132: Lowering Barriers to Create Community through Food

Tracy Stuckrath [00:00:06]:

So on today's show, I'm so excited to introduce you to Len Senator. He is the founder of the DEP in Toronto.

He is also the co founder of the Newcomer Kitchen, a nonprofit food project that supported Syrian refugees, refugee women, and the author of the forthcoming book the Pan or Cookbook to be published by Simon and Schuster in 2023. Hey Len, how are you?

Len Senater [00:01:17]:
Hello. Thanks for having me. This is really fun.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:01:19]:
So tell us a little bit about yourself and what is the DEP and what and how did you get into this?

Len Senater [00:01:25]:
Okay, well, so the Dipener is a venue that I started in Toronto which was designed to showcase the incredible diversity of culinary talent in the city, both amateur and professional. So it became a venue dedicated to hosting pop up food events. And over the course of 10, 11 years, we hosted thousands of unique food events. From drop in dinners to sort of sit down supper clubs, to classes and workshops and brunch residencies and private events and all of these things in a tiny franchise, 450 square foot renovated corner store that was home to all of this stuff. And then we were hosting all of these different types of food events, I basically had this peculiar kind of restaurant that invites total strangers to do all the cooking. And so when in 2016 when the Canadian government decided to invite 25,000 Syrian refugees to to resettle, a lot of them were kind of stuck in hotels being processed, waiting to found housing. And at that time they had kitchens and no way to prepare food for themselves or their family. And so I was like, well I have this space, I have this kitchen, why don't we just extend the invitation to them? They can make some familiar food, share a meal, bring some leftovers home for their friends.

Len Senater [00:02:32]:
And we did and that sort of took off and it became a multi year pilot where we invited Syrian women to come prepare food, sell it to the community and then pass the money to them and use this as a bridge to create social and economic opportunities.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:02:46]:
That's amazing. And I Love the fact. I mean, you just said it basically. But when I posted it on Facebook, into that, into one of the Facebook groups about food and society, you're like, I'm a person who has hosted a thousand dinner parties and worked with hundreds of amateur and professional cooks from all over the world. Drop me a line if you want to talk to me. And I just love it. And a couple people gave totally thumbs up. We want to hear about this.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:03:07]:
So. And I just think it's really just before the show started, you and I were chatting about what the word pop up is, because an event is kind of a pop up, but this is really more interesting, more restaurant related and more of that amateur chef. So talk a little bit about what a pop up because people might not understand what a pop up is because it's here and there. It's or it's gone.

Len Senator [00:03:33]:
Yeah, well, I became interested in the phenomenon of. So I used to be a designer for many years and then I took a sort of transition. I wanted to kind of get involved and I've always kind of gone through life stomach first. And so I sort of decided that I wanted to do something involving food. But I didn't, wasn't sure exactly what that was. And I was. Became intrigued. This phenomenon of pop up dining that I saw happening in other cities around the world where a restaurant would like spring into existence for one night or one week or one month in a particular place before vanishing.

Len Senator [00:04:01]:
And it seemed like there was a lot of really fun and interesting possibility sort of on the margins or outside the formal restaurant model. And I became intrigued. There was one in San Francisco called the San Francisco Underground Market, which was like a night market, but it was really focused on talented home cooks rather than on sort of established or professional chefs. And that really intrigued me. I've always liked home cooking better than fine dining. And so this was really my bag. And I knew that I didn't want to frantically cook the same thing every day for the same. For people I never get to meet.

Len Senator [00:04:33]:
So like this idea really appealed to me. And then I tried to find more pop up things happening in Toronto and I found them like basically extremely rare. And I was trying to figure out why that was and I kind of came to the conclusion that it was so prohibitively expensive to set up the infrastructure to do a pop up, like a one off pop up event that you needed like tons of money just to do it. And then the resulting event had to be really expensive to cover all those costs. And so that only people with tons of money could go to them. And then the whole thing becomes this kind of insular, elitist thing that just didn't interest me. So I was like, well, what if. What if I actually had a dedicated venue that had everything you needed so you didn't have to reinvent that wheel? Then you could, like, radically lower the barrier to participation, and you could have a far more interesting and diverse group of people come and cook, and then the resulting events could be a lot more modest, and you could have a far more interesting and diverse group of people come and dine.

