Marian Cooper Cairns is a food stylist and recipe developer based in Los Angeles with 20 years of experience in the food industry. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she still sports a southern accent and is known for making really bad food puns on social media and can make you a darn great buttermilk biscuit, just ask. When she is not poking at food with tweezers she loves to talk about all things Pimento Chz Club, her small batch pimento cheese company. Her passion for food styling and recipe development serves clients for ad campaigns, product packaging, cookbooks, and commercials.
Marian Cooper Cairns is a food stylist and recipe developer based in Los Angeles with 20 years of experience in the food industry. Originally from Alabama, she still sports a southern accent and is known for making really bad food puns on social media and can make you a darn great buttermilk biscuit, just ask. When she is not poking at food with tweezers she loves to talk about all things Pimento Chz Club, her small batch pimento cheese company. Her passion for food styling and recipe development serves clients for ad campaigns, product packaging, cookbooks, and commercials. Her favorite people in the world include her hot boyfriend/husband, her big sister, and her children Possum and Souffle.
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PFP - Marian Cooper Cairns
Marian Cooper Cairns: [00:00:00] It's like, I'm a painter, but I'm using food and the plate or platter, or cutting board is my canvas. And I know that sounds like really, like woo-y or cliched, but it's like that, that's what I'm doing. And I want it to look yummy. You know, I want you to be able to want to like, reach through the photo and pick up that sandwich or reach through the screen and be like, "I want to eat that," you know, to like get them thinking, like to make people hungry. I mean, that's how I got my, I convinced my husband to go out out with me as I made him a grilled vegetable panini that blew his mind and he was just like, yeah, I'll come back for dinner again. He said he didn't want to date, but, um, I convinced him.
Jordan: Welcome to the Prix Fixe Podcast, where the new voices in the culinary world share their stories [00:01:00] and their own words. The show is produced and edited by me, Jordan Haro in Los Angeles, California. Ultimately I'll remove my side of the conversation and let the guests tell their story in their own words.
Meet Marianne Cooper Cairns, food stylist and recipe developer of the stars. Hailing from Birmingham, Alabama, where her dad owned a Dairy Queen and her mom worked in the test kitchen in Southern living magazine, she found her way to culinary school and eventually became a food stylist and recipe developer for Southern Living as well. I admittedly knew very little about food styling before this conversation. This seemingly invisible craft is something of a dark art in deliciousness to make plated food look appealing is an illusive practice, especially when the best tasting food, isn't always as good looking as it is out of the oven. But Marian lives and breathes quality food. Her hands have absolutely shaped food your eyes [00:02:00] have seen on magazine covers at the neighborhood grocery store checkout aisle or adorning the walls of many fast food joints. Seriously, her work is everywhere. She's helped make major bestselling cookbooks with celebrities. She also makes the best pimento cheese money can buy you to arrive at your doorstep. A project she started to bring a little joy to combat the pandemic doldrums of mid 2020. She and her husband Lee were my next door neighbors and are easily the best neighbors I've ever had and remain good friends of mine to this day. She's a joyous person and I loved having the opportunity to chat with her and learn more about her craft. Let's listen in
Marian Cooper Cairns: My name's Marian Cooper Cairns, and I'm a food stylist and sometimes recipe developer. I grew up in a food family and my dad worked in, he owned a Dairy Queen. And actually my grandfather built it in [00:03:00] 1960. My dad and his brothers took it over and then it became my dad's and my sister also worked there side-by-side with him for, I think almost 10 years. I hope I get those dates right, Jennifer. I just always thought everyone's dad worked in a restaurant. Like everyone's dad owns a Dairy Queen or a Burger King, or, you know, and then when I was like third grade, my mom worked in the restaurant with my dad up until then. And when I was in the third grade, she got a job at Southern Living magazine, which is like the pinnacle Southern magazine. I mean, everyone grew up with a subscription to the magazine. So my mom works there and I'm just like, yeah, every mom works in a magazine. So as it's just, that was my normal. Um, and she worked in the test kitchen. Readers would send in recipes and she was one of eight women that worked in four kitchens, they would share kitchens and [00:04:00] they would just prepare the food all day. She would often times bring home a lot of the leftovers, and so that's what we grew up eating. We would have Thanksgiving in June and July. We would have grilled foods in the winter time. Um, because you work ahead in the editorial industry. I was just surrounded by food. We would go out to eat as, um, when we were, you know, as a family and we would rate the meal at the end of the night, just like they would rate the food. At the, at the tasting table at the magazine. So food was just like always in my blood. And so of course as a rebellious, like teenager. I was like, oh, I've got to go to college. You know, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'm going to go to art school. I'd mentioned culinary school. And it was just like, no, no, no, no, no, you have to go to college. So, um, I went to college in Philadelphia and went to art school and studied photography and just fell in love with it and then fell in love with it so much. I totally burned out, [00:05:00] moved back to Birmingham and, um, Met my future husband and would just, I lured him to my house all the time to make dinner for him. And he was, I was just started thinking about like, you know, I really, I was working in retail and really