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This Is TASTE

by Matt Rodbard & Aliza Abarbanel

If you're a fan of smart and lively conversations about food, home cooking, 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 hosted by TASTE editors Aliza Abarbanel and Matt Rodbard, and is sometimes recorded live at Rizzoli Bookstore in New York City. Visit TASTE online: tastecooking.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Episodes

  1. 856: What Does the Future Hold for California Wine?

    Today on the show, Resy managing editor Jon Bonné and Matt have an incredible roundtable conversation with three California wineries that changed California wine forever: Duncan Arnot Meyers and Nathan Lee Roberts of Arnot-Roberts, Matt Licklider of Lioco Wine Co., and Steve and Jill Klein...

  2. 855: Ayesha Nurdjaja on the Line: Burns, Swollen Knuckles, and Stolen Kunz Spoons

    Ayesha Nurdjaja grew up in Gravesend, Brooklyn, with an Indonesian father, an Italian mother, and a grandmother who walked her to Sahadi’s on Atlantic Avenue. After years in Italian kitchens like Felidia, she talked her bosses into a Middle Eastern New Year’s Eve menu that became the wildly…

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  3. 854: Adam Weisblatt Wrote the Restaurant Industry’s Realest Owner’s Manual

    Adam Weisblatt has opened seven restaurants with Last Word Hospitality, the LA group behind Hermon’s, Barra Santos, and Rasarumah. His terrific new book, ⁠For the Love of Restaurants⁠, colorfully traces the arc of building a restaurant—from location scouting, lease negotiations, financing…

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  4. 853: Rachel Gurjar Thinks Mumbai and NYC Should Be Sister Cities

    Rachel Gurjar is a Mumbai-born, Brooklyn-based chef and recipe developer whose recipes have appeared in Bon Appétit and the New York Times. Her new debut cookbook, ⁠East to East: Recipes and Stories From Mumbai to New York⁠, showcases her love for the two cities that shaped her through more than...

  5. 852: Washington Post Food Critic Elazar Sontag on His First Big Best Restaurants List

    Elazar Sontag published a cookbook at 18, ran Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurants list in his mid-twenties, and (last fall) succeeded Tom Sietsema as the Washington Post’s food critic—with no disguise required. He joins us to talk all about his inaugural ⁠best restaurants list⁠, which is firmly an...

  6. 851: Eric Sze’s Cookbook Puts a Question Mark on Taiwanese Food on Purpose

    Eric Sze first joined the show amid research for his debut cookbook, Taiwanese?. The book will be released later this month, and I speak with the Wenwen chef about his deep research around lu rou fan, what “authentically inauthentic” really means on the page versus the plate, and how his…

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  7. 850: Clarissa Wei Sells Excellent Soy Sauce and Demystifies Ancient Postpartum Cooking Practices

    Clarissa Wei is a writer and cofounder of HEYDOH, a single-origin Taiwanese soy sauce brand. Her debut cookbook, Made in Taiwan, was a cultural exploration of the island she calls home. Now she’s following it up with Sitting the Month, a study of postpartum cooking and care informed by Chinese...

  8. 849: Where New York Is Actually Eating This Fall with Resy’s Deanna Ting

    Resy’s managing editor, Deanna Ting, is back to talk all about New York City restaurants. She and Matt work through the ⁠Resy Hit List⁠, with stops at a British Indian chophouse in Hudson Yards, the Houseman chef’s seafood follow-up in East Williamsburg, Dominican-Texas barbecue in Bushwick, and…

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  9. 848: Kendal Mitchell Turns Eggshells Into Servingware: A Design Intervention for Food Waste

    Kendal Mitchell is a chef and biomaterials designer based in Brooklyn. Her Instagram series Bringing Food Waste Back to the Table turns often-wasted ingredients like eggshells and oyster shells into stunning tableware, and she’s constantly exploring new ways to create circularity with organic...

  10. 847: Korean Soup University with Clara Lee and Eddo Kim of Queens

    Clara Lee and Eddo Kim are the co-founders of Queens, the San Francisco Korean American food company that started as a delivery-only deli in 2018, became a beloved Inner Sunset superette, and now makes gochujang, doenjang, and gochugaru from Northern California–grown ingredients. Their debut...

