Fab Food with New York Times Food critic Florence Fabricant

I'm maybe a natural journalist because I'm a really died in the little skeptic.

I've got to prove it to myself. Hello everyone, Today we have a very interesting guest. Florence Fabricant, also known as flow Fab, is the longest running writer in the New York Times Food section. She is the longest running amongst the talented team of food writers at the New York Times. Her weekly columns Front Burner and Off the Menu explore the new and interesting in the culinary world. She also writes the Pairings column that appears alongside the

And I wonder what year we first met. You're nineteen seventy seven. Okay, so well that was in Westport. What was I doing catering in a store at my little store? Right? We have friends in reading who gave me a heads up about it?

Oh they did, yeah, oh nice? And there she is, the intrepid reporter coming out from New York to do Westport, Connecticut. But that wasn't so far and Westport was like the hotbed at that time of all kinds of great things. Paul Newman was our favorite. Robert Redford would come and visit, and we had an awfully good time there in Westport, Connecticut. And that's where I really started my catering business and started writing books when I started entering the Florence fabricant world.

Yes, the difference between that one, I mean until that book, more or less. There was another one before, but it was kind of drab. But until that book, it was the first sort of real color photograph professional cookbook. Prior to that, they were these spiral bound jobs that had been done starting in the log I don't know, sometime one hundred years old.

That was tradition for all these Ladies clubs to have that spiral bound. I have many of those from all kinds of times at all, and I love them. Every now and then you find a recipe that becomes part of your repertoire, and I just love them so much. And I wrote the Heather Kirkland, who is my producer on this podcast, look at this giant pile of papers about you, Florence. She included my forward to that book.

I think one of the reasons it was founded was because they decided that the village needed sidewalks, and they were the ones that pushed that campaign and at.

The same time put those sidewalks over the roots of the elm trees and didn't hurt the elm trees because they are still alive and well, towering over those beautiful shady streets. And I love that town. It is, of all the Hamptons, I think the most beautiful Hampton. Yah.

It's also in many ways the most diverse in terms of the culture and the art scene and so forth.

Yeah, and Florence lives not far from where I lived. But what did you learn about food out into the Hamptons.

I learned really the difference between fresh picked in grocery store fresh picked in supermarket.

Because of all the farm stands.

Yeah, well, that's why I started writing about food. It would drive me crazy to see people buying the supermarket tomatoes that were pale pink in July when their neighbor probably had a pile of freshly picked from their garden on a car table in their front yard and a jar for the money, right, And it really was something that would I felt I needed a megaphone because so that's.

Really really what started you. Yeah, oh yeah, I decided, I mean I was. It's complicated, but you know, well it had a very good education. She went to college Phi Beta Kappa. You have garnered many, many honors in the culinary world, which are very impressive. But to find out that your love of food and your intent to write about food came from that is very interesting and very telling.

I mean, I grew up, grew up in a household with parents who were foodies at a time when they were not, and my mother was a superb cook. In fact, a year ago Mother's Day I did a story about her and her recipes and what I learned from her. What was her favorite recipe, Well, it was a recipe for lambshanks that she got from a restaurant that no longer exists. I think it was in the East thirties called Balkan Armenian Bulkan Armenia.

I ate there. I loved Armenian food, Oh my.

Gosh, with green peppers and red peppers and onions and nice.

Yeah.

Well, the way I wrote the story was, I said, every time I sliced onions, I think of my mother, and it's not because she makes me cry. It's because she's onions so carefully, and that's I learned that from her.

Well, I think a lot of what you wrote about about the freshness of food and the importance of using fresh ingredients not just supermarket ingredients, really encourage a lot of people to start their backyard gardens. Also, well, you're much more of a gardener than I was. I'm a serious, serious vest gardener now and I am harvesting today. You would be so happy to see my solariac. I grew solariacs this big this year and pure white inside. They

Yeah? OK, and then I have a graduate degree in French.

No.

