My Boss Owes Me Over $12,000

A Bay Area Restaurant Worker Recounts His Fight Against Wage Theft

This piece was published alongside the Zócalo/Irvine Foundation program “How Can Workers Make Sure They’re Treated Fairly in the Workplace?” Read the Takeaway of the event here.

I found out about the restaurant from my brother, who was supposed to work there but had another job. It was only going to be for one day but the owner asked if I could work all week. After that, she hired me and I started working with her regularly as a prep cook in her San Francisco …

by Eder Juarez | October 18, 2023

Finding L.A. in Food Splatters and Spiral Bindings

Three Centuries of Cookbooks from Clubs, Churches, and Other Groups Chronicle How the City Has Lived, Worked, and Eaten

by Suzanne Joskow | September 13, 2023

This piece publishes alongside the Zócalo/LA Cocina de Gloria Molina/California Humanities program “Do We Need More Food Fights?” tomorrow, Thursday, September 14, at 7PM …

Where I Go: My Teacher, the Tomato

How This Beautiful Plant and Its Magic Fruit Guides a Professional Chef in the Kitchen, and in Life

by Evan Rilling | July 17, 2023

Food can connect us to the earth, our community, and ourselves. But first, we need to open a space to listen to and be in exchange with the ingredients.

As a …

Is Black Veganism the Future of Soul Food?

What Animates the Cuisine Isn’t the Chicken or the Hog—It’s the Spirit of Preservation and Promotion of Black Identity

by Christopher Carter | January 31, 2022

Soul food is famously revered for pork and barbecue, for savory side dishes cooked in lard. I am a Black man who grew up loving my mother’s cornbread dressing and …

How Concentration Camp Prisoners Found Comfort in Imaginary Feasts

From Ravensbrück to Mao’s Labor Camps, Inmates Recited Family Recipes to Preserve Their Humanity

by Andrea Pitzer | December 4, 2018

When the Soviet Union sent Dmitri Likhachev to an offshore detention camp in February 1928, the Russian scholar was crammed onto a train car with other prisoners and handed a …

What Our Gargantuan Appetite for Meat Says About America

It Symbolizes Affluence and Social Status, Showcases Regional Differences, and Reveals Shifting Attitudes Toward Health

by Wilson J. Warren | August 9, 2018

Americans have always been distinguished by their love of meat. Where does that love come from?

One short answer: our ethnic heritage. Among whites, the English and Germans were two of …

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