538: New York in the ‘90s and Inside Culinary Class Wars with Edward Lee

33:43I want her to know about something. But, you know, she's not 100 % Korean anyway. So you just start having these thoughts, right, when you have a kid. And I don't know. I just started, like, reintroducing myself to a culture that I had been born with but haven't really embraced or put that much effort into it. My fault for doing that. And so, you know, I'm just kind of reconnecting. And then, you know, by a year and a half ago, two years ago, I opened a Korean restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky called Nami. And Nami is actually my daughter's Korean name. And so I just kind of like just wanted to do something for her and to, I don't know, have some legacy for Korean food.

34:29And I thought, you know, Korean food being more popular. I thought it would be cool to do a Korean barbecue joint in Louisville, Kentucky. Anyway, it became wildly successful. and as I'm doing it I'm just getting more and more into Korean food and just like discovering more things and you know getting deeper into recipes and then things that I can't do there because it's pretty much a traditional barbecue restaurant so we don't stray too far from sort of our DNA at the restaurant like Kobe, Bimbab we're very playful with it but yeah it's got like pajeon and Bibimbap, all the classics and I just started getting really really like inspired by ingredients and like any chef go like all right like I've got all this perilla seed and we use it in a very traditional way at NAMI but I'm like yeah but what if we did this with it and what if and I just started thinking about all these things and I was like I don't have an outlet or a restaurant to do all this in and then and then the call came to do the culinary class wars and then that just got me even more completely jazzed up about like what the potential of Korean food can be.

35:42And this sort of bridging between Korean Korean food and Korean American food and what that means. And you just start to think about the evolution of what Korean food is. And it got me thinking about this theory is like there's kind of like generations of Korean food, just like there's generations of immigrants. And so you have this first generation of Korean restaurants in America, which is pretty much your first wave of immigrants. It's your mom and pop Korean restaurants. It's your, you know, your K-town restaurants. In LA, you go to Koreatown. It's, you know, your kalbi, your barbecue grill, your paja and your mandu.

36:21And that's great. And that kind of lays the foundation. And then the next version of that food is when that, those flavors and those techniques and items start to cross-pollinate with what's around your neighborhood, right? So American culture. So for example, you have your bulgogi tacos, right? And then you have your kimchi hot dogs and then you have your kimchi burgers. And so you have this, you know, again, for lack of a better word, this fusion of Korean flavors mixing with very traditional or very americanized um things and that's great and that kind of was and you're a part of that and everyone like kind of that there was this huge wave of that i don't know like five six seven years ago right where people were putting kimchi on everything and it's a and it's a great way to introduce that that those flavors and then i think there's a third wave and that wave is what's happening now And it's happening, like you said, with a lot of the fine dining restaurants in Korea where now we're going, okay, we have the traditional mom and pop restaurants.

37:34We had the cross-pollination food. Now what's next? Can we do something that actually kind of focuses the lens really, really close on Korean traditions, Korean flavors, reaching back to something that's a little bit more historic, a little bit more, you know, based on origins and techniques, but do it in a way that's a little innovative. You know, when we started doing Shia, we had all these ideas. And the one thing that I said that I didn't want to do was to put Korean flavors on top of French technique. And I think a lot of times when you quote unquote elevate ethnic food, you get into this weird territory and everyone's seen it.

38:28It's such a trap. It's such a trap. It's like miso creme brulee. You know, I'm going to do a tandoori rub on a steak. I'm going to do a, you know, a ginger macaroon. and really all you're doing is doing western food but sort of throwing in asian flavors and there's nothing wrong with that and plenty of restaurants do it and they do it for a reason it's delicious and it's fine but what i wanted to do and i think what a lot of fine dining korean chefs are doing in new york and in korea are going wait a second there's stuff here there's an entire volume of technique here already. We don't have to be insecure about it and rely on Western techniques to fuse it, to make it elevated.

39:19We can just elevate what's already there. And I think that to me, if I can put it into words, encapsulates what this third wave of Korean food that's happening right now is to say, I don't have to do a French macaroon to make a great dessert. I can rely on something that's Korean, update it and modernize it and do some, but I can, I can use that as the root and the base. And so we just, we do things with, you know, we, we, we do chuk and we do, you know, uh, uh, you know, we do kind of a kalbi, we do, uh, uh, you know, different kinds of, uh, kimchis and, and changs and we just try and elevate that.

