In this special episode, we sit down with Kat Johnson, Heritage Radio Network’s Communications Director, to talk about the current state of HRN, the decision to close the studio and how the community is adapting. She shares some keen insights on both logistic and content shifts, along how the network is helping provide information and entertainment for listeners at home. Also, like many other food focused businesses, HRN needs support in many ways right now, including financial. If you are able ...
Mar 22, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 433
In this special edition of Snacky Tunes, we chat with Helen Rosner, food correspondent for the New Yorker (who is also covering the developing Coronavirus story), and Royce Burke, chef / owner of Secret Lasagna. In both deep-dive conversations, we discuss the current state of the restaurant industry, along with other food businesses, and how they are being effected by the current pandemic. We also chat about what people can help both short term and long term, how food journalism is shifting and ...
Mar 18, 2020•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 432
Carrying the torch for the ultimate neighborhood restaurant, Minh Phan is the owner and chef of Porridge + Puffs in LA’s Historic Filipinotown. Nourishing everyone who comes through her doors, Minh talks about her journey, the beauty of a porridge canvas and celebrating the solo diner. We dig deep into the archives for a classic performance from Sudanese-American, multi-genre virtuoso, Sinkane . Check out Sinkane’s latest album, Dépaysé. Snacky Tunes is powered by Simplecast . See Privacy Poli...
Mar 15, 2020•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 431
Since making its debut in 2016 in Downtown Los Angeles, Sonoratown has been wowing everyone with its chargrilled carne asada tacos, perfectly sized chivichangas and what have become widely regarded as the best flour tortillas in the city. With a feature on Netflix’s Taco Chronicles , and a No. 5 ranking on the Los Angeles Times’ annual “101 Best Restaurants” list, Sonoratown now routinely has customers lined up down the block. Co-owners Jennifer Feltham & Teodoro Diaz-Rodriguez, Jr. sit down...
Mar 08, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 430
Kyle Glanville and Charles Babinski have spent most of their adult lives entrenched in the coffee business. They each even hold United States Barista Championship titles. The duo started G&B Coffee as a pop-up at Los Angeles’ super popular Sqirl back in 2012. They opened a permanent location of G&B at Grand Central Market the next year, and shortly after they launched the first of their now seven Go Get Em Tiger cafes. This caffeinated pair show no signs of slowing down, and we caught up...
Mar 01, 2020•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 429
Keegan Fong started Woon as a family run pop-up in order to share his mother’s (Mama Fong) home-cooked Chinese comfort food. Over the years, the audience had grown so much for Woon’s menu of Shanghainese and Cantonese dishes that the Fong family opened a brick-and-mortar space in Los Angeles Historic Filipinotown. PowerSnap are a Brooklyn garage punk band by way of Tel Aviv. The trio stopped into our Bushwick studio in 2018 to talk about growing up with musician fathers, reflected on their 12-ye...
Feb 23, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 428
Since opening in fall 2019, Found Oyster has quickly become a popular and welcomed addition to Los Angeles’ booming restaurant scene. At this narrow jewel box of a space in East Hollywood, co-owner and chef, Ari Kolender, and his partners Joe Laraja and Adam Weissblatt spin great records, pour natural wines and put up an array of seafood specialties mostly inspired by the East Coast--including bivalves from Joe’s own family oyster farm in Massachusetts. The trio have been packing them in since t...
Feb 16, 2020•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 427
We first met Yia Vang back in 2018. At the time, the St. Paul, MN, chef was garnering wide attention and acclaim for Union Kitchen, a pop-up restaurant specializing in his native Hmong cuisine. Yia’s back to tell us all about his dream to build Vinai , a brick-and-mortar restaurant that will serve as the permanent home for his family-inspired Hmong cooking. We also dive deep into our archives to our early days in 2009 and revisit an in-studio performance from Brooklyn band, Tijuana. Snacky Tunes...
Feb 09, 2020•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 426
Jenn Harris is one of the most prominent and respected voices in L.A.’s vibrant food scene. She’s a senior writer for the Los Angeles Times , and is also the Southland’s unofficial fried chicken queen. Jenn usually eats fried chicken every day, and she explores the dish’s power as a cultural unifier in the new online series, The Bucket List . We drop into our archives and revisit 2011. That March at SXSW, we caught an incredible show from Los Angeles indie rockers, Hands . Eleven months later th...
Jan 26, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 425
The name Zabar is legendary in New York City, evoking images of smoked fish, baked goods and gourmet groceries. Oliver and Sasha Zabar join us to talk about continuing and evolving their family’s legacy. The brothers own and operate Devon , a cocktail bar in the LES that features food and drink made with ingredients sourced from their family-run rooftop greenhouse on the Upper East Side. Feminist punk duo, True Dreams, make their return to the show. Since we last met up with them, best friends a...
