Hosted by our founder and company namesake, Blake MacKay, Reservations is a…what’s a less boring way of saying “panel series”? For now, it’s a panel series in which each conversation asks a big, thorny, urgent question in food that we think isn’t being asked—or discussed enough or at all—in our food public square. The idea here, really, is to gather the smartest folks and ask them to not sugarcoat, spin, or say what one thinks one is supposed to say in public. To push and challenge each other, to speak truths about their experiences in and around our beloved and broken food industry.


In the very first ever ever panel/episode of “Reservations,” Blake taps her smartest friends and comrades to attempt to answer the question: Has food media written itself obsolete? James Beard Award winners all, Helen Rosner, Osayi Endolyn, and Meghan McCarron agree and disagree on everything from Anthony Bourdain’s colonialist tendencies to the relationship between bravery and money to what the food section even is and what does and doesn’t belong in it.

Watch right here:

Listen right here: