This Is TASTE

Felix Salmon has lived in and around NYC for over 25 years, and he’s one of the sharpest observers of food culture and trend without officially writing about food. He’s the current chief financial correspondent at Axios and host of the terrific podcast Slate Money. He’s also the author of The Phoenix Economy: Work, Life, and Money in the New Not Normal. On this episode we talk about NYC dining, in...

It’s really great to catch up with Cree LeFavour, a novelist, cookbook author, and chef who just returned from four months at the South Pole, as documented in her excellent Substack. What is it like to bake bread at elevation in the world’s largest freezer? Her story is pretty entertaining, and we hear about how the world’s harshest environment can inspire creativity in the most interesting way. W...

Yes, Bill Addison is back on the show. We’ve long been a fan of Bill’s writing, going back to his well-considered restaurant criticism in Atlanta, Dallas, and San Francisco, for Eater as a roving national critic, and for the past four-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 cat...

Joshua Weissman is one of the strongest (and largest) voices on the food internet and the host of a series of YouTube shows that clock more than nine million subscribers. He has an abounding love of food and proper technique, and we get into what makes a great cooking video, how Joshua likes to spend his off time in Austin, Texas, and his great cookbook, Texture Over Taste. Wylie Dufresne is a leg...

Today is JG day, and we are thrilled! Jean-Georges Vongerichten is the man behind his eponymous Midtown restaurant as well as some of the most influential dining in the canon of American gastronomy: Spice Market, JoJo, 66, Vong, Matsugen, the Tin Building. When JG stopped by the studio on Monday,, we didn’t have a detailed plan for our talk. We wanted to go back in time, mostly, but also to talk a...

Olga Massov and Sanaë Lemoine are the authors of Hot Sheet, a delightful new cookbook dedicated to the wide world of possibilities unlocked by the humble sheet pan. They’ve conjured up seriously smart recipes for breakfasts, starters, dinners, and desserts, and today they’re going deep on their process for developing creative yet accessible sheet pan staples. Do you enjoy This Is TASTE? Drop us a...

Marguerite Zabar Mariscal started as an intern at Momofuku in 2011, working her way through the influential restaurant group founded by David Chang all the way to the position of CEO, which she has held since 2019. On this entertaining episode, we speak about Marguerite’s journey from growing up a Zabar (that is, New York City grocery royalty) to running Momofuku’s sprawling restaurant and consume...

Today on the show we have a special conversation with Emily Sundberg, the voice behind the must-read (and much-read) Feed Me, a newsletter about business, culture, food, and good gossip. Emily and Matt shared the stage at the recent Adweek Commerce Week in New York, and here they talk about all kinds of craziness, including F*og Club, probiotic sodas, Faire, Graza potato chips, the future of food...

Our guest this episode is one of our friends in the food podcasting world. Dan Pashman is the creator and host of the long-running podcast The Sporkful. He’s also the author of a great new book, Anything’s Pastable: 81 Inventive Pasta Recipes for Saucy People. In this episode, we talk about his pasta journey, from creating his own pasta shape to rigorously researching the many ways pasta can be co...

Arielle Johnson is a flavor scientist who advises some of the top restaurants and chefs in the world on how to turbocharge their cooking with chemistry. She’s currently the science director of Noma Projects, and she’s sharing all her wisdom in a new book: Flavorama. It’s a delight having her on the show to answer all our questions about the science behind what we eat—truly a must-listen episode fo...

Nicolaia Rips is a true New Yorker. She grew up in Manhattan’s famous Chelsea Hotel, which served as the subject of her memoir, Trying to Float. Now she’s the features editor of HommeGirls, and she’s writing for places like Cultured, Air Mail, and the New York Times. It’s so fun to have her on the show in an all-out New York episode. Do you enjoy This Is TASTE? Drop us a review on Apple, or star u...

Sun Noodle is a legend in the ramen game and the company behind many of your favorite bowls around the country. Kenshiro Uki, our guest on today’s show, grew up in Hawaii working at his family’s noodle company and later helped lead an expansion throughout the United States and beyond. On this episode we hear about what goes into making noodles perfectly matched for legendary shops like Momofuku No...

