Award-winning Chefs Samin Nosrat and Dominique Crenn on the Future of Food Systems

Matt Jaffe: From Salesforce Studios, this is Blazing Trails. Welcome to the Blazing Trails podcast presented by WordPress VIP. I'm Matt Jaffe, Senior Director at Salesforce. Today's guests are two award- winning chefs, Dominique Crenn, and Samin Nosrat. Dominique was nominated the world's best chef in 2016, and Samin is the author of the New York times bestselling cookbook, Salt, Fat Acid Heat, which was recently adapted into a Netflix Docuseries that she stars in. If you haven't seen it, check it out. It's fantastic. Both of these amazing chefs join Louisa Burwood- Taylor, head of media and research at AgFunder to discuss food systems and how they can be made more sustainable and more equitable. But before we get to today's conversation at Dreamforce a word about WordPress VIP who is making this show possible. WordPress VIP is the digital publishing solution that powers the world's top media companies as well as marketing platforms for some of the best known brands like Time and Facebook. Later on in this episode, you'll hear more of my conversation from Dreamforce with their CEO, Nick Gernert. Now here's Dominique Crenn and Samin Nosrat speaking with Louisa Burwood-Taylor.

Speaker 2: Without further ado, it's my pleasure to introduce the moderator of our first panel session today, Ms. Louisa Burwood- Taylor. Louisa is a journalist and editor, and currently the head of media and research for AgFunder, the online venture capital firm focused on food tech and Agtech, the chief editor of the daily news site AFN. She has over 10 years of financial journalism experience and has covered a range of financial products and markets during her career from equity capital to Asia and beyond. I don't know, you've been a busy woman, so pleasure. Welcome.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Thank you. Thank you. How is everyone today? Oh, great. But I wouldn't blame you if you were feeling a bit depressed, not a day goes by where we don't hear about an alarming climate statistic about how we're never going to reach the targets that we've been set on minimizing our impact on the climate. Just yesterday, there's a headline in the Guardian fossil fuel production is on track to double the safe climate limit and no doubt, there were several more this week. But the energy industry is not the only one that is getting flack for its environmental footprint. More than ever before the food and agriculture industries are also under the spotlight for their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, which stands at around 14% of the total, which is just under transport. But I have good news, there are an increasing number of innovators and entrepreneurs who are developing technologies to help the industry be more sustainable. At AgFunder we've been covering this for over six years now and we've seen exponential growth in the number of startups and the amount of VC investment in this space. We had a record breaking year of$ 17 billion worth of investment last year and we expect this year to be even bigger. In fact, this has been a really breakout year for our industry. No doubt, you would have heard of some of these alternative burger products like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, they've really taken the US by storm and no doubt, will be in other countries soon. And they flung food tech into the spotlight. Consumers wants to take action and beyond Burger King has had one of its best quarters on record, since it launched the Impossible Whopper. Consumers want to know how their food is made and where it comes from. So I'm really excited today to be talking to two amazing award- winning chefs who both have strong views on this topic. Dominique Crenn is the chef and owner of the three Michelin starred Atelier Crenn restaurant here in San Francisco. She has another two restaurants here and is planning a fourth one in the Salesforce tower. She's won numerous awards, including the world's best chef in 2016 and is an activist for positive change. So please welcome her to the stage. Samin Nosrat is the author of the New York times bestselling cookbook, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, which was adapted into an award winning Netflix docuseries in which she stars. She learned to cook at the legendary Chez Panisse under Alice Waters. She's an educator, she's a food columnist and she's very focused on empowering people to cook at home. So please welcome Samin to the stage.

Samin Nosrat: Hello.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: So it's great to be with you both here. Before we get into the serious stuff, I really want to know what did he both have for dinner last night?

Samin Nosrat: Mine is still pitiful. I was flying home from Los Angeles and I already know, I always get so hungry in the airport, so I try to pre eat. So we stopped at my friend's taco place and got tacos, which was really smart because my flight was delayed so many times that by the time I got home, I just opened the fridge and I had roast... I had preemptively roasted vegetables before I left because I was like it's smart, if they're not there, then I'm only going to inaudible. So I just ate cold butternut squash and cauliflower.

Dominique Crenn: It's amazing. Chocolate. No, I'm kidding. No, I just very simple fish and salad. I made that at home.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: What's your favorite food to cook?

Dominique Crenn: That's what I just said, inaudible. No, I like everything. I mean, I don't have any favorite, I just cook whatever.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: What have been some of the key changes you've noticed in the food system since you've been cooking ever in the last few years?

Dominique Crenn: Well, you mean changes where the people-

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Could be the quality of the food that you're getting, where you're purchasing it from?

