Critics’ Cult Classics: Hannah Goldfield on the Food World’s Secret Tastemakers

0:00From athletic stuff like a full-court pickup game, swish, to athletic-ish stuff like a half-mile stroll. Get those steps in! Head to Sierra or Sierra.com for the brands you want at the prices that let you do it all. From athletic to athletic-ish, Sierra's got it. Chronic migraine. 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment.

1:08Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. Morning decisions. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel, maybe? Or a white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries.

1:36Welcome to Critics at Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Nomi Fry. I'm Vincent Cunningham. And I'm Alex Schwartz. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hi, my friends. Hello. Hello.

1:54Well, we are on to the second installment of our Critics at Large interview series. This month, we're talking with our favorite writers about their favorite cult classics. And Nomi, you're up. Yeah. So for this interview series, we each picked a guest critic to come on the pod. And I asked to do my conversation with Hannah Goldfield, and I'm glad she agreed. Hannah is my friend, but she is also just a fantastic food writer. And every time I talk to her about food, I'm kind of like reminded of the depth of kind of knowledge that she has. She's written about like sushi in Omaha and dirty soda in Utah, you know.

2:41I mean, she's just kind of like doing a lot of local food reporting. and when we were thinking about this theme that we selected, the cult classic, right? We think often when we talk about this topic, about movies, we think about TV shows, we think about books, we think about albums, but it intrigued me to find out what this idea might mean in the food world.

3:11So that's today on Critics at Large, The Hidden Gems of Cooking and Eating.

3:22Hannah Goldfield, I'm so excited to have you here with me. Just a bit of an intimate one-on-one. Our summer series, as you know, is about cult classics, right? The concept of a cult classic. What does it mean in a variety of cultural fields? What is your definition of a cult classic, maybe kind of like broadly? And then more specifically, when you think about food, what emerges? The term cult classic I find to be so slippery. I'm such a fact checker at heart that I'm always looking for like really sharp boundaries to define something. I think that in general, it's a piece of culture that is deeply beloved by a group of people that is not sort of mainstream.

4:15It's not something that you would find in every home in America, for example, but the people who do love it, love it incredibly intensely. And I feel like it's something that people often like attach their identity to. like there's a lot of pride in liking a cult classic because you're part of a cult. You're a member of a small self-selecting group. I mean, maybe we can start just talking about like ingredients. We can talk about restaurants. We can talk, you know, like how does it figure in the culinary world? Right. I think there are definitely ingredients that end up as cult classics, things that like people who care especially about food have in their kitchens, whether it's like a brand of something or having like pomegranate molasses in your cabinet.

5:05Yeah, I know that people like have certain types of salt that they're very devoted to. Right. And these things shift and change. That's what's interesting. And maybe, I don't know if this is more true within the culinary world, but like, I do feel like they're ingredients that nobody uses and then they sort of become a cult classic and then they become ubiquitous. Right. Like I feel like arugula was at one point. Oh my God, yes. Maybe a cult classic. I remember discovering arugula at least 25 years ago. I was a young lass. And I remember the mother of a boyfriend of mine at the time would buy arugula.

5:43And I remember being like, ooh, I love this. I love this. You know, what is this? This is not iceberg lettuce, you know. But that does beg the question, is there a difference between like a cult classic and like a trend? Because I remember in like Nora Ephron's Hardburn, her novel, her Romana Clay novel, which I'm sure I've mentioned before on this podcast, where she recounts like kind of the breakup of her marriage from Carl Bernstein. she has this line in the book, pesto is the quiche of the 70s, which is to say all of these things which are kind of like, she's obviously like a connoisseur. She's like a gourmand.

6:25And these things that kind of like gain traction as a cult classic, but then obviously later everybody was eating. Now everybody eats pesto, you know, or quiche. Yes, I think some things kind of start out as trends and then become ubiquitous. But I do think there's sort of another category, like what popped to mind is there's a type of cabbage called caraflex cabbage. And that's become quite popular in a very small subset of people, I think. Who are these people? In sort of a small world. Well, you see it a lot at restaurants. I see. But you also see it at farmer's markets. And it is a little bit of this, like, thing.

