Sana Javeri Kadri and Zoe Adjonyoh in Conversation with Hetty McKinnon Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Each week, we talk to the coolest culinary personalities around, the folks shaping and shaking up the food scene. We were on a little hiatus for the past few weeks. I think we've done over 100 shows without a real break, so it was time. Today's conversation is from our annual Jubilee Conference that took place at Center415 here in Manhattan this past April. Jubilee is our annual conference that brings together the most amazing women in the food and drink world. We hosted more than 700 folks for this year's Jubilee and it was amazing. If you joined us for this year's Jubilee, thank you.
For today's show. We are sharing a chat that took place live on stage with Hetty McKinnon, Sana Javeri Kadri, and Zoe Adjonyoh. I know those three names are very familiar to all of you. Hetty is the beloved cookbook author who wrote To Asia With Love. Sana is the founder of Diaspora Co. and she is on the cover of the current Cherry Bombe Magazine. And Zoe is with the James Beard Foundation and she is also the author and founder of Zoe's Ghana Kitchen.
Today's episode is presented by Kerrygold, the maker of beautiful butter and cheese with milk from Irish grass-fed cows. I've been to Ireland with Kerrygold. It was one of the best trips of my life, as you can imagine, and have visited some of the small family farms they work with. The care they put into their product every step of the way is amazing. All of you out there know how the best ingredients can make a real difference, whether it's the butter in your baked goods, like a strawberry shortcake, perfect for this time of year or the cheese on your cheese and charcuterie boards. If you haven't tried Kerrygold, look for their butter and cheese at your favorite supermarket or specialty grocery store. Visit kerrygoldusa.com for recipes, product information, and a store locator. The chat you're about to hear was introduced by Janell Lo, the chef and creator behind My Best Friend is Gluten-Free and the founder of Dump the Hate, an initiative to fight violence against the AAPI community. Let's welcome Janell and I hope you enjoy this Jubilee conversation. You are about to hear from some very special and wise women.
Jannell Lo:
Hi, everyone. It is an absolute pleasure to be in the presence of you all today and I'm honored to be introducing three incredible women in the world of food. A little introduction for myself, my name is Janell Lo and I hailed the colorful multicultural landscape of Toronto. I am a chef and food blogger with over a decade of experience in restaurants, catering companies, and food startups spanning from Hong Kong to Montreal. If anyone has seen the Pixar movie Turning Red, that was pretty much my childhood. Think pop band and dancing with my friends while navigating a dual identity. I am the founder of my BF is GF, My Best Friend is Gluten-Free, a blog influenced by my Chinese Canadian upbringing with the goal of diversifying gluten-free foods in North America.
In 2021, I founded the Dump the Hate campaign, a virtual dumpling making fundraiser fighting against anti-Asian prejudice and violence. The campaign has reached an international audience with over 40,000 dumplings made and nearly $150,000 raised. When videos of anti-Asian hate crimes surfaced on the internet, I was fired up to do something about it. I drew inspiration from Chef Paola Valez's campaign, Bakers Against Racism, which I had learned about through Cherry Bombe.
Now for the stars of the fireside chat. Sana Javeri Kadri, a former food and culture photographer, founded Diaspora Co. in 2017 when she was just 23 years old. Diaspora is a spice company working directly with farm partners across India and Sri Lanka, paying them a living wage for sustainably produced, single origin, heirloom spices. They're beautifully packaged, incredibly fragrant, and other spices on the market just don't compare. I personally managed to plow through a container of their amazingly floral Nandini coriander and I just can't get enough. Sana works hard to build community through her vibrant and beloved brand and is also the newest cover girl on the latest issue of Cherry Bombe.
