You may remember Luke Matheny from the 2011 Academy Awards, when he won for Best Live Action Short and said: "Uh, I should've gotten a haircut." Since then, Luke's gone on to direct ten episodes of Marc Maron's Maron and to be the showrunner of Gortimer Gibbon's Life on Normal Street. Today's session is a surprisingly emotional one: we cover the night of the Oscars, why he thinks cheesesteaks are the most delicious of all meals, his relationship to authority, rushing his son to the emergency roo...
Jan 06, 2020•1 hr 5 min
Ben Mims is a cooking columnist for the L.A. Times, a cookbook author (Air Fry Every Day), the former Test Kitchen Director of Lucky Peach magazine, and a former food editor at both Saveur and Food & Wine. In today's session, we cover Ben's childhood in Mississippi, his unwillingness to mix sweet and savory, why he loathes lettuce, and how he went to culinary school to become a food writer. We also discuss the link between his coming out and his distaste for pork tenderloin, the hazing he en...
Dec 30, 2019•1 hr 2 min
Rachel Shukert is one of the funniest writers I know -- she's written books, plays, recaps of Smash for Vulture -- and now she's an accomplished TV writer, having worked on shows like GLOW and the upcoming Babysitter's Club, for which she was the showrunner. Today's session (which came after her real therapy session) covers Rachel's ambivalence towards cooking, her butcher grandfather and vegetarian parents, her two year-old's attitude towards food ("Eating, yuck!"), and what it was like growing...
Dec 23, 2019•1 hr 4 min
Zach Brooks is the founder of Midtown Lunch, an iconic food blog that helped people working in midtown Manhattan find a decent place to eat back in the early aughts. Since then, he's hosted the super successful podcast "Food is the New Rock" and become the general manager of Smorgasburg L.A. During today's session, we find out why asking about his lunch is "too dark," what the meal was that inspired him to start his blog, and why he thinks the late, great Jonathan Gold hated him. We also cover "...
Dec 16, 2019•1 hr 15 min
Punam Patel is the Emmy-nominated co-star of Netflix's "Special" -- she's also appeared on "Kevin From Work" and "I Feel Bad" -- and on today's Lunch Therapy she declares, right out of the gate: "I am food." Hear all about her two-part lunch (three-part, if you include the apple cider doughnut), her trip to Spain, her exercise lunches vs. her no-exercise lunches, and her dad's famous meat curry that she can no longer eat (she's a pescatarian). We also talk about her dieting up through her thirti...
Dec 09, 2019•1 hr 9 min
James Rich grew up on a cider farm in Somerset, England, so it shouldn't be a surprise that he just wrote a cookbook called "Apple: Recipes from the Orchard." In today's session, James talks about getting engaged to his fiancé Pip in Palm Springs, how Yotam Ottolenghi was involved in their initial meeting, and why he's not eligible to go on The Great British Baking Show. We also get into the various breeds of apples, how cider is actually made, leaving Somerset for Barcelona and London, and how ...
Dec 02, 2019•1 hr 12 min
Karley Sciortino is the hilarious creator of the blog Slutever, which is now a TV show in its second season on Vice; she's also the sex and dating columnist for Vogue Magazine. On today's episode, we talk about the relationship between food and sex, how Karley differentiated from her food-loving family, and the journey she's gone on with her body image (it involves TJ Maxx and TCBY). We also cover her time living as a freegan in a London squat, why she refuses to eat tongue, and the most surpris...
Nov 25, 2019•1 hr 9 min
Remember the name Lewaa Nasserdeen: if he's not running Hollywood in ten years, I'll tear up my lunch therapy license! I met Lewaa when we were both staff writers on ABC's The Real O'Neals and since then he's been a writer/co-producer on Netflix's Daredevil, starred in his own pilot, acted on NCIS: New Orleans, and gotten an overall deal at Skydance TV (where's he developing all kinds of original content). In today's session, we talk about growing up Lebanese in Alberta, Canada, where his mother...
Nov 18, 2019•1 hr 8 min
You've been smitten with her since the early 2000s, and today Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen is my patient on Lunch Therapy. We talk everything from her efforts to recreate the brown bread she ate in Ireland, whether or not she's the heir to Ina Garten, and how her German-Jewish mother found salt and pepper to be "edgy." We also cover her brief career as an art therapist, what it means to have a food blog in 2019, and how she deals with people feeling like they know her. See acast.com/privacy f...
Nov 11, 2019•1 hr 16 min
Mark Harris is the celebrated author of Pictures at the Revolution and Five Came Back, as well as a journalist for The New York Times, The Guardian, and Vanity Fair (for which he's covering the Oscars this year). In today's session, Mark talks about whether great food can rise to the level of great art, the truth about his typical day-to-day lunch journey, his favorite cookbooks, his favorite recipes, and how he and his husband (Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner) offer feedback when the ...
Nov 04, 2019•1 hr 8 min
Melissa Clark is one of the most prolific food writers working today: she's the author of 43 cookbooks, as well as a weekly columnist for The New York Times AND a new podcast host ("Weeknight Kitchen with Melissa Clark"). She also turns out to be the perfect Lunch Therapy guest because both of her parents are psychiatrists. During today's session, we talk about how she comes up with a recipe, how she empowers people to have "personal responsibility in cooking," how she deals with criticism onlin...
