved. While we were leading up to that, I also did IVF in New York. I literally implanted my second child the day before we moved to California.
Closing the restaurant was not part of the plan. We had a really untenable landlord who would not budge, ended up actually making the decision to close it when I was only a few weeks pregnant. I was not cleared to fly. I wasn't even able to come back to New York to close it. It was an intense time. So no, I don't know that I had a plan.
Kerry Diamond:
We didn't even touch on some of the other things that you were doing at west~bourne. You did away with tipping. Tipping was a big issue for you. You were trying to create a quality between front and back of house. You were really experimenting with a lot to try to make this industry better, so it must've broken your heart to have to walk away from that.
Camilla Marcus:
It did very much. Look, it was the hardest couple months probably of my life having sort of personal and professional be very not as planned, but that's how the cookie crumbles, and I think really what it is is no matter what I do, I don't like to accept the status quo. The worst thing I hate hearing is when people say, "Well, that's how it's always been done." And I always ask, "Well, why? Why can't it be done differently?" And I think I carry that frankly into everything that I do, which is do it right or don't do it at all.
I personally feel very unafraid to start to finish, really reimagine something and do it the way I feel it should be done. That still applies to west~bourne now as a CPG brand, carbon-neutral supply chain. We have no plastic. We've never had plastic from the start. We're uncompromising in that. Every decision we make is about our climate. As with the restaurant, it was plant-based, we used no plastic, which over five years ago that was unheard of. Now people are really thinking about disposables and their waste and their footprint.
We were the first zero waste certified restaurant in Manhattan. No one was having that conversation. In fact, listening to all the programming for Climate Week in New York, I sort of chuckled. We started that eight years ago. I'm so excited to see it start to get in the mainstream, but that was a conversation, we had actual mugs. We did, and we weren't supposed to, but we did serve people in plates that they brought from home. Our neighbors begged us to help them compost.
Restaurants weren't doing that at the time, and so again, it's really that ethos has just carried over into the newest expression of west~bourne, which was always part of our plan. The goal was to be in every home with products, and again, from our regenerative sourcing to no plastic to really thinking about carbon neutrality from seed all the way to shelf very much comes from how we built the restaurant ground up.
Kerry Diamond:
Knowing what you learned and just the challenges that you went through, what is your advice for sister restaurateurs and business owners out there who similarly want to do things different?
Camilla Marcus:
I always go back to a saying that my dad told us when we were young, which is if it was easy, everyone would do it. And I think really reminding yourself that the bumpy road means you're making progress, right? Progress and true change doesn't come from a red carpet gliding through and everything at your fingertips. It has to be hard-earned. I think there's a lot of value and a lot of self-worth in that, so I always tell people, jump in. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, and know that that friction is where the beauty and the progress lies. Jump in, someone's got to do it.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, before we talk about your cookbook, we're going to talk about your star product at west~bourne, your avocado oil.
Camilla Marcus:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
How did that become your thing?
Camilla Marcus:
It's interesting, I've used it for a very long time. As a chef, you're always experimenting with different ingredients, and I think for all of us who cook oil is the... before you even get to the mother sauce, right, it's the thing that everything touches, and really starting to think a lot about, obviously west~bourne, the restaurant, was very focused on aligning personal and planetary health through food, and I think that is exactly the ethos of my life, and that goes into everything I think about creating.
For me, avocado oil has always been this no-brainer. It's an incredible superfood. Obviously I'm from California where the flag might have the bear, but it really should have the avocado. It's the one thing I always tell people, it's the only food you can live on if you're on a desert island stranded. It's an incredible complete superfood, highest smoke point, neutral flavor, so it can be cooked sweet or savory, just has these incredible qualities from a performance, from a health, from a nutrition.