7:06It's certainly not a household ingredient. And I don't think it will ever become one. And I guess, presumably, if it got popular enough, maybe some, like, huge farms would start to grow it. But it just feels like nobody in America at least cares enough about cabbage. I don't think cabbage is going to rise to that level. Although I could be wrong. I could be wrong. Maybe people were saying that about arugula. It's true. You know, 20 years ago, 25 years ago. Yeah, who can tell? I mean, that brings to mind another thing. It's sort of the idea of scarcity, right? Which is, I think, applicable as you just suggested to certain ingredients which just aren't like that widely available.

7:46It can be probably applied to, if we're thinking about restaurants, it's called classics, right? Like I remember when people started talking about In-N-Out Burger. I mean, I never lived in California. It's a California chain. And I remember people being like, it's the double-double. It's the animal. You know, all of these. And of course, this is a chain. And this isn't like some like highfalutin. And yet I was like, oh, these people know something that I don't. They're talking about it as this kind of semi-secret. Right. Yeah, because it's sort of a cult classic outside of California. It started in California, but it's in some other states too, although all kind of in the western half.

8:26But yeah, that's exactly right. Like in L.A. it's everywhere. And in much of California, it's everywhere. But to people on the East Coast, like to know about In-N-Out is to, or at least it was, and I think because it's grown more present in the zeitgeist over the years. But there was definitely a time where to know about In-N-Out was to sort of be part of a cult. Yeah. And also, it's funny to think about the shifting definition of cult classic in the age of the internet because it's like we're just sharing information so constantly, especially on social media, that it's like nothing's a secret.

9:02Especially now with TikTok where, you know, you have like a TikTok girly with like a million followers or whatever come to whatever restaurant and suddenly there's lines out the door. Down the block. Yeah. And then like just the very concept of like gatekeeping and not gatekeeping and the idea of virality is sort of – it sort of overlaps with and is somehow also at odds with the idea of a cult classic. Right. So that's certainly complicated the whole thing. But I'm thinking of this restaurant called Jeans in West Village. And it's an old Italian restaurant. And I think it's kind of been blown up by exactly the process we're talking about.

9:41But there was a long time where it did feel like a cult classic. And that, like, I would have this experience where I would realize that someone else also loved Jeans. Yes. And it wasn't like, it was around for so long. It wasn't hard to get into. I'm sure it probably is a lot harder now. And it was the classic thing of like, the food isn't that good. The food isn't that good. And it's actually relatively expensive. It's kind of expensive. It's not like, oh, you could get, you know, like an enormous steak for like, you know, below market. It's like kind of expensive, not very good, slathered and like, you know, mushroom sauce or whatever, you know?

10:22Exactly. I remember getting a plate of crudité there that was like very sad and yet it felt like this piece of a New York that doesn't exist anymore like I think the waiters wear like coat and tails or they did and they'd all been working there for like literally decades and the room was sort of shabby you have to call for a res I believe like they're not on yes they're not on you know like a resi or open table yeah and so is that still a cult classic? Maybe not, but it definitely was. And I think meeting, as you said, meeting someone else who also knows about the same place is like meeting like a long-lost relative, you know, and has a big part in making something a cult classic, you know, because it's kind of like a secret society.

11:11Or Fennelly. Sorry, we shouldn't. Oh, Fennelly. Well, Fennelly is interesting because Fennelly— It was. Definitely a cult classic. It managed to stay under the radar for a long time after Soho transformed from like Artist Haven to Tourist Destination. I feel like it was really the TikTok era that blew it up. And like the age of paparazzi, I think there are always celebrities being photographed at tables on the sidewalk there. It's true. Once I saw Diplo there, I was like a couple drinks in and he was sitting outside with a couple of bros and I saw him and out of my mouth with no preamble as if God himself was speaking, I said, I love you.

11:59And he very kindly said, thanks, I love you too. It was a confusing interaction. More for me than for him, I'm sure. I'm sure he's used to it. I know. So that was at Finnelli's. Glorious.

12:17In a minute, a cookbook that's been influencing restaurants and home cooks for 25 years that you've maybe never heard of. Critics at large from The New Yorker, we'll be right back.

12:36From athletic stuff like a full court pickup game, swish, to athletic stuff like a half mile stroll. Get those steps in. Head to Sierra or Sierra.com for the brands you want at the prices that let you do it all. From athletic to athletic, Sierra's got it. Chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment.

13:09Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Allerge your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

13:45Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel, maybe. Or a white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries.

