Evan Hanczor on connecting food and art, gathering around a table, and pursuing new ventures
Hello creators and welcome back to another episode of the Creation Stories Media Podcast. I've been away on Holiday and starting a new creative journey of my own as an MFA student at Hunter College which I'm excited about, but really glad to be back to share with you a great conversation I had with Evan Hanczor. Evan is a chef, writer, organizer. Evan started his food journey after undergrad and grew as a chef at Egg in Williamsburg with owner George Weld, which would continue into various ventures in both Brooklyn and beyond.
His ventures into building a community of folks interested in the intersection of food and literature led to the creation of Tables of Contents, a collaboration between creatives of all types including writers, musicians, and of course, food, which host meals and events in NYC. In 2021 the tables of contents team launched their first print cookbook with contributors including Alexander Chee, Emma Straub, Paul Lisicky, and more. The cookbooks profits supported the work of FIG NYC, a group supporting food security in NYC communities. Please check out more in the links below:
More Evan Links here!:
Full Interview Transcript:
Apologies, as always, for any typos / grammar errors in transcription - cons of a one man shop :)
Jack: Hello, creators. And welcome back to another episode of the creation stories podcast. I've been away on holiday and starting a new creative journey on my own as an MFA student, which I'm super excited about, but really glad to be back to share with you a great conversation I had with Evan Evan Hanczor evan is a chef writer and organizer.
Evan started his food journey after undergrad and grew as a chef at egg in Williamsburg with owner George Weld, which would continue into a number of different ventures in Brooklyn and beyond. His latest journey is into building a community of folks interested in the intersection of food and literature, which led to the creation of tables of contents, a collaboration between creatives of all types, including writers, musicians, and of course food, which host meals and events in New York city.
The next of which is actually tuesday on the 26th and you'll be able to see the link to that event in our website at www.creationstoriesmedia.com in 2021. The Tables of Contents team launched their first print cookbook with contributors, including Alexander Chee, Emma Straub, Paul Lisicky, and many more.
The cookbooks profit supported the work of FIG NYC, a group which supports food security in New York city communi. I was really grateful for this conversation with Evan. And I think you'll really enjoy our conversations about literature, food, and community.
Jack: First off again. Thank you. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast and want to start by going a little bit into your background . I think what's made me interested about your work is the intersection of food, the literature work that you've done with tables of contents, which I think is really unique.
And as someone who loves food, food justice, writing. I follow your account, but also I follow the tables of contents account as well. I'd be curious to hear more about when you realize that those subjects were first important to you as a person, but then also when that was something you actually thought, Hey, maybe I could do this as part of my day job.
And then just thinking about that. Was there anything from your upbringing maybe that brought you back to food because I saw you were an English major at Tulane and then you went and did food instead. And I thought that was really interesting. So would love to hear kind of about that transition too.
Evan: Totally. Well I was always into food and, and reading. I loved when I was a child spending time in the kitchen, even if I wasn't useful just being, being around the kitchen and the sounds and the smells. And my dad was a really good cook and my mom, baked delicious cookies and banana breads and things.
So I loved being in there. I was a kid who was always reading. Yeah. I'd be falling asleep with a book on my face. So the seeds of the interest in both areas are definitely, visible from from the get go. . I got into writing. And I guess cooking, although you could hardly call it that at the time, you know, the level of what I was doing cooking, but probably near the end of high school.
I took a couple classes in the English realm that got me interested in poetry and in sort of just reading different kinds than I was already familiar with. And at the same time was having, friends over to hang out and play basketball in the driveway and would pull something frozen from Costco out of the freezer and throw to the oven and feel like it was cooking or yeah.
You know, boil some pasta or something like that. Mm-hmm , and I carried over into college when I, when I went to Tulane, in New Orleans, certainly an amazing city to be surrounded by food and art of all kinds. And I had continued to dig into poetry. I sort of planned to major in English, in some form and to continue focusing on writing, I ended up studying creative writing and philosophy.
I was also really into cooking for friends. As soon as I moved off campus, I'd go shopping and make a bunch of meals at home. One of the first cookbooks I spent a lot of time with was Simon Hopkinson's, cookbook, Roast Chicken and Other Stories, which is very literary in it's construction.
From the title itself, and other stories, and the way it's written that I could sort of read through it as if it were a novel filled for recipes. Mm-hmm so yeah, I mean, it's easy to piece this together in a linear way. Looking back, I'm sure at the time I didn't tie any of this together, but I do remember a class that Tulane, that I took it was called Last Call. It was professor named Dale Edmonds, the last class that he was teaching after 30 years at the school and oh, wow. I think it was intended for seniors and I was a sophomore maybe, but I was committed to going, cause I had heard so much about this professor really wanted to get in there and he was just teaching his favorite books.
And he let me stay on in the class, even though I think it was full. And , when I think about tables of contents, now, part of the origin story in my mind is reading The Sun Also Rises in that class mm-hmm and in my friend's backyard drinking some wine just to try to get a sense of what the characters were going through themselves.
Of course and remembering just how vividly the scenes of food, whether it was fishing by the Spain and France border or eating a roast chicken in a bistro, or even just the visceral physical nature of the bull fight stood out to me. And I always felt like, I wish I could be eating these meals.
I wish I could be experiencing this book physically. And when we had a first tables of contents event, it was based on The Sun Also Rises. We did a five course meal inspired by different scenes in the book. And that was when that seed of an idea at first came to be, I guess, realized on the plate and at the table.
I had in between, you know, shifted from writing to cooking and was working on a restaurant called Egg in in Brooklyn. And my partner at Egg George, well, who started the restaurant a few years before I got there. He was also a literary person. So our interests were aligned in the food and literature overlap.
