Rahul Khopkar Trail Map

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Matt Gregory: [00:01:00] Hey Pat, how you doing?

Patrick Wolf: Hi Matt.

Matt Gregory: How are things?

Patrick Wolf: Great, how are you?

Matt Gregory: doing well. We had a little bit of a COVID encounter in the last week, but everybody's feeling better and, yeah. Happy to be here with you.

Patrick Wolf: I'm very happy to be here with you. Sorry about that, COVID.

Matt Gregory: Yeah, COVID is back. It never left.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah, it's true.

Matt Gregory: what have you been up to these last few days?

Patrick Wolf: I've been, been working on our album, doing some recording preparing for Mary's 40th birthday. This weekend.

Matt Gregory: Huge, huge,

Patrick Wolf: big stuff.

Matt Gregory: What are you gonna do?

Patrick Wolf: We're having a little staycation in

Matt Gregory: nice

Patrick Wolf: New York City.

Matt Gregory: Nice.

Patrick Wolf: Which is a [00:02:00] city near where we live.

Matt Gregory: Heard of it.

Patrick Wolf: And we're lucky to have the grandparents here.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. That's great. That'll be fun

Patrick Wolf: with the dog.

Matt Gregory: I was just in New York actually. That's where. Um, well, it's not where the COVID came from, but it's where we all got the COVID.

Matt Gregory: Oh. And, had a great visit in New York and then ended up having to head back home to recover. And, we were celebrating my father-in-law's 90th birthday.

Patrick Wolf: Wow.

Matt Gregory: and just had a, you know, we ended up having like over a week here with him which was a real gift.

Patrick Wolf: Nice.

Matt Gregory: He's 90 years at this point.

Matt Gregory: He's lived through a lot.

Patrick Wolf: And just think of it,

Matt Gregory: hearing his stories of the Korean War and stuff was just unbelievable.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah. yeah. I saw you, you sent me some pictures. Looked like you guys had an awesome time. That's what you, for having an awesome time. You get COVID.

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Matt Gregory: When you've got COVID and no one wants to see you, you get to spend a lot of time. If you're lucky enough to have it with some people you love, get to spend a [00:03:00] lot of quality time with those people.

Patrick Wolf: That's the trick.

Patrick Wolf: That's the trick.

Matt Gregory: We did a lot of cooking.I'm really loving cooking right now.

Matt Gregory: it's just such a fun, creative outlet. the dishes part sucks. Heejin and I think often about your and Mary's "You Cook and You Clean" song.

Patrick Wolf: Should I do a verse?

Matt Gregory: Yeah, let's hear it.

Patrick Wolf: It's, well, we have two versions of it, but the original version was.

Patrick Wolf: It's like you cook and then you clean, and then you cook, and then you clean, and then you cook, and then you clean, and then you sleep, and then you wake, and then you cook, and then you clean. a counterpoint to that, my attitude that I always try to return to now about dishes is that it's a, can be a very mindful practice because you know exactly what needs to be done and there's a satisfaction in that.

Patrick Wolf: Sometimes it's unclear what needs to be done.

Patrick Wolf: And that's a whole other animal,

Matt Gregory: you mean in life generally, or with dishes? Yeah,

Patrick Wolf: yeah. In all sorts of other situations, but dishes, folding laundry, just yeah. Trying to take pleasure in those things. 'cause you know, it's [00:04:00] very, it's like walking purposefully, you know?

Matt Gregory: Today I feel like without, Intending to go there. Found ourselves in the kitchen here in this conversation. And today we've got a conversation with a chef, Rahul Khopkar.

Patrick Wolf: Yes.

Matt Gregory: who will let him introduce himself as we do.

Matt Gregory: But I'm curious about his relationship with doing dishes.

Patrick Wolf: Mm. Do you think he even has to do them anymore?

Matt Gregory: I don't think so. I think that's maybe one of the things that you achieve with a certain amount of culinary fame. Anyw who? yeah, so I guess let's move on with the episode. Huh?

Patrick Wolf: It's time.

Matt Gregory: It's time.

Introducing Rahul Khopkar

Matt Gregory: All right. we are very excited to have Rahul Khopkar here today. Calling in from LA. Great to have you here, man. I've known Rahul for a while. Met through a, a high school friend. so it's, yeah, it's great to have you.

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah, it's great to be here. This is gonna be fun.

Matt Gregory: well, I guess to, to start things off, would you mind doing a little introduction of yourself?

Matt Gregory: My [00:05:00] name's Rahul Khopkar. I was born in Manhattan. I grew up just outside of Boston in Wellesley, Massachusetts. My mom is Korean, my dad's Indian. I took a somewhat circuitous route to end up cooking.

Rahul Khopkar: It's been about 20 years now. Started cooking in Wellesley. Moved to Los Angeles, cooked out here for a little while. Went to culinary school up in Napa Valley came back to LA and cooked a little bit, then cooked back up in Napa Valley for a little while. And then I went over to Europe and I worked in Denmark for a little bit and then came back here and in 2015 opened Ramen Hood.

Rahul Khopkar: And I've been doing that for the last 10 years.

Matt Gregory: what is Ramen Hood for those that don't have Ramen Hood?

Rahul Khopkar: it's vegan ramen shop here in downtown Los Angeles. I'm not vegan but my business partner and I kind of felt like we could make vegan food better than vegan people could, and I would say so far we have.

Rahul Khopkar: But yeah, that is, that is [00:06:00] Ramen Hood in a nutshell.

Matt Gregory: Yeah, I, and having gone to Ramen Hood, I can attest that it's. Probably the best ramen I've ever had, and I didn't miss the meat. Or the egg.

Patrick Wolf: Matt, I would just like to interject here and say, how dare you not have told me about Ramen Hood prior to my trip to Los Angeles in June?

Rahul Khopkar: You were out here in June?

Patrick Wolf: Yes. I'd never been to Union Station. It's beautiful. And,it was right when there was the Pride Parade and they were sending the National Guard But if you, if I had known your restaurant was right there, I would've gone there for lunch that day. I'm sure I will when I go back

Matt Gregory: next time. Well, Rahul, it's awesome to have you on the show. Can you take us back to your earliest food memory? It sounds like it was in Wellesley.

Rahul Khopkar: there's all these like, funny stories my mom has about me being a kid where she was always kind of like making a point of exposing me to a [00:07:00] wide variety of foods. And it, there were times where it was like problematic for a while.

Rahul Khopkar: Like when she and my dad were working for UNICEF, UNICEF would pay for you to fly to your second home. So our second home was in India, and you know, you could book business trip tickets and everything. And I think one of the first times I flew in, like coach or economy like the food came and my, and I was like standing on the seat next to my mom and I was just like, where's the smoked salmon?

Rahul Khopkar: Like, so there's all these stories floating around like that. Like, I think we were in Corsica and I ordered spaghetti and I was just like, why does this pasta sauce taste like ketchup? There's all sorts of, or maybe like somewhere in Italy, maybe. Maybe near Pisa. I, I don't remember, but there's all these stories like that floating around.

Rahul Khopkar: I think like one of my earliest food memories though, and it's like very apropos for what I'm doing now, [00:08:00] is I used to come home from school and, our grandmother was living with us at the time and she and I would sit down and have a bowl of ramen together after school. And so I definitely remember that growing up.

Rahul Khopkar: But food was always like an important thing in our family. Like we would sit down together and eat dinner as a family for as long as I remember. And I know, especially in high school, that was kind of, not the norm for a lot of kids. I had friends whose families were kind of like everybody was on a different eating schedule, especially for dinner.

Rahul Khopkar: And there was no sense of, getting together and doing that. And so, I definitely, you know, have strong memories, surrounding food because of that. And, definitely understand like the convivial nature of eating. And,for me that's, that's like a really big thing. I do really enjoy sitting down with other people and eating.

Rahul Khopkar: Like, if, if we're gonna hang out and do something, my first thought's always like, oh, we should go eat something. Yeah. [00:09:00] So

Matt Gregory: totally, I totally relate to that. And, I think food has an amazing power to just disarm everybody and, put everybody on the same page.

Matt Gregory: Like you're just, you're having the same experience. Pat, did you have family dinners growing up too?

Patrick Wolf: Yeah, we did. it is one of those things that it's sort of like, if there was something that I wanted people to get back to that would be one, eating together is one that I think is, such a micro community building tradition.

Patrick Wolf: I know that it still is a thing in other countries and other cultures now. I think it's just become so easy to eat something that's quick that you can just pull outta the freezer or you can just get something to go.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah.

Matt Gregory: Totally agree. I was in, San Sebastian in Spain. probably 2015 or something. And there was a research project going on by IDEO the design firm. And they were studying, Spanish food culture and specifically in the Basque region.

Matt Gregory: [00:10:00] People of all generations get together once a week and they cook, and then they kind of experience the meals together. I think that's such a powerful practice. it sort of forces you away from your phone or away from whatever you might be, looking at otherwise.

Matt Gregory: Rahul what is, so what is your first memory of early memories around starting to cook yourself?

Rahul Khopkar: Not my memory, but when I was very little, I was apparently, like I was always very fascinated with it. And when we were living in India, like everybody has help, which is kind of how the place works.

Rahul Khopkar: And so we had a cook and I was always interested in like what they were doing and I was trying to help them make some chapatis and I fell off this stool. And the cook grabbed my arm and it actually broke my arm. He was trying to like catch me and broke my arm. And I was a baby at the time.

Rahul Khopkar: I was just like, getting to a point where I was [00:11:00] standing. I think I must have been, I don't know, like one or something like that. But I had so much baby fat that like my parents didn't know the arm was broken for a couple days. I was just stuck. That was a whole thing.

Rahul Khopkar: 'cause you know, you're in India, it's like not necessarily the best care. So my arm was set crooked and then had to be rebroken. So I spent like nine months in the cast at one point. But I don't know earliest, earliest memories of cooking. I was always kind of curious about it.

Rahul Khopkar: and I always worked, I've always worked in and around food. I worked for Whole Foods for about a decade. And so, there was always some food knowledge happening, with that. And I think probably at Whole Foods where I saw especially when I was living, working up in Portland, Maine, that store had, an open kitchen where people could come up and order food that was, cooked all in menu.

Rahul Khopkar: And that's kind of where I was like, oh, that could be kind of a cool different job to, to do. when I moved back to Wellesley, that was where I kind of decided I [00:12:00] wanted to try to get a job doing that and yeah, transition into something else.

Matt Gregory: You already sort of alluded to it, but being from like a mixed race family and like your, your mom's Korean roots, your dad's Indian roots, like, how do you think about your sort of cultural, background and heritage in terms of like, in terms of food?

Matt Gregory: Like, does that play a role in the way that you think about food or the way you think about flavor?

Rahul Khopkar: When cooking, I definitely lean towards Korean flavors a lot. I think they're I think there're a lot more. Approachable for people. There's like kind of a better understanding, I guess, about it.

Rahul Khopkar: and then with, with the Indian food, I love Indian food. I'm pretty particular about it.

Rahul Khopkar: I think that there's a lot of Indian food in this world that is, whitewashed Indian Food's one of those weird things where if you really dive into it, you look at what the British [00:13:00] did to the food and then you look at things where vindaloo is actually a Portuguese influenced dish. within India, India's regionality is so insane and intense that the food differs within the country greatly.

Rahul Khopkar: and, I don't pull from Indian food that often. We have a dish at the restaurant now that uses panipuri as like a vehicle, and I think that's a great vehicle. And we've been doing that for, about seven or eight years now. But I don't know. I think personally I don't pull from Indian food that much because it's a little bit hard to incorporate some of the flavors, depending on what I'm doing.

