As Max Ng tells it, his start at Momofuku—where he has risen to executive chef at the restaurant group’s New York City flagship, Ssam Bar—began when he showed up, as a young CIA student, with a backpack, knives, and a chef coat. Unannounced. On a busy Saturday afternoon. Asking for a “trail”—restaurant parlance for an unpaid tryout. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, this is a fucking Saturday and you are demanding a trail,” Max, laughing, recalls a cook telling him. “Come back in a week.” Ng did ret...
Nov 19, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 28
London chef and author Yotam Ottolenghi puts out cookbooks that meet at the intersection of cool and practical—with a recipe development process that is part Warhol Factory, part Bon Appétit Test Kitchen, and pure Ottolenghi. After tackling baking with his last book ( Sweet ), and before that putting Israeli cooking on the international stage ( Jerusalem ), he most recently tackled the concept of simplicity—and how Simple (the book’s title and mission statement) means something different to all ...
Nov 13, 2018•49 min•Ep. 27
You may know her from her New York Times column, On Dessert, or you may know her from trying one of her unbelievably chocolaty, world-famous World Peace Cookies at a party that one time. But before Dorie Greenspan was famous for her cakes and shortbreads, she was an early pioneer of food television and a coconspirator (and coauthor) with Julia Child. On this episode, Anna catches up with Dorie to talk about her new book, Everyday Dorie , and ask about what she actually does cook every day. We al...
Nov 06, 2018•55 min•Ep. 26
Let’s get this out of the way first. Jeremiah Stone and Fabian Von Hauske are sweet dudes: extremely hardworking, generous, with lots and lots and lots of friends in the food world—in the United States, France, Mexico, and the darkest corners of the Noma fermentation lab (all spots the pair have worked in their short and ambitious careers). They own a trio of influential restaurants on New York’s Lower East Side: Contra, Wildair, and the newly reopened Una Pizza Napoletana. And they have just re...
Oct 30, 2018•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 25
There isn’t a restaurant in New York City that’s having a bigger and brighter fall 2018 than Atomix. It’s supremely ambitious, highly polished, and uncompromisingly Korean. We love it! After it got rock-solid reviews in Eater, The Washington Post , and New York , the New York Times critic Pete Wells last week dropped 3 stars on the restaurant, anointing it as one of the city’s top tasting menus. Period. “The way the Parks put Korean culture in the foreground recalls the early days of the Four Se...
Oct 23, 2018•29 min•Ep. 24
Stay calm and…just act like Eric Ripert . Young cooks, are you listening? Ripert, a celebrated chef and TV personality, is a balancing force in this trash-fire age. And he’s also just a really good interview, as we find out. He joins the podcast to talk about communication. How one at the top of the kitchen chain needn’t yell to get his point across. “I don’t believe the pilots in the plane are having a screaming match,” he observes. True. We also discuss the Michelin stars at his restaurant, Le...
Oct 16, 2018•33 min•Ep. 23
Just imagine: It’s the tail end of a dinner party you just cooked for, you’re dangerously full of food, and you realize you made about three times too much food. What are you going to do with that half-eaten plate of lukewarm crab toasts? If Julia Turshen had anything to say about it, you’re going to throw them in the refrigerator until tomorrow night, when you’re going to pulverize them to bits and turn them into buttery crab cakes for dinner. Turshen’s new book, Now & Again , thinks about ...
Oct 12, 2018•34 min•Ep. 22
You might know him from the Eat column in The New York Times , for which he went into dozens of restaurants, home kitchens, and church basements to report on some of the untold food stories from New York’s many immigrant communities. Or you might know him as the voice you hear when you tune into The Splendid Table , interviewing everyone from activist Cecile Richards to chef Jacques Pépin. But I was especially excited to talk to Francis Lam about his work as a book editor at Clarkson Potter, col...
Oct 09, 2018•49 min•Ep. 21
Christina Tosi is a chef, TV personality, Milk Bar CEO and CCCO (Chief Compost Cookie Officer), and the author of a new cookbook, All About Cake . And indeed, during this lively episode taped live in front of a packed house at our offices at Penguin Random House, we talk about cake. Like, we get her hot take on what is up with the addictive boxed yellow cake flavor? Which great American classic cake would she eff, marry, and kill? We also find out if the kids of MasterChef Junior really make all...
Oct 02, 2018•39 min•Ep. 20
Mike Solomonov planted his flag in Philadelphia more than a decade ago with the groundbreaking Israeli-American restaurant Zahav, and people went nuts. Two words: pomegranate lamb. He’s since won many awards, opened restaurants focusing on Israeli staples hummus and falafel, and essentially put Israeli cuisine in the American zeitgeist, sitting right next to Italian and Mexican. He’s the author of several books, including the new Israeli Soul: Easy, Essential, Delicious . In this fun and wide-ra...