My love of food I grew up with it. I can remember being very young, for or five years old and we'd go to a Chinese restaurant and it was very important to me to get the amount of soy sauce that I put in my egg drop so just right. It had to be the right color, and I worked at it, and I can remember that as of being a very young child. I can remember hating a kind of pudding cold junket.

I hated it. Oh, junket. I actually liked junket that came out of a package. Yeah, And that was kind of liked it because we were not allowed very much sugar in our family, so every now and then if we had something like the chocolate putting out of a box or a junket, it was kind of a treat. But I agree with you right now, I couldn't. I couldn't eat that. If you see.

I remember the first time I ever had pecan pie. I think it was at a White Turkey in Midtown Manhattan, and I was fascinated when I guess it was the waiter or the chef, because I wanted to know how it was made. I probably was ten years old or some and how you start with all of the nuts and the filling mixed together, but the nuts rise to the top and make their own crust, so to speak. I thought that I had to go home and make one, because I couldn't believe that that's how it happened.

Besides your parents, who really influenced the way you thought about food.

I had an aunt who was more like a grandmother to me. My mother's oldest sister was also a very good cook. Later on, I devoured what I could read in the New York Times at Gourmet magazine, and and then my parents we would go to the top restaurants. We lived in Westchester, but we'd go to the theater, and beforehand the routine was to go have dinner at the Algonquin, and I remember they they did a chicken underglass.

I loved going to the Algonquin. That was really quite a treat. What about le Vaudor do you remember that? I do? Oh, and did you go there for escargo? Yeah? I remember taking my very young daughter in the nineteen late six I guess like nineteen sixty eight or nine or something, and she loved Escargo even as a very young young child. Where else did you eat you well.

I can remember my father taking me to Chamboard and they had all the different sized champagne bottles in the window.

Such a beautiful place.

And I wouldn't go into the restaurant until he gave me the names of all those. But you know the Nebeka Nezzar and the Jeriphone and the Ralphazar.

Those are so beautiful. And then the kitchen there, do you remember the kitchen was open to the seating area to the restaurant with those copper pots and pants hanging. I love that restaurant. Yeah.

My father would take me to Dominic's on Arthur Avenue because my mother hated it. Oh, so he would haul me up down there, and oh, my father would.

My father would take me to Chinatown and we would eat Chinese food, or to Houston Street so we could go to Rustling Daughters in those places. I remember going to Luchow's, Oh yes, remember Luchaus, Oh my gosh, and Rubens for apple pancakes on fifty eighth Street after the theater. So you began writing about food for the Easthampton Star in nineteen seventy two. Why did you start there?

Well, as I say, I thought I needed a megaphone to I mean, I had friends who I was the one They always asked where who's got the best?

But were you married then? Oh yeah, oh yeah, you're married. Okay, what year did you get married? Nineteen sixty? Oh I got sixty one. I got married. Florence is still married to her same husband, same husband, and I am not. And your daughter actually designs some of people.

Sign the lviis, Oh yeah, we've done six cookbooks together.

Oh great, Oh great, so she's a graphic designer. Yeah. What newspapers in nineteen seventy two are looking for a food writer?

Well, the Easthampton Star wasn't looking for a food writer. And it never occurred to me to be a food writer as a full time career. I was debating whether to go to law school, and I mean I was out of college. I had worked in market research and advertising straight out of college because it was the only job I could get that didn't require me to be a secretary. I tried to find something using my wrench

This is the Easthampton Star, which is such a charming newspaper. So what did he say?

He said, write a sample. I said how many words? And he said four hundred? And it took me two weeks.

I mean, what was it? What was the first column? Tomatoes? Uh? Huh.

But I have to say, you know today I could write back column in the shower of words.

Of course, Well you get practic. Practice makes perfect.

And I said to myself, if he agrees to pay me, I'll do it. And I started doing it, and within six months I was getting assignments from the Time.

