From Food Truck To Restaurant and Condiment Line with Poi Dog's Kiki Aranita

Welcome to the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. I'm your host Chris spear. On the show. I have conversations with culinary entrepreneurs and people in the food and beverage industry who took a different route. Their caterers research chefs personal chefs cookbook authors, food truckers, farmers, cottage bakers and all sorts of culinary renegades. I myself fall into the personal chef category as I started my own personal chef business perfect little bites 11 years ago. And while I started working in kitchens in the early 90s I've literally never worked in a restaurant. This week. My guest is Philadelphia chef Kiki Aranita. You might know her from her poi dog food truck and subsequent restaurant of the same name. Unfortunately, due to the COVID pandemic, she had to shut down her restaurant. But poi dog has returned in the form of a line of bottled condiments including guava katsu sauce and chili pepper water. We talked about the evolution of our business deciding to close the restaurant and what it was like to start a consumer packaged goods product line. Key was raised in both Hong Kong and Hawaii, so I really want to talk to her about her food experiences growing up, and why she chose to cook professionally. She also does a lot of food writing and recipe development for commercial brands. I asked her for some of her tips for those looking to start working with brands. And we also talked about her hobby of working with yarn, which has evolved from making dog sweaters to pieces that represent packaged food goods such as Pocky and talkies. Wow, that's a mouthful. And now there's an exhibition of that work that can currently be found in the Philadelphia International Airport until June of 2022. I hope you enjoy this episode, and if you love it, please share it. Let everyone know about the podcast. The show will be coming up right afterward from this week's sponsor. The COVID pandemic has clearly redefined the world of dining. Despite over 110,000 restaurants closing around the country, people still want the ambience and social connectivity that is so critical to the dining experience. Over the past 27 years, the world of the personal chef has grown in importance to fulfill those dining needs. While the pandemic certainly upended the restaurant experience, it provided an avenue for personal chefs to close that dining gap. Central to all of that is the United States personal chef Association, representing nearly 1000 chefs around the US and Canada and even Italy. US PCA provides a strategic backbone for those chefs that includes liability insurance, training, communications, certification, and more. One of the big upcoming events for us PCA is their annual conference scheduled July 7 to 10th at the Hyatt Regency in Sarasota, Florida. Featuring a host of speakers and classes. The conference is a way for chefs to hone their skills and network with like minded business people. For those who supply the industry it's a chance to reach not just the decision makers but the actual buyers of products. This will be their first time back following the COVID lockdowns and chefs are anxious to connect. For more info about the US PCA, how to join and how to attend our conference. Go to spca.com. As always, all the info will be linked up in the show notes. And now on with the show. Thanks so much and have a great day. Hey, Kiki, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me.

I'm so glad we could catch up. I can't wait to share your story with everyone. If it wasn't for COVID I would have made it up to Philly by now. I've my my shows on the verge of becoming the Philly Chefs Without Restaurants show at this point, I think like the 12th chef from Philly or so that I've had on so how long have you been in Philly?

About 10 years, which is a long time. It's like the longest. It was much longer than I expected to spend here but I like it here. Well,

I guess how did you end up in Philly? Let's kind of start there. And then we can kind of work backwards.

Yeah, so I lived in New York, I went to NYU, and then I went to grad school in New York. And then I was switching grad programs, like I wanted to change my field of study. Um, I was previously in comparative literature, with Renaissance Italian literature, my Italian stinks. So I knew that I wouldn't be able to get very far in graduate school with my crappy Italian. However, my reading and writing of my reading and writing comprehension of Italian is not terrible. But I also know knew that I wanted to get more into ancient stuff. So I switched PhD programs to one here, right outside of Philly, at Bryn Mawr College, and it was in classics.

Well, so not a food background,

not food background at all. I just happen to come from two cultures where that are very, very rich, with different food traditions that are extremely international have have been so for many generations, from Hawaii, and from Hong Kong. So I was raised very much by people who are absolutely completely obsessed with food.

Where were you raised? Were you raised in Hawaii, in Hawaii and Hong Kong? Oh,

yes, we're back and forth. I'm growing up.

Did you love that? Like, what was your childhood? Like? Did you enjoy living there? I mean, those seem like places that are really exciting. I've never been to either.

