the future of food is you: maya oren transcript
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Hi everyone. You're listening to The Future Of Food Is You, a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Abena Anim-Somuah, and each week I talk to emerging talents in the food world and they share what they're up to as well as their dreams and predictions for what's ahead. As for me, I'm the founder of The Eden Place, a community that's all about gathering people intentionally around food. I love this new generation of chefs, bakers, and creatives making their way in the world of food, drink, media, and tech.
Today's guest is Maya Oren, a true creative. Maya is the brand experience manager for The Line Hotel in Washington, D.C. and the founder and visual director of her own brand, Mojalvo. She loves food, travel, photography, and sharing her experiences through her newsletter On Holiday. I'm excited to chat with Maya about her journey and how food serves as a vessel for her creative endeavors.
Some of you might know this, but Cherry Bombe started as a print magazine. I'm actually a contributor to the magazine, as is today's guest Maya. I wrote a story on the iconic Edna Lewis for the Julia Child issue, and Maya wrote a story for the cookbook issue, which we talk about later in the show. Each issue of Cherry Bombe is thick, beautiful, and chock-full of stories to read, beautiful photos to gaze at, and recipes from your favorite food folks. So, pick up a copy at your favorite bookstore or magazine shop or head to cherrybombe.com to order a back issue or the brand new one.
Thank you to Kerrygold for supporting The Future Of Food Is You. Kerrygold is the iconic Irish brand famous for its rich butter and cheese made in Ireland with milk from grass-fed cows. Let's talk butter first. There's a Kerrygold butter for all of you out there. From soft and spreadable butter in a tub to sticks of salted or unsalted, they’re a perfect measurement option for foolproof cooking.
There's a Kerrygold butter blended with olive oil, which is about to become your pantry essential. My go-to is a traditional block of Kerrygold unsalted butter foils perfect for baking because of that higher butterfat content and because I can control the amount of salt in the specific recipe. Then there's Kerrygold cheese. The options go way beyond their classic Irish cheddar. There's Kerrygold Blarney cheese, which is a gouda style, Kerrygold Dubliner, sweet and nutty with a bite similar to aged Parmesan, Kerrygold Skellig, a tangy take on cheddar, and the rich and delicious Kerrygold Cashel Blue Farmhouse cheese. For the best cheese board, just accompany these with some grapes, your favorite crackers, and some funky jams for contrasting vibes. You're all set. If you haven't tried Kerrygold yet, don't delay, the future is now. Look for their butter and cheese at your favorite supermarket, specialty grocery store, or cheese shop. Visit kerrygoldusa.com for recipes and product information.
Now let's check in with today's guests. Maya, super excited to have you on the pod.
Maya Oren:
I am thrilled.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
So you came in from D.C.?
Maya Oren:
Yes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You've been here for the weekend, I'm guessing.
Maya Oren:
Yep. I came in on Saturday, got my fill of the city, went down to Orchard Street, and found some cool pop-ups.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What spots have you been eating out since you've been in the city?
Maya Oren:
This is going to sound so lame, I guess, but when I lived in the city a long time ago, once upon a time, I used to live on the Upper West Side and I would go to Peacefood all the time. I am not a vegan, and I actually tried to apply for a job there and they were like, “Are you a vegan?” And I said, “No.” And they were like… but I used to go there every day before work and get a chai and a muffin, and I would just go crazy for the different flavors that they had in muffins. And so every time I come to the city, it's kind of this nostalgic thing where I just get the peace bowl to-go, and some chickpea fries, and I sit in my room in my underwear and eat my food and it's so delightful.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Were there any news spots that you tried on this trip?
Maya Oren:
No, actually, but I am coming back next week, so my birthday is next week on Sunday, and I've just been craving the energy of New York. That happens to me sometimes. So I booked myself a stay at x in Brooklyn and realized that it's basically an Israeli hotel at this point with Laser Wolf on the roof. So we're going to go to Laser Wolf, my boyfriend and I, so I'm very excited.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's so exciting. So for those of you who are listening, Laser Wolf is one of the many restaurants from Michael Solomonov and it's just an incredible spot. And that's a smart move. I feel like that's probably the easiest way to get a reservation too, right?
Maya Oren:
100%. I mean, we're going at 5:00 p.m. on a Tuesday, so there's that. But then in the lobby they have K'Far, which is his other concept, and it's a bakery concept, so I'm very excited to have bourekas every morning with my coffee and just live it like I'm living in Tel Aviv again.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's awesome. Well, let's transition into your life and your upbringing. So can you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and how food played a role in your life?
