328: Joshua David Stein

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0:31The idea of Zhang is you capture the terroir of wherever it's made because you have the biome that has the bacteria and the fungi in it. You have the water from where you are. You know, like each Zhang has its own signature.

0:52This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbart.

1:23list that just hit. It's so great catching up with JDS, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:37Joshua David Stein, welcome back to the This Is Taste. How are you, man? I'm doing well, Matt. Thank you. Just, I want you to come back every year. I enjoy talking to you. I'll come back every week if you want. We could do a weekly. We could work you in. Let's just have a daily podcast. You and I just calling each other and shooting the shit about cookbooks. I'll be Mikey Barbaro. Oh, yeah, Michael Barbaro. That guy, is he cool? You think he's cool? I like his voice. His voice is great. Let's talk about a lot of topics because you do many things, and you're an editor, you're a cookbook author, you're a musician.

2:10I want to start with Esquire. You just named the best new restaurant of the year. And I want to ask you, it's you and Kevin and Jeff. And Omar. And Omar, right, Omar too. So you have four of you traveling the country and zooming out. Like what's exciting about restaurants in the U.S. right now? I don't know if there's one trend which is exciting to me. That's not what I'm asking. Absolutely not. And that's tough. That's a tough question. I meant more just in the tone. General. Something that I've noticed which is exciting to me personally is that not so much in major cities but in kind of secondary and tertiary cities.

2:50A lot of what I think are the best new restaurants and what we name the best new restaurants are the products of pop-ups or like dinner parties or non-traditional ways of establishing restaurants, which I think also has happened in New York somewhat, but also in other parts of the country. which I like because generally I think you can have a certain type of great restaurant with a lot of capital. Like there is a genre of restaurant, like an impressive big restaurant. You've named one of them, we'll get to it. Yeah. In New York, it's very clearly that. Yes. But then there's also these other voices of restaurants that are not crowd pleasers on paper.

3:36and the idea that these couples, interestingly enough, I mean, oftentimes they're, you know, life partners as well, that they've pursued their passion and parlayed that into a sustainable, well, mildly sustainable business. Some of these guys close. Yeah, but a real restaurant, that's really exciting to me because then you get these ideas and real human restaurants. Yeah. And that don't require the capital that maybe some of the places do. And these tertiary markets are not as expensive. So maybe it's just a product of that, too. You named Brooklyn's Elis as your restaurant of the year. And I've not been.

4:16Loser. What's up? Nothing. What'd you say? I said loser. I know, right? Loser. Loser. You didn't get that text from Mods? Mods didn't hit me. Hey, Matt, what's up? Mods is cool, actually. I was in Mexico with Mods once. That's a story for not the podcast. But this is the restaurant of the year for Esquire. I'd love to hear a little bit more about it. Well, Mods? Mads. I said it wrong. Well, I don't know because I say Mario and my kids think I should say Mario. You should say Mario. Why? Mario. Okay, Mario. Okay, Mario. Mario. Mads. Mads. Yeah, Mads. So Mads is a co-founder of Noma, which is a restaurant.

4:57Yeah. Of note. Of note, yes. And he has a partner here named William, who's like a front of house dude. It's this restaurant in Greenpoint. It's in terms of like square footage, quite large. But the kitchen takes up most of the restaurant. You eat on three sides of the kitchen. So it's very much integrated. The dining area and the kitchen are integrated and extremely open. Ile means fire and is means ice in Danish. And the menu is bifurcated between things that come out of the fire side, which has a smoker, and things that come out of the cold bar or raw bar, the ice. but as is befitting kind of Mads it's visionary in many different ways some of which you see on the plate and some of which you don't for instance they have a labor practice called One House I think where instead of there being dedicated front of house employees and back of house employees the cooks, everyone cooks and they're on a two week rotating schedule between whether they're in the kitchen or whether they're out on the floor.

6:14So you get people who... Amazing. I mean, it's cool to articulate it that way because it's cool. To rotate in and out from front and back is just modern. That hasn't really happened on this level or with this kind of being able to encapsulate it in words and explain it the way they do. And I think there's a lot of challenges and hurdles to that. You have the sort of atrophy of knowledge of going in and out. You know, like doctors, when doctors change shifts, you know, there's some knowledge is lost. I think for them to navigate the tipping and labor laws was quite difficult, but they put in the work.

