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Andy Baraghani
BornAndisheh Baraghani
(1989-11-27) November 27, 1989 (age 34)
OccupationChef, food writer
NationalityAmerican
Notable worksThe Cook You Want to Be
Notable awardsJames Beard Award (2023)
Spouse
Keith Pollock
​
(m. 2024)​
Website
andybaraghani.com

Andisheh "Andy" Baraghani (Persian: اندیشه برغانی, born November 27, 1989) is an American chef and food writer.

Baraghani's first job as a teenager was at the restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. He moved across the United States to study at New York University and work in New York City restaurants before transitioning into a career in media in 2013. Following a brief stint as a food editor at Tasting Table, he joined Bon Appétit in 2015 as a senior food editor and soon became a frequent presenter on the publication's YouTube channel.

Baraghani left Bon Appétit in 2021 to work on a cookbook, The Cook You Want to Be (2022), which contains recipes and essays that cover his personal life and career. The book won a James Beard Award.

Early life

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Baraghani[1] was born on November 27, 1989 and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area in California.[2][3] Baraghani is Iranian American and he grew up speaking Persian.[4] His parents had immigrated from Iran to Berkeley in 1977, a year before the Iranian Revolution. When he was young, he often experimented with various foods and played with a Fisher-Price kitchen, his favorite toy as a child.[5][6] As a teenager, he worked his first job at the Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse,[7][8][9] where he started as an intern and became a line cook in its kitchen.[10] In his time at the restaurant working under Alice Waters, whom he regards as his "culinary idol",[9] he learned cooking technique and how to be agile and "think methodically."[11] One particular experience Baraghani recalls is when he cried after he could not understand what Waters asked him in French.[9] By the time he graduated from high school, he had worked in three restaurants including Chez Panisse.[11]

Career

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Early food writer positions

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While studying food studies and cultural anthropology at New York University, Baraghani worked as an editor for the food publication Saveur. After he left his job and graduated from university, he worked in the New York City restaurants Frej, Corton, and Estela.[6][9] He transitioned from a career in the restaurant business into one in the media industry in 2013[11] and soon after became a food editor for the online publication Tasting Table.[6][9]

Time at Bon Appétit (2015–2021)

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In 2015, he joined Bon Appétit as senior food editor.[9] He was additionally co-editor of Healthyish, a publication by Bon Appétit which focuses on clean eating.[8] When Bon Appétit began to increase its focus on video content in 2016, he started presenting on the publication's YouTube channel with Molly Baz, Sohla El-Waylly, Priya Krishna, Brad Leone, and Claire Saffitz.[9] Baraghani was one of seventeen chefs who operated a Manhattan pop-up restaurant by Google open for four days in April 2016.[12][13] With musicians Cupcakke and Ella Mai, Baraghani and Baz held cooking demonstrations at the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco in 2019.[14][15] In early 2020, the LGBTQ magazine Out published a profile of Baraghani that dubbed him "the internet boyfriend of our dreams".[9]

In June 2020, during the George Floyd protests against police brutality and racism, Bon Appétit editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport resigned after a 2004 photo of him in brownface previously published on Instagram garnered criticism online. Staff members, among other critics on social media, accused the publication and its parent company Condé Nast of discrimination against their employees of color and called for better compensation and treatment.[16] Baraghani himself was accused of microaggressions toward a female Korean American coworker. A few days later, he posted a statement to Instagram in which he criticized the publication's workplace culture and apologized for the ways he had "undermined" and "hurt" BIPOC coworkers, particularly a "former coworker".[9][17][18] He continued working at the publication for another year, unlike some coworkers who resigned at the time in protest. Speaking with the Financial Times in 2022, he explained that leaving Bon Appétit was "a privilege I didn't feel I had" because of his middle-class background and the large amount of student debt he had accrued. He departed the publication in August 2021 to work on a cookbook.[9]

After Bon Appétit (2021–present)

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Baraghani's cookbook, The Cook You Want to Be: Everyday Recipes to Impress, was published in 2022 by Lorena Jones Books.[11][19] The cookbook contains recipes and essays on his childhood, international travels, and career.[20] According to The Mercury News, it "features a wide range of veg-forward, flavor-packed and often unexpected dishes" as well as dishes he ate in his childhood such as aush reshteh, a stew, and chelo (pilaf) with tahdig (scorched rice).[19] The book won him a James Beard Award in the general cookbook category in 2023.[21]

In a 2023 interview, Baraghani stated he was planning to write his second book and start a project to produce city guides for worldwide destinations.[22]

Personal life

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Baraghani is gay.[9] He lives with his husband Keith Pollock,[23] whom he met while they were employed by Condé Nast. Pollock has worked as an executive of Architectural Digest and West Elm, a brand of houseware stores.[3] They met in 2017, and after a period of "flirty friendship," they began dating. Pollock proposed in March 2023, and just over a year later, they married in New York.[24]