40:00But I don't want the food to look, feel, or taste westernized in any way. Well, I would say, Ed, I mean, it sounds like this is the type of cuisine that is prevalent in Korea in that middle to fine dining. And I've been to Korea a few times the past couple of years and been kind of shying away from the more classic traditional places and trying to see what the modern scene is. I wrote a piece for food and wine that will be coming out in December. Now, like, this is so interesting because you're rejecting this fusion, this idea that you have to, like, give it this vocabulary of the West to bring in diners because they need that miso creme boule.

40:39But, like, we as diners understand Korean food more than ever now. And that's got to be part of the calculus here. and like dc of course has such a great korean community who can support and plus the international audience from the government i gotta believe that this is setting up to be a really exciting time for bringing like i would call it traditional modern i know those are two yeah those are weird you know and it's always a it's always an education because like i'm i'm you know there are things that you know don't for example you know what ojinga is the dried squid snack yes of course so it's like everyone knows ojinga like we all eat it we all eat it with beer it's like it is such a common flavor seafood jerky it's the best seafood jerky but you don't but you don't ever eat it outside of it and I think some what I think makes Korean Americans slightly different from Korean Koreans is that and I write about this in Buttermilk.

41:46It's like if you have three centuries of tradition on your shoulder, it's really hard to see a piece of food outside of the lane that it was invented in. So Koreans, when they think of ojjinga, it's a bar snack that you eat late at night with beer. But I love the flavor of it. It's like sweet and salty and funky and dehydrated. And so we take that and we dehydrate it until it's completely dry and then we grind it up into a powder and then we coat fish with it but we also make like a I would say kind of an XO sauce but made with dried squid with the ojigang and so you just get this thing where it's like and you can see the faces on even Korean people who come and they eat it and they go I know that flavor but you're putting it in a context that have no clue why it should be there.

42:42And I'm like, do you know what that flavor is? And they're like, I do, but I can't place it. And I'm like, and then once I say Ojinga, they're like, of course it's Ojinga, but you just did it in a way that's... And I'm like, to me, I don't know, that is really fun for me to take that flavor outside of its traditional context, not make it Western, but also try and mess with it a little bit, you know? And I don't know, that's that that's kind of the stuff that we're doing it's really hard and it's not perfect right now and you know i've got i've assembled a really good team and we're starting to do more collaboration we're still you know we're a month old so we're still on menu one um and menu one's always imperfect because it's like i didn't know who my staff i don't you know so it's like basic you know entry level but as we get more comfortable with each other and as we explore more i think there's a lot to explore with Korean flavors where, where we go, okay, this is, I know this is what you think of, but we can do it and, and kind of play with it.

43:47Um, but anyway, that's, I'm hoping that we can do more of that as we, it's going to be exciting evolutions. She is the restaurant. If you're in DC, let's write that name down and go there, like book the table, check out Ed, uh, his, his skills in the kitchen. I want to, you mentioned your writing and And Buttermilk Graffiti was your first book of essays. You have a brand new book out this year, Bourbonland, which is terrific. Your writing is so colorful, erudite. And, you know, just hearing you speak, you know, clearly you've got some skills with the pen. Tell me, why did bourbon, this, you know, truly American commodity, allow you to write essays about many topics outside of drinking culture?

44:32and really what is this book's real root? Yeah. It's like I have this multiple personalities. I'm at one lane exploring deep Korean food. And I'm like, but bourbon. Right. I feel sometimes like I'm schizophrenic. But I have these dual identities in me. And I'm just like, I love Korean food, but I love Southern culture too, obviously. being in Kentucky for 22 years. So, um, and this is a book that started, you know, two years ago, um, published this year, but I didn't know, like I've been drinking bourbon my whole life. And obviously being from Kentucky for 20 years, I've been cooking with bourbon for so long.

45:18And I, I felt like bourbon is having this huge, phenomenal global reach right now. It's like never been more popular. And so I was talking to my publisher, like, well, what, what can you say about bourbon that already hasn't been said before. And there's a plethora of wonderful books about bourbon out there. And I was like, I don't know, but I don't think bourbon's ever been approached from a chef's standpoint. It's always from like a connoisseur or an expert or a bartender. And I wanted to do a deep dive into bourbon, not ranking bourbons or talking about flavor profiles or talking about, you know, ripe figs and cinnamon stick and stuff.

46:02I don't do well with stuff like that. I wanted to tell a very personal journey. And it's kind of my, the whole book is about Kentucky bourbon very specifically. So it's kind of my love letter to Kentucky. And really to talk about the people that make this beautiful thing. I think a lot of people don't understand because bourbon is so popular right now that bourbon almost went away. And there was like bourbon almost went extinct. There was a huge period in American history where bourbon was not making any money. Bodka was the drink of choice. And there were a handful of distilleries in Kentucky that were keeping this tradition alive and not making any money out of it.

