Sophia Roe’s Studio Kitchen Isn’t Meant to Be Cozy

Maraya Fisher: Do you think Apartment Miso itself inspires a level of creativity?

Sophia Roe: Absolutely. You walk in there, and there’s this massive window that gets the most insane light in the universe. People have told me they walk in the space and it's like, whatever your thing is that you do, you want to do it. If you sew, you get in there and you want to sew. Or I want to take pictures or I want to dance. You want to do your craft. It was never designed to be a place where you hang out. It really feels productive and I love that.

MF: Can you describe the process of putting Apartment Miso together? Is it close to your initial conception or did your vision evolve?

SR: It's perfect. It's exactly what I wanted it to be. There is no cozy seating. There's no couch. It is not a place for sitting. It was very much designed for productivity, and that's totally what it is. The entire left wall of the studio is nothing but racks of gear, of equipment, of tools. It's very the-inside-of-my-brain, but also utility. Everything I need is in there. There are also a lot of symbols and colors in there that mean a lot to me. It's utilitarian and sentimental—those opposite extremes in one space.

MF: And those extremes are tied together. One informs the other.

SR: Exactly. And who knows which one comes first? It just depends. Sometimes a sentimental thing might encourage me to make something. I lost someone last year that I cared about, and if I wanted to make their favorite dessert, I could go in there and make their favorite dessert. But then there's utility too: I'm doing a bake sale and I need to transport 50 desserts. How can I do that? What is something that I can create where I can easily transport 50 desserts at 9:00 in the morning?

MF: What are some objects in Apartment Miso that carry special significance or have an interesting backstory?

SR: Well, see my James Beard award is in there. Love her, the greatest honor of my life. But in the same space is also a collection of hundreds of spoons. I collect spoons when I travel. If I go to Mexico City, I get some spoons. I went on a trip with Dani [Giardina], who is my Director of Operations, but also my best friend. We went to London together, I bought some spoons. To me, this collection of things says a lot about the places I've gone and the people who I've been there with.

I keep so many cool things in there. I love keeping dead stuff. I have flowers from 2021, when I first got the studio, when I was nominated for an Emmy. I've got all these really beautiful dead flowers that I keep everywhere and they remind me of times that were really special to me. I have a little bit of a baby obsession with mold. I'm a mycelium mushroom head, so there are a lot of mushrooms. You could probably see that phallic shape every three to five seconds in the studio. There are mushrooms all over my studio by design. It's a shape that I'm inspired by.

MF: I love that. I am the same way about clothes. I love the decay of clothes.

SR: Oh my God. I mean, I want everything to be vintage. I want all of it. That's me. I just want everything to be tailored, look cool, and be vintage.

The studio also acts as an extension of my closet. The other half of it is this clothing rack of just the coolest, random fun shit, that I don't have room for in my house. It acts as an inspiration. Imagine a corkboard with textiles and pictures. It acts as that. It's big coats and I have this beautiful Rodarte mushroom dress with this Gabriela Hearst painted dress. Those things, they fall in line with how I think about food too. Yes, again, utility, but also the sentimental, the creative gets me going when I first walk in.

MF: When I think of you, I think of amazing style and beautiful food. I had no idea that they were so intertwined in literally the same space.

SR: It's a very weird quirk of mine, but to go through my house and take clothes that I'm moved by and to bring them into my studio just so they're there for me to look at.

MF: It's almost like a studio for expression.

SR: I mean, a hundred percent. There’s this idea that you need to get rid of things that you don't wear. I know this is so unpopular, but there are just things that, it doesn't matter if I don't wear it, it’s the way it makes me feel when I look at it. I think it's important for me to keep it. I can never get rid of this beautiful hand-painted Rodarte that has mushrooms on it that was gifted to me by these amazing sisters whose father used to forage.

MF: I love when it's so clear how much self-expression through clothing means to people.

SR: So much about my personal style is really about what makes me feel good and what makes me feel cool. And cool is an important word for me. If I feel cool, then my food is better, then my mood is better. And that's what's so fun about fashion or about a word. It can mean anything. It's really just about the person and how they're wearing their clothes.