Rahul Khopkar: there are certain techniques. That are really useful, like, frying aromatics and oil before you put the rest of your ingredients in. But yeah, I also feel less comfortable cooking Indian food. I just don't have as much experience doing it. if I'm making something I want it to, be a close facsimile in terms of flavor and I don't necessarily trust myself to get it [00:14:00] there. A large part of it is how you respect like the food that you are making and the culture that it's coming from, and then what you're outputting and, there's some places out here that do fusion Indian food for instance, where I'm just like, fuck you guys.

Rahul Khopkar: Like, you don't, you're not respecting where you came from and the food you're making isn't very good. Like, you've completely gone down a rabbit hole of like being trendy and making food for one type of person, right? Mm-hmm. so I don't know. there's a lot of different ways to look at that.

Patrick Wolf: I'm curious how did you decide to make your restaurant vegan if you, you're not vegan, right?

Rahul Khopkar: I'm not vegan. So my friend and business partner, Ilan, I was working in Copenhagen at the time, and he called me and he was, he had a very meat centric restaurant and was getting a lot of flack on Twitter from vegans about that.

Rahul Khopkar: And he'd [00:15:00] already kind of had this idea to do a vegan concept. And, I was already kind of in this mind frame of doing a lot of vegetable forward stuff because of where I was working. And, he asked me if I was planning to come back to LA and I was and so we started talking about, what, what we could do,

Rahul Khopkar: We originally wanted to do a vegan version of this concept called Noodle World that exists out here. Which Noodle World is exactly what you think it would be. It's noodles from all over the world. It's organized by country.

Rahul Khopkar: Like, it's we kind of wanted to do a vegan version of that, and as we were talking about it, it became a little more tricky, based on the amount of space we had to work with. and so we kind of dialed it down to just ramen.

Rahul Khopkar: And so, I think, not being vegan doing it is a, is an advantage in a lot of ways because, just like with memories, you start to [00:16:00] forget the way things taste over time. And the number of vegan products I eat where people are like, it tastes exactly like the real thing.

Patrick Wolf: Like, nah, dude,

Rahul Khopkar: it's been a very long time since you've had the real thing because this does not taste anything like it.

Patrick Wolf: I have you have, you come across the concept of like, you find a vegan restaurant. You know, this might not be the case in places like LA but like, I travel around a lot. You see a vegetarian or a vegan restaurant and it's like 4.8 on Google or whatever, and you go and it's like, that's because it's the vegan restaurant.

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: And people are so grateful that it exists at all.

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: And it's not really about like, is this food really good?

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah, I, that does happen. And I mean, you know, I give the vegan community a lot of credit. They are very supportive

Rahul Khopkar: but yeah, I've definitely, experienced that. I had a bowl of ramen at a new spot in little Tokyo out here and tried the vegan ramen, and that was terrible. But it's

Patrick Wolf: usually an afterthought in my experience. I'm a pescatarian, I eat fish, but sometimes it hits and I [00:17:00] really appreciate it, but it's almost always, an afterthought if they do a vegetarian or vegan ramen,

Matt Gregory: there's real science involved too. 'cause like, I mean, if you go to ramen hood, like there is an egg in your ramen, just, it's just a vegan egg, right? Rahul? So can you talk about that a little bit

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah.

Rahul Khopkar: So the vegan egg is kind of a funny story. we felt like we had to have something to mimic the egg. And so when we first started, it didn't take us that many iterations to get what we wanted out of it, but, when we first opened, we were making the vegan egg out of a locally produced soy milk.

Rahul Khopkar: And, it's actually surprising how hard it is to find unsweetened soy milk that doesn't have some sort of other flavor additive to it. but, we were making it outta soy milk and we were spherifying the yolk. And,

Patrick Wolf: like you do,

Rahul Khopkar: yeah, it was like we, it was this whole thing. we were buying like this yolk mixture from this guy who the yolk mixture already had. I'm actually forget the [00:18:00] two components. It's been so long since we, you'll understand why, but. So we were spherifying this yolk and the whole thing.

Rahul Khopkar: And it was cool because the yolk would pop, but like we'd have to keep the yolks frozen and then you have to put 'em in, in this bath with a, I don't know, like sodium citrate or something like that and wash it around and the whole thing. And people really liked it, but like the yolk lacked this like fatty, the fattiness that a true yoke would have.

Rahul Khopkar: And so, I think I was actually back home a couple years, it was like two years after we opened and there was a Wagamama there and I was kind of surprised that Wagamama had opened up there. And I noticed that these fuckers had ripped us off and stole our vegan egg and were making like the vegan egg.

Rahul Khopkar: And I was like, you know, Ilan and I are talking. I'm like, what the fuck? And I looked at this thing and I was kind of just like, oh, their yolk is a vegan mayonnaise base. And I thought about [00:19:00] it and I'm like that gets you like the fatty nature of what you kind of want out of the yolk, but you don't have this popping yolk.

Rahul Khopkar: And so then we ripped them off backwards. I was gonna say, you stole it back. That's good. Yeah. We switched to a vegan yolk, which simplified our lives in a lot of way. In a lot.

Patrick Wolf: I mean, the egg,

Patrick Wolf: the egg is such a crucial part of the ramen. It's you gotta, you gotta know. Yeah.

Rahul Khopkar: And I mean, you put black salt in and the yolk mixture tastes like yolk,

Rahul Khopkar: I feel like there's a lot of things in food where it's about can you trick somebody's brain into thinking a certain way about something as opposed to like it necessarily being identically the same thing.

Matt Gregory: has cooking vegan for this many years influenced your own diet?

Rahul Khopkar: not really. I would say though, I eat less red meat than I ever have before. I don't do that much dairy. I mean, I had a burnt grilled cheese the other night, but it was like, I don't do that much dairy anymore. But no, I still am kind of in this boat of you have to maintain flavor [00:20:00] profiles and it's hard to do that if you start eliminating things.

Rahul Khopkar: Ilan, my business partner has definitely, gone vegan at times.

Matt Gregory: I know that Ilan is Ilan Hall, and he, he was, Top Chef winner in the, I think early days of, of Top Chef.

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah. Season two.

Matt Gregory: Which is pretty, pretty rad that you've built this relationship with somebody like him. And I know you talk about your time work working in, in Copenhagen you know, I know that was at Noma, which is one of the top restaurants in the world, I think has three Michelin stars.

Matt Gregory: So you've had some like real brushes with fame in the food space. How do you think about that? I mean, are these just people that you're collaborating with or, is the fame they've achieved on your radar at all?

Rahul Khopkar: Ilan and I joke about his fame all the time. 'Cause it's not really like that's, I mean, he is famous and it's, it is it, the way his fame manifests itself is [00:21:00] very funny and like entertaining and like he has fun with it.

Rahul Khopkar: So it's a really positive thing. And there's all these funny stories about like every time his season of Top Chef gets released in another country, he gets like, hit with all these dms of people being like, "you were a bully." Like all this stuff. But no, you know, it's. Opportunity to do anything, I think with anybody who has any form of profile that's pretty substantial in the culinary world is important. I mean, it, you know, like most things, it's what you make outta your experience, right?

Rahul Khopkar: And what your mindset is like, if you go into things thinking that you know, everything, like it's never a good, I think in every industry, it's never a good way to operate. But especially in creative industries. And, I had a chef instructor in culinary school tell me that cooking was like climbing a mountain where you never reached the top

Rahul Khopkar: there's always something to be learned and I think that, it's the opportunities, the biggest thing, and then what you make of it from [00:22:00] there is your choice. Sometimes it's just being in the same room as somebody and hearing them talk about something

Rahul Khopkar: Is like a big enough thing. Versus actually having an opportunity to like cook alongside them is a different thing, you know?

Patrick Wolf: You, I mean, we've mentioned you being in Copenhagen, Noma a couple times, and you, I think you said you, you were in wine country in California at some point in your career as a lay person.

Patrick Wolf: My mind from those things go to and tell you, tell me how annoying this question is. Have you seen the Bear?

Matt Gregory: Yeah. Yeah. I haven't, I have not watched the fourth season.

Patrick Wolf: Okay.

Matt Gregory: I, I mostly. Oh, well here, ask your question and then I'll give you my, my shake. Well, that,

Patrick Wolf: that question at all, just bringing up the Bear, does that annoy you or are you, can we go further?

Rahul Khopkar: we can go further.

Patrick Wolf: you know, my friend who had worked in some kitchens in various capacities was surprised that I really loved the show. And I was like, [00:23:00] what do you mean? it's a very interesting show about human relationships.

Patrick Wolf: It happens to take place in the kitchen and also kind of gives you a window on how maybe the dynamics work. And I'm curious if you feel like it, it gives any kind of a realistic window onto like how different kinds of, actual cooking environments or relationships are, or if it's sort of just like Hollywood in an annoying distraction to you or where somewhere along that spectrum maybe.

Rahul Khopkar: So, I will say this like everything it is entertainment.

Patrick Wolf: Sure.

Rahul Khopkar: So it's, it's realism is capped by a necessity of, of that. much like how, I don't know if either of you watch the show, The Offer about the making of the Godfather. It, oh yeah, it's great. But like all my friends out here who are producers are like, it's entertainment.

Rahul Khopkar: The reality of that [00:24:00] show is not the real reality of things. As far as the bear goes, that show lost me in seventh episode of season one, where it's like that one giant cut and like Carmen gets locked in the walk-in. Like I've never been in a walk-in that hasn't had some way of releasing the door, whether it's like a physical mechanic or like an ax on the wall, so you can cut your way out of it.

Rahul Khopkar: But and then I have problems with some of the characters and their most notably Ayo Edebiri character, I think is just like, really poorly written. I would've hired her and fired her the same day. And just really poorly written and, and in terms of like, like a character, like people like that in, I mean, maybe today because things have shifted, but like people like that wouldn't survive where I've worked like at all.

Rahul Khopkar: Just they're not like. [00:25:00] They're not exuding the mental fortitude required to to

Patrick Wolf: you don't think she, she had mental fortitude?

Rahul Khopkar: No. I, she's, no I don't like all the whining, like thinking about quitting. It's like, no. Like when you're in the shit, you dig in and you push back, you don't complain. Like it's, that is a lot of what I get out of her character in a lot of situations. A lot of people feel the way you feel about that character. They really like her. I'll tell you who I really like.

Rahul Khopkar: There's two interesting things. One, I forget the guy who plays the pastry chef, but he's based on somebody that I used to work with, at Noma actually. So it was kind of cool to see Malcolm's story told, like a different way. you know whose arc in that show is actually dead on and really well done Cousin Richie's.

Rahul Khopkar: Yes. Because there are tons of people who, go through this transformation from one experience where, you know, before they were [00:26:00] doing fuck all and whatever, and then they have this opportunity and it, it truly transforms 'em. 'cause they've bought into, they've drank the Kool-Aid, they bought into the system, whatever it was.

Rahul Khopkar: And they come out the other side. And the most impressive thing to me is the way they nailed the irrational sense of confidence that can be built from working at like really high end places where it's like, I don't necessarily know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, but I'm not scared and I'll go do it and it's gonna be okay, or I'll figure it out as I'm doing it, or like I'll push back and I'll get it done a thing.

Rahul Khopkar: It's like if you look at the contrast between his character and what his character is capable of and that arc versus her character and what she's doing. And granted, I haven't seen season four. They are light years apart and like one of 'em gets it. And the other one is, it's like a character that's there because it, it's truly a foil character and not necessarily like an accurate [00:27:00] representation.

Rahul Khopkar: I feel like.