And then the real sort of aha moment was when I started doing research and reading that and then talking with farms, avocado trees are most often co-planted with coffee and chocolate, two of the biggest global commodities out there, right? It's one of the biggest crops around the world. If that's the co-planting that provides nutrition and shade in a regenerative farm at scale, right? Most regenerative farms and products started in coffee and chocolate because they're big. They know there's a market for it. They know there's a lot of buyers for it. This sort of natural byproduct of an avocado tree now becomes a secondary crop that they're not really thinking about. It's not what they're sort of focused on. We can sort of intercept the supply chain, create a product from something that is just growing anyway, that also happens to be this incredible all around chef superpower. And I don't know, for me, it was just this perfect coming together of what I use every day in my own kitchen.
Kerry Diamond:
Any plans for additional products?
Camilla Marcus:
Oh, yeah. Stay tuned. We got a lot coming down in 2025.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, fun.
Camilla Marcus:
We do a lot of limited edition drops and collaborations. We did a fruit butter, pectin free, gelatin free, no refined sugar with Oishii last year, sold out in a day. So our additional products tend to be popular, which we're excited about, and we're constantly experimenting. We just released a marble tray to be a really beautiful cooktop and tabletop set with the avocado oil. I'm nothing if not a product developer. I love ideating, so we have big plans to be really that go-to brand for regenerative farming.
Kerry Diamond:
So the book came out the other week. Congratulations.
Camilla Marcus:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
How long was it in the works?
Camilla Marcus:
Probably about two years.
Kerry Diamond:
And why that topic, why regenerative agriculture?
Camilla Marcus:
It's interesting because when you look at what dominates media, where capital flows, it's all kind of moving in not the direction that the data shows. When you look at climate data, hard data, hard numbers. You can tell, I like to research, I like to learn, and I like primary information, not just reading about it in news headlines. When you look at the data, the only system that can pull down carbon and time to solve the climate crisis is regenerative agriculture. 50% of American land is farmland to this day, which I think a lot of people are very surprised by. That land has the power to solve this crisis, and I think everything that we are doing, if you care about climate, if you care about the future of our food system, if you care about the next generation, everything you're doing, buying, thinking about should be focused on regenerative agriculture.
The book really for me came out of if only we had listened to Al Gore decades ago, and then followed up with Dan Barber with his seminal book, “The Third Plate.” I'm amazed how many people in my network hadn't read it. I said, but that is the answer. He is spelling it out, right? He's the book version of the movie that has been beating this drum for far too long, but now we're up against the clock and now we don't really have a choice anymore.
It really has become the imperative, and I think for me, I wanted to create something that got that research, that important information into everyone's hands. What does everyone love more than anything? A cookbook. I think doing something that isn't as academic, isn't as serious, and is a way to make it much more accessible.
I sort of say this cookbook is like the spoonful of sugar with the medicine. That was really the entire intention was to get that information into as many hands as possible and help people realize that there's actually something you can do about it, right? It's one thing to read a book and go, "Great, we have a problem, we have a solution. But I'm not a farmer, I'm not a politician, I don't make policy. What can I do?" That's the whole purpose of “My Regenerative Kitchen.” There are things you can do, and if each of us made one decision today, the ripple effects would be incredible.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us what some of those decisions could be.
Camilla Marcus:
So many. I mean, there's so many products that I share in the book, not just west~bourne products, but so many products so that you can see when you go to a grocery store or you go online to buy your food products, there are so many options for regenerative brands across the board, and that it's actually a lot more accessible and easier than you think.
Things like composting. Now there's actual home products like Mill. I call them the white glove service of composting. There's sort of no excuse now. A lot of people sort of put it off as, "Oh, it's smelly. It's difficult. I don't live on an acre. I don't live on a farm. My city doesn't compost." Well, now a lot of American cities are composting. Hello, New York. You've finally woken up from your decades long slumber.
Kerry Diamond:
My apartment building has its brown bin in the back.
