A podcast exploring gothic food, horror, and the culture of consumption.
In A Curious Appetite, Dr Alessandra Pino examines food not simply as something we consume, but as something that consumes us — shaping memory, identity, longing, and fear. From Gothic feasts to migrant kitchens, from childhood nostalgia to culinary reinvention, each episode traces the stories that linger at the table. Through conversation, the podcast asks what happens when appetite becomes a language for belonging, transformation, power, and desire.
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Replica: Food, Art and Illusion | With Loraine Senior and Christina Mellett-Smith
What happens when food looks good enough to eat, but isn't edible at all? And can a replica preserve something that history would otherwise have lost?
In this episode of A Curious Appetite, Dr Alessandra Pino is joined by Loraine Senior (also known as Loraine Krell) and Christina Mellett-Smith from Replica Ltd, specialists in creating extraordinarily realistic artificial food for museums, historic houses, film, television and exhibitions.
We explore the fascinating art of food replication, from its connections to Japanese food displays to the challenges of recreating historical dishes using recipes, paintings and surviving kitchen equipment.
Along the way, we discuss elaborate Tudor banquets, the spectacular culinary architecture of Carême and Francatelli, the importance of colour and translucency in creating convincing illusions, and the unexpectedly uncanny world of artificial food.
We also consider what happens when food escapes its usual fate of being eaten or decomposing. Can a replica give lasting physical presence to something inherently ephemeral? And why do we sometimes find artificial food so irresistibly convincing, or even disturbing?
Replica Ltd is also a proud sponsor of Serve It Forth Food History Festival 2026, taking place online on Saturday 17 October. During our conversation, we discuss why supporting the food-history community matters to Loraine and Christina, and how their work helps bring culinary history to life.
Come along and join us for a day of fascinating talks, demonstrations and conversations about food history!
Special thanks to Haints & Hollers Apothecary for their support of A Curious Appetite! They are generously offering our US listeners 10% off their teas with the discount code CURIOUS10.
Dr Tré Ventour-Griffiths: Saltfish and Sensibility
Wednesday, September 30, 2026 • Duration 01:00:40
What histories do we carry in the food we cook, the stories we inherit and the places we call home?
In this episode of A Curious Appetite, I’m joined by Dr Tré Ventour-Griffiths for a conversation that begins with his grandmother’s saltfish fritters and takes us through Caribbean family memory, migration, haunted landscapes and Jane Austen.
We explore how food connects us with generations we never knew, the lost futures imagined by Caribbean migrants, and the histories of enslavement and empire that remain present in Britain’s country houses and cultural institutions. We also discuss Sanditon, Georgiana Lambe and “Pineapplegate”, asking what contemporary period dramas reveal, or leave unexamined, about colonial wealth.
Tré closes the episode with a reading from his creative research on Delapré Abbey, bringing together landscape, haunting and the knowledge carried through families.
My warmest thanks to Tré for such a thoughtful and generous conversation.
With thanks to Sage at Haints and Hollers Apothecary for supporting A Curious Appetite. Discover handcrafted tea blends inspired by folklore, horror and the strange: https://haintsandhollersapothecary.com Instagram: @haintsandhollersapothecary
Thank you, as always, to the brilliant people who help bring this podcast to life: Artwork: Claudia Del Fiacco Audio editing and mixing: @thedeliciouslegacy Music: Manuel Pino
The Texture of Tripe is a bit of a punch to the gut, in the best possible way. In this episode of A Curious Appetite, I’m joined by Flossy (Flora Phillips) for a gloriously gutsy conversation about offal, butchery, art, appetite and why organs can inspireequal parts fascination, pleasure and disgust. Naturally, we start on a slightly spooky foot. You’ll see what I mean. There are prophetic artworks, strange signs of things to come and a Charming Baker calf already marked out in butcher’s cuts, longbefore Flossy swapped the art world for butchery. Although perhaps the writing was already on the wall: she had been cooking and eating offal since she was eleven. From there, we get straight to the guts of it. Why do organs make some of us recoil while others positively salivate? Why can liver, heart, tripe and blood move so easily between comfort food, culinaryluxury and the downright disgusting? We talk about the curious ways we distance ourselves from the animals we eat, why a highly processed food can sometimes feel less confronting than a recognisable organ, and what our reactions to meatmight reveal about class, culture, memory, taste and the stories we tell ourselves about what is acceptable to put in our mouths.