Patrick Wolf: Okay. Well when I, when I come back to Los Angeles and I do come to the restaurant, we can, drink a beer and we can get really into the weeds about this even more. So

Rahul Khopkar: I would, I would love to, I'll watch season four by then so we can talk about it. 'cause that's the, I only watch a show because people want to talk about it.

Rahul Khopkar: I'm like,

Patrick Wolf: Yeah. So is it annoying to you just its, its existence kind of?

Rahul Khopkar: No, I like, it doesn't bother me that it exists. Yeah. You know, it's, I think that it was an inevitable like outcome of the way food media has gone over all these years that there would be. Something like this eventually.

Rahul Khopkar: But I just don't, it doesn't service me in any way, I guess is the way to put it.

Patrick Wolf: Okay.

Matt Gregory: Well, it's your life. So I guess there's a interesting tension here, right? Where like, so we were just talking about, these chefs who have achieved some level of fame that you're working with, you've achieved some level of, fame and notoriety through your own work.

Matt Gregory: I think it's an interesting juxtaposition between [00:28:00] the, from what I understand though, like the work in a kitchen is like, it's hard work. It's like hard, long hours. Yeah. Grunt work, like you've been doing this for many years. You know, it's tiring. And then there's also like this, small percentage of chefs that have gotten famous.

Matt Gregory: For that sort of grunt work. And so I guessthere's a lot of romance. and maybe it started with like Anthony Bourdain or somebody, in the food industry who made it cool to be a chef. I guess, any thoughts on that?

Rahul Khopkar: It was probably like 20 years ago where it started to get glamorized because of things like Top Chef and media.

Patrick Wolf: Well, Anthony Bourdain's book too, right?

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah. I mean, yeah, he definitely, but, why am I blanking on the name of his

Matt Gregory: Kitchen Confidential.

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah, but Kitchen Confidential came out in like the nineties didn't it?

Patrick Wolf: Something like, yeah, late nineties.

Rahul Khopkar: Anthony Bourdain's an incredible storyteller. And he definitely played a [00:29:00] large role in making it feel accessible and did a good job of showing, both sides of the industry

Matt Gregory: I've never worked in a restaurant. I have, I actually started a business that was based in the back of a restaurant. And so we wereworking side by side with the restaurant staff.

Matt Gregory: and there's like a spirit to the restaurant space that I, love. there's a resilience, creativity just like, you know, a figure shit out type mentality. That is, inspiring. And there are a lot of good people that care about giving good, food experiences to customers.

Matt Gregory: And so whether or not it's captured by media, I think that's worth calling out. and I know it's hard, there's a major talk track around like teachers not getting paid enough. I think the same is true of restaurant workers.

Patrick Wolf: Like they don't, they work really, really hard to feed people and they don't get paid enough. You did mention Cousin Richie from the Bear. I feel like he has an epiphany in the show that like his role in all of it is to be the bringer together [00:30:00] of people.

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: And so like, he like providing experience and that was always kind of the role he played from the beef stand in the beginning or whatever. But like that's, that goes back to what we all said at the top sitting down and having family dinner. Like it's the thing, it's a human thing and it always has been.

Patrick Wolf: And now, that's a role that restaurants and

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: You know, whatever concentric circle of the food industry you want to include in it. But that's a role that it can still play.

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah. that part of his character's mentality is definitely like a very high end restaurant thing.

Rahul Khopkar: It's, I have a story about going to 11 Madison Park that kind of has one of those moments to it. I was with my mom and she wanted, they served a mini eggs benedict course, quail eggs and this whole thing. And as they're clearing the table my mom kind of leaned over to me and very quietly was like, oh, I wish we could have that again.

Rahul Khopkar: And it was, there was a lot of setup that took like three people to drop everything for one person. and they do coordinated drops for all the plating. And, a few minutes passes and we're talking and. [00:31:00] The captain comes back over and is just like, this is one of those moments of, be careful what you wish for and then just drop the course again, because my mom had made this like, very quiet comment to me about it.

Matt Gregory: Yeah, in terms of your own motivation, does the hospitality piece of restaurants motivate you?

Matt Gregory: Or is your focus more really more on the food or , do you see a disconnect between those two pieces at all?

Rahul Khopkar: in a lot of ways that's kind of like the whole front of the house, back of the house thing.

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Rahul Khopkar: I'm I'm very much about the food. I like if. Yeah, we're kind of like notoriously rude at Ramen hood.

Rahul Khopkar: Not like in, it's just like a,

Patrick Wolf: like the hot dog fan in Chicago where they yell at you or

Rahul Khopkar: It's not on that level. I think that if Ramen hood was not where it is locatedI would put more effort into the hospitality side of things. But for me, cooking has always been, the return has always been like somebody eating the food and liking it. it's like anybody can go anywhere, no matter how nice it is and decide to have a bad [00:32:00] experience if they want.

Rahul Khopkar: So there's only so much you can control in the end.

Matt Gregory: I've thought about that just like the busy space that you're in, in Grand Central Market and, the challenge of, you can't really control the experience. And I guess that's probably true, that you can't control it, even at a fancy restaurant.

Matt Gregory: If somebody comes in, in a bad mood, they're gonna be a bad mood. And that's a hard thing to change.

Rahul Khopkar: You know, if I've learned anything from being in that market, it's that you can't control everything. I had been cooking back home and then I came out here and I was cooking on the side, just make money.

Rahul Khopkar: And I found that I was like pretty inherently talented at it and there was real gratification. And especially like when I worked for Ilan at his restaurant, the Gorbals you know, we had this chef counter There was real gratification in making something and then putting it down in front of somebody and them trying it and seeing their reaction and enjoying it.

Patrick Wolf: There is a direct pipeline in cooking.

Patrick Wolf: It's just like, I made this thing right over here, and here you go, and here it is, and you're putting it right into your body right now, which yeah.

Matt Gregory: [00:33:00] But that feedback,

Patrick Wolf: yeah, the feedback and

Rahul Khopkar: no, I agree. You know, the return on what you're doing is almost immediate, which is nice. I was gonna comment on what you said about that notion of like, hitting it big as a chef. I think the industry's a little interesting because the physicality of it makes it so that, you have to think of an exit strategy 'cause it's not something you can do forever, right?

Rahul Khopkar: Right. Like, if you have an office job, you'll have your own problem sitting in a chair for like 40 years. But you can sit in a chair for 40 years, it's not that demanding on your body. in this game, it's like you have to have an exit strategy. the only way out really is to go in deeper.

Rahul Khopkar: having one restaurant's never really gonna get you out. you have to have more than one restaurant. it has to be more. more headache, more like you have to keep adding and then eventually maybe you get to a point where you have enough people to run it for you

Matt Gregory: and I mean, doesn't that necessarily pull you away [00:34:00] from the singular task of cooking?

Matt Gregory: If you're having to manage like five, ten restaurants, like you're not

Rahul Khopkar: Absolutely. Even, even with my one place, like my job is not really is not cooking anymore. It's mostly psychology and teaching, right? Because you, like I can make a addition, whatever, and everything I make is designed to be very easy for my guys to do because that's just what it has to be.

Rahul Khopkar: But like teaching them how to do it is one aspect of it. But then having people who work for you, like teaching, critical thinking is very difficult, I've learned. And also just kind of getting people to kind of think about things in a similar way as you, it can be very tricky

Patrick Wolf: in any field.

Rahul Khopkar: No, this is like those, these are universal

Patrick Wolf: Yeah.

Rahul Khopkar: but, you know, a lot of management over time is really comes down to teaching and psychology. It's not so much about doing what you initially wanted to be doing.

Patrick Wolf: another [00:35:00] dimension of it is, you hear the stats about like, 50% of restaurants fail in their first year or their first two year.

Patrick Wolf: I don't know what the actual number is, but you guys are 10 years deep here. Like you must be doing something right.

Rahul Khopkar: we're 10 years deep, but this is not a great place to own a small business.

Rahul Khopkar: LA does not care about small business.

Patrick Wolf: How, so?

Rahul Khopkar: I was in Japan in 2020 to go to an F1 race, and we were at just some like little bar sitting there talking to the guy who owned it, and he was just like, oh yeah. Like one of the first things the Japanese government did was they subsidized all small businesses.

Rahul Khopkar: Like immediately it was like no questions asked. LA is one of these cities where it's like you have an alphabet soup of agencies that all want money from you for different things that like, are redundant, unnecessary you know, labor here is very expensive. You get taxed on pretty much everything. The way people eat out here, they're more interested in going to places that are like part of a large [00:36:00] restaurant group that are big and flashy than like supporting mom and pop stuff.

Patrick Wolf: but so you guys are, despite that you're still doing it?

Rahul Khopkar: we're still doing it. We only have a couple years left on our lease. our lease is up in 27 you know, we will reevaluate as we get closer to that. But, yeah. I mean, rent's high.

Matt Gregory: It's grind.

Rahul Khopkar: It's a grind. Yeah.

Matt Gregory: I know we're coming up on time here and, Rahul, I just wanna say thank you so much for joining us, and chatting a bit. It's obvious that the restaurant business is a tough one. It's a lot of hard work. but I also know that, the product that you guys have put out there for 10 years is a really good one. That's, given a lot of people, a lot of joy. So, it's a grind, but I know your work is appreciated.

Rahul Khopkar: Thank you. it's been a pleasure to be here. It's always fun talking with you guys.

Matt Gregory: Thank you so much and, Good luck we'll be watching what you do next and, good luck with everything.

Patrick Wolf: i'll holler at you next time

Rahul Khopkar: Lemme know next time you're in LA We can, we can go eat. It'll be [00:37:00] great. That'd be awesome.

Patrick Wolf: Okay, cool. All right.

Rahul Khopkar: See you guys.

Conclusion

Rahul Khopkar: it was cool to chat with Rahul Khopkar about his journey I felt like we had a whole, maybe offshoot podcast opportunity to do like episode by episode reviews of The Bear.

Patrick Wolf: Oh my God. I'm gonna

Patrick Wolf: start that podcast if you don't mind.

Patrick Wolf: it was interesting to me that he really didn't like the one shot episode, which was one of my favorite episodes.

Matt Gregory: I enjoyed that episode also. I would describe the feeling afterwards. I think I was a bit stressed out by the end of it,

Patrick Wolf: for sure.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah.

Matt Gregory: Nonstop. I mean,

Patrick Wolf: you know, I, I was just asking him about it to see, I fully expected him to be like, that show sucks. Or like, I don't know. So it's just interesting to hear what he had to say.

Matt Gregory: It was cool to have him on. it just, strikes me, and, this is not a new thought, but like, the restaurant business is really hard. and it's glorified but it's hard.

Patrick Wolf: Right. I think there's a lot of, the visible [00:38:00] part of the iceberg. It's easy to be like, wow, that's cool. And I think that's true for a lot of different industries, certainly including the restaurant and hospitality industry. And it's, I mean, that's what was interesting to me about the show.

Patrick Wolf: We can stop talking about the show, but just, you know, to me it was like, it's very impressive that they've had this restaurant in downtown LA for 10 years.

Patrick Wolf: And, Like, there's so much hard work and just like, yeah. that would be hard to even convey How much work they've done.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. Well, I think about the visible part of the iceberg for, for us, and it's like. Making dinner at home.

Patrick Wolf: Right.

Matt Gregory: And even making dinner at home. God, the dishes, the, like, shopping,

Patrick Wolf: we, we forgot to ask him about the, if he does dishes anymore, we forgot to ask

Matt Gregory: him. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, it's a lot, it's so much work.

Matt Gregory: And then just thinking about making the same stuff for, I mean, it's just I don't know. Like I was alluding to, I did some work in the back of a [00:39:00] restaurant at one point in my career and like. I think the people who have worked in hospitality are like just an incredible, it's an incredible group of people that really care deeply about the experience of, of customers have a great deal of patience.

