358: David Kamp

26:05And he told me about how he went to Modena looking for something else. And then some include him. And you should talk to this guy about his vinegars. And he said it was a rainy night. He had to drive up to the top of a hill in bad weather. And some guy, some guy he meets in this house sprinkles out of some, you know, amphora or something like some ancient. A battery, right? Like one of the batteries, right? One of those cool batteries. Yeah. Ancient balsamic vinegar that's been aging for years and is syrupy, not like the kind of like generic kind you buy in a store. And his mind was blown by it.

26:38And by the way, this wasn't something that's used in Italy the way it is in America, but in a way that's kind of not a bad thing. So it got popularized as a gourmet upmarket expensive item at Dean and DeLuca. But I think an interesting thing about America is how something like that, which wasn't even in common use in Italy, became, in America, repurposed for other uses. That's not always a bad thing. No, absolutely not. I mean, there, you know, it's used, you know, on hard cheeses and maybe before the course. Now we've got like balsamic chicken, which is like marinated with balsamic. Right. No, I mean, they use it to anoint things, like a bolido misto or something.

27:16Right, bolido misto is a good one. Like a tiny bit of olive oil, a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar. United States for arugula. I say that name a lot. Ayo, Scott, I'm just going to pick, I have a bone to pick. He called it a horrendously titled new book in a very positive review. Fucking wrong. That is a great title. What do you think about the title? Now we've got 20 years between it. I still think it's great. I mean, I like my title. And by the way, Tony Scott, as he is known. Yet to friends. No, he's not my friend, but he's a guy I respect as a writer. And I'm grateful to him for his review because it was a really positive review.

27:52that said a lot of people picked up on him calling it horrendously titled and i got a note from nora efron that day the day that review ran because one of the wonderful things about reporting the united states of arugula is i interviewed nora she was one of my first interviews and out of that interview came a friendship that endured right till she died and nora wrote to me that day saying i love your title and i have a book coming out called i feel bad about my neck and we'll just see what he has to say about that. And that book became a huge bestseller. And so we kind of commiserated over like, look, we both chose weird, wordy titles and we prevailed.

28:31Have you ever thought about a documentary project to tie to this book? Yeah. Yeah. Again, I was ahead of the curve. I was approached by some people who I wasn't that impressed with right after the book came out. And I think it's actually a good time to revisit it as the basis for a documentary or a documentary series. I agree. We talked off mic, but I feel like if you compelled you of other projects, I want to get to that too. But like you could write some kind of sequel to this book and it would be wonderful to get your take on how the food movement has changed the past 20 years. Thank you. At the very least, I'd like to do an updated edition.

29:12You know, like it would be good to sort of do one with two new chapters that cover some of the ground since the book came out. Yeah. It's been 18 years. Okay, let me ask you then, looking back, do you regret not covering anything, anyone, any people, any person in the book? Yeah, I would say what I wish I'd done more of is near the end of the book, because of the era in which I was writing it, I got a little too caught up in the celebrity chef thing because it was so new and such a novelty. It was when Emeril Lagasse had a sitcom and it was like, and I wish I'd kept it more at what I call the ground level, which means like more about the consumer experience and the grocery experience and the shopping experience and more about farmers.

29:56Because I actually was on the Today Show to promote the book and I was asked, what do you think is the next big thing? Inevitably, they asked you that. And I said, I think we're going to learn more about the farmers. You heard of celebrity chefs. We're going to have celebrity farmers. and everyone thought I was joking and I wasn't. And it was kind of... Oh my gosh, the guy from Nyman Ranch gets like, you know,$100 million for his... Right, Bill Nyman. But I mean, the celebrity thing is less important than we've since become. Way much more aware of who our farmers are and young people are going into farming.

30:27They know it's a hard life, but they're doing it because they see dignity in it. It's a great book. I could talk all day, but I don't get to other projects. Definitely, I'm going to link to the show notes. It's still in print, right? Oh, yes. Yeah, it's still in print. How dare you? I mean, I looked it up last night. You can buy it on Kindle. You can buy it everywhere. So you should buy this book. If you're a fan of food history, definitely pick it up. Let's talk about Ruth Rogers. You're working with her famous, famous, famous British chef and restaurateur. You're working on adapting her podcast into a book.

