Nazli Parvizi, president of Brooklyn's Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD), credits her cultural roots and background with shaping her passion for food and food history.
Parvizi, a proud Iranian and self-described "salt fiend," holds a degree in food anthropology — a major she essentially designed herself. Reflecting on the power of food to spark interest, she told me, "I think there's a real lack of curiosity about the world these days. Whether that's due to fear or lack of access to education, I don't know. But there's something about food that makes people curious. And the more curious the eater, the more the world opens up to them."
Under Parvizi’s leadership, MOFAD hopes to inspire that curiosity, encouraging visitors to explore its fascinating exhibits. Salon had the privilege of speaking with Parvizi about her upbringing, culinary preferences, path to MOFAD and more. You can read the first part of our conversation here.
The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
How did you first become involved with MOFAD?
I became involved with MOFAD in the middle of COVID. I was recruited for the job while I was living in California, longing to move back to NYC. MOFAD had been without an executive director for eight or nine months. Our show, African/American: Making the Nation's Table, the first large scale survey of 400 years of African American food contributions to the American culinary narrative, was due to open at the end of March 2020. Of course that didn’t happen and the show sat under dust covers for two years. MOFAD had transitioned very successfully to virtual programming, but had lost its home in Williamsburg and was trying to survive like every other cultural institution.
So I came in in the middle of all that in order to keep it going and open the show, which we were able to do in February of 2022, find us a new space and get us back on our feet again.
I read that you graduated with a food anthropology degree. Could you speak a bit about that and how it influences your work at MOFAD?
I graduated with a degree in food anthropology, which didn't really exist at the time. I went to the anthropology department at Barnard and asked them if I could take every class and put a food focus on it. They were incredibly lovely and accommodating and said I could.
So I basically created my own major, at a point where it was fairly fledgling degree. And for me, I think food has always been a way of communicating and a way of having conversations with people who I don't always feel comfortable approaching or don't know how to approach. Anthropology requires a lot of field work and a lot of interviewing and I always felt awkward approaching total strangers. I mean — I still do. But somehow, going up to someone and asking them what they had for breakfast? What did you have for lunch? It’s just an easier way of approaching people. People really put down their guard and their defenses when you start talking about food. And so for me, food anthropology was just a way of discovering the people around me who I wouldn’t have had the guts to approach otherwise.
My degree in food anthropology greatly influences my work at MOFAD. I think for us, the subjects we are interested in – human behavior, science, history, colonialism, etc. we just examine these subjects through the lens of food. I think MOFAD definitely has a distinct voice. But we also deeply believe that as an organization that straddles cultural institutions, the hospitality world and the food world, we want to practice radical hospitality and we understand not everyone agrees with us, not everyone thinks the same way we do. And it’s easy to understand that because it’s easy to understand that no two people eat alike. Our goal first and foremost is to educate and make people curious and get them to question what they are eating, to think about how it’s made, how it’s grown, who is making it, where it’s packaged, etc. We just think that food is a really approachable way of learning about ourselves and the people around us.
I think there's a real lack of curiosity about the world these days, whether that's because of fear or lack of access to education, I don't know. But there's something about food that makes people curious. And the more curious the more curious the eater, the more the world opens up to them.
How did your Iranian upbringing influence your food preferences, your identity, your culture?
I think my Iranian upbringing has so much to do with my food preferences, my identity and obviously, my culture.
I immigrated to the states when I was give years old and was raised by a single mom in a pretty small Irish Catholic town near Worcester, MA and we pretty much ate, you know, three meals a day inside my home — we rarely went out to restaurants. And you know, my mom never followed trends, never followed diets — I grew up eating lots of greens, beans, whole milk, real butter and everything scratch made — everything she espoused holds true and has been proven to be the best way of eating.
Iranian food, I think, is just particularly nourishing and wonderful — it’s shaped my idea of what food should taste like and how I cook. I don't actually cook a lot of traditional Iranian food. I think it's really time consuming — but I think you can tell I'm Iranian by the food I make and how I prepare it — but mostly because of how I love to host and feed people. Iranians are the most hospitable people you will ever meet and we take so much pride in how we welcome guests – strangers or loved ones — into our homes.
The flavor profiles of how I cook, the intense sourness, the incredible herbiness are all really influenced by my background. In terms of my identity — I think being Iranian and being an immigrant, especially an immigrant growing up in a town of 13,000, where there weren't a lot of kids who looked like me or had home lives like mine certainly shaped who I am today. Like most immigrant kids — you become really adept at code switching and I actually think it’s a privilege to be both an insider and an outsider and to understand both points of view – it helps me navigate the world and connect with so many people I would be able to otherwise.
What would you say are your three most used ingredients?
My three most used ingredients are, without a doubt — and this is probably very indicative of my Iranian upbringing — vinegar or lemons, herbs and salt: I have an undying need for very sour food. I think Iranian food is deeply sour. So any souring agent, whether it's tamarind or pomegranate paste or lemons or vinegar is so vital in anything I cook.
I'm an absolute salt fiend. I find most food is under seasoned. I carry salt with me, but it is to me the most important ingredient I use. And then herbs, you know? I eat herbs by the handful. I don't think that they are a garnish. I think parsley is an incredible herb. I don't put a sprig on it. I put bunches and bunches of it in my food and in my cooking. So, those are probably the three things that you see the most in my cooking. But when I asked my staff what ingredients they associated with me – they answered with pandan (my favorite flavor) and mayonnaise. It’s always lovely to be known.
What is your favorite cooking memory?
My favorite cooking memory is a really early memory of when I was somewhere between one and two years old. We had a cook when I was growing up in Tehran and I really loved him. My parents would entertain a lot and I had a habit of getting underfoot, so what our chef or my mom would do was get one of our giant rice pots and plant me in it, so I couldn't really get out of it and I would just stand there in the pot on the floor watching him and my mom cook and get ready for the 50 people coming over for a party that night. There was something about being in the middle of the hubbub of the kitchen, sitting inside a giant rice pot and watching the hustle and bustle that just really resonates with me to this day and maybe that's why I love a party and why I love entertaining.
What’s your biggest tip for cutting down on food waste?
My biggest tip for cutting down on food waste is to learn how to make soup. I just did it today. My staff often works at my house and I went through the fridge, I had a couple carrots that were starting to bend, one or two zucchini that were getting a little soft on the ends, half an onion, kale that was going to yellow in a day or so – you know, everything where some of it was good, some of it was getting past its due, but, when you put it all together in a soup, it's just so nourishing and so good. And so quick! I cooked up a bunch of beans in the pressure cooker while the veg were sweating and in 20 minutes, we had the most nourishing lunch.
And, you know, even the ends and butts and skins of all those veg can go into a separate pot to make broth, but I really think that making soup is just such an easy skill to master and my top recommendation for cutting down on waste.
What's next for you? For MOFAD?
What's next for me and what's next for MOFAD, we will continue our current exhibition, Flavor, while creating more dynamic programming at our space. DUMBO still feels like a new space, but we are doing our best to make sure that people know that we're there as it’s been 3 years since we’ve had our own space. In the new year — look for more MOFAD programming in DUMBO and in partnership with other organizations.
We are not trying to be a best kept secret by any means, we welcome everyone to stop by. Our small, but mighty, team is there to welcome folks in on Thursday through Sundays from 12 to 6.
