You know you should vote, but you tell yourself that the system is corrupt, and besides, your vote won’t matter anyway. And so you stay home and play with your new drone that’s probably illegal to fly in your neighborhood. But it, who cares? This is America and the whole point is to get fat doing whatever you want. That’s like, the sixth amendment, or something.2
You cannot have influence without authority. It’s why well-known (usually white) chefs and cookbook authors have historically been so effective in popularizing global ingredients among the North American mainstream. Think, for example, of Rick Bayless, the Chicago chef whose Mexican restaurants introduced many Midwesterners to contemporary regional Mexican cuisine, or Andy Ricker, the Portland, Oregon, chef whose Pok Pok restaurants spread the gospel of Northern Thai cooking through the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Then there’s Yotam Ottolenghi, the Israeli chef and cookbook author whose London-based restaurants and cookbooks were so effective in communicating the joys of Middle Eastern ingredients like Aleppo pepper and tahini that
With 566,000 Instagram followers and legions of fans who make and then photograph her approachable, well-tested recipes — which she then reposts in her own Instagram stories — Roman is successful in part because of her understanding that social media has transformed cooking into a social experience, one that particularly resonates with millennials. It points to how aspirational desire — and the brands that tap into it, whether personal or corporate — can popularize things within that space. Oh, this is one of Alison’s recipes? I want to make it too.
