With his Netflix documentary series Cooked now out, the award-winning journalist discusses bad food in England in the 70s, and a party with cheese-loving nuns
About five minutes before Michael Pollan arrives I realise he’s sort of already here: just reading the menu with its references to “local”, “artisanal” and “heritage” is to glimpse his influence. The 61-year-old author and professor has made his life’s subject “these messy places where nature and culture have to mix it up”, and in writing about those places he’s helped bring about a revolution in the way we think about food. Now, he has his own Netflix series, Cooked, based on his 2013 book of the same name.
When he arrives from his nearby Harvard office (he’s a fellow at the university’s Radcliffe Institute) I tell him that even the name of this place, Harvest, seems to speak to his work. He parries, modestly: “I guess it’s descended from that line that begins with Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, which is where we’d be eating if I were in Berkeley.”
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