30:59What's it like working with Ruth? She is the most wonderful person in the world, just to contextualize for your listeners. Ruthie, we call her Ruthie. Yeah, Ruthie is. Ruthie is actually American, but she married Richard Rogers, the architect. 100 % forget about that always. The guy who designed the Musée Pompidou in Paris, among other amazing buildings. And he died two years ago. They'd been together almost 50 years. She's an American who moved to London with him because he was from Britain. And with Rose Gray in the 80s, she opened this. Originally, it was a canteen for his architecture practice.

31:34But it sort of grew into like one of the most important restaurants in London, if not the world. And Ruthie has a podcast kind of like this one. It's just very convivial, easygoing, except her friends, because like Nora Ephron, she's a collector of people, of like amazing people. Yeah. And so when she has people on, it's like Michael Caine, Paul McCartney, Lauren Michaels, Tina Fey. Yeah. The list goes on. What is the draw to Ruthie then? I mean, I'm curious because I do realize and recognize her ability to bring some huge names. Is it the restaurant status in the UK or is it just her ability to be friends?

32:13It's a combination of those things. It's like the River Cafe is it's I would say it's akin to the Union Square Cafe in New York City in that they both came up in the same time. Both Ruthie and Rose and Danny Meyer were non-Italians who revered Italian food. and they wanted to sort of bring their version of Italian food to the public and had huge success and expanded and expanded as a result. Ruthie, like I said, Ruthie and Nora Ephron have in common that they have the bandwidth to maintain 10 ,000 close friendships, genuine friendships. Like I have maybe 40 friends who are truly close friends and then I maybe have another 200 people who are acquaintances.

32:56They are unique, powerful, dynamic people who have 10 ,000 friends that are real friends. And also because of their dynamism, some of them are the most notable people in the world. Yeah. Great answer. We call those people fabulous. Fabulous. Exactly. And so just briefly, this is something I do sometimes. I help well-known people out with her books. And Ruthie just wanted to turn her podcast into a book of stories that well-known people tell about their food journeys. And it's not just, here's what I like to eat now as a rich person. It's like, I was born, Michael Caine, I was born in poverty in South London, or the director, Steve McQueen, you know, 12 Years a Slave, saying, I was born in a West Indian community in West London, and we had no money, but my mom was a great cook, and she knew how to make a great Jamaican stew chicken and stew fish.

33:55Oh my gosh. And they have these stories about really, really vivid, life-affirming stories of their food journeys from infancy to the present. God, shout out to Steve McQueen. I love Small Axe. That series on Amazon, incredible. And in fact, he said Small Axe is like a tribute to his childhood. and a lot of it is, that is like two of the episodes of Small Axe are about food. Oh, they are. I know. I love that. Yeah, the Mangrove Restaurant one. Of course. And there's an episode called Lover's Rock. Lover's Rock's my favorite. And mine too. And they both have big food elements that come out of his really, really fond memories of the community he grew up in.

34:33So Ruthie is basically just like putting you on an email with these people and you're getting to interview them or how's that, like, how's that work? Well, it's mainly, it's mainly working with Ruthie. I mean, we have transcripts, but a bit of that too. A bit of like, can Wes Anderson clarify what he meant when he said, and then we go to Wes and so forth. That's really, really exciting for you as a journalist to be able to tap in with these people. I'm sure you're learning a lot about these different ways people eat. Right. And very few famous people, notable people came from wealthy backgrounds or privileged backgrounds.

35:07So you hear a lot of really rich stories of humble origins, and almost the more humble the origins, the better the stories about the food. You're an interesting guy, David. Thank you. You're just an interesting guy to talk to. No, I mean that because you're a journalist, but you also, you're a lyricist, which means you write lyrics for Broadway plays, musicals, and you're working on a show with John Leguizamo called Kiss My Aztec. Like, I mean, first off, what does a lyricist do? I'm so fascinated in this. Well, I actually, as a kid, always wanted to be, I wish that I was alive in that period, like the 30s and 40s when lyricist was actually a job.

35:48Like George Gershwin had his brother Ira write all the words to the songs. And like, you know, there's so many, so many, like the guy, Yip Harburg, he was the lyricist for the Wizard of Oz songs. Like, and I love the internal rhymes. Like there's just a real cleverness. It's not that far off from humor, which I also write, because you're basically trying to be really economical while having a greatest impact, especially in a live show. Because in a live show, unless it's Hamilton and everyone already knows the soundtrack, most people are hearing the song for the first time. So it's not like a radio song.

