Jonathan Bardzik is a self described storyteller, cook, and author. And an awfully old friend of Annie’s. She sat down with Jonathan to talk about where cooking and performance intersect, how people create narratives through food, and the release of his brand new TV series Jonathan’s Kitchen (releasing on Revry later this month). Here are some excerpts from their conversation.
Annie: How do you describe the work that you do? When someone says to you, Jonathan, what do you do for a living? What do you say?
Jonathan: I say that I’m a storyteller, cook and author… And I’ve recently added in TV personality (because I do that). But at the heart of what I do is stories. That’s the reason I get out of bed every day. I believe that life can and should be lived with joy every single day. And I think one of the fastest ways and the most accessible ways to get there is by preparing a simple meal, setting a table, and sharing it with the people that we love. So I cook, tell stories, and write to bring more of that into people’s lives.
Annie: Let me ask you to elaborate on that a little bit. Cooking storytelling, and writing… How does that play out in the world? What does that look like in terms of what you do every day?
Jonathan: Maybe the easiest way for me to describe it is to talk quickly about how my work has progressed over the last 10 years. This started as my looking for a new adventure in life and giving weekly, live cooking demonstrations at a farm market. The storytelling piece came in because I called a good friend of my husband’s… She had worked for Bon Appetit and was the food editor for the Columbus Dispatch and had done lots of live cooking demos… And I asked her if she had any advice. She said, “Whatever you do when you are standing in front of that audience, never stop talking”. When you’re live in front of an audience, you still have to snap the ends off of all those green beans in real time. So you become a storyteller because you have a lot of time that you have to fill in. So you come up with stories about food and where these flavors came from, the people that you shared these recipes with, the history of these ingredients, and the farmers who grew them. That’s where the storytelling came in. And then I began blogging about it, which ultimately led to my first cook book. And that was the writing piece.
Annie: Tell me more about how you think about integrating cooking and food with storytelling.
Jonathan: We are hardwired as human beings to tell stories. I think that very often we try to connect teams and organizational groups through stories, but that can feel intrusive. It can be difficult, right? Storytelling doesn’t always come naturally. And so one of the things I love about the experiences that I get to create is by asking people… I ask people to tell their food stories. Food is so universal, right? Everybody needs it. So if you asked “what’s your favorite food?”, anyone (even in the most awkward business situation) will talk to you for the next 20 minutes. Then they talk about the kitchen it was prepared in when they were a kid and who prepared it… And suddenly I know part of their life history, and I know who the important people are that they share it with. So it is one part performance and entertainment, and two parts creating connection… whether that is happening in person or virtually.
Annie: Speaking of virtually, how has your work transitioned to that new medium this past year?
Jonathan: That’s definitely something that has really evolved this year. I’ve been doing a lot of recorded video. I find that even in that environment, it’s about how you take a dish and make it mean so much more. One of my recent clients asked me to record some cooking videos to be sort of an entertainment portion of a virtual conference, because they can’t have a reception. They can’t bring in a band. So what I spent my time really trying to figure out for that event is how do I make this about more than just showing them how to make eggs Benedict? Well, this particular conference was for their risk management team. So we created a menu of risky dishes and incorporated some fun terms from their work, and were able to relate back the experiences that they’re having sitting in their office, at their desk, watching this conference to try to tie it in and make it feel more connected.
Annie: What’s the best story you’ve heard back from a client or audience member over these years? Is there an example of a story that someone told about food or their life that you will never forget?
Jonathan: I have done some corporate storytelling workshops involving food, and they’re sort of specifically driven by this idea that we remember stories, we repeat them to people, and then both as the teller and the listener, we take action based on those stories. In a business environment, this makes perfect sense, right? Stories are how we build connections with each other and are such a window for all of us to see our own lives, through what we’re hearing in the story of someone else. So I was doing a storytelling workshop and I broke people up into pairs. And after this first round of what’s your favorite food, I asked people to share back to the group, the stories. Not the ones being told, but the stories that they heard. This woman starts telling the story of the man that she was paired with. And she talked about how she was from the Caribbean and he was from Africa. She explained how they very quickly found that through the African diaspora, into the Caribbean, they had so many shared experiences; their grandmothers were cooking the same food for them. She got about a third of the way through the story and suddenly she went from using the second person to talking about him in the first person singular. She wasn’t even aware that it had happened. It was just because his story now felt so much like her’s.
Annie: That’s lovely. Okay, I want to go backwards in time a little bit to your childhood and young adult life. What pointed you in the direction of the place in which you find yourself now with this work?