Dominique Crenn: When I came to United States in the'90s, I was a little bit surprised about the quality of food in America. I love America, but I'm like, " What's going on here?" No, it's true. I mean, you grew up in a place where you go to the market with your mom every week and you grew up not with farmers so quality of food is very important. So I think that changed, I think America is waking up maybe like San Francisco, I don't know in the middle, but this, I think it's changing a lot. I think communities starting to come back together, I think it's people are more conscious, which is amazing and that's the change that I've been seeing. I've been following my vision and philosophy for over 30 years and I've never bought anything commercially or anything, I always work with the community and farmers, but I think now people are conscious that this is something they need to do.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Are you noticing that as well?

Samin Nosrat: I have the positive and the negative to share. For me, one really amazing thing that I watched happen was when I was a young cook at Chez Panisse in the early two thousands, journalist, Michael Pollan wrote this story about it's called Power Steer. And it was the basis that became the omnivore's dilemma, and it was about sort of his journey through the life of one steer that he bought and raised on a big corporate farm. And that led to a cultural awareness of the importance of grass fed beef. And at Chez Panisse, when Alice Waters read it, she immediately declared that we would only serve completely grass fed and finished beef. But in 2000 there were not great sources for that kind of beef in this country, it didn't taste very good. So as the cooks, we were pissed. We were like, " This sucks, we have to serve bad beef." But she was adamant. And what it did was it created a market. It created a market for something, we stood up as sort of industry leaders. And now grass fed beef, you can find like there's fast food places that serve grass fed beef. So that's been an amazing thing to watch over the last almost 20 years. But also I think I've also been the witness to a lot of consolidation and small farms not figuring out the economics of existing, I've just the chicken, which is my favorite thing is in my own personal experience, we had an amazing farm called Soul Food Farm in Vacaville that we would purchase beautiful pastured chickens that lived completely free range life. And that farm couldn't make the economics of raising chicken work because the chicken meat would have to be $ 12 a pound for them to have a good lifestyle for humans who ran this place. So they stopped raising and selling chicken. And then we sort of went to the next possible place, the next possible place. And now for restaurants, there are very few in the Bay area, which is this is the beacon of sustainable agriculture. We all pretty much just buy Mary's chicken, which is a pretty big factory farm. It's an organic one, but to me that's something that we don't really talk about because you just slap the word organic, you slap the word free range, you slap the word whatever Walmart is, this amazing source of organics now. Costco's an amazing source of organics. And those things are really important for our environment, but also what does it actually mean? Sort of behind the curtain, those are questions I don't find people asking.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: And so how could consumers go and find that pasture raised meat?

Samin Nosrat: We are just getting straight into a guy's leg. I think it's a really complicated thing, but I think we all need to be paying more for our meat. And because when you see what it means on the lot about the lives of the animals, the lives of the people who are raising these animals for you to insist that your chicken is$ 299 a pound for organic or$ 599 a pound or whatever, it doesn't translate. And yet for me to sit here on this fancy stage in this fancy building with you fancy people and insisting that we all pay more for our food is a really complicated thing to say when there are so many people for whom food access is really complicated and difficult and impossible. So I think it's a systemic question that we're not sort of pushed to ask questions about, we're not pushed to look into and I think it's comes down to individual responsibility because this food system is not going to like the word capitalism doesn't want you to ask questions. They want you to just order your food from wholefoods. com or whatever. So it's a tricky thing, but for a simple answer, start going to a farmer's market, start getting to know your local producers, go visit that farm, see how those people live, see how their workers live, that's the first step I think.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: And Dominique, with your restaurants, how involved are you with the farmers that you're sourcing from?

Dominique Crenn: Well, I'm very lucky. We are very lucky because we have a farm up in Sonoma which is biodynamic and organic and it's a lot of work, takes a lot of time, but at least we are producing the things we want to serve on the menu. Farmer market, deal with your farmer it's number one thing, but I know it takes a lot of time, but also it's about us changing our behavior. We spend, I don't know, 24 hours on the phone, maybe it's nice out of those 24 hours take about 10 minutes out of your day, go to the farmer market and just like really connect with those people because they need us too. So it's complicated.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: It's not complicated.

Dominique Crenn: I think we are in a world that we've been given so much, but we forget to give back, so now I think it's time to realize that we messed up this world pretty badly. And it's not about being vegan or vegetarian or going to the extreme, but it's also understanding that there is a huge problem. I mean, the food system is complicated. The meats, the farming is complicated. When you say, yes, Mary chicken is organic, but everybody's using it is like, you have to think about this. So what do we do individually to make things better? We can preach a better food system, but I think it's up to us each of us everyday to do something that has a meaning and an understanding. So be more conscious about what you do and be more conscious when you go to a store. And I know it's a problem also that is expensive. Organic is expensive too, but it's BS for me because some people are organic and they're not really organic. crosstalk. Maybe we need to have a different president of the United States that-

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: It's important?

