Patio Platter with Friends

Truly, these decadent Jell-O molds would surely drive Marie Antoinette to envy. America’s culinary history was bookmarked by industrialisation, and the mass production of non-perishables. The food industry’s push for novelty resulted in humour, strangeness, and charm. Here, Marshall-Garrett masterfully allows us to look through the time glass—and the largely unassumed art of fashioning foods for filmic releases is a pure visual feast, but no easy feat—as the chef herself knows perhaps all too well.

We picked the chef's mind on everything from her shopping cart at the grocery store to a delightfully specific breakdown on Jell-O, so check out the interview below.

How long did it take you to prepare all the food for this series?

About three days, about a half day of shopping, and 2.5 solid days of cooking. The plating occurs on shoot day, so I guess actually four days.

What was on your grocery list when you went shopping for the materials to make the spread?

Haha! SO MUCH CANNED FOOD. I won’t bore you with a complete list, but the highlights include:

Cheez Whiz
Fruit cocktail
Maraschino cherries
Lil smokies
Jell-O Instant Vanilla Pudding
Frozen peas and carrots
Curly kale
Canned mandarins
Evaporated milk
Bologna
Canned pineapple
Various flavors of Jell-O
And of course: mayonnaise

If we were to eat the lobster jello, what would it taste like?

Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams, of course. Obviously, I kid. In reality, any seafood mousse mold will taste like a blend of whipped dairy, the seafood you choose, and whatever herbs you include—in the case of seafood, it is usually flavored delicately. The real question is what does is feel like? And the answer is: cool, fluffy, kind of melt-in-your-mouth, and depending on how emulsified, clarified, or strained the recipe demands, there may or may not be some texture. You can tell by the smooth versus rough appearance if there is a texture. Compare the lobster (smooth) to the Patio Platter mayo mold (rough), and you can see what I mean. Bet you didn’t expect a dissertation on Jell-O molds, but as it turns out, this is my weird mission in life.

How did you decide to pursue culinary artistry?

A feature film prop master and a dear friend, Jonathan R. Hodges, trained me. He is probably best known for his work in the movie Pulp Fiction—the most epic prop film of all time, and he has a storied career. He saw something in me, and he gave me my break. We worked on some hilarious and epic jobs together, including a McDonald’s commercial called “Ronald Has a Bad Hair Day,” which you can totally find on YouTube and Jay Z’s "Hard Knock Life" video.

I first got into the media business working with my high school BFF photographer and general badass boss lady, Danielle Levitt, who pushed me to style her early work in NYC in the '90s. Eventually I moved home to LA and met Jonathan. I also worked very closely with Stephen Stickler, a now deceased music photographer who was a dominant force in the '90s. Jonathan pulled me back to the film industry in 2014 when I food styled The Astronaut Wives Club. This is when the ham and gelatin Kraken was really released. I’d always been fascinated by period food, and I was given the opportunity to just go crazy. I made every single weird thing I could think of in those six months—except maybe a Patio Platter, as it turns out. This is really the job I cut my teeth on and is directly responsible for why I was able to pull off the Justin Bieber "Yummy" video recently. A truly epic quantity of gelatin and other fantastically weird foods were made for that video—hat tip to Maya Bookbinder and our assistants who I couldn’t have done it without.

What’s it like seeing your work featured on such high-profile projects and knowing millions of people are seeing it as well?

I’m going to be real here and say: I LOVE IT. Seriously, the love of gelatin molds, foods made into towers, and Sputnik-shaped appetizer presentations are so close to my heart, and it gives me GREAT JOY to represent this odd slice of American history to other people. Plus it’s really, strangely, what I am best at, and there is a pleasure to playing with all the cards in your deck.

What’s a challenge people might not necessarily expect when it comes to preparing food for filming and photography purposes?

