Special Sauce with Ed Levine

Last week's episode of Special Sauce ended with Michel Nischan and I discussing his groundbreaking restaurant, Heartbeat, and his efforts to serve food that was healthy and actually delicious. This week we pick up where we left off and talk about how leaving Heartbeat led to Michel becoming a trailblazing sustainable food consultant for major airlines, hotel groups, and corporations looking to dev...

This week on Special Sauce, I have as my guest my old friend, Michel Nischan, the three-time James Beard award-winning chef, author, and food equity advocate. Michel's a busy guy. Between his work as the founder and CEO of Wholesome Wave, which aims to increase affordable, healthy food access for underserved consumers, and his work with the Chef's Action Network, which he co-founded, he doesn't ha...

Today, my guest is Seth Godin, the insanely popular business blogger and best-selling author (his book, Tribes , is the most inspiring on leadership I've ever read). Seth has been encouraging and inspiring future leaders of every stripe imaginable for over thirty years, and since he loves to eat and cook and talk about food and life, I think he's perfect for Special Sauce.   Seth has some unique a...

On this week's Special Sauce, Andy Ricker explains his idiosyncratic take on what he does for a living, which he articulated in his book, Pok Pok : "I'm not a chef. I didn't invent this stuff. The food at my restaurants is not my take on Thai food." When I asked him what he meant by that, he replied, "The approach of most chefs is to go and study a food, usually in a cursory manner these days, and...

My guest on Special Sauce both this week and next is chef-restaurateur Andy Ricker, whose Pok Pok restaurants in Portland, Oregon, and in Brooklyn introduced me to the joys of Northern Thai food.   We delve into his hippie roots growing up in rural Vermont, his varied professional background ranging from working in low- and high-end restaurants to playing in several bands to house painting, and ho...

This week on Special Sauce features the second part of my far-reaching conversation with Dan Barber, and he and I cover a lot of ground. He defines each of the three plates that are the subject of his groundbreaking book, The Third Plate . I'll let you in on what the first plate is here: it's meat and potatoes, "the classic American dinner," according to Dan. But to find out what the other two pla...

I think it's safe to say that Dan Barber, the visionary chef of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, has led an interesting life. I'm sure you'll agree after listening to this week's episode of Special Sauce. Barber's dad loved good restaurants, so he was exposed to some pretty great places at a very young age. But, on the other hand, his father was also a practitioner of tough love. He used to...

Last week, I promised that you'd get to hear why Mark Ladner decided to walk away from Del Posto, which was awarded four stars by the New York Times, to open a fast-casual pasta joint, and this week I make good on that promise.  In this week's episode, Ladner and I discuss how he came up with the idea for his start-up, Pasta Flyer, and the challenges specific to figuring out how to make a good pas...

In the first of my two-part interview with chef Mark Ladner, we focus on his indirect yet hard-earned path to helming Del Posto, the New York Times four-starred restaurant he ran for twelve years. And why did the only chef to earn those four stars by cooking Italian food leave that palatial restaurant kitchen to open up a fast-casual joint where the pasta cooks in ten seconds? Framed against this...

You probably won't be able to hear it, but I was moved to tears by my interview with dumpling queen Helen You on this week's Special Sauce. Helen is the owner of Dumpling Galaxy, the finest dumpling shop in NYC, and the coauthor of The Dumpling Galaxy Cookbook , written alongside former Serious Eats editor Max Falkowitz. Her dumplings, as good as they are, weren't what got to me, though—it was her...

"Hot pig Jell-O" may not sound like a draw to most people, but that's exactly how Mario Batali describes the headcheese that he got me to try—and even like!—more than 20 years ago. How he managed that feat, his nose-to-tail approach to cooking (though not exclusive to him), how he hires so many people who start out as line cooks and end up as chef-partners, and what he regrets about giving author...

I have been dying to get Mario Batali, whom I have known for more than a quarter century, on Special Sauce since I first dreamed up the idea for our podcast, more than a year ago. And, when all you serious eaters listen to Mario on this week's episode, you'll know why. The man is funny, smart, hyper-articulate, and both thoughtful and thought-provoking. Mario has so many interesting things to say—...

