How the Head of a Food Museum Spends Her Sundays
The New York Times
Nazli Parvizi, the president of the Museum of Food and Drink in Brooklyn, spreads her time between homemade meals with friends, walks with her son and intense card games.
Nazli Parvizi thinks about food all the time and not just because, as a former professional cook and caterer, she has spent much of her life in kitchens.
As president of the Museum of Food and Drink in the Dumbo neighborhood in Brooklyn, Ms. Parvizi said food fits nicely into her mission to educate. “Flavor,” the museum’s current exhibition, dips into science by taking visitors on a tour of what happens when people lose their sense of taste after getting Covid, for example. And a detour into history reveals how the search for spices led to colonialism.
“Our insatiable need for flavor and for sugar has really wrecked the world,” she said, “as much as it’s made it tastier.”
Ms. Parvizi, 47, lives blocks away from the museum in Dumbo. Every other weekend, her 11-year-old son, Cameron, and the family’s white golden retriever, Cora, are with her. When they’re not, she doesn’t lack for company. Her guest room is almost always occupied. And brunch at her place is “kind of an institution,” she said; as many as 30 people have been known to show up.
“When you’ve lived in New York since you were 18, you amass a large friend group,” she said.
CUDDLE UP I am deeply of the belief that Sunday is a day of rest. I love to sleep in, usually till between 8 and 10 o’clock. My kiddo likes to get up early and sneak in some screen time. So the first thing I do is hunt him down and take away his screen. Then usually we’ll cuddle a little bit. I have maybe one year left of when he’ll agree to cuddle, probably, so I’m taking advantage of it.