Oct 28, 2019•1 hr 5 min
The man, the myth, the legend: David Lebovitz himself is this week's Lunch Therapy patient! The author of The Sweet Life in Paris, L'Appart, My Paris Kitchen, and The Perfect Scoop, David generously met with me when I was in New York and filled in the blanks about his life before he moved to France: his childhood in Connecticut, his years as a film student at Ithica (making doorknob slasher films), working at the Cabbagetown Cafe, traveling through Europe, and arriving in San Francisco just as i...
Oct 21, 2019•1 hr 2 min
Christine Vachon is one of the most celebrated producers in the world of film and if I told you some of the movies she's made, your head would spin: Carol, Still Alice, Far From Heaven, Happiness, Velvet Goldmine, Kids, Boys Don't Cry, I Shot Andy Warhol, Craig's favorite movie ("Safe" by Todd Haynes) and one of my favorite movies ("Hedwig and the Angry Inch" by John Cameron Mitchell). On today's podcast, find out what she eats for lunch, what she considers the cinematic equivalent of a chicken ...
Oct 14, 2019•58 min
In 2008, The New York Times named Jeremy Fox's restaurant Ubuntu (in the Napa Valley) the second best restaurant in the United States. On today's Lunch Therapy, you'll learn how the pressure of that led Fox to leave the restaurant, re-examine his life, and to start all over again in Los Angeles, where he now runs three restaurants: Rustic Canyon (where my husband and I got engaged!), Tallulah's, and the newly opened Birdie G's. We also cover how he comes up with his novel food ideas (see: white ...
Oct 07, 2019•1 hr 2 min
Batten down the hatches: today's Lunch Therapy guest is none other than... my mother! Yes, Heidi Roberts is visiting from Boca Raton, Florida and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to put her in the Lunch Therapy chair. We talk everything from cruises to diners to Weight Watchers to selling pickles with her mother at the Roosevelt Field Flea Market. We also get into more emotional territory towards the end (though we did have some technical difficulties; don't worry, you can still hear everythin...
Sep 30, 2019•1 hr 3 min
If I told you that there's a person who's not only written for 30 Rock, but also for The Comeback and The Larry Sanders Show, you'd say: "Such a person couldn't exist! Those are three of the greatest comedies of all time." Well such a person DOES exist and his name is John Riggi. In today's session, John talks about his mother's Italian restaurant in Cincinnati, Ohio, the link between comedy writing and cooking, feeding the 30 Rock writer's room on the Chopped set, connecting with his Italian ro...
Sep 23, 2019•1 hr 3 min
Marquita Robinson is a super successful TV writer working in L.A. (Blackish, GLOW, You're The Worst) and in today's session we journey back with her to her childhood on an Air Force base in Okinawa, Japan. We talk everything from You've Got Mail ("That caviar is a garnish!"), switching from Morton's to Diamond Crystal, her parents' love for Teriyaki sauce, the family's move to the Azores, Taco Rice, and what it's like to experience America America for the first time. Also: I make a joke so bad, ...
Sep 16, 2019•1 hr 3 min
Bill Addison is the James Beard award-winning food critic for the Los Angeles Times and, in today's session, we go deep into his past, Ratatouille-style, and learn about his formative restaurant experiences (he still remembers the name of the waiter!), his obsession with Lebanese food, his capacity for self-criticism, and his mother's potato rolls. We also talk about his writing technique, L.A. as the greatest food city in America, and why he gets so mad when a restaurant sends over a free dish....
Sep 09, 2019•1 hr 3 min
Carey O'Donnell is a comedy writer for TV (Billy On The Street, Heathers, Summer Camp Island) and a hilarious presence on Twitter (@ecareyo), where he brilliantly satirizes popular culture. Today's session starts lightly enough: we talk about his artist boyfriend, the Parmesan soup they eat together, growing up a swimmer, outside Philadelphia, with his mom cooking him breakfast at 4 AM. Then we get deep: talking about his struggles with addiction, his recovery, and how the whole journey may have...
Sep 03, 2019•1 hr 4 min
The author of Dappled: Baking Recipes for Fruit Lovers, and the four-time blue-ribbon winner of KCRW's Good Food Pie Contest, comes to Lunch Therapy headquarters on the heels of announcing her departure from the bakery she founded, Fiona. We get into the emotions of that -- at the time of her lunch therapy session, the news hadn't gone public yet -- and then we explore the path she took to become a celebrated baker (not, as she points out, a pastry chef). We also cover baloney burritos, the waln...
Aug 26, 2019•1 hr 2 min
The actor (Atypical, Murphy Brown, Alex Strangelove) and stand-up comedian (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert) reports on his lunch with surprising specificity, confesses to his nickname growing up ("Picky Nicky"), sings the praises of his mother's Indian cooking, and revisits the period when he gave it all up for Lunchables. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, ...
Aug 19, 2019•1 hr 2 min
The co-showrunner of HBO's Girls confesses her true feelings about eating lunch, weighs her reasons for weighing burgers, menu-plans her upcoming nuptials based on the food at her favorite restaurant, and turns the tables on her lunch therapist, advising him on how to loosen up in order to throw the perfect Sunday afternoon dinner gathering. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to b...
Aug 12, 2019•1 hr 5 min
The Emmy-nominated star and creator of Netflix's Special walks us through his salad at Sweetgreen and along the way revisits traumatic lunches from childhood (room temp Taco Bell), Zagat adventures with his dad, and what he'd order if he could have any lunch in the world. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amateurgourmet.substack.com/subscribe Hosted on Ac...
Jul 28, 2019•1 hr 4 min