Camilla Marcus:
I mean, I remember starting west~bourne and being like, "Why is there only one hauler that does this? This is crazy." Now there's just no excuse. There's tabletop solutions, there's white glove services like Mill, there's city support for it. Composting really is something that everyone can do. So yeah, I mean, the whole goal of the book, the introduction really follows... You may not notice, but for the carbon-obsessed, nerdy folks like myself, it shows the carbon impact by the numbers from seed, from where we grow our food to transit to packaging to eating and dining and recipes and creating food to refuse, trash, compost, recycling, et cetera. So the book really follows the carbon life cycle and hopefully helps inspire people again to make one choice in any bucket or the other.
Kerry Diamond:
Have you found a lot of like-minded folks out in California?
Camilla Marcus:
I have in California, but truly across the country. I've actually been pretty pleasantly surprised at how much people are excited to read something that they can do, and they've sort of said, "Look, I'm not totally sure what regenerative means, but I know it's important. I know it ties to climate, and I'm excited to figure out how I can be part of it and do something." I do think more people are activists than we give our communities credit for.
Kerry Diamond:
When did this become an interest of yours? I mean, you've got so many interests and so many things that you're trying to change in this industry. When did regenerative farming become something?
Camilla Marcus:
Well, actually, it was the backbone of west~bourne at the restaurant. I just think it didn't get as much press. I'll give you a great example. I actually pitched every major food publication when I started the restaurant on a plant-based holiday spread, and got a no for three years straight. In fact, people told me no one would take a restaurant or a chef seriously who is plant-based. Now five, seven years later, you have everyone fawning over Eleven Madison Park going vegetarian. I would sort of say my culinary ethos was there all along, our sourcing was there all along. In fact, that's where I built my original relationships with a lot of these regenerative farms was on the East Coast, not on the East Coast. It just didn't get attention.
Kerry Diamond:
Are you doing a book tour?
Camilla Marcus:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Where are you headed?
Camilla Marcus:
We partnered actually with Citizens of Humanity who is really pioneering regenerative cotton and textiles and natural dyes in the fashion industry. They've been amazing partners, so we're starting here in New York. Still will always be home here. Then we're going to Los Angeles and then San Francisco and Napa with Cherry Bombe Jubilee. Even with our wine program. At west~bourne, we had exclusively California products. A lot of those products had never been sold on the East Coast. We helped every single one of them get distribution. Shout out to Baldor. Hi, TJ. He helped me bring a lot of folks from California that no one had seen here before, and from a wine program. We only worked with responsible growers. All of the winemakers I knew personally, and many of whom had not sold again in any New York restaurants, now are all over the menus. No one's given out any credit or awards for that, but we were amongst the first to highlight the importance of growing even in wine.
Kerry Diamond:
Camilla, tell us a few more things people can do in their homes because it does-
Camilla Marcus:
Grow something, grow something like my-
Kerry Diamond:
Saying that to me, I've killed every herb I've tried to grow in my apartment. But yeah, tell us a few things.
Camilla Marcus:
I mean, really one of the big ones is grow something. It has, again, a tremendous amount of carbon capture. It will help you think about cooking differently. A patriot state of the book is Ron Finley, who's taught me a lot, always been a big inspiration for it. There's something you can grow even in your apartment windowsill, in your fire escape. You can build a community garden with friends in your neighborhood. There's so many options for that, and I think that also has a big shift in how you look at food and how you prepare food.
I think another big one is vegetarian. Really thinking about how you cook at home through a plant-based lens and not just going towards the typical chicken dinner for two is a big shift, and I think, again, really when I cook professionally, when I cook for big brands. Right before having my fourth baby, I worked for a dream brand. It was interesting because they came to me, and I said, "I want you to know straight up, I cook only vegetarian." It's always amazing to see people go, "Are you sure, you won't throw salmon on it?" And I go, "No, and I promise you, you will have an incredible time. Everyone at the meal will enjoy and they will be so surprised that it was so different, so interesting and delicious, but not the typical what you see."
I also think for people when you're hosting especially, again, it's one of the reasons that I put that section in the book very much inspired by Donna Hay and sort of her curated menus. When you have people over, you don't just have to put a whole fish on the table. Not to say that's not delicious and has its place, but if we all meet those shifts every once in a while and didn't just go the way it's always been, I do think that that has a big tidal wave effect.
