14 | EDIBLE SF FALL 2025 Growing up in rural Quebec, Laura Rokas’s family never ate out. Her mother cooked everything from scratch while young Laura watched Jacques Pépin and Julia Child on television, mesmerized by the simple transformation of ingredients into meals. There was no excess, no waste, just the honest work of feeding a family. Everything changed when she moved to San Francisco to study at the Art Institute in 2014. Working across oil painting, sculptural ceramics, and photography, Rokas discovered vintage 1970s recipe cards—artifacts from when convenience promised freedom but delivered exhaustion. “Abundance doesn’t mean when something is unlimited, it’s positive,” Rokas explains. “There’s a range within what is actually good for you. Abundance can be over the top.” Her paintings excavate a uniquely American paradox: when having too much became its own form of deprivation. These recipe cards document an era when women could make anything from convenience foods, but still had to make everything to prove their worth. The tension is built into her source material: Betty Crocker promised indulgence; Weight Watchers preached restriction. Rokas paints the precise moment when abundance becomes anxiety, which is why her work commands our cover. She’s captured the tension of our theme: how plenty can become a prison, and how having everything can mean having nothing at all. Here, Rokas tells us about painting the feast that eats itself. The Weight Of Excess In the following pages we explore how abundance (in food, in choice, and in access) can become its own form of deprivation. From Rokas’ painted warnings to San Francisco’s restaurant paradoxes, these stories reveal what happens when plenty becomes pressure. PAINTING the TENSION Laura Rokas transforms vintage recipe cards into art that questions what abundance really means Writer—Melody Saradpon Photos—Melody Saradpon/Christopher Grunder ON THE COVER 2 1 3 2
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