So I was lucky to have the space to even give that idea a shot. So that's the, cohesive version of a long and winding path that at the beginning. I certainly didn't expect to lead to making meals inspired by books, but when I look back, I can kind of see how it all comes together.
Jack: It's lovely. It's funny. You're right. It's something we're somehow uniquely able to do as humans, you know, especially if you're into the mm-hmm to the English world, it's like, actually this makes a lot of sense. So I ended up here, but I, in reality,
Evan: you're like, yeah,
Jack: I was, super young making these decisions and yeah, they worked out in this way and that's great.
Yeah. but that's awesome. And as I understand to get to egg you didn't go through kind of the classic training in the terms of going to culinary school. You more learned in restaurants
Evan: yeah. Yeah. That's right. My last semester at Tulane , I had been cooking at home, you know, for myself and friends for a little while.
And I wanted to try working in a kitchen. So I worked in this very casual spot. That was the watering hole for people after the Tulane baseball games called the old College inn . And it was a spot that served some poboy and tilapia, like four different ways and some other new Orleans classics barbecue duck and bread pudding and couple soups and salads.
It was also the kind of place where the soups were cut out of a plastic bag and dumping the steam table. We were making a lot of things from scratch like I did learn a lot of kitchen basics there. But when I left, it was maybe the last few months I was there and I just gave it a shot while I had some time in my hands.
I felt that that would be the end of my cooking career professionally. That was fun. I'm glad I got a glimpse into it. Now I can go back to writing. But when I graduated, I moved home to Connecticut and was looking for jobs in the publishing world cause I was writing and I figured that was the thing I could do to make money in the writing realm at the time.
I started working at another restaurant in town called Westport, Connecticut called dressing room and that was a restaurant that sort of opened my eyes to what a restaurant could be. They were really at the front of what is now, people feel is so common sourcing locally, having really intimate relationships with farmers using really high quality ingredients and cooking very seasonally.
And I was really lucky to land there because it was a restaurant that started to show me as I was cooking and sort of seeing this new world of what a kitchen could look like. I was also reading a lot of the foundational texts of the good food movement from Carlo Petrini and Michael Pollen, Ana Lepe and putting the pieces together that cooking might not just be this fun aesthetic, delicious thing, but actually had a interesting and important place in the world. And in relation to a lot of the things that I cared about and wanted to write about and that's what began to make me think that cooking could be a more of a career that was both intellectually stimulating and also physically and aesthetically like really pleasing and exciting to work.
I eventually moved to New York. I worked at a restaurant called Locanda Verde very briefly. When I first moved here, which is a really busy, popular and delicious restaurant in Tribeca, but I was still torn between whether I wanted to pursue, some grant opportunities or further academic opportunities or if I wanted to go into cooking.
And so I actually left that restaurant to focus on some applications and more of the academic world after a short time, but I had just moved to New York. I needed to survive. I needed the money and I found egg on Craigslist and only really applied. Well, I applied because I knew that the kind of sourcing principles that were in place in the dressing room were important to me and egg expressed those.
But also it was a breakfast restaurant in my mind. I was like, this will be easy. I can just work in the morning. I'll write in the afternoon. This is great. I'll be here for a few months and then I'll bounce off to the next thing. And I basically told George as much when he interviewed me that I'd only be there for a few months, which is not something you want to hear when you're interviewing a new employee in any field, probably particularly in cooking, but I guess he saw through me and
my intention was clearly misguided because 12 years later I was still, working at egg so that's awesome. Yeah, that's how I ended up in that kitchen.
Jack: That's so cool. I mean, I mentioned this over email to you, but egg was actually one of the first places I went in Williamsburg for food
I had spent some time there, but maybe to go out or something. Mm-hmm . And my friend who was my first summer in New York was like very in the know she, Amber I'll give her a shout out. All right. Thanks Amber. Yeah, she, no, but she was like, okay, but this is this really cool place.
She's also from Michigan we both care about seasonal cooking and all of that stuff. And we loved it like such a cool place and, and such a special space. I mean, like you said, with dressing room, I think it was pretty early on and very early if you think about the huge Williamsburg food scene that seems to be ever expanding right now.
Yeah. I think I've had like three new restaurants on my block. Which is great for me, but it has gotten just crazy big and big names, but I don't know if you felt that way. Did you know, oh, this might actually be a big thing for the neighborhood and this restaurant would become so popular.
And so like, well written about when, when you started or did it take some time for it to really gain traction?
Evan: Yeah, it, I mean already when I arrived there, egg had reached like a really high level of acclaim and popularity in the neighborhood. Partly I think because it was one of the early restaurants there, you know, really cooking from scratch, cooking seasonally.
I mean, there's you know, places like diner there early on as well, but as far as breakfast goes and as far as bringing these really high quality ingredients and farmer's market ingredients into a very accessible setting, where somewhere you could eat every day and wasn't a splurge where you went out and had some really nice food, but it wasn't a part of your regular routine.
The idea with egg was for, to just show that you could have those kind of quality ingredients and on your breakfast plate every day, some good eggs, some good grits, well raised bacon, mm-hmm, some local vegetables, that sort of stuff. I was still very new to New York and kind of wide-eyed and like, I don't even know what's going on or what neighborhood's, what , so I don't think I totally understood.
At the beginning, what was happening in Williamsburg at the time, which was the, the time when the change was really taking off yeah. Towards what it's become today. But of course, again, looking back really interesting to be there and be a part of such a cornerstone of that neighborhood and of what was happening artistically, culturally in the neighborhood, in those early stages.
