301: Chris Ying

35:29And you'll, you'll watch them take one of these chickens out of the oven and, and hack it up on the cutting board, and they present it in like six or eight pieces on top of the salad. And there's one last little thing they do before they send it out, and that is to just like scrape all of the drippings off the cutting board just straight onto the salad. And I know it seems obvious and it sounds obvious, but like that gesture to me has always stood out as what makes that place special. It is, that's the good stuff. And the most obvious thing in the world just to slide all that good stuff onto the chicken.

36:06And so that's what makes the place special, like the little accumulation of small gestures and moves like that. And besides that, like, man, that restaurant is on Market Street, not the most beautiful neighborhood in the world. Yeah, it's kind of gone a little bit in a different direction these days. It's in the thick of things. It is at the exact nexus of the Mission and Hayes Valley and downtown and the tenderloin and it's got this zinc bar. And if you can get the corner table with the windows, like in the lights filtering in, my God. I love, you know, it's a beautiful space to go into. And you really do remember the ambience of the room.

36:49I think your point is so taken about how, you know, that salad is dressed with the chicken bits and the drippings because that's like pure restaurant cooking right there. That's a la minute salad. That's something if you if it sits too long in those greens, you know, that's that's a different salad. If you're if you're doing a dinner party and you try that trick, it's just going to be wilty and not great. You need to, like, run that to the table once that hits. Exactly. And that is that's the whole that's the whole thing. Right. Is is, you know, there's some precursor to sort of like this is going to sound insane.

37:21And there's some precursor to Noma and the sort of time and place of everything where it's just like this has to be here now. Yeah. And you have to eat it right now. And I was actually having dinner with Josh Skines last night. And we were talking about that sort of immediacy of cooking. And I think like, you know, he thinks of himself as a California chef. I think of him as a California chef. And I think the defining thing is like the deliciousness and the immediacy of you have to eat this right now. whether that means like a perfectly in-season pluot or this, like you said, the chicken drippings going on the, on the salad right this second, that always takes precedence over let's meticulously plate this.

38:02Let's do this perfect and make sure it's, you know, let it, at the expense of it dying in the past, it's got to look perfect. And so that, you know what I mean? Like it's, it's all about immediacy. Yeah. Just skeins at a Cezanne, man. one of the legendary restaurants um yeah in our during our absolutely in our in our day okay speaking of restaurants and I alluded to this um man when you were a James Beard restaurant judge that was like a fucking crazy job and and I respect I'm a judge now but it's much different they've changed it you you guys ruined it for all of us okay but uh no you guys did an awesome job and you were always on the road tell me about that that process as being one of the the few jamespeare judges at the time uh it was a it was a really strange situation for me so at the time and i actually i don't remember how i don't know how it works now but at the time you had you know like 20 something committee chairs and each of us had a region and three four times a year we would get together to uh meet and discuss things uh discuss restaurants build out the semi-finalist list, review all the votes, you know, nominate restaurants and just debate for three days in a conference room.

39:18Like we sat in a windowless conference room in Hawaii for uncountable hours. That's insanity. Windowless. It was truly, it was truly, truly, truly mind boggling. Demented. But, you know, it was, it was a weird, it was weird for me, right? Because I was not, I'm not a restaurant critic. No. And, you know, I've done a little bit of restaurant criticism for the Chronicle. I wrote, you know, a few pieces for Paolo when he was editing there. And I'm really proud of those pieces. But like this wasn't my bag. I didn't I didn't review restaurants. And I was the only one in the room at the time, really, who was not who didn't have sort of like an active restaurant critic job or expense account or anything.

39:59That was the other thing is, you know, you're there's no budget to eat. You just you eat on your own dime. um but uh i actually you know i've talked about this in the dave chang show um i'm sure i'm in violation of some nda somewhere but like i walked in the room my very first trip i don't remember where it was somewhere in the midwest because that was the other thing the james beard like the committee um which had you know bill was on this i met some of my very very best friends on there you know bill was on there jennifer cole was on there lots of lots of people tina angelini like people I really love and respect are on this committee.

40:31You know, you go to cities that we're, most of us are not generally going to get to, you know, and we want to show some love to places that, you know, they're not forgotten corners by any means, but like I don't have a lot of business reasons to go to Minneapolis. And so I'm not going to get there unless we all go there and we spend three or four days eating as many restaurants we can, trying to get a dial that city in and understand it better. So I walked into this room somewhere in the Midwest and I was like, i'm the only not white person in this room you know and yeah big problem i think i think years later um that changed dramatically in the in the years i was on the committee you know we we we brought in a lot of people um who who mix things up but like at one point somebody said something to me that was like oh yeah and chris was like the first not white person ever on the committee And I was like, why would you guys tell me that?

41:26Saddle me with that. That's so much. That's so much. But no, the beards went through a lot. It's been tumultuous for them. And I've dropped out of the loop of all of it. Yeah, you did your duty. It is a volunteer organization. It's not like you're getting paid big bucks and you put a lot of time. I wanted to bring it up mostly for that because it really was a time of real sacrifice. You guys were trying to do it right, do the right thing. Obviously, the dynamic of the judging pool changed and got better, but it was a volunteer organization as it remains today. yeah it was it was uh it was all volunteer and man if i can say anything for the people in that committee is that like they all cared so deeply and passionately about the these these awards and i think that like whatever happened with the awards and whoever was to blame for shortcomings or whatever whatever whatever like i can confidently tell you like the people in that room gave such shit about like they cared so deeply about getting it right and more than that man every single conversation we had in that room was like who are who are the people we're celebrating are we missing something here you know we would push we'd push so hard on so many threads you know like you're you're a you're a a korean food guy like yeah i remember having this whole extended argument in that room not argument debate yeah uh where i was like i know i know that the I know the list of like semi-finalists for restaurant service is closed, but I just have to say we have ignored entirely the entire genre of Korean restaurants where the server literally cooks your food for you.

43:14Yeah. Like stands there and cooks the food for you. And not only that, if you need something, you push a button and they come running to your table. And I understand they're not like chatting you up and they're not just giving you, you know, the talk about the provenance of the chicken or whatever it is but like no it's fucking work as far as service goes like nobody's working harder than yeah man you go to like young money young money in koreatown and like you push that button and there's someone there within 30 seconds and grilling your your your uh gupjong and and fuck man like i i respect that you brought that up and it first clearly for a period it korean food was ignored by the james beard foundation that's obviously changed, the automix winning the State of New York award this year and many being nominated.

