Jaya Saxena

New York

Correspondent at Eater

Not here just don't want anyone to take the handle, check bsky Correspondent @Eater // Series Editor at Best American Food and Travel Writing // she/her

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Articles

Defining the Movement: How authors John Birdsall and Erik Piepenburg Prove the Power of Queer Food

3 weeks ago | eater.com | Jaya Saxena

Vnyl was a kitschy diner around the corner from my mom’s office in Manhattan, its walls decorated with things like old records and Elvis figurines, its bathrooms adorned with collage portraits of pop stars. It was, for a time, my favorite restaurant. My mom and I would dip in when she was working late and I was too young to go unsupervised. We’d sing along to whatever ’70s retro hits were playing over plates of fried calamari. It was fun, it was cool. And as I recently learned, it was gay.
There Is No True Third Place

3 weeks ago | eater.com | Jaya Saxena

Getty Images/iStockphoto Jaya Saxena is a correspondent at Eater.com, and the series editor of Best American Food and Travel Writing. She explores wide ranging topics like labor, identity, and food culture.
Bar Kabawa is the Bowery’s New Rum-Fueled Caribbean Hangout in New York City

1 month ago | ny.eater.com | Jaya Saxena

Down a half-block alley just off the Bowery, amid glass condos that feel like they could be anywhere, tucks one of New York’s best parties. Part of a two-space project from Momofuku’s chef Paul Carmichael, Bar Kabawa has taken the role of the kid sister to the prix fixe Kabawa next door — which means it can cut loose.
Ben & Jerry’s Co-founder Arrested For Protesting Famine in Gaza

1 month ago | eater.com | Jaya Saxena

Ben Cohen being lead out of a Senate Committee hearing Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images Jaya Saxena is a correspondent at Eater.com, and the series editor of Best American Food and Travel Writing. She explores wide ranging topics like labor, identity, and food culture. Yesterday, Ben & Jerry’s founder Ben Cohen was among the protesters taken into police custody at a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing at which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.
These 4 Great Palestinian Olive Oils Are Delicious for Any Occasion

1 month ago | eater.com | Jaya Saxena

Jaya Saxena is a correspondent at Eater.com, and the series editor of Best American Food and Travel Writing. She explores wide ranging topics like labor, identity, and food culture. There’s no underselling how important olive trees are to Palestinian culture, nor the symbolism they hold as Israel continues to bombard Gaza and subject its people to famine.
Why Every Food and Brand Collaboration Right Now Barely Makes Sense

1 month ago | eater.com | Jaya Saxena

Jaya Saxena On Bastille Day in 1916, Hugo Ball published the Dada manifesto, a declaration explaining “a new tendency in art” that was meant to seek meaning in newness, even if what was created didn’t make sense. We were on the brink of World War I, and much of the public seemed too politically complacent. It didn’t make any sense. Was everyone just content with how things were? To Ball and other Dada artists, the only logical reaction was to be illogical and absurdist.
Is There Too Much Pickle?

1 month ago | eater.com | Jaya Saxena

Photo by Justin Tsucalas; food styling by Lisa Cherkasky/Both for The Washington Post via Getty Images In the Top Chef episode “Pickle Me This,” which aired on April 17, host Kristen Kish, in power clashing greens, announces that two teams of chefs must go head to head in creating an all-pickle dinner. The five-course meal was to feature different kinds of pickles in every course — not kimchi or achar necessarily, but instead the cornichons and dill of the European influence.
Why Disco Fries Are The Life of the Party

2 months ago | eater.com | Jaya Saxena

“So, no blonde fries,” says chef David Viana of the platonic ideal of disco fries. “It can’t be mushy. The gravy has to slap. And some people say you can’t have too much cheese, but if it gets too heavy, it actually makes it stick together too much.” As a self-described “Jersey boy,” Viana takes his disco fries seriously. If you grew up outside of the northeast, you may have no idea what he’s talking about.
You Should Katsu Everything

2 months ago | eater.com | Jaya Saxena

Jaya Saxena I’ve been led to understand that Americans have a limited palate for textures. On the whole, we do not do the gooey sproing of collagen-rich tendons, or the sliminess of natto or the sponginess of tripe. Instead, we like things fatty and creamy and most of all, crunchy. Well, yeah, so sue me. This is perhaps the most American thing about me. I can only eat okra if it’s been crisped in besan or cornmeal beforehand, and I’m sorry but I just cannot gnaw on a chicken foot.
Hormbles Chormbles Is a New Candy Bar With the Weirdest Possible Name

2 months ago | eater.com | Jaya Saxena

Jaya Saxena/Hormbles Chormbles Working in food media means your inbox is a minefield of pitches about brands “disrupting” things that were perfectly fine to begin with. But we must give credit when a brand actually succeeds at something, and in this case, it was agitating our entire newsroom for a good hour after my colleague dropped the name of a new product intended to “disrupt the candy industry.” So thank you, Hormbles Chormbles. Hormbles Chormbles! Try saying it out loud.