Rushani Epa

I’ve joined @zeitgeistwriters as their newest literary agent and their first with a focus on food. When I moved from media into publishing, I commissioned more than a dozen titles, but the leap was bigger than I expected. Books take time, and they demand detail and stamina. Writers, or chefs who haven’t written anything outside of a menu, are asked to turn their lives into a digestible series of recipes and stories while also navigating contracts and industry jargon. Too often, that part of the work gets overlooked. After leaving the industry, I found myself instinctively helping chef friends by guiding proposals, shaping ideas, talking through structure and even just being a steady hand. After a while, it became clear that I had become a literary agent without quite realising it. So when the wonderful Benython asked if I would join Zeitgeist, it felt like a natural yes. They have an international presence, care about their authors and they make space for voices that don’t always get a clear path. This role also gives me the room to keep working on @colournary , consulting and freelancing, with the former being my paramount priority. If you're a publisher, or someone who wants to write a cookbook, or any piece of literature with food at its core, send me a message. I’m happy to talk, even if we don’t end up working together. Writing can feel lonely and daunting, but it can also be deliciously exciting, and it’s always sweeter with someone in your corner.

So, I moved overseas. I wrote a thing about it on my Substack to answer any questions that may arise (link in bio—please consider subscribing because my words are my labour). It's been an exciting, jarring, emotional and intense process but it's been a long time coming. I'll still be around freelancing and writing on the food scene in Naarm/Melbourne, carrying on @colournarymag and @mindsenplace . I'll just be travelling while I do so and based in the Netherlands for now and in Italy later. I'll also now be able to give everyone tips on where to eat and drink around the world! Let me know if you're heading to this neck of the woods anytime soon. All my love to everyone during this strange time in the world 🧡

Recently, I had the chance to have some heavy, therapeutic chats with some incredible women (including Women of Colour) and non-binary folks in hospitality. It's a shame that we are in a position in which we need to have these discussions, but it's really important that we do. Thank you for publishing this piece @gourmettraveller , and thank you, @hunkies_news , for standing up to misogyny and sexual harassment in the industry. It's common for publications to remain silent during times like these, and it takes guts to be the one to speak out against it. No thank you to seasoned critics who feel they have the right to comment on women's bodies. Who perpetuate sexism (amongst other things) in an already struggling industry. No thank you to the cishet men in positions of power who feel they have the right to treat us like second-class citizens, who fetishize us, who abuse us, who take what is ours. Thank you to everyone who I spoke with: @shannon_martinez , @jacqueline_challinor , @almayj , @thezoodle , @kelsey_tukiri , @birramoiretti , @glyphsandclutter and @stefaniew . You can find the link to the piece in my bio.

A happy birthday girl with some of her favourite champagne produced by one of her favourite people, @champagnejeromeblin , imported by her favourite person, @anotherbottle__ 🧡🧡🧡 Wishing a happy May 6th to you and yours and blessing you all on this very auspicious day 😌

Baby's first @ftglobetrotter . I’ve long been thinking about this shift I've noticed in Melbourne from Italy. The Australian pub has for eons been mythologised as a crucible of toxic masculinity, embodied in sticky floors, pints slammed onto countertops, the stale smell of cigarettes and a sort of rough egalitarianism that rarely extended to women. In Melbourne, the past few decades have seen pubs shift from rough-edged drinking dens to what today is something harder to define: venues that borrow the precision, quality, service and sensibility of wine bars while retaining the rituals, community and openness of the local. It is a model shaped as much by economics as taste, as rising costs and changing habits push operators to rethink what a pub can be, based on what people need and what they expect. Is the new pub democracy manifest? I wrote about it for @ftglobetrotter , speaking to the wonderful folks at @geraldsbarmelbourne , @daphne.3057 , @pendant.publicbar , @thecarpentersruin and @lepubmelbourne . Published with thanks to @nikiblasina . Link in bio and the piece is behind a paywall. DM me if you're desperate to read it and can't 🧡