Maya Oren:
Sure. So, I'm first-generation American. My father is from Israel by way of Turkey and by way of Spain, and my mother is from Trinidad and Tobago. And so I grew up in a really diverse sort of environment. And between Connecticut, New Haven, just outside of New Haven and Boca Raton, Florida, I feel like my life has just been a lot of these parallels of experiences that are very extreme and the mixing of cultures has always been a big part of my life. I love to talk about Thanksgiving actually, because the meal was always stewed chicken, macaroni pie, some sort of vegetable, and then my dad would always whip out his Israeli chopped salad or actually ‘salat aravi’ in Hebrew, which is Arabic salad. But that was just how I grew up.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Now that you live in D.C., are there places that you're able to get that sense of your family from? Do you have a good Trinidad spot you go to? Do you have a good Israeli spot that you're going to?
Maya Oren:
Funnily enough, neither. There's a couple of places I've been for Trinidadian food, but my thing is, and I'm not going to name names, my thing is I feel like they try to make it fancier than it needs to be. Trinidadian food is meant to be eaten out of a to-go container, and it's very casual. My best memories, core memories, are going to my grandmother's house in Queens and driving with my cousin to get roti from the local spot and getting a big bag of pholourie, which is basically just like a fried, I think it's chickpea flour dough, and it just saturates the bag in oil and you're just eating that on your way back home. So it's very low-key. And there's places in D.C. that try to make it fancy with the tamarind sauce drizzled on the plate, and I'm like, “No, I just want to get my hands in this.” But I do really get down with Turkish coffee in D.C. and I feel like my gateway into just the feeling of home.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's really awesome because I feel like D.C. is such a great place for food considering it's the nation's capital, and I love that you dub yourself a third culture kid. I'm also a third culture kid. Are there places that allow you to kind of seek that feeling of home when you think about food?
Maya Oren:
Yeah, so I think it's really interesting because food for me, it's not really about the chef or about the restaurant necessarily or the scene of it. It's more about that real connection that person cooking has to their culture. And I feel like for me, that's the gateway. I had an interesting experience here at Bunna Cafe in Brooklyn, my friends and I just wandered in, but they were doing a coffee ceremony. It was a little bit theatrical and a little bit cringey, but there was a moment with it that I was just thinking, I feel so immersed in this. And the environment felt very warm, and you could smell the coffee being brewed, and it really gets me excited about food and feels like this way to hear this language that you feel only privy to with food.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, I think food is just a great gateway for people to experience emotions and be in touch with particular senses of nostalgia, especially when home can be so many different places for you. So let's transition into, I guess, we'll dub your creative brand Mojalvo. I love the name.
Maya Oren:
Thank you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What inspired the name?
Maya Oren:
If you can't tell, I'm obsessed with heritage and culture and ritual, and so Mojalvo was actually my middle name, Ojalvo, which is my family's name. It's the Turkish last name, and I think it even dates back to Spain because when I was living in Barcelona, I saw Ojalvo written on... It was graffitied onto something, and I was like, “That's crazy.” It just traveled with me throughout my life. It was my middle name, and is my middle name, and my entire family's middle name. So Ojalvo also means hope. It comes from the word ojala. So that really felt very beautiful to me. So we all have this name that just is part of everything that I love, and I just added my first initial to it and use it as a blog name back in college for my photography, and then it just stuck.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's amazing. Can you tell us a little bit about the essence behind the brand and the different creative directions you like to go in?
Maya Oren:
Sure. So, I think it really stemmed from photography. I've always had a love for documenting my life. And so ever since I was a little kid from the age of 11, I had a camera on me, before that I was writing in diaries, and it was just very important to really depict what was around me. And so photography felt like an easy way to do that. And as I brought it into more of a business model, the creative direction is really about visual storytelling and it's about showing people what's behind a brand, the essence of a brand, what makes it what it is, and that is made up of all of those little stories that you might not see on the surface.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I think what I've really enjoyed about your work is that you specifically focus on culinary arts and travel. What drew you to that specific niche in your creative direction?
Maya Oren:
It's the culture. It's the ritual, it's the culture, it's that feeling of home that we just talked about. It's capturing all the little essences of that experience. And my video work, I've been told that it feels very transportive and it feels very immersive. And that's really the feeling I want people to get when they look at my work or read my stories is that they're really there with you because that's what it's all about. We want to be immersed in that experience. When you really feel an affinity for a brand, that's what you're feeling.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
So I've been doing a little bit of culinary school research as any gastronome enthusiast does, and I have been so infatuated by Ballymaloe in Cork, Ireland. And I noticed that you did a creative shoot in Ireland. Can you tell us a little bit about the process of that?
Maya Oren:
Yeah, so that was crazy. It was my last trip before the pandemic. It was in January, 2020, and I was brought on by Brian Hart Hoffman, who is the editor-in-chief of Bake From Scratch, and-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
He's incredible. Yeah.