That is has to last! This is especially true in film and television. In a food styling environment such as a print shoot where the food is the main event, often the whole day is built around the food, and it’s normal for the rest of the production to orbit around it. In the motion picture industry, surprisingly even in food advertising, where the whole reason we’re there is to sell food, the food is only one aspect of a very expensive production. Generally speaking, the order of operations is prioritized around the talent and the location. So, no matter the circumstances, whatever you are bringing to set, you have to be able to get it ready in the blink of an eye, and then it may wait hours until it’s filmed. Or it may be filmed over the course of several hours and under hot lights. So, the food really has to be sturdy.

Also, the work environment is more often than not anything from decidedly unglamorous to utterly insane. Like doing all this in rough camping type environs. And there is almost never plumbing or a water source.

Do you or others eat your work afterwards?

Generally, no. Food safety is a major issue, and the food sits out. If it is being eaten for the scene or job, then you are cooking and preparing it fresh over and over. I always give away the properly stored unused food though, and depending on what it is, sometimes I take it home and eat it myself. Cookbook food stylists often eat their work! They’re known to schedule the shoot around meal times—like we’ll shoot this gallette or whatever close to lunch and then eat it after. I think overall, print allows this more easily than motion picture, and food storage determines a lot.

If you could imagine any person in the world, real or fictional, sitting down and eating the food in the photos, who would it be and why?

I love the idea of people from other nations and/or times consuming these prototypical industrial food complex foods of the mid-20th century with the kind of nose-wrinkling disdain we historically applied to anything non eurocentric. It’s hard to believe now that we as a nation disdained things like garlic, but we did—we associated it with immigrants and crime. So, I think it’s only fair that this kind of "EW GROSS" thinking is applied to these super establishment foods now. This kind of food is the ultimate expression of leaning into the middle and exerting great effort to assimilate into the mainstream from the time in which it ruled.

It’s such an evocative food group. I think the only possible person it could look natural with is a fictionalized space alien or a 1960s idealized housewife, and both of these are tropes from the same era that produced this food, of course.

For me, that’s why it’s so powerful. It has such a theatrical quality to it. And of course, it’s very pretty and, for all its clean architecture, has real maximalist potential—which is why you see it cropping up in the media today. There’s this high-low culture aesthetic built into it. You see this in the Bieber "Yummy" video, and the Gucci Resort collection film directed by Harmony Korine that came out last year. I mean, obviously I am here for it, this is my favorite topic and one I think quite deeply about. So I guess really, I can see anyone and everyone getting into a gelatin mold.

Culture

The Club Is Coming to the Stage

We enter and make our way to what is approximately front left of the DJ booth, where we’re accustomed to dancing at clubs in New York. “So is this a techno club or a dance performance?” yells an uncertain participant in my boyfriend’s ear. He laughs, bouncing along to Ben UFO, and yells back, “It’s both!” The club has long been a hot topic in European contemporary dance but it is only now making its way into New York performance venues, largely through transatlantic tours. R.O.S.E. follows recent examples like Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1 (May 2024), (LA)HORDE’s Room with a View at NYU Skirball (October 2023), and Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd at BAM (October 2022).

Do these performances compromise the club’s spirit — a space idealized for its anonymity, dark lighting, and thundering music? The notion of the club as a utopian escape is admittedly just that — an ideal — because of how its intense conditions can create barriers to entry. Still, the club remains sacred for many, a place to forge connections and embrace an alternative state of being. Looking at how performances transfer this spirit to new settings reveals what aspects of the club are essential and those that aren’t.

Sharon Eyal, R.O.S.E. 2024. Photography by Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.

Eyal’s dancers make their entrance. The lighting shifts from roving blue to yellow spotlights as Ben UFO’s tracks transition to more melodic beats. Clad in deconstructed lace Dior lingerie with dark red tears painted on their faces, the dancers move cautiously in a tightly maintained pack, slicing paths through the horde with hoof-like steps and jerky leg extensions. After around ten minutes of this controlled choreography, the dancers vanish as the lighting shifts back to blue and Ben UFO picks up his dubby beats. The club, as we knew it, resumes. This cycle of tightly executed movements and free-flowing club-goers repeats several times, each time emboldening the dancers to plunge further into the crowd.