6:56And I think it does make sense. And you feel it when you're in the room, when the person who's giving you your clam that they have their sea clam, which earlier in the day they had sealed the inside with beeswax. And, you know, they had been doing the prep. And then they have made the dish and they're intimately knowledgeable about it. It's none of that stuff like, oh, well, chef has decided to do this, which I hate. Right. It's just like some and it's also which is why I hate that. I also really don't like the such polished service. It feels it feels like a one way street like this, like I'm going to be courteous and hospitable.

7:39And you're like, well, you're not looking at me as a person in front of you. It's like I'm not into that. No. And I was going to ask you about like the post menu, a fine film from 2022. How do you look at a restaurant that with this high concept, knowing this like we're in post-menu era with a straight face? Do you think the menu was that important that we're in a pre versus post-menu era? I'm elevating this a little bit for the show for the sake. But I do think as writers, it really cut deep, you know, the satire about the way some of these orchestrations and some of these conceptual, the chef will do this, as you said, you don't like.

8:14But like it definitely I think we are aware of it slightly more potentially. I am kidding when I say it as like an era, but there is some meaning to it. Yeah. I mean, I love the menu. Wonderful movie. It was. Yeah, it's a satire. Yeah. So I don't think it illustrated anything new. It just kind of was like the Jonathan Swift version of what we always think about, about overly precious service and overly sort of virtuosic kind of chefs. But Mads also – okay, so I think you have to like overall just buy into the idea you're going to go to an ambitious restaurant that takes itself seriously. And there's nothing wrong with that.

9:00Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And like I would never come across it that way. No, I don't think you, I mean, but I think you do when you, there's tons of different types of restaurants. And at the Esquire BNR list, I think we try to recognize and see as many of them as we can. There is a genre of restaurant, which Ilysses, which sees restaurants not simply as a place to get dinner, but almost as an agent of some sort of, an agent of change. You know, it is also serving dinner, but it's also much more utopian in a way than I think other restaurants are comfortable being. And I think part of that has to do with who Mads is and his culture, Danish, and his background, Noma, that he has the audacity to try something like this.

9:50Yeah. Let's talk about Fox Face Natural. Also a B &R. Right. We're continuing on the list. And you wrote this blurb, so you clearly have a strong feeling about it. Let's talk about it. Okay, so Fox Face Natural is the northernmost of a trio of restaurants on Avenue A, which I think are doing—it captures to me like the East Village spirit, like a kind of punk, fuck you, we don't care what you think spirit, and weaves restaurants into the culture surrounding it, which I think is important. And it's also delicious, which is not the most important thing. It's up there. It's up there for your list making.

10:30So what are they doing? What kind of food? Fox Face is, I think people have called it like chaos cooking. Oh, really? Yeah. Eater has called it chaos cooking. I feel like I've called it New New American. It's just a completely Catholic ingestion of so many different influences that you can't really pinpoint any. You know, they have a kangaroo tartare. They have an amazing, I think, fluke, which is just in the oven with parsley and olive oil and these potato coins, which I thought was very much like that. Is this Dave Santos? Yeah, he's a chef. Yeah, so Dave Santos has been around for a minute and, you know, he's really got chops.

11:12Yeah. And the owners are, I guess, independently wealthy tech people, but not in like an evil tech way. Maybe like a less evil tech way. Let's look into that. Let's get them on the show. Let's hear about the independently owned non-evil tech people. So they are not as beholden to the market. And I think in this case, it really pays off. I'm going to guess Superior Burger is another of the Avenue A, but what is the third? Let's go over Avenue A. I love what you just said about a place that I used to live at 7th and 8th for three years back in the early 2000s. And it's one of the best streets in New York.

