Share your food memories at the inaugural event of Let’s Talk About Food / the live show, a new storytelling podcast!

Let’s Talk About Food / the live show kicks off its mission of sharing food stories at a July 19th reception and open-mic concept introducing the collaboration of The Food Voice, Let’s Talk About Food, Edible Boston, Clover Food Lab and the PRX Podcast Garage.

The event begins with a reception, catered by Clover Food Lab, and continues inside the PRX Podcast Garage with storytelling presented and recorded in front of a live audience. The theme of the night is “The Taste of Memory.” Wine, beer and non-alcoholic beverages will be available.

When launched, the Let’s Talk About Food / the live show podcast will be a 30-minute program of entertaining curated first-person food stories organized around food memories. The podcast will stream stories from the general public as well as stories of invited local and national celebrities and thought leaders.

Do you have a food story to tell? The show will feature live performances from 10 individuals who will each share a 5 to 7-minute personal story related to the theme. Interested storytellers are invited to submit a short paragraph or an audio upload describing their food memory story. Click HERE to submit your story. All stories will be available for later downloads. The event will be hosted by Louisa Kasdon of Let's Talk About Food, Ilene Bezahler of Edible Boston, Ayr Muir of Clover Food Lab and produced by Eric Liao of the PRX Podcast Garage.

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The Team: Let’s Talk About Food / the live show:

Louisa Kasdon, one of the producers of the brand new podcast, co-founder of The Food Voice and founder of Let’s Talk About Food, explains, “For many years we’ve been collecting literally hundreds of food stories with our Kitchen Conversations mobile box at live events, at the Boston Public Market, in Copley Square, in museums and libraries up and down the East Coast. I’ve concluded that every one, yes, everyone has a great food story to tell. People love to share their food stories, even stories that are hard to listen to because they are so intensely personal.” Kasdon has collected stories from homeless men reflecting upon Sunday Dinners, immigrants sharing their delight in finding familiar food in unfamiliar places, returning Iraqi vets waxing poetically about the “good” parts of MRE’s (meals ready to eat), dining disasters, exotic experiences, Passover Seders, Mother’s Day breakfasts, and step-by-step recollections of catching, cleaning and cooking fresh caught fish for dinner. According to Kasdon, “Our food stories seem to occupy a special, quiet, personal space in our minds and memories––ritual, joy, work and wellbeing–– that it shares with no other parts of our unique selves. It will be our great joy to collect and share these stories through our podcast.”

Ilene Bezahler, co-founder of The Food Voice and publisher of Edible Boston, sees the podcast as a natural extension of her magazine’s mission in telling the stories of our local food and the people involved in creating it. “In the podcast, we’ll have the voices of our producers, our artisans, our fisherfolk and farmers. We’ll get to understand why food called to them as a profession and gain deep insights into their lives. One of the great joys in my life in building my magazine has been to listen to the amazing life stories of the people who make the food we eat,” shares Bezahler.

Podcast producer Eric Liao has been hoping to create a food-centric podcast ever since his days working at Clover, where he heard fascinating personal stories about food from customers and colleagues alike. Now at PRX, a media company that supports and promotes the creative work of independent audio producers, Eric is even more convinced that there is a need for food stories to be documented and shared in the audio world. Liao says “I’ve met a lot of people who just come alive talking about food. You can hear it in their voice: the conviction, the passion, the emotion. Hearing the way people tell these stories adds a layer of intimacy and depth that makes them so fascinating.”

The PRX Podcast Garage is a community recording studio and classroom dedicated to the craft of audio storytelling. PRX, the award-winning public media company and found of Radiotopia, opened the Podcast Garage in Allston, MA, to support the work of local audio producers and storytellers. The facilities feature a four-person studio with state-of-the-art recording and mixing equipment as well as a community space with weekly events and workshops. Membership at the PRX Podcast Garage provides independent producers with the time, tools and community to make their shows.

Ayr Muir, founder and CEO of Clover Food Lab, explains why a food storytelling podcast is a passion project for him and for Clover as a company. “All the best food items on our menu have a story behind them, from a customer or staff member who first championed them. There is something magical about introducing customers to items like the chickpea fritter sandwich that I was first enthralled by at an Israeli shop in Paris, the Gobi Manchurian that one of our prep cooks, Sharan, first brought to us from the Indochinese restaurants in his native India, the Panelle Sandwich that a customer’s mom would make for him as a kid in Sicily (and for which we went to Sicily to research ourselves), or Lucia’s own Pimento Cheese Sandwich, which her grandmother used to make in Texas. Clover is one big food memory, and the food tastes better for being associated with so many real people and real stories.”

Clover Food Lab is a cult-favorite restaurant chain founded by MIT alum and environmentalist Ayr Muir. Clover's mission is to address global warming by building a better food future. With the help of raving fans, it has expanded from a food truck in 2008 to 12 restaurants serving thousands daily in the greater Boston area. Sourcing an unprecedented amount of its menu from local farmers, Clover's seasonal and unique preparations have won accolades and recognition from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, The Huffington Post, and more.

The Food Voice is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Our mission is connecting, convening, educating, celebrating and advancing food issues in our community and the contemporary world. For more information about The Food Voice visit www.foodvoice.org