Dominique Crenn: Yeah. But it needs to start from the top and everything is involved politically. So when you start to change laws, he has to go. So what I think now we are the people, so we need to change it in our own community and not care about the political system and maybe that way things are moving. And I can see it. I think the farmer market is... I talked to a lot of farmers right now and more farmers, also more youngster wants to get into that. So, but it takes time to know.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Yeah. And so on that topic, there's a lot of technologies that I'm writing about every day that are helping farmers to farm more sustainably to conserve water, to use fewer harmful pesticides and too much fertilizer. How aware are you of those technologies and do you talk to your farmer suppliers about them?

Dominique Crenn: Well, there is zero tolerance for pesticide on the farm, and I'm very lucky to have a farmer that knows all that. Yeah, but that's an education that needs to be given to a lot of people that want to get into that business because is, when I read, before I came here, America, I think up to the 1940, it was a farm land. It was amazing. It was rich of vegetable and all that. And then the industrialization of food came in the''50s, everything disappeared and what disappear is the education and tell people how to do things right. So that needs to come from that.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Where should that come from, the education? Is that a responsibility of the government do you think?

Dominique Crenn: What?

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: The nonprofits?

Dominique Crenn: Yes. First of all, education should be free. And this is one of the things. Food is the core of the society, if you don't have food, you don't have any culture, any society. And sometime I feel that if there is no education about, this is almost a government want to control the way that we think and the way that we eat. So yeah, it needs to be more education here. I mean, you can find them in... When you go to Sweden, when you go... In France, now there a lot of education about this. And I think this is very important. We are feeding ourself. We need to know what's going on and how it's been produced. So why there is such a little education about it. I mean, go to school, what our children are eating at school is-

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Horrific.

Dominique Crenn: It's horrific.

Samin Nosrat: It's like lower grade than most prisons what served in schools. Just in the elementary school, around the corner from my house, my friends take their kids in Oakland, all the kids have available to them as free breakfast. It's just built into the, which is great, but what they get for free breakfast is usually a super sugary muffin. And for a lot of kids, that's all they have to eat and they rely on that, those calories, but also is that really the thing that's going to nourish them and help them perform the best at school. And so the people who really need those systems to be changed are the ones who have the least sort of power and resources to make those changes. So I feel, I agree with you. I think it's all about individual change. This is also like we've taken on the very largest version of this conversation, we're talking about every sort of this like as broad as possible, but I spend a lot of my time thinking about sort of the responsibility. We can sit around and discuss crop subsidies that date back to the early 1900s and all of these things that have resulted in the way things are. And also I do think a lot of the responsibility does fall to government, but government's not going to be motivated to make any changes until we ask for that. And I think because a lot of us are so disconnected or don't have this information or don't really understand what makes a box of cereal be$ 399 and actual corn be more expensive or whatever, like per calorie be more expensive. We don't have those tools. And so to me, my hope is to help educate people, to help inspire them and to move people to really be motivated, to make individual change in the way that we eat. And for now, I think my focus in the last six months, I've read so much about climate change and I feel like our responsibility as cooks and educators is to educate people and use our platforms to teach people about the importance of agriculture on climate change. And as much as I really fundamentally understand that climate change, there will not be a shift in it until there is major policy shift and corporate shift, I don't know that that corporate shift or policy shift will happen without people demanding it. And that requires us to have an individual understanding, to be making our own sacrifices and get angry about why companies aren't making sacrifices, why governments aren't making sacrifices. So I feel like I can speak on an individual level to people about what it means to give up your cheese and how much that sucks or give up your chicken and how much that sucks. And also-

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Am I giving up my cheese? crosstalk.

Samin Nosrat: I think that's the common thread in all of these parts of the food system is there's incredible. We have our versions of our farmer's markets that we're familiar with here, and we know our farmers, but also across this country, the farmers and small farms that we're familiar with are the minority. Farming is big, big business, and those farmers are aging out and there aren't young people rising up to take over those jobs. And so what's going to happen. The food system is sort of on the brink of eminent collapse in that way. There's so much just over the horizon that we don't know about and I'm still learning about, and if I don't even know about it and I live this 24/7, I can't expect you guys to know about it either.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: But talking about taking personal actions and using our platform to influence consumers, Dominique, you've been quietly transitioning all your restaurants to vegetarian or pescatarian quite clearly until last week you made it a big announcement.