Jonathan: I grew up in a family that owned a garden center and landscape business. My dad had done his PhD in plant and soil science prior to opening the business. So the casual sharing and consumption of knowledge and stories was so natural in the environment I grew up in. There was no separation between those things. There was no thought that information was too adult or that education happened somewhere else. So we’d walk into the backyard and my dad would pick up a blade of grass and tell me all about how grass grows and germinates. And now I’m now standing in front of audiences talking about micro grains and what ends up on our table. Shared experiences like that as a child shaped how I do this work, both in terms of sharing information and seeing the power of being able to create magic moments simply by making intentional space for them… the table that we sit down at and the bringing of people together to share those experiences.
Annie: You and I went to college together. And when I met you, you were always in the theater…
Jonathan: Once I got to college, I decided to do a performing arts degree. I did some acting, a lot of stage management, and a lot of directing. I think that has really shaped my understanding of this work as a performance, as opposed to a straight knowledge transfer. There is technique behind connecting with an audience, behind sharing information in a way that is remembered and lasts. From there, I went on to work in my family’s business–running a small business–which prompted me to get an MBA. I realized halfway through my first semester of my first year that what they teach is how to have a strategic perspective and understand how the pieces fit together; the needs of the different people, listening to your client.
Bringing all those things together made me really feel like I can understand the needs of a client. And then deliver a performance and experience that gets there for them in a way that is maybe a little unexpected… Sort of sneak in the back door through preparing some food and cracking a few jokes about burning things.
Annie: One of the things that we’ve been thinking and talking a lot about at TEA is how love gets fused into business and where those things align. The word love is not traditionally thrown around in business settings, but we actually think it should be. When I think about you and your background, and who you are personally, there’s so much love and enthusiasm in everything that you do. And I was wondering if you could comment on what role love plays in your work.
Jonathan: It’s interesting. The word I throw around all the time is joy. But I think the reason that I get up every day to share joy is because of the amount of love in my life and the amount that I want to pass on. I think that I have identified that I believe we are here on this earth for two reasons; one is to experience joy. And by joy, I mean really fundamental experiences that stick with you. Joy as opposed to pleasure, right? When pleasure is over, it’s over. But joy is those things that you can still use; you experienced them, and then you still feel them decades later. And, and I think the other reason that we are here is to care for each other. And I don’t think that those two things have boundaries. My work is about that kind of joy that you will remember decades after you experience it. And the reason I do it is because I believe that we are here to help each other experience that joy and to really care for each other. And I think that should infuse everything that we do from our personal lives to the time we spend with our families, to the people we work with. That’s about love.
Annie: What inspires you and your creative practice?
Jonathan: I was listening to an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert recently and she was asked if she had any advice for people trying to find a passion in life. And she said I think if you have a passion, you don’t need any advice from me because by definition your passion is following you. It doesn’t give you the choice. I think if you go to people who do things that they are passionate about and say, why did you choose this? They often say, myself included, that they spent years running away from this. I couldn’t get away from it. And so here I am.
Annie: Can you give me an example of something you’ve encountered recently that moved you or that you can’t stop thinking about?
A friend recently asked me to read a book about drug use. The writer is a researcher who studied drug use in a very clinical environment and was also a drug user himself, in a way that was functional for him. He wrote a book dismantling some of the myths that we hold about people who use drugs. What I loved about it was this idea of going hard into someone else’s world and shaking up deeply held and unconscious beliefs (in this case about drug users). And I think that this year has made me hyper aware of how many views we just walk around carrying that are unconscious. When I have started digging into some of those views, particularly around race, but also around gender, sexuality… I’m interested in making the distinction between views that are hurtful and views that are hateful. I think there are a lot of very non hateful, really good people walking around the world carrying harmful views that are unintentionally hurting other people. So it has been, it’s been a wonderful disruptor. I think that one of the major things that inspires me are things that disrupt the knowledge that I think I have… Being shaken out of my space and given a fresh understanding.
Annie: I believe deeply in the power of discomfort. If we’re all comfortable all the time, nothing can happen. We can’t function differently. We can’t think differently. It’s only when we get sort of itchy that we can feel the need to move.
Jonathan: We’ve heard this year from people who have had incredible personal and professional growth. And I think it’s because we were forced to be deeply uncomfortable. Suddenly in one day we were told “you can’t have the life that you had yesterday anymore”. And it was brutal. And I respect how many people have been deeply harmed by that. But I think a lot of us were also given a gift and an opportunity to shake up our lives and really learn and grow along the process.
Annie: I want to ask before we’re done about the show. What would you like to say about it?
Jonathan: I have a brand new show coming out this year! In fall of 2019, I created an eight episode TV series called Jonathan’s Kitchen. It is based on my second cookbook, Seasons to Taste. And it really became a celebration of joy and connection. I brought friends and family and local experts into my home, and we cooked seasonal food and shared time and shared our stories together. And I can’t wait to share it with other people. So look for it soon. Here is the trailer.