EPISODE 34- Vanessa Parish [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:04] TR: Welcome back to the Afros and Knives Podcast, the interview series featuring black women working in food and beverage, wine, hospitality, food tech, food science, agriculture, food justice and food media. I am your host, Tiffani Rozier. This week’s guest is pastry chef, food writer and creator of the Pinch of Brown Sugar brand, Vanessa Parish. Vanessa’s work as a pastry chef and mental health advocate is shaped by her identity as a queer, black, indigenous woman moving through the world. She is an active board member of the Queer Food Foundation, whose mandate is to promote, protect, fund and create queer food spaces, and also to recognize honor and celebrate queer food workers and chefs. She is just launching a candle line called Vanessa Parrish Sweet Comfort. It is a collection of candles, inspired by some of your favorite desserts, like the sage and vanilla, which reminds you of an ice cream; let's see, apples and maple bourbon with caramelized pralines, then brown sugar, fig and cardamom. Be sure to visit the vanessaparish.com, in order to grab your candles. They do sell out. They do, they don’t end up out of stock, so you definitely want to get your hands on those. You can catch some of Vanessa’s work on Blavity, BET, Tasty. You can follow her work and her story on Instagram @PinchOfBrownSugar, as well as you can hunt the internet and find her on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Apple TV. She is everywhere. You can Google Vanessa Parish, or again, you can visit her website and check out her Instagram to find out where you can discover more about her work and more about her. Let's jump into this interview. [INTERVIEW] © 2021 Afros and Knives 1 [00:02:01] TR: Welcome to the show. Thank you for being on. Of course, you are a part of the series of women who are at the intersection of black and indigenous spaces, working in food and living life and moving through the world in that way. For those of the folks who are watching don't know, this is Vanessa Parish. I'm going to allow her to introduce herself. Sometimes bios coming from the person that has lived the life, always feel a bit more compelling, a bit more authentic. I usually get the timeline wrong somewhere. I will allow you to just go ahead and introduce yourself. Give us a little background. Yeah, and just talk us through your journey, your work and where you are today, then what brought you here. [00:02:42] VP: Wow. Okay. Originally, I am from North Carolina and I am a transplant to Los Angeles. Such a culture shock, personally and culinary-wise. Just two different worlds. Essentially, what do I do? I basically started – it's so weird. [00:03:03] TR: It’s like, “What have I done?” [00:03:07] VP: I basically started culinary in North Carolina, just getting my toes wet, as far as figuring out what part of culinary I wanted to be in. I grew up in my grandmother's kitchen, which is all culinary, all food all the time. When I really tapped into that with my friends and things of that sort. I was the friend in college, I would throw fondue and wine parties, because I don't know, we're a team, I guess, I don't know. [00:03:33] TR: We all need more friends like that in college. [00:03:34] VP: I don’t know what I was thinking. [00:03:37] TR: We got people out here eating hot Cheetos and ramen. [00:03:39] VP: I was so against that. I was like, “No, I don't eat –” I didn't grow up eating that stuff. I was just like, “No, I'm just going to eat how I eat at home.” A lot of people in my circle were like, “What? What is she doing?” Anyway, so I transferred that into a private catering © 2021 Afros and Knives 2 business, working for a few tech companies that are popular in North Carolina. I guess at the time, it was Time Warner Cable, Siemens, SAS. Then when I came to LA, I got into the pastry business at Potato Louie. I became their special projects director. After a couple of years, I worked in management for Susie Cakes. I worked in Magnolia Bakery, which I know is a New York staple. I worked in their LA division. [00:04:29] TR: They got good banana pudding, I ain't gonna lie. [00:04:31] VP: I don’t want to talk about banana pudding. This is not – I know everyone who lived [inaudible 00:04:35], but – anyways. [00:04:40] TR: Do I want to know what's in it? I mean, is that what we're really doing? [00:04:43] VP: Yeah. You don't want to know what's in it. What's in it is also in your pantry. [00:04:48] TR: Of course. Yeah. I just have no interest in making it myself. That's really weird. [00:04:52] VP: There. There you go. [00:04:52] TR: Where that happens for me. Yeah. I've made a conscientious choice not to make the banana pudding. [00:04:57] VP: Right. That is the banana pudding for you. Absolutely. Let's see. Oh, it's been for a couple years ago in 2017, I was the host of a show, Tasting Our Roots with BuzzFeed’s Tasty. I'm still a tasty correspondent today, like popping in a couple of videos and do some random things. I've done some live show work for BET. My show for Tasting Our Roots is currently on Amazon Prime and Apple TV, so you can still watch it. [00:05:26] TR: Okay. I’m taking notes. Making notes. © 2021 Afros and Knives 3 [00:05:28] VP: Yeah. I’ve [inaudible 00:05:28]. Then I do on my private business side, so I still have my catering company and I strive to hire women of color, and especially queer women of color, because they're extremely underrepresented in professional kitchens. Especially when it comes to opportunities, they usually left as prep cooks and line cooks and things like that. In my kitchen, so I have a couple of clients with Viacom, with Google, Airbnb and a few people that own Malibu homes that come in summer, and I cook for them. It's a lot of fun. Lastly, I have a cookie company called Brown Sugars Cookies, and we ship cookies nationwide. I just launched my candle line called Sweet Comfort Candles, and those shipped internationally. [00:06:19] TR: See, that’s what I was – Yeah. [00:06:21] VP: Which I'm really excited about. [00:06:23] TR: Most people don't go global that fast. Okay. [00:06:25] VP: I'm fortunate to have a lot of support in Canada and the UK. Things with that. I didn't want to exclude them. I was like, “If y'all are ready for the shipping costs, I will ship it.” [00:06:37] TR: I’ll do it. Look, if you’re ready to give me the coin, I will make that work. [00:06:41] VP: Exactly. Yeah. I'm sure there's other things I've missed, but that's the gist. [00:06:46] TR: I know. It’s one of the more dreaded questions. You're like, “Okay. I just need to get a bio from you.” You're just like – [00:06:54] VP: Yeah, because it’s like, you don't want to sell yourself short. Like, oh. Like I'm a stay-at-home dog mom. They're like, “You liar.” [00:07:01] TR: Right. You're like, “Oh, okay. Now I'm not.” It's that, like I don't want it to sound like a resume. © 2021 Afros and Knives 4 [00:07:07] VP: Right. Right. [00:07:09] TR: No. It needs to be a bit more organic, like I actually did these things. Then yeah, the bios are just tough. [00:07:14] VP: Yeah, it's a thin line. [00:07:16] TR: It's true. It's true. My first question is, okay, so getting into and I've been – because personally, I'm looking at developing media brand and getting into video production and things like that. My attention has been there in A, in the process, B, in how companies and brands find talent. Then what is it to be in the space? There's not very many of you in this space. What is it to think of how to bring other people along? How much were you able to contribute to the ideas and the execution and the actual content development, working with Tasty and BET and all those other spaces? How much of a voice do you get in the creation process? [00:08:02] VP: That is a supremely excellent question. I'm going to say, it really depends on who you're working with. For example, BET is all about diversity and inclusion, especially when it comes to people of color, well brown folks, no black people. When I told them what I wanted to make for the live stream, things like that, they were like, “Perfect.