Corby Kummer

Executive Director of @AspenFood. LinkedIn: @Corby-Kummer, Threads and IG @cskummer,

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

Clover Food Lab, Boston's beloved plant-based chain is closing. Great idea, brutal economics: expensive leases + food costs up 30-50% post-pandemic.

Also on today's show: Trump's cherry-picked grocery wins, why your bill is still going up, and teens spending $27 to DoorDash a Big Mac rather than eat mom's cooking.

We talked about all of it on @BosPublicRadio
More: https://t.co/5N8gomgr7e
#Boston #CloverFoodLab #BostonEats

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

What an incredible way to celebrate Day 1 of #FIMCON2026! 🎉 A huge thank you to Food Leaders Fellow Tom McDougall of @4PFoods, @RethinkFood's Matt Jozwiak, and @MomentusCapital for bringing together such an enthusiastic crowd for dinner at The @AspenInstitute in Washington, DC.

After our Named Benefactor announcement, it felt extra special to bring some of our Food Leaders Fellows--past and current--together!

Incredible food by @MKCatering and @Chef_CarolinaGomez made the night even more special. Here's to a phenomenal conference ahead! 🍽️ #FoodLeaders #FIMCon #Washington DC

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

I’ve spent years watching the Food Leaders Fellowship grow. Announcing our Named Benefactors, @chefjoseandres, @LidiaBastianich, and @ericripert, alongside Cohort 5 is a moment I’ll never forget!

More: https://t.co/JMB3YkptVS

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

"Now it’s up to the Senate to decide whether to include this provision, which aims to suppress the will of voters so that giant meat companies can abuse pigs. Enactment would mark a substantial setback for animal rights in America’s livestock gulag." @NickKristof: https://t.co/QONvzppX6f

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

Live today!

Nutrition is one of the most important drivers of health, independence, and quality of life as we age. Yet for millions of older adults, access to the right nutrition support remains out of reach.

We're proud to partner with @NANASP for a free webinar on May 29: Nourishing Aging: Nutrition Interventions and the Future of Older Adult Health.

Featuring @RobertBlancato, @PatrickStover, and @KathleenGraim — register free: [LINK]

#OlderAmericansMonth #HealthyAging #NutritionInterventions #AgingPolicy #FoodIsMedicine #SeniorNutrition

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

To Chefs José Andrés, Lidia Bastianich, and Eric Ripert: your belief in the next generation of food leaders means everything. Read more: https://t.co/JMB3YkptVS #FoodLeadersFellowship #FoodJustice #AspenInstitute

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

We’re honored to announce that Chefs José Andrés, Lidia Bastianich, and Eric Ripert have each created Named Fellows within the @AspenInstitute Food Leaders Fellowship. 🧵🌿 Three culinary icons. Fifteen fellows. Five years. 🧳5

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

Today we also welcome Cohort 5, one of our most diverse yet bringing deep experience to a pivotal moment in food policy. We can’t wait to introduce them.

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

If you love food and care as much about the health of the people who grew and raised it and of the soil and air it was grown in, chances are strong you encountered the ideas of Carlo Petrini, who died last week at 76 at his home in Bra, Italy--his birthplace and the birthplace of @SlowFoodHQ , the movement he founded in 1986.
More: https://t.co/EvjzAi4QiH
Video from @bospublicradio

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

We're live today at 1pm ET.

Conversations on Food Justice: How SNAP Restrictions Play Out in Stores and Communities is happening now and there's still time to register and join us live (or get the recording).

This conversation matters. The people most affected by SNAP policy decisions are rarely the ones at the policy table. Today, we're changing that for one hour.

Join us:
https://t.co/V3s9qZuZDa

#FoodJustice #SNAP #FoodPolicy #FoodSecurity

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

Thrilled to announce a new addition to our panel: Margaret Hardin Mannion, Director of Government Relations at @NACSonline.

Corner stores and convenience retailers are on the front lines of SNAP policy every day. That voice belongs in this conversation.