Maya Oren:
I write down quotes when I travel from people that I'm either traveling with or people that I meet, and his quotes are so funny. We all traveled together. It was I think six bloggers from all over the country as well as Williams Sonoma. Their team came, and it was also led by the Tourism Ireland group. And so the whole plan of the trip was to really show us the other side of Ireland. They didn't really want us to go and blog about the rolling green hills and the cows on the pasture and whatever, all the things that we think about when we think of Ireland. And I really was surprised. It was a shocking trip and there was so much that I learned. And we did go to Ballymaloe and we got to cook with Darina [Allen] in her kitchen.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
A legend.
Maya Oren:
Her kitchen is iconic. We learned how to make Irish soda bread and it was just a really enriching and beautiful experience. And funnily enough, I like to call myself ‘culinary adjacent,’ I actually wanted to go to her school and I learned about it a couple of years ago. And so when we got to go on the itinerary, I was like, “Holy crap, I can't believe this is real life.” And it's really bucolic. There are chickens running around, people picking up chickens and holding them as they talk to you casually. They had a fermenting station that was basically just a trailer and they had all different types of sourdoughs that were being started. It was such a cool experience.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. It's like a bucket list. I've started my little rainy day fun list because I'm so enthralled and enthused by just how she's able to capture the essence of living life with the seasons, with food at this kind of center. So I think when I watched your video, it almost made it more exciting for me to go. I'm curious, how do you balance being immersed in an experience but also trying your best to record it? Because I feel like you had something similar with your El Camino travel video when you went to Columbia.
Maya Oren:
Yeah, so I did yoga teacher training a couple of years ago and we had to do a free writing experience where we just took pen to paper and wrote for 15 minutes and it was a pouring of our souls. And I remember I was writing, writing, writing, I don't know what to say, I don't know what to say. And finally I wrote, ‘I'm an observer of life, I observe.’ And I just started bawling. And there was this moment where I felt like, “Am I really living my life because I'm just taking pictures, I'm just taking video, I'm always behind the camera?” And I felt like I wasn't immersing myself. And what I realized is actually that I live my life through capturing, that's how I see the world and that's how I observe the world. But it's like that does let me experience and it has brought me to all these amazing places.
And so in Columbia too, it was just... Everything we were doing, I was capturing it and it was so exciting. And one of my favorite stories from Columbia was we were in Cartagena and we went to this volcano that's been dormant for years and it has a bunch of mud in the top. And so they bring people up this rickety little ladder, and you get into the mud and you just float around in the mud when you cover yourself in it, and then you dry off and then these women bathe you down in this lake below. And I was so jealous that I couldn't get in and I was trying to figure out how I could hold my camera above my head and get into this volcano without covering my equipment in mud. And one of the travelers saw that I really wanted to do that, and she basically just pulled me over and she was like, “Let me put some on your face.” And so there's this really sweet picture of her putting mud on my face so I could experience a little bit of it while still capturing all of them.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And that's beautiful because I feel like she knew the value of you wanting to capture that for them because also it's always nice when you go on a trip and it's like, “Oh, someone's taking my photo.” But also having that person be a part of that experience. Obviously we're a food podcast, so I have to ask, what were some of the best things you ate when you were in Cartagena?
Maya Oren:
Oh my God, the street food hands down is unreal. Everything has cheese, so if you're lactose intolerant, bring your Lactaid. But it's so good. And I remember actually, the thing that stands out to me when I travel is that first moment of touchdown and I always try to write about it and capture the moment. And in Cartagena when we landed, I got in the cab and we were driving into where the Walled City is of Cartagena, and we passed by the ocean and I saw this little kid just joyfully running through the waves, and it was just around sunset. So the wave hit his back and it just sparkled all around him and just felt so magical and steamy and romantic. And that night, the person who was going to be doing the tour for us in El Camino, he brought me down the street to try a bunch of street food. So we just walked around and he's like, “You need to try this, you need to try that.” I drank a beer, I hate beer, and I was drinking a beer out of a kiosk. It was awesome.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Let's talk a little bit about gear. I feel like you take a lot of incredible photos. What are some of the gear that you use and then also what advice you have for people to take better photos or just be more intentional about what they capture?
Maya Oren:
I'm a Canon gal. I've been actually debating moving to Leica, but that's a massive investment as-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's a first class upgrade. Yeah.
Maya Oren:
Yo, it is real. But eventually I'll do it. I have about four or five Canon bodies that are just collecting dust. But my go-to are the mark cameras. They're really incredible. But my thing always that I give as advice, if you're starting out or even if you just are someone that likes to take photos, it's not really about the equipment, it's really about your angle. It's about the lighting, it's about your heart in it. And I feel like my skill set with that has always just been about the emotion that I have for it. It's not really about the equipment. There's beautiful photos I've taken on my iPhone that I've actually sold as prints alongside my photos that I've taken with my camera. So I think it's just about having your heart in there and really feeling the setting and what you want to evoke with that photo.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. And then are there any photographers that inspire you right now?