Jan 19, 2020•59 min•Ep. 424
We open 2020 with an all Brooklyn show. Josh Emett is a Michelin-starred chef whose career has spanned London, New York City, Los Angeles and Melbourne. He’s also an author, and his latest work is The Recipe , a compendium of 300 classic recipes collected from such legendary chefs as Daniel Boulud, Dominique Ansel and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Singer-songwriter Mia Gladstone joins us in the studio, and performs her special blend of pop, R&B and jazz for us. Her debut EP, Grow , earned high ...
Jan 19, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 423
As 2019 draws to a close, we meet up with our good pal, Chef Royce Burke of Secret Lasagna fame, at one of Los Angeles’ most anticipated restaurants of the year, All Day Baby . We take a look back on the last 12 months and all the ups, the downs, the old, the new and the key players that made L.A.’s dining scene so exciting. In keeping with the themes of reflection and Los Angeles, we pull from our archives the first-ever live music recording we did at the Silver Lake studios of Dangerbird Recor...
Dec 15, 2019•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 422
We connect with Paulina Escanes, chef-owner of the critically acclaimed San Juan, Puerto Rico, restaurant Paulina Escanes Gourmandize . Paulina hails from Guadalajara, Mexico, where she was instilled with an early love of good eating having been raised in a family of gourmands. A longtime resident of Puerto Rico, she stepped into the restaurant business first as a baker before eventually opening her eponymous restaurant in 2018, where she serves an eclectic menu influenced by her upbringing, wor...
Dec 01, 2019•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 420
For decades, Lincoln Carson has been one of the most respected pastry chefs in the industry. During his illustrious career, Lincoln’s worked with such notable names as Eric Ripert, Daniel Boulud and Michael Mina. He’s now tackling both savory and sweet, and lining up a long queue of diners, at his critically acclaimed brasserie, Bon Temps , in Downtown Los Angeles’ Arts District. We then cruise up the 101 to meet up with our good pals at Silver Lake’s Dangerbird Records who give us another insta...
Nov 24, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 419
It’s a special episode of Snacky Tunes Live recorded at House of Vans Philadelphia. Joining us for a roundtable chat are local heroes Hop Along, Emily Kovach and Pete Angevine. Hop Along makes rock music, which includes the album, Bark Your Head Off, Dog . Emily’s the co-owner of and wine buyer for the popular bar and restaurant, The Lunar Inn , and Tinys Bottle Shop in Port Richmond. Pete’s the co-founder and CEO of Little Baby's Ice Cream , a small-batch, hand-made, ice cream and non-dairy fro...
Nov 17, 2019•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 418
We meet up with Chef Sean Brock at the ArcLight Cinemas Hollywood during the West Coast swing of the tour for his latest cookbook, South: Essential Recipes and New Explorations . For the past 20 years, Sean’s been exploring, archiving and championing the cuisine of the American South. He shares with us his passion for the ingredients, history and distinct cooking techniques of his native home region, and debunks the outdated, monolithic notions of what makes up Southern food. We dip into our arc...
Nov 10, 2019•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 417
Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in fall 2017. The category 5 storm tore buildings apart and flooded everything, wreaking havoc that the island and its inhabitants are still recovering from today. We connect with celebrated chef and native son, Jose Enrique , at the third annual Culinary Getaway, hosted at Dorado Beach , a Ritz Carlton Reserve . Jose, who despite losing the roof, the windows and the power to his widely acclaimed eponymous restaurant in San Juan during the storm, reopened h...
Nov 03, 2019•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 416
Lucas Kwan Peterson introduces us to his new Los Angeles Times Food show “Off Menu.” Traversing L.A. with a camera in tow, Lucas meets up with some of the city’s most notable restaurateurs, and gets an in-depth look at their careers, their lives and their cultures. We visit our archives and pull out a performance from Los Angeles-born-and-bred singer-songwriter Billy Uomo. Check out his latest EP, “All Trash No Love.” Join Heritage Radio Network on Monday, November 11th, for a raucous feast to t...
Oct 27, 2019•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 415
It’s a special episode of the show recorded live at Los Angeles’ must-visit culinary bookstore, Now Serving . Our guest is a longtime friend of ours who’s making her first appearance on the Tunes: Bonnie Morales, chef / co-owner of Portland’s renowned Russian restaurant, Kachka . In addition to our interview, check out Bonnie’s cookbook, Kachka: A Return to Russian Cooking , and her Snacky Tunes Chef Music Monday playlist in which she shares her favorite hits from the likes of Alla Pugachova and...
Oct 20, 2019•59 min•Ep. 414
We’re in London to meet up with world-famous experimental psychologist Professor Charles Spence, founder of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University . Professor Spence specializes in neuroscience-inspired multisensory design, and has extensively researched how the background sounds and music that happens to be playing in bars, restaurants and cafes biases what customers choose to purchase, order, and/or consume, not to mention what they...