  11. 846: The Birth of 'Hot Ones' and a Garage Full of Dead Restaurant Shirts with Justin Bolois

    Justin Bolois has spent over a decade helping build the iconic First We Feast media company—from features editor to VP of programming and development, shepherding popular shows like The Burger Show, Tacos Con Todo, and Hot Ones within the media empire. Off the clock, he’s chasing something…

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  12. 845: Kenta Goto’s Bartender’s Guide Is a Must-Read for Professionals and Amateurs Alike

    Kenta Goto is a bartender and the owner and operator of two acclaimed cocktail bars: Bar Goto on the Lower East Side and Bar Goto Niban in Brooklyn. Born and raised in Tokyo, Goto moved to New York and worked at the lauded cocktail bar Pegu Club for seven years before opening his own bar. Now…

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  13. 844: Adrianna Adarme Was Supposed to Make Movie Trailers. Instead, She Made the Meatballs.

    Adrianna Adarme has been cooking out loud since 2011, when ⁠A Cozy Kitchen⁠ was just a bored-at-work blog. This fall, she’s releasing ⁠A Cozy Kitchen Cookbook⁠—a terrific book built around not seasons or courses but moods. In this episode, Matt talks to Adrianna about her cooking style and…

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  14. 843: Kwame Onwuachi on Pitching Investors, Cooking All Hours, and Golf Taking Over His Life

    Kwame Onwuachi—the chef behind ⁠Tatiana⁠, ⁠Dōgon⁠, and restaurants from Miami to Las Vegas—joins Matt in the studio for the first time. We get into his big idea for the CPG game, his pull toward Ethiopian cooking, and his three books, capped by ⁠All Hours⁠, which is less a cookbook and more a...

  15. 842: Danny Meyer on the Pain of Eater Deathwatch; Playing Cat and Mouse with Sam Sifton

    Danny Meyer built Union Square Hospitality Group on a promise: he’d never close a restaurant. Then he closed one, and it changed how he thinks and writes about leadership. Twenty years after the release of his influential book Setting the Table, Meyer returns with a terrific new memoir, ⁠What…

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  16. 841: Carla Hall Doesn’t Need a Holiday to Bake Something Special

    Everybody loves Carla Hall. Carla Hall is a chef and TV host who has appeared on many of our favorite food programs over the years, from Bravo’s Top Chef to Fox’s Next Level Baker. Her latest cookbook is also her first baking book—Carla Bakes: Sweet, Savory, and From the Heart. Today on the show,...

  17. 840: Mohamed Attia Sold Street Smoothies in Times Square. Now He Shapes Vending Policy.

    Mohamed Attia spent nearly a decade running a food cart in Times Square before he became the person fighting to change the law that made carts like his semilegal in the first place. As managing director of the Street Vendor Project, Attia helped lead the campaign that, this past January, finally...

  18. 839: Olivia Tiedemann on the Perks of Private Cheffing and Making Crab Cakes for Martha Stewart

    Olivia Tiedemann is a chef who began creating videos while working as a private chef in the Hamptons. Her signature deadpan delivery and no-nonsense techniques have won her millions of fans. Now she’s sharing her highly craveable recipes in a debut cookbook: Eat (Like) the Rich. Today on the…

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  19. 838: How Apollo Bagels Took Over NYC… and Tokyo with Joey Scalabrino

    Joey Scalabrino is the cofounder of Apollo Bagels, a new-school bagel shop rooted in old-world techniques with nine locations across New York City and Jersey. He started making bagels in the kitchen at Leo, the Williamsburg sourdough pizza restaurant, and built Apollo through thoughtful pop-ups,...