Len Senator [00:05:26]:
And I kind of ran with that idea.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:05:28]:
And so did you have. Did you go searching out for these or did people just start coming to you?

Len Senator [00:05:33]:
It was a mix, right? Like, so in the early days, I mean, people didn't know. So I would go to like food truck events or pop up food, food markets or night markets, or put the word out and invite. I say, hey, I think what you're doing is awesome. You should come and do a night at my place and we can do a dinner. And kind of built it up slowly and organically. And I mean, I did kind of bank on the idea that the notion itself was inherently viral in a certain way. You come to this dinner party, you have this dinner by some amateur cook, you're like, oh, this is awesome. Oh, I know somebody who would love to do this.

Len Senator [00:06:05]:
Right? And so they would pass the word. And so over the years, as I built an audience and that audience sort of evangelized what we were doing, and it became more known and seen. Then it became this mix of my outreach, but also people finding out about it and coming to me. And we were able. I mean, what was remarkable is for 11 years, we just kept it full, like almost every day of the week. There was never a shortage of talent.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:06:29]:
That's amazing. And when you brought the Syrian refugee women in there, did that, Was that like every single day that you did that, or is that once a week?

Len Senator [00:06:38]:
Again, it started off just as a small gesture of hospitality. It was like, come, use the kitchen. And it was a remarkable story because we didn't know anything about the situation. I was just like, we wanted to help but didn't know how. I'm like, I have a kitchen, so just start where. Start where you are. Use what you have, do what you can. So I'm like, we finally found a way of getting the word out through this.

Len Senator [00:07:00]:
It was me and the co founder, Caribbean Pace, put the word out. It landed with this remarkable young Syrian couple, Rahaf and Ismail they took the word back to their. And they basically organized a little field trip to do some cooking. And they came down on a cold April morning. And they didn't. Some of them. For some of them, it was the first time they'd ever left the hotel that ever ventured into the city. Ever been on the public transit system.

Len Senator [00:07:24]:
It was like talks about how strong the draw of the kitchen really is. And then they came and they weren't sure, what is this whole weird thing? And I was just like, you know what, guys? Just cook whatever you want. We'll talk about it later. And once they realized that they could cook, they were just like, get out of my way. And they just sort of took over the whole kitchen. And all of a sudden all this, like, pots are bubbling and all the people are laughing. And it was clear that we were just doing a great thing. And so we just kind of did it.

Len Senator [00:07:49]:
No particular plan. And then it picked up a lot of momentum. People certainly within the deponer community, we were been doing that for about five years. We had been. I'd been running the deponer for about five years at that point. And so we had a community they were super enthusiastic. Everybody was excited about. So we're like, oh, let's do it again, and let's do it again.

Len Senator [00:08:05]:
And then at a certain point, I'm like, okay, I was just sort of paying for it just because. Whatever. And then I'm like, I can't afford to actually do this. And they were also, at this point, being relocated into homes. Now the second issue was like, can they actually make any income from this? Do they? Is there any job opportunity here? So we're like, well, I already sell event tickets on my website. I mean, I've been doing this for many years. Let's see if we can do this in a way that makes enough money to pay for everything. And so we just started to say, okay, we're going to make some extra meals.

Len Senator [00:08:35]:
They're available for sale. Who wants them? And there was just this huge enthusiasm for the idea. And so we were able to quickly scale it up to making 50 meals. Once a week would be about a group of about six to eight ladies that would come in, they would prepare 50 meals. We'd package everything up, we'd sell them into the community. And it was paid for enough to pay for all the ingredients and the overhead, and then be able to split, you know, to distribute all of the proceeds to the women. And they were able to go home with pocket money and economic and social engagement. And all of this amazing support from the community that really fundamentally respectful and equitable.

Len Senator [00:09:10]:
It wasn't an act of charity. It wasn't. It was like they were earning this money, contributing something valuable that the market was really thrilled to actually come up and purchase. And it was a really great exchange.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:09:21]:
Now two questions for that. The age range of the women cooking. Was it young women, older women?

Len Senator [00:09:26]:
It was huge. I mean, you know, the. A lot of them at the beginning, beginning were actually bringing their young kids because the women were primary caregivers. So you had like young mothers with their young kids and then you had like older mothers who really had like a generate from like, like late teens to like 80s. Like we really have a gigantic range. And I'll also add out, this is an incredibly diverse group of women. I mean you have. That's the thing about refugees is that you get this incredible cross section of the community, many of whom would never have necessarily hung out at home.