Sep 28, 2018•46 min•Ep. 19
Daniela Soto-Innes is the chef-partner at two New York baby institutions, Cosme and Atla. These young and progressive restaurants—a modern Mexican cantina featuring supremely delicious tortillas and corn meringue firmly supplanted in my dessert hall of fame, and a Mexican/Latin all-day café—are reshaping the way the city thinks about “Mexican food” writ large. Soto-Innes, winner of the prestigious James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef of the Year award in 2016, was born in Mexico City and rais...
Sep 24, 2018•48 min•Ep. 18
Deuki Hong is a San Francisco–based chef and restaurant-empire-builder in the making. He’s also the coauthor of Koreatown: A Cookbook . Here he catches up with his longtime collaborator for a wide-ranging conversation. They hadn’t seen each other in a minute! They discuss the exciting state of Korean cooking in America—and how it’s evolved significantly since the book’s release in early 2016. They also discuss Deuki’s first trip back to Korea since he was born. He covered the Olympics for the To...
Sep 18, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 17
Natasha Pickowicz is the super talented pastry chef at New York City restaurants Flora Bar and Café Altro Paradiso, where fans (and oh, does she have fans) have been impressed with her ambitious cooking. Her dessert style? Italian-ish and simple-ish and generally not overpoweringly sweet. But before she was running the show in NYC kitchens, she worked as a journalist, writing about food and music mostly, in Montreal. She served as a Canadian pizza correspondent for Serious Eats and has a unique ...
Sep 11, 2018•55 min•Ep. 16
Is there an introduction needed here? Over her groundbreaking career, Ruth Reichl has served as the food editor of the Los Angeles Times , the restaurant critic of the New York Times , and the editor in chief of the legendary magazine Gourmet . She’s written juicy memoirs, mentored a generation of writers and editors, and still writes with regularity, curiosity, and a love for real journalism. She also whispers in beautiful character-count limits on Twitter if you haven’t checked that out. So wh...
Sep 03, 2018•44 min•Ep. 15
Brooks Headley does not take vacations, read Yelp reviews, or make his burgers with beef. The chef-owner of New York City’s Superiority Burger and author of the new Superiority Burger Cookbook joined us for the latest episode to talk about vegetarian cooking, from fake meats to savory zucchini sludges that are cooked for hours. We talked about the advantages and disadvantages of cooking at a restaurant small enough to see the facial expressions of diners reacting to the food, and the inevitable ...
Aug 28, 2018•52 min•Ep. 14
The Netflix culinary travel series Somebody Feed Phil proves that food television can be both accessible and interesting. Populist and high-brow. Much of the show’s success is credited to its host, the delightful human being Phil Rosenthal . The creator and showrunner of sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond , Rosenthal made a few bucks on the series and could have basically retired and traveled the world. Instead, the 58-year-old brings a camera along on travels around the world (along with his scene-...
Aug 21, 2018•24 min•Ep. 13
For six years, Angela Dimayuga served as the creative nerve center of New York City’s Mission Chinese Food, rising to executive chef and winning fans with her inventive culinary takes (shiso and umeboshi butter fried rice is in the fried rice hall of fame) and contagious free spirit. But in late 2017 she walked away from Mission to branch out on her own. She participated in a series of fundraising pop-ups, including an ACLU benefit at Art Basel in Miami, where she linked up with the guy running ...
Aug 14, 2018•29 min•Ep. 12
For years, Peter Meehan was a mystery. As the New York Times ’s "$25 and Under" columnist in the early 2000’s, he dined anonymously everywhere from Roberta’s to Momofuku Noodle Bar to hidden gems like Uminoie in the East Village. As an author of cookbooks and while helping run the show at Lucky Peach magazine (RIP), he avoided cameras out of some combination of annoyance and muscle memory. We caught up with him to discuss his upcoming barbecue cookbook, the terror of doing food TV, and the legac...
Aug 07, 2018•38 min•Ep. 11
There aren’t a lot of things on the Internet that have been around since 1999. But David Lebovitz’s blog, full of quips, stories, and recipes from his life in Paris, is one of them. On this episode, we talk to David about why soft serve really mostly exists as a vessel for sprinkles, why it’s so hard to take photos of chocolate, and the newest edition of his book about ice cream, The Perfect Scoop . Later in the show, we talk to Jessie Sheehan , author of The Vintage Baker , and Erin Patinkin of...