44:02So that evolution is quite interesting that you bring that one up. Yeah, for sure. And like I said, everyone was very receptive to that kind of discussion. And, you know, I think that it's, I'm not going to linger on this, but like I think that the impulse in food media to sort of right the wrongs of the past or the overlooked things of the past sort of immediately. Yeah. Oh man. Is, is kind of vicious. And I, and I think that like, it's a little bit dishonest to just expect that you're just going to erase, you're going to fix everything tomorrow. And I think like there's, there has to be like a process to it.

44:43And there has to be sort of like, not, not because I want to slow it down. I want the change today, but like people want to sort of backfill. yeah that's a good word backfill is a word that and i and i totally agree with you chris i think that some of these pronouncements and these these moves um are good in spirit and heart but it seems like the timelines are are crazy and have put people sometimes you just gotta sit in your guilt a little bit oh yeah yeah no doubt but it puts people in weird spots when they're also highlighted maybe a little prematurely i agree that's the one thing about awards is once you get those awards your life's changes and you got to be ready for it um it's it's a great conversation and we could we could go on more but um i want to close with on this is taste we asked guests about their discerning taste so christa close this interview here's a little rapid fire fast and furious taste check are you ready no okay i i respect the honesty you've been honest throughout this conversation the best breakfast um the best breakfast is Taiwanese rice rolls around pork floss and yo-tiao.

45:57I'm going to link to a pork floss article we wrote about four years ago. I love pork floss. Holy shit. Do you have it at home in a jar? Just waiting. We try to, but my children just eat it by the pawful. It is outrageous. We have like a big bucket of it, not a jar. It's a bucket, right? You get it by like the kilo. And they just, Jesus Lord, man. It is ravenous. The best dessert um ice cream on top of something warm yeah your favorite way to use chocolate just in the bedroom matt just body chocolate body chocolate you know chris we're just going there i appreciate it we're about 45 into the article or the episode and man we're just doing it um the best bread uh you know i have like a you know how there's like food trigger words like you see it on a menu or something like moist like i yeah opposite of that different kind of different kind of trigger words like that's a trigger in in like i gotta get out of here but they're trigger words where it's just like chicken wings okay i'm ordering whatever could just be the worst chicken wings in the world i'm gonna do it if i see a flatbread of almost any sort like i'm gonna i'm gonna go for it so i've been in a real flatbread kick and that's like the world of flat Flatbread is boundless.

47:15I mean, there's no better way to have melted cheese and fruit than with a flatbread. I mean, come on. Yeah. Your favorite American fast food chain? Oh, crap.

47:30My favorite American fast food chain? Oh, man. Probably Popeye's. Definitely. Now, the biscuit, do you eat it upside down or right side up? There's a reason I'm asking. I've recently learned that I eat all biscuit and bun-shaped things upside down. Meaning top down. Yes. That's the only way to eat a Popeye's biscuit, which is the single greatest fast food menu item in our country. I fully agree. That is my favorite fast food as well. But the thing is, I don't think I'm doing the – So why is the – okay, let me ask you first. Why does the biscuit have to be eaten upside down? Because the top is where all the flavor is, and you've got to put that top on your tongue.

48:15I mean, it is the perfect – it is like the seasoning on that top is like there's nothing better than that seasoning. So I recently learned that I'm a weirdo. And when I go to grab a hamburger, I go thumbs on top, three fingers supporting the bottom. and then as I bring it to my mouth, I invert the whole burger and eat it upside down. And this was pointed out to me as the act of a crazy person. But I just thought it was natural to pick things up where you want to, like a baby, you got to support its little butt and then you hold the top and you flip it over and you eat it and it's just how I do things.

49:01So the biscuit being eaten upside down is incidental. You're just like a left-handed golfer. I mean, it's just like you're not – you're just a little different. I know. You're a little different. You know, Wimpy from Popeye, Wimpy would eat it, his hands, I think is where I learned it. I think he had his hands inverted. I have to look back a bit. Well, me and Wimpy. You and Wimpy. Same burger style, same body shape. A couple more. Name a chef you would like to train under, if you could train under any chef.

49:32um you know i haven't i uh you know like i i think that i've spent a little bit of time i haven't spent like a lot of time training formally under anybody but i was um when i was in china in sichuan working on on mission chinese uh we got we met the chef yubo there yeah man tight and uh you know he the food he served at his restaurant there was like sort of a um you know interpretation of classics and and you know kind of like avant-garde sort of very playful you know alenia-esque stuff you know like here's a this this edible paintbrush that you dip into this sauce then you eat the you know the top of the brush type of thing but the dude had such a grasp of the basics of Chinese food of Sichuan food rather like just what a proper mapo tofu should be what you know a a proper uh you know all these like jellies and things like that and as a as somebody who cooks a lot and has like learned a lot about you know Japanese food about uh sausages about everything who like I've spent so much time learning about how nordic food is made i'm embarrassed like at what a hole there is in my knowledge of chinese food not you know the chinese like home cooking chinese food like i do that all the time but like proper proper chinese food banquet style like banquet style style right and i just think like a lot of people myself included sort of like write it off as too mysterious and too difficult and I think training with somebody like Yubo would be my thing.

51:15That's great. Last one. Your favorite sandwich?

51:23My favorite sandwich? I don't know. Right now, I really wanted to eat an Egg McMuffin this morning, but I didn't get to it. Dude. I don't know. That's not my favorite sandwich. I can't say an Egg McMuffin. Canadian bacon. No, no, no. sausage gotta be sausage gotta be sausage the worst guy here you're talking about the biscuit then or you're taking sausage on the mcmuffin sausage mcmuffin yeah yeah yeah that's the guy that's a good sandwich but i think you know uh banh mi is my favorite oh me too number one we drafted about two months ago that was my number one chrissying what a pleasure dude thank you so much for joining this is taste thank you so much for having me

52:10hello everybody welcome to Rizzoli Bookstore thanks for being here for another installment of Taste live at Rizzoli our event series with the wonderful Taste podcast we're joined tonight by Jordan Michaelman and Zachary Carlson the co-founders of spread.com the world's most popular coffee publication and authors of the new book, But First Coffee, a guide to brewing from the kitchen to the bar. And our host tonight is Matt Rodbard, editor-in-chief and founder of Taste. So we're very lucky to have all three of them here. Thanks a lot. Well, I first want to just thank these guys for coming in, but we have a couple additional events that I'd like to announce and also on the show, we're taping a live podcast.