Clubbing in a building once built for the U.S. Army National Guard on Manhattan’s Upper East Side turns out to be surprisingly successful — at least for the audience. What starts as an awkward, scattered group searching for their non existent seats gradually gels into an engaged, bouncing crowd that erupts in cheers each time the dancers enter and exit. Performance patrons who might never step foot in a club find themselves swept up in its potential for communion, moving in unison with fellow ticket holders. But it isn’t until the very end of R.O.S.E. that the dancers finally break free from Eyal’s choreography and join the fired-up audience in a brief moment of improvisatory movement with the music. By keeping her dancers at arm’s length, Eyal seems more interested in the club as a backdrop for her signature movement style than wholly as a space with meaningful stories to be told.

Michele Rizzo, HIGHER xtn. 2024. Photography by Cameron Kelly courtesy of MoMA PS1.

Back in May, I attended Wire Festival, a multiday electronic music event at Knockdown Center that had no shortage of organically united dancefloors. It attracted a crowd of seasoned ravers who were eager to celebrate the start of spring as they danced alongside DJs who played well into the daylight. I left Wire in an afternoon daze to see Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1. My sleepless euphoria only deepened as the performance unfolded, starting with a lone dancer who looked plucked out of the festival.

The dancer, dressed in sneakers, baggy jeans, and a tight tank top, shuffled slowly into the gallery, perfectly in sync with the looping bars of an understated electronic melody. Soon, other dancers, clad in the same staple rave uniform, joined him — each having traveled from Europe for the U.S. museum debut of HIGHER xtn., which premiered at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam in 2018 and quickly became a fixture at kunsthalles and festivals across the continent. As the score’s tempo climbed, the choreography locked into a 16-count sequence, which the dancers executed with precise synchrony. They remained intensely focused, never making eye contact with each other, as they sought release in the endless repetition of synthesized beats. Once the dancers reached their limit, they stopped the sequence and exited the gallery, one by one.

HIGHER xtn. used the focused daylight of the gallery to highlight the meditative release found in the repetitive movements that dominate dark dancefloors. The performance’s restraint brought more consistency and intentionality than Eyal’s all-encompassing club construction in R.O.S.E. Yet both performances offer enticing entry points into club culture for those who may not frequent raves. Rizzo’s ecstatic, hypnotic repetitions reveal how the club can mirror other meditative practices, while Eyal’s interpolation of performance and clubbing helped hesitant audience members blossom by the end. Still, both works overlook one of the most underappreciated aspects of clubbing — its potential for individual expression. HIGHER xtn.’s pristine uniformity especially risks promoting the outdated techno trope that there’s a “right” way to dance to electronic music.

Maybe this shortcoming is, in fact, a benefit. For habitual ravers jaded by one too many sunrise sets, it’s a reminder to return to the club with more intention. If you pause and peer through the darkness, you’ll see hundreds of people moving to the same beat, each with their own subtle variations. This collective choreography is a ready-made spectacle that doesn’t need validation in a theater or museum. And when the music shifts slightly, you can watch the ripple effect sweep through the crowd while feeling the new beat in your body. Maybe this small bit of magic is best left on the dance floor.

Culture

Real Slick, Jack: Psyche Organic Arrives in New York

Shop Psyche Organic at Happier Grocery and Dimes. Coming soon to @citarellagourmetmarket @unionmarket @gourmetgarage @deciccos @fairwaymarket plus many more.

Culture

Porsche SCOPES Brings Art, Music, and Design to Toronto

The festival was a full immersion into Toronto’s dynamic creative energy. Day one set the tone with DJ collective Living Room, followed by an experimental performance by Claire Rousay that captivated the crowd. Jewelry designer Steff Eleoff unveiled her Porsche Taycan 4S art car installation—a bold fusion of automotive and wearable art inspired by her Sedona ring—while OVO Sound’s Naomi Sharon and DVSN wrapped up the night with powerful, genre-defying performances.