I mean, the places are really wonderful. Like, I'm really proud to be from each place in both places. Um, but I mean, it was still my childhood filled with like, you know, childhood traumas, and being a kid and trying to figure things out. So it was I mean, I don't think it was too extraordinary a childhood, it was just flung across the world in two different places.

You mentioned both places having rich I guess, like food, cultures, food heritage. Did you have a love of food? When you were a kid growing up? Like, was your family really into food? What are your fond memories of your childhood as it relates to food, I guess,

I'm both sides of the family are obsessed with eating out. I don't necessarily come from a family of cooks, in fact, like, they're very, very surprised that I have ever cooked for people is there still, both sides are still very confused by this path that I found myself down. On the Hawaii side, a lot of my family members are hunters and fishermen. So they like to procure food, and they know the basics of like, you know, cleaning a fish and grilling it. But they're really, really passionate about the businesses that provide the best food that we love, like whether it's the Chinese food that we bring to like every single potluck or poker, or plate lunches, like, in Hawaii, they're very, very passionate about the places that my family has been going to for generations. Like, I still go to same plate lunch places that my grandparents like went to probably when they were like, around my age. And so we've had generations of frequenting the same businesses, that my grandfather was so devoted to certain cafes and restaurants, that he would he he painted on, he was like, he was in the army, and he worked at Pearl Harbor for a long time. So most of my family's actually military on that side. But they're all very, very artistic and talented people. And my grandfather's choice of art was oil painting. So he would give his favorite restaurants and cafes, his oil paintings of old Hawaii. So if you walk into some places in Hawaii, and you'll see artwork on the wall that my grandfather painted, so I'm yeah, he was very, very supportive of, of small businesses and neighborhood establishments. On the Hong Kong side, they're very much Gore means they are people who raised me to appreciate Chinese banquets, many hours long, many many courses long. And I think it was a pretty typical Chinese upbringing in terms of food and that like you know, we eat abalone at the same time is like discovering chicken and just having like a very, very wide palette from very early on, and I don't think I really appreciated it until I moved to the US like you until I moved to like the mainland us.

I don't know much about Hawaiian food. What are some of the dishes the UAE growing up like you talking about going to these same places? What are some of the dishes that you you get when you go there?

Kula pig Lau which is like the most perfect packet of food that's cooked wrapped in tea leaves ti that's a plant I think in English it's like the Cordyline here in the in the on the mainland is very ornamental, but in Hawaii, we use it to grow a lot of different kinds of foods. Lao is often stuffed with pork, sometimes with a little chocolate butterfish ate a lot of Pokagon Growing up a lot of Japanese food, a lot of Okinawan food stuffs seasoned with soy sauce and sugar, a lot of rice, soy lomi lomi salmon, which is now considered to be an ethnic Hawaiian food that is comprised entirely of introduced ingredients. And I can go on and on and on about Hawaii's food culture. It's multifaceted. And the result of many different groups moving to Hawaii to work on its sugarcane plantations and cooking together marrying together, marrying each other and making plate lunches.

So is it still kind of evolving? Or is it kind of settled in at this point to the cuisine that it is?

Oh, my gosh, yeah, like so Hawaii, like, I feel like it's the food scene has evolved more than any other one that I have had intimate knowledge of. Like when I was growing up there, like we didn't have a lot of good Vietnamese food. And now there's, there's lots of it, lots of great Thai food. And you're immigrants to Hawaii. So there's been a really huge Filipino immigration to Hawaii. There was like initial Filipino and immigration like 100 years 150 years ago. And so and then like a much newer wave that brought a lot of more interesting and better Filipino food than I ever grew up with. Like when I was a kid, like you could get pumps it and you could get Chicken Adobo, and maybe dinuguan, or electron. And that was about it. And now there's just like, so many more options are so much more Filipino food. And there's also like, a lot more and Polynesian options, like outside of Hawaiian food. But there's something that I find really special about Hawaii is that like, if people from Hawaii decide that something's delicious, they make it their own. Without question. It's a very, very inclusive sort of food mentality. I guess, right now, Mexican video is like, all the rage. Really? Mm hmm.

Now, are they doing that pretty like traditional as we would think of it? Or do they kind of put their own spins on like, have you seen any interesting, like Hawaiian twist to that?