11:49It's a good one. It's a good one. Fowl Witch. Fowl Witch. Yeah, which is Roberta's crew. What is that? Fowl Witch is, again, another sort of chaotic. It's super loud. They have this one dish which I love, which is these long grapes. They're kind of very oblong. Yeah, those are great. Under a blanket of lardo, and it's warm, and the lardo is kind of like melting on top of the grapes. It's just that superiority burger and Fox Face are all examples to me of restaurants and restaurateurs leading the way as opposed to sort of like focus group restaurants. which again can be great it's a different beast so the big place we were teasing earlier in the conversation is Teresi which I've been to and had Rich on the show we talked about a link to the show notes now let me ask you is Teresi the kind of place that's going to be like Carbone and there's going to be nine of them around the world or is Teresi singular?

12:51oh you have to ask Rich yeah it's true you can't answer that question but I think Carbone is a hermetically sealed concept it's a red sauce joint and it's a take on a red sauce joint Of course, a red sauce joint has its roots in a specific time and place. Terezi, on the other hand, I think is very involved in the neighborhood that it comes from. They have, you know, a chopped liver and Manischewitz dish on the menu. Yeah. Which is like a nod to the Lower East Side. They have a Capaletti Cantonese, which is a nod to Chinatown. Yeah. They have, I think, Zeppole with the ham service, which is obviously they're in Little Italy.

13:36It's also a nod to the neighborhood, meaning that like the average rents are like$6 ,500 and mostly lawyers dine there, it seems, from my assessment. You mean the clientele? The clientele is a neighborhood restaurant. When you say that, I couldn't just help but think when I dine there, it's like a lot of like second or third year attorneys who are on resi. Yeah. I don't know because I didn't – I don't know how you know that. But, yes, it seems like it could be that. I mean, it's quite expensive. Those places are always going to be expensive. But I also think that when the major food group are operating at their peak culinary – you know, in a culinary sense, no one can beat Rich or Mario.

14:19Mario. We were – Mario? It's Mario. It's Mario. Carbone. Yeah, Mario. It's Mario. That's what Rich calls him. So it's Mario. The inclusion of oishimi brings us to an interesting kind of topic of modern Korean cooking in New York. And I just want to get your sense of the scene. I mean, much has been written about these modern restaurants, but I feel like you would have a really nice point of view on this. um i mean i think a lot of where we are in korean cuisine and of course you are very knowledgeable about this too a lot of it's demographic a lot of it has to do with um the role of how korean americans have flourished in this country and when they came here and how they flourished and how they've assimilated in some degree.

15:11So who has a purchasing power to eat at these places like Naro and Ouijimi and Bam and, you know, all the list like Jumak Banjum, Doubar. Atomix. Atomix, yeah. So they're mostly third, second or third generation. So they still have a very strong connection to Han-shik Korean cooking. So to see, and it hadn't been in a restaurant, certainly hadn't been in a fine dining format very much. So to see their own cuisine elevated, I'm using air quotes, but like presented in a fine dining way, I think is immensely gratifying. Like when you go to Ouija Mi, when I went, the front bar was a mix of ethnicities and the dining room was 100 % Korean.

16:00Yeah. Which I think to me, I'm white, was I don't know what the word is. I liked it. Yeah. Good. It was good. It was good. No, it was it was as a journalist, someone who covers this very deeply. It was it was a very dynamic piece of data. Interesting observation. Well, it's, yeah, because it just means that this isn't creating a cuisine for another culture's delectation. It is for the people who, you know, it's for the community. One of the other reasons that Korean cuisine, I think, is flourishing so much is because that sort of like Confucian idea of Han Sheik, of the balance of the flavors and the colors, is kind of like a new, for Westerners, is a new language and logic of cuisine.

16:49and I think that it's immensely satisfying to discover and it is not overly abstract and there's some overlap with like fine French cuisine but it's distinct. So to see it, OIG, you can see the kind of Confucian ideals of Han Sheik plus a more Western approach. Yeah. You see like Ongier Bokum done as like a small bite and with gochujang that is like very, and we'll get to jang's, but very different from the gochujang you would have if you were having like a stew, so to speak. Yeah. And I think your point is so taken about how this, there's a familiarity with the service, right? If we've gone to Danielle, we've had the service, but we've also experienced Japanese cuisine for years and years, and we know some of these tenants of East Asian cooking raw seafood seaweed-based stocks.