So there you have it. So they found you there. Yeah, and you've been writing for the Times ever since. Yeah. It's a fantastic career. And very few people stay at such a job for that long and a mass such a wide audience. Because you have a very wide audience, you have made a tremendous mark in the world of food, and the chef better platform, and chefs love you. It's no better platform in my view than the New York Times. End of story.

I could possibly be a blogger today and make a ton of money, but it's not where my head is.

Yeah, I agree. I read that. It's the first thing I do in the morning when I wake up. When I woke up and I read the New York Times cover to cover on my iPad. Today is Wednesday food, although the food articles come out online like the day before or the day before that.

Actually the non alcoholic line story was first published on and I think Thursday. The thing about the Times is number one, it's run by it's owned by people who believe in journalism number one and number two, there is integrity, and I appreciate that.

Who was at the food section when you started there in.

Nineteen eighty, Well, Jeene Hewitt was there. Oh, I love Jeane Hewitt, mem Memi.

Sheraton, uh, Marion Burrows, Marion Burroughs, Moira Hodgson, Frank Prile, every name very very familiar to those of us who really did read The New York Times. Yeah, whose restaurant reviews. Did you like the best?

That's an interesting question. I would say maybe Craig Oh.

Remember, oh, I'd loved him.

Was there when I was there? Yeah, because he kind of set a standard. And what I so admire about him is that the restaurant reviews were not about him, That's right. They were about the food. He wanted to communicate with an audience, and his opinions were important, and he believed what he believed, but it was not He was never a grandstand show off.

You're right, you're right, and that was And so you got to know him, Yes, I did you out in the Hamptons. Yeah. It was so exciting to get to know Craig Clayborne, whose books I loved and whose own recipes I liked so much. Ye too, Yeah, I remember going to one party with him and James Beard, so extraordinary. What are some of the stories that help you build your presence in the New York Times? Do you remember the different stories.

I'll give you a really to me kind of a benchmark. I got an assignment from the magazine some I don't know. I guess it was in the mid eighties to write about one restaurant west of the Mississippi one restaurant. Brian Miller was going to write about one restaurant east of the Mississippi, and he opted to write about the rhine Beck Inn. I forget who was the chef there at

And I never heard from him until he opened. You did not hear he did this. Matsuhisa is the formal name of Nobu the great chef Nobu Matsuhisa.

And his first restaurant was matiz Yes, it was on Losienica, so It wasn't. It wasn't a pretty restaurant. It was very very simple.

Sort of in a strip. It's enlarged greatly and they have that huge parking lot on the side and they and during COVID they covered that over and people ate up so well.

Fast forward to opening Nobu in Manhattan and Robert de Niro and uh Drew and so forth, and Nobu was there and when he met me, he said, you know, I never thanked you.

For writing about Matsu. I said, that's okay. I must say. I am a big fan of Nobu and what he's done for Japanese cuisine in America, bringing it from Japan to Peru and then to New York. I had a wonderful, wonderful book launch party there, I think for my weddings book, and he was charming. If there's a Nobu, I go and visit. I was in I think maybe it was Saudi Arabian. I went to a Nobu. Wow, he's all

A lot of it devoted to video, because video and photographs and all of that is what drives eyeballs to the website.

Yes, it's very important. In your New York Times column front Burner, you review new foods, food stores, cooking products. What do you look for in products and places that you select?

Well, the column is evolved over the years, and the mandate for the past several years has been new products, new stores, new people, new events, and so forth, which is extremely helpful for me because it helps me narrow down what I'm writing about, because otherwise I'd go nuts.

How many objects do you get a week to review? Well, I always get a lot. I only get what I want, Okay. The percentage of the times people send their things to people.

Do send stuff, but I've tried to limit that down to almost zero because I don't want stuff that I haven't requested and I'm not interested.

I see. So, what are three products in the last in twenty twenty three that you would highly recommend to someone like me or anybody, any reader.