46:52Yeah, I mean, they closed Stitzel Weller. I mean, Stitzelweller is the iconic distillery. Well, Stitzelweller folded. Yeah, folded. It closed, right, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I mean, all of them closed. A lot of them closed. I mean, there's, you know, and so you just had a tradition, this American spirit that everyone was ignoring for a good chunk of, you know, the 20th century. and just to see it now like go bazonkers there's something about it i'm like i'm i'm glad that it is but we also have to like take a pause and appreciate the fact that if it wasn't for these really stubborn people in kentucky who decided that they were going to continue to do this without profit uh we wouldn't have this we wouldn't have this singularly classic american spirit that has taken over the globe.

47:47And so I just think it's something that is really important to kind of take a step back and look at. Yeah. Part and parcel of the book, but also just fun recipes. And I feel like, you know, to me, the bourbon book is a little bit of a bridge between sort of this older bourbon culture and this newer audience that's very young, very diverse, very global and, and that, that, you know, it's, it's something that sort of bridges, you know, in a, in a world where everything is so divisive, it's really nice to talk about something that bridges old traditional Kentucky culture with, with young global, you know, hipsters and people who just, you know, rally around bourbon.

48:34Um, and, and I just think it's a really cool subject to dive deep into you know for for a single subject book um and it's like the future of bourbon is unwritten it's it's it's vast and it's going to become more diverse and more global and the fact that like i can make a korean recipe use bourbon as an ingredient in there and it makes the food richer and deeper like it's it's i just think that's that's what excites me. Like I've never been a traditionalist, you know, like I'm not the guy that's like, hey, let's get grandma's recipe and recreated and, you know, authenticated. And I love people that do that.

49:19It's really necessary. I'm glad there are preservationists out there who keep traditions alive. But that's not what gives me goosebumps. What I love is going, all right, let's take this cool thing from here and that cool thing from here. Can we smash it together? and when it works, it's awesome. Yeah, man. Well, pick up the book Bourbon Land and I love what you talk about. Bourbon is drunk everywhere from Upper East Side cocktail bars to the tailgate at LSU. So it's something that reunites our country in a divided country and really you tap into these. And on This Is Taste, we ask guests about the discerning taste.

49:55So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious taste check. Are you ready? No, but go ahead. I don't do rapid fire very well. let's try it the best fruit oh the best fruit it depends what's in season I like melons like a Korean melon like the Korean jame it's very understated the worst vegetable the worst vegetable you know I don't like this is very controversial I don't like artichokes I don't think they taste like anything Yeah, and the work doesn't really deliver much. A lot of work. So much work. For very little flavor. So much work. The best dessert. The best what?

50:41The best dessert. The best dessert.

50:47Ice cream? What's your number one flavor? I like coffee. Yeah, right on. I mean, we're all just chasing Haagen-Dazs. My take. My take only. Yeah, I mean, like, I love fancy. I love every dessert, but, like, I don't know. Just sitting back with a pint of coffee ice cream watching a shitty movie. It's nothing better. A restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead. Oh, my God, there's so many. You know what I used to love, though? It was really a revolutionary restaurant. We'll test people's knowledge, if any will. I'm not even going to say anything about it, but there's a restaurant called Quilties in New York.

51:35And you either know it or you don't, but it was legendary. Only follow-up is any relationship to quilted giraffe? No, not at all. Interesting. Well, I'm going to go down a rabbit hole later and do your homework. Quilties it is. All right, this is a big one. Your favorite cookbook of all time. I remember when I was younger, there was a cookbook by Ken Hom, who is a British Chinese chef. And he published one of the first like really upscale, like widespread Chinese cookbooks. And I just remember when I was younger, like cooking from that a lot and learning from it a lot because, you know, at the time, all the really nice cookbooks were all French.

52:19And he was the first one that did something that was asian that was like really substantial i know the name i'll check out this book i haven't picked it up um last one your favorite sandwich my favorite sandwich pastrami is there a place nothing else though no no no other no like pick like if you have really like a cat's kind of pastrami if it's really good pastrami or you go to like shapiro's in Indianapolis. You really get just mustard, you know, rye bread and pastrami. You don't need all that pickles or Russian dressing or anything. It's like really good pastrami. So agree. I think it's like either Langer's or Katz's.

52:58Those are my two. Yeah. Good stuff. Well, Edward Lee, what a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining. This is taste. Thank you, man. Thank you for having me.

