Growing Destinations
Your go-to source for insightful discussions on destination development. The Growing Destinations podcast delves into the strategies, challenges, and successes that drive community growth. Each episode features in-depth conversations with local and national experts, uncovering universal themes and innovative practices that can be applied to any city or region.
Growing Destinations
Sue Zelickson’s Culinary Adventures: Iconic Moments and Personal Stories
Join us on a flavorful journey across Minnesota's culinary landscape with the iconic Sue Zelickson, a luminary in the state's food scene for over fifty years. Discover how Sue's groundbreaking efforts, like founding Women Who Really Cook and the Charlie Awards, have reshaped the Twin Cities culinary scene. From her grandmother's cherished recipes to her son's baking enthusiasm, Sue's personal stories are as rich as her contributions. Her stories, such as introducing Julia Child to milking a cow, offer delightful insights into her lifelong love for food and media, including her James Beard award-winning WCCO radio show "Food for Thought."
The Growing Destinations podcast is brought to you by Experience Rochester. Learn more about Minnesota's third largest city, which is home to Mayo Clinic and features wonderful recreational and entertainment opportunities, by visiting experiencerochestermncom.
Speaker 2:There's a million memories, not only with famous people, but with people just starting in the business getting their first big order, watching people go into a big store and take an order that they got of things that they made, or seeing people find a label for their product that they never even thought they'd see out of their kitchen. So those things are rewarding.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Growing Destinations podcast, where we take a deep dive into destination development and focus on a wide range of topics, from tourism and entertainment to economic development and entrepreneurism and much more. I'm your host, bill Von Bank. Sue Zellickson has spent five decades shaping and elevating Minnesota's food scene, earning countless accolades along the way, including a James Beard Award for her WCCO radio show, food for Thought. In our conversation, we dive into Sue's remarkable journey from founding Women who Really Cook a trailblazing organization empowering women in food and hospitality, to creating the Charlie Awards, celebrating the Twin Cities' top culinary talents. Sue's passion for food goes beyond just cooking. She's long championed the idea that food has an incredible ability to bring people together, forging community and connection. We'll explore why that's been such a driving force in her career and, of course, we'll hear some memorable stories, including the time she milked a cow with Julia Child. Sue Zelikson, welcome to the Growing Destinations podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:So great to have you here today, sue, and of course I'm an admirer of you for many years and the work you have done for decades in the culinary scene, and that's what we want to talk about today. You've been involved in the culinary world for over five decades.
Speaker 2:What is it that seems so long?
Speaker 1:You know, I bet it flew by.
Speaker 2:It's still flying.
Speaker 1:What is it about food and the culinary arts that has kept your passion alive for so long?
Speaker 2:Well, people ask me that and is? I have to think back, way back, because my grandmother, my mother's mother, was the most fabulous cook. Even to this day, I can say, with no recipes, everything in her head, by touch and feel with their fingers. And she was incredible. And, for anyone who's listening, she used to take the streetcar downtown which was right in front of her house, luckily to the Great Northern Market and buy all her groceries and lug them home on the streetcar Downtown Minneapolis, downtown Minneapolis.
Speaker 1:She lived on.
Speaker 2:Bryan Avenue South, where there aren't any streetcar tracks left. They've taken them all out and everything she made from chickens and turkeys and baking and I know my son is a baker now and we've saved that she must. He must've gotten all her genes because he does pretty good job, but she could roll I can attest to that.
Speaker 2:I know you can. The talent was inherent in her and I didn't reap much of it. I like to eat it and I'm not as good at cooking. I've tried to keep up with her, but I have never come close.
Speaker 1:Your passion for food started with your grandmother, and did you spend time with her in the kitchen? I did, because you said she didn't have recipes, so it was a dash of this and a pinch of that.
Speaker 2:I would take the flour out of her hand and measure it in a cup. Oh smart, and it still didn't come out like she did. She just had the touch of feel. She made her own phyllo dough. If you can imagine that it was paper thin, because my mother's friends, when she'd give them bagels or rolls or things that had phyllo dough on it, they would call her and ask do you take the tissue paper off before you eat it? That's how thin it was and how fabulous.
Speaker 1:Well, you've had a love again for so many decades and the Twin Cities food scene has transformed over the years and you've been part of it. How have you seen it evolve?
Speaker 2:Well, the major thing I've seen is the influence of all the ethnic foods that are here now, all the real, not just from a recipe but from the real people who got their training from their grandparents and parents, the many different restaurants that are now serving this food, and also the fact that we're all here that women are taking a much bigger role in the professional side of culinary.
Speaker 1:Over the 50 years, what have you seen in terms of changes or transformations or just really cool things that have put the Twin Cities on the map, because there have been some amazing chefs that have come through the Twin Cities.