Well, the line of you know, there are a million chili crists now. And I got a new chili crisp pitched like every single day, No thank you, but the line by this company, fly by Jing, I haven't seen that. I like what she does. It just came out with a chili crisp. It's different because it has pumpkin seeds and things like that, so it's crunchier and I really like that.

Oh okay, And then what else?

I got samples of these baked goods from Alexis Gamblin, who's French and he just started this company che Tonton, and he does a very interesting take on a pecan pie, which is not a filling in a crust, but it's more like a short red crust. It's a very short pastry with the pecan filling running through it, and then the top surface have glazed pecans all over it, and then he does a little cookie versions of those. He calls them little cakes, and I think that those are

So if you want to know the latest and the best, read the Wednesday edition of The New York Times Florence fabricat. So, how has your audience changed or has it? When The Times moved much of the food content but behind a paywall, because now you know, you go to find a recipe and it's so you have to join the New.

York Well, there there are two kinds of paywalls. Is the paywall for subscribers, yes, which is expensive. The subscriptions of The Times online is very expensive. The cooking website Cooking dot n lie Times dot com. If you're not a subscriber, is a separate paywall, right and you could subscribe just to that. Yes, and I think it's been successful.

I mean, the oh, it must be if you have one hundred employees working in there.

The digital keep subscribing, the numbers keep going up and up and up. And the other thing, the other discovery, if you want to talk about discoveries, is I've been following that's non alcoholic lime seeing. Yes, I was just going to ask you about that very I mean, I had a big story recommending whites and reds for Thanksgiving, and the whites are the best ones. In the beginning were the sparklers. Sparklers because the carbonation sort of compensates very nicely for the lack of alcohol.

But the whites have.

Been getting better and better, and now the reds are coming along. I think they need they need work.

Still.

There are a couple that have appealed to me. Beers are amazing, And what shocks me is that more restaurants are not putting them on their list, putting you know, they have them by the glass, Let people buy a bottle. The nice thing about non alcoholic wine forgetting everything else is you can enjoy it at lunch regardless of your attitude exactly.

But it's the best variety. Can you make some suggestions for not all well?

I tend to prefer varietals. There are companies that do non alcoholic wines that are concoctions with tea and not using wine as the base, that try and mimic wine, and I haven't found much that appeals to it. So how is a non alcoholic wine made well? There are several methods. One is through. They can use a centrifuge, They can use reverse osmosis. There different techniques that are used to get the alcohol out, to take the alcohol

So what you see happening in food right now that you find so exciting.

Well, more and more of paying attention to the environment, paying attention to seasonality in a very honest way instead of just saying it's all farm to table and then serving raspberries in December. Come on doing their homework, when chefs do their homework when they go shopping. And I think it's increasingly important, and you know, carbon footprint and all of that figures into it, but you cannot take away from the need to keep things local as little

Oh.

I think what he's doing is commendable. I don't love everything he's doing. I'm sure you probably feel the same way, but it's certainly very interesting. You know, Cafe Chelsea in the Chelsea Hotels, they have a main course, my talkie mushroom oh Puavre that is so delicious and it's so big you can't I couldn't finish it. But it's just delicious and it's a main course. And I think the more you see that, the better, you know, the eating less meat, of course, maybe more fish, but maybe maybe

Yeah. I just had a young woman on my show on TV the other day who made it smoothie. She thinks, she really really believes and that her smoothie in the morning will compensate for her not eating pretty much the rest of the day. And it's all. It's all, it's like oat meal and not too much fresh stuff, but purple potatoes and all all kinds of adages which I don't think take the place of a fabulous green vegetable Now, I agree with you.

I think you know, these vegetable pills in a bottle, I don't believe in that at all. I believe in real food, and I think that there are elements in real food that you get that you cannot reproduce by taking a pill or that kind of thing.

Right in nineteen eighty four. Notwithstanding, I think, I think we have a long way to go before we're going to be just eating pills or drinking just weird smoothies. I don't want that to happen, not in my lifetime. Of the changes that you've seen over the years in food, what really surprised you? What surprised me?