Next is Chef Zoe Adjonyoh, ambassador for new African cuisine and founder of Zoe's Ghana Kitchen, serving up delicious Ghanaian food with popups across Africa, Europe, and North America. Named after her business, Zoe's cookbook familiar rises readers with the flavors and ingredients of West African cuisine and was ranked one of the best cookbooks of 2021 in the New York Times. She is also the director of the James Beard Foundation's Women's Leadership Programs, supporting all women, including women identifying and non-binary professionals in the food and beverage industry. These incredible women will be interviewed by the dear Hetty McKinnon, founder of Peddler, a multicultural food journal and host of the House Specials podcast. She is also the author of four best selling cookbooks, To Asia with Love, Family, Neighborhood, and Community, and a regular contributor to New York Times Cooking, Bon Appetit, and Epicurious. Please help me give it up for Sana Javeri Kadri, Zoe Adjonyoh, and Hetty McKinnon.
Hetty McKinnon:
Hi, everyone. Wow. So I'm just going to catch up with you guys to start with. Sana, you've been away for a little while.
Sana Javeri Kadri:
About eight weeks.
Hetty McKinnon:
Yes. Can you tell us what you've been up to?
Sana Javeri Kadri:
I run the spice company that's between my home, that is India, and now we've expanded to South Asia, and then my home here in the US and so in the spring and the fall, we go back to source. And that sometimes means visiting our favorite farm partners, which this time was our Baraka cardamom farm partner in Kerala, our Iranian black pepper farm partner, also in Kerala but in different parts, but then also visiting new potential farm partners. So this time in Kerala as well, we found the most incredible vanilla farmer and rather co-op of farmers, where really the magic is in the processing and the way that they're taking green vanilla beans and then curing and processing it, so it was really exciting. And so far, I've done a lot of the sourcing alone, where it's just been me going on long journeys, getting really car sick, and now for the first time, we have a team. We have a sourcing manager. She's incredible. Shout out to Kuman. And so it was just this transformative thing to go as a team now. You're like, "Oh, we do this." And like, "Oh, you do this and you're really good at this. It's not just me anymore."
Hetty McKinnon:
Look how far you've come. Wonderful. And Zoe, you've recently accepted a formidable position as the Director of Women's Leadership Programs at the James Beard Foundation.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
Formidable. I have to be careful because my boss is in the room. Yeah. Of course, it's exciting. I get to work with some of the women out here, like Fany was on the stage earlier. Cody's in the audience, I know. It's an extension for me of what I've been wanting to do for the last 12 years, which is to raise the platform and voices of women in hospitality and this really gets my hands dirty in that regard and it's fantastic. I'm very excited because there's so many women-led organizations working so hard nationwide and I really want us to all come together in conversations so that we can move things forward faster and I'm excited by the conversations I'm having.
Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah. About that, I had a conversation with Fany backstage and she said you changed her life in 15 minutes. So I want to book a session, actually.
Sana Javeri Kadri:
Me too.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
I should have a meeting with myself.
Hetty McKinnon:
You should. Yeah, via Zoom.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
Or in the mirror. Yeah.
Hetty McKinnon:
I wanted to start off by talking about a subject that's very close to my heart. And it came from a conversation I had with Sana a little while ago and she mentioned something called diaspora angst and it's this feeling that immigrants often have of feeling neither here nor there, could be cultural confusion. So can you talk about how this notion of identity and perhaps this cultural confusion, how this manifests in your products, your brand, your cookbook, in all the work that you do? How do you bring all that together?
Zoe Adjonyoh:
Wow.
Hetty McKinnon:
Starting off hard, Zoe.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
How do you bring all that together? I don't know that I've solved the answer to all of that. My answer for any of this is basically, I think this is probably true for you. We are all the essence of our experience of the homes we grew up in, of the places we've lived, the places that we traveled, the things we've eaten. All of that experience is who we are and I think as somebody who tries to, not even tries, I just am, I hope, so all of that stuff bubbles through me. So whether it's writing or cooking or being director of Women's Leadership Programs or running a eCommerce site that sells single origin with stuff, all the time, all of that is feeding. And I think everybody in the diaspora has that as well. We carry the things from our ancestors, our families, our travels, and our experiences into where we are now and that's complicated sometimes. Over to you.
