So I'm thinking maybe something like:
3-5 minutes - Introduction
5-10 minutes - The Purpose and Audience of Food Writing
5-10 minutes - Effective Food Writing: Do's and Don'ts
5-10 minutes - Food Writing Platforms
5-10 minutes - Question and Answer
Introduction
My name is Jason Shriner and I am the Aubergine Chef. I own the video baking and pastry
blog at TheAubergineChef.com and I also teach baking classes and the Manassas Park
Community Center as well as provide private class and demonstration packages. I
graduated from Johnson & Wales University with an associate’s in baking & pastry and a
bachelor’s in food service entrepreneurship and I’ve worked in a variety of bakeshops. I
started the food blog in 2010 as a way to get out of the harsh kitchen environment but still
remain a part of the baking industry. In December 2011 I was featured in Rachael Ray
Magazine, in February 2013 I was featured in Prince William Living magazine, and just this
past summer I was named one of Potomac Local’s Forty under 40. Today, I’m an online
contributor to Prince William Living, a co-host on the A La Mode podcast, and I volunteer
with several organizations including PFLAG, the Red Cross, and Together We Bake.
The Purpose and Audience of Food Writing
As I’m sure many of you know through your own experiences, it’s important to figure out
right away what are your purpose and audience for food writing. What are your goals for
the piece you are writing? For many people it’s to persuade somebody to eat something.
Are you reviewing restaurants? Do you only want to write positive reviews – and just not
review restaurants you didn’t enjoy? What was it about the meal at the restaurant that
really impressed you? How was the food presented? Did the flavors complement one
another harmoniously – or did they contrast providing a challenging, engaging, or exciting
experience? Are you trying to promote the restaurant to a local neighborhood or are you
trying to enhance tourism to the area?
For other food writers, they want to educate people about recipes and techniques to try.
There’s some persuasion here – you have to make them want to try your recipe – but you
also want them to learn something new. Is this a quick recipe for people with busy
schedules? Is this a healthy recipe for people with dietary restrictions? What do these
ingredients and techniques do for the final product? Do you want to talk about food
science so people can use what you’ve taught them and apply it to different recipes?
As trained bakers we are taught that there are 4 components to every plated dessert: the
main item, the sauce, the crunch component, and the garnish. From there, we have about 6
areas where we can influence those components: Flavor, form, color, texture, temperature,
and serving vessels. While it’s not important for you to understand all these intimately to
write about savory foods or baked goods, you can expand your thinking and your
vocabulary immediately by getting even a basic understanding of these areas.
When most people think of flavor they immediately think of the four basic tastes: sweet,
salty, sour, and bitter – and many people are aware nowadays of the fifth basic taste umami
or savory. These flavors are detected through taste buds and are some of the most
immediate reactions you have to food. But flavor is more complicated than just those basic
tastes – there’s aroma which is what gives you the grand variety of flavors you enjoy.
Aroma is detected in your olfactory bulb in your nose which means it takes a little longer to
detect aroma than flavor – and when you can’t breathe (like when you’re sick) you may not
detect aroma at all. Aroma is what gives you the ability to distinguish between a real
strawberry and artificial strawberry flavor.
Speaking of artificial and natural think about where you stand on these areas as a writer.
Do you appreciate the chef’s dedication to natural flavor’s wholesomeness or do you
sympathize with chefs who use artificial flavors for their shelf-life, strength, consistency,
and year-round availability? Does modernist cuisine where science, art, and flavor collide
excite you? Do you relate more to soul food, the meals that are prepared with minimal
processing and with thought and heart poured into every dish? Whereever you stand on
this spectrum, it will greatly influence how you feel about food and will ultimately become
your passion to the point where you want to persuade people to your side – even
subconsciously. There’s no right or wrong side. Or maybe that’s your job to discover and
prove.
The remaining components allow a chef to be creative. With form you’re focused on the
size and shape of the meal but also the height. When a chef is able to incorporate depth, it
brings a level of enchantment and excitement to the dish. The category of color is
surprisingly broad. Just as with flavor, how do you feel about natural colors vs. artificial
colors? How many colors should be present in one cuisine? How about a monochromatic
plate with varying shades? Do the colors complement or contrast each other and the dish?
Do they enhance the experience even in a challenging way or do you find the colors over or
underwhelming? Texture is very important to a particular dish. Have you ever heard, “I
don’t like this food – it’s a texture-thing”? Texture also helps prevent a dish from becoming
bland. Think of a bowl of soft custard – as you continue to eat it your mouth becomes
bored bite after bite. It’s like the food version of diminishing returns. Now imagine the
chef serves a crisp cookie with a slight flavor contrast. It awakens the mouth allowing you
to enjoy the custard as if you started back at bite one. Temperature works the same way
as texture – it provides a contrast allowing your mouth to reawaken bite after bite – and is
arguably more difficult to implement. Finally, examine how the dish was presented to you.
