Ella Risbridger
Ella Risbridger is a food writer. Her debut cookbook ‘Midnight Chicken & other recipes worth living for’ came out in 2019 and was loved by Nigella Lawson herself. Based in Lewisham, Ella also writes articles, poetry, and her children’s novel, The Secret Detectives, is out in June.
Ella got into food by simply cooking, eating and writing about it.
She speaks to QFAB about accidentally becoming a food writer, how everyone assumes she's straight, and her frustrations around the domesticity assigned to women in food. She shares advice on food writing, particularly for women, and her story of a forbidden scotch egg.
Introduce yourself…
My name is Ella Risbridger. I identify as queer and female and my pronouns are she/her. I'm a food writer, I write cookbooks, and sometimes I write other things like children's books and poetry anthologies.
So where in the world are you based? And where else have you lived and worked?
I am based in South East London. I've lived in Paris and Dubai but never worked there.
“Food writing is less about the the food and more of just a really interesting way to tell stories”
So what does your average day look like?
So I get up at like half eight, do some yoga, eat some toast, check my emails, do the dull bits of work like check what's on the calendar for today. Then almost always I get up and go for a big walk around Ladywell fields and Hilly fields. Me and my friend Caroline do that everyday with the dog. And we just kind of bounce ideas and talk about what we’re thinking of working on.
We get home about 12 and hopefully I'm all limber from my walk, full of ideas and fresh air. Then I sit down and write until four, when I start thinking about cooking. Then I cook from like four to eight, put music on. So me and my housemate always have dinner together, then it's time to watch a lot of telly. I am a deep sucker for anything that's like Sherlock Holmes themed, I watch a lot of House, I think it's probably an ASD thing, I like to know the plot and the characters and how they interact.
How did you get to where you are? What was your earliest experience in the industry?
I never wanted or intended to write a cookbook, I don't really know how it happened. I like cooking and I always write about what's happening. Honestly, I think it has to do with having been on the internet for a really long time. I was always on Twitter, or social media, always having a blog. And then I was doing a lot of cooking, so I was obviously writing about that. For me food writing is less about the the food and more of just a really interesting way to tell stories. It's an interesting way to crack into people's personal lives.
It started as a blog that I wrote about eight posts on and really loved doing. I never really expected it (Midnight Chicken) to do as well as it has. I don't think anyone did. My agent calls it the little cookbook that could, because it was just like ‘it's a weird one, it's a cookbook that starts with a suicide attempt’.
I was very lucky in that my agent and my publishers were all willing to take a gamble. I didn't think I'd stick with it. But I knew I would always be writing something. I also do kids books, I was doing poetry anthologies, and I'm sort of half working on a novel. I write about food because I write about everything. I'm very interested in food but it wouldn't surprise me if I was then like, ‘I'm pivoting into birds!’
What has been your experience being queer in this industry?
Being queer is something I've known as long as I have been alive, but nobody (in the industry) has ever asked me about it! Sometimes I occasionally mention it in an event or a meeting and people can seem uncomfortable. I think because there's a man very prominently in my first book, it doesn't cross anybody's mind. It's this thing that I think about a lot, the invisibility of bisexuality.
I remember being tiny, like three or four, and thinking, ‘there's a problem here, I have to be a boy when I grow up and I don’t want to be that’. I remember sitting on my bed thinking it was impossible because presumably, at some point, they're gonna ask me: which one do you want to be? I don't want to be a boy. But also never being able to be with a girl would break my heart.
For me it's always been a thing, so I'm always surprised that people don't know. But I suppose I have long hair and I’m big into lipstick, and very publicly had a boyfriend who died very dramatically. The whole thing was a very straight story.
So my experience of being queer in this industry is an experience of no-one ever asking me about it and total implied straightness all the times. For me my queerness is not a secret. It's just something where it just never seemed relevant. Then of course, you don't want to take up space where there's actual struggle happening, because there's very little actual struggle in my life, in this section anyway. You just feel like, ‘Oh, your assumption makes me feel weird’. You live with the general assumption that everybody is straight, which is so alien to my worldview. I assume everyone is queer.
“They’re going to ask you to give more of yourself than you want to give. Stop! You don’t have to do that. You don’t owe them your personal trauma.”
What advice would you give to anyone who wants to get into your line of work?
In my line of work the thing is to write, write, write, always and read. But I think most people who want to be food writers have kind of got that part figured out. So the actual advice I'm going to give is a thing I wish I had known. It's about cultural appropriation, be really careful! It's fine to take inspiration from everywhere but don’t call something “the definitive ___” if you've just made it up in your kitchen! That's the thing to be conscious of. Think about where the power dynamic is in what you’re cooking. That doesn't mean don't do it, but it means don't talk over people, don't call your version the definitive version, say it’s inspired by this thing and that thing, but don’t march all over people.
The other piece of advice, which is kind of related in terms of appropriation, is that if you're going to write memoir, because that's the other thing I do the kind of foodie memoir type stuff, be careful with whose stories you're telling. If you're going to write about the people, talk to them about it, or anonymise them and do it properly. I think that's what I wish that I had known. I think I was pretty careful, but there are certain moments in earlier interviews or earlier pieces of writing I've done where I'm like... you didn't need to say that. You didn't. That was not necessary.