loved it, but I just didn't see a future there. I, the culinary school thing kept coming up and, um, you know, Lee was like, I really think you could do this. In the midst of the beginning of my relationship with Lee, my husb- my mom passed away. And that was very sad. So it was also a big turning point. And it was maybe about a year after that, I enrolled in school and went to a culinary school in Austin. And that's kind of where I got started. Southern Living has this significance through Southern culture for, I mean, it's been around 50, 75 years. I should, I should know that because [00:06:00] it's like in my blood. Like I said earlier, you know, you're not Southern unless you have a subscription to Southern Living. And that's how it was for decades. I mean, the south has evolved so much. Um, but it was such an icon. And when people would find out that my mom worked there, I mean, their eyes were just like, "your mom works at Southern living?" And I'm like, "yeah," It's just like, "yeah, my dad owns a Dairy Queen. Yeah." And like, that was my life. I didn't know any difference. With what I had learned growing up in my family, I knew like about the magazine world and I really thought that that would be a great way to kind of combined my schooling and photography and I've been on shoots when I was in high school. I remember going on shoots, well, middle school and high school going on shoots with my mom. Um, we as children [00:07:00] of Southern Living. You always end up in the photos. So I've been in multiple old magazines. You probably can't find them now, but in the eighties and nineties, you know, there are I am as like a little kid, like eating a popsicle or like eating a Christmas cookie. Um, so I knew about that world and I was just like, this is so neat. I would like to do that one day. And I do remember talking to my mom and she had, she was just like, "oh, Marian. That is just a one-off job. Like. It's not like I just, it's a, it's a one-off thing. Like it's not really, like, there's not like a future there." I'm like, okay. You know, like I'm like, I'm a positive person. So I think that was when I was like headed to college. We had talked about it a little bit and, so I knew, I knew about the world kind of forgot about it in college. And then before I went to culinary school, I made myself work in a restaurant for six months to make sure I knew what I was getting [00:08:00] into because I had that rattling in the back of my head. Like I might not get that chance to work for a magazine. So I better like working in a restaurant. And that was the scariest six months in my life, like going in like the first days, um, of like working the line so to speak. And I was just like, I was sweeping the floor wash- I wasn't washing dishes, but I was just like anything they told me to do, peel onions, chop potatoes, I did it. And just watching like the dynamic of all the men that were there. It was just like, I would get in my car and I, I think I cried like after service, like every other night for like four or five weeks, but I had my little notebook and I would write down the recipes that they would tell me to make and how to, you know, I was doing it. And after the six months. I was like, "okay, I can do this. Like, I don't feel scared to be in the kitchen." And it's so funny because I grew up in and out of my dad's restaurant, my uncle owned a restaurant and his was the polar opposite. It [00:09:00] was like a fine dining. I was in that world enough, but stepping inside of that kitchen, I was just terrified. Worked in, worked the six months. And I was like, okay, if this backfires. I'll work in a kitchen or I'll become a caterer or I'll, you know, work in a restaurant in some capacity. So the first day of culinary school, I'm in this room with kids that this is like a lot of them, it was their college experience. Um, there's maybe like 60 people in my first class. You go through the introductions and you ha we had to go around the room and say like, oh my name's "Marian. I'm from Birmingham. And I would like to be a food stylist." Well, I was the last person in the room to go and everyone's like, "I want to own a restaurant." "I want to be a chef." "I want to be a teacher." "I want to do this." And I raise my hand and I'm like, "I want to be a food stylist." And the number of people [00:10:00] that turned around and looked at me, they had not a clue what I was talking about. And I was just like, all right, let's do this! And so went through culinary school and I was laser focused. I was a lot, a little bit older. I think it was about 25, 26 when I was in school. And a lot of the people I was in school with were like 18. And then there were some kids, there were people that were a lot older than me that were doing it were for fun, but I was like never missed a day, got a hundred on every test, studied. It was so hard to learn how to study again after not being in college anymore. And just tried to get in, suck as much information out of that experience. And then. We had to do an internship. And I applied at, uh, Southern Living, Cooking Light and Oxmoor House, which was a book publisher. And that was back at the company my mom worked for. [00:11:00] And part of me didn't, I was a little nervous to do that because I didn't want there to be any like favoritisms, but I, you know, did the interviews and I got an offer to work, um, at Oxmoor House. And started in their test kitchen. I didn't finish my internship because they had a position at Southern Living open up, which is like a once every two to three years. And I happened to be there in that right moment. And I applied for it and I, and I had to go through three interviews. I had to cook for all of the staff twice and it took two months and I got the job and I couldn't believe it. I was floored. I was so excited, but within working in the test kitchen, I really wanted to do food styling and immediately started food styling. Um, in the way they ran the magazine then is if you tested the recipe, you [00:12:00] were then most likely the person that would do the food styling for it, because you're most familiar with, you know, how it should look. And so that was almost, um, 15, 20 years ago. Yeah. It's been wild.