Speaker 2:It was a saying years ago, Bill, that Minnesota was flyover land. Well, we emerged from that tremendously. Now people come here from all over the world for the wonderful food, the famous chefs that we've curated here and the fact that we are living off the land like our ancestors did. It's not all these generated foods with all these bad things in it, it's natural and it's really come back. That's a big change that we see now.
Speaker 1:Throughout your career, you've championed the connection between food and community. Why do you think food has such a powerful ability to bring people together?
Speaker 2:Well, everybody has to eat. That's true, and should eat healthily and well and deliciously. Food, like you said, the word food and gather and they go together. It's a wonderful way to share traditions, to share family lore, to share happy times and even sad times.
Speaker 1:And you have been such a powerful voice for food in Twin Cities Media, both on TV and radio, and you won the James Beard Award for your radio show, which was Food for Thought, if I have that correct on. Wcco-am. That prestigious award was given to you in 2005. Tell us more about how that came about and how meaningful that is to you.
Speaker 2:Well, I loved being on the radio. It was all a fluke. I even got the job. I was interviewing or promoting somebody on the radio and the chairman of the radio station liked my voice which is a lot older now than it was then and I got the chance to go on the radio station that I used to listen to as a little girl. I'd come home from school and Ma Perkins was on the radio. So all of my childhood memories came back and to think that I'd be on the air with Boone and Erickson. It was a dream come true, really, and it opened the doors to many things Travel I took a lot of WCCO tours around the world, which I never would have gone on because my husband didn't really like to leave the country that much. Anyway, it was a wonderful 20 years and since then, and even while I was doing that, I got totally involved in a lot of nonprofit organizations involving food, involving nutrition, just involving working with people to make life better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you definitely have given back and you launched Women who Really Cook in 1993, creating a network for women in the food and hospitality industry. Tell us why you created that?
Speaker 2:It really started because there were no women in positions like, say, managers of a grocery store. They were all men. And even in the founding of big organizations like Pillsbury and General Mills, which are both here, all the hierarchy in those days were all men, and I thought women are the ones that have mostly been in the kitchen and mostly do the grocery shopping. Why should they be elevated in the same industry? So Women who Really Cook just came about, naturally. A lot of people that were in the working phase of the restaurants, but they weren't the owners at that time. They should have been the owners and the developers and getting all the credit for it as well as doing all the work. So I started that just on a fluke and it just grew up and it's now. We just celebrated our 31st birthday.
Speaker 1:And I think I heard like 250 members Yep, is that right Some?
Speaker 2:are just online. We have monthly meetings. Every month we meet at a different member's place of business, or last we did one in a home of a woman who had a business and now she is starting another one. So we see the progress that's going on and the growth and also the network that everybody puts together. If you need something, you just mention it at the meeting and people come out of the woodwork and tell you.
Speaker 1:I've got this.
Speaker 2:I can help this, yeah right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that lends itself to my next question how do you see the role of women in the industry today?
Speaker 2:They're taking over. It really is. You see, women in positions in big business, like in the corporations, that probably never would have been the secretary years ago. Not that secretaries aren't necessary, but they really have the opportunities to be in positions that men used to be the only ones that got the jobs.
Speaker 1:Sue, you started the Charlie Awards, a culinary awards program in the Twin Cities. Can you tell us more about that?
Speaker 2:One day I was coming out of the theater downtown from a performance of the Ivy Awards, which Scott Mayer started to give awards like the Academy Awards to all the people that were actors and actresses in the Twin Cities, and I went up to Scott and said how come we don't do this for the culinary industry? He said that's a great idea. Come to my office next week and we'll get going. And we did, and so for over 15 years we gave awards to all the culinary chefs and it really was fabulous.
Speaker 2:It was like the james beard awards that are national and I guess maybe I got the bug when I got an award, so that I don't know why got anybody else want to get one?
Speaker 1:pay it forward pay it forward.
Speaker 2:That's right and it was really fun. It was. It was exciting times and then the pandemic came and there weren't any restaurants that were winning awards because they weren't cooking. But we'll get that resurrected again.
Speaker 1:It had a great run, for sure, and I attended a few of them and it was spectacular.
Speaker 2:It really was exciting. Yeah, those were fun years and it really sort of put us more on the map. We had the good food, but not anybody knew about it, and so now that more people would come here and they'd want to go to these award-winning restaurants, as someone who has mentored countless culinary professionals, what qualities do you believe make a great chef or food industry leader?
Speaker 2:Well, I think, I feel that you have to have a passion. It is not an easy job to be a chef. It is probably one of the lower-end jobs when you're judging every seven nights a week, making dinner, cleaning up, making budget, making ends meet, and yet it can be a glamorous, glorious one, or there wouldn't be that many people in them and sort of. I always look at it it's somewhat like a disease. You get it and then you just can't get it out of your system. And you see this in the chefs that work for people and they want to have their own place and they know how hard it is, and then they want to have more than one and they have to have a chain Growth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and we even see now today that some of these chains are reopening again. They closed and the pandemic did a lot of damage to that industry.