Len Senator [00:10:00]:
So you have university educated Damascene urban professionals and illiterate peasant farmers and Druze and Christians and all different stripes of Muslim. And all of these people who in many ways have nothing in common, yet have this, all this fundamental thing in common. And so they actually kind of came together in this space and made there was as much connection within the community as there was a bridge between the Syrian community and the Canadian community. So one of the things that emerged, it was really fascinating to see.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:10:31]:
Well, and you had the Prime Minister Trudeau come.

Len Senator [00:10:34]:
Yeah.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:10:35]:
And how did that go?

Len Senator [00:10:36]:
Well, I mean, so this thing picked up a lot of momentum over the first year that we were doing it. It became sort of local news and then national news and then international news as a showing a sort of response to this global humanitarian crisis that was that it was a feel good story about a feel bad situation. And so it had a hook. People liked it and they didn't take a lot of figuring out to see why this was a good thing. So people saw it, they're like, yeah, this is great. And so there was a. When the one year anniversary of the Syrians arrival and came around, the Prime Minister at the time was looking for a way to sort of mark that occasion and was looking for somewhere in Canada that they felt sort of was emblematic of this new community. And they chose this project to host this sort of roundtable.

Len Senator [00:11:19]:
And so yeah, at that time we had a visit from the Prime Minister and it really spoke to kind of what was possible out of this tiny little corner store with a handful of ragtag people. It's not that the project didn't have its challenges and as we tried to figure out how to pay for it because I mean it covered its costs but there was no money to run the actual program. So we needed to figure out a way to support the running of it. And that represented a big challenge. And so we were taking advantage of the promotional publicity opportunities that we had as we tried to navigate towards turning it into a legitimate and sustainable nonprofit organization.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:11:58]:
Now one of the questions that we had chatted about beforehand was how this enabled you to build community through the food and you kind of touched on that. But I mean you've got farmers and different people and so. And I think you said it's like it really did bridge the Canadian community with this new Syrian. Their new Syrian.

Len Senator [00:12:18]:
Yeah.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:12:19]:
Members of the community.

Len Senator [00:12:20]:
Well, it was an extension of what the deponeur already did. I mean this was one particular pilot project that we ran that ran once a week for a few years and it, it became a very high profile part of what we did. But it was built on a multi year history of hosting dinners and hosting events that invited all kinds of different people from all different places in the world to share their food and culture and culinary ideas in this sort of fun, intimate and directly accessible experiential way. And so these, the core values of connecting people through food, creating economic opportunity through grassroots food engagement and all of these sort of things and diversity and inclusion through participation in food and lowering the barriers to access and all of these ideas just found their kind of ultimate expression in this particular project. But it was something that ran from the beginning and continued even after the project moved on from the depot.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:13:12]:
That's so. So it's still running, just not still.

Len Senator [00:13:14]:
Running as a non profit organization in Toronto. I mean it had to evolve for a number of reasons. It had to evolve because, well, how long are you a newcomer? After how many years? Right. How do we extend this benefits to new newcomers?

Tracy Stuckrath [00:13:28]:
Right.

Len Senator [00:13:28]:
Also we had to adapt into the reality of we had to become what they had. It had to become what the government was willing to fund.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:13:37]:
Gotcha.

Len Senator [00:13:37]:
Right. Which was different than what necessarily we had originally done. And we were facing a different challenges in a different context. So it's now under the executive directorship of Kara Benjamin Pace and Tamara Chaikin is the sort of managing director of the sort of general activities, the operations and. Yeah, and it has its own thing and it's tr. It's developing cohorts of diverse multicultural women and doing entrepreneurship training.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:14:03]:
That's amazing. Now and before. And there were so many fascinating things that you said to me just before we came on, like on here and actually before. But food is more than just food. And talk to the listeners about what that means to you.

Len Senator [00:14:18]:
Well, I mean, there probably isn't a dimension of human culture and experience that food doesn't touch or intersect with in some way. I mean, it's the most fundamental, most universal of all human experiences. There's never been a person in any time in all of history that didn't eat. So it's something we fundamentally all have in common. And as such, it leaps across these barriers of language and culture and age and race and gender and class and history and things to. To find the sort of common ground. I think James Beard said food is our common ground.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:14:51]:
Yep.

