Lunch Therapy

I've been cooking along to show tunes since I first started cooking twenty years ago... so imagine how excited I am that the Broadway cookbook that I cowrote with Gideon Glick (star of Spring Awakening, Little Shop of Horrors, and a Tony nominee for To Kill a Mockingbird), Give My Swiss Chards to Broadway, is coming out this October 4th! Gideon actually received his copies in the mail a few days a...

Andrea Nguyen ís the prolific author of eight cookbooks, including Vietnamese Food Any Day, The Pho Cookbook, Asian Tofu, and The Banh Mi Handbook. She's also the co-host of a brand new podcast called Everything Cookbooks where she, along with her co-hosts Molly Stevens, Kate Leahy, and Kristin Donnelly discuss the ins and outs of the cookbook publishing world. That's the very subject of today's t...

When Chef Vishwesh Bhatt started serving his Indian-inflected Southern food at SnackBar in Oxford, Mississippi, the food world was so dazzled, the James Beard committee nominated him for Best Southern Chef five times before he finally won in 2019. His new book, I Am From Here, captures what makes his cooking so original and specific to him and his journey from Gujarat India to the American South....

What's it like to be gay and to love food? Today's guest Dan Pelosi (aka: Grossy Pelosi) knows a little something about it. Having grown up 3/4ths Italian (the other 1/4 is Portuguese), Dan had food foisted on him at a young age. But how did he reconcile that with the body-obsessed gay-culture that he became a part of once he got older? It's a similar issue for me having grown up in a Jewish famil...

What's it like to be famous on TikTok? Ask Chef Jon Kung who has 1.5 million followers on there and is frequently on lists of TikTok's best food accounts. Learn how he went from being a chef in Detroit to being a full-time TikToker, what his process is, whether he writes his narrations or improvises them, what kind of camera he uses, how he thinks about his sex appeal, and the impact he's had on h...

For years, I've been trying to pitch articles to the New York Times food section and for years I've been failing. On a total lark, I invited Emily Weinstein, the food and cooking editor for the Times, on to my podcast and in a mind-blowing turn of events, she said yes! Today's episode, then, gets down to the nitty-gritty: what does Emily look for in a pitch, what are her pitch pet peeves, how do y...

Kate McDermott is the author of two widely-celebrated books on pie (The Art of the Pie and Pie Camp; Publisher's Weekly called The Art of the Pie "one of the best books written on the subject") and teaches a regular pie-making workshop at her home in Washington State. Today she comes on The Amateur Gourmet Podcast to school me on all things pie: from judging fruit's ripeness with a refractometer t...

What's the secret to writing a really good recipe? How do you make it unique while also making it simple enough for people to do at home? Enter Jessie Sheehan, celebrated baker, TikTok superstar, and author of the brand new cookbook, Snackable Bakes. In today's talk, we cover everything from coming up with the initial recipe concept, bringing it into the kitchen, testing it, and then freaking out...

This year's James Beard awards COMPLETELY shut L.A. out of the mix, awarding the country's second largest city zero citations for what is commonly considered one of the most vibrant, exciting, and relevant food scenes in the country. Here to talk us through the controversy is Farley Elliott, Senior Editor of Eater L.A., who has lots to say, not just on this subject, but on many others too. We cove...

Before I got hit by Covid, I spent an hour talking to the delightful coffee expert Ever Meister — who I met at my first favorite coffee shop, Joe on Waverly in the early aughts — about all things espresso, cappuccino, and, most importantly of all, latte art. Meister's been something of a fairy godmother when it comes to my homemade coffee drinks. If you've been following me on TikTok, you can see...

Have I got a podcast for you! Well: it's for you if you're, like me, OBSESSED with collecting vintage Pyrex and bowls and plates and other kitchen doodads. My guest is a purveyor of all such things: Nicole Miller, who runs @Pyrexnplants on Instagram and has her own Etsy shop. Our conversation covers everything from how she got into all this in the first place, whether or not she's a hoarder, how h...

I was the perfect audience for my own podcast this week because Craig (my husband, in case you're new) is going to be back and forth to NY over the next five months to edit his movie, and I'll be visiting often, and — crisis! — I don't know where to eat. Add to that the fact that people still ask me: “Hey, Adam, I'm going to New York soon, what are the hot new restaurants?” As if I know! Enter Rya...

What a thrill to share this week's Amateur Gourmet Podcast: an episode dedicated entirely to Julia Child! We're lucky enough to have the creator of the show Julia (and an award-winning playwright) Daniel Goldfarb here to talk all about how the show came about, casting Sarah Lancashire as Julia, taking liberties with the biography, shooting in Boston, and whether they actually made all of that food...