You know, it's funny working at the magazine my mom worked at for 10 years. I was lucky enough to actually work with a lot of her coworkers and it was. I'll probably get upset, but it was, it was so great to be able to, I felt like I was walking in her shoes. I pulled on the same refrigerator door that she pulled on for 10 years. [00:13:00] I've actually worked in her kitchen for the greater part of that. And it was really great because it had only been, you know, a handful of years since my mom had passed away and I was still so young, I mean, it was 25. I was still like trying to figure out life and to work in that kitchen, I felt like I was around her all the time and it it's funny. It like, it was so fun and exciting when I first got there, but a few years in is when it really sunk in like, oh wait, I'm living my mom's life. Like this is wild. It was, I felt so fortunate, but it was like this hug. I know that. I mean, that sounds cheesy, but like, it, it was so comforting to have that as I'm like, trying to figure out you know, adulthood. I'm still trying to figure out adulthood what I'm going to do when I grow up. But, um, that, that was really special. And then to get, to [00:14:00] hear like great stories from the editor in chief. And they would pop up all the time or somebody would find a picture of my mom and just put it on my desk, you know, we be like, "oh, we were going through old film." and yeah, when I started there, we were shooting film. You know, we still shot with film and there'll be like, "oh, we were cleaning up some things. And I found this picture of your mom." And it was, it was really special. Especially just looking back on it now. Um, it, it really helped a lot to be there. I feel pretty lucky to have that, um, as part of like that healing process, so to speak. Yeah, so sharing stories about her was really special.
Um, I was at Southern Living. I want to say I was on staff for about six and a half, seven years, six and a half years. And then [00:15:00] during that time I was testing recipes and food styling, but food styling was my favorite part. I would, you know, food style two or three days a week, but I just loved every minute of it. And I met a photographer about a year after I'd been there, um, named Jennifer Davick and we quickly just became friends. And I just got even more laser focused on food styling because she was coming from San Francisco and brought in a whole different, you know, background, uh, and her experiences working with people. And so I got to pick her brain about that. And as the magazine evolved, um, they started kind of compartmentalizing everyone. And so, you know, if you're stronger at food styling, you're going to food style, if you're stronger at testing, you're going to test. And so I fell into the food styling category and, um, I was then I started food styling every day and it was great. Jennifer would always [00:16:00] say it was like learning to play the piano and you just have to practice. And that's like with cooking in general, similar with food styling, you, you know, you have to sear chicken breasts 25 times, 50 times before you get just your right technique on how you're going to do it. And so being, I was so fortunate to work, w to be on staff somewhere and practice food styling, Monday through Friday, there's always a bundt cake, there was always a turkey. There was always a casserole. There's always a soup. So it really helped me hone what I'm doing, because there's not, there's not a school or a roadmap that it's like, oh, you want to be a food stylist. This is how you do it. A, B, C. You just have to jump in there and do it. My path was I learned on staff, other people, um, they assist, um, uh, lead food stylists and you might assist for years, and then you go out on your own and I was just thrown into the fire [00:17:00] and just had to figure it out. I was, did that for about four years, just food styling at the magazine and, um, decided, uh, since I was on staff, I really only could work for Southern Living, but we had so many other magazines within the Time Inc umbrella that I was like, but I want to work at Cooking Light. And can I work on that out? Can, can I, can I try that? And so they let me do a couple shoots, but then it started to get like, "but Southern Living's your home." so I had to, I had to make the decision to like, alright I'm going to, I'm going to leave and I've made a plan and kind of stuck to the plan. I'm saying yes to every assignment they gave me. I was like, first in line, like, let me do that. Let me do that. And then I gave my notice and it was a scary day. Um, I had a lot of anxiety about that. And turned around and a week and a half [00:18:00] later, I was hired back as a freelancer to keep working with them, but I was able to work with Cooking Light and I'm trying to remember the other magazines, well Oxmurray House. They did a lot of cookbooks. Um, Coastal Living was a favorite of mine. And so it got me. So again, I'm like playing the piano. And so now I'm getting to hone seafood cooking and with Cooking Light, they did much more, um, it just wasn't Southern food. So it was always so much more freeing to work on those jobs because it starts to get a little redundant. I joke with my friend that, uh, it's always Thanksgiving somewhere. I think there was one year we S we styled like 13, 14 turkeys within like a three month period. My personality is like, "I will not garnish the same thing. I will not repeat my garnishes on any of those turkeys." And after a while, it's just like, "I can't do any [00:19:00] more turkeys. I can't style another Bundt cake." so there was a lot of practicing, um, for years. And so we stayed in Birmingham for, I think it was another four years after that. And then my husband and I decided to move to Los Angeles. I had, um, right after I left Southern Living, an agent had reached out to me and wanted to rep me. And so she was based here in Los Angeles. And so