Maya Oren:
I am obsessed with Sam Youkilis on Instagram.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yes. Oh, his stuff's amazing.
Maya Oren:
I cannot. I'm like, can I be you? It really does. Exactly. What I love about the art of photography and video is that it brings you into place so viscerally.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, I was just in Mexico City and I saw his Mexico City, I guess photo, video dump, or whatever you want to call it. And I was like, “Oh, I'll go and I'll try the same thing.” And it just didn't hit.
Maya Oren:
It doesn't hit. Yes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I feel like I was trying to get the angles and the sun, but he's just done such an incredible job of capturing humans simply as they are which is beautiful.
Maya Oren:
He's my number one. There's other people that I admire, but I feel like I'm one of those people who doesn't really have the one icon, but more so that I just... It's actually probably too much, but I'm always on Instagram just saving posts and then I'll look back and see different ways that they've captured. I would mention actually Maya Beano, I'm just saying her handle, so I don't know if that's her actual name, but her work is beautiful and she captures a lot of the northern parts of the world. I think recently she was close to the North Pole in Svalbard and she took these dreamy photos on film. She plays a lot with perspective, so she'll take photos of people laying in the grass in the foreground with wild flowers, and then you just see the mountains in the background and it's just such a cool, very dreamscape vibe.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. Are there any people that are shooting food well that you would love or that you're inspired by too?
Maya Oren:
I feel like I'm really inspired by food stylists. There's a lot of food photographers that I like and I do follow their work, but I feel like styling is really where I get excited. And I love Mariana Velásquez, she is such a star.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yes, Colombiana is such a great book.
Maya Oren:
What I really appreciate about that cookbook is that she weaves in the parts of food that I really appreciate and dining, it's about the whole feel. It's about what's on the table, it's about the company, it's about the music, and then she talks about the food. And so that's the way I've always really loved the industry is that feeling of the immersion. Some of my favorite restaurants in D.C. do that very well as well. It's the playlist. And that's what I remember is like, man, they were playing that amazing playlist of 2000s RnB, and I was also eating khachapuri and had a glass of natural wine and it was killer.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And I think that's something that we're seeing a lot more of now in the food world. I think people are really tapping into emotion. I think it's one thing to be able to serve incredible food, but if you're not offering an ambiance and an experience, then I think it's hard to really appreciate the essence. And I think people like Mariana do that really well in the way she shares her heritage, but also the way that she wants to tell her story through food and through styling. So that's really exciting. We're big manifestors on the podcast, so I know you've worked with some incredible brands, but are there any dream partnerships or projects you'd love to work on or you'd love to have reach out to you?
Maya Oren:
My dream always has been, and it's not a brand, but it's more so a feeling is to be this consultant that just does creative direction and curation for boutique hotels and concept restaurants and comes in and just creates the programming and that feeling and that ambiance. I just envisioned myself traveling to Morocco and going through the market and finding all these cool fabrics and being like, “Okay, cool. This is what the couches are going to be.” And just bringing in that whole feel of a space and immersing people into that. That's what I found is really something I love to do.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You worked on two of, I would say, the best Cherry Bombe covers I've ever seen. So Sana Javeri Kadri of Diaspora Co for the entrepreneur issue and then Paola Velez for the Bakers Against Racism issue.
Maya Oren:
Yes. The Paola issue was very interesting because it was in the middle of the pandemic and we were shooting actually at a restaurant that I've worked with for many years, Maydan, which I highly recommend going to if you're in D.C., and Paola was their executive pastry chef at the time, and we all showed up in our masks and set up her wardrobe downstairs and then shot it upstairs where there's just a glimmer more light. But if you haven't been to the restaurant, Maydan is basically a cave. There's no natural light. There's a couple of windows, but they're covered in stained-glass. And the whole feel of Maydan is that you're coming to a town square in the Middle East and there's a big fire in the middle, and that's where the food is being cooked. So we set up upstairs and Jennifer Livingston is amazing, and she set up the lighting properly and it looked awesome.
And yeah, I got to style her look and it was really, really fun. And Sana's cover was such a blast. That was in Brooklyn, and we wanted to do a sari look, and she was very passionate about the sari. It was her way to really show her culture and give homage to that. And we ended up calling her auntie because we couldn't get it perfectly right. And if you haven't worn sari, it's all about the pleating and it's really important to get the pleats perfect. I've never wrapped a sari before. My mom's worn them to weddings because we're West Indians, so it happened and we got it finally and it looked beautiful on the cover. I feel like that was the ticket. That was the look.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. That's so exciting. So something that's both a blessing and a curse of creative endeavors is that it's not a traditional path. There's no application form. In your experience of partnering with such amazing brands and working on such amazing projects, how have you gone about attaining these jobs and these roles?
