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At Bluedot Living, we understand the value of gathering over a nutritious, home-cooked meal made with planet-friendly ingredients. As our founder Victoria Riskin puts it: “We believe that kindness to the planet and kindness to ourselves can start simply, practically, and deliciously in the kitchen.” Marco Canora, chef and founder of Hearth and Brodo, does too.
In this episode of Imagine If, co-hosts (and serious foodies) Victoria Riskin and Cleo Carney talk to Marco about the cultural shift toward convenience in the kitchen and what we may have lost along the way.
This is a conversation about food, but also about time, intention, and what it means to care for ourselves and our loved ones in a fast-moving world. Nourishment goes far beyond what’s on the plate. “We find hours to scroll through our phones, but struggle to find 35 minutes to use our hands and make a fabulous, nourishing meal,” Cleo says. “We can reclaim our joy and flavor, one intuitive, home-cooked meal at a time.”
Learn more about Marco here.
In This Episode, You’ll Hear:
- The hidden cost of convenience in modern food culture
- Why cooking has become less of a priority — and what that means
- The connection between food, community, and wellbeing
- Whole foods vs. ultra-processed “health” products
- A new way to think about nourishment in everyday life
About Marco Canora:
Marco Canora is a James Beard Award-winning chef, restaurateur, and author who has become a leading voice in the “food as medicine” movement. With over three decades of experience in the New York City culinary scene, Marco is best known for his commitment to seasonal, whole-food cooking and his mission to dismantle the “convenience lie” of the modern industrial food system.
Meet the Hosts:
- Victoria Riskin: I am Victoria. I’m always looking for the best life has to offer despite a turbulent world. I find comfort in the environment and joy in friendships. We have a great team of all ages at Bluedot who inspire me every day as we work together to build community.
- Cleo Carney: I am Cleo, a student at Harvard University, and I strongly believe that conversations, businesses, and the private markets can create profound change. I also love to cook nourishing food, work out in nature, and find sustainable swaps for everyday items and habits.
Transcript
Marco Canora: We're in the midst of such a loneliness epidemic. We're in the midst of such a health epidemic. If we think that these epidemics are going to be solved by DoorDash and gummy bears, we lost the plot.
Victoria Riskin: Welcome back to Imagine If, a Bluedot Living podcast. I'm Victoria Riskin, the founder of Bluedot Living, and we are here to bring you stories of people doing remarkable things to make our lives healthier and our planet more sustainable. Carl Sagan, when he first saw a photograph of Earth taken from the edge of our solar system, looked at that tiny, pale blue dot against the vast darkness of space and said, “That's home. That's us. Every person you've ever heard of, every human being who's ever lived, on a moat of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
Bluedot Living was born from that image. We believe that kindness to the planet and kindness to ourselves can start simply, practically, and deliciously in the kitchen. Joining me today is my brilliant co-host, Cleo Carney.
Cleo Carney: Thank you, Vicki. I'm actually very excited about this.
Victoria Riskin: So Cleo, I think we should introduce Marco. Do you think the audience would like to know who he is?
Cleo Carney: Yes. Although I'm sure there are some people who know his work very well.
Victoria Riskin: I am sure. He's the James Beard Award-winning chef behind the restaurant Hearth in New York City, in the East Village and the founder of Brodo. You sort of started with a little window on the side of the restaurant and then became a national movement. So welcome. We're so happy to have you. I'd love you to take us back to your journey because you were a kid who grew up in upstate New York, and you worked at some of the high-end restaurants in New York, and then decided to open your own restaurant, and at some point, you hit a brick wall. Do you want to talk about your journey and your love of food and where it started, and then that brick wall?
Marco Canora: Yeah, I'd love to. And thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here and talk about food. It's a topic that's very close to my heart. I often say I'm a one-trick pony. I've been all about food and cooking and restaurants pretty much my entire life. I'm really happy about that because it's the thing that lights me up and I feel like that's a blessing. So I'm thrilled to be here talking about all things food and health with you.
Early influences on how I got here, like most people, happened in my home. My mom was born and raised in Lucca, a small town in Tuscany. She came over when she was 19. I was raised on the Hudson River. My mom had a garden. She cooked every dinner for us. I was exposed at an early age to incredibly fresh seasonal food, often grown in our backyard. Those memories are incredibly impactful. I'm trying to do that for my daughters now.