Len Senator [00:14:51]:
And so. But what does the traditional restaurant do that actually takes advantage of this remarkable and unique thing that food is capable of? And so I was. That's the part that really intrigued me. And I would look at a restaurant, you go, you order, you eat, you leave. And it's kind of a missed opportunity to do something. And so I was more interested in doing that thing than I was in the food itself.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:15:16]:
Right.

Len Senator [00:15:17]:
And so, so, and. And to. To dive deeper into the places that food intersects with other stuff. One of the events that we used to host was a series of table talks. So once a month, I'd invite a guest speaker to come and talk on some subject that passionate or interested about. And that would be the. Once a month that I would cook. So I would make up a menu, because I'm not a chef, but I can cook and I enjoy it.

Len Senator [00:15:39]:
But I. So I would come up with a menu that was sort of reflected or embodied the themes or topics of their talk. And then we would invite everyone to, like, come and have a dinner and then listen to the person talk and have this kind of informal dinner table Q and A. And so we could actually dive deeper into all kinds of different issues, whether it's food and literature or food and history or food and politics or. And so, yeah, that's about that. So I've always believed that food is more than just food. And as such, the debonur was more than just a restaurant food. A restaurant was more than a restaurant.

Len Senator [00:16:11]:
And we have this cookbook coming out, which is our sort of COVID project. And I think it'll be more than just a cookbook.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:16:17]:
Well, I think so too. And. And you had told me that you had written, what, 90,000 words?

Len Senator [00:16:23]:
Yeah, kind of. I. What the only Piece of writing advice I was given the entire time was keep writing. So I, I did and then it turned out to be way too much. So it's. I have a whole separate book now that one day might find a thing. And now I'm. I've sort of been tasked at the last minute to write the Coles notes of that book to include as the introduction for the actual cookbook.

Len Senator [00:16:44]:
And that's going well. We're getting very close to the final deadline, so I'm happy with how that's coming together. So we're going to talk a little bit about the story of the origin story of the DEP and a little bit of the philosophy and manifesto of the dep. And then there's going to be a section sort of talking to newcomer Kitchen at Peace on its Own. And in this was all being wrapped around a hundred different recipes from a hundred different chefs from 80 different nationalities whom we all interviewed as well. And I sort of extracted some of their stories. So it's kind of become this sort of like humans of New York of food of Toronto. Right.

Len Senator [00:17:15]:
In conjunction with this cookbook and the story of this very unlikely restaurant and the little corner store that could.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:17:22]:
I like that. The little corner store that could. So out of some of those stories, what's like, what are some of the. What's one story that just really resonates with you?

Len Senator [00:17:32]:
Wow, there's so many. It's hard to. That's one of the challenges when you host like thousands and thousands of these events. I mean, we were in the sort of peak period. We were doing, oh, I was more or less single handedly doing 300 events a year in my space. So there's a lot going on. And it was like, from like weddings to like dinner parties to all these things. I mean one of the things that we did was a few years ago, Canada was celebrating its ostensible 150th anniversary of its formal establishment.

Len Senator [00:18:03]:
They called it Canada 150. And I just felt that was such a sort of short sighted kind of description. It's like, you know, what we're calling Canada has been doing this a lot longer than that. And so I actually reached out to Taylor Parker, who's a remarkable indigenous chef, and said, can you come and do a Canada Day dinner called Canada 1500? Because I really think we need to reframe what we're talking about here. And it's like that was an incredibly interesting experience. And so I invited him back as a sort of chef of honor every Canada Day since then. And. And then one of the interesting things that he was always, like, reluctant because he does a lot of, like, hunting and foraging as part of his things.

Len Senator [00:18:41]:
And he was always reluctant to, like, give me an exact menu. Right. And I was like, no, but if you don't have the menu, I am. How are people going to buy tickets? They want to know. And he's like, but that's not how it works. And anyway, so we kind of would compromise. And then we had. I remember we had one event where he was called Hunt and Gather, and he was going to actually take some other chefs on this, like, ice fishing trip and hunting thing, and then they were going to come back and cook all the stuff that they made.