And yes, I can't remember exactly what they are, offhand. When I go back to Hawaii, I have to eat my favorite foods first. And so during that time, I am like going for the greatest hits of my childhood, I had didn't really get a chance to try anything new. So like, I follow things on Instagram. And typically I go back for like two weeks at a time. And I can start trying the new stuff and the second week of being there. But being only there one week, I didn't have a whole lot of opportunities, especially like Christmas last closed.

I think that's how we all are when we travel. I mean, the same, like I grew up in New England, and I don't get there that often. And we were up there this summer. And as much as I wanted to try all these new places. Like I just wanted to go to like, my favorite pizza place like pizza isn't anything inventive. But it's like, this is my favorite place. And I don't like nobody makes it like that. So we hit up all those places that I went to growing up. How did you get into cooking? Let's kind of I would love to hear about that bring us up to speed. So you didn't go to school for cooking. You eventually ended up having a restaurant, a food truck and a food business. So connect those dots for me.

Yeah, all of this stuff. Everything that point on became, it grew slowly and incrementally. I left grad school I was pretty fed up. So 2008 financial crisis, obviously affected many, many people trickle down effect to lead to like budget cuts in humanities departments, in colleges, which of course affected me because I was in the humanities department in the College. So I knew that my job prospects were dwindling. And I spent two years at Bryn Mawr that were the my was was good to me. And I am did some like really extraordinary things like in those two years there, such as spend, like three months in Greece, at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens out of visiting digs, and just like going all over Greece. So that felt like the best thing that I was going to do in academia, like it felt like I had reached the pinnacle of what I hope to achieve. And I had achieved some other things as well that like I was very proud of like publishing an academic article that I'm still extremely proud of like, I feel like it was a good chunk of my life's work. But I accomplished these things. And I thought that was enough for that field. And I was really homesick I missed wine, food, Miss toys, local food, and happened to be working in a restaurant and the card mache of that restaurant, happened to have a food truck that he happened to be selling. And I bought it and it was like hoist who it is. It's not that difficult to make if you're just sticking to like Spam was rubies, and kalua pig. And like, I'd been making that stuff to like scratch that itch of homesickness for a while. So it was just like a matter of like scaling up and learning how to make that for a lot more people. And then opening the restaurant, adding more dishes, getting better at making other food and managing staff. And it was like one step at a time. It wasn't like we ever took like huge leaps. So yeah, no, I make sauces.

So you started with the food truck before you had the restaurant, right?

Yeah, the food truck for four and a half years, then opened a restaurant, kept the food truck, mostly do weddings catering on like really big events. Like when Forbes like 30 under 30 was in Philly. We catered for them. Stuff that like 5000 people show up to? That's no

joke like, Yeah, so like, without having that real culinary background? Like, was it a quick fit for you? Or was there like a transition time of like, oh, wow, this is a lot like cooking for that many people? Like, how did you find that going from not really coming from a background of like super high volume cooking to now cooking for, say 5000 people.

I mean, it definitely wasn't easy it like it was physically extremely demanding on. And my health suffered a lot for it. And it's not something it's not like time and place in my life that I ever want to go back to like it was really what I mean, what happened was, people would give us these jobs. And then we would just rise to the occasion and learn as we go. And the jobs just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It was really tough. We figured it out. I made a lot of lists I make I'm a very much a spreadsheet. Person. Now I'm very much a planner. But I'm very glad that I don't have to plan on the food for 5000 people anymore. I don't recommend it. It takes a certain personality and certain amount of energy. And I don't want to give anymore.

So why did you decide to start a restaurant? Like if the food truck was already a lot there? What were you trying to accomplish? By opening a restaurant? Were you going to be doing different dishes or just to have a different vibe?

Oh, yes. So start a restaurant because if you have a food truck, and you're mostly catering, everybody wants to get married on a Saturday in June. So the restaurant allowed us to have like a real staff. So the food truck was really tiny, it was four by eight feet on the outside, which meant it was like two by three feet on the inside. So we only ever had like one employee at a time. And with the restaurant like the restaurant could be pumping out food, we could be running the truck, there was just like a lot more opportunity for growth.

Now, if you had to choose Did you did you enjoy one more than the other. I know it might be like picking a favorite child.