As a kid, watching my mom pick zucchini flowers and then pan-fry them in a simple Tuscan pastel, what incredible messages it sent me, right? It sent me messages about simplicity. It sent me messages about nourishment. It sent me messages about being close to your food. It sent me so many indelible memories. That was really the beginning of the seed that grew into now.
I'm 58 years old. I've had Hearth for 23 years on the corner of First and 12th. I founded Brodo back in 2014. Almost everything I do is somehow — food is at the center of the universe of my life. There's such a reward on the other side of those efforts. It's really a mission in my life today to just spread the gospel of the power of cooking and the importance of cooking. I find it so sad that everyone is so obsessed with convenience. You pay such a price for convenience, and I wish we could flip the switch on that because oftentimes convenience is just a big fat lie, in my opinion.
Victoria Riskin: Yeah, that's such a powerful point.
Cleo Carney: You only get to eat so much in one day. Why not make it fabulous and nourish you? But that's my opinion as well.
Victoria Riskin: Well, I think one of the things that we always are thinking about is what can the average person do? What are the things they can bring into their home? Or how can they organize themselves so they can have that pleasure moment, given their very busy lives, and move them more in that joyful direction? Are there any principles about that?
Marco Canora: I think everybody's chasing convenience because they don't understand and realize the benefits and the return on the investment of what it means to shop and cook and share a meal with somebody you love. It doesn't have to be — for me, I'm having dinner with my wife and my kid — but it doesn't matter. It could be your friend next door. It doesn't matter who it is, but this idea of thinking of these moments where we eat food as social moments in your life.
Sure, if you're at work and you're bringing lunch or getting lunch, that's different. But most of us have an opportunity to share a meal at dinner. Investing time and energy and thought into that meal and into that engagement, and being off of your phone and engaging in conversation and making a meal — these are incredibly valuable moments in one's life. Again, we have to figure out a way to convince people to prioritize that because of the great value it'll give you over the long term.
We're in the midst of such a loneliness epidemic. We're in the midst of such a health epidemic. If we think that these epidemics are going to be solved by DoorDash and gummy bears, we really lost the plot.
Cleo Carney: Yeah, I was just reading The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, and he was talking about how important sharing meals is and how…in this individualized culture.
Marco Canora: A hundred percent. He is spot on with that, for sure.
Victoria Riskin: Joy for me is sitting around my table, maybe eight to 10 people, one conversation — one conversation — and good food and nice wine. That is joy.
Marco Canora: It is incredible. It is a joy. It's nourishing.
Victoria Riskin: It gets me — I look forward to it. I don't like the dishes after, but that's another thing.
Marco Canora: I've learned to embrace that too, to be honest.
Victoria Riskin: OK.
Cleo Carney: Washing dishes.
Marco Canora: It is very meditative.
Victoria Riskin: Oh, I didn't know that. Nobody told me that. OK. Well, I'll work on that, but maybe I need to be a little bit more Buddhist and mindful in the dish department as well.
Marco Canora: This is not a revelatory statement because I'm sure it's been said a million times, but I can't help myself. I actually said this to my wife yesterday. She's like, “Don't say that, it's boring.” But it's just so funny because here's the irony: We all bemoan time and not having it, and we all chase convenience because it's so hard and time-consuming. What are the average screen times in this country? It's like five or six hours. We find five hours to scroll TikTok and Instagram, but we can't find 35 minutes to use our hands and make a nourishing meal for ourselves? It's a problem that needs to be solved.
Victoria Riskin: I would say imagine if everybody tonight sat down at a table, had a lovely simple meal and a conversation with a nice person, we would suddenly feel whole again. There's absolutely a loneliness factor. We're whipped up by those who wish to feed us conflict and divisiveness.
Marco Canora: Yeah, it's a tough moment.
Victoria Riskin: And the revolutionary change is toward joy and flavor and togetherness, right?
Marco Canora: Amen.
Cleo Carney: Your story talking about growing up and hearing about how your mother cooked — to us now it sounds like such a luxury, such an aspirational thing, and really it should be a basic necessity because that's how humans were built to live.
Marco Canora: Totally.
Cleo Carney: What would you say in your experience building Hearth's menu and creating Brodo has really been missing from the food that people eat?