36:23If you're a lyricist for the stage, you have to write a song that's going to get across the very first time the audience hears it. And so you have to be very clear. You can't be garbled. You've got to be clever enough for the jokes to register and get a laugh. And when you called me a Broadway composer or lyricist, excuse me, I'm flattered, but we're not quite... At least my Aztec is coming to Broadway. It is yet to open. It's coming to Broadway, meaning you're going to workshop off Broadway and then eventually upstream? We have already done out-of-town productions of it in La Jolla, Berkeley, and Hartford, La Jolla, that's a good one.

37:02Yeah, La Jolla Playhouse. Now, these are major pre-Broadway theaters. So we've done it, and now it's just a matter of the usual jockeying for position and financing, and we'll get there. Did you have some good fish tacos in San Diego? Of course I did. But here's the thing. So speaking of West Indian food, when I was in Hartford, Hartford has a huge Caribbean community. I had the best Jamaican food outside of Jamaica I've had in my lifetime. Oh, right. I love to hear that. I want to hear more about lyricism. Lyricism? Is that what you call it? Lyricism? You could say there's a lyricism to my writing, and I'd be very flattered, but I think you just mean lyrics writing.

37:43Lyrics writing. So is there a food concept in your head that you're going to write? Is the great food musical going to happen? Well, what's going to happen is that I can't help it because I love food. Like my two main things that I love in life for pleasure are food and music. And lyrics kind of combine the two because it inevitably happens, whether I'm conscious of it or not, that my lyrics are studded with food references. And there's one in Kiss My Aztec. Basically, the show is a revisionist history where the Aztecs outwit and triumph over the Spanish conquistadors rather than get eradicated by them.

38:20And in our show, the big villain is a mean Spanish viceroy named Rodrigo. And he sings a song where he's basically saying that, explaining why the Spanish are racially superior, not just to the Aztecs, but to everyone else in the world. And one example he gives is we invented tapas. So I wrote this lyric like some olives, croquetas and batter fried squid. No country did tapas till we Spanish did. And so that's just one couplet that flies by. But here's the thing. The choreographer decided to have a tapas waitress pirouette in. And this is a trained dancer bearing a tray of paper mache tapas. So you actually have made by our property master, this beautifully rendered olives croquettes and batter fried squid being danced with on a fix, a fix to a tray by this like trained ballet dancer.

39:12And it's surreal that like something I wrote, some stupid joke I wrote on a whim becomes a prop. Yeah. And it's now like dance and twirled. Yeah. Yeah. Did you see the new Sweeney Todd? Yes, I did. I know Shalee and I both have seen as well. I mean, is Sondheim, is he like on the podium? Is he like the number one? Is he on Rushmore for you? Of course. Well, I mean, for me, I like the older, the pre-Sondheim guys the most. Yeah. Like I said, the Gershwins and Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer. Your humor kind of feels it's in that level a little bit more. Antiquated, yes. I get what you're saying. I'm sorry.

39:50That came off. No, no, no, no, no. I appreciate it. What's genre? You're writing a genre, maybe? Wow, I'm really digging myself a hole here. No, no, no, no, not at all. I mean, no, I would say that I fantasized about having been a lyricist in the 30s and 40s. And I won't ramble on further about this, except to say John Leguizamo has been a friend for a long time. And I said this to him one day long before Kiss My Aztec existed. I said, you know, I'm a print writer, but I really wish that I could have been one of those, you know, Ira Gershwin style lyricists in the 1930s. And then John, like 10 years later, said, remember that conversation we had?

40:23Well, I've got a show. I've written a play that seems like it wants to become a musical. And you said you wanted to be a lyricist. Do you want to be the lyricist? So that's how that started. So amazing. And so when are we expecting it in theaters in New York? In a theater, because it's a play. You called me an a theater. I guess I was thinking it was going to upstream from up right away, but you've got a Broadway house already. Yeah, I mean, probably late this year or even more likely 2025 because it takes a while to bring everything together. Oh, that's so exciting. Yeah, I'm too. Wow, I love that so much.

40:58And this is Taste We Asked About Their Cerny Taste. To close this conversation, here is a rapid fire, fast and furious taste check. David, are you ready? I'm intimidated but ready. The best fruit? Blueberries. Why? There's something mysterious and elusive about blueberries. Like, are they even really blue? Like when you look at them, you're looking kind of like their refraction through the beads of condensation on them. And their taste is elusive. Like they're astringent. They're sweet. They have an interesting texture. They're mushy inside, but kind of, you know, tight outside. I kind of love everything about them.