Along the way, Dark Food, Mary Douglas,Sidney Mintz, Ian Miller’s The Anatomy of Disgust and ClaudeLévi-Strauss’s Culinary Triangle all find their way onto the butcher’s block.
The conversation continues beyond the podcasttoo. An accompanying article drawing on this interview, and going further into Flossy’s work, offal, blood, butchery and the strange cultural life of guts, is published with GUTS magazine.
We also talk about the sensory pleasures of cooking and eating offal, some of Flossy’s favourite London places to doexactly that, and possibly my favourite image from the whole conversation: Flossy heading to the cricket at The Oval with a pot of leftover tripe, because frankly, why settle for a sandwich?
We also get into blood, abattoirs, food regulation, disappearing skills and what we risk losing when small-scale systems of slaughter and production vanish.
Offal has an image problem. This episode askswhat happens when we stop looking away.
The Canal as Archive: Reading Robert Aickman's The River Runs Uphill
Friday, August 21, 2026 • Duration 39:37
In this episode of A Curious Appetite, I’m joined by Dr Dan O’Brien to talk about Robert Aickman’s The River Runs Uphill, cultural memory, Britain’s waterways and some of the ideas currently shaping our research for The River Remembers: A Gothic Voyage through Forgotten Histories of the Thames.
Originally released for paid subscribers, this conversation is now open to everyone.
Best known for his strange and unsettling fiction, Robert Aickman was also a committed conservationist who helped establish the Inland Waterways Association in 1946. His lifelong campaign to preserve Britain’s canals provides a fascinating counterpart to his literary interest in overlooked places, lingering histories and things that resist disappearance.
Dan and I discuss the difference between rivers and canals, and what happens when we begin to think of waterways as repositories of human experience. Canals carry histories of engineering and labour as well as water, while the communities that once worked and lived around them can disappear even when the physical landscape survives.
We also explore mudlarking and the Thames as an unruly kind of archive: one governed by tides, chance and material fragments rather than catalogues and classifications. Dan shares the extraordinary story of finding an object thought to be part of a mammoth’s tooth, a discovery that stretches the history of the Thames far beyond London itself.
Our conversation also considers the more difficult aspects of reading Aickman today, including passages that reflect exclusionary attitudes towards race. Rather than ignoring these moments or allowing them to overwhelm the rest of the work, we ask what responsible reading might look like and whose histories have traditionally been preserved, celebrated or left out.
The River Runs Uphill becomes a way of thinking about attention itself: how landscapes hold memories of labour, migration, trade, industry, leisure and loss, and how easily ordinary lives can disappear when nobody stops to notice them.
Robert Aickman beyond the strange story
The Inland Waterways Association and canal conservation
Niki Gorick: Secret Feasts and the City- London Life Through the Lens
Season 1 · Episode 9
Wednesday, June 24, 2026 • Duration 48:55
How do you photograph a city that never stands still?
In this episode of A Curious Appetite, I am joined by photographer and author Niki Gorick, whose work has documented London's hidden ceremonies, docklands, working communities, and riverside traditions for more than twenty-five years.
Beginning with her early fascination for storytelling and inspired by photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson and Antony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon), Niki reflects on how photography became her way of preserving fleeting moments before they disappear forever. Together we explore photography as cultural memory, the hidden rituals that continue to shape the City of London, and why food remains central to some of Britain's oldest surviving ceremonies.
From medieval guilds and lavish civic banquets to Swan Upping on the River Thames, the conversation uncovers a London that most people never encounter. Along the way, we discuss the philosophy of documentary photography, London's remarkable charitable traditions, the changing relationship between people and wildlife, and the challenge of preserving living heritage within a constantly changing city.
Through photography, food history, London's hidden traditions, and cultural memory, this episode opens the door to a side of the city that few people ever have the chance to experience.
Further reading and resources
Learn more about Niki Gorick's work and current projects:
Niki Gorick's Dock Life is currently on display at Cutty Sark, part of Royal Museums Greenwich, where her contemporary photographs are presented alongside images and stories from the museum's archive, creating a dialogue between London's docklands past and present.