Sana Javeri Kadri:
So when I came to America for university, for college, I suddenly encountered this concept that was called diasporic angst, where suddenly we weren't from there anymore because we had experienced here. And Chimamanda's Americanah was our Bible back in early 200s and I always joked that if I ever had a cafe, it would be called Diasporic Angst and then I realized that it's a mouthful and we shortened it just to Diaspora, wanted it to be a more inclusive term.
Sana Javeri Kadri:
I say this all the time, but I think for so long in the food industry, there was this feeling that angst and the fact that we were from multiple places was not given credit and we were subdued in that way. It was almost like you're confusing and I'm going to generalize you and assume that this is what you are because I didn't make sense in the American context. There was an assumption of what I was and I wasn't any of those things. I was queer and there was a lot of things. But I think that now, we're in this moment of that diasporic angst is what fuels us and it has power. It's so powerful because we're bringing together cultures. We're taking one culture and another and we're teaching them how to talk to each other. What we're really doing, I think, is I don't think of myself as trying to share my story, though I think my story does have value, but I think we're translators. I'm a translator for my experience there to here. Now, I think through both of our companies, we're translators for our producers and these people in running incredible farms all over the world and what their stories are and what they're doing.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
And in a wider context, translating the culture as well, of where we come from.
Sana Javeri Kadri:
And I think that's been really hard. You can take diasporic angst and then you can take a little bit of attention that you get and become the token so easily and revel in it for a little bit because you don't realize the weight of it. You don't realize that it's a double-edged sword.
Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah. I think the last two years, the food industry's really changed. I've been reflecting on this a lot, both internally and with my friends, fellow women of color in the food industry. And do you feel tokenized or do you feel like we've gotten to a place where we just are?
Sana Javeri Kadri:
I think we're in process. That feels like a loaded question. I think the industry's getting better. There's a lot of people in this room pushing to make the industry much better. But I think it's also easy to fall ... I'm not even talking about tokenization by other people. It's easy as somebody who hasn't had power or attention to fall into that yourself and be like, "I should be the token. I'll be a great token," without realizing that that's not your full experience and there's more that we all need to be and we need to make space for more of us, so it's more realizing we don't need to be the token.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
Yeah. I think that's interesting language. I don't think I would've had that facility to use that language at the time, but certainly between 2010 when I started to 2012, head down, on my own, didn't give a shit what anybody was saying about me or whatever. And then suddenly got catapulted into the press as the voice, the expert, the this, the that, da, da, da, da, da. And of course, initially I was like, "Oh, this is cool."
Sana Javeri Kadri:
I'm the voice.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
I'm on the front of The Observer. Check me out. But very quickly then, it becomes apparent because you know you're not the only voice. But there is a tussle there or there was a tussle there previously, which is when you give up that bit of space, the industry has shifted somewhat over the last few years, but there has only been space in the UK especially, for one black voice or one brown person on TV or whatever it is. And that is starting to open up and change a little bit. But formally, when I have made decisions to be like, "Actually I think this other person is more appropriate," then you are you're giving up your paycheck at the end of the day, which can be hard as well. It's a tussle. But to come full circle, I've gone back to my head space of 2010 in recent years and been like, "You know what? Fuck the industry. I'm just going to ..." Sorry, industry. Fuck the industry with love, obviously, always with love. But you know what I mean? It's really about everybody trying to be true to themselves. And when you're following your own path and your own purpose, then you can bring other people on the journey with you because you're not in a scarcity. That's the thing. That's the industry.
Sana Javeri Kadri:
All of us in the industry, I think, have just, what's the word, made as part of ourselves, adjusted.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
And it's inherent, isn't it? Even the brigade system.
Sana Javeri Kadri:
Full of white privilege or white.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
Yeah. It's not set up for everybody.
Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah. And I think that's where we're at now, trying to realize there's enough room for everyone. Zoe, you want to dig into your mind a little? This is scary.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
Awkward.