52:53November 1st, we have Jing Gao here. She's the author of the book of Sichuan Chili Crisp. And on December 5th, we have Nancy Silverton and Ruth Roichel in the house. So definitely reserve those dates. But we're here to talk about Buffer's Coffee. And you know what? This is the second time we've done this in front of a live audience. That's true. And it's an honor to be back. We're great fans of your podcast, Matt. And it's very fun to get to come back and do this again in New York City. Thanks, Jordan. I'm a great fan of you filing your copy for Taste on time. And Zachary, I'm a big fan of Sprudge.

53:22Thank you. So it's a love fest here. Now, I want to just start about your book. One of the book's primary thesis is written in the introduction. Quote, one bag of coffee can be deployed in dozens of ways throughout all hours of the day, yielding often surprising, delicious results. So to start, each of you, and I'll start with you, Jordan. What was the surprising result that you found when you were actually writing this book? You know, you've run Sprudge for a decade, over a decade, 11? 14 years. 14. Sorry, bad math there. But tell me, each of you, what did you learn by writing this book? Yeah, so I think a lot of the work that we do at Sprudge involves platforming other people, other people's voices, editing other writers, finding stories around the world to tell, and doing it in a way that shows that coffee deserves journalism, that coffee should get treated the same way.

54:16all these other kinds of delicious things we enjoy get treated um very little of what we normally do in publishing sprudge has to do with telling people how to actually make coffee it's more about showing you where to get great coffee or giving the microphone to people who very much do know how to tell you how to make great coffee and kind of platforming that um but for this where the task was like to write a coffee cookbook that was sort of the the brief for the idea it meant that we got to play with coffee in our kitchens, play with it as recipes, think about it from the perspective of we love cookbooks, we love drinks books, we love this kind of stuff as like readers and consumers and getting to put that hat on a little bit, which is an entirely different way of thinking about coffee to get to really think about like, what would you do with it?

55:05So for me, one of the things that I thought was fun and surprising and like very kind of gratifying was we knew we wanted to have a coffee spice rub that was like in the proposal like a coffee spice rub um because there's so many that you can buy in the store but couldn't you make one yourself or are we simply going to king make like the best one and recommend it or what are we going to do and we tried lots of coffee spice rubs and there are some very good ones that you can buy in the store but we can't kept coming back to this idea of like if you have a bag of coffee what are all the things you can do with it one of the things you can do with it is make an awesome spice rub and we hit on this idea of saying like really what you're doing is taking your own favorite spice rub which is a very personal thing to people and often is passed down through families or is like something that becomes part of a family tradition people have very strong feelings about spice rubs and we're really just saying add fresh ground coffee to that and like do it in a ratio where the spice rub and the coffee are together and being rubbed onto specifically like a piece of fish or a piece of steak or works really great on tempeh.

56:06And when you cook it, you get to have this nice moment where the coffee sort of extracts in the pan as you're cooking it. You wind up with this beautiful sort of like coffee pan sauce as you're cooking and it's delicious. Yeah. And that to me, like in all the different ways we tried it of like we played with instant coffee and spice rubs. We played with kind of building our own rubs around coffee with all these different sorts of things. But this thing of saying like, just use what you already have, grind really yummy coffee, mix it into a rub, and like make stuff with it was really good. I love that response.

56:37And it really is indicative of this book, how the kitchen is like lives in multitudes. Like it's not, it's not just making coffee. It's literally a rub and cooking with coffee, which is really skilled. It's hard to do. Zachary, what's your answer? What did you learn? I was just surprised at how like going back to all of these brew methods, I believe there are nine or 10 brew methods in total. and going back to each one, applying brew methods that were tried and true, and then just kind of veering either direction with the variables, like how much coffee to add, how much water to add, the temperature of the water, and then just kind of realizing how forgiving all of these brew methods really are and how you can kind of hit a sweet spot, but you can really play around with those variables.

57:27And like with the French press, I was raised, you know, four minutes is the brew time for a French press. But you can go ten minutes, but coffee is still good. What's your routine? Let's just get that. I want to hear about that because we all think about coffee in many ways. We have some professionals in the audience, we have some novices here, and coffee routines mean different things. But what is yours? My routine in the morning is to make a full batch in my eight-cup OXO coffee maker. Yeah, push button. Push button. it's two buttons and then it's done and the coffee's delicious and then if I have a special coffee I will make a Chemex for myself okay I like it, Jordan I have a Technoform Mocha Master home brewer and I've used that line of home brewer at home for almost every cup of coffee I've drunk at home for the last decade and I really like that it has this sort of, it completely takes the variable out of it, we're very fortunate to get to try lots of cool different roasters and cool coffees and the techniform is so kind of steady eddy and predictable that you're really taking the variability out of it and just feeling like you get to taste the coffee or just get to taste the roaster expression of the coffee but i love when like when we tape our podcast or we get together to work once or twice a week when zachary makes a chemex because he makes a really good chemex and then i get to drink it and it's delicious yeah do you have so with the chemex what's what's your let's get it for the the audience, the listener, what's your ratio for Chemex in the book?

58:59Oh, in the book, good question. It's like I'm putting you on the spot. Or whatever, just what do you... Shall we read from the chat? I've got my bongos. We can do dramatic reading of the rest of it. Just in general, when you think about Chemex, do you have a general philosophy with that apparatus? I mean, I've been doing 40 grams of coffee, 600 mils of water. 40, 60, okay. Medium to rough? medium. I'm not leading the witness here. A nice medium. Again, very forgiving, you know, and it's fun to really play with those variables, coffee to coffee. But yeah, a medium is usually where I go to. Right.

