I Am What I Eat: Urvesh

I loved interviewing Urvesh Pavais for the Borough Market blog. My first impression was of someone calm, quiet and collected. Perhaps it was his voice, which is mellow and unwavering. This was true even when I got him talking about his favourite subject, but his eyes lit up and he talked thoughtfully and at length about the topic he is most passionate about. In fact, most of my questions for him remained unasked. Just one question was enough to elicit the answer to my next five! 

This made it very difficult to decide what the theme of the post should be. I decided to focus on the visceral nature of food and the memories associated with taste and smell, as it followed on nicely from the previous post. However, it meant missing out a lot of really interesting material on Gujurati history and cuisine, the ambiguous lines between local, regional and national identity and cuisines, food and religion, food and symbolism... the list goes on.

Here is how the post began...

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Interview with Shaun Richards: Food and National Identity

Meet Shaun Richards, my oldest friend. We first met when we were less than a year old in the UK when his family came to stay with mine in Cambridge. I have no memories of this, of course, but I do remember living with Shaun's family in their beautiful home on Sydney's northern beaches when I first moved to Australia. 

My family ended up moving to Balmain, about an hour's drive away, so I didn't see Shaun that often, but we developed a great friendship and I looked forward, in particular, to our big family Christmases. Food was a significant part of these days for me and I wondered whether Shaun had similar memories of them.

The theme of this interview follows on from the first podcast in this series, focusing again on food, memory and identity. This short video introduces Shaun and some of the themes in the interview.

I explore with Shaun whether he thinks there is such a thing as Australian cuisine and if there are any links between his national identity as an Australian and his foodways. It turns out that for Shaun being an Australian is no longer a big part of his identity. So what is? Listen to the podcast to find out.

Interview with Alex Carvajal: Food and national identity

Introducing one of my dearest friends, Alex Carvajal. This is the first in a series of interviews with friends, classmates, colleagues and acquaintances talking about their food interests (and mine).

Alex and I have known each other since I moved to London about 6 years ago. I had known him for about two years before I found out that he used to be a chef. That night we bonded over our love of food, and it has continued to be a focal point of our conversations ever since.

I have created this short video to introduce you to Alex and some of the themes covered in the interview. 

The main focus of this interview is on his Colombian heritage and how this has influenced his foodways in Britain. This ties in with the theme on the blog this week, which is around food and identity. In the interview Alex talks about his memories of Colombia, the important links for him between food and family, as well as sharing food, and his take on Colombian and British cuisines.

Having spoken to Alex so much about food in the past, I was surprised how much I learnt in conducting this interview. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did. 

Food and identity: the sentimental stuff

For all that wider social and cultural processes, such as globalisation and commercialisation, have a part to play in shaping the links between food and identity (see my last post), for now I want to focus on the part we can all relate to: childhood memories, nostalgia, family connections and traditional values.

The unit we did on food, memory and identity for the MA Anthropology of Food was one of my favourite topics and has become the main focus of my studies. The core readings we did for that unit all touched on migration in one way or another and this is probably why it resonated with me.

I was born in Cambridge, England, but grew up in Sydney, Australia. I have always felt a strong attachment to England, one that my sister, who was born in Australia, does not share. I always felt compelled to come back here. As a kid growing up in Australia, I was proud of my English heritage. In some respects it defined me, or I wanted it to. I was sad when I returned to England and people told me I had an Australian accent.

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