Speaker 1:Still recovering.
Speaker 2:Some are coming back and taking another bite.
Speaker 1:You've interacted with so many chefs, restaurateurs and food personalities throughout your career. Are there any memorable encounters or collaborations that left a lasting impression for you?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a lot of fun ones that I do remember. I remember meeting Julia Child, and that was someone I just read about or heard about. Then, when I met her in person, she was just like any other local person, national person, just like a great aunt or something. So she came to Minneapolis and she knew it was going to be cold here and so she just came in with a down jacket on. She knew it was Minnesota, she was going to be dressed for it, and then I took her around to some of the TV stations and things that was with her and one of the interviews that came out that she'd never milked a cow.
Speaker 1:So there you go, milking a cow.
Speaker 2:I think that was one of the warmer trips, so it wasn't when she was here in the winter, but we did take her over to a farm. She was on KSTP and then there were farms out that way and she milked her first cow. It was something I'll never forget. It was something she hadn't done and I hadn't done either, so I tried to wither, but no, that was fun.
Speaker 2:And then there's a million memories, not only with famous people, with people just starting in the business getting their first big order, watching people go into a big store and take an order that they got of things that they made, or seeing people find a label for their product that they never even thought they'd see out of their kitchen. So those things are rewarding. And watching people become successes and some of the struggles, being able to help some of the people that needed help. And I just that's the way I live. I started out being a clerk in my father's drugstore, which I had to take two streetcars to to get to, and one day I couldn't figure out how to make change and he fired me on the spot and that story went through our family for years.
Speaker 2:And I had to take two streetcars back home and find another job. You have published several cookbooks. Tell us about those. My mother died of cancer in her 60s and I was helping some people at the Guthrie doing something with the cookbook that they were doing, and I was doing some work at the Cancer Society when my mother got cancer and when she died I thought, well, this is another way that I could raise money. I was doing it already for some others and so I decided we should do a Minnesota Heritage cookbook and that grew into two cookbooks and we raised thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars with those cookbooks and that sort of started my cookbook journey and working with publishers and working with people. In fact there was more paper on my dining room table in those days than there was food, because it takes a lot of shuffling and trying things. And I even did a chocolate cookbook because that was one of my loves, and I used an architectural firm to print all the. Each recipe had a different architectural print.
Speaker 2:Oh, very interesting yeah to highlight the architecture printer, which is like a work of art. So I have a couple of those copies left. Anyway, I thought about that for a long time.
Speaker 1:How many cookbooks in total?
Speaker 2:I think about 10 for a long time. How many cookbooks in total I think about?
Speaker 1:10, maybe Wow.
Speaker 2:Some were just family ones that we just did for, like a bunch of my girlfriends and I got together and did a grandma's cookbook for all our families to have and it did take a big chunk of lifetime.
Speaker 1:Do you have food that you really say, oh, I just crave this. Or are there certain food items that you just love?
Speaker 2:Well, I adored my grandmother's caramel rolls pecan caramel rolls and the only place I found that makes them in a bakery the way she used to is at the Quinn's Cafe Latte in St Paul. In fact, she just brought me some today, Very nice.
Speaker 2:Just perfect. She brought them over hot, as a matter of fact. And then I have another big weakness, which is chocolate. Frango mints were my very favorite, and when they came here from Marshall Fields in Chicago, they had a big opening at Dayton's at that time and no, it was Marshall Fields at that time, so that's why they were there and they were giving samples on every single floor, and so of course I went there because I heard that. But I had also just come from a coffee tasting where they do you know you taste the sips, do the sipping. I came home that night with the chocolate and the coffee in my veins and I was on the ceiling. I drink decaf coffee, I don't have to get caffeine coffee and I still eat lots of frango mints.
Speaker 1:And why not?
Speaker 2:And why not?
Speaker 1:You just celebrated your 90th birthday party. I was there along with several hundred people. Sue, that was quite the night.
Speaker 2:It was a big surprise, it was quite the yeah, it was amazing. I think I've aged another 200 years or something, but no, it was Well. Did you have a good time?
Speaker 1:I did, but it just shows the passion and the love that the community has for you. Just so many people there to recognize you. It was fun to see the chefs making cakes and having an old-fashioned cake walk, so the influence of you and the community has been really great. Thank you. It's been fun to to know you and your family as well, so I just want to say thank you for that and thank you for being our guest on the growing destinations podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to the growing destinations podcast and don't forget to subscribe. This podcast is brought to you by Experience Rochester. Find out more about Rochester, Minnesota, and its growing arts and culture scene, its international culinary flavors and award-winning craft beer by visiting experiencerochestermncom.