59:42And then it's a three and a half minute pour, four and a half, five minute draw time. And typically a very nice cup of coffee. Absolutely. Let's talk about two moments with Sprudge. 14 years and then 2018 when you published your last book. What has changed the most since when you launched Sprudge 14 years ago with specialty coffee, with coffee journalism, with generally the way that we as consumers drink coffee? I know it's a big question, but I think you can answer it. I think you're up for it. I think that specialty coffee has won. Love that. i love that in 2009 it was so hard to find it and you had to be in most for the most part in kind of big cool cities in cool parts of town and it was very subcultural and it had especially been like that i mean back to throughout the aughts but even by 2009 when we started it it was still it really felt like it was the tip of the spear and now the entire spear is lodged in animal and it's running around me like it's everywhere and and um almost any city in america all over america and we have several kinds of styles of stories that we do at sprudge often that are submitted by readers for things like we do a build outs of coffee series every summer and we've done this since 2010 that's focused on new cafes that are under construction around the country and um there's no geographic boundary there's no population density requirement there's no dominant background or culture.

1:01:21I mean, it's from every swath of life and urban life in America and rural life in America where there's this sort of identifiably third wave kind of Sprudge looking cafes. Right, you got the Sprudge starter kit, which I've joked about. You've joked about it. Sprudgy cafes. And that is very different from when we started in 2009. Very, very different from when we started in 2009. Do you think, to follow up, that there is a do you think that the money has followed the fans? I guess that's a way to put it. Do you feel like since then people have actually invested money into specialty coffee or is it just a general sense that people actually, the culture caught up with the nerddom and the real specialty coffee heads back then?

1:02:06I think we like to be really careful on that answering side of it because we're not cafe owners. We're not on the business side of it. And so much of what we do is reporting on kind of what's happening out in the world. but it's like you're only ever reporting on the tip of the iceberg. There's all these other stories that are kind of underneath it. But I do think that it can make businesses seem to be successful. I mean, coffee, you talk about what's different from 2018 to now. I mean, the pandemic was this huge shakeup that had all these impacts across food and beverage and hospitality and all these big, deep, meaningful ways.

1:02:40But coffee was sort of weirdly positioned to, in many cases, not all, but in many cases, not just survive but thrive but grow but be okay, serve coffee out the front door and be okay and that's something that I think has even just sort of continued to double, triple down on the growth of specialty coffee becoming the ubiquitous part of life in America. Yeah. Anything to add, Zachary? Well, like cold brew is like a household term. My gosh, yeah. And people know and want cold brew, and cold brew is available just about anywhere. And cold brew is a great product for a business owner to serve.

1:03:28It holds for a long time, and it's easy to serve. You just pour it. People drink it quickly, and they want more quickly, right? Yeah, absolutely. And a lot more folks know what specialty coffee is now. and look for it and seek it out. So I want to talk a little bit more about home and then we'll segue into cafe. But, you know, this book, you write openly about your love of the automatic machines. You've said on the stage, you've talked about the automatics and you give an appraisal of the pod system. It's not dismissed. I mean, it's not like praised, but you give an appraisal. And it feels like there's no excuse for us as a culture to have bad coffee.

1:04:13Though some do, and we don't want to be mean to those people, but they're just missing out. So each of you, and I'll start with you, Zach, let me know, let's hear about how can we improve our home coffee routines? How can we as citizens who love specialty coffee, but maybe we're missing something? uh invest in a grinder is a great way to start it's a great point yeah uh just a little thing like that can really go a long way. And it'll make your coffee taste better. It'll make your coffee last longer. So you're saying when you be more specific about what do you like, what are we doing wrong with our grinders?

1:04:55Oh, I don't know. I mean, what are we doing wrong? Well, a blade grinder is a very common household appliance. And it's great for a million spices in a pinch, but it's great for waking up your entire house. Great for waking up your entire Warehouse is very loud. It is that sound. But it takes a really special touch to get a consistent grind with a blade grinder. And I know it's possible because I've seen folks do it and you can do it, but it's just so much easier to use a burr grinder. An electric burr grinder is great. Even a hand mill. Yeah, the hand mill's cool. Like definitely, you know, it feels like it's obviously analog.

1:05:36You can travel with it and it's kind of nice to get your grind out in the morning. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that if you have a Mr. Coffee and if you're liking your coffee but you want to step it up a bit, a grinder would be a great way to start. All right, Jordan. So improving coffee, grinder, what else? I'm going to get more philosophical if that's okay. The best way to improve how to drink coffee at home is to decide that you care. like if you decide that you care then you begin kind of investigating all the ways to make it taste better and i think this is true with almost anything it's true with food it's true with wine it's true with so many kinds of things like that we consume in life um your coffee is funny because it's the only thing that one maybe the only thing that is sort of simultaneously a functioning socially accepted addiction and a delicacy and most people um and this is even how i think i felt about it when i was in college uh sort of don't go any further than the functioning socially accepted addiction part of it which is fine and you can maybe even kind of refine that a little bit but it's that other part where it dawns on you that it's a delicacy or you decide that you care about that part of it that begins to sort of unravel all of the rest of the kind of stuff and then of course it's this endless world and i mean i'll add to that i love that you just said those two elements i'd say it's affordable luxury it's a luxury if you're getting the world's best of something is it uh uh you know is it a cup of excellence rated coffee it's under a hundred dollars for like the best in the world that's exactly right or even i mean like if you come to New York if you'd like to go eat the best dinner in New York it's$1 ,000 if you'd like to go drink the best bottle of wine in New York it's$1 ,000 if you'd like to go have the best cup of coffee in New York it's like$8 it's$8 and it's at Drip and Nigel Price is probably making it, just going to say that he's in the audience but that stuff is awesome that is kind of a cool thing it's okay to talk about that I think that there's also a push and pull on that of like it's also kind of messed up that the best coffee in New York is only$8.