Kerry Diamond:
How about grocery shopping? What are some labels you should look for? What's some...
Camilla Marcus:
Regenerative.
Kerry Diamond:
... packaging you should look for?
Camilla Marcus:
Looking towards regenerative brands. I mean, there's not a ton of us, but there's a strong and mighty community growing. Again, many of whom we've partnered with, SIMPLi, Patagonia Provisions, Flour and Water, which is a restaurant. They now have an amazing regenerative pasta brand. Are so many out there. We just had Lundberg Family Farms.
Kerry Diamond:
They're in the book as well.
Camilla Marcus:
People say, again, rice is one of the biggest staples in American homes, and they're doing incredible work with regenerative rice.
Kerry Diamond:
Brita from Lundberg Family Farms was just on the pod.
Camilla Marcus:
I'd love to meet you. I'm a big fan. I've never met them, but they're in the book because again, I just think it's one of those things that people say can't be shifted, but it can literally tomorrow. Thinking about cover crops, thinking about the flowers you use when you're cooking at home, focusing on perennial grains, not just your typical AP flower. And I would say read a label. I mean, honestly, read the label, read the ingredients, focus on vegetables and high functional foods. That's also the best part of regenerative foods. It's healthier, it's more nutrient dense, and I think more delicious and flavor forward.
Kerry Diamond:
Camilla, we're going to do a little speed round.
Camilla Marcus:
Sure.
Kerry Diamond:
What beverage do you start your morning with?
Camilla Marcus:
Always a cappuccino. We have a personal La Marzocco that I bundled into my restaurant order. I was like, "So we're going to have a three group. Can you add me one for my home? And by the way, can you teach my husband how to use it?" I made him go through counterculture coffee training. I said, "If you break my beautiful baby machine, I'm never going to... I won't survive."
So yeah, we do... Coffee for me has always been a really ritualistic thing in the morning, it's the time to slow down. Canyon Coffee, they're part of our little highlight on our holiday package. Our holiday box this season is all regenerative brands, all regeneratively grown, and we're working with Cafe Telegrama out in LA and Canyon Coffee. It's a fully regenerative coffee blend.
Kerry Diamond:
When will you release the box?
Camilla Marcus:
November.
Kerry Diamond:
What's always in your fridge?
Camilla Marcus:
Fermented chilies.
Kerry Diamond:
What's your most used kitchen implement?
Camilla Marcus:
Cast iron pan.
Kerry Diamond:
What's a treasured cookbook in your collection?
Camilla Marcus:
Alice Waters who graciously, graciously wrote the forward.
Kerry Diamond:
That was very exciting when I saw that.
Camilla Marcus:
Definitely cried.
Kerry Diamond:
What was your favorite food as a child?
Camilla Marcus:
Sushi. My dad worked in Japan when I was young, and I was definitely the kid that was like, I'll eat anything. Give me your craziest thing. I would say sushi, and in general, just anything new. I love trying new fruits and vegetables. There's nothing better, and I write about this in the book. I think there is nothing more special than seeing something that you've never seen before or ever cooked before. I feel like that's the joy of this business is that you're always learning.
Kerry Diamond:
What's your favorite snack food?
Camilla Marcus:
Honestly, pop sorghum. It's in the book for a reason. We make a lot of it. I even taught my son to make it, and honestly, he does make the best. He just really understands the ratios.
Kerry Diamond:
Is it like popcorn?
Camilla Marcus:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
I've never had-
Camilla Marcus:
But more delicious, and a cover crop.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. I've never had pop-
Camilla Marcus:
See, there's a quick switch you can make in your home kitchen.
Kerry Diamond:
There you go, folks. What are you streaming right now.