  20. 837: Caper's Dana Brown Thinks AI Can't Touch Food, Eater Lost the Plot, and There's a New McNally Worth Betting On

    It’s the return of Food Writers Talking About Food Writing. Every couple of weeks, Matt invites a journalist to talk about some favorite recent food writing as well as their thoughts on the industry as a whole. Dana Brown was a fixture of Vanity Fair’s Oscar-party machine and Graydon Carter’s…

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  21. 836: Ruth Reichl: Five Memoirs, One Hot Substack, No Filter

    Ruth Reichl reviewed restaurants for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, ran the country’s most legendary food magazine, and wrote five memoirs about all the meals enjoyed and life lived. Today she’s doing it again on her wonderful Substack, La Briffe, unfiltered and endlessly curious....

  22. 835: Naan Pisses Him Off. Vada Pav Gets the Medal of Honor. Meherwan Irani Returns!

    Meherwan Irani has been sharing wisdom about Indian street food since first appearing on this show in 2019. That would be vada pav’s genius, naan’s overratedness, and his mom’s three-lentil dhansak. Now it’s all in his debut cookbook, No. 1 Best Indian Cookbook in the World, alongside the two...

  23. 834: Vegetable Nerds Wanted with Ali Francis

    Ali Francis is an Australian writer and pastry chef living in Salt Lake City, Utah. She’s the author of the new book The Curious Lives of Vegetables: An Artful Exploration of the Wonderful World of Edible Plants, Their History, and Their Crucial Role in Our Future. It’s a must-read for produce...

  24. 833: The Sheet Cake Plot Twist with Zola Gregory

    Zola Gregory is a writer, recipe developer, and food stylist based in Seattle. Her biweekly recipe column for TASTE, Extra Good, has yielded countless hits, and now she has a debut cookbook to enjoy: Sheet Cakes! In this long-overdue episode, Zola stops into the studio to talk about her distinct...

  25. 832: Pim Techamuanvivit’s First Restaurant Job Was Opening a Now Legendary Restaurant

    Pim Techamuanvivit left a career in Silicon Valley to become one of the most important Thai chefs working today. She’s self-taught and runs Michelin-starred kitchens on two continents at San Francisco’s Kin Khao and Nari and Bangkok’s Nahm. Her new book, Cooking Thai, is the result of writing…

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  26. 827: Marion Nestle on Fibermaxxing, RFK Jr, and Collecting Cereal Boxes

    Dr. Marion Nestle is a renowned nutritionist who has been shaping food policy for over half a century. She co-founded NYU’s groundbreaking Food Studies program in the ‘90s and has published over sixteen books, including her newest, Sugar Coated: Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America's…

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  27. 822: How to Build a Booming Bakery Business at an Artisan Market with Zeena Lattouf Joy

    Zeena Lattouf Joy is the founder and head baker of Zeena Bakery, a Palestinian American bakery based in NYC. Their ma’amoul, focaccia, and other treats are beloved mainstays of the artisan side of the Fort Greene farmers’ market—and a regular part of Aliza’s weekend routine. Today on the show,...

  28. 819: Confessions of a Cookbook Literary Agent with Sally Ekus

    Sally Ekus has been inside the cookbook business since before she could walk—literally stuffing press kits for her mother’s culinary PR firm as a kid. Now a senior literary agent at Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency leading the Ekus Group, she’s brokered hundreds of book deals and become one of...

  29. 818: It Took a Chef to Make a Buzzy Drinks Brand like Faccia Brutto

    Patrick Miller is the founder and distiller of Faccia Brutto, an Italian-style spirits brand based in Brooklyn, New York. He worked as a chef for 19 years in some of LA and New York’s brightest restaurants, and he began making amari as holiday gifts for loved ones while working as the…

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  30. 816: The Pad Thai–Free Zone with Bangkok Supper Club’s Jenn Saesue

    Jenn Saesue didn’t want to open another Thai restaurant that served the same watered-down menu as everyone else’s—so she didn’t. Nearly a decade later, she’s the cofounder of 55 Hospitality, the group behind Fish Cheeks, the Michelin-listed Bangkok Supper Club, and Bub’s Bakery, New York’s first...

  31. 815: Anthony Bourdain’s Life Was a Movie. Matt Johnson Directed It.