Len Senator [00:19:04]:
And I was like, great. And I was writing all the stuff up, and then they went and they didn't catch anything. Right. And he's. And then sort of without actually telling me, he's like, yeah, that's why I don't give you that. Because that's not how the supermarket of mother nature works. You don't get to eat whatever you want, whenever you want. And that actually made me realize just sort of how deeply colonial like the whole restaurant model really is to just assume that I can eat the same thing all the time, anytime, whenever I want, no matter whether it's in season, no matter where it comes from, and maybe even re examining that is something we kind of need to move towards.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:19:46]:
Well, and that just jumps me to the standard banquet menus that you get at hotels and convention centers. Here's the Italian, here's the Mexican, here's the Asian buffet. And this is what you're going to get. Right. We need to come back to kind of doing that. Hunting, gathering. What can we get locally? Right.

Len Senator [00:20:01]:
Yeah. And like, I mean, Dan Barber talks a lot about it in his book the Third Plate. There's a lot of ideas that we need to kind of like, reconsider cost and convenience as the primary driver of our food choices and look more at both what positive sort of intervention that food can do in our choices of what we procure and where and how and why. And we as consumers of food need to be more interested in, and also be willing to make little compromises around what we eat and when, because we're. This is our sort of participatory dialogue with the environment, with the terroir, with. And then the chefs use their skill and their knowledge and their expertise to make that delicious. Right, Right. And so I think all of us working together can try to sort of shift the focus of food and how we engage with it and try to help it be more of a force for positive change and less of a force for the sort of negative and unsustainable sort of status quo.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:21:07]:
Yeah. I mean, it's that institutional dining, not just with restaurants, but with. We were talking about it before the show with hospitals and whatever. And how we can. Instead of it being the number one expense for meeting planner, how can we use it as a tool to do those connections?

Len Senator [00:21:24]:
Well, I think you can really try to align, like, if you're having a particular event, what is the function or purpose of that event?

Tracy Stuckrath [00:21:31]:
Right.

Len Senator [00:21:31]:
Is it a wedding that you're trying to keep this sort of, like, wish fulfillment sort of luxury fantasy? Is it a corporate event where you're trying to, like, motivate people and get them connected and engaged in team building? I mean, you. And then to sit down with the chef. Right. Or with the planner and say, how can we use food to get everyone in that event closer to whatever that goal is a much better use of food than just to, like, stuff something in your pie hole until the next meeting, like. And so again, in the same way that the restaurant was a missed opportunity to connect people, I think sort of these standard menus that you're talking about are a missed opportunity to reach the goals of whatever your event is actually doing.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:22:12]:
Right, Exactly. And it. And that takes a lot of different change from a lot of different perspectives, from institutional corporate buying to regional buying and chefs and what they're trained on and how they do that. And then meeting planners, thinking about it a lot more purposefully, I mean, I.

Len Senator [00:22:31]:
Find, like, for even something like being involved in the preparation of the food is probably one of the most profound team building activities.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:22:41]:
Right.

Len Senator [00:22:41]:
That you can actually do. I mean, collectively cooking something, which is essentially how everything was cooked from almost all of human history.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:22:49]:
Right?

Len Senator [00:22:50]:
Right. Is the way we form connections and bonds and trust and figure out who's got which skills and it's all done. And then you sit down and share immediately the result of your collaboration that connects people in a way that doing a trust fall or, I don't know, whatever kind of like, thing playing laser tag or is just not going to do. And so here it is. Food. Food could be doing the very thing that you're having your event to do better than your event if you were just to use food to do it.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:23:21]:
That's so like, I want to do that. I just want to make that happen just instantaneously. Right. The you had on your Twitter Description that I loved. It is the place where interesting thing, interesting food, things happen.

Len Senator [00:23:35]:
Yeah.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:23:36]:
And. And I think that what you just said re. Kind of reiterates that.

Len Senator [00:23:40]:
Yeah. So that's sort of the slogan of the deck. And it sort of ties into this idea that it's not about, like, the fanciest mission. It's never going to be the. I couldn't even get a restaurant review because we never served the same thing twice. Right. So it's like we're not to call it a restaurant is. Didn't really work because it.

Len Senator [00:23:57]:
It just was something else. So that was the only way I could kind of summarize it in a. In a couple of words.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:24:03]:
Right.

Len Senator [00:24:04]:
But it was also. I mean, it also ties to the name of the place. So just for those who don't know. So the depeneur. I'm actually calling you now from Quebec from a friend's house where I'm staying in Quebec. And I'm originally from Montreal myself, even though I live in Toronto now. And in. In.