41:30I love this choice. And unless you live in West Michigan, it's difficult to find a good blueberry. Well, in New England in the summer. I know. Late summer in New England. You're busting my chops. I know. I'm just giving some West Michigan pride. But I think there are good ones in Maine as well. in New England, the worst vegetable. Oh, I will not libel vegetables. Why not? Because in America, we have enough of a problem selling people on vegetables. And my experience with vegetables is I had terrible kale and terrible broccoli when I was a kid, but it's just because I was having it prepared the wrong way or was the wrong kind of kale.

42:05So it's basically a matter of, it's usually a matter of finding a way into how do I make this vegetable in a way that it'll be pleasurable. It's like adding some balsamic vinegar, maybe. Precisely. But also, we've had this topic come up. They've made, like Brussels sprouts used to taste really bad, and they've been genetically modified to taste better. It's not entirely that, though. Brussels sprouts used to be overcooked to a fair the way. Yeah, true. And people have figured out not to do that. Your favorite NYC restaurant right now. Well, I already mentioned Il Posto Ocanto, so I'll just pivot over to another Italian place, Via Corotta, which is not a shocker.

42:42It's one of the most popular restaurants in New York. But bite for bite, Jody Williams and Rita Soti make the best food in New York. Your favorite American fast food chain? I would say Shake Shack, just because Danny Meyer figured out how to scale it. I didn't, it was too much of a pain to go to Shake Shack when it first opened because there was such a huge line. Yeah. But now that it's expanded, you can find them in airports. Oh my God, I'm so grateful. There's so, you can find them on the Jersey Turnpike. Yeah, exactly. Which is amazing. Yeah. The best dessert? pie i i love a fruit pie i love a pecan pie i love a key lime pie a maple walnut pie can i briefly tell a story about i love a pie when i was a kid we used to have to take these standardized tests in like first grade like a proto sat and there was one question which said rank desserts in order of which is the best and this shocked me even at age six or seven because like they were asking for a objective answer to a subjective question.

43:42And the three things were ice cream, cake, and pie. And there was a right answer. No, no, no, no. I'm not kidding. And my first, I had pie, cake, ice cream, because those are my personal preferences if I had to rank desserts. I had the wrong answer. That's incredible. The correct answer, the quote unquote correct answer was ice cream, cake, pie. You have to write about this. And I sound like a Gen Z person. Saying that it was a different time isn't enough. I love it. It was traumatized. Oh, man. Shot's taken. I love this. No, but can you research this actual test? They called it like the California standardized test, but it was given nationally.

44:20You have to find this. Like an aptitude test for first graders. Your favorite cookbook of all time. Of all time? Yeah. Woo! I would say Cuisine Rapid by Pierre Frenet has got to be up there. just because, as its title suggests, it kind of took the idea of distilled by like Julia Child and Craig Claiborne and so forth and Jacques Pepin, but made them weeknight recipes. Man, I didn't ask you about Pierre because we wrote a great piece about Pierre's quick cooking recipe book, his cookbook, and you had in the United States of Rougala a story about how he and Jacques Pepin consulted, correct? They were consultants?

44:59Oh, for Howard Johnson's. For Howard Johnson's, which is like a huge chain restaurant. Howard Johnson's was, at the time, like, it was talking about rest stops, like Shake Shack. It was at almost every rest stop on the New Jersey turnpike and the New York Thruway. And the actual founder, Howard Johnson, was a regular at Le Pavillon, which is the fancy French restaurant in New York where these guys got their starts. And when Le Pavillon, they both fell out Pepin and Frenet with Henri Soule, who is the temperamental owner of Le Pavillon. Howard Johnson hired them to be consultants on how can we improve the quality of the Howard Johnson's product.

45:39And so the chicken pot pies suddenly got a lot better. Talk about ahead of your time hiring fine dining chefs to consult. But that's why it didn't work, because it was too ahead of its time. And I think the cost was too high to make it sustainable. Is Frenet somebody that we still just don't talk about enough? Well, I think it's partly a matter of he was of a time. And I was lucky to kind of get the end of his career and like a generation older than me got the start of his career. And that's just how life rolls sometimes is that some people live on forever, like Julia Child, and some people are semi-forgotten.

46:12But I will give a shout out to him because he was great. Oh, man. Favorite recent cookbook discovery? I would say, Yawande Komolafes, My Everyday Lagos. And before you stop me, every Nigerian I know says Lagos and not Lagos, but My Everyday Lagos is also acceptable if you're ordering this book from a store. She writes for The Times along with Melissa Clark. And her recipes are just so great in the everyday paper. But the cookbook focuses on her Nigerian heritage. And it's just like another, for me, it's just another thing that I can add to my toolbox of approaches like jollof rice. Just knowing how to make that.

