Chef Kenji López-Alt serves up a nourishing recipe of food and music

Food and music — they both nourish and sustain us in different ways as powerful conduits of heart and soul, migration and memory, lineage and legacy. This connection popped up a few months ago when I was talking to a group of elementary school students about the tradition of folk music and how it gets handed down through generations, evolving as it goes. “Just like a recipe!” said one of the kids.

Kenji López-Alt’s life combines food and music. He’s renowned as a chef, New York Times best-selling food writer, culinary scientist, podcast host and YouTube star, but he grew up as a musician. He started violin lessons at age 4, and is still an active chamber music player who collaborates with leading artists. He’s recently launched a project called “Tasting Notes,” featuring a hybrid of live music, cooking demonstrations and conversations about the creative process in both fields.

Kenji’s culinary career is based largely on his remarkable ability to explain the science and teach the techniques of cooking to legions of home chefs and food lovers. But he’s the first to admit that technique is simply a tool, the skill set we need to express what’s in our hearts and to share that expression with others when we make food and when we make music.

His dual passions have brought him full circle to an exploration of the sounds and flavors that shaped his life, from the boundless cultural diversity of his New York City childhood to the traditional recipes he ate at his Japanese grandmother’s table. In this conversation, filmed at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn. (where we also enjoyed the local food scene!), we reflect on the immense power of both food and music to connect us across cultures, across continents, even in times of division and distrust. The experiences and memories we access when we taste a favorite dish or hear a favorite song are sources of comfort and love, sensory reminders of who we are, where we come from, and how we can find essential harmony in our shared humanity.