Len Senator [00:24:19]:
In all of Quebec and French Canada, the deponeur is what you call the corner store. Right. The slang, the way you'd say bodega or convenience store or whatever, it's. That's in. And so it's unique to Quebec. The etymology is kind of interesting. So if you were like, driving down the street and your car breaks down, you might say, oh, je suis en pen. Meaning like, I'm stuck, I'm in trouble.

Len Senator [00:24:41]:
I'm in a jam.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:24:42]:
Okay?

Len Senator [00:24:43]:
So the depaneur is the person who comes and gets you unstuck or out of trouble. And so I guess in Quebec, in France, it would be like a tow truck driver or like a roadside assistance would be a defender. But in Quebec, it was like, I guess someone was like, oh, man, it's 10:30 and I need beer and cigarettes and snacks. It's like, oh, you're open. Awesome. You said, you totally got me out of this jam, you know, depend. And so it became known as the deponeur. And so I took over in Toronto.

Len Senator [00:25:10]:
I took over what was an old corner store.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:25:13]:
How so cool.

Len Senator [00:25:14]:
I was a Montrealer, nostalgic for the kind of. The difference of how bohemian. My bohemian early artist days in Montreal. And I said, okay, I'm a nostalgic Montrealer with a corner store. I'm going to call it the Depeneur. But also I thought that food in Toronto and maybe in general was a little bit, and maybe I could learn depend a little bit.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:25:36]:
And that's what And I think you've done a really good job about that. Yeah, I wish I could have. And what are your. Now that you're on a sabbatical because you've taken. You're taking a year off to write the cookbook and write the second book and other things. Right. Whatever pops up into your agenda here. So do you.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:25:55]:
Where do you see it going?

Len Senator [00:25:57]:
Well, so just to clarify, so two years ago I was actually hitting the limits of this little tiny space. Like we were just packed every sing day, all of the events, and the rent had essentially tripled from under me. So even though I was content to just keep doing what I was doing, it was not becoming. I was sort of at the growth maximum. There was nowhere to expand and it was just rising. So I'm like started to think a lot about where do I go next. And I got it. And I said, okay, I need to.

Len Senator [00:26:27]:
I don't care if it makes more money. I just, I don't want to work so much. That's just too much work. It's very hard. Right, right. And so I, and I spoke to my mentors and advisors and they were like, you might actually have to work less. You might actually have to make more money if you want to work less. And I was like, oh, okay.

Len Senator [00:26:42]:
So I started thinking about expansion and new spaces and bigger things and economies of scale. And then I started to just get really overwhelmed and I'm like, I can't plan and execute a whole new deponeur while I'm running 300 events a year. Right, right.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:26:58]:
Because it's just you.

Len Senator [00:26:59]:
Yeah. I mean, I've had great people helping me throughout, but not. It was always three people worth of work and one and a half people worth of revenue. So. And so I was just. So I kind of was looking at this, feeling stressed out. And then I said, you know what, you can't change the tires while the car is moving. You just gotta park this thing for a bit, take a rest, think carefully and deeply about what it is that I want to.

Len Senator [00:27:21]:
Where I want to go with it, and then purposefully and intentionally work towards that. And I decided that. And then like three months later, Covid and one of the interesting lessons was I was encountering all of these problems of growth that was like causing all of these challenges. And so I was like, I have to grow. And then all of a sudden I turned around and had. I actually got a new lease and doubled down on an expensive new build out and expanded and then walked into Covid with that. It would have been totally catastrophic. So ironically and perhaps profoundly, the smallness which was what I was pushing against actually ended up being the saving grace.

Len Senator [00:28:06]:
And I could dial it back down to a one man operation and navigate through Covid. And so when we were suddenly really constrained in what we could do in terms of events, I was on pen to dep the situation. I was like, well, what can we actually do? If I start with what I start where I am, use what I have, do what I can, it's like, what can I do? And I said, well, I have all these amazing cooks that have been here through the last decade. Why don't we try to celebrate them in another way? So we. I had this idea of doing a cookbook showcasing a hundred of these different cooks. And then I started doing my research and due diligence and I discovered that probably the only thing worse than the restaurant business model is the cookbook publishing business model is just like an absolute disaster. So I became clear that because one of the important things about the dev is everybody always got paid, right? For when it was shared risk, shared reward. If we had a great night, we both made good money.