So yeah, I was very lucky to land there, even if I wasn't exactly sure what I was landing in when I first arrived.
Jack: It makes sense. , I think the time was definitely right. But pretty amazing to see the run it had obviously too, mm-hmm I mean, I don't know, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts too, on just working in one place for that long, especially after you thought.
You based on what I heard,
Evan: It definitely wasn't, wasn't my plan
Jack: right, right. How did you end up , really saying committed to that mission, obviously the expansion, like going to Tokyo and yeah. Things that you probably really never expected at that stage. I'd love to hear about that.
Evan: No, it's true. I mean, I was so lucky it's the kind of situation that I think it feels so strange, especially in the food industry to hear how you worked somewhere for 12 years. Like, that's just not what happens, you know, 12 months is a long time and for a lot of people at a certain restaurant, but I was so lucky to land in this situation with George who, he and I are such close friends now and very similar in a lot of ways in ways I couldn't have anticipated when I first arrived there. But the things that I saw in the restaurant that reflected George's personality and values Or what hooked me at first, the mission around creating a positive work environment and really treating, cooking like a profession and not just something you did on your way to something else.
And the same with service, the commitment to sourcing locally and sourcing from quality and responsible producers from around the country and the desire to really create a community space that was accessible and healthful and left people feeling better than when they walked in.
The idea was to create this transformational breakfast experience, which sounds kind of like crazy, but you saw it every day, dozens of times a day when people walked in and when they left and the feeling that you might be setting some of the little pieces of New York on a better path as they went out into the city for the rest of the day, like maybe you were just nudging the trajectory of the whole city in a slightly better direction.
That was pretty cool. And then over the years, there just continued to be new developments and new projects. That forwarded that mission from starting our farm up in the Catskills. To opening Parish, which was the restaurant we had down the street for a couple years to moving egg, to the Parrish Hall location, which was much bigger.
And then seeing how, we thought egg was as busy as it could have get. And then in a larger location, we saw that could get almost twice as busy yeah. To writing a cookbook, to opening egg in Tokyo. There was just there was always a new challenge and a new way to think about what we were doing, expand the work that we were doing.
And it just kept me interested , I don't think I was thinking what's next. What's next all the time. Yeah. I was just fortunate to try to like respond to what was happening and what was happening was that I kept being reengaged and reinvigorated by the work. And it was just a lucky position to be.
Jack:
But I mean, definitely lucky, but I think also a Testament to the choices you made, because I think it's easy. I imagine coming out of Tulane and like you had friends come to New York to like go into finance and things like that, where people are always gunning for the next thing. And to stay in one place, but you saw it pay off in, in so much other, probably more interesting ways.
And also it sounds like the partnership, obviously having a boss that allowed you to have that flexibility and then really bring you in as a thought partner when you were so young and new to the scene, I think is, is pretty awesome. Definitely. Yeah, yeah.
Evan: A lucky thing too, but totally not, not everyone is open to, to leaving that kind of space for collaboration, for growth for the way I really became integrated into the fabric of the business.
Mm-hmm so the conditions that, you know, George created the conditions for that to happen and it also worked out that I ended up being a good person for those conditions at the same time. So that like synchronicity of those things happening in a way.
Jack: I wanted to go back to ask if there were any other books from the last call class that have stuck with you, because I'm always looking selfishly for, for new book recommendations.
Evan: Yeah. So absolutely. I wish I had the syllabus still, but we also read The Member of the Wedding, the Carson McCullers book, which we've also done at tables of content dinner on since then. And then the book that I wrote, my kind of major paper on was Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry, which I think has had a bit of a bit of resurgence in popularity, but was kind of lesser known at the time, but really interesting formative or formally interesting book I would definitely recommend it if you're into like a weird disorienting reading experience. Oh, always. I think we also read
maybe Tender is the Night. That might have been a different class. Yeah. A couple others, but I don't recall all the texts.
Jack: Yeah, no, that's, that's great. Now I'm curious. Are there any books if you were to go back and teach a class similar, based on some of the stuff you've done from tables of contents, too, if there would be any books that would raise to the top, because I have one in particular that is on my list.
If I were to ever teach that you did actually do so, but I I'll let you,
Evan: I'm still like pinching myself at how lucky we've been at the caliber of authors that have been excited to take part yeah. In Tables of Contents over the years, just people who, I always joke that cooking ended up being my back door into the kind of literary circles. I never would've climbed to if I had just kept writing
Folks that come to mind are Alexander Chee Queen of the Night, which is one of my favorite has become one of my favorite books ever. Would certainly be a book I teach Carmen Maria Machado. Her Body and Other Parties. One of the great, weird books of the past 10 years Samantha Hunt, I would probably teach, , The Dark Dark .
I think her collection of stories is super interesting. God, I'm gonna forget so many books that I would love. That's okay. You had like 150 authors and you almost any of them could be on the list. Those are a few that, that come to mind off the top. That's that's great.
I actually, oh, go ahead. Sorry. One more, one more that please. We didn't get to do this event in person, but during COVID we did a virtual event with Te-ping Chen who wrote a book called oh my God, I'm blanking on the name right now. It it's gonna, it's gonna come to me. But an amazing collection of stories that each of them like messed my mind up in the best way as we went along, but I'll remember the title and get it to you.
Land of big numbers. I believe it's called. Awesome. Yeah, I haven't what's the book that comes to mind for you?
Jack: Well, the reason I brought it up also besides like, it's kind of a dream thing as a professor, right.
To just be like, this is my class gonna teach whatever I want. Yeah. Sounds like he had a good . Last call. So as,
Evan: yeah, it's actually, it's really cool tables have kind kind us back together. Oh, cool. I mean, in my mind he's still professor Edmonds, but you know, joined our mailing list and, and responds every once in a while and keeps tabs on what we're doing.
