In 2013, Simone Faure, a pastry chef from New Orleans, opened the James Beard-nominated La Patisserie Chouquette in St. Louis. She got her start going to culinary school in New Orleans and making kosher wedding cakes for The Ritz Carlton in New Orleans and St. Louis. Her schedule involves going to bed by 7 p.m. and getting up at 1 a.m. to start baking. In this edition of Voices In Food , Faure talks about cultural appropriation and how words like “allyship” are performative.
On Cultural Appropriation And Food
The idea that the people who came before us have laid out a path for us is fascinating to me. When it comes to food, I think it has the potential to heal a lot of wounds. It’s transformative when we stop taking input from the outside and we start listening to each other and realizing how much we all have in common. But we have these preconceived notions about people’s food like, “Oh, that’s odd. That’s weird. That’s gross.” Well, I’m from Louisiana, and we will eat anything that is moving. But people come from all over the world because they want to learn to cook that food. They want to work in those restaurants. They want to be diners in those restaurants. I was in Korea, and there was a Cajun restaurant. It said Cajun, and I was like, “OK, we have arrived.”