At its peak, the wealthy Ottoman Empire indulged its love of food extravagantly. One pastry chef in a great home would specialize in making filo for baklava and another one a subtly different filo for savory boreks. A banquet might feature as many as 50 dishes, the guests tasting only a mouthful of each. It was a cuisine of subtlety as well as richness. Compare this with Charles Perry’s January talk, “Banquets of Marrakesh.”

Charles Perry majored in Middle East Studies at Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley. After graduation he pursued a writing career, serving as an editor and staff writer at Rolling Stone from 1968 to 1976 and a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times Food Section from 1990 to 2008. He began collecting medieval Arab cookery manuscripts in 1980 and has published widely on Middle Eastern food history.  

A remarkable number of alcoholic drinks were available in early South Asia made from grains, fruit, sugarcane, palm sap, and also from the sweet mahua flower. Many drinks were complex brews of various sugar sources and herbs. Drinking was an innately social affair, whether this was lovers in private, drinking imported Persian wine from each other’s mouths, or the crowd of dancing, singing drinkers in an urban rice-beer tavern. Alcohol was almost always consumed along with salty spicy snacks for which we also have considerable evidence. In this talk, James McHugh introduces the drinks, snacks, and drinking cultures of ancient and medieval South Asia, based in his research on texts in Sanskrit and related languages.

James McHugh studies the history and religions of early India. He completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2008, and is now professor at the University of Southern California. His first book, Sandalwood and Carrion, explored the meanings of odors, perfumes, and aromatics in India. His latest book, An Unholy Brew: Alcohol in Indian History and Religions, is a study of alcohol, drinking, and abstinence in premodern South Asia.

Over the last forty years, Japanese cuisine has had an oversized influence on fine dining in the United States. Chefs cooking at celebrated American restaurants are now freely using Japanese ingredients, condiments, culinary techniques, and concepts, and the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, the leading culinary school in the country, now offers a concentration in Japanese cuisine. This lecture will describe in some detail this “Japanese turn” and argue that this contemporary culinary movement toward Japan is comparable to the Japanese influence on European and American art and architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and may be another important Japanese moment in American cultural history.

Samuel Yamashita is the Henry E. Sheffield Professor at Pomona College, where he has taught Asian history since 1983. He began his scholarly career as a Confucian specialist and published Master Sorai’s Responsals, an English translation of a political treatise written for an eighteenth-century shogun, in 1995. In the 1990s he turned to the Asia Pacific War, and the result was Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese and Daily Life in Wartime Japan, 1940–1945. Turning to food in 2009, he published Hawai’i Regional Cuisine: The Food Movement That Changed the Way Hawai’i Eats in 2019. He is currently finishing three book projects on food: an anthology of the writings of kaiseki chefs in Japan, a study of the new hyperlocal cuisines that appeared along the Pacific Rim in this century, and a history of Japanese food.

What is Italian cuisine? That seems like an easy question to answer however a deeper look shows that it's not so easy. Things change. Traditional cuisine is both an abstract and concrete cultural artifact, a reflection of a people and their customs, which themselves change along with their food and their cooking as changes occur in their agriculture, their commerce, their trade, and their economy. Traditional cuisine is also a part of collective memory that forges the part of material culture that can be produced and consumed. A culture’s cuisine is not immutable but changes over time along with cultural and economic changes. Italy is complicated: is it a multitude of regional and provincial cuisines or is there a “national” Italian cuisine?

Clifford A. Wright won the James Beard Cookbook of the Year award and the James Beard award for the Best Writing on Food in 2000 for A Mediterranean Feast. His most recent book, An Italian Feast, is a sequel to that book. He is the author of 18 other books on cooking, food, politics, and history.

A look at the history of LA's Koreatown, with an evaluation of its current state and thoughts on its future from Eater LA editor Matthew Kang, with photographer Emanuel Hahn, author of Koreatown Dreaming: Stories and Portraits of Korean Immigrant Life.

Matthew Kang is the lead editor of Eater LA. He has covered dining, restaurants, food culture, and nightlife in Los Angeles for over 14 years. His work has also been featured in Angeleno Magazine and TASTE Cooking. He hosted a YouTube show called K-Town covering Korean food in America and has been featured on Netflix's Street Food, Hulu's Searching for Soul Food, and Cooking Channel's Food: Fact or Fiction. He grew up in Glendale, graduated from USC, and lives in Torrance with his wife Rochelle and toddler Enzo.