And I think it's cool for him to see a former student doing this thing that he finds interesting. And it, and it's so exciting the internal student inside me, you know, for an old professor to be giving me validation. So,
Jack: oh yeah. Oh yeah. It's it's the best, especially like literature.
Or like writing professors where they have certain ones. I feel like same. I went to Michigan, have the same kind of like legendary cult status that, you know, all the artsy kids wanted to take. No matter what, I don't know if that'll ever go away for me as well, but yeah, I it's funny mine, when I was reading over and looking at tables of contents and, and looking at things that's from Carme, Maria Machado would definitely be like top, top of my list.
Dreamhouse mm-hmm Dreamhouse is one of my favorite books of all time, but it's so good. And actually, today, my friend , he's going to fire island, and so he was like, what's like, what's a good gay book that I can bring to look intellectual. And so I, I did give him Alexander Chi, so
Evan: oh, amazing.
Great. Yeah. It's so we're a lot we're align on our curricula here.
Jack: Yeah, exactly. We have good. We
Evan: can sounds like we're teaching the same class. We're co-teaching
Jack: stuff. Exactly. It's a good adjunct thing. Right. We can do every other week. Yes, totally. They get a mix. We'll probably give like differing feedback to the, to the writing and really screw up.
Right. So that's, that's how it, it is in
Evan: my exactly, exactly. Get them ready for the publishing world. right, where you hear divergent things all the time.
Jack: Yeah, exactly. And have you continued writing. Do you still think about writing either, obviously with tables of contents as such a creative project and with cookbooks you've been writing in that way, but I don't know if you've thought about other writing, whether it be food writing or other writing that you were interested in, in undergrad and coming out of undergrad.
Evan: Yeah, I've definitely thought about it. I haven't actualized it as much as I would like to. I was doing the the artist way. I dunno if you're familiar with that. Oh yeah. 12 week program. Kind of fell off in the middle, but I'm getting back on nice this summer, and that was a good, I made it three days.
Jack: So, so you made it a lot longer
Evan: than great. Yeah, I think, I think in my first time I might have made it three days and then I made it six weeks and hopefully next time I'll make it all. But that was a good way to sort of warm the, , the muscles up in the writing world and having the tables of content's newsletter, even though the writing is much different than writing a story or, or writing poetry has been a nice way to just stretch the voice a little bit in simple, letters to the folks who are subscribing.
I really love doing that , and you'll relate to this. I love doing interviews, one of my favorite parts of tables of contents are the conversations we have with the authors at the end of the readings, but also having longer conversations interviews with artists of all kinds. Yeah.
Chefs, farmers is super fascinating to me and, and I think that crafting a successful interview and then editing and presenting it in a way that's compelling is its own cool kind of writing to me. So there are definitely ways I'd like to do more of it. And I'm always hoping to carve out more time for that.
Right.
Jack: But it is interesting. I mean, I think like writing is maybe the one that's most like immediately accessible to, or like when we're younger, we think we could, it's something we could imagine ourselves doing. Whereas like the realm of creativity for a lot of writers, it's like, I don't know, you could do a lot of things like, like cooking or like other art forms.
And I think you see so many different multi genre artists now, and people being more comfortable and flexing those lines, which is funny because like MFA programs are still separated and like, you are poetry, you are nonfiction, you are fiction. It's like, I don't know that anyone is actually like, yep.
That's what I wanna sign up for, for the rest of my life.
Evan: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I wonder, I'm sure there are programs that are, you know kind of creating new structures yeah. For people to work in that are less hierarchical or less divided than the traditional models. And I imagine those will continue to be more common as, as like you say, people work across genre and across discipline.
Jack: Yeah, definitely, definitely hope so. And even just like expanding what those genres are, I think is, is cool to see mm-hmm but I want going back little bit, I mean, you went to egg, you, you started there, you were thinking about doing the writing, you've done a lot of creative projects.
You started tables of contents. You've written cookbooks. I feel like these are a lot of projects that I personally, maybe wouldn't have the guts to, to go and do on my own. There's a lot of stuff that you went and did, and there's not a guarantee that this is gonna be , a success.
Do you feel like you are inherently someone who's willing to take risks or was there ways you coach yourself into that comfort or boosted your risk tolerance? asking for myself really?
Evan: Yeah, it's a good question. And I don't know if I have like a clear answer to it, right? I'm still learning about myself but I think, or what comes to mind for each of those things, is that in all these projects I've had collaborators and I feel like a collaborative person at heart.
I love working with people on projects and certainly opening parish hall and writing the breakfast cookbook and opening in Tokyo. Those are full collaborations, with George my partner at egg. And having someone else signed up for the ride you're pushing each other out of the plane or down the slide or whatever it is.
And that was really helpful and allowed me to be brave in, in ways that I don't know if I would've done on my own. And similarly with tables of contents that was a project that at the beginning didn't feel risky, cuz it was sort of let's give it a shot and see what happens.
But even with that, when we held our first reading series, after we had done a handful of dinners it was with a friend of mine, Rebecca Stein, who we had started chatting about this idea and she helped bring in a few other friends to be the readers for the first couple months of the reading series.
And so in that, in that case too, had someone who, who was collaborating with me on that. And then with the cookbook that we wrote for Tables of contents during COVID, there was a bit of a combination of just the world being so weird that it was like, we gotta do something. Why not try this?
And again, finding incredible collaborators, especially Mariah Rodriguez who designed the book and did so much of the work, making it look as, as beautiful as it did. That's so nice. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It's gorgeous. So lucky to find her and she, she just did an incredible job with.