I like them for different reasons. When I was one working the food truck, I liked to be the only person in the food truck. Because it was an entire kitchen that like I could reach like an octopus. I know nobody can see me right now. But I'm like waving my arms like an octopus. I could like even had like the grill within reach the fire within reach. Like it challenges every single part of your body. And to be able to do that and like push food out. Like it just it feels really, really good. And when people come to the food truck, everybody's happy. Like, nobody ever complains when they're getting food from a food truck. Maybe on very, very like rare occasions. It gives the person's like Grumpy to begin with, they're going to be grumpy when they get food from a food truck. But like nobody, nobody really tells you that it's that like the customers that food trucks are going to be really really nice the customers at restaurants. There's like a learning curve for the customers to get to know you and manage their expectations with what you're serving, especially if it's an unfamiliar cuisine to them. I'm very happy to report that with the restaurant and we did end up winning a lot of customers over. But with the food truck like you don't have to win any anybody over. They're just like so delighted, like with with the fact that you exist. And they have stumbled upon you and they're getting food from you even though they waited in line for three hours. I've worked with restaurants, it's like people are very unwilling to wait at restaurants. But with food trucks for whatever reason, they're happy to get in line and like wait there for two hours. I'm not I don't understand that like I because I see both sides of it. Like I would not go and wait at a food truck for two hours. I don't care what they're serving. The people just a lot more impatient when they walk into a restaurant. And they have just they have different expectations. They have more things to think about. They have tables to sit down at that have to be your comfy and clean and managed and a food truck. You know they're standing as they're eating and there's nothing to complain about. With a restaurant. The thing I miss most is working alongside and managing a very, very competent and kind staff. That of course is not something that I did at the future. because we did not have much of a team when it came to running the food truck, it was just it was at most three people on the truck. There, even though it was really, really tough to sum up, I missed the physicality of cooking on the food truck. And I missed the camaraderie of working in the restaurant.

Were you the only one doing this kind of food in the area?

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I had partner and for dog, we had already closed everything, and separated and got our our different ways. Before I started the sauce company. Like we had said goodbye to the making of the food on the sauces came significantly later.

I guess we can jump into that your restaurant closed now was that solely due to COVID?

Yeah, because, um, we were a restaurant that made all of our money, our business rather, that made all of our money on catering on the restaurant itself broke even. And it broke even by budge being the seats at lunch line out the door at lunch, constant pen catering for the businesses around us, like the law firms and banks, and so on and so forth. So we couldn't afford to lose money on the restaurant, and we couldn't afford to not do catering, like Catering is the only money that we made, really. And in March, all the events were canceled. So I handed back 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of dollars of deposits that we had taken through basically 2021. And we knew then that things were dire. And when rest when events weren't reinstated or rescheduled, we knew pretty soon that we thought it was not financially viable. So I'm all about like, you know, promoting my cultures and cooking and sharing my food with everybody. And I'm also like, very practical, like, I know that a business has to be financially viable to exist. And I knew very, very early on that it was not going to be financially viable for the near future.

Well, the interesting thing, there's, you're talking about how without the catering, it wouldn't be financially viable. But there's so many restaurants out there that don't even really do that much catering. I mean, I think that speaks a lot to the state of the restaurant industry. Like, how many people are out there running restaurants that just, it's not a good financial decision? And when do you know to throw in the towel, even without a pandemic? Right?

Yeah, I mean, I can imagine, like, if you're stuck to a certain concept that doesn't allow for catering, I can definitely see that. I mean, if you serve alcohol, and you're making money on alcohol, then like, why bother? And why bother, like sending people to like deliver, like, delivery is a whole nother bag of worms. But um, yeah, I mean, so for some places, catering is not the answer. And for some it is and for us, like it was built into our business model. And it was, it was really, really necessary and lucrative for us. And without that, we could not exist.

And I know I guess the word of the past two years was pivot but that is what you seemingly did. So now you have a line of poi dog condiments. You When did you start that? When did you know that you were gonna go and start co packing a line of products.

Um, so we closed the restaurant in July. And I'm the first few batches I made myself and then found a co found two co packers eventually. And now I'm never going back like it's so such a dream. Working with these two co manufacturers, I hope to develop more products down the line working on it. And I really wish I had started the sauces when I had the restaurant because I thought it was pretty good at finding alternate streams of income, such as with catering and merch and typical things. But the sauces would have been amazing. If I had had a staff, it would just have been so much more efficient. And with people like constantly coming in the door and buying whatever the hell we had, because it was good. I really I really wish I had started the sauce thing earlier. That is That is my only regret.