Dominique Crenn: It's interesting. It's not like I'm suddenly I just wake up. So Petit Crenn was opened in 2015, is never been any meat or any meat product, it was focused on vegetable with the farmers and the farm and just sustainable seafood. And we never talk about it, for me it was like, I'm just doing this, I want to do this. Actually, Crenn's been meat free for over a year and a half and then backwards. So I think for me, and I said that before, yes, chef, we have such a huge responsibility and it's not, I'm vegetarian or a vegan like I say, I choose. The meat industry is so complicated and I'm sorry, I don't want to use a piece of meat in my restaurant, which I don't serve a lot of people. And it's just like all this waste and all that and I don't know where that come from. So I just want to make a statement and leave the things that I believe right now we need to have actions. So action when you say sometimes, you might make some sacrifices and it's okay. And it's like, wow, okay or maybe like just eat meat once a week. Which is obviously, the meat is destroying most of the planet. And this is a fact as you say, yeah, it can be delicious, it's a fact. When I go back to France and I go to friends that I know that have farms I'm like, meat is super good, but it's not about what we think is great, it's just like, we have to think about what's the consequences. I was saying the other day, it's not about meat, but it was about plastic. Plastic was one of the greatest invention in the 1970, but it was a great invention, but nobody thought about the consequences. This is 1970, what's year we are, 2019 plastic are destroying the planet completely the ocean and everything. So I think when we do something and when we buy something and I say that food eating and food is an act of activism, we need to understand the consequences when we do something, and that's what I'm doing right now. If I do something, there is a purpose but there is consequences. So I want people to be aware about this and yes, it's not easy to change a way of doing things.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: And it's also about inspiring consumers, it's difficult trying to remove meat from your daily lives, that's always the sort of central focal point of a meal, what advice can you give people about how to do it?

Samin Nosrat: I mean, if you take meat away, then you're like how many inaudible do I have to eat or whatever. You're just like, it's this big filling thing, and it's for so many of us, not everyone, but for the vast majority of cultures in the world, it's a centerpiece or at least a really important part of at least dinner, if not multiple meals in the day. So to ask people to give that up is a huge thing. I was reading this amazing book it's called, We Are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer, he points out that... The whole book is about changing the way you eat. He doesn't even broach the topic of your diet until page 70, and on the way there he's like this topic is so touchy for people that in An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's film, which was added at the time and still in some ways like the biggest sort of statement and communicator of information and the importance of this issue for people at large, he never mentions food, he never mentions changing our diets because it's such a tricky thing to broach, especially if you're a politician, because it has to do with your childhood, and your nostalgia, and your family, and your culture, and it's asking a lot of people. And yeah, if we don't ask a lot of people what's left, there will be nothing left for us. And so to me, I feel like my responsibility is to teach you how to enjoy non- meat things more, and also I'm not asking... I struggle with this my own self every day. I made a commitment to be a part time vegan, I'm a daytime vegan, night time non- meat, night time chicken and cheese. And almost every day I fail I'm like, but butter. And so I'm not going to change 40 years of habit overnight, but what's important to me is to try and to talk about it because thanksgiving's coming up, do you really need that turkey on the table? Turkey sucks. Turkey is always dry, it has all this stuff. And I feel just imposing rules on people or demands and saying, this is what you got to do without giving people tools and also the opportunity to talk about how hard it actually is, is a mistake, is a mistake, but also we don't know how to cook vegetables. We have been so separated from that, and also most Americans grew up with vegetables from a can. Frozen vegetables are amazing, I think I always have a freezer full of them so that I always have them when I come home from a trip, but people are not connected to it. I make cauliflower and people are like, " What spices are on this?" And I'm like, " It's literally salt and oil." And they're like, " Is it special cauliflower?" And I'm like, " No." But it's like people feel so divorced from our food, and that is due to years and years and years of things that were outside of our control. So to me, I'm like, how do I empower you, give you a little bit of control and also motivate you to make some change and motivate you maybe if I get five of you guys to go read that book or to commit to eating less animal products, you will then have to talk about it around the thanksgiving table. And maybe that passes on and that passes on and that passes on and you don't know who it's passing on to and you don't know how many people it will get to. And maybe at the next election, people will vote differently. And often it's local leaders who make the biggest and most immediate changes, not the... I mean, as much as well. And that's who we need to sort of be setting the standards. And in California, we are often the trendsetter for the rest of the country. So to get people in power here who will make those changes, outlaw plastic bags, outlaw that kind of stuff, that's the stuff that then trickles out.

Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick break now and to bring you a conversation I had with the CEO of Wordpress VIP, Nick Gernert. Wordpress VIP is the leading provider of enterprise Wordpress and it powers companies like Facebook, Spotify, and more. I had a chance to sit down with Nick at Dreamforce to discuss how his company is grappling with topics like the future work digital transformation and more. So we are here at Dreamforce. And I think one of the things that you and I have been talking about is Dreamforce is really the epicenter of the Salesforce community. It's the Salesforce community, the trailblazer community coming together from all over the world. You guys at WordPress VIP have such a robust, strong community yourselves.

Nick Gernert: Yeah.

Speaker 2: What is that sense of community like for you guys?