And also I think a big part of even considering doing that was, was not really letting myself think too much about what it would take. I just started sending out emails to authors to see if they might potentially be interested in contributing some recipes and a little story. And I don't know what it would be, but might raise funds for food relief.
And once people started saying yes, then I was committed. Then I had to see it through. I think if I went back and thought too long about, here are all the steps it's gonna take and here's how much it's gonna cost. And here's how many copies, like we would need to sell to actually make some sort of impact.
I would've been like no way . Yeah. But I think when I had already started to leap and there was no going back, it was just like, we'll see where it goes from here. So sometimes I think that's, that's key is you're never really, and this is something I think I I've learned.
Certainly working in restaurants and opening a couple restaurants you know, tried to carry with me is you're never ready. You're never as ready as you want to be. Or I guess I should say you may never feel ready, but you are ready. Like we can all can do, so much more than your rational brain will let you believe.
And you as a creative person need to turn off that, that rational brain a little bit and just go for it. And know that whatever happens there's gonna be something beyond that, that one project success or failure. And as much as you can hold onto that, that mindset and that give it a shot attitude.
Yeah, God, I love that more success you're gonna have.
Jack: Yeah. I think it's so hard in, in New York, especially to embrace the, the irrational when you're like, yeah. To turn that off, especially when. Everybody here obviously is the hustle culture. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to afford living in the city, which is very real concern, but I do think it prevents a lot of people from doing what they wanna do.
And, and then you get blindsided to the fact that actually there's a lot of people in the city who make it work, who are doing those things that you wanna do, who are doing creative work and they're figuring a way to make it work and to be here. Mm-hmm you just might not always see those
people.
Evan: Right. Right. And, and it may not also look like creative work as career either. Like I was able to do tables of contents because I had a job at egg that I worked at, a very full-time job. But was it also allowed me the space and resources to try, try out this idea. And it continues to be something that doesn't really make any money, but provides me and, and the team that works on tables of contents with me and a TC community, the audience and, and people who are, who have become to know it and love it provides us with so much other I don't know, so much other return like wonderful return that's not financial.
Jack: Yeah. I mean, even in the, in the social media presence, , is so reflective of, and obviously by design, by what the team has done, there is much more community oriented, sharing the mic, so to speak versus like mm-hmm, , let's try and push and sell the cookbook to the max amount.
It's, it's really focused on the community. In a way that feels super authentic because it is. And as someone who follows, appreciates that, especially when, like, like we talked about, it's just that part can be a bit of a drag and you feel like you have to do it. Yeah.
Evan: Yeah, absolutely. It's a lot, it's a lot easier to, to share the mic and let other people, tell their stories for me as some, I mean, even as someone whose role and tables of contents to be in front of the mic and to chat with authors and to be host right.
I'm much more comfortable doing that and being a champion of other people's work and other people's ideas and doing that in a way that's building community or serving some other purpose than self-promotion, which I continue to be less than comfortable with. Yeah. is a that's good thing trying
to work on.
Jack: It's good. Right. Like I think I wish I had more of it, but also don't want to get too much of it, you know, it's a fine balance. For sure. yes. And going back to kind of the launching this cookbook, obviously you talk about during COVID would love to talk about, you know, a few things during obviously the impact it had on egg tragically.
Sure. And, you know, just being in the industry during that time, but also mm-hmm, I think the way you channeled that into table contents and also thinking about food justice and, and would love to hear what that means to you and what got you interested there? I know that's a big question and a tough subject.
Evan: Yeah, totally. A very big question. I guess I'll start with the trajectory of COVID. I mean, anyone who's in the city or in this country knows a really hard time for many industries particularly the food industry or a service industry more broadly. And I think when we were going through it a little bit like the mindset needed to start new projects, the mindset needed to persist through that.
In whatever form we were able to required us to turn off a little bit of the like rational brain. Mm-hmm because you kind of couldn't get bogged down with why is this happening? What's going on? , how are we gonna survive long term? It was a very much like, what are we gonna do today?
What are we gonna do tomorrow? How are we gonna get through this? What's the need in front of us right now? We can't have customers in the restaurant, but we have produce in the walk-in. How do we find ways to get that to people who need it? And I was so lucky to be a part of fig this community of chefs and food activists and urban farmers and caterers people all across the food industry largely based in New York that had been meeting really informally in this sort of self education model for a long time, we'd have study group where we'd get together and share potluck meals and talk about issues in the food system that we might not have , the time or space to dig into during our working hours and in whatever our many jobs were at the time.
Right. And through that, we were also able to practice activating , on our mission and , on our values in small ways over the years. And so when COVID came through and being so close to many of the populations that were , most acutely affected by it. Food workers undocumented communities we were kind of positioned well with that.
The jump into the fire attitude that a lot of people in, who work in kitchens have we were positioned well , to start something quickly and to share our resources and, and activate our network. And that was just an amazing way I think, for all of us to feel like we were still doing the work that was important to us, which was feeding people, even if we weren't able to do it in the model or in these spaces that we were used to doing it.
So that's how the food justice work began. For me just immediately after COVID started organizing home deliveries of produce and prepared meals that, and that that's something we thought. Again, we didn't really think about what the long term of it was, but we began and then nine months later we were still doing it.
And it had grown along the way. And with that work, there was a ton of need to obviously try to try to fund it in whatever ways we could. And a lot of people doing that work and a lot of funds needed. And so since tables of contents also couldn't have in person gatherings, the cookbook came to mind as a way that we could both engage with our community engage with the authors and hopefully raise some money to support the work that that fig was doing and continued to do so.
