Scott Barton, Hasia Diner, Ben Harney, Grace Young & Julia Moskin

Teaches at Museum of the City of New York - Public

Scott Alves Barton is an Assistant Adjunct Food Studies Professor at New York University. His research, films, and publications focus on the intersection of secular and sacred cuisine as a marker of identity politics, cultural heritage, political resistance, women’s labor and knowledge, and self-determination in Northeastern Brazil. Barton’s publications focus on cooking, culinary history, food and faith, Candomblé and Tambor de Mina religious rituals, and rites of passage. During his 25-year tenure as executive chef, restaurant/product consultant, and culinary educator, Barton was named one of the top 25 best African/African American chefs by Ebony magazine. He is on the board of the Association for the Study of Food and Society, the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition, and the African Diaspora Religions Committee of the American Academy of Religion.

Hasia R. Diner is the Paul And Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at NYU. A specialist in United States history, she has written and taught extensively in the fields of immigration history, American women’s history, and American Jewish history. She is the author of Hungering for America: Italian, Irish and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration, among other books. Her book, We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust,1945–1962 (New York University Press, 2009) received the National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish studies in 2010 as well as the Saul Veiner Prize for the outstanding book in American Jewish history.

Ben “Moody” Harney is the founder of Mother Shuckers, the only oyster cart in Brooklyn. Fascinated by the story of Thomas Downing, the son of freed slaves who peddled oysters on Wall Street in the late 1800s, and went on to open one of the most successful oyster restaurants of his time, Harney was inspired to operate his own oyster cart. Recently featured in the Netflix series, High on the Hog, he believes the oyster can and should regain its place as an everyman’s food. Mother Shuckers, along with more than 75 purveyors in New York City, donates all their used shells to the Billion Oyster Project, an initiative that aims to restore one billion oysters to the New York Harbor by 2035.

Grace Young is an award-winning cookbook author, culinary historian, and Chinatown activist. She produced the video series Coronavirus: Chinatown Stories, in collaboration with videographer Dan Ahn and Poster House and is partner on the #LoveAAPI social media campaign. She has been fighting for the survival of Chinatowns and AAPI mom-and-pop businesses across the country. In 2022, Grace received the James Beard Foundation’s Humanitarian of the Year Award. Grace is a three-time James Beard Award winner and a six-time IACP Award winner, including the 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award. Named the “poet laureate of the wok,” Grace has devoted her career to demystifying and preserving the ancient cooking utensil for use in contemporary kitchens. She is the first food writer to write extensively about wok hei.

Julia Moskin (moderator) has been a Food staff reporter at The New York Times since 2004. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. She reports news (startling readers with such facts as most sushi is frozen, not fresh), writes profiles (of food people, from Paula Wolfert to Paula Deen), and spots trends (like Korean fried chicken, which she wrote about before any other United States journalist). She has exposed the frequent use of ghostwriters by celebrity cookbook authors, and her investigation into the finances of the James Beard Foundation led to the resignation of its entire board of trustees. Recently, she’s been investigating the best recipes for kitchen classics in her video column Recipe Lab. She has multiple recipes that appear in NYT Cooking.