Matt Gregory: and so Rahul was talking about, the sort of. The way he gives it back to customers a little bit, and I'm like, dude, you're making the same food for people every day. Like you can, that's your right.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah. I feel like if you can hone that vibe like a little bit, Hey, yo. Yeah. People appreciate that.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. But, you know, we didn't talk about this, but like the reviews for restaurants it's really problematic. Like, I don't know if you've seen Ratatouille, but like it used to be that,

Patrick Wolf: watched it recently.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. It used to be that like, restaurants would worry about the incognito New York Times [00:40:00] restaurant reviewer coming in and like having a bad meal and now it's like.

Matt Gregory: Every single customer who has the power to like post a review of you. It's

Patrick Wolf: basically black mirror, like everybody's just filming everything.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. Yeah. Which is, that's tough. That's a, that's a grind, but

Patrick Wolf: yeah.

Matt Gregory: so

Patrick Wolf: you've been to the his restaurant and to, I, one thing I meant to ask him about, which we really didn't talk about that much, was the vegan egg.

Patrick Wolf: Did you have that?

Matt Gregory: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patrick Wolf: How is it? I mean, it looks

Matt Gregory: exactly like an egg. Wow. It looked, well, it looks like half an egg, yeah. Like it's cut in half sliced egg, sliced. Yeah. And it was, yeah, I'm very equivalent. Experience to like eating a, eating an egg.

Matt Gregory: I just,

Patrick Wolf: just, the whole concept really excites me because I've, having been a vegetarian

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: Or a pescatarian for 10 years. So much vegetarian or vegan food is like an afterthought and there are, I mean, it's been growing in that time.

Matt Gregory: [00:41:00] Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: I think it's been getting much easier to eat like legit food.

Matt Gregory: have you had vegan eggs?

Patrick Wolf: Yeah, but I think I had them like early on and I was like, eh, and even, you know, like the texture of, and the flavoring of everything has gotten better in the last 10 years. I think it has.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's definitely worth trying to get out there to, to try it at some point if you're, if you're out there for music or whatever.

Patrick Wolf: Next time in LA

Matt Gregory: Yeah. And it's right in Grand Central Market which is, you know, it's, it's a busy food market.

Patrick Wolf: yeah.

Matt Gregory: And, yeah, it's a fun, fun experience. And, you know, they've been doing it for a long time and they're really good at it. And it's Ramen delicious.

Matt Gregory: Good time of year for ramen.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah. Although, I'll, I'll have soup anytime.

Patrick Wolf: We have a good place near us here now that we go, whenever Mary and I have a lunch opportunity, we're like, now let's just go there.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. [00:42:00] No, actually we had pho we, well, we had pho and ramen last night at my house.

Matt Gregory: We ordered takeout from a local place here that we love.

Patrick Wolf: Nice.

Matt Gregory: So,

Patrick Wolf: I love a, I love a bustling downtown market too. Have you ever been to the one in Philadelphia? I forget what it's called right now. I don't think so. No. Just like indoor, lots of little stalls. Is that what Grand Central Market in LA is like?

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: What about the ferry building in San Francisco? Where would you put that? Yeah, it's like

Matt Gregory: Ferry building in San Francisco. is Chelsea market like that in New York? Chelsea Market?

Patrick Wolf: Yeah.

Matt Gregory: Yep.

Patrick Wolf: I mean, this one in Philadelphia that I'm thinking about is a little more crowded and bustling. It's like, yeah, like Chelsea Markets, like "we are in a market. I, we just went shopping."

Matt Gregory: Posh. Yeah. Yeah. Posh.

Matt Gregory: What are you cooking at home right now?

Patrick Wolf: Actually Eamon, My 9-year-old son just learned to make. Ramen Mary gave him a book, called. How To Be a Person, which we kind of want to give to everyone we know, but it's got, all manner of just like basic life skills. And one of the things was how to make ramen from a packet of [00:43:00] dry noodles

Patrick Wolf: He put in all sorts of mushrooms and vegetables And made it for the family for dinner.

Matt Gregory: And

Patrick Wolf: he was so proud and it was so great.

Patrick Wolf: how to be a person.

Patrick Wolf: And then he made it a second time and it kind of sat for a while, so the noodles got a little soggy.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah. And so that was like kind of sad and disappointing, but now we gotta, we gotta psych him back up again.

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: And that's just, it's never, you know, it won't be the same every time. That's the other thing about the restaurant business is like you're trying to make it basically.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah, it's you, you're trying to bring together the specialness of like, but most people don't go here all the time. It's like a special thing, right? But like, you're trying to do the same thing over and over again.

Matt Gregory: Totally.

Matt Gregory: Well, it was fantastic. Pat, thank you again for joining the episode and, it was great to chat with Rahul and looking forward to the next conversation.

Patrick Wolf: Matt is always a pleasure, and when I go and eat the vegan egg, we can compare the notes.

Matt Gregory: Yeah, that'd be cool. if we're ever in LA together, we could do a live episode with, with Rahul.

Patrick Wolf: That'd be great. [00:44:00]

Matt Gregory: All right, cool. Have a good one

Patrick Wolf: later.

Matt Gregory: See ya.

Matt Gregory (01:07 Hey Pat, how's it going?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:09) Hey Matt, I'm good. How are you?

Matt Gregory (01:11) I am good. It's great to be back. We haven't had an episode come out in maybe a month or so, which was not really planned, but it's really exciting. I'm like feeling very energized to be back here and excited about our episode today.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:26) That's great. I mean time flies A, and B, I've got my microphone this time so like I'm getting a little bit serious.

Matt Gregory (01:32) Yeah. Yeah. No, I can see you're dabbling in seriousness, which is really exciting. Yeah. We dabble in seriousness. Yeah, no, it's, I think with summer, I'm sure a lot of our listeners can, and I know you can relate, like it just, gets busy and end of summer. Yep. Summer camp and.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:39) That's a great slogan for us. especially end of August, end of summer, nobody does anything.

Matt Gregory (01:56) ⁓ We took a little family trip, which was really nice. We went to London and ⁓ we just kind of pretended we lived there for a couple of weeks, which was super cool. Played house, went grocery shopping.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:00) amazing. That's great. Play house.

Matt Gregory (02:15) Yeah, it was cool. How was the end of your summer?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:13) That's awesome. Jealous. It was great. It zoomed by as we've been alluding to and kids are back in school. I saw my fallen leaf the other day. It's all happening, you know?

Matt Gregory (02:26) Yeah. It does feel like it's just suddenly the seasons change. And actually this is kind of a nice lead in today. Today we've got Stephanie Hsia who is joining us. Who's a landscape architect ⁓ and leaves. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm super excited to chat with her.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:40) I was gonna say leaves, she deals with leaves.

Matt Gregory (02:46) and to introduce you to her, I think you'll be inspired by the work that she does. we've got a couple more episodes that are in the works. So excited to to keep rolling here with Trail Map. And thank you all for listening. And please, again, subscribe if you if you haven't. And feel free to share feedback with us. We'd love to hear any. Feedback, positive, negative, or indifferent. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:11) We're getting further down the trail, but you can just hop on.

Matt Gregory (03:14) Yeah, yeah. And then another cool like little update is that I've been working with a really talented graphic designer on the branding for Trail Map which will launch in maybe a month or so. so that's coming along. And now Pat has a fancy mic. like we're really, we're growing up here. This is cool.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:33) I mean, you folks are watching it in real time. We're crawling, and then one day we'll walk.

Matt Gregory (03:36) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, cool. All right, well, we can stop chatting and we'll get to the good stuff here. Thank you all for listening.

Matt Gregory (03:46) Well, we're here today with Stephanie Hsia and really excited to have you here with us Steph, I was wondering if, as a way to start the episode, if you could just quickly introduce yourself to our audience.

Stephanie Hsia (03:58) Sure, thanks for having me. My name is Stephanie Hsia a landscape architect and currently live in Brookline, Massachusetts. I did grow up in New Jersey and moved around a bit before settling here and yeah, and had kind of a kind of roundabout way that I found landscape architecture.

Matt Gregory (04:18) Cool, we're excited to get into that. I grew up, I don't think you know this stuff, but my mom is also really into landscape architecture and she was an art history major, but studied it a lot. so I feel like as a kid, I kind of got exposed. Like we always went to like really cool gardens. and walked around, you know, cool old houses that had interesting landscapes and stuff. And so I feel like I've gotten a little bit of exposure to it. And I've always thought your career sounded super cool. I'm, really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. This podcast really focuses on people's paths, like how they, how they got to where they are. and sort of maybe a little bit about where they think they're going. And for people who seem to have found things that are really aligned with their values, like often like there are pieces of it that start really early. so one thing that I noticed as I was reading your bio is there was a description of growing up in New Jersey, spending time among fruit trees in your father's garden. So. I was wondering if you could talk about his garden a little bit and just maybe tell us about it.

Stephanie Hsia (05:21) Yeah, I was really influenced by the garden that my dad created in New Jersey. It was a typical one acre suburban lot, which if you drive around in New Jersey, it's typically a large lawn with some trees in it and not much going on. But my dad planted early on when we moved there, I think I was four years old when we moved there, and he planted.

⁓ three apple trees, a bunch of Japanese pear trees, a pluot tree, which at the time, you know, no one knew about pluots, cherry trees, and also around our depth, he planted every year tomatoes. We had blueberry bushes and we had a vegetable garden in the back, mainly, I would say peppers and chives and all kinds of good veggies.

⁓ And it's, you know, I've never asked him, but I, know, he didn't grow up in a place where he, they had space for gardens. He grew up in Taipei, which is a very urban crowded city. And so he, you know, I think he learned this himself and every year we would, I would help him out in the garden. And we would really kind of benefit from, from all the, the labor that he put in. So we would.

have the Japanese pears. There were so many tomatoes. Every year, my mom would stick a tomato in our lunch bags. Like it was an apple, and I would eat it like an apple, and everyone would think it was really weird, but that's just what I did. And so I loved being outside in that garden space.

And my, it's funny, my neighbor and I was best friends with her growing up and we made our own little garden. My dad helped us create our own little space next to his space. And it lasted for about a year or so. Like, I don't remember what we planted in it, but we very quickly, like it fell to just being chives, like something that was just like self-spread. But we tried to make our own little, little garden space out there.

⁓ but really, I mean, ever since then at any place I've moved, I've always tried to, ⁓ bring some, some of the garden inside. So when I didn't have garden space, would grow plants. and now, you know, where we live in Brookline, we're really fortunate to have a little bit of, garden space and, and have, ⁓ planted, ⁓ also, made a little garden, raised garden beds, planted two Japanese pear trees, two nectarine trees.

So yeah, it's kind of come full circle.

Matt Gregory (07:49)

That's awesome.

So it sounds like there was always a big component of, like, plants, fruits, vegetables. If you think back to your earliest times in the garden, like when you were a kid, maybe between 5 and 10 years old, were you drawn to the fact that you could eat the stuff from the garden? Did you...

play make believe in the garden? What was your time in the garden like?

Stephanie Hsia (08:09)

Yeah, I would say the edible component was huge. It was just really fun to go and forage. one of my clearest memories, my dad would bottle ⁓ the cherries and make wine out of it because they were too sour to eat fresh. So he would put them in jars and add a bunch of sugar and stick them in a basement. I don't think it was like a very scientific process, but

you know, about a year later you take it out and my neighbor and I, you know, we were young kids, he would just give it to us to drink and so we would just love the fact that we were drinking cherry wine at a young age. Probably had like, you know, the amount of alcohol that kombucha has. But, you know, it was so fun to do that. And I would say, you know, we, just like any kids, would like run around in the space and I don't

think it was so much make believe, but created like good hiding spaces. Like my dad planted a hedge around the gardens, around the fruit trees of evergreen trees as a buffer from like the winds to kind of help shelter them. And so we had a lot more planting and a lot more kind of like nooks and crannies and like interesting, you know, foliage than most other properties.