Nick Gernert: Yeah, it's been amazing being here at Dreamforce because it really helps. This being my first one here, it really helps crystallize for me, just what this community around Salesforce really looks like. And like how many similarities I think there are to work from, to the WordPress community. I mean, when we talk about WordPress at large, we're talking about a community of thousands and thousands across the globe. There'll be a thousand, they're called WordCamps across the world where these are events that are locally arranged, they're everywhere from, they are across Asia, Europe, anywhere, six continents and they are attended from a very passionate group of folks that come there. A couple of weeks ago, I was at the WordCamp US, big gathering of thousands here in North America. And these are people that are just passionate about the software, the platform, what it's capable of delivering and really contributing to the success of the overall ecosystem. And being here this week is just really, it's just great to see because so many of the conversations I've been having this week are coming from a place of like, how do we all lift each other up? How do we take what we're already doing? But like, let's bring that to another level and let's do that together. This is something where the rising tide really does lift all boats and getting a sense of that this week's been really incredible. We're sitting in a room right now that is kind of this glass room it's looking out over-

Speaker 2: It's like a little orb that we're in.

Nick Gernert: Yes.

Speaker 2: I feel like we're just going to like levitate and float away.

Nick Gernert: That'd be amazing if we could, this room is huge. The-

Speaker 2: I wouldn't put it past the people onsite here. I mean, they certainly have the know how to make that happen.

Nick Gernert: Yeah. And it's been great because it actually lets me kind of like see in a physical space, what really, you don't get a sense of it in a digital context, right? We've got commerce over here, you've got marketing over there. All of these pieces that you're sort of looking at and you can see how they come together, and for me where a platform like WordPress can sit in the middle of a lot of these pieces here, it really is the glue that holds together like many different aspects of a customer's experience. And when you kind of have that core there, that's really strong and you can say like, oh, here is how things from our commerce feed into what we're doing in content marketing. And here's how we do lead acquisition and we actually can quickly assemble landing pages that are in support of other campaigns that we're doing. And here's how we're driving traffic to those things. When the CMS really empowers that level of agility so that you're doing that you have an idea, you can ship it that day, you're so much more able to really capture all of the value that I see in this room and everything here. And it's just been really great for me to sort of see past here's how all these elements can really come together and here's all these people that are impacted by these different workflows and by these different capabilities.

Speaker 2: It's incredible because I feel like it would be easy for that sense of community to not exist.

Nick Gernert: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Like it would be easy given the work we're talking about if that somehow got lost, but then you come here and you see the power of it and you see the enthusiasm. I mean, just being onsite for Dreamforce day one, when the doors open and you see that flood of people, I mean, you and I were talking earlier, it was like black Friday or something. I was like, what is happening? Where are the $12 TVs that they're giving out?

Nick Gernert: It's just great to be a part of something like that, right? The energy there it's genuine, you cannot start to force those things and it's been really exciting to be a part of it on the WordPress VIP side of this, we benefit from sort of there's WordPress as a whole has a massive strong community around it. And then really from VIP, going back to your first question of me, which is like, what is this VIP thing? We were able to take that same community, but really focus it in on a community of folks that are very alike in the fact they are part of a fortune$ 500 organization and they are sort of working against these. A lot of the things we've been talking about here on this, or they are at a major media organization. And so we'll pull together similar events and in different locations and bring these folks together to share in ideas, to share in best practices, to share in technologies that integrate into the platform and come together in this way. And that sense of community is never where there's winners and losers. Like everyone coming together-

Speaker 2: You all learn together.

Nick Gernert: Let's all learn together. And like everybody, is better by sharing through these things. And there's a ton of trust that has to go into building that that does not happen.

Speaker 2: Of course.

Nick Gernert: This is something that's built over a decade plus, but when you've got it, gosh, what an asset, what a wonderful thing it is when those things come together like that. It makes it a special place.

Speaker 2: That was Nick Gernert CEO of WordPress, VIP. To find out more, visit wpvip. com and that's wpvip. com. And now back to our conversation at Dreamforce.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: But I think it's all about balance, it's not about like extremisms-

Samin Nosrat: No, we're never going to make it because everyone's not going to go for it.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Then this is the same way I crosstalk. Yeah. In the UK, there's always was to have the meat and two veg, there's a recommended meal to have, what can be replacing that meat now? Is there any kind of easy fixes? I hear that a lot of people are eating mushrooms more like almost stakes-

Samin Nosrat: I mean, it's squash stakes.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Do you have any tips or things that you serve at your restaurant?

Dominique Crenn: inaudible Everything can replace meat. I mean, there is country that they've been vegetarian since the beginning of time. So it's about the way that you cook and the way, yeah. I mean, vegetable at the rockstar man is like delicious, but if you get to that mindset, I was like, " oh my God, what I need to replace my meat." You're saying no, what's out there that is delicious and I can try? So that, we need to like it's not about replacing something, it's about evolving and trying something else.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: What do you think of the meat alternatives? So I mentioned a couple, the Impossible burger and beyond-

Samin Nosrat: You saw me take a deep breath. I was like, I mean, I have a problem with it.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Okay. Why is that? Are you talking about the plant based burgers? That's what you have a problem with?