Yeah, again, exactly like we were talking about before, just not really not really thinking about what it would take to go all the way, whatever, all the way meant. Right. But still intentionally acting but in a more focused and more, let's give it a shot sort of way and that, and that naturally grew into its own self sustain thing.
And now fig continues to partner with Transgrediendo, which is one of our closest community organization partners for weekly food delivery. We're working with black trans liberation now on a new project and we've restarted our study group. This also happened with tables of contents when some of the avenues for our work were cut off with COVID new ones opened.
And then as some of the avenues that had been cut off, began to reopen, we maintained the new ways of working we had developed and we restarted the old ways of working and through that process of growth that we were able to be forced into something new and then bring back something else that was important to us which I'm sure for a lot of people in COVID on personal levels where you might have made changes to your life and then reincorporated things that you were missing as they became accessible. So if you were lucky enough to I guess survive, through this horrible time I think a lot of people found their lives had taken on new and maybe fuller shapes because of going through that
Jack: for sure. But I love, I mean, embracing kind of the good thing about it in is that it was such a horrible time and that allowed people to say, well, what the hell?
What do we have to lose? Mm-hmm in a way. And I think that's yeah, enabled. I I've seen so many, so many friends in my life take new creative projects or new career paths. And I think that at least is a positive outcome. Mm-hmm but yeah, that's so super, super interesting. And obviously such impactful work and it, and it goes back to what you're talking about with egg, with, with all your projects have just been super community oriented. And it sounds like that collaboration though is also what just drives you in, in order to actually pursue the next big project.
Evan: I might have mentioned before the thing it's really the thing that brought me to cooking and allowed me to see cooking for what it could be, which is something that sits at the intersection of all these areas of interest and all these important parts of our society.
And while my first reaction to cooking was that it was a little frivolous and it wasn't really like a long term career I wanted to go. Right. I wanted to be thinking about big things and writing about big things and cooking at first I couldn't see that in the work. But as I began to understand how much it was, it that being in the kitchen and the choices we were making in the kitchen the way those impacted so many of the things that I wanted to be writing about that's, what made it really exciting for me.
And that's what has kept me in it, the pleasure, but also the impact on community and economy and culture and politics and all those things. They all touch food in at some point along their path. And that keeps it exciting still.
Jack: Yeah. I love that. And it, I love that you were used the word also frivolous because I think it is funny in so many different creative genres, people are worried about their work being frivolous, even, even in writing. Like, I think about that all the time who is this really for?
Evan: . No, it's true. It's true. Something you kind have to grapple with, but then you ultimately have to believe in, the work and the potential of that work.
Jack: Yeah. I mean, like it's like , the other flip side is I think our generation is just, there's two things. It's like frivolous in capitalist economic structures. And also on the other hand, which is everyone wants to make this big impact, and how we had initially think of it as like working, like spending my whole time, working on a nonprofit or as an activist, which are obviously all important, but the way I think you actually make it an impact I think is, is more varied than that. Not everybody needs to go do those things and nor would everybody be good in those roles.
and I don't know, it's, it's finding those spaces where, where you can do that within the things you enjoy, which I think is cool about what you've done at, at tables of contents
Evan: Oh, thanks. Yeah, it's true. I mean, it's, it's sort of taking that mindset of impact and both, personal and societal transformation and applying that wherever you find yourself in your career or in your life, you don't have to be in a field that it's explicitly defined as an impact field.
I think a lot of people would say that the kitchen is not. But I know tons of cooks and dishwashers and servers I've worked with who have made enormous impact through that channel of working. So yes, absolutely. It's absolutely possible.
Jack: Okay. I wanna move to some of my rapid fire questions.
I'll call them it'll really keep you on the the hot seat that way. And I do have another one to throw out, so have a few tricks at my sleeve unintentionally.
All right. Let's let's see where this goes.
Evan: This is where I think this is where I get canceled. Yeah,
Jack: exactly. Right. Yeah. Then you can delete it. It's fine. great. We're not in the business to cancel anyone. Cause then I also do. I think I also do at the same time, it's a dangerous game. The first one is what does creativity mean to you?
Evan: I guess I think creativity, what feels like being creatives to me is seeing something in a new way, however, that ends up happening. And that's certainly the mindset that brought tables of contents to life is , what if we took food and put in the context of literature and what he took literature and put it in the context of a table of a dinner or a meal.
So I guess like complicating context, creating new new spaces for things to exist in so that you might see them in a new way. And that might be the way you phrase a sentence or the way you combine colors or notes or whatever, but something about Like curious and new combinations feels like a kind of definition of creativity to me.
I love
Jack: it. That was a great on the spot definition.
Next question is obviously you've surrounded yourself with creatives, your partner's an artists, your friends with a lot of different writers. How did you go about creating such a cool community and friend group in New York where sometimes it feels hard to, to find those people who have like-minded interest.
Evan: Mm, well, I'll definitely have to give a lot of credit to Rachel who's my partner who, while in the early years of having Parrish Hall and egg, at the same time I was working just like crazy had no time for socializing had no friends. And Rachel builts this amazing community of folks who became extremely close friends over the years, some of whom, were in creative fields, some of whom weren't but that was the foundation that I think allowed me to start to settle into New York.
I think even after several years of being in New York, it's a place that's so amazing and so dynamic and full of energy. But if you don't have somewhere to be intimate and to have close and quiet connections with friends, it can also be a place that is easy to feel adrift in.
And if you do have , your core group of, of people then you have the best of both worlds. You have everything you need to live and succeed here, but it's not necessarily easy to find. So I think Rachel really helped me creating that starting point for us and our friend group was key.