We witnessed SCOPES Toronto bridging underground and mainstream with day two’s lineup. DJ Korea Town Acid’s set paved the way for Angelphroot and Dameer’s debut of BASSMATI, a track blending South Asian influences with bass-driven sounds. Chippy Nonstop’s return to Toronto and Richie Hawtin’s extended set were milestones of the evening, proving that the city’s underground scene has a global resonance.

The final day featured standout performances from local pianist Harrison, Indigenous artist Tia Wood, and hip-hop visionary Sean Leon, who elevated his set with a live choir. Moonshine Collective’s film and musical performance explored themes of African utopia, showcasing art’s power to bridge culture and technology. Rising Toronto star SadBoi, who paused her tour to perform at SCOPES, further underscored the festival’s commitment to nurturing local talent.

Throughout the weekend, we experienced installations from artists like Mitsu Mitsu and culinary creations from Bar Mordecai, capturing the multifaceted creativity Porsche SCOPES brought to Toronto. This milestone 10th edition, open to all, allowed Toronto’s vibrant arts scene to thrive, underscoring SCOPES’ mission to celebrate local talent while connecting it to a global audience.

office had the chance to connect with rising star SadBoi ahead of the event. In our conversation, she shared insights into her creative journey and reflected on what performing and growing up in Toronto means to her and her work.

How are you, and where are you at right now? You told me you were traveling.

Um, I’m good, I’m feeling really good right now. I’m traveling back to Salt Lake City. I had a show yesterday in Seattle. I’m on tour right now with Coco and Claire.

How is touring life treating you? Do you like it?

I love being on the road. To be honest, I feel like I don’t know—like I’ve had good experiences and bad ones—but this time it’s really fun, especially with the people I’m surrounded by. It’s also the longest tour I’ve been on; I have about four more weeks to go. I’m trying not to think about how many days I have left.

Do you feel homesick?

Yes, because when I start thinking about how many days are left, I start to miss my dogs. I’ve just been trying to stay in the moment—I don’t even know what day of the week it is, to be honest with you.

Oh, sweet! What are your dogs’ names?

Jillian and Winston. I know, they’re crazy names.

You’ll be performing at SCOPES in Toronto, which is where you grew up. Do you feel like the crowd is different when you perform in Toronto compared to other cities?

Yes, I mean, Toronto just feels different because it’s home. Every time I come back to perform, something in my career has changed. The last time I performed in Toronto, people just wanted to have a good time, and I’m excited to perform back home again to see everyone’s reactions. I know it’s going to be different from the last time. It’s exciting to see your own growth. Toronto is a tough crowd, though. If we’re with you, we’re really with you.

So, they’re super picky? You have to gain their respect, or what is it?

I think Toronto people are in their own world, but when something really connects with them, they’ll lose themselves in the moment. But it takes something to bring them out of that. Toronto crowds are tough because even if they like you, they won’t show it outright until they’re really vibing with you.

It’s like a vibe check, right?

Exactly. They’ll enjoy your performance, but it’s hard to explain. When people visit Toronto, they often say, “Oh, you guys are so nice,” and I’m like, “I don’t think we’re that nice, we’re just polite.” Like, you can walk down the street, and no one will say anything, but it’s just our mannerisms.

You mentioned Toronto can have a moody energy, especially at night, and that the underground night scene there really inspires you. Can you talk more about what makes Toronto's nightlife so influential for you?

Absolutely, Toronto has this unique energy that comes alive at night. Similar to New York, there are the popular clubs everyone knows, but you need to find your niche—the people who know where the real parties are. I remember going to raves in high school yards, sneaking in because I wasn’t old enough. Events like Baby, Jerk!, and Yes Yes Y’all were pivotal, exposing me to DJs blending dancehall with EDM—something I hadn’t seen before. Toronto nightlife is moody and intense, but when everyone’s out, it’s like the whole city is alive.