they brought me back or they got me out here for a few shoots. So I was able to work with like Target. I did a, I did a cat food shoot, just that, you know, just to get me out here just to see, you know, what it was like to work. And they kept saying like, "you would do really great here, Marian." And I was like, "you're crazy. I'm I'm not moving to Los Angeles." And then one day I was like, "you know what?" I think I was out here for a two-week shoot. [00:20:00] "This place isn't so bad. Like maybe, maybe this can work." and I was, I was just getting so kind of bored with my work in Birmingham and I love what I do. I love what I do. It doesn't feel like a job, most of the time and talking with my husband, Lee, we figured, why not? Let's try it. And so he was very supportive and, and so we moved to LA and we've now been here a little over six years. And it was hard first because I didn't know anyone. Um, and that's taken about three to four years to like really build up that base of, um, photographers that I work with and assistants. It takes a lot of people to do what I do, um, connections, but in the last, probably before the pandemic, um, I was kind of hitting a stride of repeat clients and that kind of stuff.[00:21:00]
Well, first and foremost, I'm not a chef. Yeah I went to culinary school, but I'm not a chef. I like to call myself a cook or a food stylist. A food stylist is there to prepare the food for camera, whether it's motion or for stills. But we have an eye on what is going to look the best. And we also have to look at like, how, if, if we're following a recipe, if it's made correctly, but there's little nuances on how something's going to catch the light or how can you keep food alive? Why while a photographer is lighting something or, uh, the camera's rolling. Food is a living breathing thing and we are there to make it look its best. It's [00:22:00] just like why you get your hair done. It's a really funny job because like I said earlier, there's not a rule book. There are a few books out there that are helpful now and YouTube is pretty cool. I'd say one of the things I love most about my job is the fact that every day is different. Every job is different. Sometimes I'm just unwrapping 300 cookies to find the best one and hand to a model. And then other days I might be preparing. A four course meal for a table of 12 people to sit down and look like they're having their best Thanksgiving ever. Um, and that's what I really like. That it's always something different. I'm always meeting new people. I might work on a crew of five people and I might work on a crew with 50. When I'm hired to work on shoots. I generally work with like an art director or, um, somebody from a brand [00:23:00] and they send me, sometimes they send me recipes and other times they just send me photos of what kind of food that they want. Um, and that's for like advertise advertising jobs. And then I spend a lot of. Most important part of my job is the prep. Before I even set foot in the grocery store before I set foot on set and I go through and like, look at the recipes, ask the questions. Like, are people going to be eating the food? How long, like how many shots are we doing in a day? So I can get an idea, like how, you know, I might have to replate the salad eight times or might, we might not have time to do that. So to gauge like how much food I need to buy, and then a lot of times I'll pull pictures. Um, inspiration images and send to the client. Like, I know you showed me the sandwich, but wouldn't it be a little bit better for your product if we show it this way? So a lot of it's corralling all of the information. It's hard sometimes as [00:24:00] creatives to describe what you want with words, because the words don't necessarily translate to what's in that person's head. And so on, there is like a translator to like pull it all together and then put it together in food. And I'm lucky to use like my background from college. It's like, I'm a painter, but I'm using food and the plate or platter cutting board is my canvas. And I know that sounds like really like, woo-y or cliched, but it's like that, that's what I'm doing. But I have to, like, I still, in the back of my mind, like, I can't just do whatever I want. I have to, I've got that art director in my background or that client being like, yeah, that tomato's pretty, but we're trying to sell the meat and the hamburger or, you know, to, to make sure that I'm making all these other people happy. Making me happy. I don't like working on a shoot where I don't like [00:25:00] the end product, but sometimes I'm being told to move things a certain way. And so I've gotta like inflect a little bit of "me" in there and keep the food alive and to make sure it's looks good and delicious. I think a lot of times when people think of food styling, they immediately ask questions like, "oh, you use Elmer's glue as milk. And I've seen a video on YouTube about they use motor oil is syrup." There's some, there's some weird, I get weird questions. I'll just leave it at that. Um, I use all real food 99.9% of the time I have through practice, I have tweaks, you know, to how to keep food alive or make it look fresh, even if it's been sitting there for hours. The way I put my spin on things is making it look real. Food styling 15 years ago, 10, 15 years ago, [00:26:00] everything was very sterile. Like when you look back on old cookbooks or, you know, an ad for McDonald's from 10 years ago or even five years ago, the food is very perfect and neat and fake. And what I like to do is add that realness to it. Maybe it's some crumbs, a little drippy sauce. It gives it like that ooey gooey factor. "Craveability" is a word I hear a lot lately. Imperfectly perfect. So it's like the tilt of a bun on a burger or the drip of a sauce. It just brings like a human element to it. And also that, like, there's somebody in the room, like you're looking at, uh, uh, my friend Scott Jones, he was a editor that I worked under and he said something once to me that I think about so much is that we were looking at images, [00:27:00] and he was like, it looks like everyone's left the room. Like where is everyone in this image? Because it was so there was just, if something was off, it was lonely. There wasn't that human ness. And so I, I've never forgotten that. I think that like, when I'm just looking at just a photograph. I'm just like, is somebody there? Does it look like we've just caught a moment? And so that's where I constantly am thinking, like how to add that humanity to something and just make it look real. But delicious. I feel like I'm the mediator a lot of times on some shoots where I have to teach someone what food can do and also reign in people's expectations on what food can't do. But I try to do that in the most tactful [00:28:00] way. There's photo shoots and, and film shoots. It can get, there's a lot of tension, you know, it's a lot of money in my business. And so we've got like such a short amount of time to do our jobs. So I kind of have a tap dance that I have to do to keep all the parties happy. And I don't mind that. Yeah, it can be, it can get really tricky at points. The hardest aspect of my job. It's probably the personalities that we juggle, but I like the juggle. I love to meet people. I think that's where my Southern roots come in. You know, like I never want somebody to feel left out. Like I'm not trying to like climb my way to the top of something and I want everybody included. So I'm always thinking about. Earlier, like, you know, does the art director, like what we're doing? Is the client happy? Like I have to toe that line. And the art director sometimes doesn't care about what the client thinks and the client doesn't [00:29:00] care what the art director thinks, but I have to be the one that like brings everybody together and the final product. That can get really hard. I was on a shoot. I think it was for Seven Eleven. And we were shooting an obscene amount of food for one day. Like I felt like a drive-through, like, you just, they would order up food and it's just like, I'm not food styling right now. I'm running a drive through. So we've got a pizza on set and they're like, let's try this. Let's try that. Okay. Wouldn't it be neat if we do this. And then at the end, the, uh, one of the creative directors. Said "let's do a cheese pull and my head just flipped around and I was like, "great. That's going to take about an hour and a half." Yeah. You just can't like pull out a cheese pull in five minutes after a pizza's been out of the oven. There's just it's we get weird asks in our job a lot. So a [00:30:00] cheese pull is when you see your next like Pizza Hut commercial is when you lift up the slice of pizza and pull it away and you've got the strings of cheese or you cut a grilled cheese in half and pull it apart and you have a cheese pull. That's what we call it in our industry, but that's, um, you know, it takes time and you don't get it on the first go. You have to just do it again and again and again, and you will get one that looks great. And a lot of people on shoots when I've done them, I do one. And I say, before I start, I'm like, this is going to take several goes, please, if we can. And I try to be as polite as possible. I'm like, can we not comment until I've done it a few times? And inevitably I do one and there's one or two people. "Okay. You know what you should try is XYZ." And I'm like, "no, we just need to do it again." And just try to stay as calm as [00:31:00] possible. I guess I get frustrated a lot when people are like, "well, you know what you should try is this, this, this?" And I'm like, "no, like I just like, give me a second. Like, this is an organic natural thing. And we just have to like, let it do its thing. I'm here to get like, carry it across the finish line," but you, you just can't like, "we want more string on this or we want more cheese on this end and more here." You just have to do it and let it. I'm it's guide and I'm there to get it there. So that's one thing I hate. Well, and every job is totally different. I love working on advertising and commercial shoots, but then I love working on cookbooks shoots because in the cookbook, like you become a family, you work for like a week or two, and you're with like maybe a photographer, a prop stylist. There's me, my assistant. I generally work with an assistant [00:32:00] because they are the ones preparing 90% of the food and I'm just doing the plating so we can get more done in a day. But anyway, a cookbook, it's a small crew and you spend 10 hours with them every day for two weeks. It's like, it becomes like the best family and some great memories from, um, working on cookbooks, but that's totally different than, you know, working on a broadcast commercial or working for ad campaign for, um, a national chain. And that's a whole other thing where in a cookbook, she will do 10 recipes in a day. It's a lot, but it's, you know, we're, it's, it's delicious. We generally eat the food for lunch 90% of the time. Um, if the cookbook's good. Um, and then I'll work on a campaign, you know, for a restaurant and we might only prepare four dishes all day long because we're [00:33:00] tweaking every little nuance. Is the lettuce, okay? Is, do we need a cook more chicken? Because that is at browned enough? Is there enough golden color on this? Um, we'll go through a lot of food just to produce, you know, for photos. Um, and there's different personalities of jobs. It, it keeps me on my toes and I like that next. It's not like going into an office where you're sitting in front of a computer, kind of doing the same thing. And you've got your routine. You go at lunch at one o'clock every day. I never know when I'm going to take lunch break. Sometimes I don't even eat lunch. We roll in the door and we start cooking and we're done when we're done. It can be hard. You know, um, it's