Molly Baz

On January 7 the fires burned down the butter kitchen, the one where we’d watched Molly Baz make Spiced Meatballs with Pappardelle and Rosemary Pasta e Ceci. If you’re like me, you had imagined yourself in that kitchen, seeing yourself tipping a perfect chicken off her very cool rotisserie, stirring soups, and making extravagant sandwiches with tons of Ayoh, Molly’s personal mayo brand. You’d poured yourself a glug of Drink This Wine and watched some more. She showed you how to conjure maximalist magic; she helped you pull a chocolate bunny out of a hat. Her medium was gooey-crispy-salty-spicy-creamy-everything food that appealed to both your adult and inner child. She seemed genuine, completely herself.

Maybe it was the article on her house in Domino magazine that started it. Or Tuna, her photogenic and adorable dog. Or the IG post with Mr. Boots, her even more adorable son, giggling in the bathtub. “Giggle Therapy,” Molly said in the caption, and, yes, in the coming weeks, you’d find yourself searching for that post just to hear that laugh.

 Molly was not your friend exactly; she was your ally. She gave you permission to fuck up, but she also showed you how to make people happy: your dinner party guests, your partner, yourself. She was the test kitchen star who asked Condé Nast Entertainment to release her from her video obligations so she would no longer appear on Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel in solidarity with coworkers of color who alleged pay discrepancies.

She was up there on a billboard in Times Square, pregnant and naked, save for chocolate chip cookies covering her “nips” (in Molly’s world we have nips and titties), before it was taken down for being “inappropriate.” And then she was also the person who decried the hypocrisy of taking down an image of a pregnant woman for indecency but leaving those other billboards, the ones with the nearly naked Victoria’s Secret models fully bathing in the male gaze.

 As she said on her Instagram, “I’m extremely disappointed and yet not at all surprised that our cheeky little breastfeeding empowerment campaign was deemed ‘inappropriate’ by @clearchanneloutdoor and our billboard was removed after just 3 days. Take one look at the landscape of other billboards in Times Square and I think you'll see the irony. Bring on the lingerie so long as it satiates the male gaze.”

After her son was born, she was back up there, breastfeeding him for a collaboration with Bobbie Original Baby Formula. She had a backbone, this Molly, and that made you care. But take a reverse angle for a sec and imagine how all that’s a hard thing to be every single day, and even harder when a national disaster falls on your head.

 I met Molly at Valerie Gordon’s chocolate/coffee shop in Echo Park on a quiet Tuesday three months after she lost her home. She came walking up the street, approachable and friendly as we got our drinks and sat on benches outside. I already knew personally how the fires can be a paradigm shifter in your relationship to both people and stuff. We accumulate. We accrue. We carry all our things from place to place like turtles, our shells getting bigger and bigger. But there’s also something about losing everything in eight minutes flat, as she and her husband did in Altadena, that reframes every single thing in your life. It’s like falling through a trap door fast into a completely new reality. It teaches you.

Molly had always prided herself on being self-sufficient and independent, she told me, unfazed by criticism.

“As a public person, I’d become a bit hard in the world as a self-preservation tactic. [The wildfires] really broke that down for me and cracked me open. [With the Molly everyone knows], everything’s good. She’s a bundle of joy and positivity and nothing too deep and she makes cooking feel easy and lighthearted. That’s what I deliver over and over because it’s my value prop to the world. And it’s always been relatively easy for me to maintain that self-identity because nothing this tragic has ever happened to me and called my mental health into question. And then this happened, and I felt deeply unwell. I couldn’t be that person right then, and I didn’t know when I could be that person again. I [also] had a lot of shame around not being a fun person to be around and not being a pleasure or a joy and worrying that people would feel ‘Where’s Molly?’”

Everyone who lost a huge part of their lives as part of this disaster reacted differently. From renters to those who suffered smoke damage to those who lost legacy houses, from older survivors to young families like hers, everyone experiences a different flavor of pain. Molly’s is the sadness of losing a home full of hope and promise (her husband, Ben Willett, is a designer who handmade every single in their house) but also factor in what fewer experience: the unforgiving pressure of fame.

