At the top of a Brownstone, just a few short blocks from Bed-Stuy's Herbert Von King Park in Brooklyn, the smell of caramelized onions and grilled fennel is all-consuming. Alida Borgna, an Italian-American private chef and co-founder of YAYA, lives with her brother, who also works in the food industry. Their professions shows in their house, which is rife with cookbooks and fermenting curiosities, filling the space to the brim, a stage for healthy sibling competition and good meals. Raised between Umbria and New York’s West Village, the freckled-covered, gap-toothed chef, who prefers the freedom of pop-ups over restaurant brigade-run kitchens, holds a degree in Gastronomic Sciences and is alumni of Chez Panisse.

In order to reduce food waste, Borgna has learnt to become very resourceful. Give her a bag of tomatoes and she'll be able to create three highly diverse dishes. But Borgna is not afraid to cook via emotion rather than precision. A recent dinner involved spilling polenta all over her dining room table, and she urged guests to scoop it up with their hands. By the end of the evening it was all gone.

For private chefs who are always on the move or working from someone else’s home, ensuring sound food storage systems is paramount to their success. However, one of the main causes of food waste in the home can be attributed to the lack of organization in fridges. This utilitarian object with a simple function - to keep food fresh - has been the main driver behind Borgna’s way of cooking. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, up to 40 percent of the food in the United States is never eaten. In another study  by the USDA, the average American wastes about 225-290 pounds of food per year. After coming across artist Jihyun Ryou’s conceptual art project, “Save Food From the Fridge”, Borgna had found a tangible way to change this, at least in her own kitchen. Ryou’s project archives traditional food preservation and finds ways to implement them into modern day kitchens through updated designs.  

Today, Borgna builds custom food storage systems for herself and friends, employing carpentry skills she learned from her father. The outcomes are open-air wood structures that almost function as sculptures for the home. They feature netting, secret drawers, and nooks, customized to her diet.

How has returning from Italy inspired your approach to food?

‍It has encouraged me to be more playful and resourceful. The simple approach doesn't really get as much mileage here and the quantity to quality ratio feels much smaller. The food in Italy is so good because there is a strong foundation of knowledge and tradition-supporting cooks. The quality of the ingredients are excellent, even in supermarkets, whereas here I find that sourcing delicious ingredients is much more time consuming and expensive.  I still rely on the idea of cucina povera (poor man’s cooking) but tend to incorporate more spices and flavors than I would have in Italy, which feels apt considering the demographics of New York.  Those Italian traditions are my foundation, but I am mostly influenced by the day to day contact I have with different cultures and farmers that come my way here.   

Keeping food stored in cool, dark places is a practice that's been around for centuries. What's the argument for building a fridge unlike the electric ones we have access to now?

I’m not trying to build an anti-fridge. I am a Luddite, but I think the technology that fridges offer are very useful. Nevertheless, it’s easy to become too comfortable and abuse the ease of a fridge to the point that it becomes a dead space.  

Can you talk about the process of customizing and building one based around your diet? What kind of fun accoutrements did you include? How does it fit into the interior design scheme of your home?

Jihyun’s work was such an inspiration to me, and I wanted to expand on her idea and come up with a system that would accommodate a person that cooked everyday and was bringing a substantial amount of food into their home. There is a section to store alliums, root vegetables, brassica and leafy greens, eggs, tubers and herbs…My kitchen is the heart of my home, and so introducing this structure felt natural to the space. It’s very much an actualization of what I imagine a holistic relationship to food looks like.

What was your relationship to your fridge like before building your own? Do you have any particular memories related to how you used fridges growing up?

I associate fridges with chaos. Growing up, you could never tell what would be lurking behind that piece of cheese. Nevertheless it’s definitely a dynamic space that required a thorough regular cleaning. I also work as a chef, so a lot of my time is spent trying to reinterpret leftovers and odds and ends from the events I cook for. It means I have a pretty close relationship with my fridge, and am aware of the pitfalls of the deep dark corners in the back shelves. The association with chaos has to do with the design of most fridge spaces - lots of different compartments and deep shelves, which in most fridges are filled with a mix of moldering condiments and forgotten leftovers.  My vision with food waste with this project is focused on the domestic space, and readdressing the home cook’s relationship with the food they bring into their home.

What is the biggest misunderstanding about the way we keep our food stored?

‍That it’s already dead!  So much of the food that we bring into our homes has the potential to be treated as a living plant or organism, and understanding that and treating your food as a living entity, as an extension of yourself is what I'm going for.  I want to encourage people to consider their food, and creating a physical structure is a way of capturing your attention and providing an optimal space to store what is eventually going to become a part of yourself.  It’s a full cycle of care that begins with the earth and ends with your body and well-being.‍

Has building your own fridge changed your relationship to food?

‍Yes, it’s like having a small garden in your kitchen that you need to tend. I feel more empowered and excited to buy food and bring it into my home. Interacting with the structure has also allowed me to understand the real life cycle of foods and how fragile they are, and how they interact with each other. The design of the fridge is evolving and not based on a particular culture, mostly older common knowledge relating to food storage which is universal. Every culture and country still shows vestiges of pre-fridge culture. A good example is the European way of keeping eggs outside of the fridge, or that some households in the US still have butter bells.