I think most recently over the past let's say decade or so, is how fast stuff catches on. And I think a lot of that has to do with social I think sort of a watershed moment might have been back in the late eighties when restaurants started serving redicio and arugula and using balsamic vinegar, and suddenly everybody wanted to buy those things. I mean, in the past, if you ate something in a restaurant, I can remember growing up, you weren't interested or going to try and reproduce that

Oh and I have like eighteen varieties of garlic in my garden and they all are different and they are all delicious, cooked different ways.

And then I think about something like what Dan Barber's doing with these new vegetables, the garlik Have you tried that?

Oh? I just had a dinner with Dan where he served garlik's, which is a cross between a leak and garlic. It was delicious. He just brazed them very simply and they were delicious. And he's working with a group that is called the New Organic Project. They are trying to verify what is organic and what is not organic. Organic is just a word now and the supermarkets it's slapped on and.

I see people selling organic salmon. I said, what what is that?

Right? Yeah, how could that be? But in the vegetable department especially, Yeah, we don't know that it's organic or not. In order to age gracefully stay healthier, we can't fill the hospitals with ailing people. We have to know what we can eat that's going to keep us really going. Yeah. Absolutely.

The one thing about the l the Highest Cookbook I don't know if you're aware of, is that it is a salmon free cookbook, surf free. Well, I did not know about that. Salmon doesn't belong in East Hampton.

Yeah, they can't be fished there and they cannot be. But you do have something that I see the signs that I went to that little place on the way to Amagansett where it says clam pies on a sign of nailed to a tree. What the heck is a clam pie? Oh, it's delicious. There's my recipe in the book. Oh that's your clam pie. Goes way back.

I mean, if you go back to the Spiral Bound lviis cookbooks from the nineteen forties, say you'll find clam pie. It's a two crust pie and the filling is chopped up clams, usually onions and potatoes and whatever clam juices as a pie filling. Oh, so it's like a stuffed clam in a crust. Well, it's not as finely mince. There's no bread or anything, and it's not as finely minced as it's almost more like a clam pizza topping

Oh, I bet that's good. It's delicious. I bet that's good. But clams now are like two dollars each for a little clam. Do you have a special little clam spot in Easthampton where you go dig your own?

I don't dig. I buy them, but I open them. I think clams are easier to open than oysters.

Oh. I have a clam knife now, an oyster knife and a scallop knife, because they are growing scallops in Maine in the ocean on long ropes hanging down into the sea, and they are delicious and you can really enjoy them braw. You can have them as crudos, so nicely, so good. Well, you've hosted a speaking series. I want to mention this at Guildhall where you are on the board. Do you have any favorite moments of those events? Well

And we had a really nice sign and you brought this amazing corner cope, you have vegetables and flowers from your garden. It was But I'll tell you the very best was Anthony Bourdain. Oh well, he was always the best. He was outrageous, funny, just amazing, and people were hanging from the rafters to hear him speak.

Wow. He was unforgettable. So six of your books were designed by your daughter, thirteen books to date. What do you like about working with your daughter? We get along. We've got a very good relationship. Yeah. And how do you stay curious? Because you're very curious. Well, I've always been curious. I've always said that if i'm if I'm

Don't just accept what people tell you. Look it up, go back and do your homework. It just shocks me how accepting people are of certain things that are just not true or accurate, and that they don't do diligence in terms of getting information. If they're publicists working for a client, they accept what the client says whole cloth, without ever make asking a question. I mean, I can't tell you how often I've said to a publicist who is pitching a product. Let's say a condiment, and I'll

No?

I mean, how can you do anything without digging. I'm maybe a natural journalist because I'm a really died in the little skeptic and I got it.

I got to prove it. I've got to prove it to myself. Well, you're you're a great and your columns show it. Thank you so much for sitting down with me. You can find Florence. Florence's writing in The New York Times each week, and you can follow her on x at flow fab F L O F A B. Thank you, Martha. This is a pleasure.