It's Mother's Day this Sunday! Do you know what you're cooking yet? Or what you want your family to cook for you? Please welcome Sarah Copeland to the stage. She's not only a prolific cookbook author (The Newlywed Cookbook, Feast, Every Day is Saturday, and her latest, Instant Family Meals), she also happens to be a mom. In today's episode, we talk about Mother's Day strategies (pancakes, waffles,...

So excited to talk about my favorite subject — COLLECTING COOKBOOKS! — with none other than the founder of Stained Page News, one of the premiere destinations for cookbook news online: Paula Forbes. Paula and I are such cookbook geeks that this conversation sounds like it's sped up, but it's just us being super geeky and enthusiastic. Find out which cookbooks we're proudest to have in our collecti...

The late Pulitzer Prize-winning L.A. food writer Jonathan Gold once wrote about Kevin Bludso's BBQ: “The brisket that issues from those battered smokers is a paradigm of meat, beef that disappears so quickly that, if it weren't for a feeling of satisfying fullness, you might swear that you had less eaten it than dreamed it.” Kevin Bludso is a BBQ legend and now, with the help of my pal Noah Galute...

I don't know about you, but I'm insecure when it comes to wine. It's just so overwhelming. What's the difference between natural wine and regular wine? Why is some super expensive wine not worth it and some cheap wine a great bargain? How do you learn all of the things you're supposed to learn about mouthfeel and terroir and structure? Welcome to Wine Week, my attempt to clear things up for you an...

It's my favorite time of year: spring! So many delicious things to eat (fava beans, artichokes, strawberries) and so many ways to prepare them. That's why I've invited two notable food writers on to the podcast to talk about their favorite spring cooking strategies. First, L.A. Times cooking columnist Ben Mims swings by to tell us about his newfound love for radishes, his savory approach with rhub...

Welcome to the debut of The Amateur Gourmet Podcast! Fans of Lunch Therapy: don't worry. You'll still get all of the in-depth interviews that you loved before, only now we're doing it on a theme. And this week's theme is FOOD TV. Natasha Leggero, host of the brand new TBS cooking competition show Rat in the Kitchen, comes on to talk about judging a cooking show, talking about food on TV, traveling...

So excited to have Dan Souza on the pod today! Not only is he the editor-in-chief of Cook's Illustrated, he's a regular on one of my all-time favorite cooking show's: America's Test Kitchen on PBS. Today our conversation covers everything from his responsibilities as editor-in-chief, how difficult it was to make changes to the Cook's Illustrated format when he took over, what he makes when he does...

If you like musicals, you've gotta listen to today's episode of Lunch Therapy. My patient is none other than Ben Rimalower, the only person I know who loves Patti LuPone as much as I do — so much so, that he wrote and performed a one man show about it called Patti Issues (which was a NYT Critic's Pick!). He's since gone on to write and star in another one-man show, Bad with Money, as well as writi...

This week's Lunch Therapy patient, Cathy Barrow (aka: Mrs. Wheelbarrow), is the highly accomplished author of four cookbooks — Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Practical Pantry (an IACP Winner for best single-subject cookbook), Pie Squared (a James Beard-award nominee for baking and desserts), When Pies Fly, and her most recent, Bagels, Schmears, and a Nice Piece of Fish. In today's session, we talk all about t...

My Lunch Therapy patient this week, Andy Baraghani, made a name for himself at Bon Appetit with his viral videos and approachable-yet-exciting recipes. He's now the author of a brand new cookbook, The Cook You Want to Be, which arrives on shelves April 26th. In today's session, we talk all about Andy's sense of discipline and how it changed during the pandemic. We also cover his Iranian background...

My patient this week is Matt Rodbard, founder and editor of Taste and co-author of Koreatown and the co-author of the brand new cookbook, Food IQ: 100 Questions, Answers, and Recipes to Raise Your Cooking Smarts. Our conversation hits some juicy topics like cultural appropriation, how editors handle accusations against chefs in their publications, and how Jewish people are obsessed with meals and...

Rebecca Metz plays Pam Adlon's funny and very humane manager on FX's Better Things (one of my favorite shows) and that's just the beginning: she's been working in Hollywood for decades and has been on everything from Gilmore Girls to Malcolm in the Middle to Shameless to AJ and the Queen. Today's session is all about what it means to be in actor in Hollywood: the craft itself, the brutality of aud...