Wednesday, May 27 · 1pm ET · Free:
https://t.co/R7OvFA7Jxe

#FoodJustice #SNAP

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

More people to memorialize on a day of remembrance. Last week we also lost Aglaia Kremezi, who wanted to bring Greek food to every curious cook in the country. The emphasis is on curiosity. She wanted to know the technique and recipe for every eggplant, egg, artichoke, lamb, and gigandes bean recipe she found on one island or one mountain village, and compare it to another. She wanted to document the history and culture associated with a recipe, and make the dish accessible to any home cook--and, unusually, she knew American home kitchens and ingredients. And she wanted to make everything look beautiful--something she had been trained to do at art school in London after her Athens childhood in an intellectual, politically connected, complicated family.
When I launched @TheAtlantic's Food Channel, I asked Aglaia to write a regular column from the cooking school she'd opened on Kea, the island closest by ferry to Athens, where she and her husband, Costas Moraitis, rebuilt and expanded a family house to provide a paradisal setting for spirited, hands-on lessons.
The biography she supplied us has her typical tang, and you can hear her voice especially in the last line: "Aglaia Kremezi has changed her life and her profession many times over. She currently writes about food in Greek, European and American magazines, publishes books about Greek and Mediterranean cooking in the US and in Greece, and teaches cooking to small groups of travelers who visit Kea. Before that she was a journalist and editor, writing about everything except politics. She has been the editor in chief and the creator of news, women's, and life-style magazines, her last disastrous venture being a 'TV guide for thinking people,' a contradiction in terms, at least in her country."
But you can't hear her voice trilling the R in "That would be grrrreeat," or the excited, breathless squeal of "Yes it's wonnderful" or the staccato dismissal of "It's terrrible terrible." Aglaia loved discovery, and sharing her enthusiasm. Her energy was constant--in the @Substack newsletter she and Costas wrote and photographed, in her reading, and in her travels. A trip to a new country with her--I took many, thanks to @OldwaysPT, whose @sarabaersinnott posted a wonderful tribute to Aglaia, and thanks to @SlowFoodHQ's conferences we often met in Turin--was an exercise in near-exhaustion. She wanted to go to every museum and gallery and stop at every antiquarian bookstore, every public market, every flea market. Again, curiosity and wanting to understand everything drove her. She was an invaluable part of the annual @Oxfordsymposium, and wrote a thorough report of its first post-pandemic meeting in 2022, dedicated to "Food Away from the Table," which @elisabethluard, a main organizer, remembers as still the best symposium summary.
She was vehement in her likes and dislikes. But when she liked you, nothing was too much. She and Costas were wildly generous to the groups that would visit Kea for several days of cooking lessons, frequently followed by educational and of course food-centric excursions they organized to other part of Greece. In the spring of 2024 our friends Jamie and Nina, also friends of Aglaia, came with us to Kea and then Thessaloniki, and rolled dolmas and pide pastry under the grape arbor that dappled daily sunlight. At our first dinner Aglaia and Costas, knowing of our love of wild greens and my embarrassingly insatiable sweet tooth, made an elegant and emerald-green soup to start and a cassata-style ricotta cake with Greece's gem-colored "spoon sweets," extremely sweet but powerfully flavored candied fruit. And they arranged scholarly guides for our own excursion to Thessaloniki and the stunning, relatively new, archaeological museums at Vergina dedicated to the family of Alexander the Great.
Do look at the Atlantic archive of pieces Aglaia wrote, and the wonderfully appealing Substack Aglaia and Costas posted even as she was being treated for the aggressive cancer diagnosed only a year ago. And find a copy of The Foods of the Greek Islands, my favorite of Aglaia's books. Every page has a recipe I want to make, as I remembered when I opened my copy--along with a typically loving inscription from Aglaia.
As @chefjoseandres has given so many gifts to the world, most especially his example as a tireless and fearless humanitarian, his wonderfully popular @zaytinya restaurants lastingly give diners the gift of Aglaia's inspiration and also recipes at every meal. Andres called Aglaia “a teacher, a cook, a master storyteller, and a friend,” and never failed to give her credit as being a guiding force for the restaurant; he asked her to write the foreword to the Zaytinya cookbook, which you should also buy. We take any and every excuse to dine at Zaytinya. We'll toast Aglaia's memory many, many times over the next weeks and months.