Jul 31, 2018•44 min•Ep. 10
A brilliant chef, motivator, entrepreneur, and storyteller, Angie Mar is a force of nature. Her inspired meat cookery at the restaurant she owns and operates in New York City, the Beatrice Inn, has won awards and recognition from fickle New York City critics. On this episode she shares her story of being reviewed by The New York Times (it’s a crazy story), as well as the day she was forced to fire her entire kitchen staff just hours before service (equally intense). Also on this episode, Deb Per...
Jul 24, 2018•27 min•Ep. 9
Alon Shaya is one of the leading voices in a newly crystalized Israeli-American food movement going down Stateside. Born in Israel and raised on cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, Shaya now calls New Orleans his home where he operates restaurants that blur borders. You’ll find blue crab and sweet corn hummus next to harrisa roasted chicken next to caviar on potato chips. On this episode, Shaya talks about his amazing journey, as detailed in his memoir (with recipes), Shaya: An Odyssey of Food, My Jou...
Jul 17, 2018•35 min•Ep. 8
Andy Ricker ’s headstone: Let’s talk about that. The Thai restaurateur, cookbook author, rock guitarist, and drinking-vinegar empire builder has done a lot. But we’re going to take a shot at that headstone. Thai Cuisine: Not a Monolith! For over a decade, we’ve heard Ricker make this case about Thailand's diverse and unique foods many times over, and he continues in this interview—where he is joined by his longtime book collaborator, JJ Goode . It’s a great listen. Later, Smitten Kitchen’s Deb P...
Jul 10, 2018•27 min•Ep. 7
In her years as a New York Times reporter, Julia Moskin has traveled to Provence to write about cooking in Julia Child’s kitchen, introduced us to the concept of “procrasti-baking,” and taste-tested commercial brands of hot dogs so that we don’t have to. On this episode, we talk to Moskin about her life working on the Food desk and her recent Pulitzer Prize win. She talks about some of the glamorous and not-so-glamorous parts of her job, including what she calls her “house cocktail” of cereals t...
Jul 03, 2018•51 min•Ep. 6
Gail Simmons is a very cool human being. While many know her best from Top Chef , her career in food expands way beyond a judge’s table. She trained at culinary school and went on to assist legendary food writer and columnist Jeffrey Steingarten. She also worked the line in busy New York City restaurants and is the author of two books, including her latest, Bringing It Home . In this very candid conversation, Simmons shares her story—from living in Montreal and Israel to working in the kitchens ...
Jun 26, 2018•33 min•Ep. 5
We’ve followed the career of cookbook author and op-ed columnist Mark Bittman for nearly two decades, through his How to Cook Everything series and his writing in The New York Times and other publications. In this lively interview, Mark discusses how he started writing about food (it’s a great story), reading the comments (he doesn’t), and if the Amazon–Whole Foods hookup will end up on the right, or wrong, side of history. We also speak with our current TASTE Cook In Residence Therese Nelson . ...
Jun 19, 2018•48 min•Ep. 4
We’ve been reading Smitten Kitchen for more than a decade now. At its helm is the hilarious and candid Deb Perelman , who joined us on this episode to talk about her favorite mushy carbs, keeping up with reader comments, and whether the Instant Pot is really worth the hype. Later, TASTE Editor in Chief Matt Rodbard shares a personal story about the great Anthony Bourdain. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-inf...
Jun 13, 2018•28 min•Ep. 3
Alison Roman wants to change the way you think about granola (it doesn’t have to be sweet), dinner parties (they don’t have to be fancy), and boiled potatoes (there should be a stockpile in the refrigerator at all times). We talked to Alison about her new cookbook, Dining In , and what it’s like to cook and entertain in small spaces. Also, Smitten Kitchen founder Deb Perelman answers a reader question: Which touristy food places are worth going to in New York City? See Privacy Policy at https://...
Jun 06, 2018•28 min•Ep. 2
For Samin Nosrat , the James Beard Award-winning author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat , the majority of great meals spring from a combination of those four foundational elements. We talked to Samin about too-mami (cooking with too much umami), angry letters, and the differences in brands of kosher salt. That is, not all kosher salt is the same. Also, Smitten Kitchen creator Deb Perelman answers a reader question about the art of lasagna. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California ...
Jun 04, 2018•31 min•Ep. 1
After a two-year vacation (LOL), Anna and Matt are back! If you're a fan of smart and cool and weird and lively conversations about food and culture, this is the place. We interview the most interesting characters in the world of food, media, and cookbooks and release episodes several times a month. The program is co-hosted by TASTE editors Anna Hezel and Matt Rodbard, and is sometimes recorded live at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn, NY. Visit TASTE online: tastecooking.com See Privacy Policy at ht...
Jun 01, 2018•36 sec
