Having a Bite With: The Libi Project
An interview with co-founder, Carli Gordon
When I started this series, it was to spotlight different hosts and hostesses on the ways to create communion. If I could describe the series in three words, it would be: “on breaking bread.” (In this particular case, the bread we are most likely talking about is challah, which I learned, is a very patient process). What follows is an conversation which takes this concept at times literally and at times more figuratively. I think it’s important to remember here that breaking bread can also mean splitting a pizza with friends. And hear in lays the impact of what follows: we learn (spoiler) is that there is no more important virtue in hosting, in business, and and in life generally, than the ability to pivot. I spoke with Libi Project cofounder, Carli Gordon about how learning to iterate, to imagine and reimagine has led her to find success. I hope you enjoy.
If you live in New York, or in really any city but particularly those with a robust “third-wave coffee” scene and things like “micro-bakeries”, you too know about the pop-up. Similar to the rise of the gig-economy, it gives voice to small creators who share their work through in-person events at other, more established businesses. Especially in a city like New York, where space is hard to come by and expensive when you do, the creator economy subsists on its temporary transfer. An economy of partnership. Some pop-ups are word of mouth, some you discover through your favorite Instagram accounts, or maybe you keep tabs on the Infatuation’s updated list. But regardless of where it’s held or how you find it, there is no group doing the pop-up better than the Libi Project, a mission driven culinary culinary design studio specializing in event production and brand activation.
I sat down, with Libi Project cofounder, Carli Gordon, about how she got her start, how she’s reimagined her work, her goals, and her tips for hosting events of varying scale. Carli, informed by her own experiences in travel and cultural preservation through food, began the Libi Project, ostensibly, in her apartment, hosting Shabbat for friends. She uses the term Shabbat loosely. In Jewish liturgy, it means, roughly, a day of joy, which falls always on Friday. To Carli, joy is the foundation of the events she throws, and of everything she does, as was evident in our conversation, which was naturally convivial and riddled with laughter. She lays this foundation in Bed-Stuy, where she now lives:
I moved to New York in 2019 and lived here for about six months before leaving to get my master’s during Covid. But I found my way back and have been here for about three years working in the hospitality space. We founded the Libi Project in 2023.
I moved to New York in 2019 and lived here for about six months before leaving to get my master’sl during Covid master's. But I found my way back and have been here for about three years working in the hospitality space. We founded the Libi Project in 2023.
What did you get your Master’s in?
Food studies. It was more food anthropology and history based study of world food cultures and mobility. So yeah, that’s sort of how the Libi Project comes together.
And how are you liking being back in New York?
When I first moved back to New York, I lived on 1st Ave and 6th Street. And it was like food heaven around there, especially with proximity to the Lower East Side. I feel like that's like those are my go-to places for good food. That and Bushwick.
Bed-Stuy honestly has so many good spots as well.
It's changing a lot. I mean, mostly due to gentrification, which is another whole conversation. But also a little bit west of here like in Clinton Hill you have Place de Fêtes which is amazing. And then there's a lot popping up in Fort Greene and Cobble Hill as well. There are some great wine bars around those areas.
Absolutely. Carli and I discuss some of the best spots in these neighborhoods, (list coming soon), what it means to be a woman in the food space and how it gives way, rather easily, to imposter syndrome.
To assuage my own imposter syndrome, I say, I felt like I needed to work in a kitchen. I find it really hard to, like, claim any sort of expertise or knowledge over something if I've never done it. I feel like it's a plight of women.
I kind of like that. I do appreciate that if someone's going to be laboring over ingredients to make your dish beautiful and delicious, then at least you should understand the time and energy and effort that goes into that.
I think it's all about slow growth. We have to learn to adjust our expectations. Like I've always wanted to have my own physical space for cooking and hosting events. And originally I was looking at places that have a full on kitchen or were more like a proper restaurant. But then I came to the idea of a culinary creative service or mission driven creative culinary service.
It's different. And I mean it is about the food, but it's, more than that, for me, the community side of things So I always look at spaces. I'm thinking “that's all I need. I just need that.” But we’ve found a way around that.