Marco Canora: I just think it's a prioritization thing. Our priorities are a little off-kilter. The choices we make around the food and the beverage that we put into our mouths need to be higher on the priority list. My latest brain explosion trigger is this gamification of food. First, it was powders, and now powders are turning into gummy bears.
Cleo Carney: Yes, protein gummies, multivitamin gummies.
Victoria Riskin: Wow.
Marco Canora: It's so bonkers to me that so many of the people who exist in this community of valuing health, wellness, longevity, optimization, and all this, somehow think that a greens powder or a vitamin gummy bear is the path. It just — I'm sorry, but my brain short-circuits on this idea. I get triggered and frustrated by it because it seems so blatantly wrong to me. It's shocking that somehow it's being embraced in health and wellness communities in this country.
Victoria Riskin: It seems like we're all moving so fast that even tasting and digesting is a lost art.
Cleo Carney: I've really seen that in college. At home, I cooked for my family, and my mom cooks. We go to the farmer's market on the weekends. Then coming here, you have the dining hall food, which is not great. I see with my peers, they wake up, they drink a protein milk to get through to lunch. Then for lunch, there's not enough time, so it's coffee and a protein bar. There's just a lack of desire and just trying to get through things. I actually have a question for you on that. How often do you go back to Italy, because you have Italian heritage, and do you notice the difference when you're there, versus in the States, in the way they take good care of their food?
Marco Canora: Yes and no. I go back relatively frequently. My mom still has relatives there. Sure, the history is longer and deeper, and I feel like there are a little bit better value systems around food. But I will say convenience is pervasive on the globe. People are chasing convenience. People are moving away from committing time and energy to cooking because somehow it's low on the priority chain. I feel like it's a global problem. I was going to say Japan, but even Japan is obsessed with convenience foods and packaged foods.
For some reason, it's hard for people to find the time to do the shopping, the cleaning of the vegetables, the chopping, and the cooking. I get it; it's not easy. But I feel like the ROI is so great. That's the message I'm trying to send. Nobody's making promises that it's super easy, but the return on that investment is a wonderful one on all kinds of levels. Not just the physiological, nourishing aspect of eating whole foods that you prepare, but the mental and social things that come along with preparing and sharing a meal, too. These are very valuable things in our pursuit of happiness and wellness.
Victoria Riskin: I was just thinking about Bhutan, where they measure Gross National Happiness rather than Gross Domestic Product. I don't know if they have processed food there now, but still, there is a cultural emphasis on wellbeing and happiness. I wanted to ask you a little bit about how you think about what foods you're going to make, where you get products, and how you know they're coming from a sustainable source. That's a complex process to make those decisions, whether it's for Brodo or in your restaurant.
Marco Canora: It sure is. As it relates to my home and my restaurant, I'm lucky because I live close to the Union Square Greenmarket in New York. I'll acknowledge it's a huge privilege to have the proximity to that place and the resources to afford that place. I've been shopping at Greenmarket for probably close to 30 years now, and I literally walk it three days a week, every week, since I started cooking at Gramercy Tavern in the mid-’90s. So that is really core.
Victoria Riskin: It's like having a candy store, but it's not candy. Are you then making decisions about what you're going to make for the restaurant or for dinner based on what you find there?
Marco Canora: Sure. We're crazy seasonal at Hearth, and what we see at the market drives our menu changes for sure. After being a professional chef in New York for 30 years, you create a lot of relationships with fishmongers, meat guys, vegetable people, and farmers. Again, food has been the center of my life for three decades, so I have a network. It's easy for me to sit here and talk about cooking at home. I often make assumptions about what people know about food and cooking because it's so intuitive to me. My CEO at Brodo is like, “Wait a minute, we don't even know about boiling vegetables.” I'm like, “What do you mean you don't know how to boil a pot of water?” A lot of people are starting from zero.
Victoria Riskin: You really have to remember that. So when did this lightbulb go off about Brodo and the brilliant broth process? People on my team say it is so clean and so fresh and flavorful versus all the others. How did that come into being?