Is it trite or gimmicky? Does it enhance the dish? Does it reflect the environment where
you are being served? Keep in mind that it is very difficult to stock a wide variety of dishes
and glasses so try to think of serving vessels as going the extra mile to impress the diner
rather than a definitive characteristic of the dish.
Food writing goes beyond reviewing things that you’ve tasted. You could be designing a
menu for a restaurant where being both precise and concise is valuable. As a blogger, I
develop recipes and I have to cognizant of how I write my directions down. These are more
technical examples of food writing, but describing food can also be more symbolic and
meaningful. In novels – whether fiction or non-fiction – the way you incorporate food into
your piece can have a powerful impact on the reader. Food connects us – all of us – and on
some innate level we all understand food. If you intend to incorporate food writing into
your work this way, think back on books you’ve read and analyze how the author utilized
food and how it enhanced the piece.
Ask if there are any other forms of food writing
Activity 1
Taboo Style
1. Describe the item on the card without using the name or using any of the words on the
card (spaghetti, margarita, devil’s food chocolate cake, mussels with wine sauce)
2. Describe the image on the card, other people have to draw it*
Do’s and Don’ts of Food Writing
Before we go through and discuss the list of words I found let’s review some brief do’s
don’ts on food writing:
Give a backstory – People love to hear a good story when they are talking about
restaurants. How did the restaurant get started? What’s the restaurant’s overall message?
Who is the chef? Where did they come from? If you’re contributing your own recipe be
sure to include your story in relation to the dish.
Use metaphors but don’t go overboard. Make them relevant to your voice. A little bit of
humor can make a piece more enjoyable but a professional sounding piece will strengthen
your credibility.
I’m sure many of you have dealt with word limits especially if you contribute to
publications. When you are cutting back on words make sure to read your piece aloud to
your friends and family to make sure your voice and personality still shine through.
Describe the food in question – don’t tell the reader how it tastes with subjective terms.
Delicious, scrumptious, and delectable don’t tell you much about the food in question.
Elaborate on the dish and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions. Don’t go
overboard with too many details or adjectives.
Consider writing the piece as a narrative that describes your entire experience. I like to
think of this as the NPR style of food writing as nearly every time I listen to an NPR piece
about food it tends to be very narrative. Think about using dialog in the piece to make it
more engaging.
Speaking of NPR, if you want to be inspired for your food writing listen to podcasts like
NPR food, the Splendid Table, and The Sporkful with Dan Pashman. I absolutely love how
they describe food and even though they may use words that are cliché or even completely
made up I still feel engaged as a listener. They obviously have an advantage being in an
audio format, but it can still motivate you as a writer.
Play samples of audio
Let’s go over some words that are popular in food writing. I’ve done some superficial
research online and there are a ton of opinions on words not to use in food writing – but
not much on words to use. While there are many words the different sources agree that
should be banned from food writing, there is a lot of room up for debate. I don’t completely
agree with this list, but I included many of those words anyway.
If you find yourself using the same words on this list often, ban yourself from using those
words. You guys are creative I know you can find a new way to describe the food.
Review list with students and discuss and debate words
Activity 3
Scattergories Style
1. Everybody gets a list of ten items and then has to describe the item using the letter
drawn on a die. For every word that person gets a point but if another person has that
word they don’t get a point – it must be a unique word.
Food Writing Platforms
For this final segment I want to focus on different food writing platforms and give you a
chance to brainstorm ideas with each other on how to get into those areas. There are
menus, blogs, publications, and prose for example.
I think menus are some of the hardest things to write since space is a premium and often
when you author a menu you also have to have a good sense of design – or at least be
working with a good designer. Since being concise is valuable, word choice is that much
more important. Avoid saying “flavored” as it makes everything it touches sound like junk
food. I like to use inspired to describe menu items that I’ve taken liberties on (think “our
twist on an old favorite”!). A menu should be quick to read to encourage turn over.
However, if the establishment makes only a few items you can afford to be a little more
wordy especially since the lack of menu variety may reduce the restaurant’s charm.
Consider being bold and possibly wild to give the menu voice. Not everything has to read
like an instruction manual. Have you ever heard of Thug Kitchen? It’s a food blog that tries
to inspire people to eat healthy by using bold crass language – it may offend some people
but it’s an excellent example of voice and branding.
Blogging is one of the easiest ways to get started with food writing but it will take some
time investment. There are some fees associated with blogging like webhosting but it’s
usually not too financially inaccessible. However, as a blogger you need to have a more
diverse set of skills. You’ll have to know how to design a website to appear professional
which means you’ll need some coding skills – or at least know how to google how to code.
Wordpress is an excellent platform as it makes everything visual and user friendly to
assemble a website. (Wordpress.org vs. Wordpress.com) You’ll need photography skills
since photos are what draw people into food blogs. You’ll need to manage your social
media and test your recipes. Will you also do videos on youtube? Then you’ll need to know
how to record and edit video. Blogs have almost no boundaries but that also means you’ll
need a broader range of skills or you’ll have to hire people for those specific areas.