Maya Oren:
I think it's a process and I think it's about being really determined. I am no stranger or fearful of cold emailing, and that's always my biggest piece of advice to anyone that asks me is just to find the people that you admire and write them. Back when I started, it was the early 2010s. I was emailing everyone, I emailed Kerry [Diamond] at Cherry Bombe and I was like, “Hey, I love the magazine. It's in Madewell and I work here. What's this all about?” And those emails have always led me to new opportunities, and I think that the more that you insert yourself and the more that you stay the course of what you're passionate about, always keep that North Star in mind. You'll get to have those opportunities. And I also really live my life by knowing that what's meant for you won't pass you by. So you just have to keep the course and just feel secure in knowing that what's right for you will make itself apparent and you'll get to have those opportunities, just keep that vision.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
But that doesn't come with a little bit of effort. It's one thing to show up, but I'm curious how you continue to show up both in your creative spirit but also in the work that you're doing for these particular brands.
Maya Oren:
It's physically showing up, it's emotionally showing up, it's mentally showing up. It's all of those things together. And when someone can see that you're really engaged and really passionate, they're going to continue to want to engage with you and want to be a part of that journey. And so I'm always asking who someone might be able to connect me to. I'm always passing out, back in the day, my business card, now it's just giving my Instagram handle. But it's just a way to always stay curious as well, and figuring out what the next step might be by asking those questions of people. And you never know who someone is connected to. Case in point, I love Susan Alexandra, the designer. Her stuff is fantastic. And I went to her store yesterday and I tried on a headband and one of my very good friends, she wrote me on Instagram and said, “Oh my gosh, I'm friends with her.” And I'm like, “No way.” And obviously I'm going to try to pursue that and see if something can happen from that.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's such great energy to carry us into talking about your full-time job.
Maya Oren:
Yes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
So you're currently the brand experience manager at The Line Hotels specifically in D.C. Can you tell us a little bit of what the role encompasses?
Maya Oren:
Yeah, so it's definitely a new part of the industry. I think before it was pretty much a part of marketing, it still is. Some of the more lifestyle brands will hire someone specifically to do this role. And what I'm in charge of at The Line in D.C. is everything that the guest experiences. So this is from the amenity they get when they check in, the temperature of the room, the music in the lobby, the furniture they're sitting on, and then also the programming that they're experiencing. That all is kind of under my jurisdiction. And so it's a really, really wide role. It takes basically all of my life, but it's really fun and exciting to put my feet in their shoes and think if I was traveling here, what would I want to see and what would I want to experience? And it's a good exercise also of really showing a brand in its physical form, which is something I've always been very passionate about with the video and photo is showing that brand experience. And so this is just that next step into it where it's really in the physical realm.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, I also think it's a perfect role for you. I feel like you're a seasoned traveler, you’re a third culture kid, what it means to travel for different circumstances, whether it's for family, whether it's for research, whether it's just for vacation. I'm really curious how you bring a lot of your life experiences into the standards that you set for guests.
Maya Oren:
Oh, yeah. Much to my team's surprise I feel like, but I'm someone who always pulls from my experiences and brings that into how I do everything. I think that's really the sign of a good brand or a good experience is having that personal touch. And so one of the programs I did actually in the summer was Soca dance classes. And we wanted to do something that was exercise related. And of course I could do yoga, which I did do, or I could do a pilates class, but I thought that Soca would be very special for D.C. because there's a really robust Caribbean culture and population in D.C. and it just represented, I feel like the city in a way that made sense to me.
And as someone who's lived there for six years, not just your run-of-the-mill, because there's kind of two sides to D.C., there's the suits and the monuments and the marble and all of that, and then there's this other kind of counterculture chocolate city, all of the different diversities, this massive, robust Ethiopian culture. And so when I'm pulling my programming, I'm actually trying to pull from more of that true culture of D.C. so that our guests can be in touch with a side that maybe they wouldn't have been able to see if they stayed at a Marriott or the Hilton or something.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
When it comes to food as it intersects with hospitality at The Line, how does that look like for guests?
Maya Oren:
Lifestyle brands. Their whole thing is really bringing in a lot of different experiences. Perhaps it's a shop or it's a restaurant or a cafe. We have a restaurant in-house, we also have a cafe in-house. But I think the part that's more interesting to me is the amenity. I always try to find interesting ways to tie that in. One of my favorite examples of that was Jeni [Britton Bauer] from Jeni's Ice Cream stayed with us at The Line a couple of weeks ago. It was so cool. We ended up running into each other. I was grabbing my morning coffee and I saw her.