Now were these all ones that you were using at the time in the restaurant, or did you tinker with them and kind of redevelop them after the restaurant closed.

So they taste the same, but they're completely different like to create a manufacturing formula for a CPG product is very, very different from coming up with a recipe that you're going to serve to somebody immediately. A recipe that have a four dish or sausage you're going to make immediately like it's not broken down into percentages, you can taste along the way you can tweak things. If you come up with a formula for something that's going to go into a bottle that's shelf stable, it has to be exactly the same all the time with no variance and it has to be sent off to a lab and tested for various things depending on what it is and back in 2013 where the chicken was a chicken katsu with a guava katsu sauce. So a panko breaded chicken breast served with rice macaroni salad And with a homemade sauce. And the sauce was a pretty typical katsu made with was to sauce, chicken broth, soy sauce, and our innovative addition of guava, which to me is perfection. And that was like the sauce, we served on the truck. And every now and then in the restaurant, that was really a truck dish. But the one that goes into the bottle, I work with a for that particular co manufacturer only processes vegan ingredients. So I had to like completely retool the sauce, I had to mimic the flavor of fish sauce of the Western sauce with white miso and mushroom powder. So the so the guava katsu is completely vegan, the original recipe was very much not.

So you say you can't taste the differences. Like it tastes the same or I mean, you can probably taste the difference.

Oh my gosh, no, it's not on. It is spot on. It's I'm still happy with it.

How did you figure that out? Like how much playing did it take to realize like the me so in the mushroom, we're going to be the trick like did you try a bunch of different things. First,

my brain was kind of going down the vegan route. Hawaii has a very, very rich food culture that is very, very pork and fish heavy. So that makes a lot of food I love inaccessible to people who don't eat pork or fish. And I want to make the flavors that I love more accessible. So I was already in like the vegan frame of mind. I'm not vegan, I just like vegetables. And I feel like people should eat more plant based things. One of my closest friends is vegan. So I wanted like, during pandemic, we were doing a lot of like food trades and I wanted to make sure that she could try stuff that I made. My also was the chef and residence for Saqqara, which is a vegan meal kit delivery program that I did for a while as like as a customer, and it was a huge fan of and then they hired me to write some recipes for them. So I was very much like cooking vegan. And this just like fell into that sort of framework.

I love vegan food. And it's nice because it seems like every time like I'm a personal chef and every dinner I do, there's almost always someone who's vegetarian or vegan and just makes it so much easier when everything's kind of like coming from a vegan base. And then you can add meat to those who eat it. But it's so much harder to take it out. I mean, I find so many other condiments that I love. Like I love Mr. Sher sauce and like it's got fish in it and it's not vegan, and the vegan one isn't quite the same.

There is a difference in that from like the original glava katsu. Um, this one really glazes very, very beautifully. Um, it makes a wonderful caramel sort of crust for me, it's, I didn't there's no added sugar to it other than like the lava, which is inherently sugary. But it's just it's so so good when you're using it to barbecue, anything on the grill. So definitely, like try it like brush it over, whatever you're barbecuing. Like, definitely try it that way.

Well, I do love pork, so like brushing some of that on some pork and throwing it out on the grill. I think that's something I'm gonna have to try. Yes. You mentioned chef and residents for the meal kit, but you're also recently chef in residence with Jose Garces, for his new program. How was that experience?

Oh, my God, it was so cool. So I mentioned that I missed the camaraderie of working in a kitchen and seeing people execute dishes really, really well. So I scratched that itch for about two months with Jose Garcia says team, Ethel there, and everybody who works in the kitchen is like at the top of their game. They're so talented, they're so hardworking. And they're so consistent, like there's so good at what they do. And it was just like mind boggling to see them push out that much food. The way that the residences, residencies broke down was they change according to what is on show at the Kimmel center. And mine was especially long and especially busy, because it was concurrent with Hamilton. Um, so it was really, it was really wild, to see that kitchen work and put out my food, like consistently every single time was such a pleasure.

What was the training process like that? I'm interested in these resonance programs, like did you send recipes ahead of time and the kitchen staff were kind of like reading them and training on them? How long did it take to bring them all up to speed on your stuff?