Hetty McKinnon:
Is it? No, it's not. I did a bit of research on you and I read in one of your interviews online, where you cited a Marianne Williamson quote, where you said, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." Is the fear of success, this is a question for both of you, is the fear of success or the feeling that you are undeserving something that you still grapple with in business, in everything you do?
Zoe Adjonyoh:
Yes, of course. I don't think anyone ever arrives to ... This is all a journey, becoming, right? We're all becoming. It's a process and it's a lifelong journey into really being comfortable in your skin, being comfortable with what you think, being comfortable in your values. It's a journey and it's a process, but I would be lying if I said sometimes I didn't doubt myself or I didn't worry if I am ... Just recently, I'm not going to tell you what the position is, but somebody asked me to apply for a job that's an amazing job. Not the amazing job I've already got, obviously, another amazing job. And I looked at it and thought, "Wow, that is an incredible job. Why are they asking me to apply?" So I can still have that doubt, and I think as women, especially, we have that ingrained into us a little bit, sadly, the patriarchy has done that, but I think we're shifting. I think everybody's consciousness is shifting and the pandemic was a real moment for that to give space for people to have that conversation with themselves.
Hetty McKinnon:
What about you, Sana? You've been really transparent about your rise and how you've gotten to where you are. And it's just so refreshing to hear that honesty about the privileges that you've had, the fact that you are here in America.
Sana Javeri Kadri:
Yeah. That's a privilege right there. Right before coming here, I was on FaceTime showing my parents and my grandma my outfit. And I was like, "Nani, I look hot." And Nani was like, "Pride comes before the fall," and I was like. I think there is that ingrained feeling of, "Oh, you're hot shit today. You're going to do something terrible tomorrow," and I think that's where I really have to remember that we all fail and we all need to be accountable to that failure. And we're all going to make mistakes and fuck up in a hundred different ways. We're just going to do it with style. And our team talks about that a lot the time because we have a very young, dynamic feelings full of team. We have all of our identities coming together, working together to build a hard thing. And I think if we weren't embracing the fact that we were going to make big mistakes and do it wrong, we wouldn't do it at all. It would be too scary.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
Without failure though as well, you don't grow. If you don't push yourself out of your comfort zone, where's the growth going to happen? Do you know what I mean? That's exactly how you grow, is going up against discomfort.
Sana Javeri Kadri:
It's also really hard because it's so nice to be comfortable. I hear you.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
It's difficult, but life is hard. This is the challenge.
Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah. The climb is always where it's at for me, The climb, rather than I never want to get to the top because the climb is where it's all happening.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
Well, the top always shifts as well. You're doing it.
Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you both do so much in the food space. How do you move so seamlessly from being entrepreneur, cookbook author, soon-to-be cookbook author, chef, activist, all these things? And you do this with this not a singular goal, you have many goals, but decolonizing the food space, which you've both talked about in your businesses. How do you talk about this and navigate all these hats as you get bigger audiences? It's challenging, right?
Zoe Adjonyoh:
No. It's with the help of people. I think nobody works in a silo. I personally, I'm just the person that needs to have a lot of different things going on and that's just how I've been built. And balance is about, it's easier in a way, because the singular thread that I've decided is the core of everything I do, whether it's about the gender pay gap or queer rights or whatever it is, at the end of the day, it's all about decolonizing because the colonizing is the part that has fucked up people's minds and thinking. So it becomes easier for me in that sense, if I know that everything I do is working towards that goal and the priority is what is in the day. What's in front of me in the day? I'm not doing this all the time. It's just like, "What's in front of me right now?"
Sana Javeri Kadri:
I've held a lot of hats. Diaspora was just me for a long time. A lot of you saw me here in 2018, pouring through myself and there's now 15 of us and it's just an incredible team who are much smarter at several parts of the business than me. But I think right now, my role as a young, clueless CEO has been very much, "What does good leadership look like? Where does my ego get in the way of good leadership?" I feel like in the past 12 months, we've really gone through a labor movement transformation that is happening and I think that's phenomenal and really exciting. It's also involved difficult conversations with my own team of, "Well, how do we participate in that? How do I, as the owner of this business, have power in this relationship?" That's a lot of what I've been thinking about and I feel like the other things that you're at attributing to me don't take up actually most of my time. Right now, a lot of it is Zoom meetings and hard conversations.
Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah. Did you find that you had to learn to be a boss of so many people?
Sana Javeri Kadri:
Yeah. I don't know how to manage humans. I started this company when I was 23 years old, five years ago. I had one year of work experience under my belt and yes, I knew a lot of things and wanted to bring a lot of things together and was always a hustler, but I had had one manager before that, so I'm learning leadership from scratch. And Blake, who does our PR and is amazing, said this recently that I'm building the plane as I'm learning how to fly it and it's a good metaphor.
Hetty McKinnon:
It's incredible.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
I'm tempted to invite you to apply for the Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership Course. I think we can help.
Sana Javeri Kadri:
We'll chat.
Hetty McKinnon:
Can't keep Zoe down. On the opposite side to the scarcity, I've read, Zoe's talked about abundance mindset and the ability to see the limitless potential in life, the potential in other people and everyone around you. And moving ahead, how do you, how do we create more space for the next generation of women-led businesses, particularly run by women of color?
Zoe Adjonyoh:
It is collaboration, being in community, and knowing that at the end of the day, there is limitless, everything. Limitless, everything, and we just have to know and believe that. And if we can be generous enough with ourselves to share space, share time with other cooks, chefs, writers, whoever they are, it doesn't become competition. It becomes an opportunity to create something new together.
Sana Javeri Kadri:
I think for me, it's about specificity. I see the value of representation and I see that you can't be where you can't see and it's important to have faces that look like us everywhere. All experiences of brown women everywhere are obviously not the same and I think there's a little bit of pretending that they are that happens right now. "Oh, you did it so I should be able to, too." You and I have had this conversation a lot, where I feel it very important to mention that I graduated college debt free. I come from a family in Mumbai that has money. I've been on a conveyor belt of elite education since I was a child. A lot of those privileges allow me to access spaces that people that look like me don't have access to. And I think then it's now realizing, "How do I open that door?" I think that's where working through our scarcity stuff comes in. I think it's exactly what you're saying, is collaborating, bringing everybody together and figuring out how can we walk together.
Zoe Adjonyoh:
On this point real quick, because I know we're running out time, what I'll say is, for example, when I started, when I pivoted down the kitchen to be the eCommerce ... Sana's business, I'd never met her. Didn't know anything about you, honestly. And I was Googling single origin. I was trying to find inspiration for how I was going to ... And I found your website and everything you'd written I was like, "Jesus Christ. She's in my head." I need to meet this person. I need to talk to her. I wrote to you and I said, "Look, I love what you're doing. I love this. Can I copy and paste everything on your website?" Pretty much, and you were really generous and you were like, "Yeah, go for it." And I took a lot of what she had written and adapted it as to the language that suited me and my brand and my personal values and stuff. And again, reached out, you were going to be in New York. And I was like, "Can I meet you?" And you gave me advice. And that's what we all need to do. We need to reach out. Don't be scared to ask for help. And then the other side, give it. You can't do one without the other, so that's the marriage,
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Hetty, Sana, and Zoe for their insightful chat from Jubilee. If you'd like to support these women, and I know you do, you can purchase cookbooks by Hetty and Zoe at your favorite bookstore or pick up some of the excellent spices from Diaspora Co. Thank you to Kerrygold for supporting today's show. Learn more at kerrygoldusa.com and pick up some of their butter and cheese the next time you see it at your favorite shop. Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter over at cherrybombe.com or give us a follow on Instagram at Cherry Bombe. That's bombe with an E. Thank you to Radio Cherry Bombe's Jenna Sadhu and thank you to Joseph Hazan, studio engineer for Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center. And thanks to you for listening. You're the bombe.