Matt Gregory (09:20)

Yeah, cool. That's great. It sounds like a magical place.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (09:23)

Totally.

Stephanie Hsia (09:24)

⁓ maybe as magical as a one acre suburban lot surrounded by other suburban lots could be. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (09:28)

You work with what you got.

Do you think his interest in planting came from anything related to his professional life or was just that he really wanted to like spread his wings because he had more room and go with it?

Stephanie Hsia (09:41)

he's retired now, but he, was a chemical engineer. Um, he did study, however, geology in undergrad. So I think he always had an interest in like earth maybe. Um, and, um, I mean, it's interesting that if his other, he's, he has a lot of other brothers and sisters and I don't think any of them really garden. maybe it just comes from like an innate.

desire to cultivate.

Matt Gregory (10:03)

that's great. we've, started to grow some plants here at our house and it's just, even if our, like our total production of a given crop is like 10 tomatoes in a summer, it's just like very satisfying to get something from your backyard.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:18)

Thanks.

That's about literally how many tomatoes we got, by the way. got a lot of them.

Matt Gregory (10:23)

Yeah.

Stephanie Hsia (10:23)

This was a good,

this year was a good crop of tomatoes. Last year wasn't so good. But there is a lot of also joy of I've got two young kids and having them be excited about seeing the crop and picking it themselves and eating it themselves is really rewarding. So it's like kind of passing on that, you know, to the next generation, this love of cultivation. ⁓ They get really excited when they see something like cucumbers, which are

Matt Gregory (10:38)

Yeah.

Yeah.

super cool.

Stephanie Hsia (10:48)

it seemed to just kind of sprout out of nowhere. And it's it's kind of magical. It's like, it's just growing from air and soil and water. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:55)

They have those huge leaves too, it really like

spread out.

Matt Gregory (10:59)

Yeah, we might need your help with our cucumber Steph because the ones that we grew late in the season look more like lemons or mangoes than cucumbers. They're like a very weird, there's something weird going on. Maybe we could talk about that offline.

Stephanie Hsia (11:08)

⁓ okay. Yeah, okay.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (11:13)

But like, you know, having a garden in your backyard is kind of just a great way to be connected to, you know, the earth and nature, like in your everyday life. like, it seems to connect to what you now do in your job is to, you know, create environments for people, you know, not just in their, in their own, on their own property, but like in city and shared spaces to be sort of more connected to, you know, living, breathing earth.

Matt Gregory (11:14)

⁓

Yeah.

Stephanie Hsia (11:23)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (11:40)

all around them. Urban spaces can get pretty, I live close to New York City, there's big areas of not very green spaces and I've just been looking at some of the pictures of the stuff that you've been working on recently in Cambridge and in Florida.

It's easy to draw a direct line from the stuff we were talking about in your childhood to this, but I'm just curious about the space between those two points and how you got there.

Stephanie Hsia (12:10)

Yeah, that's a great question. Definitely growing up in that kind of environment and seeing the landscape, cultivated and grow and seeing the fruits of your labor and developing that love.

certainly that is a huge component of kind of what we hope to do with our landscape designs, which is, know, creating the kind of space where people can appreciate being within nature and experience kind of like the beauty of being in a space that might be inspiring. it is the hope a lot of people go into this field.

with kind of big aspirations of, and come from a place of wanting to, you know, improve our urban environments, tackle some of the kind of environmental and social issues through the design of the public realm. But, you know, in reality, we work on a very kind of small scale sometimes, like a site, you know, a garden or a park.

Sometimes we get the chance to work at a larger scale, the city scale. But Regardless of the scale, we always hope that we're able to express something in the landscape that leads to the appreciation and the use of the space in a way that is beneficial socially and ecologically.

Matt Gregory (13:19)

Yeah, that's one of the things that I realized as I thought about like more about your the type of work you do is like how multifaceted it is

Maybe before we get there, I know, you studied both sciences and art. And I'm just wondering if you can kind of, as Pat was starting to get to help us draw a line between your education and landing in.

in landscape architecture.

Stephanie Hsia (13:43)

Yeah, it was a little bit of a journey to get here and to find the field of landscape architecture. ⁓ I don't think it's very well known. And I wasn't really aware of what landscape architecture was, you know, growing up. And so when I went to college, I always had this kind of dual interest in the sciences. I loved biology, loved

studying plants and animals ⁓ and also growing up had this kind of overall like desire to help the environment. I just didn't know what was the kind of best avenue to do that. And in college I studied biology and art and so those are the kind of you know dual interests art and design and biology and I graduated not having a clear path.

whenever I told anyone I was a dual degree, they'd ask me how, how do they relate? And I would say, you know, it's, I think fundamentally it's this kind of appreciation for beauty, in my opinion, is like, what kind of maybe ties the two together. But in terms of a career, I wasn't clear. And so I actually spent a year

teaching English in Taiwan. And then I went to grad school at UC Santa Barbara in the environmental sciences program there for a master's thinking, oh, might, you know, maybe I'll work for environmental nonprofit and then I can just do art on the side, you know, as a hobby. And I graduate. I like photography and painting particularly.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (15:07)

What kind of art?

Stephanie Hsia (15:11)

In college, it wasn't a huge focus. was kind of, took a class a semester and was able to graduate with a dual degree. So it was always kind of like more, less of a serious pursuit than the sciences for me. And so, and then in grad school, you know, I did enjoy the program, but it always felt like something was missing, you know, and

Patrick Dyer Wolf (15:25)

It always is. No, just

Stephanie Hsia (15:36)

I ended up working in Oakland, California and saw a poster advertising free public lectures in landscape architecture. And I was like, maybe I'll just go to that, just check it out. And I went to the first one and I was like, wow, this is exactly what I want to do. But I had already gone to graduate school, so was like, ⁓ how do I do this?

Matt Gregory (15:54)

So cool.

Yeah.

Stephanie Hsia (15:59)

I

had to go back. And you have to, like you, it's a, it's a technical program. You have to have a degree in order to practice. there is an alternative path in in that you can do like an apprenticeship, which is like how people used to do that in the past, but that's a very challenging way to become a sort of like a registered landscape architect. I think you have to work under someone for 10 years and you have to find someone who's willing to do that for you. And it's not typical, like most firms.

hire you with a degree. It's just not a typical path of travel. So, yeah.

Matt Gregory (16:33)

Yeah, it's, it's, so

interesting to hear, the, way that you sort of, ⁓ studied these, these things, you know, biology and art that, you know, might seem quite different on the surface, but you were like satisfying different parts of your brain with, with the, with a different, ⁓ educational paths. I look at like, I went to a liberal arts college, Pat did too. both went to Wesleyan. and you know, there was no pressure.

on us, you know, exerted by the university to be like, you must study something that will lead to, you know, earning and to career path. But that's like very different from I've done some mentorship at Northeastern University with the entrepreneurship program there. And like, as part of the undergrad experience at Northeastern, you have a year of working of like, you go right out to like, what do you want to do? Like, we'll get you a job in some company and you can do that for a year.

And I think, know, Northeastern is very, it's the co-op program. Northeastern is very proud of that program. But it's like such a different undergrad experience than the liberal arts experience. And I think like, I just think there's a lot of pressure being put on kids today to like decide what they want to do. And I think that there's so much benefit in exploring.

⁓ And it sounds like there was a real exploratory nature to the path that you took through school.

Stephanie Hsia (17:53)

Yeah, I was really fortunate that I could go back to school. It was a hard decision to make both ⁓ kind of financially and just career wise to have to kind of essentially start over. you know, I had already started working as an environmental consultant and it's been a couple of years doing that work. And so the idea of going back to school and starting with internships again, et cetera, was, was a little bit, you know, it had to really kind of

come to terms with that, but it felt like this was the right path for me and it was worth investing in and doing it. You know, it still had the rest of my life left. So, but I would have to say that I am not regretful at all about my path prior to that. I would say my life experiences and my working experience all really greatly informed and benefited.

my career as a landscape architect. I already had this prior working experience, but beyond that, this kind of more technical expertise in the sciences that became very beneficial. And, you know, I also did enjoy my time in my twenties. Like some people do come to landscape architecture earlier and you start working and it is a very intensive field to for study and for work.

And so having the kind of time where I could do a little bit more exploration and study different things, I think I'm very grateful for that and that I was able to, you know, do this kind of schooling and exploration.

Matt Gregory (19:19)

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (19:20)

Do you feel like your working life now, I mean, from the limited amount I've read and from what we've been talking about, it seems like it's a job where you can try to bring together and balance, I guess, you know, an element of artistic creativity or just, you know, more sensory...

you beauty and like that side of things with all of the, as you say, intensive and scientific knowledge and experience you have and to try to like meet those two. Do you feel like, is that accurate? Like, are you, do you feel like that is part of your goal or your pursuit or am I kind of off?

Stephanie Hsia (19:57)

I think it happens concurrently more so than not. and it is true that you could, you know, focus on one more, one or the other. ⁓ I don't think they're really in conflict with one another. they're kind of dual, you know, there's, there's the process of the design and then there's the execution of the design, like the built work.

And so I think both come into play essentially, very, as essential elements and as, as goals too. Cause we want technically well executed projects that are, you know, aesthetically pleasing and that are beautiful and that are, you know, beautiful spaces people want to be in, but are, you know, technically sound.

the details support the life, the trees, the flowers, et cetera. So we look a lot into providing the underground supports in terms of the structures and the soils that are put in, et cetera. So, and then in terms of the approach to design, a lot, we start from a place where we are really focused on the concept and understanding the site.

in terms of its history, in terms of its place, in its kind of context, its hydrological and ecological context. And we're finding the story that we want to tell through the design, which is kind of like a, in a way, like an artistic pursuit, I guess. But we're solving technical challenges at the same time. So we're solving circulation, like how

cars, people are moving through the space. We're looking at, know, storm water, you know, there's flooding issue, know, climate change, et cetera. So we're solving for technical problems at the same time that we're trying to also create these spaces that would hopefully inspire people.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (21:41)

I was curious about, I mean, so you've been working on the Urban Forest project in Cambridge, is that right? I was curious about, you know,

Stephanie Hsia (21:53)

Yes, ⁓ that was a,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (21:55)

just how the things you were just talking about manifested in that, telling the story of, I mean, it's a very well-known city, a lot of notable things going on, it's very beautiful. I'm just wondering if you could speak to telling that story and the environmental, all the many facets of what you were working on there.

Stephanie Hsia (22:17)

Yeah, it's a really great project. A little bit unusual for a landscape architect to be ⁓ the lead in that project. It's a master plan. It's looking at how does a city grow and maintain their urban forest over time. So we worked on that project in 2018 and ⁓ are actually now actively working on that again as a five-year update.

So we're looking at the success, you know, how has the city progressed in terms of the goals that we laid out in the master plan and what are the next priorities for the next five years for the city. In terms of, it is a much more technical project, but we are looking at it through many different lenses and many different disciplines of like, how do we tackle the urban forest through policy?

