Pot Luck Food Talks: Kitchen Stories From Behind the Pass

🎙️ EP168 - Two cooks catching up on recent food travel, forgotten cookbooks, kitchen myths, and the uneasy feeling that somewhere along the way, we started cooking for the wrong reasons. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🥂 When Is It Too Late to Say Happy New Year? 🥩 What's a Good Roast Beef? 📚 Falling Back in Love With Old Cookbooks 🗺️ Building a San Sebastián Food Guide 🥟 Knödel Explained 🇩...

🎙️ EP167 – If you cook meat, age fish, ferment, or make sauce, you’re already using enzymes. Kevin Jeung has spent years at Noma working directly with fermentation, aging, and enzymatic processes in the lab and the kitchen. 🎧 Topics Covered: 🧬 What enzymes are (in cook language) 🍍 Pineapple & papaya tenderizing… then eating your meat 🧼 Cold-water detergent = enzyme tech you already trust...

🎙️ EP166 – Cooking With Trash. This episode is a love letter to the parts we ignore… and the flavor we’re too lazy to earn. If you’ve ever thrown something away and then paid for it again in a different form, this one’s for you. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🗑️ Cooking with Trash – Why upcycling is a real chef flex 🥕 The Veg Stock Revelation – Balance, seasons, depth 🧈 Stock Veg Tapenade –...

🎙️ EP165 — Christmas service is the cruelest shift of the year: everyone’s celebrating, you’re bleeding tickets, and the smell of cinnamon just mocks you. Eric and Phil talk why working Christmas Eve always sucks—and the fantasy menu you’d cook for your tribe if you weren’t trapped on the line. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🎄 Why Christmas Service Breaks Chefs 🔥 Cinnamon Fantasy vs Kitchen...

🎙️ EP164 – These books were impressive, innovative and expensive. But does Modernist Cuisine still hold up? We talk cooking with science, gizmos and gadgets vs. cooking with just a knife, a pan, and years of repetition. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 📚 What Modernist Cuisine Actually Is 💸 The 500€ book and who it was really for 🧠 Cooking by intuition vs. cooking by process 🧪 When technolog...

🎙️ EP163 – Kitchens Run on Fear. One way or another, every cook learns that the heat isn’t just on the stove—it lives in your gut, your ego, your nightmares. This episode is about a cook’s fear and the tiny mistakes that steal your sleep and shake your sanity. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🍳 Fear Runs the Kitchen 💸 Expensive Plates, Expensive Mistakes 🌙 Cook's Nightmares Are Real 🧠 Ego, F...

🎙️ EP162 – El Bulli is gone. But if you cook today, you’re still cooking in its shadow. This episode is about how one weird beach restaurant rewired modern kitchens, pastry, foams, ferments – and the way chefs think about creativity itself. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🏰 El Bulli: The Most Influential Restaurant? 🔧 The Prep Table Revolution – One Long Bench, One Brain 🔥 How Mugaritz, Noma...

🎙️ EP161 - Chefs live and die by the prep list. This episode is kitchen discipline: owning your section, juggling a thousand timers, costing without bullshit, and letting go of those ego dishes nobody orders. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 📋 Night Prep Lists – Building a bulletproof station 🐂 Grab the Bull by the Horns – Taking real control of your section (and surviving clopening) 🗣️ Commie...

🎙️ EP160 – We got told we “know nothing about hospitality.” So we cracked open the word, the history, the ego, the danger, and the beauty of inviting someone in. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🤬 Instagram Says We “Know Nothing” About Hospitality 📖 Hostis: Guest, Enemy, Stranger 🤝 Host vs Guest — Power, Grace, Boundaries 🎁 The Art of Giving ⭐ Arzak's Bad Reviews -Trip Advisor Rage 🍬 Avant...

🎙️ EP159 - We pray to the tire god—patron saint of burnout and greenwashing. The cult of squared perfection, fake sustainability, and the insanity of chasing stars. This one’s for every cook who’s ever asked—what are we really cooking for? 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🌿 Michelin’s Vanishing Clover – Green Star sudden disappearance 🛞 Love–Hate with the Tire God – Worship, whips, and whiplas...

🎙️ EP158 - There’s a difference between a place that looks cool and a place that feels right. One has soul, the other comes with a mood board and hashtags. The ones we love need no gimmicks, just good taste, hot planchas, cold anchovies, and the kind of energy that makes you think, “Damn… I wish I’d open this.” 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🌿 Cafe Botanic – Dirty chai, quiet gardens, plant-b...

🎙️ EP157 - Foie gras with white chocolate. Anchovies in a cake. Jamón fat in flan. Sounds wrong—until it’s not. This episode is about breaking the rules and laughing at anyone who says, “that’s not how it’s done.” 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🍰 Savory Desserts – Blue cheese cheesecake, anchovy tart & foie gras ideas 🦆 Foie Gras Ganache – White chocolate, corn nuts & San Sebastián f...

🎙️ EP156 – 700 covers. Tickets spilling to the floor. Grill in freefall. This episode is about the nights everything falls apart, and why that’s where real cooks are made. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🔥 Friday-Night Meltdown — When the pass loses the plot and how to reset 🧾 Ticket Tsunami — Reading, batching, and staying ahead of the board 🥩 Grill Triage — “Fire everything” vs. perfect se...