MF: Returning to food, do you feel that you get the same outlet of self-expression through food?

SR: One thousand percent. I have a new partner and he's been a really big food muse for me because he's got this gnarly sweet tooth. I just happened to be in this really fun phase in my lifelong journey of being a chef, where I love making desserts. I think it's the people that you meet that can drive where your intentions lie. Right now, I'm really trying to nail this very, very specific texture for a cookie that he likes that is not easy to achieve. That's the most fun thing for me.

I'm coming at food from three places. Either I’m problem-solving—I'm trying to fix something or nail something or I'm trying to reach a specific apex—or it's story-driven. My friend who passed away, their favorite dessert was a lemon bar, so I'm making lemon bars. Or, sometimes, I want to make food in a very specific shape or with a specific ingredient. There were months when I was just making pretzels in the shape of squiggles. All I wanted to do was make squiggle food. And then I'll go through phases where every single recipe has got to have persimmons. Right now I want everything pears and caramel. I'm obsessed with them.

Dani was just like, "Man, I really don't want all pear recipes." People get sick of stuff and I'm like, "No, I'm going to do caramel every day for a month." And then suddenly I'll wake up and just change my mind and do something else.

MF: I love the concept of food muses, whether that be an ingredient or person.

SR: Right now my food muse is definitely my boyfriend. It's been nice to be with someone who's got their own nostalgia and experiences with food. He just loves foods that I've never even considered. He challenges me to think about palate and about food differently. But it was interesting, last night, my boyfriend and I went out to eat and he was like, "I just defer to you." I'm inspired by him, but he's also like, "Wow, this girl knows things about food and I'm going to try something different." So it's a two-way street, and that's pretty inspiring also.

MF: And that's a great analogy for what you need in a relationship in general.

SR: This is true. It's important that there'd be some form of, if there's pushing, there's pulling.

MF: There's a classic Proust anecdote where he eats a madeleine and he's flooded with a very tangible memory from childhood. I was wondering if there's a distinct sensory memory that you have in your space that could be triggered by a smell or a taste.

SR: It's really probably more about process. There's a process that brings me back to a certain specific thing. I grew up super food insecure, so I didn't grow up in an amazing food-centric home. I grew up in a boxed mac and cheese home.o I think [there’s] this esteem of gratitude anytime I'm making food with my hands. I feel so lucky to have the knowledge. Cooking is a survival skill. I feel so lucky that I dedicated my life to a thing that will ensure that I'll never experience what it is to not know how to feed myself ever again. I'll always be able to feed you. I'll always be able to feed my partner, my friends, my future family. No one will ever be hungry.

I think that there's a moment in Patti Smith's book M Train, which I love, where she is having a conversation with someone she had met briefly in the past and was meeting them again. They asked her, "I don't really remember meeting you. God, was I a jerk?" But when they had first met, Patti didn't have any money and she was hungry, so he had bought her a sandwich. So simply she said, "You fed me when I was hungry." For me, that sticks out so deep in my spirit. I think about that moment all the time.

The gratitude I have that I know how to do this and that I am a cook is amazing. My space consistently reminds me that I'm doing okay. I know what I'm doing and I'll never go hungry. And those are the three things that, what else do you need?

MF: I love that Patti Smith anecdote.

SR: Oh, it's sick. Especially as someone who feeds people. I tell people all the time, especially when it comes to your advocacy work, you think all the time like, "Oh man, I'm only donating $5, or I only dropped off a few cans of food, or I only helped for a few hours at Salvation Army." I tell people all the time, one meal is a game changer. The inspiration, the zest, the energy that you feel. That's one less meal you have to think about. So it's not nothing. It's not nothing to ensure that a person has dinner. From an advocacy space too, I always encourage and implore people to feel really good about the work that they do in that space, even if it is seemingly small.

MF: Even if it's just a sandwich.

SR: Girl, just an apple, just a tangerine, just a little bottle of water. It really can steer someone in a direction of hope, of positivity, being seen. There's a lot of hope, courage, and bravery in providing food for someone and for someone to accept it. It's just beautiful.

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