46:54And I don't necessarily have to apply it to a full-on Nigerian dinner, but I can use that as a complement to something else I make. Great call. We had a great episode with Yawande on this show, and it is a really terrific book. It is one of the best of the year. Great call. A couple more. Your favorite city to visit outside America for the food? This isn't quite a city. I'm going to say Jamaica, which is a small country, but you can't say Kingston because it's really the whole of Jamaica. I really have grown to love West Indian food. And Jamaica is one of those places where if you go eat the local food because it's never as good elsewhere as it actually is in Jamaica.

47:32I'm talking about the jerk chicken where they're making fresh over an allspice wood fire that's been burning for 300 years. You know, they just keep stoking it. So the depth of flavor there and then like the meat patties and just the mangoes, the fruits and vegetables, the escovitch fish preparation, the hot peppers. I just love the freshness of the flavors. And like I said earlier, Hartford's the only place I've experienced that even begins to approximate how good the food is in Jamaica. That's Jamaica. How do you visit Jamaica? What's your way of... You fly an airplane there and you land in either Montego Bay or Kingston.

48:11No, honestly, I had a really good initial exposure to Jamaica, which is there's a place called Treasure Beach, which is southwest Jamaica. It's St. Elizabeth Parish, which is way less touristed and less enclosed. Like you're in the communities as opposed to on the northern coast of Jamaica. You're sort of in a fortress, a tourist fortress. And the great thing about Treasure Beach is that you're among the population. you can kind of casually walk around and discover things, which is my preferred way of doing it. Great tip. I appreciate that. A couple more. A cuisine you would like to learn more about?

48:46Indian cuisine. I'm from central New Jersey. And when I was a kid, there was just beginning this wave of Punjabi immigration into the towns near me. I was in a town called Highland Park and Edison and Woodbridge, neighboring towns, got really, really huge Indian populations really fast. So I liked Indian food from the outset. But what I've come to realize as an adult is that I was only having Punjabi food. And again, it's like I was saying about Italy, every region of India has its own distinct cuisine. And like my son spent an internship at the Taj Palace in Mumbai. And he was telling me about the food there, which is completely different from Punjab food.

49:27And then there's, you know, Rajasthani food, there's Chennai food, which is more seafood based and whatever. There's just so much variety. And I know I'll only ever scratch the surface, but I'm into that. It's a great call. Last one, your favorite sandwich. Open face tuna melt. Is there a New York City destination to acquire, order, and eat the sandwich? Well, they're used to it. My favorite one was a university diner on 12th and university place. It's now a sweet green FU gentrification. i never went there i'm very bitter but you know eisenberg sandwich shop had a really good one too and the guys who have taken it over now it's called s &p lunch they do a very faithful version of the eisenberg tuna melt yeah the s &p lunch guys are are really operating at the highest level i appreciate what they're doing i mean it's a little groovy now which is problematic not not the food or the the employees it's the the client base i liked it when i was the youngest person there.

50:26Now I'm the oldest person there when I go. I know. I loved going to Eisenberg's. The food never really hit the mark, but it was such a beautiful experience. It actually did hit the mark for me. For you. You had a good experience there. David Kamp, what a pleasure having you in the studio. Thank you so much for joining. This is Taste. And Matt, I am so grateful you had me here.

50:50hey eliza what is up not much matt how are you doing i'm great we're here with three things what's your first thing my first thing is that i tried this pizza pop-up wizard hat pizza for the first time have you tried it why are you laughing wizard in the name of a pizzeria that is like how is that not marijuana related yeah yeah it's not i'm gonna say right now no i'm just being like a jerk and judging by its name i think it's a great name but i've never heard of it it's a funny name i feel like there are a couple restaurants in the city like my favorite thai takeout place is called nudes and chill and every time i recommend it to somebody i'm like please like just stay with me on this it used to be the people that did look by plant love house if you ever went to that place in prospect i love that place i i'm sad about that place leaving and I thought that name was intense.

51:39Yeah, I liked that name. So they do, this is not even my first thing. They do nudes and chills, the exact same food. It's really good, but the name just seems like it's like a meme restaurant, you know? So whenever I tell people about it, I'm like, stay with me. So Wizard Hot Pizza, stay with me, is a pop-up in Flatbush that this guy Josiah Bartlett is doing. And my girlfriend Shirley was filming a video there, so I got to eat all the leftovers, but they were not refrigerated. They were like, I think, pretty intact to the experience of eating it there. And they were really good. And I had like the sourdough pizza.

