On this episode of Culture & Flavor, Zella talks with Puerto Rican Chef Carlos Portela. Chef Carlos is from Caguas, Puerto Rico. After many career experiences across the globe, Chef Carlos Portela founded his life project, Orujo Taller. His avant-garde style ranges from primitive to modern, using endemic ingredients to Puerto Rico and pre-colonial influences. He bases his cooking methods on temperature control, precision, and the flavor of Caribbean cuisine. He now brings these concepts alive at Orujo, in the bustling San Juan neighborhood of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Portela, a Johnson & Wales University graduate in Rhode Island, belongs to different culinary organizations such as the Chaine des Rotisseurs, CREA (Culinary Research Educational Academy), American Culinary Federation, and Slow Food International. In 2020, he completed a course in Science and Cooking from Harvard University. As a lifelong learner of the culinary arts, Chef Portela has hosted numerous workshops and training for young chefs and gastronomy enthusiasts.
Portela has traveled the globe to Europe and Latin America, representing Puerto Rican Gastronomy. As a connector and advocate of Puerto Rican chefs, he works on expanding the philosophy of food sovereignty and knowledge of the cuisine of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, which is among the most complex in history and flavor. Carlos Portela was recognized as a 2024 James Beard Foundation 'Best Chef South' semi-finalist.
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47:21
Chef Nina Compton
On this episode of Culture & Flavor, Zella talks with St. Lucian native Nina Compton, Chef/Owner of gastronomic gems Compère Lapin and BABs in New Orleans, along with her fast-casual restaurant, Nina’s Creole Cottage in Caesar’s New Orleans about her recently released cookbook, KWÉYÒL/CREOLE.
Since her flagship restaurant, Compère Lapin opened in 2015, the restaurant has garnered critical acclaim – both nationally and locally – for Compton’s one-of-a-kind Caribbean-inspired Louisiana cuisine. Sister restaurant BABs (formerly Bywater American Bistro) has been touted as one of the city’s best restaurants, showcasing house-made pastas and other ingredient-driven fare. Compton has been name-checked across the globe was named "Best Chef: South" by The James Beard Foundation. In April 2025, Chef Compton released her first cookbook, KWÉYÒL/CREOLE: Recipes, Stories and Tings from a St. Lucian Chef’s Journey which tells the story of her thrilling culinary journey from St. Lucia to Jamaica, Miami, and New Orleans.
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42:35
Chef Sean Sherman
On this episode of Culture & Flavor, Zella talks with Chef Sean Sherman Founder/Senior Director of Vision & Strategic Partnerships, NĀTIFS Founder/CEO, The Sioux Chef and Owamni by The Sioux Chef about a recent visit to Italy, Decolonizing American food systems and their love for Prince. Sherman is a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, Chef Sean Sherman focuses on the revitalization and evolution of Indigenous foods systems throughout North America.
Through his activism and advocacy, Sean is helping to reclaim and celebrate the rich culinary heritage of Indigenous communities around the world. Sean has dedicated his career to supporting and promoting Indigenous food systems and Native food sovereignty. His goal is to make Indigenous foods more accessible to as many communities as possible through the non-profit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NĀTIFS) and its Indigenous Food Lab professional Indigenous kitchen and training center. Working to address the economic and health crises affecting Native communities by re-establishing Native foodways, NĀTIFS imagines a new North American food system that generates wealth and improves health in Native communities through food-related enterprises.
Sean’s first book, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, received the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook in 2018, and he was given the 2019 Leadership Award from the James Beard Foundation. In 2021, Sean opened Minnesota’s first full service Indigenous restaurant, Owamni, which received the 2022 James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in America on top of numerous awards nationwide. Sean has just been named one of the Time 100 Most Influential People of 2023. For more visit his website seansherman.com.
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39:55
Diggin' in the Crates
On this episode of Culture & Flavor, Zella talks with DJ Lynnee Denise about the legacy of Black music. Denise is a global practitioner of sound, language, and Black Atlantic thought, Lynnée Denise is an Amsterdam-based writer and interdisciplinary artist from Los Angeles, California. Shaped by her parent’s record collection and the 1980's.
Denise’s work traces and foregrounds the intimacies of underground nightclub movements, music migration, and bass culture in the African Diaspora. She coined the term DJ Scholarship in 2013, which explores how knowledge is gathered, interpreted, and produced through a conceptual and theoretical framework, shifting the role of the DJ from a party purveyor to an archivist and cultural worker. A doctoral student in the Department of Visual Culture at the Goldsmiths University of London, Denise’s research contends with how iterations of sound system culture construct a living archive and refuge for a Black queer diaspora.
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1:02:05
The State of American Food
Jim is at home at every level, whether as a six-time USA delegate to Slow Food’s Terra Madre in Italy, a visitor to Cuba to study organic farming, extensive work in urban agriculture, or planting on his 30-acre farm. Jim maintains that the local food and sustainable agriculture movement is the foundation of a sustainable community. As a scuba diver and photographer, Jim has traveled widely to capture the beauty of the land and oceans. He has exhibited his photos in books, hospitals, galleries, and magazines. Working now on two books, Jim has contributed articles and photographs to We Are Each Other’s Harvest, Sustainable World Source Book, Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky, Kentucky African American Encyclopedia, Latino Studies, Biodynamics Journal, African American Heritage Guide, Stella Natura and other publications. Jim believes that we need some big ideas that connect humans in a sacred relationship with the Earth and Cosmos, which will require us to think not just “out of the box” but “out-of-the-barn”.
Coming soon from HRN, Culture & Flavor is a podcast about food and culture centered in Black & Indigenous foodways. Hosted by Zella Palmer, Director and Chair of the Dillard University Ray Charles Program in African American Material Culture in New Orleans, Louisiana. Each episode features high vibrational conversations with cultural bearers, chefs, farmers, scholars, bbq pitmasters and more - where there is flavor, there is history - Join Zella Palmer and her guests as they share stories that will have you praise dancing, cooking, conjuring and inspiring your culinary journey.
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