Thomas Meglioranza is an award-winning American baritone whose highlights from the 2016–17 season included a Hugo Wolf recital at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, J.C.F. Bach’s solo cantata “Pygmalion” with Ars Lyrica Houston, the role of St. John in Louis Karchin’s Jane Eyre with the Center for Contemporary Opera, and a debut with the New York New Music Ensemble singing James Primosch’s Dark the Star. He is also a visiting artist in voice at the Longy School of Music of Bard College.
But when he isn’t singing or thinking about music, he is probably thinking about food, cooking, writing about food, or musing on which of his 500 cookbooks he might crack open for ideas about what to cook for Thanksgiving 2018.
This passion for all things food related led Meglioranza to become a frequent poster on the food discussion website Chowhound.com in the late 1990s. The site was the brainchild of another musician, jazz trombonist Jim Leff. Meglioranza and Leff became friends and collaborators on other Chowhound projects; Meglioranza was the editor of the NYC edition of Chownews (a weekly digest of site discussions) and a contributor to a series of books called The Chowhound’s Guide to . . . .
So, 15 years later, when Leff asked Meglioranza if he would be interested in collaborating on a food-related app, he quickly agreed. The app is called Eat Everywhere and it is designed to help take the fear out of ordering food in restaurants of diverse ethnicities.
The way Leff first explained his idea for the app to Meglioranza was that it would be “like having a food expert friend whispering advice in your ear while you tried to figure out what to order in a restaurant whose cuisine was unfamiliar to you.” It is available for purchase now for iOS and Android and has been receiving very positive reviews from users.
As Meglioranza explains, “It’s a pretty novel idea. It’s nothing like Yelp or Chowhound—it doesn’t tell you where to eat, it tells you what to eat and how to order. Once folks start using the app, they immediately get it and the reaction is ‘Wow, why hasn’t this existed before?’”
Here’s how it works. Imagine you are invited to a Pakistani restaurant on a business lunch. You have never eaten Pakistani food before, you are a super fussy eater, and you are a vegetarian. To put your mind at ease and ensure the best experience, you open the app and choose Pakistani for the cuisine you need help with.
Once there, you can select the For Super Fussy Eaters tab where you will find Pakistani versions of chicken nuggets (marinated, broiled chicken cubes) and deep fried bread (Puri). You might also delve into the Vegetarian Survival Dishes tab where you will find many mouth-watering options with easy-to-understand explanations of ingredients and what to expect to see on your plate when it arrives. There are also pronunciation guides and instructions on how to say “I am a vegetarian” in many languages (in case the Pakistani restaurant you are visiting happens to be in Pakistan and not Poughkeepsie).
Other tabs list still more options categorized as The Short List (easy-to-love crowd pleasers), ‘Litmus Test’ Dishes (to gauge restaurant quality), Ice-Breaker Dishes (order like an insider), and Adventurous Eating (so you don’t confuse even-kids-love-it Puri with the goats-feet-and-head specialty, Paya).
Now you are prepared to order with confidence and enjoy your lunch. If you want to delve deeper, you can read some general information about Pakistani food under the Things to Know tab and find links to further information and online resources on the More Info tab.
With his busy singing career well underway, one might think it would be difficult for Meglioranza to commit to such a project. But one of his primary considerations, when approached about participating in the project, was that it sounded like fun. “My interest in food has always been a nice complement to singing because it’s never been connected to ambition or making money,” he says. “It’s all of the passion and fun, with none of the baggage.”
Which is not to imply that singing doesn’t also include its fair share of passion and fun. After Meglioranza discovered classical singing in his sophomore year of college, he couldn’t imagine anything else being nearly as gratifying. He appreciates how his interest in food shares some similarities with his interest in singing.