    Matt Johnson directed the films BlackBerry and the DIY comedy Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie—now he’s taking on Anthony Bourdain. His new film Tony, out in August from A24, skips the traditional biopic format entirely, compressing three formative Provincetown summers described in Kitchen...

  32. 814: How Pierce Abernathy Went from Instagram to Your Bookshelf

    Pierce Abernathy is a recipe developer and content creator based in Brooklyn. You may know him from his popular online videos showcasing his seasonal approach to plant-forward cooking—and now, he’s releasing a debut cookbook: Every Leaf, Every Stem: Craveable, Creative Vegetables All Year Round....

  33. 813: Anthony Bourdain in 2005: Direct From Cassette

    In 2005, Matt sat across from Anthony Bourdain at a magazine photo shoot. His first TV show, No Reservations, was only a few months old, and they dug into the contents of his travel bags, which he had brought to the set from his apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. Two hours turned into a highly personal...

  34. 812: Building Birdee Bakery with Renata Ameni

    Renata Ameni is chef partner of Birdee, a bakery and all-day café on the Williamsburg waterfront. The Brazilian-born chef is a fine-dining veteran who worked at Eleven Madison Park and opened Crown Shy before hopping over to more casual territory. Today on the show, we talk about bridging the gap...

  35. 811: 1990s Los Angeles and 2010s YouTube with the Internet’s Grill Dad, Noah Galuten

    Noah Galuten—chef, James Beard Award–winning cookbook author, and YouTube food guy—joins the show to talk about his new book, Grill Time!. The conversation covers his unconventional path from UCLA theater student to LA pitmaster, the case for treating your gas grill as a weekday kitchen…

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  36. 810: The Boss of Your Kitchen con Omi Hopper

    Omi Hopper is a Puerto Rican chef, social media influencer, and food entrepreneur. You might know her as a semifinalist on season two of Next Level Chef, or from her popular cooking videos across social media, where she shares her takes on Puerto Rican classics. Today on the show, we talk about...

  37. 809: Claire Saffitz’s Summer Baking and Next Book Plot Twist

    Claire Saffitz joins us for a summer-minded conversation about cooking outside the dessert lane. The best-selling author of Dessert Person and What’s for Dessert talks pizza-oven construction, YouTube behind-the-scenes, garden life in the Hudson Valley, and—for the first time—details about her...

  38. 808: The Man Who Coined Fusion Cuisine and Discovered Charlie Trotter with Norman Van Aken

    We're thrilled to have chef Norman Van Aken on the show. Norman is the founding father of “new world cuisine” and the man who introduced the word “fusion” into the culinary lexicon—at a 1989 symposium in Santa Fe, decades before it became widely used and sometimes critiqued. A former carnival...

  39. 806: Lydia Pang Argues “Stinky” Is a Great Thing

    Lydia Pang is a creative director and the author of Eat Bitter: A Story About Guts, and Food. It’s a memoir that connects to the Chinese cultural concept of 吃苦 (chi ku), “eating bitterness” or being resilient, to her own life, with each chapter rooted in a recipe. Today on the show, we chat about...

  40. 805: Real Talk About Drinks Writing and Trend-Chasing Bars with Echo Lake’s Chloe Frechette

    Chloe Frechette spent nearly a decade as executive editor at Punch, the James Beard Award–winning drinks media brand, writing seriously about cocktails and the culture around them. Then she did what most drinks writers most certainly do not do: she opened a bar. Echo Lake and Undercurrent, her...

  41. 804: Toby Maloney Made Half a Million Cocktails. Emma Janzen Was Taking Notes.

    Bartender and author Toby Maloney has made somewhere north of half a million cocktails over thirty-plus years, from Milk & Honey and Pegu Club to the Violet Hour in Chicago and the Elbow Room in Vancouver, Washington. His new book with coauthor and drinks journalist Emma Janzen, The Classic...

  42. 803: Netflix's Culinary Monster Finally Gets His Own Kitchen with Hasung Lee

    Hasung Lee spent a decade cooking inside other people’s restaurants—Gramercy Tavern, Geranium, Atomix, the French Laundry—before Netflix viewers met him as Culinary Monster, the mysterious “black spoon” who muscled his way into the final round of Culinary Class Wars season 2. While he lost in the...