14:14Let's turn to cookbooks. Tell me about what makes a cult classic cookbook. Yeah. There have been, in history, there have been cookbooks that I do feel like are or were in, like, everyone's home. Like The Joy of Cooking or— Right. Or Fanny Farmer. Cookbooks that become, like, a standard wedding present, for example. Right. Or a cookbook that, like, you go to college and your parents or your grandparents or whatever give you this cookbook to take with you to kind of start your adult life. Yeah, I mean, and that was really, I mean, I'm thinking of a very relatively small country and community. But when I was growing up in Israel, there was one cookbook that everybody had.

14:56And I think it came out in the 70s. Her name was Ruth Serkis. And it was in Hebrew, but generally in translation, I guess it would be Cooking with Love. That was the title of the book. and every home I ever went to had that and every recipe, you know, like I remember there was a potato salad that my mom and everyone else would make, you know, there was like a chocolate cake. There was like easy home cook basics that everybody cooked because everyone had the same book. That is really an example of just like absolutely widespread. Do you think it's still widespread? Because that's something that's coming to mind for me you know, too.

15:35I would bet, if I had to guess, I would bet that it was like reissued with maybe some updates, but I'm not sure. But when I was growing up, that was the book that everybody had. I feel like that's another category of cult classic is a cookbook that was for a time in everyone's home and then sort of fell out of fashion. But now it's still kind of beloved by, you know, people who love cookbooks and love the history of cookbooks. Like now I want to buy that book. I'm going to go get that book. And of course, Hannah, you belong to a subset of people who are food hounds, cookbook hounds, whatever you want to call it.

16:16And I know that among this group, there is a sense in which certain cookbooks of the past, cult classics, if you will, where there's a kind of like maybe even almost a competitive eBay kind of culture of like, oh, you can get this book, but it's$200. Right. It's not something that you can come across at your Barnes & Noble or on Amazon. It's something that needs to be kind of sniffed out. And I know that you talked to Bonnie Slotnick, who has a cookbook bookstore, and I know she kind of like talked to you about that phenomenon of kind of like, Yes. A heightened interest in certain cookbooks and the prices that people are willing to pay for them.

17:04Yeah. So Bonnie Slotnick of Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, a wonderful store in the East Village, which is all it's all rare and vintage cookbooks. She doesn't carry anything new. And she's just an absolute encyclopedia of cookbooks and like a true historian. And I kind of brought up the subject of cult classics with her. And it's funny because she's almost too deep in the world. She was like, well, who's the cult? I mean, she's the cult. She's the cult. In a way. But she does have a great sense of what people are looking for. Because people come to her often looking for rare books that are hard to find and can be expensive.

17:49What are some of these books that kind of like fetch high prices because of their relative obscurity and rarity? Do you have a couple of examples for us? Well, one example is a book that I wrote about as well, which was Martha Stewart's very first cookbook called Entertaining. It was out of print and it became weirdly hard to get and it was going for like hundreds of dollars on eBay to the point that then the publisher reissued it because it was that much of a cult classic, I guess you could say. Which is funny because it's like Martha Stewart, the like doyen of, you know. Sure, this is not like a marginal.

18:29This is not a marginal. No, she's one of our biggest celebrities. She is the definition of a household name in every sense, you could say. So the idea of one of her cookbooks being a cult classic is kind of funny, but I think it was. And maybe it still is, even if it's highly available now. I still think it's like it's not really applicable to today. I wrote a whole column about it. It's like a kind of glimmer in time. You know, it was so specific to a certain kind of entertaining within a certain kind of socioeconomic scene that didn't apply to everyone then. And certainly I think it applies even less now.

19:10It's just a very different era. Yes. So Hannah, now we're going to turn because I know that there is a cookbook that you brought today that we're going to talk about a little bit more at length. Because when we asked you to think about a cult classic and the world of cookbooks, you were like, I want to do the Zuni Cafe cookbook. Yeah. So why don't you tell us a little bit about the book and the restaurant that it stemmed from? Yeah, so it's called The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, a compendium of recipes and cooking lessons from San Francisco's beloved restaurant. It's by Judy Rogers, who was the chef at Zuni Cafe for many years.

19:51She died in 2013. The book came out in 2002. So Judy Rogers, who was the chef, she worked at Chez Panisse. And she certainly kind of picked up the mantle of this idea of California cooking. And then Zuni Cafe during her reign became super influential in that sense. So it's a lot of like seasonal, European inspired, but very California produce driven cooking. And you brought the book with you. I brought the book. It's very big. I think it weighs probably four pounds. Wow. It's over 500 pages, I guess, including the index. And it has this extremely beautiful, to me, image of a plate with these kind of mottled nectarines, speckled nectarines, and then fresh almonds sort of falling out of their fuzzy green pods.