Many serious eaters know the pleasures associated with ordering something delicious from the online food retailer Mouth.com.  But not many people know the fascinating backstory of Mouth's cofounder Craig Kanarick. That's where this week's episode of Special Sauce comes in.  How Craig went from telling Fortune 500 companies what to do at Razorfish to finding the next great jam-maker at Mouth is a t...

I call part two of my interview with Missy Robbins "The Comeback Episode," because we learn what happened when Missy returned from her self-imposed hiatus from her career as a chef. Missy delves into how the time away helped shape her personal philosophy and, inevitably, the development and opening of Lilia, her much-lauded Italian restaurant in Brooklyn and her first as a chef-restaurateur. Contr...

On this week's Special Sauce I chat with Missy Robbins, the chef and owner of Lilia in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Missy describes her 20-year journey to opening her own place with such sharp clarity that after we finished recording, I was unable to think about anything else for hours. And when we tried to edit our conversation down to one episode we found that we couldn't, so this week's episode is j...

In this first of a two-part interview with The New York Times Op-Ed Columnist and former restaurant critic, Frank Bruni, we delve into everything from his earlier days as Rome bureau chief for that same paper, why it feels as if readers of his memoir, Born Round: A Story of Family, Food, and a Ferocious Appetite , have "essentially been in bed" with him, and what he feels are the true qualificatio...

On this week's Special Sauce, I continue my far-reaching conversation with great cook and ramen master, Ivan Orkin, aka Ivan Ramen.  What is his recommendation on the best way to eat ramen, how did he make it as an American ramen chef in Tokyo, why did he return to the U.S. after so much success in Japan, and what non-noodle project does he have in the works in New York City?  You'll just have to...

In this first part of a Special Sauce double-header, Ivan Orkin, of Ivan Ramen and Slurp Shop in NYC, talks about life before he became a celebrity in Japan as a gaijin (foreigner) ramen chef: the Orkin family table growing up on Long Island, NY, how a high school job working as a dishwasher in a local Japanese restaurant helped first develop his palate, his early years teaching English in Tokyo,...

This week's guest on Special Sauce is chef and school food activist Bill Telepan, who is now at the helm of New York's Oceana Restaurant.  Bill shares some particularly insightful observations about why chef-driven neighborhood restaurants across the country are struggling, his mother's reaction to his decision to drop out of college and attend cooking school ("You're kidding, right?"), and why yo...

In part two of my conversation with Marcus Samuelsson, we chat a little about the profound Russian influence on everyday Swedish cuisine, the driving inspiration and ethos behind opening his Harlem restaurant, The Red Rooster, and how he was able to stop obsessing over creating a technically perfect fried chicken recipe and embrace it as "an emotional endeavor"–with a little tough love from a famo...

This week's Special Sauce features Chef Marcus Samuelsson, whose restaurant, The Red Rooster, is arguably ground zero of the Harlem food and drink renaissance.  I found Marcus's story so inspiring and moving that I decided it merited two episodes. In fact, this is the first interview I've done for the show that has brought me to tears. There's so much to Marcus's remarkable story, so tune in to pa...

Chef Daniel Rose of Le Coucou, the best new restaurant in New York City, reflects on his career and kitchen philosophy. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Our first Call Special Sauce with Stella Parks  was so nice, we decided to do it twice. Leah from DC wanted to come up with ideas for baked goods that "would just really light people on fire" at her daughter's school's bake sale table—in a metaphorical sense, that is. Both Carol from Connecticut and Kelly from Massachusetts had holiday pie questions, which Stella deftly handled, advising on blind...

Let's face it: One of the main reasons we look forward to the holiday season is the copious amount of baked goods we get to make and eat. So, with that in mind, I invited our pastry wizard, Stella Parks (aka BraveTart), to take calls on a special holiday baking episode of Call Special Sauce. And I strongly urge serious eaters everywhere to take a listen. Why? Mostly because Stella is so knowledgab...

On today's episode of Special Sauce, Kenji and I fielded a wide variety of potentially vexing questions about cooking on a boat (Mike in Cyprus), preparing acidic foods in cast iron cookware (Julia in New York), making the most of small kitchens (Andrew in New York), marinades vs. brines (Kevin in DC), and leaving out food overnight (Philip in Pittsburgh).  This episode was truly all over the map,...