Len Senator [00:28:58]:
If we had a terrible night, we both took a hit. That was always the fundamental premise. So I wasn't going to like do that for 10 years and then tell everybody to donate to the cookbook for free. So everyone was going to get paid to be in this and with 100 people even in an honorarium, right? There was, plus the photography, like there was no way to pay for this using what I could expect to get from a Canadian publisher. So I said, all right. So we turned it around and went to the community and we did it. Launched it as a Kickstarter and the Kickstarter went on to become the most funded Canadian cookbook ever.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:29:32]:
Wow.

Len Senator [00:29:32]:
Yeah. And we sold, you know, like more than 700 advanced copies and raised enough money to like launch the whole book and also to validate the project enough that I was actually then able to take it to a major publisher, just to several major publishers actually, and negotiate the backing of a publisher who would otherwise maybe be reluctant to give this relatively obscure first time author a chance on the national stage. So it worked out really well. And it was really built. It is both built on and a product of the legacy of the last 10 years of the deafener.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:30:07]:
That's really cool. And I'm so glad that, I mean, you've sold seven. I need to go buy one too. Put my money in that case.

Len Senator [00:30:13]:
Coming out in 2023. Exactly. The beginning or the end? I don't know quite yet because it is a very long, slow, involved process. And doing a anthology of a hundred different contributors, some of whom have never used a recipe or English isn't there for it. Turns out it's actually a lot of work. Who would have thought?

Tracy Stuckrath [00:30:33]:
Well, and just you saying that who's never used a recipe, just made it from it, reminds me of Pilar from last week. And just talking about the food traditions, I'm like, when you invited those Syrian refugee women into the depth to cook, they're just cooking what they know and what they love. And maybe they didn't do.

Len Senator [00:30:53]:
Some of them know it. I mean, we're talking, like, if you have 10 kids and 45 grandkids, you've been running a restaurant your whole life.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:31:00]:
We were talking about the recipes and how saving the traditions of these refugees who are coming to new cultures, and so they have to learn what one to cook with. New food types, for one, possibly with also. But their memory of the dishes that they made.

Len Senator [00:31:16]:
Well, I knew I understood this in the abstract at one point, but then I remember in the early days of the Depeneur, we actually had a visitor from Anissa Helou, who's a very preeminent figure in the world of Islamic food. She's a famous cookbook author, and she was speaking at ter, the Terroir Symposium, which is a big food industry sort of thing in Canada. And she was the keynote speaker. And she had heard about the project and came to speak to check it out. And when she spoke to me, and she made it really clear that the stakes here are high, that one of the most ancient culinary traditions in the world, I mean, we're talking tiger food of the Western world, and it's a sort of unbroken, just tradition that's evolved. And it's not owned by celebrity chefs and Michelin stars and fancy things. It's owned by these women and these mothers and these grandmothers, cooking in their unique ways in their unique villages. And what happens to all of that knowledge when 6 million people are, like, thrust into diaspora around the world, coming to a place where you buy hummus in a tub at the supermarket, and no one's ever heard of this ingredient or that herbal? And it became clear that what we were doing, even though this wasn't the focus, was like, we were communicating silently that this knowledge is valuable and that people value it and that they see value in it and they're willing to pay for it, and encouraging them to, like, hold onto it.

Len Senator [00:32:40]:
And so we became about something much more than just earning a little pocket money or whatever. And then I started to think deeply about this too, that you don't get to have a culinary tradition for 5,000 years unless that tradition itself can be repeated generation after generation. That itself is a technology of sustainability on what can be extracted from your continually generation after generation. And so I was like, well, what if we could reframe this whole thing? What if it wasn't about all the things we think we need to teach them about getting a credit card or signing up for cell phone plan or whatever nonsense, and we could just shut up for a second and actually listen deeply to what we might learn. And then, I mean, we've been. Canada's been Here what, like 300 years? Look what we've done to the place. So it's like if we could actually hear, we might actually get the most important lesson of our lives.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:33:37]:
Oh, that's amazing. It really is. I mean, because you're.