52:09I had like their take on a Hawaiian pizza, which had thin crispy speck and pineapple on it instead of like big chunks of ham. Oh, man. Really good. What's the what's the what's like the dough style? What are we are we talking like classic New York style? It's a sour dough style. And I would say that the slices are a little smaller and thinner than what I would say is like a very classic New York style. It almost reminds me of like the pizza you could get in LA. I would say. The dough is like very bubbly and active. And I also really liked the spicy pepperoni pizza with hot peppers on it and like a little bit of honey.

52:41It just was a very like pleasing, sad pie. Speaking of pizza pop-ups, have you been hearing about Chrissy's at all? I have heard about Chrissy's, which is in the old Superiority Burger place, right? It was or it is going to be there eventually, but there's been permitting delays. So he's been popping up at Superiority Burger proper, the one on Avenue A, like for late night pop-ups like you know some real hypey shit it seems like a good pie yeah i'll have to go try it and compare there's a lot of pizza happening in the city yeah and what about shi's what do you think about shi's burger yeah not pizza of course i have never managed to eat a shi's burger because every time i've been somewhere where it's happening the line has been so long that i just have i've been too hungry but i will say that the last time i was trying to eat a shi's burger i did happen to be in the same space as fk twigs because it was just on the street in like dime square and she apparently i don't think she was at the pop-up but she was around the area yeah so lots of hype exciting i shy guy uh shy guy shy's guy we were we were dming about doing it doing a podcast yeah he's a cool guy i was at school i was at a cyclones game with him over the summer randomly what is that gentleman's name shy but like his name is shy just oh i mean clayton cut that's because i don't know what his proper name is i just he was at my friend's birthday party Okay, no, you don't have to cut that.

53:56We're being honest. I feel like I want to know you, Shy. So hit me up again if you're listening to this and we'll talk about it. Okay. That's a lot of pop-up talk. It's a lot of pop-up. You know me. I'm always at the pop-ups. What's your first thing? My first thing is not a pop-up, but it is a piece of content that I just consumed right before coming down to record this. It is truly one of my favorite articles of the year. It's written by Priya Krishna. It is a massive profile in the New York Times food section on hand hospitality. It is a great story of a story, a story that I've personally been pursuing for years and have never actually done what Priya did, which is speak with the founder of Hand Hospitality.

54:37Are you familiar with Hand? No, I'm racking my brain because I feel like maybe I would know if I had an example. No, it's cool. Let me break it down a little bit. Hand Hospitality Group has been operating in New York City for, I'm going to, my gut is like it's about eight years. They're behind some of the city's most prominent and exciting Korean-American restaurants and Korean restaurants imports. I've spoken about some of them on the show, so I don't need to go into detail, including Ariyari Hojikpan. Her name is Han. Auto Mix, Auto Boy. We're talking about Lise. Yes. There's 15 of them in total in New York.

55:13low-key low-key low-key operators they they're very media shy and i thought priya did such a nice job um in capturing uh and just reporting on their what their what their impetus is what their mission is and how they are operating these restaurants with kind of the opposite approach to most operators which is they avoid all press they're letting the restaurants speak for themselves they don't really have chefs i mean auto mix and auto boy and so salon or jp and Elia. And there are big names, but most of their operators are pretty anonymous and they like it that way. Just love these restaurants.

55:45So I'm going to link to that article in the show notes. You should definitely check it out. Yeah, I can't wait to read that. I obviously love Priya's writing. And I will say just to defend myself as somebody who works in food media, but didn't know the name of this group off the top of my head, I think it speaks to the fact that they are operating in this way, that all of the restaurants are ringing bells, but the fact that they're all connected is somewhat of a surprise. Oh, it's cool that you say that. It's like your own point of view is I value it. And I think it says a lot about you're plugged into a lot of things, including pop ups.

56:13And and the fact you don't know about is kind of this, I think, kind of a mini scoop or mini major scoop by Priya. Congrats on that scoop, Priya. I saw you at an event. We talked about this piece. Great work there. What's your next thing? My next thing. So I like pop ups. I like kombucha, obviously. You talked about this and I tried a really cool new kombucha for the first time over the weekend. I was at Dear Friend, which is a really cool cafe, wine bar, bookshop kind of hybrid in Bed-Stuy on Tompkins. And I tried a new kind of kombucha from Unified Ferments, which is a brewer here in the city that does a lot of work with single origin tea and things like that.