I got to meet a lot of really interesting people playing basketball, which is something I try to do when I travel now in every city I go to, I try to play pick up basketball because it's just this space where the rules are understood. The language of the game and of the interaction is understood.
Even if you don't speak the same language and all sorts of people play it. And it's just an entry point for friendships. And I've developed tons of really cool friendships, from, Barcelona, to Tokyo, to Mexico city, , through the basketball court. And here in New York, for sure some of my close friends, I first met playing basketball and then ended up going to their , DJ parties and meeting a bunch of people there. So that was an entry point. And then for writers I think, a lot of it is through tables of contents. And through just in a way, the work and the work of hospitality, , creating spaces where people feel comfortable and feel seen and feel like they're really welcomed in their full selves there and doing that.
And then creating work inspired by their work has led to just a really nice level of connection and understanding. And in many cases, friendship with folks which has been really so joyful for me, and more than I could have hoped at the beginning of, of starting this project.
Jack: I love that.
Any, any favorite places to play pick up? Maybe you don't wanna reveal that oh,
Evan: no, totally. I mean, I, I live in Carroll gardens, so nice. If I play outdoors these days I'll play up at Brooklyn bridge park. Oh. But I used to play a lot on the courts at Christie and Houseton. That's where I had a bunch of a bunch of friends early on. That was my regular my regular pickup spot. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't usually probably the two.
Jack: Most, my boyfriend plays pretty regularly at, at Tomkin square park. I'm not a basketball player. Yeah. So I feel like I'm missing out on that. Now hearing you say about it.
Evan: It's not the only way in
Jack: that's right. I could do
at Brooklyn bridge park. They also have volleyball, you know, also can't probably play that, but I feel like, you know, can started somewhere?
Evan: Yeah, I was actually just at Tompkins square park a couple weeks ago. I hadn't played there in a long time. Yeah. But it was live. It was a great energy.
Jack: It's very live. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun to go watch cuz just a lot of personalities too, which is
Evan: great. Absolutely.
Jack: Are there any writers who's writing about food, makes them a target for you for tables of contents that you're excited about or would love to work with?
Evan: Yeah, a target. It sounds so, so violent. Yeah. I know. Like on, on your hit list, I'm coming to get 'em that's right. Oh man. There's there's so many folks who would be a dream to have at, at TC, I guess, in terms of people who we haven't had come read before. Yeah, there's some authors who we had been in the works on things with before COVID that ended up being disrupted.
One of them was Brian Washington. Who's writing in general, but particular around food. I really love Ocean Vuong. I'd love to love to work with them on anything just like, even if it's not writing about food, I feel like I know that work is so lyrical and beautiful. Who else comes to mind?
Angie Cruz is someone we've been trying to have come through for a while. Ella Thoman I love, love for work. Yeah, I mean, one of my great, one of the great tragedies of life and of tables of contents is amazing. Books come out so much faster than you can possibly keep up with them. And that's just gonna be something I have to accept as a reader and, and as a curator forever, that's it?
Jack: That's right. So, yeah. That's funny. Have you ever read real life by Brandon Taylor?
Evan: I haven't, but we've been, we've been in touch with Brandon recently. Oh, that's funny. And trying to get him through it.
Jack: He would be a good one, I think from a, yeah, from a food perspective, writing perspective.
Evan: Oh, cool.
Yeah. I'm not, I'm not familiar with the food in that book, but I love his writing and he's hilarious on Twitter. So yeah, yeah. Be a great
Jack: guest. He does this like really cool where he like makes like he being the, he writes about the character making this dinner that I just really liked that scene, which made me think of it as, you're mentioning some of the other writers.
Cool. I'll we'll bump into the, you'll have check it out. Yeah. On, I'm sure your very long list. Okay. Two, two, maybe three more. what helps you reengage your creative energy when you're feeling stuck or down.
Evan: Mm, well, I guess it depends on which creative energy is down, but cooking is often , a recharge for me cooking with, and for friends, especially I love having people over for dinner.
I love having people over for breakfast. I'm like really trying to get the, the breakfast hang to be more of a thing than the dinner. It's just an amazing way to start the day. I love being outside, going for a walk. I like being in the woods, , my parents still live in Connecticut and then in the spring I'll go up and it's almost eye Rollie now, but yeah, I've been doing it for so long.
I think I can still own like foraging for ramps and mushrooms and stuff there. When the season's right. And playing basketball again, like going out yeah. And like shooting around or like exhausting myself on the court. It's one of those places where it can be hard to enter a flow state in writing or in, and other kinds of creative work.
For me, it still feels like maybe just so that I'm not doing it enough or not practiced enough, it's always work. And rarely I'm entering that kind of place where I'm just like coasting and then zone, right. Things are happening around me. And I can enter that zone when I'm cooking and definitely when I'm playing basketball.
And I think that just does something to one's brain that opens things up or totally loosens some wires or something like that. So, totally. That's
Jack: that's great. The one I wanted to add was also if there's any, any upcoming projects that you're working on that you're excited about or anything else that I can plug here.
Evan: Yeah, there are some projects. Which ones are we ready to talk about? I don't know. yeah, if, if
Jack: they're too secretive, that's okay too. No, no, not really. There's anything under wraps. Wouldn't wanna. I
Evan: mean, there's, there's a bunch, there's a bunch of tables of contents events in the works. Nice. Which are excited we have one on Monday. Well, it'll be after this is, has aired. I'm sure. But we do them monthly. So next one is coming up in a few days. Awesome. The end of July, September, October, all, you know, so booking those out are really fun starting to select the food for those is, exciting.
