The Artist Currently Known As: Bineeta Saha
Bineeta is a food writer whose work has been published in Broadsheet, Vogue Australia, Journals of Love & Literature, MASS MEMO and more.
What are you studying? I do a Bachelor of Social Work and Arts, I major in Art History, and my minor is Sociology.
How are you finding it? I really love art history. I feel like that department is a gift to my fucking life. All of those teachers give, like, an actual shit. Sociology: dgaf. I didn’t get to pick it. If you do social work, you have to do sociology. Social Work, I have gripes. The first two years were theoretical learning, and I’m still yet to get to placement, which will be the next two years. But I don’t regret choosing it. I just haven’t got the full experience yet.
What do you like to make? I like to write mostly. I can’t make things. That’s why I have to write about them. I like to write about food, the best. I love writing shitposts, I love making vulgar things, I love making fun things. Things that are vulgar and fun and yummy.
What’s feeding you creatively at the moment? I think I’m at the stage of creative cycle where I don’t want to think about creating, and I just want to numb my brain stupid. I have been watching ‘The Pitt’. So good. Finishing ‘Industry’, season 4. I don’t really read much, which is fucked to say as someone who writes, but I don’t be reading. Going to restaurants; always. Having fun; always. Always feeds me. I’ve been going to a lot of concerts, I’ve been dancing a lot.
Because you’re a food writer, do you find the whole process of restaurants, eating, going, dressing up, presentation, everything—is it a form of play for you?
Play and also ritual. I think I’m someone who enjoys a ritual, in my nature. I don’t know if it’s because I’m Hindu or because I’m autistic, but the ritual has always been… a sense of play, a sense of routine. When I’m working I love putting on the nice get-up; I love doing, this is Bineeta from Broadsheet, the voice. I love going back and doing the interview, talking to the chef. And sitting down and writing, getting it edited, I love that process.
But with my friends and when I take them out to eat—food has been my hyperfixation. that’s why I write about it. My genuine autistic hyperfixation. If someone posts a restaurant on their story and it’s in Sydney—if it’s just a napkin and a fork—I WILL tell you where it is. When I take people out, I put a lot of care into matching where to put them. I look at the menu; I think about what outfit they’re going to wear; I think about what we’re going to talk about. do we want to do a sharing menu? Is it going to be a daytime/nighttitme thing?
What’s your experience been of pitching for and writing for big publications? Like Broadsheet and Vogue?
Okay, so, Vogue wasn’t really a pitching environment. It was more so; as an intern, you get assigned things they need to get done; or you do the backend work. But funnily enough—this was a stroke from heaven and god—my first day, my first assignment for Vogue, was to write an article on the 50 best restaurants in the world. Magic coincidence, because I’ve been writing about food since I was what, 16? I had this piss-take account in highschool where we fucking review Ichibanboshi Town Hall ramen. And so getting that as a coincidence was, yes yes yes! Because now I can use it to apply for other places, and I was only there for 3 weeks.
Broadsheet was for FASS3000, you get credits. Even then, I wasn’t really pitching, I was only there for 3 months, doing what they needed me to do. It was only after I got the offer that I would work on a commission basis. A lot of people think the job of food writing is critique, which is like SMH, but I just think that’s fucked. I don’t really want to write about food that I don’t enjoy, because I don’t see the point. And I don’t really know what to write if I don’t like something.
Food writing is quite unique in that it’s so pleasure-forward. it’s genuinely about your body, and what you like… For sure. I feel like there’s a lot of similarities between art history and food writing because both of those things are inherently sensorial. I sound like a fucking cock. But they are! And I feel like, being an art history student, what’s my favourite medium of art? Bitch it’s food! Food is ephemeral performance art. Writing about those two things come very naturally to me, cause I see them as the same. Food writing is just, there’s no academic references, and art history is just, I don’t need to think about a public to talk to.
I really loved your blog piece about when you went to Berlin. Deep cut! Because that was such a beautiful piece of analysis that I’ve never heard anyone talk about. You said when you went to Berlin, they have this vision of food as “the practice of place.” What do you think is Sydney’s “practice of place”? What’s your impression of how food reflects Sydney?
It’s gonna be harsh. I feel like Sydney has a distinct identity that it doesn’t want to acknowledge yet. Sydney collapses on other people’s cultures because we don’t want to accept our own. What’s trendy right now? Japan. And it’s going to be Vietnam. I’m not saying every restaurant does this, because there are so many places in Sydney that really do have the epitome of ‘Sydney food’. It’s native food preparation, using our native ingredients. I think having a relaxed attitude, the waiters sitting at your table to explain a menu, like at Bar Planet; that’s so Sydney. I remember, I was at Bar Herbs and they were looking at our IDs before we went in, and the seccy was like, “Oh, you’re all on your learners?” That’s so Sydney. That sense of fun interactions between a consumer and the staff, that sense of play, Indigenous ingredients, mismatched plates, outdoor seating. So Sydney.
I was also reading back over your USU [Creative Awards] piece. Because you do talk about food in that. I know, I can’t fucking stop! Food in that piece is linked to suburbs which are linked to race. And that’s Sydney. That’s so true. Sydney is kind of cannibalising other areas of itself. It’s really still distinct and separate. And you say about Berlin, that there’s all these multiple histories in Berlin, and they all want to be tasted all at the same time. Do you think that same thing is happening in Sydney? Or not? Bitch… that’s a good question. I think Berlin is a special place because it has multiple histories at the same time in view, dramatically. When you walk in Berlin, you can see bullet holes from World War Two. But you can also see underground dungeon sex party raves. When I was in Berlin, I was going to some museum and [I saw] kids ripping a Free Palestine sticker off a sign. It’s all regressions and progressions of history at the same time, going back, going forward.
Sydney is kind of the same, but has a little bit of a harder time contending with the fact that we are like that. There’s a sense that we’re good at hiding things. How can you contend with history if you don’t want to see it there? That’s our culture too. Because we don’t want to contend with our own layers, so we lean on this crutch of multiculturalism to not really navigate what’s actually happening. And that does translate to culture, and that does translate to food and restaurants. And magazines.
One thing I also connected to with that USU piece you wrote was… it was very much the cadence of a selective school. Which I think was intentional. Everything I do is coming from a selective school Asian kid angle. Cause guess what bitch: that’s the only voice I have! And there’s one bit in particular where you say, “I wish I was your dreams but I am only me.” And then a little later on you say, “do I love the work? Do I have love for the work?” Do you think that kind of questioning, or the doubt, is that linked to the selective schools maybe…?
Bro is the sky fucking blue? Yeah. No, for sure it’s linked to the selective school. We were there! Both of us were there. That school did a number on us. I have a lot of sympathy for myself, but I have a lot of anger for myself. We were all looking at each other’s mistakes and having to see each other the very next day. I have so many good friends [from school], but that school was beyond. When I wrote that piece, I was really going through it. This was a period when I was applying for everything, getting into none. A lot of what I wrote about in that piece was the beautiful things about Sydney and its suburbs and its food and being ethnic that I love, but there’s so much grief I have over what that school did.
We needed that. Yeah, we did.
You can find Bineeta at @bineetasaha_ and via their blog.