1:07:59It should cost more. You start to pull on that and there's a whole world of that to pull the string on too. When we co-edited the coffee issue at Taste for 2018, I think we talked about equity for farmers. This is an endless conversation. Let's talk about that right now. It's a good moment because of$8, the pricing schemes of coffee. This is a tough question but i mean what should how should coffee be priced well i think that that's a really really really big question i think something to kind of pull out a little bit as you mentioned like in the book there's an appraisal of pods and we're polite about it but very like we're sort of like care more about all this other kinds of stuff and i do think there is something about that style of coffee drinking that is kind of desultory and very much like commodifies it or it exists in this weird simultaneously commodified but kind of playing within the tropes of like it being delicious or being like a flavor that you care about it wants to have it both ways which is weird um but i think what to us like has more possibility and allows you to sort of continue to to unpeel some of this bigger stuff is to like be like treat treat it like a delicacy like really care about it because not only is it capable of all this incredible kind of flavor and versatility which is really what our book's about um but it is also connected to this like citizen like this this uh chain of artisanship as profound and complex as any wine as any uh product that we consume any kind of delicacy that we consume um and uh should be talked about and thought about that same way So, Zachary, how do you respond to somebody who's like$7 for black coffee?

1:09:52Like when someone like says that, I mean, you hear people say that. Yeah. I mean, it makes me kind of like, it makes me go a little crazy. But how do you respond? $7 is a lot for a cup of coffee. Like that is a lot of money for a cup of coffee. Facts for society right now, right? And I feel like the experience has to be heightened to enjoy that$7 cup of coffee. Even if the cup of coffee itself is the most delicious thing, I mean, is the experience wonderful? Everything has to be right. And if someone feels like they've been cheated because they bought a$7 cup of coffee and it doesn't taste good, that's heartbreaking.

1:10:33Yeah, and just to kind of add to that, this is another reason why I think it's a little funny in this book and we had to fight to keep this chapter because there's a chapter in this book that's like go to cafes and we had to fight to keep it because they were like why are you putting a chapter about going to cafes on a home coffee book it's like because if you talk to people who are like the best home coffee like nerds the deep on the motorcycles and maintenance thing of making coffee at home and have hundred thousand dollar home espresso machines and brigs you know we've seen it like they are like let's go to the cafe like let's go to the coffee shop and go compare what we're doing and like cafes have the ability I think play a really important vital role in creating that appreciation and understanding of coffee as a delicacy and uplifting that whole experience and making it understand why not only should it be$7, but actually you're getting a deal.

1:11:25You're going to get a deal for sure because you're going to get a water. It's going to be maybe sparkling. You're going to get maybe a little snack with it. It's going to be served in a beautiful vessel. It's going to be served by a very nice person and it's going to be$7. It's pretty crazy. yeah and the sound and the cafe is really good for your brain like the brain like the sound the noise the sound noise on the cafe is very good for your brain well we've segued to the cafe part but i i guess we're gonna have our our legs in both both uh territories because i want to talk about espresso because espresso is one of those things that i believe in the book you are very polite but you are essentially saying that espresso at home is hot trash so in the first book we we are just like don't do it right um and uh that was sort of like a hot take and it was in a book that was kind of modeled around the hot takes or whatever yeah the new rules of coffee 10 speed press 2018 green book in 2018 fantastic book you know i think that And you asked a little earlier in the conversation, what are some differences between now and when that book came out?

1:12:33I think that some of the technology has caught up. I think that the access to on-demand education, particularly through things like YouTube, has helped catch up. and now when I talk to people about espresso at home because we get asked about it all the time now that conversation I think looks a little bit more like well how seriously are you going to take your hobby what do you really want and just so you know if you think that this is going to be cost benefit analysis for you I have really bad news because you're still going to go to the cafe and even if you get really into it as a hobby you're still going to go to the coffee shop because you want to compare what you do to the coffee shop which is what like every home espresso geek does.

1:13:15So none of the cost benefit stuff really works. But if you love having it and you're somebody who's like, my dream is to have a yummy cappuccino at a dinner party at my house. Like that's pretty cool. Like I get it. And I think that there's ways to think about wanting to do that and approach that that feel more doable now than they did five years ago to us. And so that's why there's more in this book. Yeah, you've evolved a bit. But I mean, Breville seems to be a company that is really, you know, tripled down on home espresso. And I wonder what you think about that machine in particular. Or there's multiple machines.

1:13:52It's not one, of course, but there's a couple that are quite popular. Yeah, there's definitely been a big push in the market in kind of that under$1 ,000 range. And we have some stuff in the book that's sort of priced out at different ranges in it. And I think that there's trade-offs for all of it. you know people that i've talked to who have home espresso practices that they're really happy with typically have invested into equipment that's a little bit more expensive yeah it's like 5x that i think that it also implies a kind of a cutoff for how much you care right because if you've invested that much it means you really really care um there's some people who buy an a thousand dollar electric guitar and never play it but most people who buy an a thousand dollar electric guitar play it and i think that that's kind of like what happens with espresso machines a little bit too there's some people who buy an$100 guitar because they're like, this seems like I'll learn how to rock out and then they never play it.

1:14:44And I think that happens a lot of times with sort of lower priced home coffee making. Zachary, what is your relationship with espresso? I was a barista for about 12 years and was introduced to espresso making that way. And so I've always, for those 12 years, worked on very high-end machines and going from that to like a sub$500 espresso machine is kind of a bummer. But I will say that like good friends of mine who have two kids, very busy house, they just bought the Breville Barista Pro and they love it and they use it every single day. They tell me it's so like easy. You push a button and it does it all for you and you can adjust the variables and it works for them.

1:15:36And they were talking about getting a higher end machine. And I was like, are you going to dial it in? Are you going to clean up the espresso grounds every morning? Are you going to like, and they were like, maybe the automated one would be better. And it totally works for them. And also maintenance is much less. I mean, with the 5 ,000, you have to maintain it really, really, really religiously. Yeah, and not everything's going to be the right thing for everybody. Like, there's a difference between saying, I want home espresso as good as what I can get at a really good coffee shop or saying I just want to have espresso at home like there's actually quite a lot of daylight between those two things and quite a lot of money between those two things right okay so to the cafes I guess I want to ask you I'll start with you Zachary so what do you look for in a cafe I mean meaning if you're like going to London or Seoul and you're going to three spots and you have like you know two hours and you've got to like make the stops.

1:16:31Or if you're in a town and it's like the one place that is just opened and it's like in a random town that maybe doesn't have a great cafe roaster, but you've found it. What are you both looking for when assessing cafes, which Sprudge does so well. I think if you're going to a city, you have to just put the city name, put Sprudge, drop that shit in Google, and you're going to find a great story. I do it all the time. but how are you making these lists? What are you looking for? We rely a lot on writers that work for us who are either local to those cities or have been in those cities long enough to have a really nice opinion about it.