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[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

A lovely @nytimes consideration of Carlo Petrini's philosophy and practicality by @pete_wells that shows why Prince Charles and Pope Francis were so drawn to @SlowFoodHQ, Petrini's ideas, and his presence.
📷https://t.co/68EBvUqo7U

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

@UNISG students singing outside Carlo Petrini's house the day after he died at home, in the town he transformed.

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

My tribute, from the same day: If you love food and care as much about the health of the people who grew and raised it and of the soil and air it was grown in, chances are strong you encountered the ideas of Carlo Petrini, who died today at 76 at his home in Bra, Italy--his birthplace and the birthplace of
@SlowFoodHQ
, the movement he founded in 1986. Petrini went beyond uniting people who wanted to find and eat the best of a region’s and country’s produce and cuisine. He showed them that they couldn’t fully enjoy that without recognizing the dignity and well-being of the people who make food, the importance of tradition and human contact, and social and environmental justice. Chapters of Slow Food opened around the world. Those chapters, the dozens of books and guides Slow Food published, and

@UNISG
, the university he founded near Bra, in the region of Piedmont, changed lives and careers. And changed mine. He turned my concerns and priorities upside down when I went to my first Slow Food meeting in Italy in the fall of 1998. Skeptical, I went for the food but stayed for the values. Stayed for good: my
@TheAtlantic

piece about the movement led to my book The Pleasures of Slow Food. For several wonderful years Carlo and I did a double act when he lectured in America and England, and he would pretend to get mad at me because my translation wasn't word for word. But the spirit was true. And no one was more spirited on stage. He was mesmerizing and passionate. A few clips and videos below, and a fond retrospective interview he recently gave to an Italian newspaper. His spirit animates every choice of
@AspenFood
's Food Leaders Fellowship, and I had the chance to tell him on our yearly visits just why he would fall in love with all 72 (and about to be 90!). How proud he would be of what he inspired. 📷https://t.co/tH4aVe5BeB 📷https://t.co/O42g0SKXuL 📷https://t.co/fwoyrws5Xh 📷https://t.co/1M3XuonrFl

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

If I look ridiculously happy onstage with Carlo, it's because I was.

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

Huge thanks to the Cleveland Park Library and everyone who came out for our Tuesday Talk on Food is Medicine and @aspenfood Leaders Fellowship. The questions were sharp, curiosity and expertise real, and the energy in the room everything a speaker could hope for—plus some celebrities in the room, including @freshfarmdc’s wonderful new director, Cat Oakar, and a wonderful new fellow we’ll be announcing soon!

[Corby Kummer @CKummer]

If you love food and care as much about the health of the people who grew and raised it and of the soil and air it was grown in, chances are strong you encountered the ideas of Carlo Petrini, who died today at 76 at his home in Bra, Italy--his birthplace and the birthplace of @SlowFoodHQ, the movement he founded in 1986.

Petrini went beyond uniting people who wanted to find and eat the best of a region’s and country’s produce and cuisine. He showed them that they couldn’t fully enjoy that without recognizing the dignity and well-being of the people who make food, the importance of tradition and human contact, and social and environmental justice. Chapters of Slow Food opened around the world. Those chapters, the dozens of books and guides Slow Food published, and @UNISG, the university he founded near Bra, in the region of Piedmont, changed lives and careers.

And changed mine. He turned my concerns and priorities upside down when I went to my first Slow Food meeting in Italy in the fall of 1998. Skeptical, I went for the food but stayed for the values. Stayed for good: my @TheAtlantic piece about the movement led to my book The Pleasures of Slow Food. For several wonderful years Carlo and I did a double act when he lectured in America and England, and he would pretend to get mad at me because my translation wasn't word for word. But the spirit was true. And no one was more spirited on stage. He was mesmerizing and passionate. A few clips and videos below, and a fond retrospective interview he recently gave to an Italian newspaper.

His spirit animates every choice of @AspenFood's Food Leaders Fellowship, and I had the chance to tell him on our yearly visits just why he would fall in love with all 72 (and about to be 90!). How proud he would be of what he inspired.
https://t.co/YTv9VJY3lT
https://t.co/A87tdfshjj
https://t.co/fwoyrws5Xh
https://t.co/S8Pr7pBIpM