Oct 13, 2019•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 413
From 1972 until its closing in 1983, Todd Barkan’s Keystone Korner in San Francisco was widely considered to be one of the world’s top jazz venues. The club played host to a slew of live performances from such legends as Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis and Betty Carter. Todd is a renowned jazz producer and impresario, earning a prized NEA Jazz Masters fellowship in 2018. Chef Robert Wiedmaier was born in Germany and trained in Belgium and the Netherlands. He landed in the D.C. area in the ...
Oct 06, 2019•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 412
Critically acclaimed Portland, OR, restaurant Bullard is named after Doug Adams’ hometown in East Texas. The James Beard-nominated chef calls the restaurant’s cuisine “Tex-Oregana,” which is to say Pacific Northwest ingredients combined with Tex-Mex spirit. Bullard’s located in the Woodlark Hotel where Doug also bakes up kolaches at Good Coffee . In keeping things West Coast, we tucked into our archives and our recordings at Dangerbird Records’ studio in Los Angeles for a look-back listen to sin...
Sep 29, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 411
Dave Beran’s our guest for this entire episode. He burst onto the national culinary scene as the Executive Chef of Grant Achatz’s high-flying, concept and genre-bending Chicago restaurant, Next . His work at Next’s stoves earned him all kinds of accolades--including a James Beard Award--so it was a bit of a surprise in 2016 when Dave announced he was leaving for Los Angeles. The following year he opened his first-ever restaurant, Dialogue . The 18-seat tasting menu restaurant lives in a former f...
Sep 22, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 410
At her Michelin-starred restaurant Elizabeth in Chicago, Chef Iliana Regan has been stunning diners with her modern and soulful midwestern-inspired fare. Her cooking is rooted into the flavors she learned both growing and foraging ingredients on her family’s small farm in Northwest Indiana. In her new deeply candid memoir, Burn the Place, Iliana chronicles her less-than-conventional life’s journey. We’re joined once again by longtime friend of the Tunes, folk singer-songwriter Fletcher C Johnson...
Sep 15, 2019•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 409
Ben Hundreds, co-founder of famed L.A. streetwear brand The Hundreds , gives us the download on his latest creative endeavor, the Family Style Food Festival , which hits on Sept. 15 at Television City. He described it to us as, “A day where we’re going to collide streetwear and food.” The upcoming fete features the combined talents of restaurants such as Jon & Vinny’s , Secret Lasagna , Felix and Howlin’ Ray’s , and artists, brands and designers like Verdy , James Jean , Mr. Cartoon and Chin...
Sep 08, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 408
We open the show in Lima, Peru, with legendary chef Virgilio Martínez. He’s redefined the cuisine of his homeland by diving deep into the country’s incredibly diverse ecosystems and indigenous ingredients. He’s served potatoes that only grow thousands of feet above sea level, unleashed the flavors of wild varieties of quinoa and amaranth seed and even used kushuru, an edible cyanobacteria harvested in high-altitude wetlands. His flagship Central Restaurante is one of the most acclaimed and groun...
Aug 18, 2019•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 407
It’s an all Eastside L.A. episode. We open in Echo Park with Chefs Akira Akuto and Nick Montgomery, owners of the hit Japanese sandwich shop Konbi . The two longtime friends and restaurant industry vets opened the daytime restaurant in fall of 2018, and it instantly gained critical notoriety and a cult following for its katsu and egg salad sandos . Our good pals at Silver Lake’s Dangerbird Records give us an up-close look and listen to their Microdose single series with dream pop upstarts Mirror...
Aug 11, 2019•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 406
In 2006, Ed Levine was a 54-year-old freelance food writer who wanted control of his own professional life. He took to the internet, created a blog and called it Serious Eats . Unbeknownst to Ed he had launched what would become one of the most respected and most oved food sites in America. Ed’s chronicled the entire surprising and wild journey in his new book Serious Eater: A Food Lover’s Perilous Quest for Pizza and Redemption . In January 2013, we met with Brianna Lance, Savannah King, Lyla V...
Aug 04, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 405
Christian Page is the chef / co-owner of one of Los Angeles’ most iconic lunch counters and burger joints, Cassell’s Hamburgers . Originally opened in 1948, Cassell’s rose to wide acclaim before shuttering in 2012. Christian and his partner Jingbo Lou resurrected the brand in late 2014 in the Hotel Normandie--they now have a second location in DTLA--and began once again slinging some of the best burgers and patty melts in the country. We return to Dangerbird Records ’ studio in LA, and things ge...
Jul 28, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 404
In 2015, Chef Rene Redzepi made the surprise announcement that he was shuttering his venerated Copenhagen restaurant Noma to search for new inspirations in hopes of finding reinvention. He reopened in 2018, but only after years of hopscotching the globe--Australia, Japan, Mexico and more--learning new tricks and running dining pop-ups. Acclaimed food and drinks scribe Jeff Gordinier, whose own life coincidentally was at a crossroads, tagged along and chronicled this four-year quest in the brand ...
Jul 07, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 403