Baraghani stated in a Bon Appétit article that he had only worked in a kitchen with one other man who was openly gay, despite cooking in "male-led" kitchens through his career, and he felt as though kitchens "weren't exactly environments that encouraged me to come out" due to cultural norms of the profession.[25]: 128 [1]

References

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  1. ^ a b Baraghani, Andy (March 16, 2018). "I Hid Who I Was for So Long. Until I Became a Cook". Bon Appétit. Retrieved September 21, 2022.
  2. ^ @andybaraghani (November 27, 2019). "Turned 30 today. It was fitting that the first message I got was from my mother. For so long, I have beaten myself up about where I am in life, how much I've accomplished, and where my future is going, but today I feel pretty good and proud about the last 30 years. And I feel pretty damn good about the next 30 years as well. Here is to being one step closer to becoming a daddy 😏❤️". Retrieved June 5, 2023 – via Instagram.
  3. ^ a b Abarbanel, Aliza (July 19, 2022). "On Long Island's South Shore, a Leisurely Summer Dinner". T. Retrieved August 31, 2022.
  4. ^ Betancourt, Bianca (November 28, 2022). "Andy Baraghani Is a Food World Favorite for a Reason". Harper's Bazaar. Retrieved July 25, 2023.
  5. ^ Ladly, Meghan Davidson (April 29, 2022). "Chef Andy Baraghani Is the Most Curious Cook". Sharp Magazine. Retrieved September 23, 2022.
  6. ^ a b c "Andy Baraghani, Senior Food Editor, Bon Appétit". Into The Gloss. October 4, 2019. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  7. ^ Williams, Mary Elizabeth (June 8, 2022). "How chef Andy Baraghani makes his delicious recipes with a few tools and no dishwasher". Salon. Retrieved September 23, 2022.
  8. ^ a b Dommu, Rose (February 17, 2020). "How Andy Baraghani Became the Internet Boyfriend of Our Dreams". Out. Retrieved August 24, 2022.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Patalay, Ajesh (April 25, 2022). "Cooking with 'the internet boyfriend of our dreams'". Financial Times. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
  10. ^ Breijo, Stephanie (August 19, 2021). "Chez Panisse alums changed the way we eat, cook and conceptualize food and farming". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  11. ^ a b c d Anderson-Minshall, Jacob (April 22, 2022). "How Out Chef Andy Baraghani Seeks to Pique Your Culinary Curiosity". The Advocate. Retrieved September 3, 2022.
  12. ^ Morrell, Tarajia (April 21, 2016). "Google's NYC Pop-Up Restaurant Shows How We're All Connected By Food". Condé Nast Traveler. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  13. ^ Tishgart, Sierra (April 7, 2016). "Google Translate Recruited Ace Chefs to Run a Free Pop-up Restaurant". Grub Street. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  14. ^ Hughes, Hilary (August 12, 2019). "Bon Appetit's Molly Baz & Andy Baraghani Dish on Cooking With CupcakKe & Ella Mai at Outside Lands". Billboard. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  15. ^ Mendoza, Mariecar (August 11, 2019). "CupcakKe brings shock and awe to Outside Lands". Datebook | San Francisco Arts & Entertainment Guide. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  16. ^ Severson, Kim (June 8, 2020). "Bon Appétit Editor Adam Rapoport Resigns". The New York Times. Retrieved September 2, 2022.
  17. ^ Harris, Margot; Haasch, Palmer; Greenspan, Rachel E. "A new podcast is exploring the reckoning that happened at Bon Appétit. Here's how the publication ended up in hot water". Insider. Retrieved September 20, 2022.
  18. ^ Harris, Margot (June 15, 2020). "Bon Appétit star Andy Baraghani says he 'undermined' and 'hurt' BIPOC colleagues in an Instagram apology". Insider. Retrieved September 3, 2022.
  19. ^ a b Reviews for The Cook You Want to Be:
  20. ^ Sgroi, Nicole (May 4, 2022). "Brookhaven food connoisseur dishes new recipes: A new cookbook debuts". The Long Island Advance. Retrieved September 19, 2022.
  21. ^ Canavan, Hillary Dixler (June 3, 2023). "Here Are the 2023 James Beard Foundation Media Award Winners". Eater. Retrieved July 25, 2023.
  22. ^ "Beloved Food Writer Andy Baraghani Wants the QR Code Menu to Go Away". Cultured Magazine. May 31, 2023. Retrieved July 25, 2023.
  23. ^ Leatherwood, Olive (June 27, 2022). "Andy Baraghani Hosted Not-Your-Average-Book-Party for His Cookbook, "The Cook You Want to Be"". Vogue. Archived from the original on September 23, 2022. Retrieved September 23, 2022.
  24. ^ "Andy Baraghani and Keith Pollock's classic New York wedding included more than 15 fantastical desserts".
  25. ^ Tabares, Leland (2021). "Misfit Professionals: Asian American Chefs and Restaurateurs in the Twenty-First Century". Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory. 77 (2): 103–132. doi:10.1353/arq.2021.0006. ISSN 1558-9595. S2CID 235717297.
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