⁓ How do we look at it through practices? So how does the city ⁓ manage and maintain the trees? Through design when, you know, cities are reconstructing the streets, how do they make space for trees? And also outreach and engagement. How does the city bring in the residents, all the constituents, renters, et cetera, to plant and care for the urban forest? So we looked at it through

many different lenses, some of them more technical than others, a lot of the key component of it is communication. And so that does require, you know, the ability to kind of synthesize and create drawings and graphics that are legible, that are clear and that are beautiful. So that's, know, how it comes kind of together in terms of like the technical and I would say like maybe the more artistic.

you know, hand to that. Yes, visuals are super important.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (23:55)

Gotta have good visuals.

Stephanie Hsia (23:59)

And it's a lot of data. And so how you take this complex, you know, data set, how you dice it and create, you know, graphics out of it that tell the story.

Matt Gregory (24:00)

Yeah.

I'm when you look at building a team, you're currently working for a landscape architecture firm in Cambridge. And when you look at building a team for a project like the Urban Forest Master Plan, are there different disciplines within landscape architecture? Or are you doing all of these different pieces? Because it strikes me as being a really broad skill set, like the left and right brain and the

Stephanie Hsia (24:32)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Gregory (24:34)

creative and the technical, like what does a team look like?

Stephanie Hsia (24:36)

Yeah, definitely not on our own. We have a team of consultants who are experts in their field who advise us and we work together with them. So we definitely, you we have a policy expert. We have a resiliency expert on the field, an arborist. The previous plan had an ecologist as well and a soil scientist.

And we also have a graphics communication consultant. So we do build teams. A lot of what we do, ⁓ landscape architecture is a very multidisciplinary and also very generalist field. So what we do a lot of the times is we know a little bit of everything and we coordinate, collaborate, and we bring things together and we synthesize. We do a lot of the work ourselves, but we rely on experts who

are, you know, they provide the more technical expertise that we're not able to dig into or don't have the training for. But I would say within our realm that, you know, planting is probably the one that we would really claim as ours. ⁓ Grading, planting, a lot of the other kind of topics that we work on, we will consult with experts.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (25:43)

It's good that some people somewhere rely on experts still today.

Matt Gregory (25:47)

Yeah, not just AI.

Stephanie Hsia (25:47)

Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (25:49)

I have a question. This could not be, this might not be a thing at all, but tell me if you've heard of this. I've heard in a few places that whenever this was done in mid 20th century, like Joe, city planner, was like, we don't want the mess of like female, like fruit trees all over our cities. So they planted all male trees and that has been like a leading cause of.

Matt Gregory (25:50)

Go for it.

Stephanie Hsia (26:11)

Mm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (26:13)

allergies, allergens, because it's just all dude trees. Is this in any way accurate? And this ties back to our earlier discussion of fruit trees, which are so wonderful.

Stephanie Hsia (26:16)

Yeah.

⁓

Yeah, that is interesting. I haven't heard of it as a leading cause of allergies, although I can believe that. So some, you know, some trees do produce a lot of pollen. They're wind pollinated. So those are the ones that will cause more allergens. I, there are some trees that do produce a lot of smelly fruit, like ginkgoes, for example. If you sometimes cities by accident, we, know, they, they might plant a female ginkgo and then

it'll just be a big mess. But I would say, you know, it's kind of like the there's a saying the right plant in the right place or right tree in the right place, like we're in the city streets sure like, you may not want to be planting as many female trees that are producing a lot of messy fruit. But maybe there's the opportunity to do that in parks. And then with the wind pollinated plants, the male plants, you know, the hope is that

There's some planning where you're thinking about where, you know, you want to diversify your forest. You don't want to plant the same thing everywhere that leads your plant, that opens your, your urban forest and your trees up to risk. Where like pests and diseases can come in and kind of wipe out, you know, a good portion of the forest. There's a lot of examples of invasives coming, invasive pests and coming to do that. So generally the, the kind of.

best practice would be to try to diversify and like find the right places where those plants could go.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (27:45)

So take things case by case and not use a heinously broad brush.

Stephanie Hsia (27:49)

Yeah, that would, you know, I would say maybe as an example, the Asian longhorn beetle in Worcester about a decade ago, wiped out, I don't remember what portion, but it was a catastrophic loss of maple trees. They just had over planted maples in that city and took out, you know, a good portion of the canopy. So you definitely don't want to over plant.

Matt Gregory (28:12)

If we can go back to just quickly to like this multidisciplinary field that you're in and I can relate I think to the the energy that you get from kind of I don't know if it's like if the analogy is like being a quarterback or like, know, just kind of pulling all the pieces together. I think it's like a very satisfying thing. I've done that in jobs in my career too, which I can relate to. I'm wondering like

Where do you get your energy when you're thinking about landscape architecture? Like which pieces of it are most energizing? where is your heart? Or is it all of it?

Stephanie Hsia (28:46)

Yeah, there's so much to love, which is why this field is real, like I love being in it. I'm finding that because we work on its project base and projects come about and we're always working on different things, and the projects also vary quite differently in scale and project type.

that we're always learning. And I really love that aspect where I'm just constantly learning new things. And a lot of that does come from collaborations, I do love learning from other consultants. And it's, I feel like it's going to be a never ending kind of learning career for me. I love many different aspects of it. It's very satisfying to produce a very beautiful drawing.

It's also very satisfying to see your landscape design come to life and be real. It's just, it's just an amazing thing. it's like, see it come to life. It's, and see people use it and enjoy it. I would say I love doing the research as well. love diving into, I love diving deep and really finding something that's really unique and special about the site that you're elevating.

and showcasing and your design is very satisfying to find that one thing that is really grounding your design and kind of inspiring or informing what is coming out of it. I would say too that I do love diving into research, my background in sciences. I love kind of looking through literature research and finding things that

that substantiate, that like provide evidence, but also inform kind of like how we do things. That's very satisfying to bring in like scientific basis for how and why we do something.

Matt Gregory (30:30)

I guess I look on the, on the residential front and like, at the, you know, landscape, businesses that are out there. And I think there's like a big range of them, right. And there's some really good ones and less good ones. but it, strikes me that, ⁓ that industry is like, definitely a service industry. and,

the work that you do on each individual piece of land and thinking about the context of it and thinking about the diversity that's possible. so the kind of the service model of like, we're just gonna put down mulch everywhere and do the same thing every year. Like it kind of loses that nuance and...

I get really excited about, the thoughtfulness of the work that you're doing and thinking about each unique place. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (31:13)

Well, so

we're both from suburban New Jersey, different quadrants, but we're both, you know, similar zone. And Matt, what you were describing is like all around me. There's, you know, the landscape trucks. It's hard to drive around this neighborhood and not like see a landscape truck. I'm not trying to like toot our horn, but we've taken, a small step we've taken is in the front, our front yard, we've planted like,

Matt Gregory (31:29)

Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (31:35)

some native plants of New Jersey, which like people, think people think are just weeds. They're like, oh, you should, you should weed whack those. Um, but like, you know, they don't, you don't have to water them. They just, they live here. They're, um, and like, it's just a, like learning what those are. Like they're not a, they're not a hedge that you would see here. They're sort of just like, you know, they do, they do great here cause this is the plants that are from here.

I had a conversation recently with my friend, actually who went to school with us, Matt, my friend Rachel, who is growing, she's growing like a moss garden in her front yard. And it like, she has a young kid, a three year old kid, and they were playing together in her new moss garden. And it just like unlocked a memory for her of like, my gosh, this is like, this is what I used to do. Like when I was her age, like when I was five years old.

I used to love to sit in a moss garden and pretend that fairies were coming in and just be in kind of a shady area. I could just sit there for hours pretending or talking to my friend or whatever. And I think, so she's kind of rediscovering it now, her parent-age self.

I experienced this too when our native plants were coming up this year, like in the spring. was like a pretty wet spring in this area and like they were just thriving. I was just like, man, like this is a satisfaction and joy that like I can't even remember the last time I had it. and I, I think you're right, Matt, like a lot, you know, a lot of what we do, a lot of how we sculpt the earth around us is just like not connected to

how it wants to be or how we want to connect to it. I'm sorry, I know I'm not supposed to stack questions, this is just like a really rambling paragraph, but I think it has a general point. ⁓ I want to tie it together with a quote that I saw on the Reid Hildebrand Instagram page, that says, "if war has an opposite, gardens might sometimes be it." Like I think, you know,

Stephanie Hsia (33:23)

you

Thank

Patrick Dyer Wolf (33:34)

finding a way to connect with our landscape is is balance and like is peace. And I wonder if you, do you ever get, other than just going and maybe, you know, seeing how people are interacting with your spaces, do you ever get feedback from people or do you ever get to discuss with people who are there, like how it has affected them or how?

Stephanie Hsia (34:01)

Not too much. You know, I've overheard or people who have overheard things and will relay them to me and those spaces did a project at MIT. So that's a local one. Down in Tampa, the client did relay some feedback, which was really satisfying. And, you know, we're revisiting the Urban Forest Master Plan right now.

And so getting, definitely getting some feedback on that. It's something that we don't really have too much of a chance to do sometimes. And that we, once we build a project, sometimes the clients will keep us on just to kind of check in every once in while, especially residential clients, but typically urban projects, you know, once we install, we don't really have, we don't have a contract that, that lives on afterwards. So there's not a lot of post construction,

kind of evaluation or post-occupancy evaluation. It's something that we would love to do to understand how people are using the spaces, how successful is it, or is it designed in a way that might be off, like not appealing to certain populations? Those kinds of things would be really great to understand beyond on the technical side of like.

is the plant surviving or not, but how people actually, you know, do they find the bench welcoming or is, you know, are the pavers too fancy and feel like it's not public and it's actually might feel too private. So things like that. I think a lot of our conception of like, what is a kind of

like acceptable home landscape comes very much from like a European history, this European history of like how people, you know, how we kind of dominated the land and we kind of forced, you know, trees and plants into certain shapes and into formal designs. And that was kind of brought over here and

⁓ has been perpetuated as a kind of like, this is what is acceptable in terms of like a beautiful cultivated landscape is like, we almost have to show a little bit of dominance to it and shape it and make it tidy. But I think, you know, and then that you're saying about, you know, people being like, what is this? Is it a weed? It's like, it is a chance for that to evolve with our value system of like accepting, you know, that

⁓ there's a chance for diversity. There are different types of plants and that we do want to support wildlife. We do want to support pollinators and that we can plant things that are messy, a little bit messy. And, you know, we do maybe want to plant more natives because those do hold more habitat value, wildlife value than non-natives. So I think it's a

It is something that we face a lot is like the perception of these spaces in terms of maintenance and needing to, it's a kind of like overall cultural like shift that needs to happen to be able to accept this as like an acceptable form of a home landscaping or even the landscape.

Matt Gregory (37:06)

So for somebody that's listening and this is resonating with them and they've got a landscape service company that comes in and as I've heard, of mows and blows and everything is tidy and what would you recommend to somebody who wants to understand more about how to evolve their landscape into something that's a little bit more nuanced and a little bit more connected to the natural?

environment, but maybe doesn't have the budget to hire your firm to come do a project in their backyard.

Stephanie Hsia (37:35)

Yeah, there are a lot of great resources out there online of planting, planting recommendations of natives that work in, you know, your region. And you do want to kind of just as a basis, you want to understand the conditions of your site, sun/shade, moisture, etc. So I think planting is a really kind of easy one. Plants can be expensive, but there's also like, you know, you can start small and kind of

build it over time, plant a little bit this year. There's some plants that do self seed or will spread. So those could be like good value plants. do that at home where I'm like, I see this one's growing. So I'm just going to take a cutting off of it and plant it over there. because I, don't spend too much on plants. So I think planting is an easy one. And then in terms of maintenance,

One thing that is really beneficial to insects is to kind of leave more of that plant material over time. An easy thing is to take the leaves and mulch it and spread it on your planting beds as a kind of mulch. You could also choose not to maybe clean up all the leaves and do that in the spring. So that's creating habitat over the winter. I have a couple logs.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (38:46)

That's a tough one for people. People

are resistant to that.