56:49It's called Nilgiri Kunur, and it's one of their experimental blends. So I'm not sure how many places have it available right now. I think if you go to their kind of tap list in the city, would probably be the easiest way to find it. It's made from a black tea that's produced by this women-led team in the Nilgiri Mountains in Southern India. And unified ferments on the bottle say things like coriander and candied orange peel. But I took a sip and I said Arnold Palmer. Oh, wow. It really tastes exactly like an Arnold Palmer to me in a fun way. Such a great compliment. So like there's a little bit of sweetness, but not too much.

57:22In the glass, it's very opaque and cloudy and looks like it would be kind of a heavy drink, I would say. But then when you sip it, it has a lot of this kind of citrusy flavor with that black tea. And I think that's something I really like about kombucha brands when they use single origin teas and really kind of let that speak because kombucha is fermented tea. But so many brands are just throwing in a lot of juice. So I would definitely recommend in general. I like unified ferments. And I think this one is pretty cool. Love that tip. And I think when we talk about NA, we sometimes do, except for you, forget about kombucha as like a category that is exciting.

57:55And it's tea adjacent, of course. Unified Ferments does their kombucha in wine bottles. And they have beautiful labels. And I actually do bring bottles to my friends who don't drink when I'm going to a dinner party or something. Just because it does feel kind of celebratory. And it tastes a lot like what I would say a natural wine could taste like. But without the booze. Without the booze. I hope. You wrote that great NAP piece, the beverage piece, last year. Let's do the kombucha piece. Oh, my God. I would love to do the kombucha piece. I feel like every couple of years, someone lets me write a community story.

58:28There's no allowing. You run Taste with me. So let's do it together. Let's do it. There's cool things happening. I love it. What's your next thing? I want to call out a book that is being published in March that we're publishing here. And we're going to have the author on the show. It's called Vegan Mob, Vegan Barbecue and Soul Food, written by Taria Gordon with Korsha Wilson. I saw Korsha last week and we talked about this book. It's really cool. Are you familiar with Vegan Mob? It's a Bay Area food truck and restaurant group. I think I've seen this on Instagram, but I love Korsha's work also.

58:58So it seems like a cool collab. It's really cool that she, you know, Korsha did a terrific job working in concert with this restaurant group. And what they're doing is vegan Calmex. And what I like about the book is it's very cookable. I would say they lean into the Impossible Burger fake chicken patty, you know, ground beef realm, which I think is great. I think we were talking about cooking plant-based. There's two ways to go. You could say everything from scratch or you could say using some of these products. And I'm not going to judge either. But I think for me personally, I would cook more from this book.

59:37And the recipes are just off the page, jumping out. And they're doing, I would say, like a loaded nacho, buffalo chicken fried mushrooms, and even a vegan gumbo. And I just love the way this book is put together. Of course, I look at the cover and interiors. I'm like, yeah, these photos are amazing. I'm like, who's the photographer? And of course, it's Ed Anderson who shot Food IQ and I know well. And he just is able to make many things look absolutely delicious. Vegan Mob is the name of the cookbook. Oh, I can't wait to listen to that episode. Yeah, it's going to be fun. We're going to record it remotely or maybe they'll come to New York.

1:00:14Well, stay tuned. It'll be coming out this spring slash summer. What is your last one? My last one is not food related, but I'm just really liking the new TV show, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And I want to talk about it. Let's talk about it. I feel like I've heard a little bit about it. There's been a little bit of a vacuum, though, with the PR. I don't know. What is it? Is it? It's out now, right? Obviously, you're watching it. It's out now. I've seen a couple episodes. You haven't seen it yet? No, I want to. I would just say the casting is really fun. I think Donald Glover has amazing chemistry with Maya Erskine, who you maybe know from the show Pen15.

1:00:46Did you ever see that? Every episode twice. Okay. I'm like, was so sad they killed that. It was like one season short. I honestly could only watch one episode of that show because it made me so uncomfortable. Because if you haven't, if you're listening, you haven't watched the show. It's a comedy where these two grown women are playing their like 12 to 14 year old selves, probably, but everyone else is an actual teenager. It's masterful. And this is like kind of in your age range a little bit zone wise. Like the time that they are in. Yeah. Yeah, but it's just it's so uncomfortable comedy and it's really awkward and I just can't really get it makes me uncomfortable to watch.