Now I'm doing programming for the Knife Factory and I’ve seen the struggle of like, how do you make money off of this? Enough to compensate the talent, give them money for their time and energy and expertise and also pay for the space.
Absolutely. When did that shift happen for you?
So both Shana and I worked at Resident Hospitality together, which is essentially a pop-up series in more unique luxury spaces around the city. We partnered with Michelin trained chefs and salons to put on five course dinners with wine pairings. And for us, we found that our passion was really around providing a platform for the chefs to share their culture through their cuisine as well as through the wine and their knowledge around it. We really loved giving them that space to share their love and passion around their food culture and just the love for food generally.
But I've gone through many phases of it. When I was younger, I always wanted to have my own sort of culinary space. And that's evolved over time. At first it was a bakery, then it was a cafe, then it was a juicery that, you know, like it just kind of went from all these different things.
And I was looking at spaces in August because there was one that was around my neighborhood in Bed-Stuy. I was like, “Oh my God, it's perfect. I need to do it.” But the rent was so expensive and then it became a project where we would have needed investors and just a lot of money to flip the space and outfit it with a kitchen and stuff. So in the end, it turned into this more mission driven culinary community space idea.
I just came to realize it wasn’t realistic, at least at the moment. So then the question became: how do I continue to build this community?
Still technically under Resident, we began putting on culinary industry nights because there were a lot of chefs we worked with and we wanted to continue to build a community around those people and really uplift that community. From the servers, the dishwashers to the sommeliers and the chefs, that was our favorite part, being and working with those people.
So I had this idea of trying to create like kind of more scrappy events where it's not a big cost, but it's a way to really show our chefs in our community. Continue to embrace them. So I did a ton of outreach to all these brands that I really loved with more mission driven ethos and eventually partnered with Farm One, which is a vertical farm in Prospect Heights.
Mostly it’s event centered programming or food centered event programming and culinary programming centered around uplifting culinary entrepreneurs. That's it. I love that.
That was essentially our first Culinary Industry Night. We both no longer worked at Resident, but were like, let's keep doing it on our own. At first we wanted to do Culinary Industry Nights plus branding and branding identity and logo design. Now we no longer have an interest in that.
I mean, we still do it for ourselves, for our own digital identity and photography. But we had this idea to help up-and-coming chefs start their own brands from scratch and provide some sort of package including photography, newsletter creation, website development and all these things.
But it's very different now in what we want to do. Mostly it’s event centered programming or food centered event programming and culinary programming centered around uplifting culinary entrepreneurs. That's it. I love that.
But also, we have a lot of different passions, and we never want to pigeonhole ourselves into doing only one thing, so it's just continuing to evolve.
That makes so much sense. I mean, your brand is very design forward. In terms of design, and then in terms of finding the spaces that you're using, and the partners that you're working with, is there a certain look you're going for? In terms of being a mission driven initiative, how important is that in the partners that you're working with?
First and foremost, I think because we don't have a physical space yet–I like to say that because it’s still my dream at some point to really have my own space–I had been looking out for different kinds of creative event spaces. I first heard of the Knife Factory a while back and I was like, “Okay, this is somewhat similar to what I want to do or open.”
Carli laughs: I just essentially had randomly stayed in a treehouse one summer in the Berkshires and it was beautiful and I was chatting with the guy who was hosting us. He was from Australia, a photographer and had worked in the culinary and hospitality space. He helped photograph for the cookbook of Balaboosta and Ina Garten, he's very very talented. While I was staying with him, he had just come back from Williamsburg where he had moved from when he landed in the Berkshires full time.
I was like, “oh, what were you doing in Williamsburg? Like, so random.”
And he was like, “I was celebrating a friend's birthday at her event space, this culinary event space.” and he mentioned “Yeah, they do like a lot of like interesting events.”
For example, they had had like a vegan naked party I was like, “Oh, I know exactly who that is” because I follow the Knife Factory. I had I forgot the name of the woman who runs it–
But you can't forget a vegan naked party.
Yeah, exactly. So I was like, Oh, I know exactly who that is.