She was staying with a friend who lives in Berlin but is of Iranian descent. And I immediately was like, okay, I need to get them pastries from Shabbat, which is an Azerbaijan bakery. I just got them a variety of all these beautiful pastries. I go there very, very often and put it in the room. And it was just this moment to touch not only the culture of D.C. and AdMo [Adams Morgan neighborhood] where our hotel is located, but also to connect with the guest and what their experience is and their heritage. Maybe that would just be an exciting moment for them.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
So in any of the programs that you've done at The Line Hotel, were there any that had food play a big role?
Maya Oren:
Yes. So there's actually two. One of them was with a local gelato company called Dolcezza, who actually I think are national now and in most whole foods across the country. So check them out. And so what we did is we grabbed the last of the strawberries for the season and we had the chef ember-roast them over an open fire, and then we dredged them in honey. So then our local gelato company, they're incredible. We basically formulated a gelato using the last of the summer strawberries and literally called it that.
And this was during the early fall, so it was kind of a fun treat to be able to have this strawberry flavor as we're about to go into the holiday season. So that was really cool. And the other one was natural dying handkerchiefs. So what we did is we worked with a local company, Blue Light Junction, their collective of artists that are kind of exploring the history of natural dye. And so they grew a plot of land on our rooftop with indigo and marigold and all of these dye producing products. And then we took food scraps from the kitchen and I invited staff up to dye these handkerchiefs and that became part of the uniform. And sometimes I'll drop them off as a little bit of an amenity. So Jeni actually has one now.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow. Jeni's got all the goods. So what normally goes into an amenity at The Line Hotel?
Maya Oren:
So they're all different. It's very unique. I think generally we will do some sort of food and a drink, but if I know you personally or I've found that you're going to stay with us, I will research you and go deep into the Instagram or wherever you are online and then use that to inform what I'm putting in your room and hope that it delights you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, that's amazing. Well, I can't wait to stay at The Line. I wonder what you're going to put in my little amenity. When you think of this role in the grand scheme of hotel operations in your, I guess few years working here, how are you hoping to see it change the way that people feel about hotels and feel about staying in them? Because I feel like for the last few years there's been the debate between hotels and Airbnbs and people are slowly inching their way towards hotels because again, of the whole experience, the ease of hospitality, just like the brand that you're getting.
Maya Oren:
I'm seeing a lot of new brands popping up that are basically exactly straddling those two worlds of the Airbnb experience where you could stay in more of a group home with that lifestyle brand boutique hotel you're getting catered to type of energy. I think we are moving back to that because people want to be catered to when they travel. And the thing that's so beautiful about a brand that has the brand experience in it is that you do get to have that choose your own adventure. You can decide where you're going to eat, but it's all kind of housed within this one place. So it feels very safe, feels very cozy, and you also can identify yourself within that brand. And so you get to choose which boutique hotel you're staying at and what experience you want on that trip.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
How are you hoping to see The Line grow in relation to other hotel brands or boutique brands?
Maya Oren:
So The Line is unique because our model is to move into areas that maybe aren't the chosen places for hotels normally. There are these neighborhoods that you just don't really travel to generally if you're staying somewhere. And so I think that's actually a very unique moment for them. And so I think that it would be great if they just continue to set their feet into places that are a little bit more unexpected, those second tier or third tier cities. And I think also just continuing to really center the brand experience, which we do really well, and having the operations team kind of move with that.
If you're not in the industry, that's a very big challenge is aligning the operations with the brand, and especially post COVID because there was this moment where operations is what you have to do, that's what we have to do to survive. And the brand experience fizzled out and it wasn't as much of a focus for so many years. And so now that we're kind of incorporating that back in, it's really finding this marriage between the two and understanding how they speak to each other and how that then translates to the guest.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Have there been any memorable stories or experiences you've had since you've been working at The Line?
Maya Oren:
So one of my favorite experiences was Bob's Dance Shop. They are a flash mob and they call themselves The Flash Bob.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's cute. I love that.
Maya Oren:
So there are these four guys, they live, I think between San Francisco and L.A. between the four of them. And they are just fabulous. They are amazing people. They are just such literally a bolt of sunshine. And I learned that they were traveling with Sophie Tucker to do their tour, and I was like, you guys have to stay at The Line and we have to do a Flash Bob. We surprised diners in the restaurant and I think about 15 of us, and we practiced in this special secret location and learned this Flash Bob dance. And then we interrupted the diners at 7:00 p.m. and did this dance in the lobby and it was so funny.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Okay. People were like, “Yay, dinner with a show.” That's awesome. That's really cool.