1:01:20But it's really cool to see Maya go from doing that to playing like essentially a cool blooded killer spy who's been set up with Donald Glover, which if you watched the Mr. Mrs. Smith movie, this is kind of in that same ecosystem, but different. But I think it's really cool. And it seems like a lot of the Atlanta crew are working on this show, which is just so evident, like even before you get to the credits in terms of the writing is so tight and super fun. And I would just recommend it to everybody if they need something to watch. I love the pick and the fact that Atlanta crew is working on it.

1:01:49I mean, the filmmaking in the series Atlanta is just on a different level. I think some of it was quite challenging, which I think makes great television. I'm sure we'll go down that route with this. I just think it's just it's a highly inventive plot structure in Atlanta. Yeah. Yeah. It's super cool. And also the look ahead at Mr. and Mrs. Smith has some of the craziest cameos and just like actors in it. like um sarah paulson michaela cole paul dano etc it just seems like a really fun show i love it it's like amazon can just like add a zero to every paycheck and just like get people of all types to work on their shows yeah i love that and also i think just like donald glover as a showrunner people i think are rightly wanting to work with him on it and i would imagine that he produced this with the intention of starring in it and i think it was a really smart role for him also because he's just kind of killing it.

1:02:41And that clothing is also really fun as a side note. It was originally going to be Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the opposite, and that didn't ever pan out. So this is a new casting. Yeah, I think it's a cool casting. I do love Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Yeah. What's your last thing? My last thing is this. We're recording this on February 6th. February 7th marks the eighth birthday of Taste. Oh, happy birthday. Yeah, we're eight years old, which is a great age. Wow, should we throw like an eight-year-old birthday party that's like bowling and pizza? I mean, or go to the zoo. Like, I mean, I feel like I'm thinking, yeah, bowling, pizza, going to the zoo.

1:03:16I mean, it's definitely, you're starting to get up there where you're like thinking about, you know, adulthood a little bit in your brain as an eight-year-old. Yeah, but your concept of adulthood is like not what real adulthood is. Of course. Well said. I mean, it's like, yeah. Pizza for breakfast. It's more like, what do you want to be is not like astronaut anymore. It's like, you know, I'm going to be a helper. You know, it's like you're a little more thinking about your future at eight. Yeah. What did you want to be when you were eight? When I was eight, I think I wanted to work for the Chicago Cubs.

1:03:45Well, I mean. Slash live across the street from Wrigley Field. That's the dream. Slash like just watch baseball games from the rooftops all day. I mean, for me at eight, the big city was Chicago. I didn't know what New York was. It was not on my radar. It was a general idea. And of course, I hadn't been to California. and it was like literally the big city was Chicago. So I wanted to move to the big city at eight. That's cute. How about you? What did you want to be at eight? I'm trying to think about this. I loved to play make believe and pretend. So I think I maybe was in an actress era, even though I don't think I actually wanted to do that.

1:04:22I think it was just for fun. But I do remember I really wanted to live in San Francisco because I grew up in LA and my mom's family is from the Bay Area. And that would be like the big city we would get to go to that wasn't LA, right? Because I think even as an eight year old, I was like, well, I can't live at home as an adult that would be crazy which my parents are listening to this they're like yes you can live in LA as an adult if you want oh I love it um but yeah oh so yeah eight years it's amazing we launched the we had a launch party at joy luck palace on uh February 7th 2017 and uh it's been a great run and Eliza it's we've been working together on taste for a couple years now um shout out to Anna Hiesel Tatiana Batista Talia Bayokis my old colleagues but getting to eight eight feels like a moment.

1:05:06It's not like a round number, but food media and media in general is, um, is certainly not healthy going through a lot of changes. Um, but I have to say, I have to really acknowledge the support that taste receives from crown publishing group and the folks here. And I really, this is truly a dream job every day I come here to work. I love meeting authors, talking about cookbooks, talking about food, cooking culture. And it's just such an amazing thing that we're at eight years old. Yeah, it's so fun to be a part of it. And I do think we should do our eight-year-old birthday celebration somewhere.

1:05:40I mean, I feel like it's got to be pizza. It's got to be milkshakes. It's like two big, like the Sundays need to be like too big for an eight-year-old stomach. Serendipity, that's where we have to go. Let's go to serendipity and then we can like barf at the end of it. Okay, sounds good. Sounds good. It's a deal. Eliza, great catching up with you. You too.

1:06:04This 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 Gumbert. 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.