And he offered to put us in touch or suggested I DM her. And so I messaged Chelsea, who runs The Knife Factory, and it felt like I was talking to my future self. And so I was like, I want to like, work with her like figure this out and started managing their events programming.
We've just really become friends and it’s so nice to have a relationship where we are both really passionate and excited about the culinary space and creating opportunities for people in that space like, and career development and brand building. And so I've continued to work with Chelsea very closely.
She's an actual knife maker and is amazing and has had such a cool path. She really supports the programming that I'm interested in. Which also specifically has to do with food culture and preserving identity through food. That was definitely something I thought about when I thought about who I wanted to work with or how I could collaborate or work with partners.
It was somebody who really valued that aspect of the culinary world of preserving culture through food but also the educational part. Chelsea has that interest too. So for now it feels like a very good partnership to continue because it's like we're both very passionate about that area of food.
And so that was a perfect example of like, oh, “this is not just a dinner party.”
How do you see this changing or evolving over time?
I don't know, it's hard to move forward when we think about other collaborations and stuff. I always want to make sure that there is some sort of mission driven idea behind it. For example, literally in my apartment, we hosted a “Fancy Scraps Supper Club” which is run by a girl named Olivia. She is really passionate about food and sustainability and how to combat food waste.
And so that was a perfect example of like, oh, “this is not just a dinner party.” She's sourcing most of, if not all or all of her ingredients from companies that are upcycling products or rescuing produce. I obviously love dinner parties and I love creating spaces for connection over food, but I really like to collaborate with people who, again, are like focusing on preserving culture through food and also have that mission driven aspect.
Gosh, I'd be terrible at a podcast.
I was thinking this is perfect. It brings up so many questions that I have. First of which: what percentage of the time are you and Shana cooking? And then if you are cooking. What does that preserving identity through food look like for you?
It's so funny, when I first think about how the Libi Project kind of came about, it was in a period when I was hosting many, many Shabbats in my apartment, which was essentially bringing together friends and friends of friends, anyone who wanted to join. At one point, we invited a friend of ours who's a chef, Jules—who isn't Jewish, doesn't come from a Jewish background, but it wasn't about that—to cook us dinner and then it became about his food culture, you know, or his passion around food. It was again about creating that space for connection.
But a lot of the Shabbats it was me cooking, mostly from cookbooks of Jewish or Israeli chefs and from Jewish diaspora cuisine including. More modern takes but I had so much excitement around preserving my own culture and identity through again, hosting my friends.
How do you define your cultural identity?
I'm Jewish American. My whole family lives in Chicago but they came mostly from Eastern Europe. Yeah. And so come from, my parents say this and I don't, I really need to like sit down and get It’s funny because beyond my Jewish American food culture, I don't feel that I have such a strong identity in food. I think my excitement around this topic from other people and their food cultural identity. It almost makes me wish I had it more.
That sounds kind of sad, but it's like, I grew up with my mom cooking constantly, my grandma cooking constantly, all Jewish American food. You know, matzo ball soup, challah, kugel, all that stuff. But beyond that, there wasn’t much. And so my mom would make whatever she felt like.
How do you feel your work now shapes that identity in food?
For example, when we had the Fancy Scraps Supper Club, Olivia put up paper on the wall for people to answer specific questions and one was “what is your favorite food memory or something like that?” And instantly, I was like matzo ball soup from my mom, but it's also so many other things, like it's like my favorite Korean restaurant or it's my favorite Thai restaurant. Whatever it is, it's very interesting to me to learn about other food cultures.
And also while I think about it, I think because I've always lived in cities where I have so much access to different cuisines and cultures, so it's really exciting for me to just continue to learn and really immerse myself in those food communities when I don't have much knowledge around it.
Do you have any particular chefs, especially Jewish or Israeli, that have influenced your own food culture?
For sure. I have always had Yotam Ottolenghi's books. And then I'm actually helping right now to edit a cookbook edit written by a couple who I met while I was studying at University in Italy. I had actually used to buy challah from him in this tiny tiny town in Italy. His name is Ben @BenGG and long story short, it came full circle because they just gifted me the Shabbat Cookbook from Adina Sussman. And I discovered that I really, really loved making her recipes as well.