Dr Sam Hirst on Singing for Supper: William Linley in Regency Britain
Wednesday, June 10, 2026 • Duration 36:49
In this episode of A Curious Appetite, I am joined by Gothic scholar, educator, and founder of Romancing the Gothic, Dr Sam Hirst, to explore the remarkable travel journal Summer Rambles in 1825 by the musician and traveller William Linley. Drawing on Sam's work transcribing and annotating the manuscript at Newstead Abbey, we journey through Regency England in the company of one of its most observant and entertaining diarists.
We discuss Linley's connections to the world of music and theatre, his possible links to Lord Byron, and his fascinating visit to Newstead Abbey, Byron's former home. Sam reflects on discovering the diary in the Newstead archives and explains why Linley's candid observations, social commentary, and frequent complaints make him such an engaging narrator.
Food features throughout our conversation. We examine what Linley's diary reveals about Regency hospitality, travel, and dining, from breakfasts and suppers to pickled onions, delayed fish deliveries, cold fowl, ham, and "badly dressed eels." Together we consider how food functioned as a marker of status, comfort, and sociability, and how complaints about meals often reveal just as much as descriptions of them.
Our discussion also returns to Newstead Abbey, where Sam shares insights from his work marking the bicentenary of Byron's death. We explore Byron's complicated relationship with dancing, the scandalous reputation of the waltz, the role of music within the house, and the ways Newstead has been reinterpreted for modern visitors.
The conversation then turns eastwards as Sam reflects on living and working in Kazan, Russia, a city shaped by Russian, Tatar, Muslim, Orthodox Christian, and Jewish traditions. We discuss how experiencing different cultures transformed his perspective as a historian and researcher, encouraging a deeper appreciation of nuance, complexity, and the dangers of simplistic historical narratives.
Naturally, food accompanies us on this journey. Sam shares memories of Russian, Tatar, and Central Asian cuisines, including plov, triangular meat-and-potato pastries, sour cream, cottage cheese, and the extraordinary hospitality he encountered around family tables. We also discuss nostalgia, migration, and the foods we continue to long for long after we have left a place behind.
Nina Atesh: Dining with the Devil
Season 1 · Episode 7
Wednesday, May 27, 2026 • Duration 39:47
What happens when history itself becomes a magic trick?
In this episode of A Curious Appetite, I am joined by writer, director, and Artistic Director of Pither Productions, Nina Atesh, to discuss In League with the Devil, her fascinating new play inspired by the extraordinary life of Erik Jan Hanussen: illusionist, clairvoyant, celebrity showman, fraudster, political opportunist, and one of the most enigmatic figures of twentieth-century Europe.
Together we explore the challenges of researching a man who spent his life reinventing himself, blurring the boundaries between fact, fiction, performance, and belief. We discuss historical truth, psychological horror, charismatic manipulators, cults, scammers, influencers, and why audiences continue to be drawn towards certainty, spectacle, and the promise of hidden knowledge.
We also delve into the theatrical process behind the production, including Nina's collaboration with legendary illusionist Simon Drake and mind reader Graham Jolley, whose work helped recreate some of Hanussen's techniques on stage. Along the way we discuss theatre-making, pub theatre culture, the changing economics of performance, and the enduring magic of gathering together in a room to experience a story unfold in real time.
Because this is still A Curious Appetite, we also talk food memories, childhood kitchens, Cypriot family meals, smoky bacon crisps, Sunday roasts, and the surprising connections between cooking and theatre. Both rely on ritual, timing, community, and a little bit of everyday magic.
We also touch upon horror theatre, GrimFest, Kim Newman, creative collaboration, and the strange power of performance to make us believe, if only for a moment, in something impossible.
Erik Jan Hanussen
Illusion, magic, and performance
Historical research and unreliable sources
Psychological horror and theatrical storytelling
Cult leaders, scammers, and charisma
Simon Drake and stage illusion
Graham Jolley and mind reading
Pither Productions and GrimFest
Kim Newman and horror culture
Pub theatre and creative communities
Dorothy Barrick: Feeding the Frame- The Art of Food in Film
Wednesday, May 13, 2026 • Duration 30:25
What kind of job requires you to carry knives, toothpicks, pastry brushes, chopping boards, glycerine spray, and sometimes half a kitchen in the back of your car?
Food styling.