Emanuel Hahn is a Los Angeles-based commercial and documentary photographer/director. He is interested in topics of identity, culture, diasporic experiences and the question of what it means "to belong." His deep observational and listening abilities have led him to tell the stories of the coffee farmers in Colombia, Chinese grocery store owners in the Mississippi Delta, the Korean Uzbeks in Brooklyn, and most recently the Koreatown community in Los Angeles through his photo book Koreatown Dreaming.

From the wine-loving Spaniards who first settled Los Angeles to the cocktail quaffers of the jet age, Los Angeles tastes have shifted when it comes to enjoying alcoholic beverages. The city has been a center of winemaking and brewing, a region where intoxicating potions were celebrated by movie stars and hunted down by prohibitionists, and a place where finely balanced drinks and abysmal concoctions were crafted by bartenders and celebrities. This talk begins with pious monks, continues with law-dodging partiers who were anything but reverent, and ends in the new world of LA cocktails.

Richard Foss started writing professionally in 1987, and his job as a restaurant critic eventually led to two books, numerous scholarly and popular articles, consulting jobs at museums, international lecture tours, and several TV appearances. His science fiction and fantasy stories have been nominated for awards, and he continues to freelance for various publications. Richard is the co-founder and Executive Director of Collage: A Place for Art & Culture, a nonprofit arts and performance space in San Pedro that donates musical instruments to students, hosts free music lessons, and does other charitable work related to the arts.   

Cookbooks have evolved over the last 50 years from straightforward recipe guides to books more reflective of the personalities, ethnicities, and foods that shape our diverse culture. Cookbook author Joan Nathan and journalist Barbara Fairchild have had front-row seats to this evolution/revolution. 

Joan Nathan is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and other publications. She is the author of twelve books, including Jewish Cooking in America and The New American Cooking, both of which won James Beard Awards and IACP Awards. Nathan’s latest book, My Life in Recipes: Food, Family, and Memories is a treasury of recipes and stories—and an invitation to a seat at her table.

Barbara Fairchild is best known for her more than three-decade career at Bon Appétit magazine, including over ten years as Editor-in-Chief. These days, Barbara is a public speaker, avid restaurant goer/watcher, frequent traveler, and the Chair of the Los Angeles Council of the Careers through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP). 

Ken Albala cooked noodle soup every morning for breakfast for several years. Using handmade noodles made with every imaginable ingredient, homemade stock and fresh vegetables, he also broke every rule about what you are not supposed to do. The results were remarkable, often rooted in history, and just as often wildly innovative, they will make you rethink what noodle soup is all about. 

Ken Albala is Tully Knoles Endowed Professor of History at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. He has written or edited 27 books and was the 2023 recipient of the university's distinguished faculty award. His next book is entitled Opulent Nosh. He is currently working on a book about wooden spoons, clay bowls and homemade food.  

NOTE: If Flower Street is closed at 5th Street, tell the traffic cop you are going to the library and you will be let through.

Highlighting the Nayarit restaurant that her grandmother, Doña Natalia Barraza opened in 1951 in Echo Park, Natalia Molina's talk is about place, family and community. Interviewed by Nancy Zaslavsky, Molina discusses how Mexican immigrants who congregated at the Nayarit hungry for flavor memories and language of home were attempting to carve out a niche for themselves in their new homeland. Those who worked and ate at the Nayarit, were not only putting food onto the table or into their mouths, they were establishing links with one another and creating neighborhood.

Natalia Molina is a Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and Dean's Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. Her research explores the interconnected histories of race, place, gender, culture, and citizenship. Her most recent book is A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community, on immigrant workers as “placemakers” who nurtured and fed the community through the restaurants they established, which served as urban anchors. In addition to publishing widely in scholarly journals Professor Molina is a MacArthur Fellow. She enjoys opportunities for intellectual and cultural exchange, whether in the classroom, lecture hall, or over a restaurant table.

A lot of people think Muslims are forbidden to drink alcohol. But how do you explain the fact that there's a genre of wine poetry in Arabic, and that a couple of caliphs wrote wine poems?

The fact is that Muslim law considers wine "disapproved" but not "forbidden." As a result, attitudes have vacillated over time between puritanism and tolerance, and even a certain amount of whoop-de-doo-ism. And there are all those poems.

Charles Perry is a widely published scholar specializing in the cuisine of the Muslim World. He majored in Middle East Studies at Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley and studied at the Middle East Center for Arab Studies in Shimlan, Lebanon. Thereafter he pursued a career as a journalist, culminating in 18 years as a staff writer for the Food Section of the Los Angeles 

Famous for its food and drink, the Golden State influenced the diets and policies of presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.