When I first started getting interested in more food and design, just like the aesthetic part of it, I looked a lot to Sunday Suppers. My friend Sadie, had given me her cookbook when I was in college–it's this beautiful, more design-forward culinary book. The founder is actually Israeli, or comes from Jewish culture, so that was like my first introduction to the intersection of design and food and aesthetic.
And also my partner is Israeli. So he's also somebody who I’ve learned recipes from. He and I will try to cook recipes that his mom makes, which is a collaborative effort because I don't know what they taste like. I mean some of them I do. Two years ago, I visited and she made a feast when we arrived. It was so funny. Everybody was just watching me eat.
In terms of aesthetics, other than Sunday Suppers, do you have other influences for when you guys are putting on an event? What do you hope the space feels like or looks like?
It's a great question. I mean, first and foremost, when I think about hosting people, regardless of where I’m hosting, I always want guests to feel like they're walking into their best friend's house. What was so beautiful about the last culinary industry night was that the Knife Factory space very much feels like a living room or like a basement in the best way possible. Like you're walking into this space and it doesn't feel rigid, it doesn't feel so minimal.
Having that warmth and that feeling of walking into home. Alternatively, in the more minimalist vein, definitely a quality over quantity aesthetic is kind of where both of them come together because at the end of the day, I do believe that your environment changes the way in which you enjoy a meal. I mean it’s literally proven to change the way the food tastes.
Because, I think at the end of the day, it's really about connection,and less about the food sometimes, you know, and like just having a really laid back, wonderful evening, you know, over food. Food is the connector.
Another influence–it's so funny–I have this picture that I got when I was studying abroad in my undergrad. They had this store that was outside the market with hundreds and hundreds of old vintage photography or like film photos of completely random people, but you can buy them for not a lot of money. And I got this one, essentially it’s an image–that actually I put on the postcard of the culinary industry night–that really defines how I want to live my life. Give me one sec, I’ll find it. It's a perfect example of what I want my events to feel like. Wait, let me see.
Basically it's like these women in a field drinking. There's nothing fancy about it. It's just the coming together of friends. Of course I can appreciate the aesthetic and the beauty of having beautiful linens and candles and this and that, but at the end of the day, if the music's right–music is very important–and there’s lots of wine and the company is good, it will make for a perfect affair.
Are you are you always wine over cocktails?
Definitely. I really don't care or really like cocktails, which is so funny because I know it is such a culinary art that I can appreciate, but from a far.
I actually just went to an amazing tasting on Monday with Wild Ark Farm, which is mostly like natural wine and the owner, Todd, was also pouring his liqueurs. WOW, I mean, he has such a cool ethos and mission around his idea of producing wines and spirits. He uses as much as he can from the land that he's on and really tries to combat waste. He uses all of these edible shrubs and herbs and things that he's foraged. His ethos is effectively trying to create a memory in a bottle. I'm trying to get him to be on the panel for the next culinary industry night.
In terms of wine, do you have a preference?
I prefer red wine. I like a chilled red. I also prefer orange. When I was getting my master's there was not much in the town at all. Like it was a very traditional, old Italian town. There were three or four places that all the students would go, one of which was called Zero, and it was a natural wine bar. It was run by the cutest Italian man who had so much passion and love for the industry generally and for natural wine. And he had such amazing bottles, obviously, cause he's in Northern Italy. So he had his pick from some of the best and we used to go there often. What I loved about it was really the conversation around natural wine was being had in a very laid back way. Not pompous at all.
So at the dinner parties, what I try to do is we do this activity called “wine about people,” which I actually learned from a natural wine educational class during my master's. The idea was that everybody can talk about wine no matter who you are. Wine is a learned language. So to say that just because you don't X, or you're not a certified Y, or this and that, it doesn't mean you can’t talk about wine. Everyone can talk about wine. So that’s what we did. Everybody tasted the same wine, wrote about the wine like it was a person and then you shared. When we read our descriptions out loud, we found that mostly everybody had similar descriptions of the kind of people that described the wine.