Marco Canora: The birth of Brodo was the confluence of a handful of things. The story I've told the most is a health journey. I was 10 or 11 years into Hearth and in my mid-40s. Cooking in New York City for a living is very stressful. Through my 30s, starting my own business and being a proprietor running a mom-and-pop shop in Manhattan for 10 years, grinding away — it really took a toll. My daughter was 5 or 6 years old, so I was trying to be a new father, a good husband, and run a successful restaurant. It is like a bunch of pirates on a ship — a ton of booze, smoking cigarettes, and not taking care of myself.
After doing that for a while, I was a bit of a wreck on every level. I had a moment where I decided to start focusing on getting my health and mental health back. One of the first things I did was transition from drinking probably five or six quarts of coffee a day for real to just having some coffee in the morning. Then I started transitioning to my cooking broth at the restaurant, which is the broth I grew up on. It's a mix of turkey, beef, and chicken. I started consuming a lot of it every day. It was amazing what that did. It calmed my nervous system; I believe it healed my broken gut. I started to get more energy and sleep better. Then I was able to start exercising. It was a cascade of incredibly good things.
Around the same time, I had to renew my lease and had a 70% increase in rent. That created a bit of stress. I was also in the midst of separating from my business partner after a dysfunctional relationship. I was about to embark on a lease renewal with that rent increase while going through this health journey. I had this window on First Avenue that, since 2003, I thought of as an opportunity to sell something, donuts or coffee. But with the rent increase, the pressure was on to do something.
That's how the lightbulb happened. I was drinking this broth and thought, maybe I could sell the broth in a cup because it's so amazing. I put together a logo with a buddy and got a rubber stamp from the store. It's a wonderful bootstrappy story: a rubber stamp, a white cup, and some broth I was making in the basement. I put my chef hat on and created a menu with add-ins. I launched this little window selling three kinds of broth with five add-ins out of little two-liter pump pots.
Victoria Riskin: How did you get customers? Did they just see your little window?
Marco Canora: That's the beauty of being on First Avenue in the East Village. I printed a menu and put it on the window. I built a window that went up and down, and I literally stuck my head out the window.
Victoria Riskin: Oh my God.
Cleo Carney: It is the American Dream.
Marco Canora: For real. I wish I had a video of the first day because I literally stuck my head out the window and was like, “You want to try some broth?” It was amazing. I would do anything to relive that opening year. It was such an incredible moment in my life.
Cleo Carney: Are there some lessons you had already taken from your time at Hearth that translated to Brodo? Was it a great success from the start?
Marco Canora: The timing was incredible, and from moment one, it really resonated. To this day, pitching a newbie at that window is my happiest moment because I have no doubt I'm going to win them over. This stuff is so flavorful, satisfying, and feels so good going in your body. I close every deal because this stuff is incredible.
Victoria Riskin: My first “aha” moment was when I was making a puree and I used Brodo. When I tasted it, I said, “Oh my God, what happened to this puree?” There were all these lovely flavors that just don't happen with water or regular chicken stock.
Marco Canora: That's why this has been at the center of every chef's kitchen since the beginning of chefs. It's such added value. I've always fantasized about it being on the list of staples alongside butter, milk, eggs, and cheese.
Victoria Riskin: So you've done some flavorful ones… this one is the Rosemary and Tuscan Sun… and this one is the Coconut Curry and Lime. I want to go down a flavor road with you. I come home tonight and I don't know what to make for dinner, but I want to use the Coconut Curry Lime. Give me some tips.
Marco Canora: We eat a lot of chicken in this house. I get bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. With whatever vegetables or herbs you have, plus one of the flavored broths, you're 35 minutes away from something deeply flavorful and nourishing. I'm obsessed with intuitive cooking. Once you figure out an approach to an oven-braised chicken thigh, cooking is about process, and then you do your own flavor layering. You season the meat, sear it on both sides, take it out, add whatever vegetables and herbs you like to the pan fat, put the chicken back in, add a pouch of Tom Yum or Tuscan Sun, and go in the oven at 375 for 30 minutes. Voila. I love the idea of process recipes as opposed to me telling you exactly which herbs to use. Embrace the process and learn to become an intuitive cook.That's how you make it easy. If it's too big of a project, people feel they can't do it.
Cleo Carney: Following recipes with specific grams is so silly. If an everyday person is listening to this, you know, they are busy. They do have to think about some sort of convenience thing as well. Although obviously you can ruin priorities to an extent, what are some tips you'd have for someone who just, you know, wants to care about the planet, wants to feel good, wants to go on their own health journey, or just feed their family better? Any advice in that realm?