I don't know if the other other chefs and residents are doing it the same way. But so basically, the training process was essentially up to me. Um, so the way that I did things and I think others are doing it differently was I came up with a sort of like a master menu of many dishes, and I found out like what were Like what suppliers they worked with, was feasible for them to bring in and accessible. For example, like Jose Garcia has all the garsons group now, which is separate from Jose gases, and the gases group, they own distrito. So I knew that there was a very, like very high chance that they were bringing in fresh masa, and making tortillas from scratch, and so on and so forth. So I, I built that into my master menu, like I wanted, I wanted to start, and I wanted a really good to start. So I found out who their suppliers were, like what was feasible and, and went from there down that route for the ahi, poquito, Stata, I also wanted to use my sauces on the menu, and the sauces appear on almost every dish. And they also appeared on the bar menu. So that was exceptionally amazing. I did not come up with the cocktails, bar manager, Tom voided. And he did an absolutely like genius job with them. And so like basically, like we shot some ideas around, but not a lot like I had a pretty clear idea of like I wanted what I wanted to serve, it just needed to match up with the guy says groups of buyers and capabilities of the staff and the way the kitchen was laid out. And so we settled on a few. And then I broke those dishes down into very, very, very detailed spreadsheets. Like broke it down so that each batch of luau, for example, was like measured down to the gram for every single ingredient. And then it was like, on the portions were all measured out. Basically, I sent them like extremely, extremely detailed spreadsheets on every single dish and every single part of prep. And then they made it then we then I went in and tasted everything before we open to the public, and made some tweaks. And then we opened and made some more tweaks. And then as we went along, like you know I, I was in there very, very frequently in the beginning, troubleshooting and like Jose Garces himself was also there like making suggestions. Until we were very, very happy with the final result of the dishes. Like the first week like I thought the food was pretty good. But by the third week like it was I thought I was so proud of it, I was so happy with what they were putting out. But yeah, a few changes here and there. And I also supplied them with a lot of stuff in my garden. And sort of like the end of summer stuff. I made guava katsu specifically for them that was using the tomatoes from my garden, brought them shiso leaves and edible flowers, like every week. It was it was a really cool experience.

I think it's such an interesting idea that I don't know, I feel like we're maybe going to see more of these, you know, Dan Barber this past year did this chef and residence program, you've got this? I think it's a good idea. I don't know if it's a trend that will continue. But I hope so I think it's especially like Chefs Without Restaurants. I think it'd be really cool for you know, like, I don't work in a restaurant, but I would go Do you know, a month or so somewhere? I think there's a lot of people who'd like to maybe go try that.

So yeah, like I'm about all about it. Like, I am still really traumatized from closing the restaurant. So I'm like, Yeah, I will take every residence that comes my way. Like that's financially viable. Sign me up, but I will probably not open another restaurant. For the foreseeable future. It's just too hard.

Will you work with a lot of brands also developing recipes, don't you?

Yes, lots. I love a project just wrapped up one. That is not totally out. It's like partially out yet out. Now. On the Norwegian seafood Council, I wrote a bunch of recipes for them did a bunch of videos, I think one video has come out. And I think I did four in total. teaching people how to skin fish and make it into talkie worked with cream cheese brands, a bunch of others.

I know a lot of people in my community want to get into doing that and doing more. Do you have any advice? And also like, Have you had any you don't have to name businesses, but like, Have you had any bad experiences? Because I think you know, these things don't always go the way that you want them to. I think sometimes you enter into partnerships with brands and you think it's gonna be a good fit, and it's not. So I guess the two questions are like, has it always been amazing? And do you have any tips?

Number one tip is start a website and put your recipe work out there. Have a page for whatever press you get. But yeah, have a centralized location with a form that people can fill out and get back to you if they're interested in you developing recipes for them. Just make it really, really, really easy for clients to find you and see what you can do. Like I don't think I'm the best chef out there. I think I have a unique take on things. I'm not half bad as a writer and I have a lot of teaching experience. So yeah, if you need me to like, make a video parsing things down like I can do that for you. But the best thing that I have going For me, I make myself available and I respond to all the emails and all the messages. As soon as an opportunity comes my way, I am going to be very responsive. I haven't had a lot of bad experiences I really haven't like, sometimes it takes people a while to pay, which is annoying. But I also have a bookkeeper who will chase people up on me, I guess that's my other like secret weapon, the fact that I have a bookkeeper. And like my recipe development work goes into the same place as my, like my sauce business. So um, I typically don't have to, like chase people up for invoices, because she will do it. And I know that's a big headache when it comes to people who work on a project basis or, or freelance. So yeah, I highly recommend getting a bookkeeper who will chase up invoices for you, it will take a lot of stress out of your life.