a very physical job. I'm on my feet all day. So it's really nice to be sitting here talking to you right now. And a lot of times I'm hunched over on a counter or, uh, I'm working [00:34:00] on the floor because we shoot a lot of things overhead now. And, um, you know, down on my hands and knees or I've got to get in there, you know, I can I'll style. Say for instance, I saw a hamburger and I can set it up and style it in the kitchen. But like the last 15% I've got to do on set. So I'm down there, like on my knees, on a table with my tweezers and paintbrush and little thing, oil and super glue here and there. And, you know, just trying to like poke things cause it's, it's funny, like just turning a leaf a certain way, or, um, a glisten of oil on the hamburger patty, like how it will affect the light. And you have to realize that, but you've got to do all those nuances and it's at the end of the day, I'm beat. I feel like sometimes I've run a marathon, but I haven't gone anywhere. I want to say one of the, one of the jobs I was most excited to get [00:35:00] was, um, the job for whole foods. And it was when I was still kind of early here in LA. And when I got that and I worked with them on several shoots, I felt like, oh, wait, I'm really doing this. I'm really doing it. Every job. I just, I still feel like I'm growing and learning. Um, because every job is totally different. I always get excited - to having a new client. And not just in a, like, I'm going to have work, but just like, oh, here's this new thing that I'm going to learn like next, um, in a couple of weeks I'm working on a shoot for this, um, vegan meat company. And that whole industry is, you know, there's Beyond there's Impossible, but like, that's just the tip of the iceberg. I've been working with a vegan seafood company for a couple of years and what I've learned doing that was incredibly fun. And now I'm going to learn like how to ha I've got to figure out how to style vegan [00:36:00] bacon and vegan turkey and vegan roast beef and pepperoni. It's new. It's a whole new territory of, um, you know, figuring out what I can do with it and what I can't do. Um, so I do like that learning side of it.
A lot of studios that we work in offer kitchens, and that is great. But sometimes we have to build out a kitchen or we, we get food trucks, but this isn't like the typical food truck. It's a box truck that's outfitted with a sink running, um, a sink and then they have to bring in water. So we have running water. And it'll have refrigeration, um, you know, our cooktops, we can bring in grills, heaters, everything. It's a mobile kitchen, but it doesn't look like the, like a taco food truck. [00:37:00] That's another part of like how I said the prep is so important having to ask those questions ahead. Like, am I going to have a kitchen? Am I going to have running water? Will I have refrigeration? And you would be surprised how many times I've asked those questions and it's like, "oh no, you need that question, mark. I had no idea." It's like, "yeah. And I really don't think I can work out of the, um, employee break room, kitchen," you know, like that's not going to work for like the level of things that I was asked to do that for that job that comes to mind. So you really have to know, you know what you're walking into. One nice thing, now that I've been in LA long enough, I know, you know, the studios and what they're going to have, but they're still always at, you know, one refrigerator's not going to cut it. We need to bring in three. And so I generally work with the producer or [00:38:00] the photographer and they help coordinate making sure we have all the equipment. And another thing that's happened is I'm prepping for a job and I'm buying all the food. Well, this job isn't till Monday, but I'm going to be shopping for this on Saturday and Sunday. Where am I going to put all this food? And so that becomes like this juggle dance of dividing the grocery list between my assistants and myself, or asking a neighbor, if I can use their refrigerator, that has happened from time to time. Um, so it's a. It's a funny dance that we do. And it's con, I'm constantly juggling too, because when I'm on a shoot, I'm starting to get information about my next shoot coming in. And so I've got all these balls and I'm juggling them. And meanwhile, I'm on set and I've got ice cream on set, and I've got to figure out how to get [00:39:00] what I'm working on in the moment and make sure that I'm ready for the next job, because it can be back to back to back to back. The highs are real, real, real high, but the lows can be just, I haven't had any like terrible shoots, but there've been a few where they were outside of my control, but I was in a bathroom. I would sit in the bathroom and just like, all right, we're going to shed a little tear here. And then we got to, you know, put your big girl panties on and get back out there. Cause we gotta get this done. It's no, it's it's it can be incredibly stressful, but the, the longer I've been here in LA, I really have found a lot of great clients and great photographers that I have so much trust in that I know that I'm not going to get, um, they're not going to put me in a [00:40:00] bad position. So that's what, like the longer I'm here, the better it gets. And it's like every, every like six months I was like, wow, I didn't think it could get any better. Like, I have less anxiety about what I'm doing. Um, I, you know, in Birmingham I loved everyone I worked with, I worked with some of the most talented people and I realized like after I left, I think a lot of us felt like we had a chip on our shoulder because we weren't from New York or we weren't from LA or we weren't from Chicago. Those are kind of like the three big food areas, really like New York and Chicago. There's a ton of food photography happening. Um, and we all kind of had a chip on our shoulder about not being from there. I think after I left and