In this episode of A Curious Appetite with Dr Alessandra Pino, I’m joined by Dorothy Barrick, known as Dot, a food stylist and home economist whose work brings food to life on screen in ways that are often invisible, but absolutely essential.
We talk about what it really means to work behind the scenes on film sets, from preparing edible props to understanding how food behaves under lights, heat, pressure, and repetition. A dish might need to look fresh for hours. It might need to be eaten repeatedly by an actor. It might need to appear identical across multiple takes. And sometimes it needs to do something stranger altogether, like ooze, collapse, bleed, or stand in for something else entirely.
I first came across Dot’s work through The Radleys (2024), based on Matt Haig’s novel, where food becomes part of the film’s unsettling emotional atmosphere. We explore how food on screen creates mood, reveals character, and shapes tension, especially in horror and uncanny cinema.
We also discuss: • Working on The Roses with Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch • Nicholas Hoult’s enthusiastic eating on The Great • Horror food styling and beautifully grotesque visual tricks • Cooked watermelon used as tuna sashimi • Pear standing in for delicate raw fish • Continuity, repetition, and the pressure of keeping food camera-ready • Fashion, colour, design, and food as visual storytelling
We also spend time discussing Babette’s Feast, one of the great films about food, grief, memory, and transformation. Dot reflects beautifully on the meditative power of baking and how repetitive, intricate culinary tasks can help us process difficult moments and sit quietly with ourselves.
And of course, because this is A Curious Appetite, we end with food memories: childhood casseroles, the horror of beef tongue, oysters, whelks, seafood towers, and the foods that stay with us.
Richard Crampton-Platt: Pasta and Prejudice
Season 1 · Episode 5
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 • Duration 55:13
This episode was not sponsored by Greggs. But it begins with a sausage roll! I’m joined by Richard Crampton-Platt (you might know him as @thegreedydick).
We talk about chicken rolls and why they disappoint. Raw chicken sushi and what “safe” really means. Why Britain trusts takeaways and Italy doesn’t. Food delivery and what it reveals about how we live. The myth of pizza margherita. Carbonara, cream, and the illusion of authenticity. Food smuggling, migration, and adaptation. And why food feels different from art or music.
It starts light
It turns philosophical
And somewhere along the way it becomes about trust. Because food is the one thing we choose to put inside our bodies. And that always says more than we think.
Read more on Substack https://substack.com/@dralessandrapino
Email: acuriousappetite@gmail.com
Artwork by @medusazzz Audio by @thedeliciouslegacy Music by @manu_pino_1111
Useful links and references Richard Crampton-Platt’s writing, videos and restaurant commentary can be found via The Greedy Dick on Substack and his wider online platforms.
Bocca di Lupo, SohoRichard talks about working at , the regional Italian restaurant in Soho, which helped shape his understanding of Italian food and food history.
Emiliano Amore: On Love for the Liminal Larder
Season 1 · Episode 4
Wednesday, April 15, 2026 • Duration 30:29
In this episode, I speak with chef and writer Emiliano Amore, who writes Britalian on Substack, about migration, identity, adaptation, and what he beautifully calls “the liminal larder” that space between cultures where Branston pickle meets pecorino, cheddar finds its way into lasagna, and food becomes a language of belonging. Born in Rome and now based in England, his work emerges directly from this in-between space.
We talk about Britalian identity, culinary stereotypes, emotional ingredients, recipes as memory, and the idea that adaptation is not compromise but a form of becoming. Throughout, we return to the idea that food carries emotional weight, that it holds memory, longing, and the quiet traces of where we have been and who we are becoming.
I can’t tell you how much I loved this conversation with Emiliano. It is a rich, thoughtful exploration of home, appetite, and the stories we tell through what we eat.
Read more on my Substack https://substack.com/@dralessandrapino
Artwork by @medusazzz Audio by @thedeliciouslegacy Music by @manu_pino_1111
Useful links/references
Emiliano's substack an online cookbook and writing project exploring Italian and British food cultures
Russell Norman, award-winning restaurateur associated with Polpo and Brutto, often linked to the idea of Britalian cooking styles
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If you enjoyed this conversation, please follow the podcast, leave a rating or share it with someone who might enjoy listening. Thank you for being here and staying curious about what’s on your plate.
