Food with Mark Bittman

Ming-Na Wen is the voice of Mulan, Fennec Shand in The Mandalorian, and, now, a cookbook author. She grew up in her family’s Chinese restaurant in Pittsburgh, the Chinatown Inn, which has been open since 1943 and which her brother still runs today. Her debut cookbook, Have You Eaten Yet? , started as a recipe collection and turned into a memoir she didn’t know she was writing. She talks with Mark...

Florence Fabricant has been writing about food for the New York Times since 1972. She has watched farm-to-table go from fringe idea to cliche, lived through the rise of the celebrity chef, and outlasted most of the restaurants she ever wrote about. This week, she joins Mark and Kate to talk about her new memoir, Salty, Not Sweet: A Life in the Food World – a book she resisted writing for years and...

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, First Partner of California, joins Mark and Kate to talk about what actually happened when the state decided every public school kid deserves two free meals a day, and that more than half of those meals should come from California farms. It sounds like a policy conversation, but it's really a story about scratch kitchens, nacho bowls, salad bars, fountain milk, and what...

Nik Sharma is a former molecular biologist who left his lab for a kitchen and never looked back. He's a three-time James Beard finalist, an editor-in-residence at America's Test Kitchen, and the author of Fundamentals of Flavor. We cover what baking soda actually does to meat (the meatball revelation alone is worth the episode), why you can marinate all day in yogurt but never in vinegar,...

Justin Ellen is a phenom baker at just 22 years old, has almost a million Instagram followers, and his debut cookbook "Better Than Grandma's" is out this week. He appeared on Netflix's "Is It Cake?" at just 18, fooling the judges twice, while also missing his prom and graduation to film it. This episode was recorded in person at Mark's house in Glynwood, where Justin and Mark made bread pudding fr...

Marion Nestle is turning 90 today and she has not slowed down. Her new book,  Sugar Coated , co-written with former Kellogg vice president Lisa Sutherland, tells the story of US food and nutrition policy through cereal boxes — complete with full-color reproductions of every front and back panel of All-Bran, Rice Krispies, and Froot Loops going back to the early 1900s. Mark and Kate talk with...

Mara Fleishman is the co-founder and CEO of the Chef Ann Foundation, which has reached more than 19,000 schools, 35,000 school food professionals, and nearly 6 million students in its work to replace ultra-processed food with fresh, scratch-cooked meals. Before that, she spent a decade at Whole Foods as their global director of partnerships. We talk about what school food actually looks like now v...

In this revisiting of an episode from last summer, the up and coming queen of ice cream talks to Mark and Kate about how her ice cream brand, Malai, mimics her childhood; what it means to build your own culture; sourcing intentionally with no shortcuts—and why having a values-driven business is so important to her; and why her parents are the best people ever (and her #1 fans).  The Bittman P...

Joseph Ogilvy is the author of  Tin Can Coast: A History of Industry, Greed, and Fishing in the Golden State . When Mark first saw the book, he exclaimed "Finally. At last!" The book is a history of the fisheries and fishing communities of the California Current, which is the ocean system that made the state of California: almost 2000 miles of the most productive waters on earth. Mark an...

Mark has known Jean-Georges Vongerichten since 1987, when he arrived in New York. They've written books together. They've remained close friends for nearly 40 years. Today, they talk about Jean-Georges growing up in Alsace on pork fat, juniper berries, and parsley as the only herb anyone grew, and on arriving in New York when the Union Square Greenmarket was two stands selling apples and potatoes,...

Today, a special conversation Mark had in June with Congressman Jim McGovern (MA) at the Good Food for All Summit in DC. McGovern has spent decades in Congress fighting to protect SNAP, fund school meals, and push food security to the center of the policy conversation. He and Mark cover a lot of ground: why the food system isn't broken so much as designed, the difference betwee...

We're bringing this one back. Hawa Hassan was born in Mogadishu, fled the Somali Civil War at four, spent time in a refugee camp in Kenya, and arrived alone in Seattle at age seven. She went on to win a James Beard Award and write two of the most distinctive cookbooks in recent memory. In this conversation, she and Mark and Kate talk about her book Setting a Place for Us, which travels to eight co...

Kevin Boehm co-founded the Boka Restaurant Group nearly 25 years ago and now runs 35 restaurants across Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. He and his partner Rob Katz won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur in America. He also lived in his car, wrote a fake resume to get his first restaurant job, and spent two decades drinking heavily to manage bipolar disorder before getting sober...