  43. 802: 200 Million People Watch Vikas Khanna Talk About Indian Food. Here's What He Couldn't Say on TV.

    Vikas Khanna grew up in Amritsar cooking beside his grandmother, arrived in New York with $3 and a dream, and became one of the first Indian chefs in the city to earn a Michelin star. His restaurant Bungalow—now one of NYC’s most coveted reservations—tells India’s culinary story through its 28...

  44. 801: We Went to the Summer Fancy Food Show. We Have Notes.

    The Specialty Food Association's Summer Fancy Food Show is where the next year of grocery shelves gets decided, and Dan Frommer, founder of The New Consumer and one of the sharpest minds tracking how people spend their money, was there for all of it. Dan joins Matt to unpack the trends and new...

  45. 800: How Long Gone’s Jason Stewart on Erewhon Losing the Pizza Plot, Noma’s LA Adventure, and a Visit to Ballerina Farm

    Jason Stewart, cohost of How Long Gone and one of food media’s sharpest outside voices, returns to the studio. We talk about his early vegan days, his current London dining life, and what he’s enjoying in his hometown of Los Angeles. We also revisit some of his past TASTE writing, including a...

  46. 799: The Dream of the $50 Dinner in New York Is Alive and Canada's Wild Run at North America’s 50 Best with Luke Fortney

    It’s the return of Food Writers Talking About Food Writing. Every couple of weeks, Matt invites a journalist to talk about some favorite recent food writing as well as their thoughts on the industry as a whole. Luke Fortney went from covering New York’s restaurant scene at Eater to contributing...

  47. 798: French Training, Japanese Soul: Tadashi Ono's Long Road Home

    Tadashi Ono spent nine years as executive chef of La Caravelle, one of America’'s great French restaurants—twice earning a three-star New York Times review—before walking away to cook the Japanese food he actually wanted to cook. Since then, he’s run Matsuri and Maison O; written four cookbooks...

  48. 797: Rita Gigante Grew Up the Godfather’s Daughter. Now She’s Sharing Classic Italian American Spots on Instagram.

    Rita Gigante is not your average food influencer. She’s a psychic medium and healer and the author of The Godfather’s Daughter, an autobiography about growing up as the daughter of notorious Genovese crime family boss Vincent “Chin” Gigante. Rita is passionate about creating videos that showcase...

  49. 796: Founder in the Field with Fishwife’s Becca Millstein

    Becca Millstein built Fishwife into one of the buzziest brands in food, turning a sleepy pantry category into something people actually want to talk about. This time, we didn’t talk to her in our New York City studio—we followed her to Santoña, Spain, to board boats, participate in an anchovy...

  50. 795: Toshi Kizaki's Retirement Project Won Him a Michelin Star

    Toshi and Yasu Kizaki opened Sushi Den on Christmas Eve in 1984 on South Pearl Street in Denver. Little did they know how the opening would impact Japanese food in America. Over the next four decades, they built a supply chain that flies fish from a market in Kyushu to Denver in under 24 hours,...

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ABOUT THIS SHOW

If you're a fan of smart and lively conversations about food, home cooking, 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 hosted by TASTE editors Aliza Abarbanel and Matt Rodbard, and is sometimes recorded live at Rizzoli Bookstore in New York City. Visit TASTE online: tastecooking.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

HOSTED BY

Matt Rodbard & Aliza Abarbanel

Produced by Matt Rodbard

CATEGORIES

arts food

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does This Is TASTE have?

This Is TASTE currently has 753 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.

What is This Is TASTE about?

If you're a fan of smart and lively conversations about food, home cooking, 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 hosted by TASTE editors Aliza Abarbanel and...

How often does This Is TASTE release new episodes?

This Is TASTE releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 753 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.

Where can I listen to This Is TASTE?

You can listen to This Is TASTE on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.

Who hosts This Is TASTE?

This Is TASTE is created and hosted by Matt Rodbard & Aliza Abarbanel.
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