Stephanie Hsia (38:48)

I know, yeah.

Yeah, we could pile it somewhere, know, somewhere in the back where it's maybe not as visible. Could leave logs. I have a couple logs that are kind of like dual seats and also are just kind of rotting at the bottom over time. But the kids love turning them over and seeing like centipedes and worms on them.

Yeah, I think there are these little shifts that, you know, it's really just tackling what you can in the moment, start small and build it over time.

Matt Gregory (39:14)

Yeah. Cool.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (39:15)

My wife

was in college, did a semester, an urban education semester in New York City where she was working in a kindergarten class and they had a rotting log in a terrarium and they were asking all the kids what they thought were gonna happen and they asked this one kid, said, what do you think's gonna happen with this log? Do you think, are critters gonna come out of it? And he said,

Small lions.

We always reference that when we're talking about rot... small lions. When we're talking about rotting logs. Anyway... sorry.

Matt Gregory (39:39)

Bye.

Okay.

funny.

No, no, totally fine. So in the scale of different projects that you've worked on, we talked about the Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan and this Tampa project for this greenway in Tampa or more residential stuff, is there a specific scale that you like working on or is sort of a mix of different scales satisfying?

Stephanie Hsia (40:10)

It's of different scales that's satisfying. Yeah, I think it's really satisfying to work at a larger scale where there's more of an impact, like the Urban Forest Master Plan, for example. The Tampa project was also part of a larger district. It's 53 acres in the future, about just a portion of that was built.

Matt Gregory (40:21)

Yeah.

Stephanie Hsia (40:29)

And that really created a kind of whole new district. You know, so being part of that kind of vision is really, really kind of, you know, very interesting and satisfying. But also just thinking like, like we think about details a lot. You know, currently I'm doing some research into how we plant trees and the soil systems that are supporting those trees. And so those things,

know, understanding kind of like what the tree needs that that's in this very tough urban condition. Scales up to the city scale and to the, you know,

the details for that at the very, very small scale influences the larger scale too.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (41:06)

feel like you might have alluded to this briefly towards the top. A thing that I think about related to this is, there's kind of a gap in, I don't remember what any of the numbers are, richer areas have more trees, poorer areas have fewer trees. And we're talking about urban areas. And in my neighborhood,

Stephanie Hsia (41:25)

Okay.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (41:30)

quote unquote, Newark, New Jersey is a great example. It has a riverfront. It does have a, there's a beautiful park, Branchbrook Park, but there's a lot of area that could be the subject of many projects or whatever, but it's always questions of funding and.

know, desire to do things or not do things. And I know that, you know, the current mayor and the government there has been very wary of just unleashing gentrification. Like they don't want it to just be another example of what happens all around the country where like people get, people just get, you let one thing happen and then people who have been living there for decades just get priced out of the neighborhood.

Stephanie Hsia (42:13)

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (42:15)

I guess I wonder how you think about that kind of thing if you do, if you have occasion to in your projects or if that's something that your firm ever deals with, if there's like grants of some kind involved or yeah, how you think about that kind of stuff.

Stephanie Hsia (42:27)

Mm hmm.

Yeah, that's where the consultant comes in. All right. We have worked with a economics consultant to specifically the question that you're asking about gentrification. And how do you support that local community to stay in place as as you know, the neighborhood is changing and becoming more green or more, you know, amenities, green spaces, which do tend to attract more investment and then

Patrick Dyer Wolf (42:31)

Yeah.

Stephanie Hsia (42:50)

you know, typically people get priced out of the homes that they're living in. So there are, it requires planning in advance and for the city and the developer to recognize this and to plan for it and to put in the structures. There are, you know, different kinds of structures that could be put in place to support people who are living there ⁓ to continue living there. I couldn't speak like.

too much more detail about it, but it is something that we are very aware of as we are creating these spaces in the city. In Cambridge, what you mentioned about the disparity in canopy cover between lower income areas, higher income areas, it is very much tied to the historic development of these spaces. If you look at, for example,

I don't know if you guys know about the redlining, which was like a program back in the 30s of essentially discrimination through home mortgages. And so there's a clear correlation between that and like current canopy cover. If you also look at the land use type that are in those spaces, those tend to be places where there's a lot more industrial uses, commercial uses. And the homes are much more

multifamily ⁓ with little setbacks or very limited back yard space, which all relates to the fact that these places have less space for planting. So it's not only that there's, you know, less income in those areas to plant, but there's actually less space. And so one of the things we recommended in the urban forest master plan was that

or like one of the big takeaways was really that different strategies are needed in these different areas. And in those areas that are really hard to plant, a lot of they really rely on the city to be able to plant more in the public realm. with the sidewalks and the parks, it is creating finding those opportunities to where there may be places like parking lots or vacant lots to to find, you know, room.

convert basically impervious spaces to more permeable spaces for planting. There are also things that cities can do through negotiations with developers to, you know, as in return for development rights to plant, create parks and plant green spaces, create green spaces and those harder to, you know, harder to plant neighborhoods.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (44:48)

Mm-hmm.

So they get a tit and someone else gets a tat. Tit for tat.

Stephanie Hsia (45:05)

Yeah, it's,

yeah, they just have to know, you know, it's just really providing the city with like here, you know, here are the spaces that we think really need the canopy based on what we're seeing. so that's, that's a lot of what we're doing is like, what do we think is going to happen based on the current, you know, planting rates and how do we, how do we help the city direct their investments and their energies to reach their goals of, you know,

getting these neighborhoods that are currently much below average and canopy cover up to more of the city average.

Yeah, and it has real consequences. It's not just about trees. You know, it's like in context of changing climate, a warming climate, these have real impacts on health.

Matt Gregory (45:36)

⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:44)

Yeah, no doubt.

Matt Gregory (45:45)

So this is a bit of a shift in gears, but you talked about learning basically being a big part of a value of yours, something that's really intrinsic in your role. There's a lot of just continued learning, and it seems like you get a lot of energy from that. I'm wondering, what about teaching? Are you?

Do you feel like a desire to pass along the things you're learning to like the next generation of landscape architects and like, does that look like?

Stephanie Hsia (46:15)

Yeah, more and more as I feel more and more comfortable and more kind of have more experience in this field. do do some lecture, like guest lectures at landscape architecture programs. I've done some presentations to like nonprofit groups, for example, on specifically really on the urban forest and also on the soils research.

I haven't looked for teaching opportunities, but it's definitely something I would maybe consider in the future, but I'm more focused right now, I think on practice. Yeah, but there's a lot of mentorship that happens too. And so that's already satisfying is to work, we work in teams with different levels of experience. so mentorship is a huge part of what we do too.

Matt Gregory (46:45)

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (46:46)

What are you working?

What are you working on right now?

Stephanie Hsia (47:00)

Um, well, the five year update for Cambridge urban forest master plan. Um, and, uh, I just wrapped up, uh, uh, large residential project up in New Hampshire. Um, so working a little bit on wrapping that up and, uh, I'm starting a master plan for a botanic garden in Wisconsin. Um, yeah, those three projects.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (47:21)

wow.

Matt Gregory (47:23)

Very cool. Sounds like a lot to keep you busy. I'm wondering, in having a busy day job, being a parent, all the different responsibilities you have in your life, can you talk a little bit about the role of your backyard garden and how you think about that, what energy you have for that, what role it plays?

Stephanie Hsia (47:41)

Mm hmm. Yeah, it's, it's a respite really. It's, so lucky. I'm so lucky that, you know, when I'm in the kitchen, which I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, I feel like I'm surrounded by green space and that's mentally very calming for me having, just being, feeling like I can see green and I'm immersed in it. when I work from home, I'll spend like five minutes outside and weed real quick.

And I like that a lot, actually. I waiting is a chore for some people, but I really like doing it. And I haven't had, it's like, I need a quick break. I'm going to go outside, five minute waiting session. Or just like, I'll just check on the plants. I have to say as a busy parent, it's definitely not in the shape that I would want it to be, but it is, it is a, you know, it's nice to be like, okay, I got five minutes. Let me do it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (48:07)

It's an exercise in patience.

my mother-in-law gave me a t-shirt recently that says gardening. And there's a woman, know, like, she looks like a 1950s woman gardening. It says "gardening because murder is wrong". And it's, you know, some people I think took it as like a vegetarian shirt, which I don't think it's intended to be. But it's like, it's it's mental health. Like it's, it's a...

Stephanie Hsia (48:36)

Hahaha

test.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (48:44)

Yeah, it's what you're describing.

Stephanie Hsia (48:46)

It really is.

Matt Gregory (48:46)

I also think

as somebody who's been lucky enough to like go spend the morning in Steph's backyard, like it's awesome for you. And it's also like a real gift to your friends and like your community. it's a, like, feel like I hang out there and it's just relaxing and it's like a nice way to disconnect. And you kind of forget that you're in a pretty urban environment.

And yeah, it feels very satisfying. you know, we live in, I live in a multi-unit building and it's challenging somewhat because we share all the space with three other wonderful neighbors. But like it's, you know, figuring out how to, you know, align and like, you know, what we want that space to feel like is it's, actually a lot of work to figure out. And yeah, it's just really cool to be in.

in your space, feels very welcoming, very grounding, calming, also just thoughtful. But also you can tell that it doesn't have the like, I've been to some wonderful houses that have massive manicured green lawns and everything is tidy and everything. And your garden has like, it doesn't

It feels natural. feels like it connects to the space that it's in.

Stephanie Hsia (49:58)

Thank you. That's a huge compliment. It feels natural due to the weeds that are around. I'm just kidding. ⁓

Matt Gregory (50:02)

I mean

you

Patrick Dyer Wolf (50:09)

gotta remember not to

weed my plants that I planted, you know?

Matt Gregory (50:12)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or have your neighbors.

Stephanie Hsia (50:13)

Yeah.

Matt Gregory (50:15)

So I know we're almost up on time here. Thank you again, Steph, for spending some time with us this morning.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (50:21)

Can ask one more question? I just saw somewhere that you, this is a while back, you had a project that explored the phenomenological qualities of water.

Matt Gregory (50:21)

Yeah, yeah, go for it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (50:32)

Do you remember that one?

Stephanie Hsia (50:32)

⁓

it might've been my student project. Does that sound familiar? Okay. Yeah. Yes. Feminological qualities of water. Feminological. Yeah. I would say that's not a term I use every day. I don't know. I was, it's a grad school term, I guess. yeah, it was, ⁓ I think, you know, thinking about water, as in it's

Patrick Dyer Wolf (50:36)

I think so, yeah, 2013. Can you talk about what that is? What are the phenomenological qualities of water?

Yeah. I mean, I use it every day.

Stephanie Hsia (50:57)

forms missed the flow of it. ⁓ The project looked at, it was kind of a crazy student project, which it's good for student projects to be a little bit more on the crazy side for exploration, be bold. And it played with the ground surface.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (51:11)

Be bold.

Stephanie Hsia (51:18)

coming up in different ways where the water would kind of cascade either like across the back of it or be pumped up and be like, like little water jets or mist. And so it was a playful landscape or a plaza, which just had many different experiences of water as like a playful environment. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (51:40)

No, no.

Stephanie Hsia (51:40)

It was

kind of a, you know, I look at it now. like, that is like, that's a death trap. Like whatever I, I, I drew up total death trap. ⁓

Matt Gregory (51:45)

you

Patrick Dyer Wolf (51:49)

Well,

I imagine there was no boiling water.