Maya Oren:
Yeah.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Well, Maya, I feel like you do so much and do it at such an incredible bar, but I think I was first introduced to you by your article in Cherry Bombe. I think you're such an incredible writer. So I want to talk a lot about how writing has also been another medium for you to express creativity. So you have a Substack newsletter called On Holiday. I binge read it over the weekend. Fascinating. Probably cried a few times. But what inspired you to start writing?
Maya Oren:
Yeah, writing I feel like was actually my first love. It was the diaries. When I was six, I had a diary entry that my sister would read to me, recite to me, and make fun of me for because it was super dramatic and I talked about my chest hurting and breaking my watch, and it was the worst day of my life, but I always just had this feeling like I needed to tell my story and tell the stories around me. And so On Holiday was birthed during the pandemic. It actually started out as a blog called Ronnie. And the idea is just how to live more of an intentional and a joyful life. I think that's my journey in life is finding out how I can just approach the days with more joy, especially in a time where it was really hard with the pandemic, especially for people in our industry just crushed.
I remember when we went into the lockdown and I was like, “What's going to happen to my business? What's going to happen to all of the industry that I work with and love so dearly?” And it was a really crazy, existential moment. And so writing this newsletter has really just been a source of finding those stories and telling those stories and discovering ritual and discovering traditions that can really bring a lot of intention into my life. The other really interesting part of it is with On Holiday in particular, and my goal with it is being this first-generation American. My parents moved here, my dad more so than my mom, but they really identify with being American and so they've adopted this culture that's kind of like a non-culture.
And I've found a lot of kind of frustration in that because I am such a lover of tradition and of ritual. And so in my adult years it's been cobbling together all of these different traditions that make me feel joy. And it's having the croissant with a cup of coffee to stay at a cafe and really enjoying that moment and not rushing through the day or having a Turkish coffee or drinking the saffron tea and lighting Shabbat candles. It's just all about those rituals and bringing that richness into my life. And by doing that, I hope to inspire others to do the same.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Why do you think it's super important for us to center our lives around ritual?
Maya Oren:
I think that as a society, when you move away from ritual and from tradition, you almost lose a piece of yourself and we lose a piece of humanity. And so it's really important for me, and that's something that I love to do when I travel, is really finding those little quiet moments that make up a society. And in Columbia, my favorite moment was when we were going to salsa dance classes and everyone was going salsa dancing. That was just what you did on a Sunday. But as we were driving there, I saw people sitting on their front patios just hanging out. They were drinking like a cup of juice or whatever and hanging out with their neighbors or their family. And in Trinidad, it's the same. It's relaxing. You're just relaxing. And we don't do that here as often. So yeah, I think it's finding that piece, retrieving that piece of you that's a little bit more centered and quiet and questioning it and investigating it.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You called yourself ‘culinary adjacent' earlier, but I think what I really enjoyed about your writing was there were always small elements of food. You talked about eating croissants in Paris or you talked about the tea-leaf experience that you had or even talked about experiencing coffee or how you've found a lot of stuff in your family through food. I'm curious how food has played a role in developing or enhancing your relationship to writing.
Maya Oren:
Food it's very sensual and it's very visceral, and I think that it's a really beautiful place to write from. And so I think that's why there's always that anchor of food because it's just something that's very beautiful to describe and it just dictates the story for me. This is so random, but my first thing that I did here was I went to this new location called The Red Pavilion that's owned by two women of Asian descent, one of which is a Chinese herbal medicine healer. And that's how I found them because I'm also very obsessed with herbal medicine. And I ended up going to a show of this Shamonic healer who's Siberian, her name's Snow Raven, and she did this sound journey with us. And I started the night with a CBD [cannabidiol] cocktail. It was a mocktail actually.
And it just kind of centered me into the experience. And then at the end of the night, we were all humming together and we did this beautiful communal prayer where we were all humming, and then she was singing on top of it with her kind of ancient prayer. It was just such a transformative experience, but it was all of those layers together because there was that cocktail moment and then it just moved into this sound journey. So there's always those connections that I really love bringing together into the moment.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's really beautiful. And I want to talk a little bit more about your Cherry Bombe article. I feel like writing in Cherry Bombe is such a big step in any culinary adjacent or food person's life. What did you write about, if you want to tell our audience?
Maya Oren:
Yeah, I saw the pitch submission for the cookbook issue, and it just immediately came to me that I needed to write about Naparima girls. So Naparima Girls Cookbook is basically the most famous cookbook out of Trinidad and Tobago. It was created by a school, the Naparima Girl School, I think it was originally just brought together as a way to fundraise for the school and bring more money to them. And they sold so many copies and now I think they're on, gosh, I don't even know what edition they're on, but they have a ton of editions. And the book actually goes for a lot of money now, especially the first edition, which I luckily have. It was my mother's and I think she got it from my grandmother. And it's all tattered. It's pink. I love it because it's just all illustrations. There's no photos, and there's all these old ads from Trinidad as well in there.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's so cute.
