Sophia Roe

The chef and host of Counter Space on growing up hungry, microdosing, and why fungi are the future.

AS TOLD TO GOSSAMER

This Conversation is featured in Gossamer Volume Six: the Garbage issue, which you can order here.

Most of the work that I do is in food and food security advocacy. I focus on how to feed people. One in four kids are hungry every single day in America, which is pretty wild. Almost 60 million people go hungry or go to bed hungry every day here. Hunger is treated like a temporary emergency when it’s a systemic issue. I’m also a chef and the host of a TV show, Counter Space, but everything I do always goes back to hunger and why some people have food and other people don’t. That’s me. What I care about the most. 

I just want to make people feel full. And while that’s a temporary feeling—shit, there’s nothing like it. Like, man, you just feel good. The right meal at the right time is like a Birkin. I think being a chef is the coolest job ever. Food was never part of the plan. I was a college dropout. I got a job at a restaurant and I lied that I knew how to use a knife. They quickly found out that I didn’t, but I learned. It wasn’t like I was planning on being a chef one day. I always loved food, but I know what it feels like to go to bed hungry. I was a foster care kid. I lived in a group home.