It was just so amazing way to show that wine doesn’t have to inaccessible. It can actually just be a person we all know.
People try to make wine inaccessible. Which is why I really prefer natural wines; there aren’t as many rules to it. And you're really able to play around in your head with the idea of what you're tasting. It isn't so rigid.
Oh, that's so interesting. Do you have Natural wine bars the city that you particularly love?
You know, it's so funny. I live in New York City with some of the best food and vibes and bars in the world. And I don't go out that much food wise because I prefer to cook. Unless it's a a special meal or it's a meal that I wouldn't be able to cook myself
So I go out a lot for Korean food or Thai food because I just prefer to go to the experts rather than trying to cook myself, because, let me tell you, I've tried. When I was in Italy for example there was nothing beyond the same dishes at these very traditional Italian restaurants so what we had to do as students of this international program is we'd come together and have dinner parties and cook and bake things that we missed from home or that we couldn't get in the town.
But that's where a lot of my love for these dinner parties came from. Shabbat was a really big thing there. I had all a group of friends that actually none of them were Jewish, but I was like, “let's do Shabbat.” Come over, we’ll cook together. And that's very much, I think how, what I took with me back to New York.
If I had to choose, though, The Four Horsemen is my favorite. Everything about it–the service, the wine, the wine service, particularly where they bring three bottles of wine and let you taste and try and talk about it, and then just the atmosphere–I just love it.
Frog Wine Bar opened two blocks from me. And I really don't go there often, but when I do it definitely inspires the like the idea, again, of making natural wine more accessible, and making wine in general more just more fun and easygoing. People are playing pool, which is really cool because you really only associate pool tables with like old style bars and beer, so again, it’s trying to create this more casual, accessible, laid back community around wine.
Like we all have different palettes and we all have different tastes. So I think we need to stop feeling like we need to match somebody else's expectations of what good wine is.
It's the same thing with food too.
Definitely. For example, I used to work at Eataly and my boss was from Italy, from Piemonte, and would make a delicious spaghetti Pomodoro, which is so simple. And, you know, and if you compare that to, like, a jar of sauce, what's to say which one is better? Taste is subjective, it’s what reminds us of home and our own cultures and experiences as much as it is the actual flavors of something. It’s just something I think about.
Yeah I think the subjectivity around food and your experience of it is very important to take into account. When you are hosting, like, are there certain things that you're always cooking because you know they're going to be good?
One dish that I always feel hits is pasta with ragu. But my partner is pescatarian, so I feel like I don't eat a lot of meat at home any more.
Once in a while I will, if a friend's over or we're having Shabbat, we will make roast chicken. But I always do it with a friend, which is so funny too, because my mom is so good at making chicken and meat and fish at home. I just don't I don't like cooking it.
If I’m cooking pescatarian, I really love the anchovy shallot pasta from Alison Roman's cookbook. It feels like everybody knows this recipe but it’s so good and so easy.
And then if I'm hosting, which is usually on Friday evenings, I always make challah and we have it with really good butter and maldon salt or we do labneh or something like that.
I tried to make challah a couple of weeks ago for the first time. And It did not come out well at all.
It’s a process. I started making it in Italy when I decided I wanted to do Shabbat for my friends. So I started making it often and it's very much evolved since then, but some days I have bad days because it depends on the weather, the temperature, and all those varying factors. But I will say, if you have questions, check out Funny Girl Bread–she's amazing.
She was at our last culinary industry night and I asked her to make this gorgeous challah, which I wanted to be the center of everything. We surrounded it with a huge grazing table and small bites.
Are you team grazing board or are you team seated dinner?
I'm team seated dinner, definitely. I actually don't even really like family style that much.I know that's so lame, but I really love when everybody has their own plate.
Famously, I'm kind of secretly hate sharing food. I don't tell anyone, but it's like a feeling that I have.
It’s a European sensibility, the sharing of it all. But I can also appreciate their inclination of just savoring. Every bite and the time shared and everything. It’s emphasis on sharing, generally.