Dock Life Renewed: How London's Docks Are Thriving Again
Faith in the City of London
Contact: acuriousappetite@gmail.com
Artwork: @medusazzz Audio
Production: @thedeliciouslegacy
Music: @manu_pino_1111
Along the way we talk about:
William Linley and Regency musical culture
Byron, Newstead Abbey, and the waltz
Hospitality and social performance in the Regency period
Food, travel, and complaint as historical evidence
Manuscript transcription and archival detective work
Russia, Tatarstan, and cultural diversity
Plov, pastries, hospitality, and food nostalgia
Why complexity is often more interesting than certainty
Whether you're interested in Byron, Regency travel, food history, archives, or the pleasures of a well-kept diary, this episode offers a fascinating glimpse into the people, meals, friendships, and journeys that shaped life in the early nineteenth century.
Learn more about Dr Sam Hirst's work, courses, and events at Romancing the Gothic. The platform brings together readers, writers, and researchers interested in the Gothic, Romanticism, folklore, and literary history.
Special thanks to Nina Atesh, Simon Drake, Graham Jolley, Kim Newman, and everyone at Pither Productions for their generosity, creativity, and for helping bring one of the most intriguing theatrical projects I have encountered in recent years to life.
Hosted by Dr Alessandra Pino.
A podcast exploring how food shapes memory, identity, longing, fear, culture, and storytelling.
Britalian food and Italian cafés in Britain Topics include British-Italian greasy spoons, post-war Italian café culture in London, and the blending of British and Italian food traditions.
Greggs sausage rolls Richard mentions Greggs expanding its sausage roll range, including pork, vegan and chicken sausage rolls.
Bovril The conversation touches on Bovril, Bovril on toast, Bovril as stock, Bovril in Arctic contexts, and its role in British food memory.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Culinary Triangle” Discussed in relation to broth, boiling, food preparation and social bonding.
Sidney Mintz- Sweetness and Power (1985) Mentioned in relation to industrialisation, sugar, work, pleasure and modern eating habits.
Fellini’s Satyricon / Trimalchio’s feast Richard discusses Fellini’s strange, uncanny representation of Roman feasting, excess and food spectacle.
Carbonara and authenticity The episode explores carbonara as a contested dish, including cream, pancetta, guanciale, egg, authenticity and cultural negotiation.
Zuppa Inglese Mentioned as an Italian dessert whose name translates as “English soup”, and as an example of Anglo-Italian culinary overlap.
Fagioli all’uccelletto Mentioned in relation to beans, sage and their transformation within a British breakfast context.
Full English breakfast and global variations The conversation touches on full English breakfasts, British breakfast culture, and variations such as full Turkish, full Greek and other cultural reinterpretations. A Full English on Pizza?
La Cucina Italiana Richard mentions looking through La Cucina Italiana for elaborate celebratory dishes, including timbales.
Le Gavroche and the Roux family Discussed in relation to French food in Britain, ingredient sourcing and the challenges of early fine dining in the UK.
Delivery food and food trust The episode compares British and Italian attitudes to takeaway, delivery apps, trust, ingredients and food safety.
Food safety, industrialisation and adulteration Topics include adulterated bread, chalk, alum, salmonella fears, raw chicken in Japan, and different cultural attitudes to risk.
Mussolini, rural fantasy and Italian food nostalgia Richard mentions the darker historical roots of certain romanticised images of rural Italian food culture.
M. F. K. Fisher, American food writer exploring food, desire, memory, and identity
Panikos Panayi, Spicing Up Britain, a study of migration and the transformation of British food culture
Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), an influential British cookbook including early references to pasta such as vermicelli and macaroni
The Grand Tour, eighteenth-century travel tradition through which British elites encountered Italian culture, art, and food
The eighteenth-century “macaronis”, British dandies returning from the Grand Tour associated with cosmopolitan taste and Italian influence
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italian writer and filmmaker associated with representations of marginal, subcultural Italy
Anna Magnani, Italian actress emblematic of a raw, authentic Italian cultural identity
Cesare Pavese, Italian writer exploring themes of place, identity, and modernity
Vivienne Westwood, British designer representing alternative and subcultural British identity
Nigel Slater, British food writer known for intimate, domestic, and reflective food writing
Fleabag, British television series exploring contemporary identity and emotional life
St John, London restaurant known for nose-to-tail cooking and the use of offal in British cuisine
