Merida Anderson (photo: Danny Rico)
Interview by Megan Cole
Secret suppers have been a nerdy obsession for a while, and when possible I try to experience what these edgy and daring cooks and chefs are making outside of the mainstream restaurants. I discovered Merida Anderson, author of Vegan Secret Supper: Bold and Elegant Menus from a Rogue Kitchen, before she put pen to paper (or words to word processor) for her cookbook. She was hosting her secret supper in her East Vancouver apartment, and I was a skeptical omnivore, but was curious about the experience. Dish after dish, Anderson had me shocked and hungry for more, especially when it came to the chocolate mousse (yes, totally vegan and totally decadent). We recently caught up with Anderson to talk about the evolution of her secret suppers, which are now held in Montreal, New York and Vancouver, and her cookbook.
First of all, congrats on your cookbook. You seem to have your hand in a million different cookie jars. Haven’t you done everything from ceramics to building bikes, fashion and now a cookbook?
Thanks. Yeah, I have experimented and tried a lot of things, but I wouldn’t say that I’m ADD on things, just want to know everything.
You seem to have a pretty sophisticated palate now, and a great sense of how to put ingredients together. Were you always like that? What did you eat when you were 15 living in North Vancouver.
I don’t know what I ate. I’m pretty sure it was just regular North American food. I grew up in a pretty healthy household. My mom made bread and we weren’t allowed juice, and we never had junk food in the house. When I think back on it, it was a pretty special thing that my mom was like that.
When did you start considering veganism?
I was very young and getting into the punk scene, and there were a lot of vegans at that point in that community. I was influenced by that and I saw a few animal-cruelty videos. I think now my reasons for eating a certain way have definitely changed, and keep changing for me. It’s not that I don’t feel bad for a suffering animal, but that’s not necessarily the reason why I wouldn’t eat meat or dairy anymore.
How did your family feel about your decision to become vegan?
I told my mom and she was pretty upset. She dumped a whole bunch of cookbooks at the spot where I sat at the table and said, “We’re having chicken for dinner, what are you having?” I was like, whatever I know how to cook, and I definitely didn’t, because when I remember the first thing I ever made, and it was horribly disgusting. It definitely took a lot of learning, but I remember writing a cookbook when I was 16, so I was always pretty into it.
It must have been hard to learn how to cook vegan at that point. Things have really changed around what is available as far as vegan food goes. How did you learn to cook?
There wasn’t really anything available at that point. You couldn’t even get chocolate soy milk. You could get your Sunrise Tofu and that was about it. Any of the vegetarian cookbooks that my mom had were from the ‘70s, and I think the book that really brought me into veganism was Sarah Kramer’s How It All Vegan. That was definitely a book that taught me how to be vegan, basically.
You started your secret suppers in Vancouver, and now hold them in Montreal and New York, too. What have you noticed about how people respond to veganism in different cities?
It’s definitely something I’ve noticed that it’s different from coast to coast. On the west coast, vegan food is definitely seen as being more like “hippy food.” But when I moved to the east coast to New York, I found people didn’t want to eat vegan food because it was all processed and fake. Those are two separate, conflicting ideas. I did a private supper recently, and I always kind of dread those because there will be a few people who are very excited because they are the ones who wanted to have it, but the rest of their family members are more like heavy meat eaters who just want to make fun of it, even though they enjoy it. It’s hard when you have to constantly defend yourself. I try not to talk about it too much, and I try not to make things that emulate other things on purpose, because it’s not my goal to create something that looks and tastes like chicken. There aren’t that many vegans, and if you want to make an impact on someone that hasn’t eaten vegan food or doesn’t want to, you don’t want to scare them off with tofu, and you just want to show them that food is food, and you don’t have to think that it’s vegan; it’s just food.
Where did you first get the idea for your secret supper?
I actually went to something very similar to a supper club that a friend of mine in Halifax put on when I was visiting there. He had a big house in a smaller city, so every Sunday he would have people come, and there were tables and chairs in different rooms. It was exactly how I do it. I just fell in love with the idea, and because I was trying to write a cookbook for so long, I thought it was a perfect way to test ideas. I was in between careers and it seemed like a perfect direction to go.
What do you remember about the first secret supper you hosted?
I definitely know at one point I left the kitchen when I was prepping and I burnt a syrup I was making for dessert. I smoked the whole house out and I didn’t have a front window to open. It was when I was in an attic apartment, and it smoked up the whole house. I had to get that out before everyone came over. It was good though. When I started I had a lot of community from being in the music scene for so long and everyone was friends of mine and it was so amazing to have them support me like that and word spread from it being all friends to a wider community.
How was it different starting a secret supper in Vancouver compared to New York?
In Vancouver, at the time I started the supper club, I only knew three vegans, who were my friends. I think the biggest contingent of vegans I have coming to a supper is in New York. For Vancouver, it’s always a mix of ages and diets, which is great, I wouldn’t want it to be solely for vegans. I think it’s great that people are willing to try something different.
Now that you have so many secret suppers under your belt, have they gotten easier?
It’s still a challenge. I don’t use other people’s recipes, so every time I’m creating something new, which is hard. And for me, I’m a pretty shy person, so it felt like every time I had a supper it was like having an art show or playing a concert. I would see people talking and think they hate it; that was really hard for me. I was putting myself out there every week and in such a different way that I had experience playing shows and doing art. It’s also hard every time I move cities, like when I moved to New York, I knew one person there, and when I decided to do the supper club I’m not someone who goes out and talks to people and promotes themselves, and that’s what people do in New York. I found it really hard. I think one of the hardest things was going somewhere where I didn’t have a community and starting something that relied on word of mouth.
How did the cookbook come together?
I just started writing the recipes down that I was cooking, sort of. I wouldn’t write down my recipes. I would right down what I put in it, and I started deciding to put out a full cookbook when I started accumulating so many different recipes and dishes. I would start writing them down, and I was putting them on a computer, but it got wiped accidentally, so I lost everything. I got so discouraged, and didn’t want to rewrite everything. It was always on the back burner. I always wanted to be with Arsenal Pulp Press, though, because I had grown up with How It All Vegan, but I never had the confidence or the drive to make it happen in the professional way. I do a lot of things that are DIY, and when it comes to things that are more professional or bureaucratic, I tend to shy away from it.
Did people in New York and Vancouver respond differently to your secret suppers?
The response is great in every city, and very different. When I did it in Vancouver, I did it every week and there weren’t a lot of vegan restaurants in Vancouver. There was one, but nobody ever knew about it. It was neat because people weren’t just coming to experience a supper club. I had a friend who started a supper club and cooked meat, and she found she didn’t have returning customers. She just had very foodie people who just loved the idea of going to an underground restaurant, but I found I had people who came every week, because they treated it like going to a restaurant and it was a better choice for vegetarians and vegans. In New York it was different because there are so many vegan restaurants there. I met lots of amazing people through the supper club and met people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. When I go back to New York, I get to see lots of familiar faces and that’s pretty special.
Merida Anderson regularly hosts her vegan secret suppers. To find out where she’ll be and when the next supper is, go here. Vegan Secret Suppers: Bold and Elegant Menus from a Rogue Kitchen is available now and was published by Arsenal Pulp Press.
No Comments