Exactly, exactly. If you're cooking for other people, what do you hope to get out of it? What motivates you to keep doing this? And then what do you hope other people will get out of it?
Oh, it's always such a hard question because I constantly think, like, “why do I like this?”
Events are very stressful. Which is funny because growing up, I was always throwing these little events or to get togethers with my friends. All my birthdays were cooking classes or cake decorating. And I used to love having a Christmas party every year, which is ironic because we were all Jewish. But we’d make cookies and we'd have different color frostings and do cookie decorating and watch elf together. And so it's funny because I literally have done this my whole life, like host other people.
I'm literally always hosting my friends cooking for them. I think for me it comes down to serving others. I've always been volunteering. I've always been creating experiences for others. And it always ties back to my love sharing food cultures and sharing traditions around food. And just creating a really fun environment to share those things is something I really love.
When we thought about Culinary Industry Night, we really wanted to create this kind of space for those who were in the hospitality and restaurant industry. And Culinary Industry Night was so amazing for me because it was very much celebrating all of the really, really talented and like hardworking people that are constantly trying creating beautiful experiences for our community, but often not getting that service back. I really love the idea of like doing more career development or personal development for people in those roles because when I was working at a wine bar, when I was 18, sweating in the back, washing dishes and just thinking to myself if people out there ever really think about everything that's going into making their experience happen, you know?
And so I wanted to celebrate entrepreneurial creators, makers, producers, farmers in the space that don't often get a chance to take time to build those bridges of partnership and connection.
So that's another big reason why I love those specific kinds of events. And again, what I hope people get out of it is like: just building collaboration with people that they might have otherwise not have the opportunity.
I think having a way to celebrate others is something that I wish we had more opportunities for because I feel like we live in such a competitive, intense environment, and so often we are go, go, go, go, running, running, running, constantly comparing ourselves. And that's something that I constantly think about. It's hard not to, you know. But creating spaces where that’s not the culture, that’s very important to me.
Wow. That's amazing. I mean, a huge part of the service industry is low wages, especially for the amount of work it is. Like I've never worked harder in my life and I never will work as hard in my life as I did when I was a baker. It was such a privilege that that was something I was able to step away from and was able to go find like a desk job that was a little bit more sustainable. But I was very aware of the privilege to leave.
When I was at Resident, I was working in person five days a week, flipped hours, like 2 PM to midnight or 1 PM to midnight. And I was like, I feel like my soul is sucked from me. I was physically and mentally exhausted. It almost took the fun away, you know. That's why I want to create these opportunities, events and dinners as a way to uplift. That could be a reason that I feel so passionate about that, I have so much respect for the people who do this kind of work and I don't feel that there are that many environments do that.
In terms of the environment you’re creating, a few rapid fire questions for you:
Flowers or candles? Flowers
Assigned seating or choose your own? Choose your own.
Paper napkins or cloth napkins? Cloth napkins, for sure.
Okay, this one we kind of touched on, but family style or plated? It's unpopular, but yea, plated.
Cheese board or a starter course? Starter course, definitely.
What is the most important lesson you've learned from hosting?
Ooh. I mean, the first thing that came to my mind, which we already talked about, is that music is everything.
But also, I think, honestly, is that people create their own fun. Because even if I'm having a Shabbat dinner at my house or if I’m having a random group of people together, it is up to them. I can give them the space and the time. But it's up to them to really be open to new people, to sit somewhere else that maybe they don't feel as comfortable to, to get to know somebody new.
I cannot control that. So that's something I've learned because I put a lot of pressure on myself and I'm very like a generally anxious person so I thinkI've had to really learn how to to try to enjoy the events that I put on.
That's a big lesson, too. You cannot do everything. You cannot. I mean, I personally, I cannot cook while also hosting while also making sure the music is good, and clearing the plates, while also…
I've learned that some of the best dinners have been potluck style because it's very quality over quantity, you put everything out, and you can all relax.
That's something I've learned a lot and I am trying to practice is saying yes. People will be like, “can I do the dishes?” Or, “can I clear the table?” And I have always said no.
But I'm trying to lean into yes, as my mantra.