Samin Nosrat: Well, I'm not going to say which burger it is, but I was on the panel with one of the CEO and the founder of it is like, do you want to make your plan best burgers who make it good for the environment and make it good. And it's like what is the new burger? And it's like, it's so weed, I won't do shitty bright by- product that is like pesticide and all that. I'm like, " What the hell?" So if you want to do something, you just say you get it. I mean, obviously there's something-

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: It's an alternative for now?

Samin Nosrat: It's an alternative but I think there was other where too is like, if do a burger that is meatless, it's not a freaking burger, I'm sorry. I mean, it's something else.

Dominique Crenn: Okay. I have a slightly different take, which is, so many people rely on fast food for their calories and for their getting through the day. So to me, I think it's a both and that everything about climate change is both and, not either or. Not either systemic or individual, not either vegetarian or whatever, but I think to get a flick, some percentage of fast food burgers can be replaced with impossible burgers. I'm all for that. I'm all for that. Because the most immediate thing that we have to do is sort of replace animal agriculture with something else. And there's not going to be some clean sort of swipe that we can do to fix the whole food system in one go. And I actually think Impossible Burgers kind of tastes kind of good. And they sent me a whole bunch and they've been in my freezer, they're still there. I haven't eaten them, but I probably will-

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Do you think that they taste good?

Dominique Crenn: I think they do. I mean, I haven't... It's been maybe 20 or 30 years since I've had a McDonald's burger, so I think I don't have a lot of comparison, but I usually when I go to in and out, I just get a grilled cheese. I don't need that, to me, I just want all the sauces in the cheese.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Yeah.

Samin Nosrat: Me too.

Dominique Crenn: But I'm not the person they're aiming at. So I'm just glad that it exists. I'm glad that a lot of people think that it's a good alternative. I don't really want to eat that. What I think a lot of people miss when they are trying to look for a meat alternative is umami and texture. And I don't really have a solution to the texture problem, but there's a lot of other amazing sources of umami in the world. And one of the things people always ask me whenever there's a talk like there is an audience, they're like, " Well, what do you eat?" And I'm like, " Well, I have a pretty weird, I travel a lot and then I come home and I'm like, I just want vegetables." Because when you're traveling, all you eat is case Diaz and so inaudible or pizza or Mac and cheese or whatever, that's just like cheese and carb thing. And so bagels. So I at home want to eat vegetables. So I make rice in the rice cooker. I make broccoli or green beans or whatever I have and then I take... I learned this from my hippie friends who were trying to, when they were little growing up in Hawaii, their mom the treat at the health food store was like, if they were good, they could get a piece of marinade and tofu So this my friend Mara makes us tofu that is like, and I'm always like, " Why is it so good?" And I didn't grow up liking tofu. I love Korean tofu soup, but I'm not drawn to meat preparing tofu at home, but she just marinates. She gets medium from tofu. I think the texture is crucial that it has to be the medium firm one. She marinates it with Braggs Liquid Aminos, which is like the hippie version of soy sauce, it's unfermented soy sauce, which is pure umami. And then she fries it in coconut oil. And because the coconut oil gets really, really hot, the outside of the tofu gets this lacy golden crispy crust and the inside, which is that medium firm texture turns into this incredible custard it's so, so, so it's so addictive and so, so, so good.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: I think she is working for the tofu.

Dominique Crenn: Yeah. What's funny is? This is so funny. So when I started my column at the New York Times, Sam Sifton and the editor was like, listen, like you can have this column, but every recipe you write needs to be a winner. Like if you write about lamb shanks, lamb shanks need to be sold out on the entire Eastern seaboard that weekend. And I was like, " How am I going to write these?" And so when I wrote the tofu recipe in an article, it got so popular that people are writing me being like the medium term firm tofu is sold out in the store. And I wrote to him, I was like, " I did it, but with tofu." But I will say it takes like five minutes to make, I eat it at least once a week. It's so simple. It's so delicious and it gives me that sort of satisfaction of the thing. And I don't know. Also I have a weird person, I get obsessed with things and I eat them for like three weeks and then I'm like, I never want to eat that again. So right now I'm like an anti chicken phase, more tofu.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: So we know how you feel about some of the plant based burgers. There are some innovators that are actually trying to recreate meat-

Samin Nosrat: Oh, like lab grown meat?

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: The lab, grown meat. What are your thoughts on that?

Samin Nosrat: I'm not, again, I'm not against change, but it's like, if you want to do the change, don't do it in a way that is also not that great.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Why do we have to recreate meat?

Samin Nosrat: Well, we can just thinking about maybe just doing something that is different. It's like being so afraid of change, but we're going to give you change, but we're going to give you seal that hint of like that, that one that is still perhaps meat is no, just can we think about something else?