I’ve never been gifted a whole cooked lamb before. I suspect it might remain one of the greatest gifts I’ll receive. This came off the back of a conversation with @thierrymana from @eleniskitchenandbar while I was working on an article about luxury beyond the usual French canon. She spoke about the luxury of generosity she witnessed at family gatherings, namely around Easter time, anchored by her pappou and a lamb slowly rotated on a spit. I could picture it all, smoke permeating the air, children running around the suburban backyard, the sunshine hitting fruit trees and dappling the cement in leaf-shaped shadows. She said she would cook me one in celebration, and I didn’t expect to hold her to it. A few months later, there I was sitting with loved ones, working through an abundance of mezze, of herbaceous fingers of dolmadakia, deeply savoury zucchini fritters, glossy bullhorn peppers stuffed with mince, golden triangles of saganaki dotted with plump muscadets. Then the lamb arrived, carried out whole by two men and set down gently on the table next to us. Like the Pied Piper, it enticed people from nearby tables who followed the spectacle with their phone cameras. @chefhristos butchered the lamb seemingly effortlessly by our table, pulling apart the charred meat that had cooked for hours over charcoal. The skin had tightened, unified with the fat and crisped into buttery shards, salted and herbed. He lamented over not doing this for his family in Melbourne due to their small size, of feasting back home in Greece and during Easter, and the significance of an Easter lamb. It was served simply, with light lemony wedges of potato and shredded cabbage, so as not to distract us from the star of the show. We ate deeply, more than we meant to, and still left with containers of meat to share with our community. There’s something to be said about Greek generosity and hospitality, but at the risk of stereotyping, I’ll leave it there and note that this all came down to Thierry and her beautiful family that have fed Melbourne for generations. People like you remind me why I love what I do – food connects us in a way little else can.

Luxury dining is still so often framed through French ideals: in printed menus, foie gras, white tablecloths, polished cutlery, I could go on. But for many cultures, that very opulence is witnessed in the abundance of a saffron-stained biryani for a wedding party, a glistening bistecca alla fiorentina at a Sunday lunch, a pot of maqluba turned out with bated breath, or a lacquered roast duck spinning atop a lazy susan. In the March issue of @gourmettraveller , I explore how maximalism is reshaping the language of luxury dining, and why abundance, spectacle and generosity have long been markers of celebration and luxury across many cultures.  With thanks to the brilliant chefs and food folks who shared their perspectives with me: @tomsarafian , @alexkelly95 , @chae_melbourne , @minoli.desilva , @eleniskitchenandbar and @chef_bcole_ . Now in the March issue of Gourmet Traveller.

After two cancelled flights and three days of playing house in a Dutch airport, we finally made it to the motherland, Sri Lanka. We dropped our bags off at Havelock Place Bungalow and wandered sleepily next door to @gini_outdoor_kitchen for one of my favourite meals in Colombo. People talk about Gini’s fire cooking, the restaurant named after gindara (Sinhala for fire), and the charcoal plumes that drift through its tropical courtyard attest to that. But I think it’s their curious approach to seafood and their sound relationships with local fishermen and foragers that are quietly overlooked. There’s a hidden order sitting in half a crab shell, cradling noodles of squid caressed by charcoal smoke as it seared in a sieve, emboldened by an ambrosial crab curry. This was the most delicate squid I’ve ever eaten, so tender that it reminded me of the gentle tripe in trippa alla romana. It contrasted the crudo with its dry-cured islands of meaty white fish caped in a razor-sharp declaration of garlicky, lemongrassy nam jim, mellowed by a dulcet coconut milk emulsion so moreish I spooned it into my mouth like soup. Their cocktails are equally thoughtful: the Arrack Sour, a mainstay of the drinks list, promotes not only arrack distilled from fermented coconut flowers but also locally sourced, lightly smoky kithul treacle. @nelaka_d , head mixologist and one of three brothers behind it all, commitment to the craft also led to the team opening a speakeasy called Kampong. We headed there for a post-dinner nightcap only to think Google Maps had led us astray to some random uncle’s murukku shop. Little did we know that behind the steel shelving was not only one of Colombo’s coolest bars but a dedicated outpost for Nelaka and his team to shine.  The Dayawansa brothers, in my opinion, are some of the most exciting operators in Sri Lanka’s new wave of hospitality and Gini and @kampong.colombo prove this each and every time.