Stephanie Hsia (51:52)

No, yeah, you know, to be really feminological, I should have added that in. Across the spectrum.

Matt Gregory (52:00)

I actually sensed real regret in that sigh, Steph. You didn't figure out how to incorporate.

Stephanie Hsia (52:04)

Boil the water.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (52:05)

Should have boiled, should

have boiled it. Put a hot tub in maybe.

Matt Gregory (52:09)

Are there specific projects or types of projects?

that you hope to work on in the future that you're particularly jazzed about.

Stephanie Hsia (52:17)

Yeah, I'm really interested in tackling kind of how we think about biodiversity more in our landscapes. And that also ties to scale where, you know, animals and they work, there are no boundaries for animals. And so everything kind of works together in a city to support different organisms.

⁓ and so I'm interested like kind of at a site scale when we're planning, cetera, like, how do we think about what that parcel or that space can do for different fauna. Cause we think about plants a lot and we think about, and I think a lot of it is like, what is the habitat that we're creating, but how do we create the frameworks like to tackle this question?

And so I've been doing a little bit of research into how we measure biodiversity. It's very, you know, there's different ways and so it's kind of, it's complex and it's also dependent on, you know, the fauna that you're looking at supporting. And so much of it is, you know, the habitat size, et cetera, that's all dependent on what you're looking to.

what your goals are for which animals you're hoping to support. So yeah, that's one thing I'm really interested in thinking more about, hoping we have the opportunity to do that, either as like a research project or applied. But I think people are definitely, the field is definitely heading in that direction. ⁓ We've also been tackling climate.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (53:35)

That's interesting.

Stephanie Hsia (53:39)

really focus on carbon emissions in our fields recently. We don't have an existing standard, unlike architecture and construction, they do have carbon accounting standards. We don't have one for landscape. There are some tools out there that are very useful, but the longevity of those is not for certain. And so our firm is actually investing quite a bit in understanding

what is it that our field needs to do to get to goals of carbon neutral, you by 2040 basically is what the American Society of Landscape Architects have put out there as a goal. But our field is very carbon intensive and the only way we can really offset is through planting. We are lucky that we have offsets, but ⁓ it's all about reducing our embodied carbon emissions in our projects, finding the materials, finding local materials so we're not shipping everything.

finding materials that are low carbon, et cetera. So we're starting to dig into what that is.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (54:32)

Do you dabble in LEED certifications? Is that still a standard that people?

Stephanie Hsia (54:36)

It still is a

standard. We do some projects that are LEED, but it doesn't really apply so much to landscape. There are other standards that are more applicable to landscape that we've worked on.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (54:46)

Got it.

Matt Gregory (54:46)

So as it relates to your own trajectory and then thinking about the field, do you have any recommendations for young people that are thinking about getting into landscape architecture, about ways to explore that interest and pursue a path that might look something like yours?

Stephanie Hsia (55:04)

⁓ I would find something that, that really excites you as a student and grow it and use opportunities within your project work, ⁓ to, expand your expertise in those areas. So, ⁓ I would say like in my kind of trajectory, I was able to find ways to kind of dig more into research and to kind of, ⁓

build that ability and then, you know, the people around you know that you're really interested in that process or in that topic and people will start going to you. it's, you know, what's great about this field is it's generalist, but it's always good to have fine things that you're really particularly passionate about and to grow those, find opportunities to grow those things.

Matt Gregory (55:46)

Are there, so I took a class, senior year of college, a couple classes on architecture and there was a great lecturer who I loved listening to. And I still like, of all my college notes, it's probably the class I took the most notes in. Are there good like resources for lectures for people that might like want to just like listen to?

like thought leadership in this space. Like, can you find that online?

Stephanie Hsia (56:11)

Definitely Landscape Architecture Foundation is a nonprofit that does a lot of, know, puts together conferences and puts a lot of material out there. So I'd definitely go to their website. They also have fellowship programs, so they support people who, you know, promising research and gives them the time to do that. The American Society of Landscape Architects

is the, like, it is the national ⁓ organization that certifies landscape architects and there's a lot of resources too on their website, lectures, videos, yeah, all kinds. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (56:48)

You're gonna put

that in the show notes, Matt?

Matt Gregory (56:49)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Steph, thank you so much for spending your morning with us or part of your morning with us. Really appreciate you taking the time and I guess anything more you want to share with us before we sign off?

Stephanie Hsia (57:02)

⁓ No, I'm happy to share landscape architecture. think it's a really fun, exciting field ⁓ and a very optimistic one. And yeah, I hope your listeners find it inspiring or interesting at least. Thanks. Good to talk to you and good to meet you Pat.

Matt Gregory (57:16)

Awesome. All right.

Great to chat.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:20)

that was great

Matt Gregory (57:20)

That was a great conversation. feel like, you know, I don't spend that much time in green spaces, but when I do it really. Yeah. I spent a lot of time in, in not green spaces, brown spaces, paved spaces. ⁓ and it's such, it's such a nice feeling. What's when you think about garden spaces that you've spent time in, like what, what do you think of that?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:28)

You get gray spaces, brown spaces.

Paved,

I've never been to Steph's garden, but the way you were describing it even was just lowering my blood pressure. It's almost like the type of haircut I feel like I've been striving for my whole life is just not too manicured, kind of tumbling over in the right way. It's like, you know.

Matt Gregory (58:03)

Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (58:04)

Where it's like it like seems effortless, but really it takes a lot of like thought and expertise to appear just like so And she was she was saying that she goes she goes out all the time just looks at the plants like she's got five minutes Just look at the plants pull out a couple weeds It's just like living in harmony and it's not it's not that you're not shaping the landscape It's just that you're being very like in tune with it as opposed to trying to just dominate it like a lot of I think

Matt Gregory (58:17)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. mean, I think,

it's you, you certainly have to spend money, but it's, it's easier to just hire somebody to come in and like, rip it all out and plant new grass. it's a lot more time. Yeah. It's a lot more time intensive.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (58:38)

Right.

Yeah, put some chemicals down.

Matt Gregory (58:49)

to be thoughtful in the way that, it's at some level, like I think, and I feel this with our backyard, like it's like kind of scary. You like don't really want to mess it up. ⁓ you know, so like it takes a level of confidence to like, to do it. And I've seen Heijin, my wife, like really building that confidence in terms of like our little patio garden. And it's really...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (58:59)

Right.

Matt Gregory (59:12)

It's very satisfying. It's very comforting to have that. And I wonder, like, actually was working with a company a couple ⁓ of jobs ago that was focused on olfaction And one of the theories behind the work that we were doing was that our urban environment, especially like our built environment is

is almost like scent. mean, obviously there's like, I'm thinking about like walking in New York City in the summer. Like there's, there's horrible scent associated with that. ⁓ mostly, yeah, mostly human created, like the, like natural scent of flowers, of trees, of, you know, being taking a walk in the woods, like it's, it's got like this restoring quality to it. and, and I, and I think about like,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (59:38)

Hoof. Tough stuff. Yeah. Hot garbage.

Yeah.

for sure.

Matt Gregory (59:59)

all of these sort of inexplicable diseases that we have, know, anxiety and depression and, know, like these different issues that we have. like, I know that when I walk in those environments or that I'm in those environments, you know, I feel better. I feel like more, yeah. Yeah. If they can, mean, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:15)

Everybody should take a walk in the woods 10 minutes every morning. I also, I wasn't, yeah if they can.

Well we gotta make it easier for everybody, you know? ⁓ I was in LA in June. We were working on recording some songs. And you know, LA is a huge city. It's the second biggest city in the country. But I was in East LA.

Matt Gregory (1:00:24)

Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:39)

⁓ There's just so many, there's a lot of fruit trees. There's a lot of just like beautiful flora kind of just like spilling out all over the place. Great smells. A lot of like stairways and you know hills, mountains. You can kind of like find yourself in a canyon and like it can get very dry obviously and there's been you know fires. There's fires that can be

Matt Gregory (1:00:43)

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:01:05)

Usually not as bad as they were this year, but, but despite all that, like there's, it seems just like a thriving still ecosystem and the, you know, there's birds in these canyons. I don't think a lot of, many people who haven't spent time there would think about, think of LA in that way, but I really experienced that this time. you know, getting to take walks just around neighborhood streets and up through.

know, hilly streets and whatever. ⁓ And I think that can be, I mean, you know, New York City's very crowded, very cramped together, but I think that can be possible to cultivate almost anywhere if we really, if we want to.

Matt Gregory (1:01:30)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I was in last, last, last fall, I had the opportunity to go to China and I was in Shenzhen, China. And Shenzhen is where most consumer electronics in this country come from. It's like got a huge, it's not, maybe not like, like central Shenzhen has become, you know, more, more like

white collar type jobs, more office jobs, more tech. But surrounding Shenzhen, there are just tons of factories. But Shenzhen is known, I believe, as the garden city in China. the city has really built up over the last two decades, but there's been real thoughtfulness around maintaining green spaces.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:16)

It's like New Jersey, the Garden State.

Matt Gregory (1:02:27)

⁓ And I had this perception of what I was going to in China and I was completely wrong. Like it was like an incredibly walkable green environment. And I was just kind of blown away by that.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:27)

Mm-hmm.

I think that that points to another thing that I wanted to get into a little more in this conversation, but it could be its own rabbit hole, which is the kind of interesting intersection of like how that happens. And we were talking about, you know, private spaces, people's yards versus a private firm, like Steph's versus a government. And it's like, you know, if a government or a firm is doing something, it's not, you can't please all the people all the time, but like,

Matt Gregory (1:02:54)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:05)

Sometimes that's where it has to come from if you want to do it on a city scale. kind of has to be. And you know, you could be as democratic or not democratic as guess as you want about whatever project you're doing. it's just sort of an interesting intersection to me of like people wanting to have control over their own space versus like a shared space. How do we want it to be? But I think.

you know, as we've been talking about, think the more green space we can have, the better for everyone.

Matt Gregory (1:03:30)

Yeah, and I think it's, you know, talking to somebody like Steph, who, you know, has like a really diverse and, you know, ⁓ quite extensive educational background, and then all of this experience on the job, like, it takes really smart people to like, manage these things, because there's so many different considerations, and it's so multidisciplinary. And I think like,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:53)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Gregory (1:03:54)

connecting the dots a little bit here, like the type of exploration that we were talking about, you know, that you get in kind of a liberal arts education, where like you're, you can kind of explore and, know, like that's building a skillset that's like a generalist skillset that, you know, somebody like, you know, like somebody like Steph.

you know, can explore that way and build all these, you know, different skills in art and biology, and then bring all that like learned experience and practice to her work. And, and it's really cool to meet people like that. And I think for maybe younger listeners, you know, you may feel pressure to be like, I'm going to be a

baker, or I'm going to be a school teacher, I'm going to be a lawyer, doctor, or whatever. Those are all amazing paths, and you can have a great life at them. But I think there are also paths where you just get to be a really good thinker, critical thinker, and learner. And then there are paths like landscape architecture that are well-suited to those types of brains.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:00)

Yeah, I do want to shout out and support Wesleyan a little bit. don't know if you were really giving them the business, but remember all those majors that were interdisciplinary? Mary's was Science and Society where you combined a hard science and a soft science, College of Letters. think there's certainly a liberal arts vein in those type of places, but you can definitely...

Matt Gregory (1:05:16)

Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:25)

do what we're talking about with Steph, whether different disciplines to try to create a balance,

Matt Gregory (1:05:32)

wonderful to chat, Pat. ⁓ Thanks for being on and look forward to the next episode.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:35)

OS.

Always a delight, Matt. Thank you to have me here.

Matt Gregory (1:05:43)

Yeah, of course. All right, bye.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:45)

Bye.