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: So I've got-

Samin Nosrat: I mean, it's true. I mean, it's just like why to recreate something that is just, yeah, why we don't change the food system and still have meat but doing properly and thoughtfully and people would be conscious about it. It's like, I don't want to eat something that is not natural. It's just crazy.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: So what do you mean by doing meat properly? Can you share with us, what is the best way to be raising meat? If you say do eat meat still from time to time, how do you-

Samin Nosrat: Yeah, I do, it's just like, so meat for a long time was literally for the rich. Okay. So no one had meat on their table maybe once a week or once a month, you know, it was something that it just-

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Special occasion?

Samin Nosrat: Yeah. And then this idea that it just make you feel more, wealthy to eat meat like I think when the meat restaurant, like the Shan restaurant and start to like-

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Oh, in the'50s?

Samin Nosrat: In the'50s is like this ideas. Like, and it's just like, made me think about who are we as human? Are we follower? Are we making, oh yeah, I'm going to eat meat so I'm like Hey, I went to this restaurant, I got a feeling meat like, oh cool. You so cool right now. It's like, it's true. It's weird. It's just like thinking about, first of all, we need to understand what meat's doing to your body. And we don't need meat every day. We don't. And so it's changing the behavior. And when you do that, then you also have maybe farmers that start to read things differently and then when the market is, then there's nothing, then there's nothing to sell. It's about season, like eating vegetable when the tomato is not in season, do not eat tomato. When the bro... It's like thinking this and have a different like diversity.

Dominique Crenn: Yeah. And historically meat is seasonal. Animals, they have a gestation period. Historically, new animals are born in the spring that's why we eat lamb at Easter. You know, all there is a reason for this thing. And all of that stuff has been manipulated and perverted to be able to offer us everything at every time. And as populations across the world, sort of get out of poverty and there's more a great bigger middle- class across the world, those people have been watching TV and watching people eat meat on TV since the beginning of time and they're like, I want that now too for myself. And so a lot of the meat in this world is not even being not to say America doesn't have its problems, but there's a global middle, like a new middle class and what they want is beef. And so-

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Yeah, because it bring you two different aspects?

Dominique Crenn: Totally. And it's a signifier. And that to me has nothing to do with cooking or anything, it has to do with the messages that we're sending out to the world about what makes you a happy person.

Samin Nosrat: I mean, I get a chocolate croissant in the morning, it would make me so happy. It's true, so.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: So based on your reactions to those two innovations, I suppose, plant based meat and the cultivated meat, I want to do a hot or not round, with a few others. So you have to say hot or not. If you think it's a good idea or not.

Dominique Crenn: She's all not for everything.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Robotic restaurant.

Dominique Crenn: No.

Samin Nosrat: Oh my God.

Dominique Crenn: No. No. And you know what, for me, this is like... Sorry, I'm interrupting your lightning round. But like, this is really important for me because, and I'm sure for you too, because to me, actually, one of the most offensive things, and it's actually in a lot of ways, a symptom or a representative of all of this other stuff that we're talking about. Probably 15 years ago, I used to say, I was like, okay, well everything's being digitized, but at least food will never be digitized. At least even in the saddest version of eating, if you are a total hermit and you order takeout, you have to open the door and give the money to the guy who brought your takeout. Or you have to go to the grocery store to interact with the cashier. There's at least some modicum of like human interaction. And so the idea that that is being stripped away and offered as a convenience to us is to me, one of the most offensive and upsetting parts. and also a symptom of everything else. And I say this as a person who spends a lot of time on my phone and I hate myself for it, but I'm addicted to. And yet I feel so much better when I put the phone down and I go out into the world and I interact with somebody. So robotic restaurant is one of the most... and I was so like, secretly I had shot in inaudible Frito when like the robotic Kima restaurant in Berkeley went out of business. I was like, yes, yes.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: What about alcohol free drinks?

Dominique Crenn: Oh, hop.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: What is that?

Dominique Crenn: They are companies creating that's something that gives you the feel of like a spirit that you might mix with it, like a gin and tonic, but it's a non alcoholic gin.

Samin Nosrat: Or water,

Dominique Crenn: crosstalk Sorry. It's crazy. CBD

Samin Nosrat: So I just, I went through 16 treatment of cancer treatments. So CBD is good.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: inaudible.

Dominique Crenn: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Samin Nosrat: But it's also, I mean, marijuana, it's been a plant that has been here forever-

Dominique Crenn: Talk about plant based.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Yeah. What about plant based crosstalk.

Samin Nosrat: No but it has been around for a long time and I know the medical industry or whatever, what was it in 19-

Dominique Crenn: Oh, you're talking about like, when they just decided to demonize all drugs and turn everything to scheduled,-

Samin Nosrat: It's a natural so I'm all for it. I guess we'll hide yet I'm all for it.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: We're running out of time. I've got one more, insect based ice cream.

Dominique Crenn: Insects as-

Samin Nosrat: I'm totally into that.

Dominique Crenn: Yeah, totally into that. And even my friend, inaudible that was cooking with me last year, actually Cran. And he was like, I'm going to do the menu that I do at Dom in Brazil. I'm like good luck. I mean, good luck, you got to go through the immigration and all that. Jeez, the guy brought some amazing ants. I mean, it was like mind blowing. I swear to God, it's so delicious.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Are those the ones that taste like lemon grass?