However, if your blog is successful it can become your portfolio or your resume. Many
people have turned blogging into a business with displaying advertising on their sites and
working with brands to create sponsored posts. An example of a sponsored post is when a
food blogger is given a brand’s ingredients (say King Arthur flour) and money to write
about the ingredient. A sponsored post is supposed to be authentic and it should be an
ingredient the blogger is truly interested in or is already using. Too many sponsored posts
may damage a blogger’s reputation and authenticity but sponsored posts can also boost the
blogger’s authority (a major brand wants to work with you) and even search
rankings/visibility when the brand promotes the post.
You can also write about food for publications like magazines and newspapers. I write for
Prince William Living, a local magazine, and I contribute monthly food articles for their
online version. The articles are similar to my blog posts but I try to be more brief and
either educational or entertaining in the post depending on the recipe. I was able to get
started writing with PWL through networking. For those of you unfamiliar with
networking, basically you find business networking meetings that sound interesting to you
and you connect with people there. Some of those people will become business
acquaintances and some will even become your friends. Eventually your acquaintances
and friends will invite you to additional meetings and to meet their connections and over
time you’ll meet more and more people. When I started networking I didn’t have a specific
goal – I just want to get into networking and meet as many people as I could. If you want to
get in with a publication, you would find out which groups that publication gets involved
with or who has connections at the publication and see if you can connect with them
(LinkedIn is great for that).
Writing novels is an area I’m pretty unfamiliar with but you can of course include food
writing in your novel. Like Water for Chocolate is an excellent example. The book
incorporates recipes and techniques at the beginning of chapters and uses food for
powerful imagery. Here’s an excerpt: (page 50)
Getting your novels launched is an area I’m unfamiliar with but there are and were a ton of
great resources for that here at Fall for the Book. My personal friend Monica Bhide is an
author and teaches food writing workshops as well. If I were thinking about launching a
novel I would reach out to her first.
Let’s end this workshop with questions and answers as well as a roundtable discussion.
Words to use
Herbaceous
Peppery
Bright
Sparkle
Community
Connection
Words to avoid
Artisanal or Artisan
Authentic (Is one dish more authentic than the other? Is there authentic fusion cuisine?)
All Natural
Organic
Farm-to-table (locally sourced is better)
Mouthfeel (I don’t mind it, but it may be too scientific for others to appreciate)
Moist (I don’t mind it, but some people really hate it)
Approachable (avoid when talking directly about food)
Flavor/flavored
Weak, over used, or cliché
Cooked to Perfection (cliché)
Fusion – describe the food directly, i.e. Asian-hipster cuisine
Decadent
Delectable
Eatery
Epic
Luscious
Nibbles, bites, victuals
Pillowy (especially about pasta)
Yummy
Velvety or Silky
Melt-in-your-mouth
Savor
Yummy
Crispy (just use crisp)
Devour
Feel (use mood or atmosphere)
Funky
Gobble
Iconic (just use famous)
Mecca
Mouth-watering
Mound
Nosh
Ooze
Slurp
Sinful
Scrumptious
Trendy
Uber
To die for
Noms
Variety (be specific)
Farm-raised (be specific)
Gastropub (only if they refer to themselves as it)
Locavore
Foodie (try foodist, connoisseur, food enthusiast, food geek/nerd)
Rustic
With (your entire article could be something with something served with)
Delicious
Tasty
Crowd-pleaser
Lovely
Fabulous
Drool
Dreamy
Sources:
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bella/2014/06/food_drink_writing_words_avoid_not_
use.php
http://grubstreet.com/2012/07/banned-food-writing-words.html
http://urbanvegan.net/2011/08/101-overused-food-writing-terms.html
http://www.au.timeout.com/sydney/restaurants/features/11079/25-words-to-avoid-infood-writing
http://eatyourwordssmc.wordpress.com/course-info/hot-tips-for-food-writers/
http://www.theauberginechef.com/2013/08/4-tips-menu-writing/
http://www.theauberginechef.com/techniques-plated-desserts/
http://www.savorysimple.net/baked-eggs-and-chorizo/
http://www.fifteenspatulas.com/quick-ramen-noodle-soup/
http://www.abrowntable.com/home/rowntable.com/2013/08/easy-south-indianchicken-curry.html
http://girlinthelittleredkitchen.com/2014/06/spiked-peach-mint-ice-tea/
http://www.theauberginechef.com/2013/11/episode-139-white-chocolate-moussecranberry-compote-gingersnap-cookies/
Activity 2
Charades Style
1. Close your eyes (so you’re not influenced by gestures) and describe your favorite food
but never use the name of the item
2. Draw a category from a hat and describe your favorite item from that category
(cocktails, dessert, bread, pie, sandwich etc) but never use the category name or the
name of the item*