17:52But then we're thrown Koreans' view of both fine dining and East Asian flavors, but in its own extremely unique way. And I think as anyone, as a general diner or as a journalist, it's innately extremely interesting to see this exciting style of Korean cooking. Yeah. And I bring up Korean cooking with you, not because you're a fine observer of restaurants and you have great things to say, But you wrote a Korean cookbook, and we're going to talk about it in the spring when it's out. It's called Jang. And really, Joshua, I really admire this project, this book. And I know Minggu, your co-author. I know Nadia Cho, your co-author.

18:31I really respect all three of you. And I'm going to have probably Minggu or Nadia or you or all of you back in the spring to really talk about it. But just give us a little taste because you've given me the PDF recently, and I think it's fantastic. You've done a great job. Well, thank you. Yeah, so jang is the first cookbook of its kind to focus on jang, which is gochujang, which I think most people know about, which is a spicy pepper paste sauce, spicy fermented pepper sauce. Ten jang, which is more similar to… Miso. Miso. But not really, but yes. But not really, and I think Koreans do rightfully object to that.

19:11And then you have ganjang, which is similar to, it's the liquid part of a fermented soybean paste, and that's similar to soy sauce. That's a general way of putting it. But importantly, it underpins so much of Korean cooking. Like, jjang is the thing that makes Korean cooking Korean cooking. That, again, in Japanese, you would call it umami. In Korean, you call it gamchil mat, profound flavor. That fermented flavor comes from the jjang. Yeah. So this is a book. I mean, I guess I can also just say that it's thanks to you that I wrote it because you hooked me up with the project. I mean, I only sent one email, but I figured you would be so down with it.

19:52I was very, yeah. You ran with it. You all three. It's an amazing book. It's great. And I think it was a challenging book in some ways because Minggu Kong, who has Mingol's, which is kind of Korea's best restaurant, not an American chef. Not in America. He's Korean. You know, it doesn't speak English, you know, perfectly. It's not just another like introductory book about Korean cuisine. And there are some and they're all and they're very, very good. And it's about a specific product and not everyone can get this product. You can usually get gochujang, but denjang and kanjang are kind of hard to get from an artisanal way in the States.

20:33You write these head notes, and I love your great head note writer, and we'll talk about some of the other books. But one I just stuck on was, quote, hummus is like the distant cousin of Tenjun. Both are made from beans. Both are vegan. Both are astonishingly versatile. Tenjun hummus. You made a Tenjun hummus. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense, and I've never really encountered that. And it's wise. It's really good. Well, I wish I could take credit for all of that. But I really just, in this case, Mingyu, you know, like, as I was saying, it's not an easy, it wasn't an easy book to get made because Mingyu doesn't have a big following here.

21:11And, you know, it's not the most common ingredient for all of those reasons. And at the same time, what you get from working with someone who's so deeply knowledgeable about this is he can be inventive and innovative because he has such a profound knowledge of his ingredients, in this case, denjang. And he sees those connections. One is chickpeas and one is soybeans. They're both legumes. They're both kind of a paste. Of course, hummus is not fermented. But he draws these connections, which I think are not obvious. and to me I think the reason why I was most excited about the book is because I had just finished a book with Joe Campanale on Italian natural wine called Vino and my mind was in terroir.

21:59That's what I'm I like terroir. Just generally which is also frankly why I don't like Carbone Privato like there's no terroir there because it's just a sort of... The terroir it's like basically it's like a top an MX black. Yes. That's what it is there's no terroir. Um, but the idea of jang is you capture the terroir of wherever it's made because you have the biome that has the, um, bacteria and the fungi in it. You have the water from where you are, you know, like it's naturally fermented. So it's just amazing to me that there are all, are all of these jangs from different parts of Korea and each jang has its own signature.

22:41the artisanal jang is like a very human labor intensive endeavor but regardless you are cultivating a sense of place absolutely and i have some jangs in my fridge from like two three years ago travels and they taste so different from the the brown tub you're going to get at at h mart which is also a good product too not to undersell that stuff no it's a good product but yeah basically this book i'm very proud of it and i and i hope it finds you know receptive readers because it opens up a whole nother world of expression. Let's talk about some of your other projects. Okay. Let's talk about Tom Colicchio.

