This Is TASTE

There is no food writer we would rather talk to about Italy—and, really, talk to about food in general—than Katie Parla. Her mind, her spirit, and her willingness to drive around the wonderfully off-the-grid cow towns of Puglia for the sake of a book project—it’s all really special. In this episode, we talk about her decades-long obsession with Italian food and culture, and what has gone into her...

How does a venture capitalist working in and around food actually grocery shop? Elly Truesdell, founder and managing partner of New Fare Partners, joins us on the show to tell us all about it. Elly got her start working in the corporate office of Whole Foods, and we find out about her nearly 10 years there discovering some of our favorite food brands. We also find out what a VC actually does, and...

Gail Simmons is a very cool human being—had to say that from the jump! While many know her best from Top Chef, Gail’s 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...

Chef and budding TV personality Daniel Harthausen is one of the most exciting voices in food, having just won the first season of HBO’s very good cooking competition show The Big Brunch and running the roving pop-up Young Mother in Richmond, Virginia. Harthausen was raised by a Korean mother and a half-Korean father and “had a baseline of what really good Korean food tasted like, without really kn...

Trigg Brown is the chef and co-owner of Win Son and the coauthor of a really great new book, Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook. Trigg and Matt share many mutual friends, and it was really cool for them to meet for the first time on the mic. We talk about Trigg’s early cooking career in Charlottesville, Virgina, and working in New York City with the Colichio crew at Craft and Colichio...

How cool to have our old friend and former colleague Talia Baiocchi on the show. Talia has one of the sharpest minds in food media, and we talk about the publication she has run for nearly a decade, PUNCH. We wanted to ask Talia about so many topics related to modern drinking culture, including the explosion of nonalcoholic drinks, the issues with natural wine, and her take on the future of the co...

Yay, it’s Smitten Kitchen day, and we’re really, really excited to welcome back our friend Deb Perelman. Deb is the writer, photographer, recipe developer, and driving force behind one of the internet’s most popular home cooking destinations. We talk about what she’s been cooking and how she’s been living her best life with two kids in New York’s East Village, and we discuss her wonderful new book...

Indian chef and Unapologetic Foods cofounder Chintan Pandya is a James Beard Award–winning chef and runs some of the best restaurants in NYC, including Adda, Dhamaka, Semma, Rowdy Rooster, and his latest Bengali triumph, Masalawala & Sons. We invited Chintan into the studio because, dude, we wanted to know how he keeps opening hit after hit. We wanted to talk about regional Indian cooking and how...

Yes, Bill Addison is back on TASTE. We’ve long been a fan of Bill’s writing, going back to his well-considered restaurant criticism in Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco, Eater as a roving national critic, and for the past three-plus years as the head restaurant critic at the Los Angeles Times. Bill is our favorite critic, writing about our favorite food city in the United States, and we talk about wh...

For years, Ryan Sutton was the chief restaurant critic at Eater New York, before his position was recently eliminated. Ryan is one of the most respected critics in the game, and we wanted to invite him to the studio to talk about his career and some of the memorable stories he’s worked on. Does Ryan have any reviews that he regrets? How does he stay excited about dining out each and every night? A...

After working as a fact checker for years at the New Yorker and contributing to the magazine’s Tables for Two column, Hannah Goldfield was named the magazine’s first full-time restaurant critic in 2018. We welcome Hannah back to discuss her life as a New York City restaurant critic. We talk about some of her recent reviews and get some of her thoughts on that little film called The Menu—where a bi...

On this very special episode, we catch up with the one and only Cathy Erway. Cathy is a prolific writer and cookbook author behind the great new book Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook, which she wrote with the cofounders of Brooklyn restaurant Win Son. During this wide-ranging conversation, we find out about Cathy’s cookbook writing career and her James Beard Award–winning work on TAS...

Justin Smillie is the chef of Il Buco Alimentari and the author of the now-classic live-fire cooking book Slow Fires: Mastering New Ways to Braise, Roast, and Grill. We wanted to have Justin on the show to talk about his life in and out of the kitchen and what is currently exciting him while running one of New York’s most popular restaurants. We also discuss his previous restaurant, Upland, and wh...