 “I’d always felt self-sufficient,” Molly said. “I can run my business and do what I need. But I had to ask for a lot of help in the last few months, and people really showed up, especially right after the fires. I experienced what it means to have a village for the first time in my life. Even when my son was born, I didn’t feel it to this degree. That was a very insular experience; we were in our little cocoon and protected from the outside world when he was born. With this, though, we were protected by nothing—but the community came to our aid. I had to learn how to accept things; the kindness was uncomfortable because I wasn’t used to being someone who asked for or needed [anything]. I was always the person taking care of everything, right? So now I’m fiercely for LA. LA’s amazing. I love LA.”

Molly grew up in upstate New York and lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, making her a truly bicoastal creature. And she always wanted to live in LA, she said.

“Not necessarily because ‘that’s my community,’ but just because of the lifestyle. It’s gorgeous here, so beautiful. In the end, you just go for your quality of life. You choose that. And hope for the best.”

The fires reframed her business as well.

“I made my first real hire post-fires, which I think was long overdue,” Molly said. “But I’m so up-to-here with everything that I’m doing that I realized to sustain my business—which is, again, the one thing that I do know I still have—I had to offload some of this off my back and invest. I’m making a bet on myself that my future and career is bright, but I need support to allow it to continue to thrive, especially now. The authentic version of myself is [turning out] to be even more relatable than the me that said, ‘Everything’s great. We’re making Cacio e Pepe today.’ People are struggling everywhere for different reasons. And sharing that, even if it’s different circumstances, you realize that people need to feel seen in their whole human experience.”

We compared notes (yes, we both ate almost nothing in the first days after, and now we’re all about comfort foods) and silver linings, because they do exist.

“I’m really intentional now about stuff,” Molly said. “Day two I made a really hard rule, that if it doesn’t spark joy, it’s not entering my door. I’d rather own six items of clothing that I really like than 600 random pieces that make me feel unlike myself every day. I learned that really fast. I only want this cup if I fucking adore it. I wouldn’t say I’m in my minimalist era, but you realize so quickly how few things you actually need… That’s the only thing that’s not making us feel like total strangers in our skin right now… and a fresh start feels like a unique opportunity that you rarely get to experience. Ta da! We’ll run with that.”

One month later, Molly organized Stock That Pantry, a Free Pop-Up Grocery for LA Fire Victims. Finding the perfect place to stage an actual store, she called out to all the many brands she works with for donations, and invited everyone who’d lost their houses, in Palisades and Altadena, to fill their baskets for free.

It was a beautiful moment. I can’t tell you how good it felt to be in a room with people who understood, and to experience that kindness. I went with my daughter and the brands were really cool, different and interesting. When we unloaded them into our very sparse pantry, it did feel again like we were in some way more whole.

“The biggest word that’s come out of this tragedy for me is community,” Molly said. “Sometimes it takes the worst moments of your life to really see it.”

Molly’s a survivor. Her business thrives on her new and continuing authenticity and her posts that share her personal life just enough. Tuna is fine, thank you, and Mr. Boots and Ben. If Molly is still struggling with the fallout from this, she’s honest about it: That helps her and all of us by giving us permission not to be perfect all the time. We’ll get through, because that’s what we do. What’s different is she’s even more   visibly entrenched in our fantastic Los Angeles food community.

And now can we talk about that sourdough garlic butter bread?

PHOTOSHOOT CREDITS:

Photography by @amydickerson_photographs
Producer: @sophenau
Assistant: Sarah Schecter, @corndogg1rl
Molly’s Makeup and Hair: @makeupbyjessiex
Molly’s Stylist: Anastasya Kolomytseva @anastasya_k

Stylist Assistants: Alexandria Smith, Celeste Caceu, Bindi Peluce

Molly wears sweater jacket by Zankou, tank by @guestinresidence, boots by @ugg, top by @taottao_, jacket by Valiant, shoes and pants by @tibi

Thanks to @ediblelamag’s brand partners: @atacamahome, @zlinekitchen&bath, @ghia, @fromagedaffinoisusa