 In 1903 Roosevelt and the naturalist John Muir camped in Yosemite Valley, where they ate campfire steaks and debated conserving land for public use. As a result, TR preserved 230 million acres, founded the US Forest Service and five national parks, and their trek was deemed “the most consequential camping trip in American history.”

 Richard Nixon, the only native Californian elected president, saw food as fuel and ate cottage cheese for lunch every day. So it was a surprise when he led important food programs and ate exotic dishes in Beijing while conducting “chopstick diplomacy” in 1972 – which spurred America’s Chinese restaurant craze.

 Ronald Reagan liked TV dinners, meat and potatoes, and jellybeans. Nancy Reagan hardly ate, but emulated Jackie Kennedy and hosted spectacular evenings for Lady Diana and the Gorbachevs at the White House. Yet it was at their simple ranch in Santa Ynez that they felt most at home -- and helped bring global attention to California’s wines.

 Alex Prud’homme has been a nonfiction writer for thirty years. As a journalist he has covered a wide range of subjects for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Talk, and Time. As an author he has written nine books, on subjects ranging from biotech to terrorism, fresh water, and food. He is best known for co-writing Julia Child’s memoir My Life in France, a #1 NYT best-seller that inspired half the film “Julie & Julia.” In February 2023, Alfred A. Knopf published Dinner With the President: Food, Politics, and a History of Breaking Bread at the White House, a narrative history of the politics of food and the food of politics. Covering 26 presidents -- from George Washington starving at Valley Forge to Donald Trump’s burgers and the Bidens’ pasta and ice cream -- the book includes sixteen pages of color illustrations and ten presidential recipes.

Since the earliest days of Hollywood, movie studios have been feeding their armies of stars and crew working on the lots. From Warner Bros., which served the top names of the Golden Age of Hollywood who were shooting classics like “Casablanca” during World War II, to Disney, Paramount, MGM and Fox, each studio commissary had its own vintage character and unique menu items. These days, the commissaries still exist, and their specialties have evolved to suit today’s tastes. Come along for a starry tour of Hollywood as seen through the studios’ official restaurants, the people who worked there, and the off-lot staples like Tam O’Shanter and the Smoke House.

Pat Saperstein is deputy editor at Variety, where she covers movies, TV, vintage Hollywood and restaurants. She has written about restaurants for the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine and more, and was a co-author on the books “Eat: Los Angeles,” “Drink: Los Angeles” and “Cannes: 50 Years of Sun, Sex and Celluloid.” A native of Los Angeles, she never tires of exploring Southern California and points beyond.

From fast food locations that all started in Los Angeles to historical iconic restaurants, George highlights the food industry from his two current books, Made in California and L.A.'s Landmark Restaurants. Visit the original California locations that impacted the country's eating habits and trends in this informative presentation—and then return to some of the area's venerable food establishments loved by all.   

George Geary is the author of fifteen historic food and cookbooks. This year, George is celebrating his 30th year in morning television conducting food segments on WGN-TV Chicago, NBC-Tampa, and his home station FOX5-San Diego. In addition, this is the 35th year celebration of George Geary Culinary Tours, conducting tours of Los Angeles Food locations and the South of France. In the 1980s, George worked behind the scenes on major television shows in prop departments creating edible and non-edible foods. In 2025, the 40th anniversary of The Golden Girls, Chronicle Books will publish George's 16th book, The Official Golden Girls Cheesecake Cookbook. In addition, George is frequently quoted and written about in New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and USAToday as an expert in California Fast Foods and Restaurants. 

Bonnie Benwick discusses, via a virtual Zoom presentation, the state of food media, covering its evolution in America via newspaper food sections as well as trends concerning ingredients and cuisines, the impact of diverse voices, and alternative ways of presenting recipes.

Bonnie is a freelance food writer/editor, and cookbook recipe tester based in Washington, D.C. She worked for 39 years as a journalist, spending the majority of her career at The Washington Post, retiring in 2019 as deputy Food editor/recipe editor. In 2013 she published “The Washington Post Cookbook: Readers’ Favorite Recipes.” She is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and Les Dames d’Escoffier.

The lecture is free via Zoom but reservations are required:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/culinary-history-program-bonnie-benwick-on-food-writing-unfolded-tickets-635461330947