Beyond the Plate: An Interview with Food Journalist Kayla Stewart

Award-winning journalist and cookbook author Kayla Stewart talks food, travel, and history.

If Kayla Stewart is the moon, then food is her sun. Her life has always revolved around it. From childhood memories of messy, garlicky crawfish boils in Houston to savoring warm bowls of Bakso soup while planning English lessons in Indonesia, Stewart’s life, both personal and professional, has been centered around food memories.

But food for Stewart goes beyond what’s on the plate. She savors the stories behind the meals we enjoy,

particularly the underreported stories of Black people in the food world such as a Harlem baker making some of the city’s best rugelach and two Brooklyn sisters opening the first Black food bookstore in the U.S. She sees food as complex topic that is both inherently fun but also a vessel for larger social issues and history.

As a James Beard Award winning food journalist and cookbook author, Stewart’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Food & Wine, and more esteemed publications. She is currently working on an upcoming cookbook about black cuisine in Texas.

Your background is in food writing as well as travel writing, and in many of your articles, specifically “Sweetest Harvest” and “Teach a Man to Fish” you combine elements of culture and social issues into your writing. I’m curious what initially sparked your interest in food journalism and how you use it as vessel for educating people on complex issues?

It was really a love of travel, and interest in learning about other cultures around the world. I’ve always had the most interest in those subjects. I think by nature of being interested in the world, you also are exposed to food from other places, which I was, and it kind of took off from there. I saw it as a real career possibility when I was living in Indonesia on a teaching assignment. I think food is a good time, and it’s a wonderful thing. It should be something that’s fun and also brings people together at the same time. There are often stories, more difficult stories that tell us what’s on a plate and what a dish tells us about. My job is to find that balance allowing people to both be able to enjoy a piece that might be about a dish that they grew up eating as a child, but also understand some of the more difficult or more complex subjects that are related to that dish or to that cuisine. It’s about finding that balance between both. You want to bring the joy that is integral to food writing but also tell the truth which is just simply a part of journalism, and the truth isn’t always bad necessarily.

You have a joint master’s degree in Journalism and International Relations. How do you combine those two areas of interest in your writing?

I try to make sure that stories are layered. Particularly when I’m doing profiles or features, I try to bring in the economic, political, and social components that may round out the story a bit more. International relations really taught me about how to research, but also how to understand how political relations within a country or region or society can impact things like how, what and where we eat. It still has been useful in this career, and then, of course, because I am a food and travel journalist, I’m traveling abroad pretty frequently. I have experience on how to work with people from different places and backgrounds and knowing how to be dropped in a new place. I have to both get acclimated to a new country and also get out a real story, so having that degree allows me to adjust to those responsibilities and be able to do them all.

I really enjoyed your most recent article on the Harlem baker making rugelach. Can you tell us how you found that subject?

With him, it was a direct assignment for my editor; however, this guy just so happens to work a few blocks from where I live, so I know this place. I think this relates to how I stay inspired and find ideas for these stories. Living in a city like New York means that it would be wrong not to experience all of the myriad of ways you can find inspiration and stimulation in the city. There’s endless art, culture, and all sorts of things. It’s just a matter of walking outside and going to museums, going to events or going to a restaurant that looks interesting or a bakery down the street. That’s what I’ve done since I’ve lived here. When I’m finding characters, a lot of times it really is me going into a neighborhood walking around and just taking some time to see what’s there and what’s interesting or doing research.

Let’s talk about the research. You incorporate a lot of history into your pieces. How important do you think it is to research the stories you report?

It is essential. I can’t tell you a story I’ve written in recent years that did not require some level of research. It’s an integral part. It is part of why I think my stories have been able to do as well as they have. Because yes, I’m trying to make a point, and when I’m trying to write a piece, I definitely want it to be research based. I think it makes it stronger and more rigorous. It validates some of those subjects that you might be trying to explain in a piece. So yes, to answer your question, it’s very important and it’s a significant chunk of this job. Being a writer is not just writing. It takes a lot of other elements to get to that final written piece that we’re responsible for doing, and a big part of that is research.

I am curious if you have a favorite city for food writing. Not including New York.

That’s a great question, and yes there is. New Orleans is actually probably my favorite food city right now, pretty easily.

Why New Orleans?

Some of it is personal and my family is from South Louisiana, so I am quite familiar with the cuisine and with the landscape there, but I also just think it’s fantastic. It’s one of the more colorful, interesting, and unique places I’ve been to — not only in the United States but in the world. When you talk to people who are well traveled from other parts of the world, they will often say something similar. It is just unlike anywhere else in the world. They have their own special place in the food culture. A lot of cities say this, but I think in New Orleans, they not only genuinely mean it, but it is the truth. Food is the root and the foundation of that city. It’s like the city doesn’t exist without food. It is much woven into the fabric of everything that they do.