I think I can talk about this and then if I can I'll know later, but exactly I send it out. , I'm weirdly to me working on this project on Jewish futures, which is with a friend of mine who I've done climate work with in the past and her work and sort of facilitation is focused on creating positive or optimistic narratives about the future, whether that's in a political setting, whether that's in a climate setting.
And in this case, she's working with a foundation that's trying to explore more positive, interesting Jewish features that are not, you know, tied to some of the traditional things that Jewish futures tend to be tied to like the state of Israel or Jewish reproduction. And I'm working with a group of artists.
Each of us are working independently to create an idea of what , this looks like in the next five hundred years that's so I'm actually using the tables of contents idea and pairing it with the tradition of the Sater, which is a mirror around the story and imagining a time in which tons of Stater like meals are happening, but the source material might be a novel or might be a collection of forms and the tables are diverse and the voices are diverse.
And that's in my mind, an exciting way to, to build on that tradition for a new world and for a more interesting future So, yeah. I'm curious to see how that idea comes together. That's cool. That's awesome. Thanks. And then I'm doing my first artist residency this summer in Vermont.
So I'll be away for three weeks working on who knows what right now, but I've had some ideas for like installation style projects with tables of contents. I wonder if any of them will, will find clarity in that time, but I'm just, I'm, I'm really excited to have this three week stretch of time away from my life focusing on creative work, which I haven't yet had.
So that'll be a new experience.
Jack: That's really cool. That's awesome. And where is that?
Evan: Yeah, it's at, it's at the marble house project. Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Outside of Dorset Vermont. That's so awesome. Yeah. So I'm really looking forward to that.
Jack: Yeah. I I'll be curious.
I'll definitely follow up. I'm curious to hear how it goes.
Evan: Yeah, I'll definitely let you know. And, and hopefully some cool work will come out of it.
Jack: Oh, yeah, you're already on their website and everything. Look at that. Oh really? Oh no, I haven't seen this. Yeah, they have some good, they have some nice pictures of tables of contents reading series there.
Okay. That's awesome. They're on it. They're on it.
Evan: this is, this is a reveal for me. This is real time
Jack: yeah. Yeah. This confirming. We're not any trade secrets here. I like any releasing anything before they did. Lastly, just wanted to close with any other thoughts on creativity or any lessons you wish, that other people told you earlier or lessons you did get when you were earlier in your career, that that were really inspiring to you?
Evan: I know, I guess I just, it's probably, it's true. I think in all areas of life, Little moments of like positive reinforcement are so important. Especially in the creative life, which already faces such challenges from the world and from the way society is structured and from the way we're messaged about how we're meant to build our our lives.
And I think I was just lucky on all sorts of levels from the family level to friends, to, you know, mentors or people I just interacted with to be given when I most needed it signs that whatever I was doing was worth doing and worth pursuing. Right. And I just don't think there's anything more important than that.
And, and as a society, I think we need to find more ways to make that accessible to, to everyone. You know, sometimes I think graduate programs, , MFAs are the biggest thing you can get out of. It might be that right. Might be a, a place for there's space for your work. And there are people telling you, you can do this, this is good work on this, you know, even more so than the technical skills you might acquire there, but we cannot certainly cannot have, it be the case that you have to be able to pay for the kind of encouragement that is gonna allow you the confidence to continue with your, with your art?
Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. I don't know that that just feels important. And, and something like I was so lucky to have as, as I started cooking and then as we started ToC and let me feel like, all right, we can, we can give this a try and I'm lucky I did. Yeah. I
Jack: love that. I mean, it feels like. Almost in some ways, a no brainer, but I do think so challenging to get, especially like a lot of these, a lot of creative projects can feel super like you're on your own and you don't really know what the path is and what steps to take and having that reinforcement.
And also just how to navigate, I think is also so important.
Evan: Yeah. Especially , just the idea of art as it's presented with a capital a can be so intimidating. And we talk about this at tables comments all the time. Part of the reason for existing the similarities I felt in the creative process are just the process of writing a poem and making a dish of food and the overlap in what you need to succeed in both those things.
It's just like the repetition of scrambling thousands of eggs. Like that's a creative act and that's something that if you're intentional about it is the same kind of thing as working on your syntax , or working on your lines or your your chords or whatever, and letting people see like the lowercase
encouraging people to see the lowercase, a art in many things we do in our, in our daily life is also I think, to open up the creative mind and creative possibility to folks. So I think that's another thing too, democratizing art is like a kind of a trope but I do think it's, it's really important to bring it in to, to our everyday.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
And I, I feel like not, not a trope in the way you're describing it for sure. Okay, good. I agree. No, I agree. I think it's like acknowledging some of it because then it can also mean the things that seem more daunting you can compare to like, actually, it's not really all that different from what I'm doing in this, in this other space.
Jack: Which I think is really nice. Absolutely. Awesome. I know I already am, am over time. But oh, all good. . but thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation. Great to chat.
Evan: I hope you keep in touch and I hope you can come to a TSE at
Jack: yeah, I was just saying, thinking that I was like, I definitely wanna be more involved in those.
It just sounds so fun. And now that we're post COVID, I think in terms of building community in New York, going to things like that is super special and kind of a rare yeah. Thing. So, so glad that you're doing it. I, I definitely will come.
Evan: Awesome. Well, I'll look forward to seeing you all,
Jack: Have a lovely night.
Jack: Thanks once again to Evan whose fantastic work, you can see both at his Instagram at @EvanHanczor or check out the tables of contents page online at www.tablesofcontents.com or via Instagram at tables.of.Contents. They , as a reminder, they are having an event next week in Brooklyn that I myself plan to go to, but there are many more events coming up.
They usually do one about once a month. Thanks once again for listening and make each day a day to make.