I have one more piece of advice actually, which is particularly for young female identified writers. And actually, anyone who the world identifies as female. They're going to ask you to give more of yourself than you want to give. Stop! You don't have to do that. You don't owe them your personal trauma. I've seen it happen again and again and again. They want you to write and I think with any famous woman they want a story of female struggle, usually about rape or miscarriage or trauma in some way, some brutal female trauma. They do it over and over again and you don't have to do it. It's a game that you don't have to play.
What is the best meal you've ever had? Where was it? What was it? Who was it with?
Very difficult question obviously! This isn't definitive but I once ate a really good scotch egg by a river when I was a child. And it wasn't ours, it was from another family's picnic. They had been like, ‘Do you want one?’ It was this forbidden food because my family were very much ‘make your own yoghurt’. It was a really good meal.
Also the night we went into lockdown, I made this Gochujang pork belly. I think we felt the pandemic coming and that it may be the end of the world, which is a deep phobia I have. So I was just like, ‘I will prepare everything!’ I made this pork belly and it was amazing with mashed potato with garlic in it, and carrots with honey. That was extremely nice.
What is your guilty pleasure?
Biscoff spread with a spoon. We've also been really getting into potato smiles.
What are your top places to eat or drink?
1. Lupins (@lupinslondon) - it's just the nicest place and like it's one of those restaurants you go to for such a cosy time, I always take my mum there.
2. Bread & Butler (@breadandbutlerldn) - a bakery in Deptford. They’re the nicest place ever, I wrote most of my last book in there, they are so lovely. Their cardamom buns and Hamlet sourdough loaf are extremely good.
3. Panas Gurkha (@panasgurkharestaurant) - it's a Nepalese takeaway that we've recently leaned into which is absolutely amazing, it's on Lee High Road, it’s so great!
4. Home - a Chinese restaurant in Lewisham. They do this thing, it just says ‘duck fried rice’ on the menu, which does not sound promising, but it's like just a perfect little bowl of brown rice with caramelised onions and duck and then a sort of gravy and you’re like, ‘this shouldn't be allowed to come to the house because its so good!’
Favourite banger to play in the kitchen?
I've been going back to like a song by Best Coast called Boyfriend which I used to listen to a lot as a teenager. She released an LGBT version of it recently called Girlfriend/Boyfriend which is so exciting, it's just so inclusive and such a big banger. And a song called The One by the Lemon Twigs, it’s got big Buddy Holly vibes.
What advice would you give to your younger baby queer self?
Oh God! Poor baby, it's all going to be alright, I reckon (laughing)! So I kind of wrote Midnight Chicken because I was 21 and I had just tried to kill myself. I was like, ‘this is very bad, I will write this big book of advice to myself’. Then I got these lovely messages from people who were like ‘I’m 21 and I'm so unhappy, but I read your book and now I'm not sad!’
Mostly I would say try not to worry, but you're going to and you should (laughing)! I want to be like, it's gonna be alright. Well actually it's not gonna be alright… it's going to be amazing and terrible! You're going to hate it, but you are going to love it. And it is going to be interesting. It's at least going to be very interesting.
“For women, because you’re cooking there’s this very domestic vibe and there’s an implied and persistent heteronormativity that can feel minimising of the work you’re trying to do.”
Do you feel it is important for the LGBTQI+ community within the food and beverage industry to have a network and if so why?
I think it's so important. Certainly in the food writing world, it feels very straight to me and very cis.
For women, because you're cooking there's this very domestic vibe and there's an implied and persistent heteronormativity that can feel minimising of the work you're trying to do. Which isn't to say that domestic work is unimportant, but it’s not something I identify with. I feel that anything like this that disrupts that extremely heteronormative paradigm of ‘cooking in the kitchen equals domestic woman’ is important.
When I tried to sell Midnight Chicken I had this meeting with an editor who was just like, ‘yeah, I really see this as a sort of like little London kitchen love story, boy meets girl.’ And I was like… that's really not what I'm trying to do. Like, yes, yes, there is a man in this but also, it's not about that! For me it’s a story about friends and boyfriends and more, it’s not just one thing.
I'm really hoping to keep pushing against that stuff. A lot of what I'm working on now is about trying to decentralise the nuclear family/boy meets girl story of everything. But as a woman in the food industry it's so easy to fall into that. It’s probably particularly prevalent in memoir food writing for women, or on Instagram women having to say ‘here's my perfect life, it's so simple for me, I just rustled this up for my husband’. It is not a great vibe. Anything that we can do that makes it feel more interesting and more exciting, and more like the kind of life that people I know lead, and people I know want to lead, will help knock that off its pedestal a bit.
What is next for you?
I have got a children's book coming out in June, called The Secret Detectives which is a murder mystery prequel to The Secret Garden about colonialism, which is exciting. It was a choice to write a book about racism for nine year olds, but I think we've done it. It was a real labour of love and I got to talk to some amazing people. It's about power. The idea that we have to stop giving children beautiful books about the Victorians and we have to talk to them critically about what it is and who suffered and who got ignored. We have to talk about all the complex power structures. And I've got a poetry anthology coming out in October, also for kids. And then hopefully, sometime soon, maybe a new cookbook!
Anything you would like to share with the QFAB community?
Tell you what has absolutely blown my mind is a podcast called The Logbooks which is by Switchboard, the LGBT helpline. It's the literal logbooks from their history and they just read them out. It gives me such joy and I’m such a sucker for people being gay in the past!
You can find Ella on Instagram @ellarisbridger. Her cookbook Midnight Chicken is available at all good bookshops or here. Her debut children’s novel, The Secret Detectives, is coming out in June and you can preorder NOW!