Dan Jacobs is the chef and co-owner of DanDan and EsterEv in Milwaukee, a runner-up on Season 21 of Top Chef, and one of the most quietly remarkable people to come on this show. In 2016, four months before opening his first restaurant, he was diagnosed with Kennedy's Disease, a rare neuromuscular condition often mistaken for ALS. He went on to compete on Top Chef eight years later anyway. Mark and...

Shirley Chung is a Top Chef finalist, French Laundry veteran and José Andrés darling. In 2024, she was diagnosed with stage four tongue cancer, and it changed her life. Shirley talks about the diagnosis she almost missed, the treatment that saved her tongue, and what it felt like to slowly, painstakingly relearn how to taste. Along the way: an unlikely connection with Grant Achatz, who went throug...

Toya Boudy is back. Since her debut cookbook came out in 2023, life has thrown a lot at her: divorce, her mother's health struggles, sobriety, and raising three kids. Her new book, Cooking from Scratch, is the result of all of it. Kate and Toya talk about rebuilding after everything falls apart, and about Malinda Russell, a free woman of color who published a cookbook in 1866 and packed it with ev...

The father-daughter duo talks to our father-daughter duo about their new cookbook and why it's special – and what it was like working on it together. Plus, Courtney's "recipe detective" journey and Al's take on The Morning Show – and Mark's on The Bear.  Get the recipe for Everything-Bagel and Lox Strata on The Bittman Project:  https://bittmanproject.com/recipe/everything-bagel-and-lox-...

We revisit Kate's conversation with the writer (and ex-Mario Batali employee and former assistant to Anthony Bourdain) Laurie Woolever, who talks about how (and if) kitchen culture has changed since the early-aughts heydey; why she never felt like a victim; her memoir, Care and Feeding; and how Anthony Bourdain put people at ease—and why people loved him so much. Subscribe to Food with Mark Bittma...

New Yorker writer Hannah Goldfield talks to Kate and Mark about "intentional drinking"; how, right now, it feels like everyone is taking a stance on where we land on the drinking spectrum; how bars and restaurants are making drinking (and not drinking) easier to navigate; and mini cocktails.  Read Hannah's recent piece, "The Age of 'Intentional' Drinking":  https://www.newyorker.com/maga...

Baker Paola Velez talks to Kate and Holly about why and how she started Bakers Against Racism and how its influence and warmth has spread—and continues to spread; ad-libbing baked goods and feeling passionate about getting others confident enough in the kitchen to do it, too; and how romance played a factor in her career choice. We've got recipes from Paola's book, Bodega Bakes! Chocolate Malta Ca...

Revisiting our interview with Nasim Alikhani, the wildly popular Brooklyn-based chef, who talked to Kate and Mark about why the slow cook makes Iranian food special, the best way to enjoy a dinner party, and leaving Iran for the US in the 1980s. Get Nasim Alikhani’s recipe for Date Scrambled Eggs on the Bittman Project: https://bittmanproject.com/recipe/nasim-alikhanis-date-scrambled-eggs/ Subscri...

The prolific writer talks to Kate and Mark about why her mom told her not to learn how to cook (and how the kitchen is now her happy place), the big problem with mainstream veganism (and the food that ended her vegan journey), and using food and cooking to manage loss. Subscribe to Food with Mark Bittman on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and please help us grow by leaving...

In this revisiting of a 2025 episode, writer, chef, and TV star Alton Brown talks to Mark and Kate about fame, "then" and now; the problem with memory—and memoir; falling up the stairs; his farewell tour; and eating on the road, monastically.  Head to the Bittman Project for a special excerpt from Alton's collection of essays, Food for Thought:  https://bittmanproject.com/alton-brown-mea...

Liz Carlisle is an associate professor in the environmental studies program at UC Santa Barbara, Aubrey Streit Krug is the director of the Perennial Cultures Lab at the Land Institute, and Leah Penniman is an acclaimed activist and farmer who co-founded Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York. The three joined Kate and Mark to talk about why perennial foods should be seriously considered as part...

In this revisiting of a 2022 episode, Mark talks to beloved chef Sheldon Simeon about learning to butcher chickens in first grade, the divide between Hawaiian natives and tourists, and cooking for three days straight. Sheldon's on Instagram: @chefwonder, and you can get a bunch of his recipes on the Bittman Project! Shoyu Chicken:  https://bittmanproject.com/recipe/shoyu-chicken/ Loco Mo...