1:17:13Me personally, when I'm traveling and I only have one, you said I only have one cafe that I could go to. We can do that for you in Jordan. We can do like the crawl. I would look for the place that, I mean, I would just look for a place, like for me, I'm really into baked goods and that draws my attention. I pulled over really fast the other day because I saw cinnamon rolls, like a sign for it, and I veered. But I look for the cafe that might have a nice espresso machine that is serving a high-end extra specialty coffee, good food. Those are all things that I'm looking for. Okay, I like that. So it's definitely beyond the coffee, it sounds like for you.

1:17:54for me but that's just because i'm hungry and uh but but of course there are great cafes that don't have a food program yeah right on what about you um i think that uh you know like if i'm thinking about coming to new york i'm thinking about going to la or going somewhere with like lots of kinds of coffee um something that's fun to do is go to brand new cool hot new cafe maybe that i read about on sprudge um and i'm not saying that to be cheeky i mean like literally i know about it because somebody wrote about it for us. We use it as a discovery engine too. But I also really love going to like third wave vintage cafes, millennial vintage cafes, millennial retro cafes, places that were like really cool 10 to 15 years ago but are still open and are still doing the thing.

1:18:45Because sometimes those experiences are great. And I feel like that about coffee shops. I also think that there's something to say about that for restaurants and bars and all those kinds of stuff. It's been just long enough now, like in the wider sphere of food and beverage, including coffee that we can talk about like a Auts throwback cafe or whatever. But there's some really fun coffee experiences at places like that and that have been doing it for a really long time and are sort of building blocks of third wave culture, but have like grown and refined. Oftentimes these are places that have had like people who have been part of their team for much of that time and have a lot of experience or making coffee really great.

1:19:18I also think it's really fun increasingly to get to go to pre-third wave or non-third wave cafes that are maybe expressing like drinking coffee in diners or sort of kind of more of like a traditional Italian and European expression of coffee. I think stuff like that's really fun too because it like presses a different button in my brain than the third wave coffee stuff does, but it is still part of the coffee culture and it's interesting. And I also think like we probably, I don't know, I don't want to speak for you, Zachary. Me, I maybe kind of was like, that's the old way. You know, when I was like a snotty millennial 10 years, that's the old way.

1:19:57That's not cool anymore, man. But it means I like kind of overlook some of it. It's like I love going to Puerto Rico. I love Puerto Rico. I love that place. Trading Co, yeah. It's so interesting and cool and like utterly distinct and of itself and has this important thing in coffee history. And so I like all of it. I'm glad you mentioned that. That's a place that I feel like maybe isn't written about that much, but it's been around for a long time. anywhere that there's like a you know an urn and a mug of a variety different chip mugs and joan baez i mean i'm down to to give them the shot because i love that that's how i grew up drinking coffee in the 90s that was what that that was coffee especially coffee to me to us it feels like that's breaking rules because third wave like any revolutionary movement in any cultural setting it creates a new orthodoxy around it right so like if all you know is third wave or you came up in it or whatever for specialty coffee, then that's the new orthodoxy, right?

1:20:53Like that's the way you learned the rules. So going to the stuff that sort of predates that or exists before it has this sort of like, these guys just don't give a fuck kind of a thing. It's like it's a wavelength. It's on a total different thing. And I love stuff like that. And so the coffee is extremely delicious. Yeah, for sure. Extremely delicious, super dialed. It's like a great roaster. It's like maybe they're roasting it. Yeah, for sure. Let's name names. I feel like this is great. You set this up. You've kind of like given a general sense of what you like, but we haven't actually named names.

1:21:22So this is the assignment. Three cafes that you just adore. It does not have to be one that is the hottest or newest, but ones that you adore around the, we'll say world, each of you. Yeah. Well, so, I mean, just in this context of saying like New York City, like I went to Drip Coffee, Nigel's Cafe, the Soho location on Verrick Street this morning. we're going to go to a Brasso tomorrow which is classic millennial vintage third wave vintage coffee and then go to Puerto Rico and to me that feels like that's three really interesting I'll drink very different coffee at all three places it's going to be absolutely delicious and you can walk between all of it because it's New York it's great Zachary 9th Street Espresso on 9th Avenue C the one far east you used to work there Zachary I used to work there which is why I have such an affinity for it and then you just walk down 9th Street and then take a few blocks up to 13th and 3rd, every man espresso in the theater there.

1:22:25In the theater, yeah, right. 12th Street, yeah. 13th and 3rd? Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. And then just walk down 13th to Joe, right there on 13th and 4th. Yeah. Over there. That's another wonderful place. I love the story that Amy Sedaris used to bake cupcakes called Dusty Cupcakes and would walk them to that cafe oh that's really sweet I didn't know that story well thank you to Joe for bringing Decaf to this evening event what's the intel are they going to open the pro shop again I feel like that was such a loss I love that place you should have Jonathan on the podcast you said that in the past I haven't followed up it's definitely a question first question let's talk let's go to actually to the kitchen because i want to close this conversation and we'll take some questions um about well first off you created your own manhattan special which i think is amazing we're in manhattan and i have to address that as a i don't know the manhattan special does anyone know what that is raise your hand if you had a manhattan special yeah i don't know so that's good so yeah it's oh it's so good every one of you is missing out please go try one you can just go to the bodega and buy one oh my god it's so good so explain what it is and how did you make it so manhattan special is one of these like old timey late 19th century new york things that has stuck around as like a new york drink new york delicacy um it is a pre-bottled soda that's made with a very darkly roasted and sweetened espresso soda uh and then they're bottled in these cool kind of art deco looking bottles it's all made out in brooklyn um every once in a while you'll find it outside of new york or out on the west coast um like at an import store or a place that has a big cookbook in silver lake has yeah right right exactly yeah that kind of a thing or soda classic soda shop or whatever might have it but it's a really distinctly new york thing and it's something that like we have sought out and you know you it's strong stuff you sort of slug it it's almost kind of medicinally strong and sweet this coffee soda and it's it's really delicious and um one of the things uh you know in the book that we wanted to try to do to to unpeel that question of like you have a bag of coffee what are all the things you can do with it like making a coffee simple syrup is actually really um adaptive to lots of different kinds of things once you have that you can cook with it you can make delicious drinks with it and what kind of coffee you use to make that simple syrup will dramatically impact the end product and so To make like this, our version of Manhattan Special, we suggest using like, use a specialty coffee, but like most specialty coffee roasters, especially like if they're a sort of company that's got, let's say eight cafes or 10 cafes, or they've been around for 10, 20 years, like a Joe or an Intelligentsia, has a dark roast blend because there's passion, people who are really passionate about dark roast coffee.

