This time on Can I Talk To You? we start making our way back west across the country after last episode’s chat with my cousin in Nova Scotia. Today - and happy Victoria Day for those listening when the episode comes out - we stop in Toronto to talk with Haley Polinsky, a food stylist and recipe developer well-known for her creative approach and attention to detail. Haley has worked with numerous brands on commercial and editorial work from stills to motion.

As you’ll hear in this conversation, Haley’s background in art and in the culinary world helps her merge her technical and intuitive cooking skills with her strong eye for composition and problem solving to make drool-worthy food shots.

One quick note… the phone line was not great for our call. I’ve done my best to clean it up a bit, but given it’s already two weeks since I put the last episode out, I didn’t want to make you wait any longer. Thanks for listening anyways!

In this next bit we talk about four of her shoots. You will hear me describe them very poorly, so it’s best if you head over to the episode page while listening to see the pictures for yourself. You can find them at benfast.ca/talk.

I was particularly interested in talking with Haley because of my work as a business teacher. I spent a lot of the fall talking with students about marketing for restaurants and helping them through creating a hypothetical food truck. Kids, make sure you listen to the full thing for the chance to win a prize!!! Marketing in food is so interesting, complex, and nuanced that most people don’t realize how much is going into their eating habits even though they are bombarded with ads for food dozens of times each day.

If you can’t tell, I was getting increasingly hungry while talking with Haley. Sadly, I’m not as good a cook as her, nor does my food look as good as hers, and at the time I could only think about the grilled cheese sandwich I was about to make. So, I asked her what I could do to make it look a bit better. She recommended some things like how to cut it and when to pull it apart but… I got too impatient and most of the melted cheese just fell out - I deleted the photographic proof!

A big multi-course dinner thank you to Haley Polinsky for talking with me about food styling and marketing in the food sector. As she said, you can find more of her work on her Instagram at @haleythemaker or on the web at haleypolinsky.com. You can also find past episodes of this podcast here or find me on BlueSky at ben-fast – why not tell me your favourite recipe over there or in a review on Apple Podcasts. While you’re at it, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast there or wherever fine podcasts can be found.

This episode was recorded and produced by me, Ben Fast, in Victoria BC on the unceded traditional territories of the W̱SÁNEĆ and the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples. The music you’ve heard is by Kirsten Bale, thanks Kirsten!

Next time, we’re hurrying hard back home…

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