53:16Eliza, you are back from your incredible month in Asia. I just felt like we should catch up because I literally we've been on Zoom a few times, but I haven't seen you. It's nice to see you. It's nice to see you, too. We've been talking over Slack at strange hours of the day when we both happen to be online. But no, I'm back in New York. I'm back in the podcast studio. So just coming back to New York, you're in Taiwan, in Thailand. We're going to chit chat a little bit about it here, but then you're doing a full conversation with your girlfriend, Shirley, and you're going to go over a lot of the spots and link to them.

53:48And it's going to be amazing. But what's it been like coming back to New York? It's pretty weird. I was saying this when I walked in talking with our producer, Clayton, but I feel like this is definitely about to be the most talking I've done with anybody who's not my girlfriend in the past month, probably. Or at least speaking in English, which is the language that I speak the best. Although I did learn a lot more Mandarin. So that was really fun. And specifically how to say things in like a Taiwanese way, which is really fun to get to learn how to do. But no, I walked into Midtown today and I saw all of the coffee carts and the halal trucks.

54:24And I was like, OK, I'm back. I'm accepting it. I love these things about New York. So it's been nice to be back. I've been doing a couple like New Yorkie things, but mostly just adjusting to the time and cooking because I haven't cooked in a long time. Right. You haven't been in your home kitchen. I'm sure that you missed it. Right. I mean. Yeah. I really I feel like cooking is such a huge form of, I guess, self-care for me. It's just an outlet and it's something that really centers me and is creative. I'm sure you feel that way, too. I do. So getting back into that, I think, was a really nice way to kind of reorient my body in this routine I have of being back in New York.

54:58But some things like the weather or my schedule or the subway here, I think, are more of an adjustment. Well, I've missed you, first off. I miss you, too. It's nice to see you in person. And I've been doing some monopods, which, you know. You're talking to yourself? Yeah, mileage may vary with that listener, but I've been trying. I like having you here, though, so we can bounce off ideas and record three things and just do our interviews here. I want to know a little bit just broadly, what was your takeaway broadly about just being in Taiwan? I mean, I really loved it there. It was special for me because I was going with my girlfriend, Shirley, whose family is all in Taiwan mostly.

55:36And I got to meet a lot of her family for the first time and also just get to see this other part of her life and the way that she can exist in the world and eat all of these foods that I've been looking at and wanting to try for a long time. But I feel like just the Taiwanese people are really kind and also really chill. I feel like there is this sense of certainly things are orderly in the subway, runs on time and is like beautiful lines that people line up in. And then they play like a different classical music song when the subway arrives. Just if we could have that in New York, just classical music in general.

56:12Right. I mean, I love it when you hear a subway performer playing. But just the experience of like waiting for the subway and having it be so calm and orderly and kind of thoughtful as well. Like there were things like that that just felt so completely different. But even that sense of kind of order, like I didn't feel like it felt uptight in any kind of way. It felt like people being respectful for each other and looking out for each other. And there were so many little moments like that that I found to be really meaningful. And then also the food obviously was so fantastic and the quality of seafood and shellfish because Taiwan is an island or the fruits that I got to have there that I never had before.

56:49And I felt that way about getting to go to Thailand a lot as well and just experiencing like so much of the way that people exist in social spaces together. All of that stuff. A month in Asia, a month plus. I mean, when you're less than a month, three and a half weeks, three and a half weeks. OK, well, it's longer than most trips. I've never been there that long. That's was there something about the way food was prepared or just your own diet that struck you in upon reflection about the way, you know, things are maybe slightly different from your usual day to days? Yeah. You know, the food is very inexpensive in both of those places, especially in Taiwan.

57:27And because of that, like people make up for it in the speed in which it can be served to people at a lot of places. So there's a lot of stuff where things have been already prepped ahead of time and then they're just frying it off, like putting it in the broth, assembling it. And especially if you're eating at one of the more like casual, like on the sidewalk or like a little restaurant, like a lot of the places we would go to, they just have it done that way. But it's still so affordable and it's really fresh. And I think especially like a lot of Taiwanese, like more home style or traditional cooking that we were having is about having these high quality ingredients and not necessarily doing as much with it.

58:02Versus in Thailand, you have these really, you know, elaborate curries and pastes and salad dressings. And there's kind of so much more going on there from a ingredients perspective. So I feel like comparing that was really nice. Also, I feel like a lot of people know that I love fruit and getting to go to all the fruit stands. and I had a wax apple for the first time. Explain. Have you had those? In Korea, yes, I've had a wax apple. I can't recall. I know I've had it, but what's the texture like? This is my new favorite fruit. I've eaten it so many times over the past couple weeks. The texture is the best part.