20:50And then there's some prosciutto on butcher paper in the corner. And it's just incredibly appealing. When did you first become familiar with it? So part of what made me think of it was that I first became familiar with a recipe from it, which a friend made for me at a dinner party. And it was a very memorable meal because of this one recipe, which was the roast chicken. The trick to it is that it gets pre-seasoned. It gets salted a full 24 hours before you're ready to cook it. and then you leave it in the fridge uncovered. And it's basically like a dry brine. It draws out all the moisture and seasons the meat from within.

21:34And then you cook it in a very hot oven. You basically turn your oven as high as it will go. And I believe there's also a bread salad that goes along with it. Yes, which is like kind of surprising and exciting. Like bread salad is not that common here in the U.S. I feel like it's, you know, panzanella is everywhere in Italy. But the idea of a bread salad is kind of novel, and it gets tossed partly in the drippings from the chicken, and there are currants involved, and pine nuts, and some greens. And it's just really like kind of a perfect meal. And the recipe has been, you know, I know Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen published a sort of adaptation of it.

22:17it's certainly burrowed its way into a certain subset of the culinary zeitgeist. And what is it about the cookbook specifically that makes it so beloved among those in the know? And how is it different from like Joy of Cooking or a book that's much more widely known? Well, I think the things that make it so beloved by the people who love it are also the things that have kept it maybe from becoming a classic. Because one thing you notice is how text heavy it is. It's so text heavy. And as we were just discussing, it's huge. It is huge in size. It's a bit intimidating at first. Yes. And I think I could see it being intimidating all the way through for someone who isn't particularly interested in cooking or maybe isn't like a cooking obsessive.

23:15But if you are interested in cooking, if you have a curiosity about it even, it's an incredible resource. Someone described it, I think it was Jonathan Gold, as a very generous cookbook. It is so detailed and so vividly written. There's like, there's a whole— The writing is wonderful. The writing is wonderful. It really reminded me of like, you know, I'm not a person who's very interested in cooking. I'm a person who loves food. And I'm a person who loves reading about food. Like whether it's in the form of like actual food writing or if it's like, you know, I always loved like Little House on the Prairie when they would describe like, you know, the leg of venison and whatever it is.

23:56Like skinning a bear. Yeah. I feel like there are like hotcakes in Little House on the Prairie. There's hotcakes. You know, there's always like drippings. Bacon, lard. Yeah. So I love that sort of thing. And I have read like Elizabeth David, you know, books that do have— Who is a big influence on Judy Rogers. Yeah, books that do have recipes, but that aren't—the recipes are almost—it's not that they're incidental, but they are placed into a whole narrative that is kind of almost like a life philosophy, you know? Right, exactly. I read the introduction. And one thing that was interesting to me, this is a quote from Judy Rogers from the book.

24:40A truly good meal depends on a cavalcade of sound judgments, many of which occur well before you lift a knife. When you decide what to cook, you are deciding whether a meal can be really good or not. If you choose to do a dish, you can get good ingredients for one you are completely unfamiliar with or one you don't have the time or proper equipment to prepare. You may be setting the stage for a mediocre meal that will be no fun to produce. So here's what I found interesting. The combination that it tries to forward between exactitude and fun, like saying like, oh, you have everything needs to be just so.

25:19This is not a book where it's like, you know, five minute meals for the harried housewife, you know, to throw together. And it's okay if you don't have, if you sub in, you know, whatever, this kind of flour for that kind of flour. You know, it's like, it doesn't matter whatever you have in your pantry. This is not that. This is like very exacting. But what Rogers keeps emphasizing is that this will be enjoyable. This will be fun. Yeah. What are some of your favorite recipes from the book that you've made time and again? And what feels special about eating this kind of food? To be totally honest, I haven't cooked that much from this book.

26:03I think in part because I am in a phase of my life where I'm not really cooking exciting dishes from cookbooks. I'm cooking things that I pray that my children will deign to eat. You are the harried housewife who's throwing together five-minute meals. It's kind of true. And my relationship with this book, I've made the chicken many times, but it's more of like a fantasy for me. I do hope that I'll get to a place in my life where I can have these leisurely weeknight dinners, maybe after my kids have gone to college. Bye-bye. So long. Or dinner parties where I'm like making really ambitious things.