Well, that's good advice. I mean, it's it's just interesting. I mean, there's so many more opportunities for chefs now, which I think is is wonderful, right? Like, you don't just have to work in a restaurant to make money working in the food world. So navigating, navigating, this has been, I don't wanna say challenging, but just different. I think a lot of us who came up through the culinary industry who didn't necessarily have like a business background, or marketing or know how to do this, or write contracts, kind of figuring out as we go. And then I wanted to touch on this crocheting project of yours, which I mean, I don't know if I should call it a project or hobby or what but um, you've been doing some really cool stuff with crochet. And when did that start?

Oh, pandemic, I was really bored. Yeah, locked out

super bored. Have you ever done it before.

So I only learned how to crochet a couple years ago. Not that long before pandemic, my best friend Mel taught me. And I made a lot of dog sweaters. Like for a while I was the girl who made all the chef's dogs, sweaters, like I've made sweaters for like half the chefs in Philly. For the dogs, the ones who have dogs, I don't crochet like a normal person, like I can't read a pattern. I don't know a whole bunch of different fancies dishes, like I make everything up along the way. And so when I crocheted for chefs, dogs, I would need to have like the dog in front of me, like I need to touch the dog pet the dog, sometimes maybe even like stitch around the dog. Because that's just like how my brain works, um, in order to make things 3d. But you can't really do that when you aren't seeing your friends or their dogs. So I got super bored. And one day I was just like, I was like looking at an object. And I was like, I wonder if I can make this a yarn. And then I just never stopped.

And now it's a display in the Philadelphia Airport.

Yes, it is on exhibition for the next six months, until June 2022 in Terminal B.

But so for our listeners who haven't seen these before, they're based around like, what do you say culinary advertising type stuff? Is that a way to describe some of it?

Oh, yeah. So this is like a strange thing that happened with along with the recipe development work for brands. Okay, so I started crocheting the stuff that I miss, or like my favorite groceries like strawberry Pocky. And also things that like, hold a lot of nostalgia for my husband, Ari, like bomba and peanut chews like something that you look at, you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it's made out of yarn. That's so cool. And that reminds me of my childhood. Yay, delicious. Um, so I started doing that. And then I'm brand started reaching out to me. So I have crocheted like, quite a few on packaging for brands now as well. Like, they'll be like, hey, write us a recipe also can crochet our product, or they're like, Okay, they're like, alright, we'll cook here, we'll send you a bunch of product, do whatever the hell you want with it. But please crochet it. And now like I have a more systematized way of executing those orders, but there are a lot of fun when they're pretty challenging. I just did a couple crocheted boxes have a bone broth for kettle and fire. And that was so hard. It was it was crocheting, like, round things that have like many ridges is so hard, but it was so satisfying. So yeah, I will also have your bread also crochet your packaging. That's really

amazing. I mean, that's like so outside the realm of anything I know how to do. My mom used to knit and it was the same thing. She would make sweaters like I was a big, New York Mets fan, and she did their logo. But she had to like kind of freestyle it herself, like the whole like New York skyline and all that. And it's not like that my brain doesn't work like that at all.

Yeah, I mean, my brain only works of freestyling I can't, I can't read a pattern. I look at people who like get this piece of paper and tell you how many stitches to make for each each row and my brain can't do that. I can only I can only freestyle.

Will you have any new projects in the works like anything you're working on besides kind of keeping up with the sauces and all that and then the recipe development.

There's a new sauce that I want to develop this year. So maybe I mean, I guess that's kind of a goal like I, I'm not gonna tell you what it is because I will need you to sign an NDA. So working on new sauces, working on any sauce, but yeah, I'm teaching at Drexel, I still also teach at Penn Museum in their international classroom, mostly by Hawaiian food culture and sugarcane plantation history. But I'm teaching at Drexel, I'm teaching the geography of tourism, and this upcoming semester, and I'm really, really looking forward to that. I know it sounds a little bit strange to be like, Oh, I'm choosing to hospitality theory like that is probably one of the most boring things that like sentences I've ever uttered. But yeah, teaching hospitality theory, geography of tourism, bringing in a lot of really interesting guest speakers from all over the world. People who own tour companies, people who work in corporate travel, my sister's boyfriend happens to be a health inspector on a cruise ship for Norwegian Cruise Lines, dragging him into to speak. Yeah, I feel like I put together a syllabus that I would like to sit in on so

well, that sounds fun. I would like to take that class. When I was in college, I went to culinary school, we didn't get to pick a single class, like from when you go in as a freshman, they give you every single class that you're going to take till you're a senior with no electives at all. And

oh, my gosh, yeah, sorry.