August was cheering @moktarmusic in a sea of Palestinian flags at Dekmantel, then driving our Mini from Italy to Croatia and Montenegro, sharing whole fish in Albania, snorkelling in turquoise Ionian waters around Paxos, lying on the white sands of Antipaxos and living with locals in an old Corfiot town. September was a Calabrian fever dream and the national Chilli Festival, followed by falling in love with Napoli. October was a revolving door of best friends: wine in Paris and prix fixe lunches together in Burgundy, teaching Monopoly Deal to winemakers in Jura, and a tour of our favourite pizze in Lucca. November was packing up our house in Lucca, abbiamo detto arrivederci presto ai nostri amici and driving to London, our next home, via Lyon. December was swaddled in layers like a newborn being carried through the snow of Finland’s Arctic Circle via huskies and snowmobiles, eating wurst with Amma/Mum in Germany for the first time, followed by another home: Den Haag, with family, coming together as Cyclone Ditwah took a hold of our motherland. I remind myself daily how lucky I am to hold a passport that lets me move so freely and how deeply unfair that is. Palestinian friends are caged by a despot, while Indian friends must pay thousands and navigate mountains of paperwork just to apply for a visa. As of tomorrow, people suffering through some of the world’s worst wars and genocides will be banned from entering the United States. The imbalance cuts me open and stitches guilt into my insides, which is maybe why I don’t post about my travels as often. To travel is a man-made privilege, though I don’t believe it should be. Migration runs through my blood, and is what carried me from the isolation of Australia to the vastness of the world, something I carry deep gratitude for. If you’re someone lucky enough to move, write or wander freely, remember that it’s a privilege whether you want it to be or not. And with that privilege comes a responsibility to platform, amplify and to make space for local voices, without speaking over or taking it from them.  We fade to nothing without each other, we are dolceamaro, bitter and sweet, together.

June was the debauchery of Champagne on a Tuscan beach with Lucchese friends, spilling into the World’s 50 Best in Torino and a hot, boozy Italian summer that bled into July, and needed a post of its own. Last part to come.

It’s ticked over onto that time of year again, where I’m almost numb from how overwhelmed I am. I’ve been wondering why this Gregorian threshold floods so many of us with both hope and dread and causes us to question whether we’ve been “good enough”. If I had to compare the past 365 days of my life to something, it would be my favourite digestif (amaro) or my sister’s favourite dessert (dark chocolate clementine cake). The high tide of sweetness – of travel and love – rushing in and encompassing me. The bitterness of the world encrusting me as it pulls back out. Rinsing me and repeating. January was of being dusted in snow like icing sugar across Austria and Germany, then filled with Negroni, gelati, focacce, bistecche and dolce in Firenze and Lucca. February was about the pastels of Lucca, the grey of London punctuated by spots of golden sun, and the earthy terrazzo of Bologna. March was bright plastic hawker centre stools and Michelin-star service in Singapore, and Bali’s confronting contrast, its beauty and hospitality in a chokehold of shirtless migrants and cashed-up bogans. April was in the arms of my friends and family back in Naarm/Melbourne, and May was the cool salve of king coconut water against my throat and remourning my thaththa/father in Sri Lanka. Part two in the next post.

Who gets to own a common food word? Trademark law has always been a complicated beast, but it's evident that it's disproportionately affecting global cuisines from the UK to the U.S. Swipe right to read why. And, show support for @yasminkhanstories 's beautiful vegetarian cookbook, Sabzi, by purchasing it!