Back of House, assembled by artists Diana Albrecht and Ryan Stopera, isn’t quite a traditional cookbook. For example, the measurements aren’t always measurements—there’s more eyeballing and tasting than you might be used to in a recipe.
“Have you ever had an Asian auntie tell you how to make rice?” Stopera smiles. “It’s the most nondescript instructions—you know, ‘up to your knuckle.’”
“You have to rely on your sense of taste and smell: How’s it coming across to you?” adds Ali Elabbady, who wrote the foreword to the new book. “It kind of gives you a chance to make the recipe your own in a really interesting way.”
That’s not all that’s unique about Back of House (out November 8, 2025, 200 pages). While there are plenty of books out there from celebrity chefs and cooking personalities, this collection of stories and recipes highlights the ancestral cuisines of 12 immigrant chefs hailing from countries like Armenia, Haiti, Mexico, and Vietnam. It’s a challenge to xenophobia and an invitation to explore food, tradition, and family with loved ones in your life.
Stopera has worked for Public Functionary in a few different capacities over the years (today, he serves as a film advisor), one of which was running the Northeast art space’s cafe. That role “deepened my respect and appreciation for chefs and folks who feed folks in the community,” he says.
That’s when Stopera (a Chinese-American writer, director, and photographer) and Albrecht (a queer, Korean photographer and art director) started dreaming up a cookbook that focused on the immigrant experience. When Waterers, a regional foundation, surprised Stopera with a grant about two years ago, the collaborators started compiling the recipes and conversations that would make up Back of House.
“We have always been connected to immigrants in our families; [we’re] advocates for and have deep love for immigrant communities,” Stopera says. “We didn’t know that two years later, the xenophobia and the moment that we’re in would have escalated to the point it is now.”
Stopera and Albrecht have also written essays in collaboration with each chef, a result of “really deep, profound conversations about ancestry as it ties to these recipes.” Back of House is a cookbook, but it’s also an art book, with documentary-style photos by Stopera and Albrecht. And it's an archive, one that honors the “often invisible community members that take care of their community, that have been doing it forever, that don’t get their flowers,” Stopera says.
Some of the stories and recipes come from working chefs—folks like Shea Maze, a south Minneapolis sculptor and painter who was also the chef at Public Functionary, and his grandmother. Céleste Macias from Nopalli Rebelde, whose work focuses on ancestral Indigenous traditions and healing through food, shares one of their family recipes, as does Azhar Abdusebur from Red Wolf Chai. Others are at-home chefs offering stories and traditions from their lineage for the first time.
What the stories share is a sense of food as bond, as part of the magical connective tissue that joins generations and communities. Back of House celebrates stories that are not always written down; its recipes are done by feel, by taste, with love. Not everything can be measured in cups and tablespoons.
You can celebrate the book’s release with a party at Bar Brava this Saturday featuring complimentary, curated small bites from the excellent Jook Sing. Or stop by Public Functionary on Friday, November 14, when Stopera and his wife Leslie Barlow are hosting a co-book signing featuring Back of House and Revolutions Are Made of Love, a children’s book Barlow illustrated about activists James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs.
“Any time you go into any immigrant household, you’re always immediately taken aback by how friendly they are, how approachable and warm and inviting they are,” Elabbady says. “And not only that, but they give you food that nourishes your soul and also gives you the stories that feed that soul as well, that make you want to do better in the world.
“What I would love to hear is that people buy this book, they sit down with their families, they reflect on these stories, and then they talk to their families about their ancestral recipes,” Stopera adds. “Together, they feel it, they’re inspired, and maybe they make something that’s not even in the book—but it inspired them to do that.”
Back of House Launch Party
When: 6-10 p.m. Saturday, November 8
Where: Bar Brava, 1914 N. Washington Ave., Minneapolis
Find more info and preorder the book: here.