Julius Roberts is a chef and farmer living in the idyllic English countryside off the Dorset coast. He’s also the author of The Farm Table, a new cookbook chronicling his life cultivating crops and animals and cooking with this bounty. It’s a real delight to have him on the show to talk about transitioning from cooking in restaurants to family farming, daily life on his smallholding, recipe develo...

The Netflix culinary travel series Somebody Feed Phil proves that food television can be both accessible and interesting, populist and highbrow. Much of the show’s success is credited to its host, the delightful human being Phil Rosenthal. Phil returns to the This Is TASTE studio for the first time in over five years and we catch up about how his show has grown in scope, we talk about some of his...

Crystal Wilkinson is the author of a compelling new book, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a memoir that honors the author’s maternal ancestors, which she calls her “kitchen ghosts.” On this episode we speak with Wilkinson about life in Kentucky and what she came to learn about her family history while researching the book.  Also on the show we catch up with Howie Kahn, a prolific journalist, sn...

Hailee Catalano and Chuck Cruz are two of our favorite social media follows (@haileecatalano and @chuckycruz). The two chefs, who met in culinary school, cooked at Chicago restaurants like Dos Urban Cantina and Cellar Door Provisions before starting to share recipes on TikTok and Instagram. Their inventive recipes and laid-back vibe have won many, many fans, and it’s so fun to have them both in th...

The hamburger god George Motz is back on today’s show, and it doesn’t disappoint. George is a writer, a TV host, and the guy with the cool hair and an endless well of knowledge about the hamburger. On this episode we talk about the opening of his wildly popular new NYC restaurants, Hamburger America. The first few months has brought long lines and introduced a very opinionated city to one of the f...

Today on the show we have a great double episode with two serious dudes in the restaurant game. Arjav Ezekiel is co-owner of Birdie’s, a beloved restaurant and wine bar located in Austin, Texas. On this episode we talk about Arjav’s immigrant upbringing in Portland, Oregon, and what brought him to the exciting world of wine. Also on the show we have a really great conversation with Harris Mayer. H...

Kanchan Koya will forever change how you look at your spice drawer. The chef, author, podcast host, and nutrition coach has a PhD in biomedical sciences from Harvard Medical School, which she uses to champion the science-backed benefits of ancient spices. We invited her into the studio for a truly fascinating conversation answering our many questions about health claims around spices—such as, what...

Matthew Schneier is currently the chief restaurant critic at New York magazine and previously reported on fashion and culture at The Cut and the New York Times. Matthew joined us in the studio to talk about the job he took over a little more than six months ago. We discuss putting his own unique stamp on the coverage, what he looks for in both old and new NYC restaurants to review, and how he came...

Himanshu Suri is best known by his rap name Heems. 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. Check out his very cool new album, Lafandar.  Also on the show is James...

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? On this episode, we welcome back Graza’s charismatic cofounder Andrew Benin to talk about the ups and downs of running a quickly growing food company. We hear about public drama, explodi...

Christina Chaey is a writer and recipe developer based in Brooklyn. A former Bon Appétit food editor, she’s currently writing the newsletter Gentle Foods, where she shares essays and recipes rooted in cooking how you want to feel. It’s so special to catch up with Christina in the studio about her background working in magazines, expanding the concept of wellness food, and making her very own cookb...

Andy Baraghani started his professional cooking career as a teenager at the legendary Berkeley, California, restaurant Chez Panisse, and he was truly just getting started. After working as a line cook at Estela in New York City, he was hired as the food editor at Tasting Table and eventually found his way to the Bon Appétit test kitchen, where he worked for over six years and won the hearts of man...

What a great conversation here with David Kamp, a journalist of the highest order and author of one of Matt’s favorite books about food ever, The United States of Arugula: The Sun-Dried, Cold-Pressed, Dark-Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution. In this episode we talk about the book’s legacy some 15 years after its publication. We also find out what David is working on now, i...