coming to LA, it made me realize like what incredibly talented people that live there and still work. There's still a [00:41:00] ton of work there and how much I learned, you know, I said earlier it was like playing the piano and we wrote some really good songs there. Being from the south, I feel like I bring a knowledge of, um, what the rest of the country is like, because there's like the New York and then there's the California state of mind. And I feel like I bring like what the rest of the country is eating. You know, I didn't grow up with avocados on every single thing. I didn't know. You could put avocado in so many things until I moved here. But, you know, when I'm working with like a Target, for example, or, you know, a Walmart, like, I feel like I'm like working for like the rest of the country, like real people and not like this. East coast, west coast. I don't mean, I hope that comes off like not sounding so [00:42:00] negative, but I think a lot of people get lost in like, "oh, every, every place is like California" and it's not. And you can see the difference, like in your, on your dinner table. And I just had like a more like homegrown. No middle America is the wrong thing. Cause it wasn't middle America. It was the south. Just a knowledge of like where a lot, how a lot of the rest of the country eats, like comfort food. That's been so big, you know, for years I think it had a, a big trend after the 2008 economic meltdown. There was a huge trend in comfort food. And then I think Southern food just got lopped into that and Southern food got really big. Um, and then, and then turn around with the pandemic. Um, just it, I don't know. I just feel like it's how more people really eat it. Here's the funny thing is, and I get, I get to work with a lot of people in [00:43:00] LA and have, you know, our work. There's like a network of food stylists, and I don't know very many, but yet we're friends on Instagram or we email each other, like, "Hey, I'm going to San Francisco. And I need an assistant,", but I, I work predominantly in like recipe driven food and whether it's editorial, which is like magazines and cookbooks or advertising when someone's trying to sell food, but there's this whole other myriad of people in, especially Los Angeles that make food for like stunts in a way, or for cooking shows. That's, what's very different. Like I'm. I don't know what you would call my lane, but like, I don't work on cooking shows. That's a whole different hat. You have culinary producers. You've got a team of people behind like a cooking show, whether it's just like a one [00:44:00] person cooking show, or if it's like a food competition show. There are so many people in the background and that's a whole different hat of how you organize and shop and prepare. And then there's the making popcorn explode from cannons and, um, when food is, is used as a prop in a way, then there's food styling for, for movies. I don't, I don't know that hat. And that's the whole thing of having to build, you know, um, a grand ballroom desserts scene. I wouldn't even know where to begin. I stay in my lane of, um, of parsley sprig-, well, not parsley sprigs, but, um, of, of cooking re real food and helping people sell that. I get asked a lot like, "oh, do you work on this TV show? Or do you, do you do the food for [00:45:00] this show?" And I'm like, "no," like, and I wouldn't even know who to call. Like our, my industry is so tiny yet. It's so broad. And also one thing, a lot of people have misconceptions when I'm asked like, "oh, what do you do?" And I'm like, "oh, I'm a food stylist". And they're like, "oh, that's so cool. You get to take pictures of food." And I'm like, "No I don't have a camera. I don't even own a camera anymore." And I was in art school for that. And also like, I don't buy the plates or bring the plates or the, you know, the napkins, that's a whole other prop stylist that that's a heavy load that they carry the surfaces you shoot on. When you look at a photograph in a magazine or in an ad campaign, there have been so many hands that have touched that, but yet we make it look like it was effortlessly just they're like, "oh, I set down the plate of spaghetti and it looked [00:46:00] perfectly twirled and, you know, and deliciously yummy." There were, there were a lot of people behind that camera
Food is just insanely popular and it it's the one thing we all have in common. I do feel as though everyone, everyone's expectations of food has grown and what, what they expect food to be like in a restaurant now is not what it was like 15 years ago. The expectation, the bar is so high. I feel like it does put a lot of pressure on my industry in the sense of is the accuracy, right? Also, are you buying the best ingredients you can for your food shoot? Like you can't just roll into [00:47:00] Walmart, buy the best looking produce the evolution that is happening in food weirdly is making my job a lot easier because I have access to better food. That's one plus about being in LA. There's multiple farmer's markets to choose from every day to get the best looking arugula, herbs, tomatoes, et cetera. That makes my job a lot easier. Some of the words I would use to describe what my style are, is a little messy. "Perfectly imperfect" is a word that gets thrown around that. I hear people say about my work. You look at different people's websites and their portfolios. You do see a style. It's hard to look at your own and be like, "this is my brand, and these are the key words," but I really want food to look approachable and not like a statue in a museum. And I want it to look yummy. [00:48:00] You know, I want you to be able to want to like reach through the photo and pick up that sandwich or reach through the screen and be like, "I want to eat that," you know, to like get them thinking, like to make people hungry and not something that's so pristine and perfect and almost sterile and cold. Unless it's ice cream.