1:25:19That's not something I think we drink all the time in our homes necessarily. but um for this it works it works a treat man it's perfect um you make this espresso syrup with very dark roasted coffee um and then um mix it with mineral water yeah it's great and it was another passion of yours i love that um why did the espresso martini come back so fucking hard it was like inescapable especially like during the pandemic it's it's still here you see it everywhere surprising for you yeah i think anything any anytime you can see timothy chalamet and larry david doing the same thing at the same time that that's pretty loudly argues for itself i also think it's just a great name like i'm a big believer in like a like the unified theory of like 99 of the reason why anything is cool or popular is because the name's good like espresso martini is a really lovely mellifluous phrase to say yeah um and i think that that is an important part of why it's popular as well you are endorsing espresso and sparkling wine in the same glass to be consumed not in the same glass not in the same glass okay i misread i was like holy shit okay no no it says no it says like a sidecar i'm sorry i totally misread okay but talk about the pairing then yeah it's cool it's cool and we're gonna do this at some of the events that we'll do through the fall um yeah it's an interesting thing to kind of play with so everybody's brain is queued to have a shot of espresso and have a little glass of sparkling beverage on the side of it.

1:26:51Traditionally, that would be club soda or Pellegrino or some kind of sparkling water. But what that does is it grooves the mental pathway in your brain to associate like an espresso and a little cup of something sparkling. But what that little cup of something sparkling is does not just have to be mineral water. It can be other stuff. And the people who I think, I don't know if they first first to ever really do this but we sort of had this moment of being like wow this is so cool is at G &B coffee in Los Angeles and the Go Get Them Tiger espresso bars in Los Angeles where from very early on they were serving shots of espresso with a side not of sparkling water but a fizzy hoppy tea.

1:27:34Yeah they were like the hop water guys from the beginning. Yeah and it's absolutely delicious. Delicious incredible pairing makes the espresso taste better makes you think about it as this sort of completed thing. And so all credit to them for sort of hipping us to the idea of, oh, this could be other stuff. And I really like wine a lot. And thinking about, you know, what is this other thing then for sparkling stuff and playing around with like how a Lambrusco works with a washed espresso, how a champagne would work with like a blended espresso, how thinking about some like some pet nat or something that was like a little more like gluey or natty wine or whatever would taste with like some natural processed shot of espresso that had lots of fruit and flavor in it.

1:28:21Like there's all these kinds of ways that you can think about. I think the key is that you're not necessarily saying pour a whole glass of wine to have with the espresso. It's fun to think about it as like a little two ounce pour. It's not much more than you would pour of that sparkling water as your sidecar. Anything that sort of allows you to trick your brain and be like, my brain is used to this, but the flavors are different from what I'm used to. Lightning round. On This is Taste, we ask guests about the discerning taste. So to close the interview, here's a little fast and furious rapid fire fast and furious.

1:28:52I'm saying it twice because it is twice, two of you doing it at the same time. Taste check. Too fast, too furious. Exactly. Taste checking is ready. Ready. Okay. The best breakfast. Wait. You. Who was first? Me. You. Strawberry waffles. and the Stumptown Finkel Puente coffee. You answered it. It was with the coffee to pair it with. I love that. It's really nice. Sturgeon Onion Scrambled Eggs at Barney Greengrass, the Sturgeon King since 1918. Yeah, represent what's the coffee with it. Is there coffee? Whatever the diner coffee. Whatever they're serving. It's the Barney Greengrass Blend Diner Coffee and it is delicious.

1:29:30The best dessert and the coffee to pair it with? Tiramisu. my favorite dessert with whatever espresso they're serving with the Tormesu. I really like rice pudding a lot and I would like to have that with a glass of dessert wine please. Your favorite New York City restaurant classic edition. You lived here for a while. You probably have one. You go first Jordan. We're going to go to Jeans later tonight. That's a pretty good classic New York restaurant. Yeah. Jeans is real good. I'm like I'm blurring a blank about Jeans I know there's the new jeans. It's the same people, and it's like a block away from where the one was that has been around for 100 years, but it's the same.

1:30:14It's the new one on Lafayette? No, it's not on Lafayette. No, it's on like West Alamath. Okay, into it. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, awesome. Okay, you. Keen's. Yeah, I really enjoy. Just the rooms are beautiful. Beautiful choice. Favorite Portland restaurant classic edition? uh portland struggles with classic restaurants and it depends on what you count as classic but there's um a really really great it's kind of i guess it's portland's shape and east or something it's been there not since the 70s but more like the late 90s this place called hagan's it's like a great um pacific northwest cuisine really tiny micro farmer markety but they were doing it make their all their own security but they've been doing it since like the late 90s What an interesting restaurant scene.

1:30:58Yeah, it's fun. That's a great place. I love to take people from out of town there and they have a great lunch. Yeah, yourself? Yeah, the Higgins in the bar, like having lunch at that bar is so beautiful. What a restaurant. We haven't talked about Portland at all, but... That's okay. Portland won't miss us. It's okay. You can leave Portland for a week and nothing happens. It's fine. Parting shot about Portland, though. What's good right now? We'll take questions. I mean, there's lots of awesome stuff. I mean, it's a whole world of awesome stuff. We met a really cool, what's that downtown Portland coffee club guy that we met?

1:31:32Are we going to be able to pull this out live on the show? No, but Hypnos Coffee just opened this weekend. And it is gorgeous. It's on Williams. It is in northeast Portland. Hypnos, it's so perfect. It's just like simple. They have a beautiful slayer. I love when you say simple. That is like such a great description. It's great. When you can say something simple and gorgeous, like, yes. Yeah. Portland Weekend Coffee Club, is that what it's called? Is that close? It's close. You bring it in cool, the kind of multi-roaster thing. He's bringing in lots of coffees from different people. I love it.

