What I Make
Gastronomic culture, and beyond
My content centers on gastronomic culture: how food is made, sold, eaten, and what it says about the city around it. But the lens extends further, to the streets, rituals, and rhythms that give food its meaning. Below is a sense of the range. It's not a fixed menu.
Food in Context
A dish, a vendor, a neighborhood, and what the combination reveals about how a city feeds itself. Less cultural lecture, more curious observation about how something exists within a given gastronomy.
Cultural Moments
Why certain foods appear at certain times, and what the celebrations around them actually mean. The calendar of eating that marks a culture's year, with the context most people never get.
Regional Food Recap
A personal record of eating through a place, companion content to my Substack series Derek Eats, which goes deeper on context and recommendations for each city covered.
Cities as Text
Observations of what makes up a given city, read through its built environment. Where the urban planner in me shows up most clearly, and where food culture and physical place overlap.