Dominique Crenn: Yeah.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: He talks about them on his chef's table episode.

Dominique Crenn: And he's like on top of like he did it with like pineapple and I was just like, I was blown away. But they are a good source of protein. They usually do a lot of in sales of America and not just, ants but other things, but yeah, why not?

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: And I think they're doing insect burgers as well.

Dominique Crenn: Yeah, but like once again if she do, yeah.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Caveat.

Samin Nosrat: The same thing I was saying, this isn't about insect burgers, but like I think this is an example that I can, I think sums up what we're thinking. So this company sent me this their plant- based ice cream and I have to say it was so delicious, so, so, so delicious. But I won't name the company because their whole thing is like, it's so much better for the environment, you don't have to give it back. And then it arrives in your house in like so much styrofoam. And I'm like, " Men, you guys you're not looking at the whole picture here, this is bananas". And so to me, that's the thing, which is like, sure, you might be solving one problem but you're creating a totally different one. And if we're not understanding this is a systemic situation, so yeah, I'll eat some insect ice cream but, do you know what I mean? Maybe that's not actually, that's just a weird bandaid for something that's like a lot of blood shooting out.

Dominique Crenn: Totally.

Samin Nosrat: Yeah.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Yeah.

Dominique Crenn: It's true. My assistant is here and I drive her crazy all the time. Even in the restaurant we like packaging, it's such a big deal for us. She knows like, so now I'm like, do not bring your trash to my restaurant. So what we did, we try to educate those company. Like if we get wine or fish, there's a way that we ask them to package it. So it's not just like follow kind of the philosophy that you have, you want to be sustainable, you want to be all that, don't bring that shit to my restaurant that if it's not packaged, it's true but we also have to do that.

Samin Nosrat: And people were able to do it with the straw, the straw was this dumb thing, which now everyone's like, cool, we fixed climate change, but at least right. But like, it does serve an amazing, it's an amazing example because how fast did we go from straws to everyone in carrying their own straw in their pocket? Because people were like, I saw sea turtles, sea turtles die. Okay, cool. So if it is possible, people can all grow together and stand up and say, we want this change and we're willing to pay for it and we're willing to sacrifice. So I think we just have to do it for something a little bit bigger than-

Dominique Crenn: Yeah, absolutely. It's the education, but I want to tell you a story. It's very funny. So I have two, five years old, two girls fraternal, not twin and we just talk to them, we see things, but we don't push anything on them. And we went to a restaurant the other day and Charlotte is five years old and I tell her story inaudible that story, it's like, blow my mind. Then so the waitress came and she's like, so can I give you guys water and ice? And Charlotte is like, " Okay, you can bring me water. I don't want any ice, but I don't want any plastic straw in it because that straw is going to go to the ocean and hurt the turtle." And so it's like they know that, and so this. I think this is very important and I think is being conscious and I don't want to advertise anything but first of all, we tried to have the restaurant always free but next year at Salesforce, we are opening booty Crenn, which will be all waste free. We're also going to have a coffee shop. You're going to have to bring your own cup or you're going to have to buy some subsidy inaudible cup. I know it's going to piss a lot of people, but I don't care. Or you can come and drink the coffee there. It's kind of cool and to interact with others, it's true. Stop for one second, ll those people that are working at Salesforce. You have 10 minutes to... Well, I'm looking at you because you work there, but it's just like, take your time to just come and enjoy and it's not going to be in the plastic, we're going to reuse everything. We have a lot of things. We have a farm that everything that we use, we can go back and put that bag back in the soul and it's not easy. I mean, we struggling with it every day. It's like, " Oh wow, what am I going to do to not do this?" But it's so rewarding and we've been working on it for the last few years and it's just so rewarding and then-

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: When does it open?

Dominique Crenn: 2020.

Speaker 2: April?

Dominique Crenn: April, 2020.

Samin Nosrat: Fantastic.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor: Well, we're going to have to wrap up for now, but thank you so much for very inspiring very-

Samin Nosrat: No, let's stay here.

Speaker 2: That was Dominique Crenn, Samin Nosrat and Louisa Burwood- Taylor at Dreamforce 2019. If you enjoyed this conversation and you want more, like it, be sure to hit subscribe on Apple podcasts or your favorite podcast app. That'll do it for another episode of Blazing Trails. Thanks for listening. And thanks to WordPress VIP for presenting the show with us. Join us next Thursday. For a conversation about company values and culture creation with Marco Bizzarri, CEO of Gucci.

Announcer: Blazing Trails is a production of Salesforce, a customer relationship management solution, committed to helping you deliver the personalized experiences customers want. So they'll keep coming back again and again, Salesforce bringing companies and customers together. Visit salesforce. com/ learn more.