I have a hard time, um, with like, not having hobbies because I turned my hobby into my career. I mean, that's how I got my, I convinced my husband to go out out with me is I made him a grilled vegetable panini that blew his mind and he was just like, "yeah, I'll come back for dinner again." He said he didn't want to date, but, um, I convinced him. Yeah. I have a hard time with [00:49:00] hobbies, but entertaining is my number one hobby. And I love, I still love to cook at home. A perk of my job are great leftovers, not food that we've cooked that day, but ingredients. And I love that, the challenge of like, okay, I've walked away from the shoot with a giant bottle of olive oil, a pound of kale, a side, a salmon, and three boxes of crackers I've never even heard of, but the packaging looked cool so I bought them and then figuring out how to put together a meal using those ingredients and not be so wasteful, but it's like a, um, it's almost like a, uh, a really fun game of putting things together. And that's where I feel like I've been able to take like my culinary degree, like I said, like, I don't like to refer to myself as a chef. Yeah. I went to culinary school, [00:50:00] but I don't own a restaurant. You know, I don't, I don't run a kitchen. I'm just a really good cook. I love what I do, but it doesn't feel like work until it does feel like work. I, when I finish a shoot, even when it's been a really hard one, I'm always looking forward to the next one. It's like the thing it's like, it's not sexy. Like what I do in a way, because I'm basically here to help somebody else make more money. I know that is like not, you know, like I'm like I'm pimping out the food. Like I'm there to make it look good. I've got to put the lip gloss on it and that tees up its hair. Um, and then send it on its way to, you know, make money. It's a sexy job and it's not a sexy job. It's not a job to me because I love it. You know, like I'm, I'm playing with food. I get paid to play with food. Sometimes I feel like I'm the dirty little secret, [00:51:00] you know, you go through the drive-through at a restaurant and you open up your hamburger in your lap and you're like, "wow, that sure doesn't look like the picture." Like I, you know, that, that hits me sometimes. Like you're working on a packaging shoot and you open up the frozen meal and you look down and you're like, I got to make that look good. You know, like I feel bad sometimes I'm like, we'll finish a shoot. And I'm like, "you know what? That looks damn good." And I'm like, man, that person at home is going to open up their frozen meal and be like, "this isn't. Yeah, this is wrong," but like we're following the rules. Like we're using the products, we're using the right amount of chicken, the right amount of pasta, or, you know, we have to follow those rules in our industry. But yeah. Sometimes I feel bad about what I do, especially when you make it look really good. [00:52:00] And it's like, oh, it's not going to be like that at home. Well, I've gotten, I think too coming from Birmingham, I was working in such like an editorial field. And when I came to LA, I've gotten to work on like national things. In Birmingham, I was just very regional, but I've loved like working for Walmart, working for Target, you know, working for big, big names. It kind of goes back to that chip on my shoulder that I felt in my industry in Birmingham. And it's like, no way I can do this. And it is it it's given me a lot of joy in knowing like, um, I'm pretty good at my job and people like want to hire me again, because again, there's not like accolades that like food stylists can win or, [00:53:00] um, or, you know, the, there's not a path, there's not a school for it. So there's no, you know, you can't get a master's degree in. You know, food styling. So like when you land like a big client, that's it feels, it feels good to me. At least it's an, and it's different for everyone too. I don't know. I just kind of get a kick out of that. Like people all over the country are going to see this. And I touched that. I did that. That's me. Like I have a photo of me standing in front of my first billboard, I was in like San Francisco and turn the corner and here's this giant burger. And I'm like, "I did that! That's mine!" and it was just the best feeling in the world to know that like, oh, all these people are going to be looking at this. Um, it was neat. I loved that. If you've been in a sorority, you would understand this, which I was not, but she's like, she's a legacy. Like when I showed up to interview, she's like "She's a legacy." Um, and I was like, oh, [00:54:00] I didn't want to have like that extra pressure of like, "oh, she only got the job because her mom worked there," but it was neat. And the older I've gotten, like looking back on all of that, I'm like, oh my God, I have this huge connection to my mom through my job. It was amazing. I think if my mom could see me now, she would tell me to slow down. I'm addicted to my job. I both of both of my parents worked a lot and I've turned around and done the same thing. And I think they would, I know my mom would be very proud of me, but then would be like, "you need to stop and smell the roses more often. Maybe you, you can go out for lunch with somebody and not take that job and have a little bit more time for myself and my husband and my family.
Jordan: Thanks for listening everyone. For links and resources about everything discussed today. Please visit the show notes in the episode. For a deeper dive into [00:55:00] this episode and all others in our archive, please visit our website www.prixfixpodcast.com. If you want to support the podcast the most effective way to do so, would be to hit the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other platform that you're listening in from. Don't forget to leave us a review too, if you have the option to do so. Sharing the show with your friends on social media is always appreciated. Shout out to Shawn Myers for creating original music. To Jason Cryer for the graphical elements. The show is produced by Homecourt Pictures. You can always reach out to me at Jordan H a R zero on Instagram and Twitter. Follow the show @ prix fixe pod on Instagram. Or email us via prixfixepodcast@gmail.com. I appreciate every second of your attention and support. See you in the [00:56:00] next one.