1:32:06Yeah, there's always kind of little stuff like that that's popping up. I love the multi-roaster. All right, we're going to open up for a couple questions and then we'll do a signing. Anybody have a question? I'm going to walk. Yeah, here we are. I'm going to head down. Oh, sorry. I took Christine. Exciting. Hi. Hello. Hi. I run NYC Underground. It's coffee tours of New York City. My name's Kay. Nice to meet you guys. Nice to meet you too. Welcome to New York. And as a person in the streets trying to educate people about specialty coffee, how to taste it, how to appreciate it, I'm really looking for advice.

1:32:42Like how do we teach people to appreciate specialty coffee? Is it the role of the coffee industry to do so? how does that transformation happen?

1:32:56I feel like that was like when I was a barista in 2005, the big thing was trying to be as gentle and sweet and bring people in because the latte art is beautiful and it makes people think, wow, this is special. but the coffee is a real star but like trying to figure out how to do that how to like explain what coffee is was always a challenge and you just really have to meet people where they're at and take their hand and be as sweet as possible and yeah I feel like everyone that I I led public cupings and everyone I spoke with everyone has a different idea of what coffee is. 99 % of the people loved coffee.

1:33:52They didn't necessarily love the really high-end specialty coffee, but they loved coffee. And I really wanted them to try and appreciate the coffee we were serving. But I didn't take it personally if they were like, this isn't for me. But I feel like not telling them that they're wrong, that they're drinking the wrong coffee, and my coffee is the best coffee. like that's not the way to bring people in. Yeah, just to kind of echo to that, something we talk about a lot day over day for publishing Sprudge and then thinking about with our new book, very much so this idea of how do you talk to every kind of coffee drinker at the same time?

1:34:33How do you talk to people who know more than you do about ratios and gear and what's new and what's hip and people who maybe have been drinking coffee for longer than you've been alive, but have a way of doing that that's very kind of set and tailored to them and it might not look like what we think specialty coffee or fancy coffee is supposed to look like. How do you talk to everybody at the same time? And the answer is that it's really hard and you have to care about doing it and keep coming back to it over and over and over again in whatever your practice is. And for us, that's in journalism and writing, is coming back to that again and again and again.

1:35:21Does this bring people in? Does it alienate? Are we walking the tightrope of having it be for as many people as possible? And it's hard to do. but it ends up being, I think for us has served as a guiding light for the kind of work that we want to do. So in New York, I've noticed the rise of breakfast tacos accompanying a lot of coffee vendors and cafes. If you guys were to suggest to future cafe owners a pairing that you suggest would go well as a staple for all cafes to have in their glass case, what would you suggest? Well, I would love it if at like 1 p.m., 2 p.m., the toaster oven kicked on and fresh baked cookies were prepared, you know, just like maybe six.

1:36:13And just fill the whole cafe up with the smell of cookies, bring people in from the street. Like Courier Coffee in Portland has one of my favorite chocolate chip cookies with sea salt, pairs so well with their Cortado. Yeah, more cookies, please. can we talk about culture yeah culture sorry culture espresso i mean that's just the cookie of of my life awesome yeah yeah who else one more are there any trends coming down the pike that we should be on the lookout for yeah we um i think this year we're gonna do like a what's hot what's hot what's not but like two truths and a lie style like it will do like two things that we actually think will be popular next year and one that's just ridiculous and will never happen and we'll try to make you guess which one is going to be the thing no um you know the thing that um kind of keeps coming up a lot and we're having people who write for us pitch us about it often and we're having the chance to try it in cafes and from good roasters is all of these sort of co-fermented coffees have you tried any of those the sort of fruit co-fermented coffees yeah yeah um and that is a big catch-all term um that can refer to all of these different kinds of ways of adding organic material that isn't coffee to the coffee drying and processing methods that are done like at the farm level where coffee is grown um and so there's all these different ways of doing it people do it with all these different kinds of fruits um and um it is capable of creating flavor profiles and aromas in coffee that almost are like if you ever had like a like a blueberry flavored coffee or a hazelnut coffee where it's got like an additive right it's like able to do that but organically it's not i don't know if it's as dramatic and it's certainly not as like kind of i think sometimes the fruit flavor just sprayed coffee as it can be kind of chemically or whatever um but like this is doing it with natural materials and there's a lot of really interesting stuff about it has some really interesting implications at the coffee producer coffee farmer level which is cool too particularly when you're talking about being able to get more money for crops of coffee or to make the most out of coffees that on their own may not have scored as high or garnered as much money in the trading system there's a lot of interesting implications for that which is cool and the coffees that i have personally experienced with it tend to be all over the map i've had ones that i thought were awesome i've had ones that i thought were uh weird and like i i didn't love them in the moment but then i was thinking about them the rest of the day um i went to a coffee shop in tacoma washington which is where zachary and i uh grew up um called naomi joe really cool young interesting coffee roaster coffee shop in tacoma washington and this guy is doing espresso that was processed with grapes and then you drop it in a lager beer that's brewed to like this old Tacoma lager beer brewing recipe that's been around for 150 years.

1:39:33And it's this like grapefruit espresso, or like not, it's like this like grape espresso beer, like bomb that you drink. And it's unbelievably good and like super weird. And like, I don't know if that is third wave coffee, even like, I don't know what that is, but it's super interesting. And I think that people really like it. Customers really like it. There's something about it that's like interesting and grabs people and fascinating and there appears to be more and more interest and kind of velocity around this being something that people dig and are into and I think that that's going to keep going, keep going, keep going.

1:40:13I think a brandy wine. I think it's in Maryland. They do a co-fermented with passion fruit. It's pretty nice. Well, I want to thank Jordan and Zachary. Thank you so much for joining. I appreciate you being here. And I want to thank our producers, Pat and Clayton. And thank you, Christine at Rizzoli. It's so great having events here. We have a couple more coming up. Thank you so much.

1:40:40This is Taste is hosted by Eliza Abarbanel and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumber. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit taste online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things that are happening.