Maya Oren:
What's really cool about it, this specific edition, and I have two is one that my aunt got me a little bit later on, but this one that I go to a lot has all of these recipes that my mom used to cook from as we were growing up. They're all the pages are dogeared and posted it up and she has her notes in there from my grandmother. A lot of the recipes are, I think within each family sort of adapted and the joke in our family is the macaroni pie. Who makes the best macaroni pie between my mom's sisters? And they all have their own little spin on what they add to the recipe to make it theirs. Yeah, it's just been really fun and cooking through that once in a while is really great and just brings me a lot of peace and comfort.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
If you want to check out Maya's story, you can find it in issue 17 of the Cherry Bombe magazine. Do you have any big plans for On Holiday other than just writing?
Maya Oren:
Yes, definitely. And it's funny that you asked because yesterday I was sitting in Veniero's, which I hadn't been to since 2014.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Great spot.
Maya Oren:
So many memories there. And my best friend was with me and we had just done the little route through Orchard Street and we ended up in this no name, it probably had a name, but it wasn't anywhere to be seen, little shop that was all a collection of Asian and Chinese goods, and they had all of these rabbit motifs because we're in the year of the rabbit. And it was just really fun to kind of look through all of these pieces. And we walked over to Veniero's and my best friend looked at me and he said, “You need to start a shop.” And it's been something that I've always wanted to do of ritual items and probably speaking to my culture of Jewish heritage as well as my Caribbean culture, as well as taking notes from cultures around the world.
And so I think my big hope for on holidays to make it a bit more tangible at some point, I would love to do an event series. I think it would be very cool to gather people and show them ways of dining that are different or experiencing life in different ways. I think it would be great to do a detox of digital for a day, and I did do that one time. I had a digital free dance party.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's beautiful.
Maya Oren:
Yeah, I think something that has always been inspiring to me is the way that we all dine around the world. And so Supra has been really inspiring to me. I got to experience that in the Republic of Georgia. And so just bringing that to my audience off the pages, which I've written about a lot of these experiences and having people actually practice what we're preaching would be really special.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And how have you connected with your audience through your writing?
Maya Oren:
I feel like a lot of times it's just people coming up to me and saying that they read an article and then we just get into a conversation about that article. I always love those conversations because it allows us to really elaborate on how they're bringing that ritual into their lives. And sometimes we actually even go for a coffee to stay, and that's really special.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's awesome. It's a nice way to slow down. Well, Maya, we're just about wrapping up, but we have a really awesome tradition here at The Future Of Food Is You podcast. We call it The Future Flash Five. Are you ready?
Maya Oren:
Yes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Okay, awesome. The future of food styling?
Maya Oren:
Creative, loose, local.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of creative direction?
Maya Oren:
Personal, relatable.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of food writing?
Maya Oren:
Anecdotal and immersive.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of hospitality?
Maya Oren:
This one's a loaded one for me, I think because I'm just a little bit too close to it. But I think the future of hospitality is about lifestyle and it's about layers.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of food travel?
Maya Oren:
Ask a local and finding the gems that you find along the way.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I love that. Maya, thank you so much for this conversation.
Maya Oren:
It was such a joy.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I've learned so much. If we want to keep supporting you, we're at the best places to find you.
Maya Oren:
I feel like the source of all of it is Mojalvo, my Instagram, and from there you can just go to my Linktree and you'll find everything you need to see.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Amazing. Thanks, Maya.
Maya Oren:
Thank you so much.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You've reached the mailbox of The Future Of Food Is You podcast. Please leave a message after the beep.
Maya Oren:
Maya, you dear are magic. I know you know this intimately by now. I hope that you are dancing and singing and using your voice to share your stories. I hope that you're still writing and making art. I hope that you're finding ways to be with the earth daily and continuing to build rooted communities all around you. I hope that you still center joy and celebration in your life because life is nothing without celebration. I hope that you have that peaceful space that you've envisioned filled with sunlight and books and flowers, and a loving family that nurtures you deeply. You have so many dreams and aspirations, and I suspect that by now that it always works out even better than you could imagine. And time is always on your side. So if you've published the book, created that space, or finally launched the lifestyle brand, know that no matter what, you are magic. Keep breathing deep girl. Keep connecting and trusting your inner knowing and continue to let her guide you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's it for today's show. Do you know someone who you think is the Future of Food? Tell us about them. Nominate them at the link in our show notes, or leave us a rating and a review and tell me about them in the review. I can't wait to read more about them. Thanks to Kerrygold for sponsoring the show. Visit kerrygoldusa.com for more. The Future Of Food Is You as a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Thanks to the team at CityVox Studios, executive producers Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, and associate producer Jenna Sadhu. Catch you on the future flip.