Marco Canora: I really try to build a community around Brodo because yes, we sell broth, but I want to sell an approach to living. Part of that approach is like cooking and making things. Mother's Day is coming up and we're sharing a basic baby food recipe. Here is the “complicated” time commitment: one cup of any vegetable you want, peeled, cleaned, and chopped — carrot, beet, frozen peas, cauliflower, whatever. One pouch of chicken broth. Boil it for 10 minutes without a lid and mush it with a fork.
Cleo Carney: Perfect.
Marco Canora: I'm serious. Organic chicken broth is super clean.
Victoria Riskin: You could take that and make it a side vegetable for dinner. That sounds beautiful.
Marco Canora: Exactly. The other thing I'm doing is what I call warm savory smoothies — a.k.a. soup. But here's the difference: Soup usually means sweating vegetables in oil, which is a process. I want people to just boil whatever combo of vegetables with broth until it's mushy, then blend it and drink it.
Cleo Carney: It is different because people like you serving broth in a cup is really interesting. Whereas people traditionally would have it as part of things, you say, as a base of many recipes. Eat it like a chicken noodle soup. But it totally makes sense. It's convenient. It could be a sort of protein shake on the go, but it's real food. Tastes great. Keeps you full.
Marco Canora: It's the warm and savory version of the smoothie culture. If you have good broth and vegetables, you're done. Smoothies are usually ice and fruit; if you think of this as a savory smoothie served warm, it's thoroughly nourishing. I'm obsessed with these simple things that are actually whole — built on whole foods — and and thoroughly nourishing.
Victoria Riskin: Yeah, so we have a new line of journalism we're doing. We focused on the kitchen and a franchise kind of series we're doing called “Riffable.” Have you ever heard the word riffable? So the idea behind that is can you riff on what you have in your refrigerator? How can you make something? So if I said to you, OK, I have a purple onion and I have a cucumber and I have a and I have some nuts. I don't know. I'm just throwing the set you, Marco. What would you do with that? Could you riff on those things?
Marco Canora: If it was a red onion and a cucumber, I would make a salad and put the chopped nuts on top for added texture. Those ingredients in my mind want to be served raw as a salad.
Victoria Riskin: Cleo and I are coming to have dinner at Hearth. We have one last question we ask everybody. At the end of this podcast, we always say to the guests: “Imagine if…” and you fill in the blank. It could be anything — personal, metaphorical, or food-wise.
Marco Canora: I know this comes across as self-serving, but hopefully you'll see the bigger picture. Since the beginning of Brodo, I've been obsessed with the industrial food system around hospitals. When I thought about the healing properties of broth, I also thought about emotional healing. When you drink a good cup of salty broth, it feels comforting and calming. I thought, not only does the sick person need that nourishment, but the loved ones around them could use it, too. They all need that hug of what a cup of broth can be. It kills me that hospitals sell plastic jugs of Nestle Ensure. They sell $4.5 billion a year into the hospital system. It's a plastic thing filled with a hundred ingredients, and because it has a nutritional panel that checks boxes, people think it’s the right thing to feed sick people. What if we got rid of those $4.5 billion worth of plastic cups and made broth in the kitchens of these hospitals? Serve them real food instead of grape jelly.
Victoria Riskin: Absolutely. That would be so healing. One last question: What's for dinner?
Marco Canora: We're roasting a whole chicken. I took it out of the refrigerator an hour ago so it would come to room temperature. I cook it at 300 for an hour and a half, then turn it up to 475 with a fan for the last 30 minutes. You get really tender meat and super crispy skin.
Victoria Riskin: Oh man, I'm hungry.
Cleo Carney: Thank you so much, Marco. It was really lovely to meet the person behind it all.
Victoria Riskin: Thank you for joining us on Imagine If from Bluedot Living. If you want to explore our recipes and products for your home, you can find us at bluedotliving.com, and for daily inspiration, follow us at Bluedot Living on Instagram. If you enjoyed this conversation, share it and please add your thoughts in the comments on YouTube. I'm Victoria Riskin, and we'll be back next week with more stories from great people doing amazing things in their little corner of the planet.