Len Senator [00:33:42]:
It.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:33:42]:
It reminds me of my grandmother. She made this succotash. None of us know how to. How she made that succotash. And she passed away but 15 years ago, none of us can figure out how to do it. And my other grandmother, who passed away three years ago, I don't really know the recipes that she did. Right. And.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:34:00]:
And I really wish that I did. I mean, I have my mom's recipes that she does and I recreate those. But how do you. It's a shame that I don't. We don't have my grandmother's crab cake recipe in her succotash recipe.

Len Senator [00:34:13]:
Yeah, well, they connect you, like humanly and personally to that family, to that tradition. And then more deeply embedded in those recipes are where those ingredients come from, your relationship to them, the stories that they embody. And then in that is the politics and the history that shaped those things. And so, like, yeah, through those recipes we connect to all of our human legacy.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:34:39]:
So amazing. I wish we could talk for so much longer. So before we. Because we're getting up on that 40 minute mark, what do you. What is your favorite food and drink?

Len Senator [00:34:49]:
Now that's pretty tough, right? I don't know. I can talk about a specific dish, but I can talk about the characteristics that it has. It's like, I don't. I'm not necessarily interested in fine dining and elaborately plated things. Food that's really expensive. The idea of like food as a kind of like status symbol. She really doesn't sit with me. So it's the food that it's made with love, that has a story that comes with it.

Len Senator [00:35:13]:
It comes from somewhere. Either comes from a place, it comes from a family, it comes from a recipe from your grandmother, whatever. And then people, it's made with this fundamental spirit of hospitality and generosity. And then you sit down and you share it and you share it with the people who made it. Right. And them. And you have this experience that uses that food as the connect that connects you to each other, to the stories embedded in things. That's where it happens.

Len Senator [00:35:42]:
And that's what I tried to put on the center of the plate when you had. I mean, one of the things I'll say about the deponeur's event is we had communal dining, right. It was like a big table. You have eight people. We put big platters on thing and everybody. It was the only restaurant I've ever been to where total strangers pass and serve food to each other. Wow. It's a fundamentally different quality of experience and it's not for everybody.

Len Senator [00:36:04]:
Not everybody wants to, like, go to a dinner party. Sometimes you just want to grab a snack or you don't want to make small talk, chit chat with strangers. But you know, how hard is it to find new friends and meet new people in a big city? So there were. There's something else on offer. Food, like you said, is so much more than food. And that's a big part of what I did. And I really hope to do more of that. And I guess now, I mean, another way of saying it is I love to eat in someone's home anywhere in the world, try new things, and you can only do so much.

Len Senator [00:36:32]:
And as the old saying goes, if Mohammed can't go to the mountain, then you bring the mountain to Mohammed. And so by hosting this thousand dinners, I brought the whole world into my kitchen and got to have those meals without ever leaving my city.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:36:45]:
Oh, I'm just so impressed by you and inspired.

Len Senator [00:36:49]:
Thank you. That's very sweet.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:36:51]:
You're welcome. Okay, so everybody, this is Len Senacher and he is the founder of the dep. I said it right. In Toronto. He is taking a sabbatical to write a cookbook on his experiences at the Debonair with a hundred different from around the world, so recipes from 80 different countries, etc. So check it out. Every. I put the links in there in the bottom so you can find him.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:37:14]:
Follow him, stay on track with his book when it comes out. And Lynn, thank you so much for what you do.

Len Senator [00:37:20]:
Oh, my pleasure. It's a lot of fun and it's very tasty to do it.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:37:24]:
Very tasty to do it. I would love to do that. So everybody, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening to the Eating at a Meeting podcast. We are here live every Wednesday on NOW on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. And every Tuesday a new audio podcast drops onto your favorite podcast platform. So make sure that you download that. We've got 118 episodes published this as of this week.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:37:48]:
So. So thank you for tuning in and checking us out. Until next time, everybody. See you soon. Thanks for listening to the Eating at a Meeting podcast where every meal matters. I'm Tracy Stuckrath, your food and beverage inclusion expert. Call me and let's get started right now on creating safe and inclusive food and beverage experiences for your customers, your employees, and your communities. Share the podcast with your friends and colleagues at our Eating at a Meeting Facebook page and on all podcast platforms.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:38:22]:
To learn more about me and receive valuable information, go to tracystuckrath.com and if you'd like more information on how to feed engagement, nourish inclusion, and bolster your bottom line, then visit eating@ameeting.com SA.