Camilla Marcus:
“Heartstopper,” it's this U.K. show that I'm obsessed with on Netflix. Highly recommend. Season three just dropped. I binged it. Of course, I have no time on my book tour this week, and I was up literally till 3:00 in the morning watching it, and I was kind of laughing. I'm like, I should be more awake tomorrow, but I really need to binge Heartstopper.
Kerry Diamond:
What's your favorite food film?
Camilla Marcus:
Oh, I probably have three. I mean, recently, “Common Ground.” If you haven't seen the documentary all about regenerative farming, you absolutely have to. It's the sequel to “Kiss The Ground,” which is an amazing nonprofit in the space. Really, I would say the preeminent educators that we have, and then of course, “Big Night” and “Ratatouille.”
Kerry Diamond:
Do you have a motto or a mantra?
Camilla Marcus:
Probably just do it. I mean, I hate to rip it from Nike, but I do love “Shoe Dog.” Again, it sort of goes into like jump in, figure it out later. Don't be afraid of the messy and the friction. It's what makes us human. It's the best part of this experience. Do something. And I think that that is very much the ethos of the book.
Kerry Diamond:
“Shoe Dog” being the Phil Knight book that every entrepreneur needs to read.
Camilla Marcus:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
How and when you learn to trust your gut, do you feel like you have learned that?
Camilla Marcus:
Birth.
Kerry Diamond:
Birth?
Camilla Marcus:
Birth, and I will say I'm very fortunate. I do believe I just have a very strong instinct, and there's a part of my brain that was never able to ignore it.
Kerry Diamond:
So you were born that way?
Camilla Marcus:
I do think so. I can't remember a time I didn't, and it's led me... I've got myself in trouble. Anyone who knows me, even from childhood, I got kicked out of my nursery school. True story, four years old. I was asked to leave, and my mom said, "Well, why?" And they said, "Well, she asked questions no one knows the answer to." My mom said, "Well, why can't you just say I don't know?" And they go, "We don't know. She just challenges the authority in the classroom." And my mom's like, "She's four." That's something I really try and instill in my children, and I try and help support my village and friends in our community.
I think women are absolute witches. I think that we are born with incredible intuition. I think we are tied to the earth in a very cosmic way. If only we would ignore society and the things that get programmed out of that. Women have incredible intuition.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, last question. If you had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be and why?
Camilla Marcus:
Anthony Bourdain, hands down. I never met him, but I always felt a kindred spirit. He's sort of my speed. I think that act first, figure it out later, don't be afraid, right? Think about it. He was a restaurant chef, really broke the mold of what food media, what food publishing could be in a way that we now get to benefit from, but it was unheard of. Talk about the public arena ignoring restaurants. I mean, he really broke that mold. Never apologized, wasn't afraid of F-bombs. He just was so unapologetically himself. And again, as someone who never met him, that is who I'd like to resurrect and be trapped on a desert island with. Wouldn't be trapped if you enjoy.
Kerry Diamond:
No, with him, no, you probably wouldn't feel trapped. You'd probably be happy to be there.
Camilla, thank you so much.
Camilla Marcus:
Thank you, Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
Congratulations on this.
Camilla Marcus:
You've always been the biggest supporter. You wrote the first article on the restaurant. Nina Friend wrote it in Cherry Bombe. It was the first article probably ever written about me, about west~bourne in the very early days of my journey in this industry. So I hope you know I'm always very deeply grateful.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, I'm happy to hear that. I've been a big fan of yours, and like I said, you talk about a lot of things that no one else does, and you've tried to make this industry a better place. I just hope you know we all appreciate that.
Camilla Marcus:
Well, thank you, and we got a lot of work to do, but we're making progress. Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. I would love for you to subscribe to Radio Cherry Bombe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and leave a rating and a review. Anyone you want to hear on an upcoming episode, let me know.
Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Joseph Hazan is a studio engineer for Newsstand Studios. Our producers are Catherine Baker and Jenna Sadhu. Our content operations manager is Londyn Crenshaw, and our editorial coordinator is Sophie Kies. Thanks for listening, everybody. You are the Bombe.