128: Heydays at the June Motel - Translating a Lakeside Summer Cuisine into a Cookbook with Katie Laliberté
Release Date: 05/14/2024
AnthroDish
One of the most frustrating parts of watching Gossip Girl growing up was witnessing the elaborate breakfast spreads that the families had each morning, only for the main characters to grab a piece of toast and run away with anguish. When we think about fiction, food isn’t always central to how a story is told. But what happens when it is? My guest this week is Margaux Vialleron, a French-born and Glasgow-based interdisciplinary writer and cook. She is the author of two novels: Breaststrokes (May 2024) and The Yellow Kitchen (July 2022). Her story, Fernanda’s Fish Soup, was runner-up...
info_outline 141: Uncovering Medieval Pictish Foodways through Paleobotany with Dr. Shalen PradoAnthroDish
Oftentimes, when we think about plant-human relationships, we’re thinking about our contemporary lives and how plants factor into it – be it North American plant-based diets or what we’re growing in our apartments. But our relationship with plants goes back for millennia, and accessing this historical and prehistoric knowledge is a glimpse into what life looked like for ancient humans. My guest this week is Dr. Shalen Prado, who is here to explore what we know about plant-based eating during the medieval period of Scotland. Shalen is a settler-archaeologist living in Saskatoon and...
info_outline 140: Recovering from Restrictive Online Diet Myths with Dr. Sarah BallantyneAnthroDish
Diet culture on the internet is excellent at sensationalizing our food to the point of panic. I’m sure many of you have seen the videos across TikTok and Instagram where someone positions themselves as an expert and demonizes strawberries, bread, or my beloved potatoes. But what happens when we take a more proactive and less restrictive approach to looking at food? My guest today is the delightful Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, the founder of Nutrivore.com and the New York Times bestselling author of Nutrivore: The Radical New Science for Getting the Nutrients You Need from the Food You Eat. She...
info_outline 139: What Makes for Good Food Policy? with Chef Joshna MaharajAnthroDish
One downside I find when I spend too much time on the internet is that there’s an overwhelming viewpoint that the system is broken and there’s not much we can do to change that – or that food, in general, is disconnected from all other components of our lives. But I think these attitudes forget that a lot of empowerment comes through advocating for better policies across the board. My guest today is absolutely LEGENDARY when it comes to just that: Joshna Maharaj. Joshna sees food as our common denominator as humans and understands it holds the power to solve many problems we’re...
info_outline 138: Fish, Wine, and Letting Go of Ego in Southern France with Steve HoffmanAnthroDish
In the daily grind of work under capitalism, I’m sure I’m not alone for dreaming of something more to life. Usually, this takes the shape of going somewhere new in the world on vacation or picking up a new language and imagining what life would look like if you lived in that country and spoke that language with ease. For my guest today, this dream became a concrete and humbling reality. Tax preparer and food writer Steve Hoffman details his journey with his family in his beautiful new memoir, . Steve is a French speaker and shameless Francophile who tirelessly works in his...
info_outline 137: Transformations through Fermentation and Oracle Decks with Julia SkinnerAnthroDish
As far as public conversations around fermenting, we’ve come a long way as a society in our understanding of what that is in 2024. So with that, deeper explorations into the practice of fermentation and its role in building communities get a lot more interesting. Dr. Julia Skinner is returning to AnthroDish today to discuss the magic and art of fermentation, a central theme in her latest work, The Fermentation Oracle. This book is an oracle deck, recipe guide, and meditative practice that combines the understanding of magic, metaphors, and transformation in the small moments of our...
info_outline 136: Beer (and Everyone) Still Has a Diversity Problem with Ren NavarroAnthroDish
If you’ve listened to AnthroDish regularly over the last few years, you’ll know that Ren Navarro is a champion of diversity and inclusion within the beer industry and beyond. When I first interviewed Ren back in 2020, we looked at her Canadian consulting services through B.Diversity, and the diversity problem within craft beer in Ontario. We’ve lived truly a lifetime of unprecedented times since then: we saw the proliferation of Black Lives Matter movements and heavy pressure for more equitable change, and DEI initiatives take stronger footing through many industries reckoning with their...
info_outline 135: Growing Olive Trees in Texan Heat with Dr. Vikram BaligaAnthroDish
Climate change is a daunting reality for many of us – there’s a lot of anxiety around understanding what’s happening and how it affects our communities and the foods we grow. While there’s no magic bullet, there is a lot of great scientific researchers working hard to share what they know about this. For example – you may not immediately think of Texas when you think of olive oil production, but this is one of few American landscapes suitable for growing olive oil trees! My guest today is Dr. Vikram Baliga, a horticulture professor in Texas. He studies conservation and has...
info_outline 134: The Art of the Plant-Based Table with Chloé Crane-Leroux and Trudy CraneAnthroDish
Eating is so central to our ways of connecting as people and communities, but how we show up and make space around food is a practice of care and art. My guests today, Trudy Crane and Chloé Crane-Leroux are a mother-daughter duo best known for their individual foods, fashion, and lifestyle content. Montreal natives, these two are bursting with creativity and a deep appreciation for romanticizing the little moments in life. They’re here today to talk about their stunning new cookbook, a collection of recipes inspired by their European travels and the lessons around fresh, local...
info_outline 133: How to Break Down Diet Culture and Live Nourished with Shana Minei SpenceAnthroDish
Spend too much time on the internet these days and you can walk away with a lingering sense of body shame, dietary uncertainty, and overall not-great-vibes. To me, this means it’s all the more important to reflect on our relationships with food and re-assess how we think about them. My guest today, Shana Spence, is one of the central people that I take a lot of inspiration from when it comes to healing relationships with food. Shana is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her debut book came out this past August 2024, titled . She currently works in public...
info_outlineHere in Ontario, we’re just hitting the warmer spring weather after a grey and cloudy winter, and anyone living up north can attest to the amount of daydreaming we do about our future and past summer plans. During that daydreaming, memory and nostalgia can play a significant role in establishing an ideal summer, with tastes, scents and flavour playing powerful roles in thinking about what foods were prepared and shared. During the summer, the simple and mouth-watering foods tend to satisfy better than during a blustery snowstorm — but how can one capture the ritual and ceremony of joy and make it last throughout the year?
My guest today is Katie Laliberté, who is here to share the nostalgic and delicious experience that informed the forthcoming Heydays at the June Motel: Beach Town Classics, which is co-authored by Freddy Laliberte, Evan Baulch, and Emma Bulch. Katie helped to open Heydays Restaurant in Sauble Beach in 2020, after many years of supporting restaurants in Toronto. She is a writer and sometimes book-seller and is currently working on a restaurant romance novel as well.
Today, Katie explores the pandemic landscape origins of Heydays Restaurant through its ongoing partnership with The June Motel, how her Connecticut roots informed the unique coastal comfort food cuisine within the cookbook, and how the restaurant and book serve as an invitation to take the beach home with you, to create summer memories to last a lifetime.
Learn More about Katie!
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Instagram: @heydaysrestaurant
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Website: https://heydays.thejunemotel.com/