Photo by DavidFairchildStudio.com.
Richard Foss has been writing about food and drink professionally since 1986, when he started reviewing restaurants for the Los Angeles Reader newspaper. Since then he has contributed to over twenty different publications, including articles in the Encyclopedia of World Food Cultures (Greenwood 2011) and the Oxford Companion to Sweets (2015). He has taught 500 Years of American Food, American Fermented, and What Shakespeare Left Out at Osher Institute/UCLA Extension. Richard is on the board of the Culinary Historians of Southern California, and is the Chair of that organization’s Speakers Bureau. His first book, Rum: A Global History, was released by Reaktion Books in April of 2012, and was followed by a speaking tour that included lectures at the National Arts Club in New York, Tryon Palace in North Carolina, and a talk for the Culinary Historians of Washington. His book Food in the Air and Space; the surprising history of food and drink in the skies, was released in December 2014. I have presented programs on that topic in Seattle for Boeing’s 100th Anniversary Celebration, at the Museum of Travel and Transport in Auckland, New Zealand, at SpaceX headquarters, and for international aerospace conferences. Richard is also the Executive Director of COLLAGE: A Place for Art and Culture, a California 501c3 Nonprofit that operates an arts venue in San Pedro, CA.