You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I'm talking to Eric Kim, a staff writer at The New York Times food section and author of the just released cookbook Korean American. I've admired Eric from afar via social media, as well as his beautiful essays. And it was a thrill to finally get the chance to talk to him and find out that he comes from a literature background, which explains the beautiful writing. We discussed how he came to food, the way his cookbook took shape during the pandemic, going viral with gochujang glaze, and his relationship with meat. 

Alicia: Hi, Eric. Thank you so much for being here.

Eric: Hi, thanks for having me. It's so great to finally meet you.

Alicia: I know. It's so great. I'm meeting so many people that I've wanted to meet for a long time. [Laughs.]

Eric: Yeah.

It's kind of funny. I won't say the person's name, but we have a mutual friend. And anytime I want to say something to you, I say it to this person instead of just—I should just DM you and be like, ‘Man, that latest newsletter was great.’ But instead, I just tell your friend and hope that they tell you.

Alicia: Yeah. I mean, we can be friends. We can be friends. That's ok. [Laughs.]

Eric: So great to meet you, though, seriously.

Alicia: For sure!

Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Eric: Yeah, sure. 

I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, in the suburbs. My parents moved there in 1983. And they've been there since. And I was there till I was 18. 

And I ate mostly my mom's food. She was a cook. She cooked a lot of Korean food, Korean American hodgepodge dishes. And I think when I got old enough to drive especially, but even before then, when I kind of was tall enough to stand at the stove, my brother and I were latchkey kids. We ate a lot of convenience foods. And I think that's a big part of my life and my nostalgia. It's become a theme in my work, because I just love these memories of these frozen meals actually span so much farther than myself. And I think about this all the time, actually, my—the way my micro life has macro resonances. And so you just say one thing, like ‘Remember this?’ And then thousands of people are like, ‘Yeah, me too.’ And almost always they are children of immigrants and I think that is something I have discovered recently. And I feel it's a real power. It's a power to harness, I think. It's really nice. 

Oh, and just like in terms of dishe. I vaguely specifically remember this one after school snack that I ate a lot, which was the broccoli cheddar chicken hot pocket, which is the best one and kind of very substantial. It's got some vegetables in it, but what I would do is I would take the first bite and then squeeze it out onto a bowl of rice and ust mix that up. And then later in our, later—our Thanksgivings had this broccoli cheese rice casserole dish. It was like I was manifesting that or something as a kid. And now, it's a regular staple in our—on my Thanksgiving table. 

Alicia: Yeah. The combination of broccoli and cheese, I have to admit, is just unbeatable.

Eric: Sublime, for sure. Delicious. 

Alicia: I used to get the Stouffer's with broccoli. When I had my first job, I would put that in the microwave because I made no money. So I'm like, ‘Alright, I'm gonna go to the supermarket, get a Stouffer's mac and cheese with broccoli. And because it has broccoli in it, it's fine. It's healthy.’ [Laughs.]

Eric: It was a classic. I mean, what a genius move, because that—once you eat the macaroni, there's still sauce. There's so much sauce. And so, kind of having that broccoli moment is really lovely. That's funny. Yeah.

Alicia: Well, you're one of those food writers who is a really good writer too. Not to say that there aren’t many. [Laughter.] But what came first for you, writing or food?

Eric: Oh, man. I've actually never been asked that. That's funny. Well, food. Yeah, for sure. But I didn't have consciousness of it until after writing. 

So I think about this all the time. Maybe this is a good story. But I was doing a PhD in comparative literature, and I had just taken an oral exam. It was kind of the big moment before you go off and write the dissertation. It's after your third year. And so what happens is all your friends show up outside the door of your exam room. And it's almost a formality, at least at the program that I went to. And you get flowers and you get a laurel, a thing around your head. And kind of that's your badge of honor, a rite of passage. 

And then I didn't pass mine, though. I was one of the few people who didn’t because I was horrible at speaking. And yeah, it was this huge wake up call for me because I'd wanted to be an English professor since 10th grade of high school or something like that. And there I was, kind of like halfway through a program that would let me do that. And I got a low pass. They called it a low pass. When I walked out of that room, my friend had this huge bouquet of flowers, and then slowly lowered it. 

My advisors were like, ‘You can either leave. You can leave the program with a master's degree, or you can take the exam again and then continue on to the dissertation.’ And I think at that moment, it was the first time in my life I really just realized that wasn't for me, the academia. And that writing was for me, though. And that was the part of the program that I excelled at, I think. And there was even a writing portion that was good that I did well on, apparently. 

And I remember looking at the room. And it was these four white men. I was like, ‘What happened? How did I fail this? Why didn't you prepare me?’ And I didn't ask it like that. I'm sure I barely spoke. I was like, ‘You said that the written portion was good, right?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, the written portion was good. But the oral part is really important.’ I think it was in that moment, I was like, ‘Ok, I'm gonna want to pursue the thing I'm good at.’

So I didn't know what that meant yet. But what happened was, I called my brother after I was in my suit, or whatever the—it was probably the first suit I'd ever bought or owned. And my brother was kind of like, ‘Hey, Eric, you were never happy there. You love food. You're talking about food all the time.’ And at the time, I was Instagramming. That was my food blog mostly. Those Instagram captions, I would just write as long as I could until I hit the word limit. And that was sort of how I got started with the food writing, I think. 

And then, so my brother made me realize that food was always there. It was the one constant. And I happened to have an old boss at Food Network who was able to give me a job. And that's how it all started. So it's kind of a bit of both. It was writing first, but the consciousness—It was food first, but the consciousness was later. Yeah.

Alicia: What made you want to be an English professor? Who did you like to read?

Eric: Hmm. Oh, yeah. I mean, you can see it on my bookshelf here. But it's sort of my love for Michelle Branch. [Laughs.] Which I don't hide. But I think about this all the time, when you're so young and you have no frame of reference for anything. And then something comes at you. And it just really sucks you in. A certain song is super catchy. And then that person’s second song is super catchy, and that third song. And then you just realize, ‘Wow, I just really like this person's music.’

And then, for me, that was 20th century American literature. Throughout high school, just kind of breezing through my English classes and not really paying attention to it ’cause math was so hard. And all these other things were harder. And so, I just kind of didn't take it seriously. 

And then there was a moment in the 10th grade when I looked back on my favorite books, and they were all from John Steinbeck. Or they were all from a very specific time period in American and American literary canon. And I was like, ‘Okay, I guess this is it. This is my Michelle Branch of books.’ So yeah, I pursued that in college.

And I just loved college so much, which is such a lame thing to say. But I had a great time in college. And I had really lovely professors. The English department at the college I went to was just so supportive. And they were great. I just figured why not keep doing this, you know? And so, yeah, I kept doing it. And enjoyed the part of being a student, but I think I didn't enjoy being a PhD candidate. That was a very political thing, very performative. And I sucked at talking. So I was really bad at it. I was really bad at acting. 

Alicia: Yeah, I can relate. 

But you came to food media. You were at Food Network? How did you get into the recipe writing aspect, which you've had such success in?

Eric: Thank you. It happened randomly, I think. Oh, yeah. Like most things, it seems random. But then when you really narrate yourself, you can narrativize the trajectory. 

But so for me, it was <a target="_blank