Yeah. But you know, I continued my education as I get older. That's why I take classes, I'll just go to do a one off on something that's interesting. One of the things I also like to ask is, do you have any favorite resources? And it doesn't have to be like super technical, but it could be like a cookbook, a website, an app? What are some of the things that you love that help you function?

As a writer, I love the upcycled Food Association. They bring in a lot of new brands, and they support a lot of new brands that are trying to turn food waste into something delicious and wonderful and good, both for people and for the planet. So yeah, that's a very obscure one, if you want to go down there never heard of it. There's a huge world of products out there that are trying to save food from going to the landfill. And so that's a really great resource.

And I guess one of the last questions I like to ask is, who are some of your favorite people who you think are under the radar, like, I guess in the food world are their chefs, business owners food truckers like who should more people know about

my friend Angie, who is who was the owner of such a car current owner of founder of compact kitchen here in Philadelphia, she's an absolute ridiculously amazing resource on Southeast Asian cuisine. I've learned so much from her just from being her friend, just from having her make me tasty food. She's great. And my husband, our I feel like is kind of under the radar. In some ways, I've learned a lot from him as well, like, he really is, just works with a lot of interesting farmers and foragers and forges on his own. And I've learned a lot about on edible plants in our region from him. And he's like a very, very curious mind. And we try not to talk about work at home, or rather, he talks about work at home and I tune it out. But outside, when we're going out to eat or going out. We're traveling or like meeting up with farmers and foragers and fishermen. Yeah, he's a really, really great resource and a complete cooking nerd,

where you gotta give props to your husband and you just got married, was it like a month or two ago?

It was November 10.

So you guys don't really talk food at home or work, cooking at home.

Um, he talks work at home and I tuned him out. I don't like talking about work at home.

I mean, I guess it's hard if it's something you enjoy, like, I love cooking. My wife used to be in the food world. She went to culinary school as well. But yeah, I can tell sometimes we're like, I'm going a little too deep on it. And it's like, okay, it's just dinner tonight. Like, this doesn't have to be a big deal. Oh, that's funny.

Yeah. So he doesn't cook it. So it's different. Like we have like different kinds of like, personal and professional separation. So he doesn't cook at home at all. Like I'm the home cook. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's at first I was annoyed about it. And now I'm happy about it. Because the kitchen is mine. And he can't like, I don't know if it's like a dude thing or whatever. He can't find anything in it. Like, it'll be like worse a greater. Where's the microplane? Like constantly?

That's because my wife's always moving it in different places. I don't know if it's like that in your house. But like it was here. It was here yesterday. And now it's in a different drawer.

No, every object in my house has like a very intentional location. So it's mind boggling to me. He can't find things.

You got to figure out that rhythm in the kitchen. But yeah, well, thanks so much for coming on the show. I've really enjoyed having you here. Thanks. This is a really great chat. Before we jump out of here, where can people find your sauces if they want to buy them?

The easiest place would be point og philly.com That's poi DlG philly.com. It's might be in a specialty grocer near you. If you're in Philadelphia, it's at almost every specialty grocer in the city. So it's really easy to find

fantastic I will send everyone your way. I'll put all that info in the show notes anything else you want to plug or leave us with before we get out of here.

If you want to check out my writing and my recipe development, it's at Kiki or Anita comm K i K i ARA and ita.com

and there's a lot of it. I tried to read as many articles as I could before we got on here today.

It's it's i know i Yesterday I made some inroads at trying to organize it a little bit better, but I'm working on it will say writing.

Well thank you again. And to all our listeners. Thanks for listening to the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. Go to chefs without restaurants.org To find our Facebook group, mailing list and ship database to communities free to join. You'll get gig opportunities, advice on building and growing your business and you'll never miss an episode of our podcast. Have a great week.