We’re thrilled to welcome Sohla El-Waylly to the show for the first time. Sohla is a prodigious recipe developer, a fixture of food YouTube, and a judge on HBO’s cooking competition The Big Brunch—plus a friend of Aliza’s. This week, Aliza and Sohla unpack Sohla’s background before becoming one of the most viral stars in food media today, her thoughts on the ever-controversial brunch, the concept...

On this episode, we catch up with Ben Van Leeuwen, the cofounder of a namesake chain of ice cream shops with an accompanying grocery store freezer section line. We invited Ben on the show to talk about what inspires his exacting, hypercreative flavor creation. We also talk about the ups and downs that come with running a growing consumer food brand. Was he freaked out about the Halo Top takeover a...

Stay calm and…just act like Eric Ripert. Young cooks, are you listening? Ripert, a celebrated chef and TV personality, is a balancing force. We talk about how he keeps the exquisite (and massive) Le Bernardin empire running, day after day. We talk about recruiting talent, and he’s also just a really good interview, as we find out in his return to the show. And we also discuss his meals at Noma, an...

Yes, it’s James Hoffmann day on TASTE, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. James is one of the coolest dudes on the Coffee internet, and we wanted to have him on the show to talk about all things coffee at home. On this episode, we talk about what actually makes great coffee at home (the topic of a new book), his big thoughts on espresso, how he rated the best grocery store coffee brands, and what i...

We wanted to have journalist Anne Helen Petersen on the show not only to talk about modern office lunch culture...we wanted to have journalist Anne Helen Peterson on the show to talk about soup! Peterson is the author of the amazing newsletter Culture Study, and she has much to say about the intersection of food and pop culture. She also name checks some of her favorite cookbooks from Ali Slagle,...

Himanshu Suri is best known by his rap name Heems, and he is our guest on this entertaining episode of the show. We wanted to have Heems on not just because we are a fan of his former group Das Racist (you may remember their song “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell”) but because we wanted to talk to him about Punjabi food. About growing up in Queens. About his new passion for gardening. We really...

If you’ve ever clicked onto the NYT Cooking or Bon Appétit websites looking for something to make for dinner, you’ve probably seen Hetty McKinnon’s name. The prolific plant-based recipe developer and cookbook author is one of the busiest people in food media, contributing reliable and highly craveable recipes across the internet while releasing cult books like Neighborhood and Family. On this epis...

You’ve spotted their iconic squeeze bottle on the shelves of Whole Foods and seen it used by your favorite food influencers and chefs on Instagram. But do you know the story behind Spanish olive oil company Graza, one of our favorite upstart food brands around? On this episode, we speak with Graza’s charismatic cofounder Andrew Benin to talk about the ups and downs of running a quickly growing foo...

Christina Tosi is a chef and TV personality as well as Milk Bar’s CEO and CCCO (Chief Compost Cookie Officer) and the author of a new cookbook, All About Cookies (among many others). On this lively episode, we talk to her about all things cookies and cake, moving upstate, grocery shopping at dawn, baking David Chang birthday cakes every year, and Milk Bar life (as a mother). We always enjoy having...

Odette Williams is the author of Simple Cake and Simple Pasta, and she was really fun to have back in the studio. We talk about her journey from novice pasta maker to authoring a cookbook on the subject. We also discuss the art of simplification, and how her Australian upbringing has shaped the way she eats and cooks. Also on the show, Aliza and Matt talk about three things that are on their minds...

The social media meme can be funny, biting, poignant, and oftentimes ubiquitous. Eli Sussman, a talented chef and cookbook author, has mastered the art of the culinary meme, and we talk about it on this very special episode. Eli has been a friend of ours for years, and we had fun catching up about his journey from Michigan short-order cook to LA music marketer to NYC restaurateur, provocateur, and...

Jamie Oliver returns to the show, and we could not be happier to talk with him about so many things. For those who didn’t grow up watching food TV, here’s the deal. Jamie pioneered a form of food television that brought cameras into the home in a way not previously seen. When The Naked Chef debuted on BBC Two in the UK and the Food Network in the United States in 1999, home cooking on TV was a sta...