Tieghan Gerard, the prolific blogger behind the popular and controversial recipe website Half Baked Harvest, is leaving her well-appointed Colorado barn kitchen for a month-long collaboration at Fig Restaurant at the Santa Monica Fairmont Miramar and Bungalows from Wednesday, April 10 through Friday, May 10. Gerard will work with Fig’s executive chef Damon Gordon, using local ingredients from the Santa Monica Farmers Market to cook renditions of favorite recipes from her blog, including ricotta pancakes, marinated cherry tomatoes with burrata, spicy pesto alla vodka rigatoni, and Calabrian chili roasted red pepper pizza.
Half Baked Harvest started as a blog in 2012. Early on, Gerard published recipes like a non-traditional take on latkes with cheddar and chipotle, complete with a cringy comment about not being Jewish and unable to say the name of the dish. Gerard built a brand on the aspirational Colorado countryside cooking lifestyle. Her debut cookbook, Half Baked Harvest Cookbook: Recipes From My Barn in the Mountains, was released in 2017. It featured recipes like quinoa bibimbap, a dish traditionally made with rice (“bap” translates to rice in Korean, though it also encompasses a variety of grains including barley, sorghum, and millet) and “healthier” slow-cooker butter chicken, a meal that isn’t inherently unhealthy. The book is still a top seller on Amazon.
In 2021, Gerard posted a recipe for “Weeknight Chicken Pho Ga” on her blog, which she described as “Vietnamese-inspired.” Quickly, the recipe drew widespread criticism from readers who didn’t believe it was an accurate representation of pho, especially coming from someone who is white. Some pointed to issues with nontraditional ingredients like caramelized chicken and a sesame chile sauce, and others pointed out that pho shouldn’t be a quick dish, but instead takes time to develop flavors. While versions of pho can be made in kitchen appliances like pressure cookers that reduce the time it takes to achieve a rich broth, traditionally pho takes hours of simmering and effort to develop its flavor. At first, Gerard ignored comments on her Instagram post that voiced concerns, but eventually, she began to reply with a boilerplate apology, and thanking commenters for bringing it to her attention. The name of the recipe has since been changed on Half Baked Harvest, but the URL still reads as “chicken pho.”
In March 2023, Gerard garnered criticism again for appropriating another Vietnamese dish after posting a video recipe for “25 Minute Banh Mi Rice Bowls” to her approximately five million Instagram followers at the time. In the Instagram post, Gerard didn’t refer to the dish as banh mi inspired, though in the full recipe, she calls it “Vietnamese-inspired.” Instead of being prepared as a sandwich, the dish was reformatted into a coconut rice-based bowl with ginger-sesame ground chicken, cucumber salad, and pickled vegetables. The backlash came swiftly as commenters pointed out her mispronunciation of banh mi and the recipe’s use of Asian-influenced ingredients in a rice bowl that didn’t have much relation to the original dish beyond the inclusion of pickled carrots. Some asked where the banh mi was since the term directly translates to “bread” in Vietnamese. One commenter referred to the dish as “halfbakedeffort,” while others voiced that they would have preferred for the recipe to just be called an “Asian rice bowl.” Gerard apologized again, but the recipe is still on Half Baked Harvest as “25 Minute Banh Mi Rice Bowls” and the video of her mispronouncing banh mi is still on Instagram.
Even with the controversy, Gerard has still enjoyed widespread success with the release of three cookbooks, and appearances on The Cooking Channel, Food Network, HGTV, and more. Since 2012, Half Baked Harvest has expanded from just a cooking site to an e-commerce hub for those who want to buy into the idea of an upscale domestic farm life marked by idyllic snowfalls and oft-controversial recipe renditions.
Reservations for Gerard’s upcoming collaboration are available through Fig. Neither banh mi nor pho will be on the brunch or dinner menu.