🎙️ EP155 – Phil & Eric are back on The Line: the guests who test your patience, the ones who treat the menu like a suggestion, and the quiet power of saying NO when everyone expects you to bend. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 👨‍🍳 Back belly, underbelly, and serving up “The Line Pt. 9” 👀 Open Kitchen Reality – Early signs of trouble before the first ticket drops 🔄 Annoying Guests – The...

🎙️ EP154 — Basque fire, Bangkok chaos: From Mugaritz to Noma and now the streets of Thailand, Chef Iñaki Bolumburu turns a 35-seat speakeasy into a traveling txoko where the market writes the menu, charcoal does the talking, and “waste” gets a second life. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🏡 Basque Roots – Farmhouse life, family kitchens, and early sparks 🎓 Bilbao School Days – Bad student, goo...

🎙️ EP153 – More audience questions. More proof that breaking rules and ignoring common sense sometimes makes food more delicious. From soggy chicken skin to overcooked pasta, sometimes wrong tastes right. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode 🍗 Soggy Chicken Skin — Hainanese chicken, hot-water trick, poached bounce 🌿 Ugly Greens — Army-green spinach 🥧 Recipes That Shouldn’t Work — Boiled-butter cit...

🎙️ EP152 – From Wall Street to Berlin Burger Joint: Sachin Obaid eats more fine dining than anyone we know. But his true masterpiece? A burger that tells his life story. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 📈 From Finance to Fryers – line-level pressure on Wall Street and on the pass 🥒 Gilda Memories – a dirty martini that tasted like San Sebastián 🌍 Third-Culture Cooking – India meets the U.S. i...

🎙️ EP151 – 🍳 Forget the tasting menu. If you want to be a real cook, start in the trenches. 🔥This week we take on audience questions — and crack open the uncomfortable truths young chefs need to hear. ⚡ 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 👨‍🍳 Best Advice for Aspiring Chefs – Why foundations matter more than stars 🔥 “F### Tasting Menus” – The lost art of real cooking 🔪 Choosing Your Path – De...

🎙️ EP150 - Julián Otero isn’t here to make you comfortable. As creative chef of Mugaritz, he serves ideas disguised as food—sometimes brilliant, sometimes brutal, never safe. At the most controversial restaurant in the world, the dish isn’t finished until you eat it. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🎙️ Intro – Meet Juliano Otero, creative chef of Mugaritz 🤳 Gastro Cringe – calling out bathtub t...

🎙️ EP149 – Tourists chase paella. Chefs chase truth. This is Barcelona through a cook’s eyes: lobster-slick canelons, seawater stews, five-euro dinosaurs, and bars where the plancha still shouts. Some obvious, some hidden. All about how this city eats—and why it matters. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🌊🐖 Mar i Muntanya – Catalonia’s surf-and-turf DNA 🍝 Canelons + Lobster Butter – humble pas...

🎙️EP148 – A casual catch-up ☕ turns into a deep exploration of a cook’s career 👨‍🍳—turning points, mentors, and the lessons that shape a chef’s path to excellence ⭐. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🍰 The Cheesecake Test – Why eating from the back might mean you’re a psychopath 🔥 Improvising in Caracas – No oil, no problem (fish confit saves the day) 👨‍🍳 Mentors Who Changed Everything –...

🎙️ EP147 – Eric and Phil go all-in on the potato hall of fame—Robuchon’s butter-bomb purée, Heston’s triple-cooked fries, French gratins, plus some real WTF recipes like potato sauces and espumas. The greatest spud dishes every chef should know. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🥔 The Potato is King – humble, ugly, glorious 👨‍🍳 Robuchon’s Legendary Purée (60% butter rule) 🍟 Heston’s Triple-Co...

🎙️ EP146 – From Canteens to Michelin Stars – Giacomo Zani’s career didn’t start in gleaming fine-dining kitchens. It started with peeling potatoes for 400 in a pharmaceutical company cafeteria. Now he’s Executive Chef at Amelia in San Sebastián, running a 2-Michelin-star kitchen and helping launch restaurants from Bangkok to Miami. This is about passion, discipline, and saying yes before you’re re...

🎙️ EP145 – This is tuna, lip-to-tail. From cheeks to collars, marrow to belly—we break down every cut, every technique, and every dish that makes this fish a true culinary heavyweight. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🏛️ What Is a Sociedad? – Basque supper club rules & culture 🍽️ Cooking in the Sociedad – Eric’s 100-dish Basque challenge 🥣 Marmitako Deep Dive – Peppers, bonito, and potato t...

🎙️ EP144 – A Basque Temple of Smoke and Simplicity. It’s nearly impossible to get a table—yet somehow, we found ourselves upstairs at Asador Etxebarri. Later, over wine-stained notes and full stomachs, we tried to make sense of every course kissed by smoke, salt, and fire. 🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode: 🥣 Pea Broth – A liquid emerald that sets the tone with gentle smokiness 🥩 Our CHORIZO – M...