23:17You've been working with him on this book for a little while, and I think it's nearing the end, I would imagine, because we talked about it last time. Maybe not. I hear the sigh. But, like, Tom is such a dynamic personality, and, you know, I've said it before, he's going to run for Congress at some point. I mean, he's got really big ambitions about his life. Maybe not. You have more insight, obviously. But anyways, how's the Tom book going? Tom book is going well. I mean, it's a memoir. And when I was writing a memoir, right, when I'm writing a memoir, it's important to me that I think the other person likes me.

23:55And it's very hard to know whether Tom likes me. So that was like actually quite hard to work on for a while. Then he invited me on this boat trip from South Carolina. He bought a fishing boat and we piloted it up to Brooklyn and then out to Mattatuck where he lives. Wow. You wrote about it for Esquire, right? Yeah, I wrote about it for Esquire. Yeah, cool. One of the reasons I wanted to go is because he was also inviting his friend, like his actual friend who he likes in real life. And I was kind of curious if he would treat this friend the way he treated me. which is not mean but it's not like chatty small talk yeah he's fine with silence and uh he was equally silent to this guy and it also made so it kind of made me realize that oh it's just the way he is then i wrote about it for esquire and i included right that whole aspect and I thought it was a very good piece.

24:59I worked really hard on it. His only feedback was, we caught a fish. We caught a yellow fin tuna and his only feedback was, it was more than 30 pounds. Oh my gosh. But his brother, Mike, reached out and said, you really captured my brother. Yeah. So then after that, I think Tom saw, I got comfortable that he didn't hate me and he understood that I also have a point of view and then since then we've kind of been working at a pretty good clip to finish the project. I can't wait to read it. I can't wait to read it. Is it out in a few years then? A couple years? Yeah, 2020 probably five. Okay. I don't know.

25:39You're also working on a follow-up with Kwame Nwache called All Hours and I read the announcement notes and I was like, wow, this sounds, you're a long-time collaborator with Kwame but this book sounds really cool and it sounds like it's going to be, I hate saying it, the most personal ever because that's weird, but it's going to be pretty in the world of Kwame. Tell me about it. Yeah, well, I think Notes was obviously mostly a memoir. My America is his personal recipes, but also the recipes from kind of the diaspora. But kind of more focused on his family and all ours. You know, Kwame is a super dynamic, fun dude who knows a lot of people and does a lot of dope shit.

26:24And I think this is just like more of a free, freewheeling, fun book. The headnotes are, it's told through a 24-hour period. Is that your idea? Yeah. It's a great idea. Really smart. I think it's a conceit is what you would call it. Conceit. It is a conceit. Just because, you know, I do so many cookbooks and I'm kind of reaching the limit of what is interesting to do and how you can tell stories and head notes and how you can make the cookbook also feel like a work of art as well. And so drawing from James Joyce, no.

27:05But I just thought, yeah, telling his story about his actual life. And, you know, so you can have one day, 11 a.m. can be a tuna fish sandwich. And then you'll have like the dateline, like Los Angeles 11 a.m. Like hanging a LeBron. Sure that's one but then also 1105 could be another day in New York making you know a sandwich for his niece. So there's like it's multiple times it's not all one specific day but it's like in his life it's a multi-faceted kind of cubist portrait of his life. No and it sounds from with your reporting chops and your ability to capture scene and tone and of course the recipes it's going to like have a lot of like people in it his world, and you're going to be building the universe of Kwame Nwache.

27:50And I can't wait to read it. It sounds dope. I can't wait to write it. How far are you, Lon? Not far. So you're at like 6 a.m. right now? No, we're not. I mean, to be honest, it's like I'm doing the Russ and Daughters cookbook. I'm doing Tom Colicchio's book. I'm doing David Neyfeld's book, Dad, What's for Dinner? We just finished Jong. I'm working on Greg Backstrom's book. Nothing matters with Greg Backstrom. Nothing Matters. Nothing Matters. Is that a pun or is that literally he's like a nihilist? You know, the real title I think is going to end up being Nothing Matters But Delicious. That's kind of a better title.