“Coming up with a good song recital program and planning a good menu feel like very similar tasks to me,” Meglioranza says. “You work so hard to get the individual songs or dishes right, but it’s important to zoom out and make sure the whole sequence works. For both recitals and menus, I think there should be a nice overall arc. What kind of mood do you want to establish at the beginning? What kind of feeling do you want to leave them with as they exit the concert hall (or dinner) into the night?
“In between, the songs (or dishes) should build and progress,” he continues, “keeping the senses fresh and surprised—but it shouldn’t feel random. You also have to be careful where you put ‘big’ songs (or dishes or wines) because they can make whatever follows seem pale in comparison. A theme can be nice, but not if it leads to a feeling of repetitiveness, and so on. So many of the same principles can be applied to either endeavor.”
This careful attention to the design of his recitals has garnered praise from the New Yorker, which describes Meglioranza as an “immaculate and inventive recitalist.” Former New York Times music critic, Allan Kozinn, calls him “especially compelling as a recitalist” and compliments him on his “warm tone and interpretive astuteness,” as well as his “elegance and wit” in a 2015 concert review (www.pressherald.com/2015/11/15/baritone-brings-elegance-wit-to-german-art-songs/). This skill has also pleasantly surprised some critics, who were initially suspicious of his eclectic and often unknown selections. It seems little wonder that he can be trusted to design a brilliant menu of food as well.
Meglioranza is a native New Yorker of Thai, Italian, and Polish heritage and, though exposed to authentic Thai cuisine (with visits to Thailand) as a child, Meglioranza confesses to being unappreciative then, as a fussy eater. When pressed to identify a favorite dish, he expressed nostalgia for some home-cooked Hungarian dishes his mother used to make, pizza, and whatever great dish is in front of him at any given moment.
He compares this in-the-moment kind of obsession to music. “When I’m working on a great piece of music,” he says, “it completely occupies my mind to the point where I can hardly imagine any other music even existing. And then after the performance, I reset and move on to the next piece. Food is kind of like that for me. If I’m really enjoying a slice of pizza or a mango, it’s the only food in the world at that moment.”
As for singing about food, he says, “There are a lot of great songs that deal with food, but for some reason I can’t think of any that actually whet my appetite. I went through a period a few years ago when I was ending almost every recital with Cole Porter’s funny song ‘The Tale of the Oyster.’ I love oysters, though that song is more about food poisoning.”
When it came down to getting this app off the ground, Meglioranza and Leff used the online platform Checkvist to collaborate with 10 or so other “food-obsessed nerds” and spent over two years writing several books’ worth of content. Meglioranza compares his own process on the project to some other people’s hobby of knitting. “I don’t knit,” he says, “but it was what I imagine knitting a gigantic scarf for two years would be like. There were periods when I would spend several weeks working on the app for a couple hours a day, stretches of time when I was too busy with singing to work on it at all, and everything in between. It was an ideal side project in that way.”
When asked what advice he could offer other singers with side project aspirations, Meglioranza says, “Go for it. It seems like a few years ago, if a singer had another job, they would be likely to downplay it, lest their colleagues and potential employers take them less seriously as a professional singer. Nowadays, there seem to be so many great singers out there with non-music-related side hustles going on: selling real estate, being a personal trainer, selling wine, driving for a rideshare company, even practicing law. The economy as a whole is so much more gig- and freelance-oriented now.”
Most performing artists need some kind of side hustle, particularly in the early stages of a career, so why not try to find a way to combine that need for income by doing something truly enjoyable? “I sometimes wish I had taken a job in a restaurant during those years after graduate school when I was living in New York City supporting myself with a combination of professional choral work and mindless office temping,” Meglioranza shares.
When asked what he hopes this app can achieve, Meglioranza’s answer is “Peace, love, and understanding! It sounds cheesy, but I truly believe that getting to know and love the food of another culture can go a long way toward promoting understanding and compassion. I hope that this app will help users have experiences that are delicious and fun—and perhaps also break down walls and expand horizons.”
Maybe this is another example of the similarities between music and food: people coming together to enjoy new exciting, enriching experiences.
