At the Table with Sophia Roe

It all connects for Sophia Roe, the James Beard Award-winner, two-time Emmy Nominated TV host, editor, and founder of culinary studio Apartment Miso – from the stories she shares to the recipes she cooks to the clothes she wears.

Her honesty and mindfulness shine in person and through her social platforms. She brings hundreds of thousands of followers sunflower donuts dusted with cinnamon sugar, sun-dappled wooden counters and silver storage racks in the background. Smiles and sounds and smells (yes, we can totally get a whiff of those freshly baked Salt Pears through our screens). She’s that radiant.

So, we made a trip to New York to co-host an intimate dinner with Sophia. Set on a grey, clouded evening (how quintessential!) at L’Appartement 4F in Brooklyn. The team took over, reconfiguring a serpentine table (better for conversing), draping it in a white tablecloth, setting it with our new and exclusive French-inspired dinnerware collections, and filling it with fluttering florals arranged by her friend Molly Ford. Courses, curated by Sophia and prepared alongside L’Appartement 4F’s Chef de Cuisine Stasia de Tilly, followed.

Between chatter and laughter and moments quieted by full mouths savoring bites, guests included friends of ours and Sophia's. “I love feeding friends,” she said. “That's my ultimate jam.”

We also chatted with Sophia about the intentionality behind everything she does, the connection between food and fashion, and what’s inspiring her right now.

For Sophia, the season is what guides and inspires. The dinnerware collections, with their bright colors and playful script, felt perfectly in step with the shift in seasons, the end of spring, the air of summer, and its warmth and bounty making its way to us. “These collections are fun and summery and bright, that’s so in tandem with what’s going on right now with food. We’ve got lots of green beans. But we’ve also got great berries. Summer is very ice cream sundae / popsicle / fresh, light vinaigrette salad vibes, you know?” Cue the courses: Niçoise Salad, Cod en Papillote, Seared Caraflex Cabbage, and a Build-Your-Own Ice Cream Sundae bar, to name a few. (The homemade toasted coconut ice cream, finished with a drizzle of raspberry coulis, was a favorite.) Pinks and pale butter yellows were plentiful, in the food, the florals, even the fashion.

Sophia's voice around food insecurity, and how we approach food access and education every day, comes through clearly in her content and captions. On a smaller scale, Sophia's always asking: How can we bring what’s in season onto our plate and into our palates? “It’s not just the best way for the planet, but typically the best way from an access perspective as well. I'm always encouraging people to look at ways that you can make your life more accessible and the things in your life more accessible, and I also think people are looking that way too because typically what's more accessible is also more affordable.” It's a reflection of Sophia's commitment to making good, nourishing food a right, and not a privilege.

The same intentionality Sophia brings to cooking shows up in her style too, shaped by her experiences with food insecurity growing up. “My style is a lot more bountiful and plentiful and fantastical. Because of that, I'm inspired by what it is to be full and be fed, and so I think that really translates into my style. I am very much the girl that goes upstate, very in touch with nature, my food is very seasonal, very fresh, as little manipulated as possible, and my style is like that, too. I have really good statement pieces and really good statement ingredients that are in season and seasonally relevant.” Sophia’s advocacy for food access education infuses everything she does. “It is consistently something I talk about, in how I speak about food, how I eat, how I want other people to eat, even just the way I eat in season.”

When asked about what’s inspiring her now, Sophia shared: “My fiancé. We are aligned in so many ways. He’s one of the most incredible humans in the world. I am inspired deeply by the fact that I’m having a baby in less than a month, at what I’m capable of 36 weeks pregnant, climbing up and down stairs, building a kitchen studio, feeding people. I’m also very inspired by my new culinary studio. It’s about eight months in the making, and I can’t wait for it to be open to the public so people can experience it for themselves."

It was a night filled with good food, good conversation and company, and the kind of intentionality Sophia brings to everything she touches. It was also a reminder that food is never just food, but an invitation to gather, nourish, and educate in every sense.