58:34I would say it's as juicy as like a very good apple or an Asian pear, but the texture is much lighter and less dense than those fruits. It's almost cottony, or like little like tufts inside of it when you bite it in it. And it's really crisp on the outside. And the flavor is maybe like, I had a hard time. If anyone could describe it to me, I would love to know what other people would say. But maybe like a green grape or a plum that has that kind of tart, sweet, almost like herbaceous note. It's about the shape of the palm of your hand. And it looks like a bell kind of or a bell pepper. I really love this.

59:08I wish we could have them here. I brought three on my flight back. Yeah. And ate all of them and realized that I should have brought more. Yeah. Or your next trip. Did you have any soursop? I had soursop and I also had sugarsop. I think the Taiwanese for that is sakya. I'm probably not pronouncing that right. But Taiwan is the largest grower of sugarsop in the world. It was brought over by the Dutch when they were colonizing prior to the Japanese colonization. And it's grown very widely in the southern part of Taiwan where we were. So I'd never had one before. That was pretty cool. Is there like a flavor or a scent that just is still with you from this trip?

59:46Stinky tofu. Oh, you had some. Okay, cool. No, I honestly did not have some because I really found the smell to be just a lot for me to handle. I get migraines and I really feel like the smell of stinky tofu felt like it was going to trigger a migraine for me. But when you're walking around, especially in Taipei, there's a lot of places that are doing braising and you can choose from a bunch of ingredients where you want braised right then and there. and stinky tofu is really common. And so we would be walking down the street and Shirley would say, stinky tofu, like cover your nose. But once you smell it, like it's kind of too late, you know?

1:00:18Yeah, it just like sits with you. Let me ask you, this is a little abstract, but like, is there like a flavor or a texture that you experience that you have? And I've had this experience many times in Asia, like a style of a, like an acidity that felt like I'd never had that in American cuisine or Korean American. or I mean is there something that sticks out from you? I think maybe a texture that I found myself experiencing a lot is this chewiness you know like QQ is a term for that also that very kind of squishy chewy texture that a lot of people I think are drawn to in Taiwanese food and then a less maybe a little slightly less chewy version of that but boba is something I was having a lot of when I was there and I really love tea and oolong and there's a lot of oolong that's grown in the mountains in taiwan and a lot of the boba places we went to that have those really beautiful like top of the line like tea espresso machines that you can put different single origin teas in and then they have a whole array of other things that are going to go into that um also the coffee citrus or tea citrus combination is something i found myself loving and encountering so much um both like the coffee tonic water with some grapefruit or kumquat or calamansi.

1:01:36It's like a lot of the coffee shops I went to were doing. And then also a lot of boba shops were doing black tea with like chunks of grapefruit. Yeah. I don't know what to call it. The flesh? Like the like the pulp. Yeah. It would be like a grapefruit flavor. But when you would drink it, there would be like actual little membrane, like parts of grapefruit that you could be having. It just felt like so fresh. I love that combination. And just thinking about the cafe culture in Taiwan, I've heard it's legendary i mean it's it's the quality of the teas and i mean what was the service like in the cafes was it like seated you would order at the counter and have or was it more like a like a quick you know i feel like there's a really cool range of kind of places we went to certainly a lot of the boba places don't have a lot of seating at all it's a counter that you step up to and order and then take it with you on your way and lots of people have uh little like portable boba cup carriers.

1:02:29That's a piece of fabric that wraps around it with a handle on top, which I immediately wanted and ended up actually, we'll talk about it in the episode, but Shirley and I went to a place called DIY that you can customize shirts or all kinds of things, but you can also customize your own little fabric boba carrier. And so once I had my own boba carrier, so I didn't, I had my hands free and I could loop it around my wrist and walk around. I really felt like I was operating on another level. But those kinds of places, I think, are very quick versus there are a lot of really beautiful coffee shops that you can go and sit in, and especially in Tainan in the south, where we were at the end of the trip.

1:03:06There's a huge bar and coffee culture there, and it's down a lot of these beautiful old alleys in what used to be a former home. Maybe it has pieces of the old walls kind of sticking out and coming through, and then you could get it to go, or you could dine in and get a pour over or a cortado or something like that. Amazing. I can't wait for that conversation with Shirley and you'll have to share some specific places to go to because that will be a lot of value there. It'll be great. We have already been talking about how we're going to structure the episode. There's a lot to talk about, but whatever we do, it will come with detailed show notes of things as well.

1:03:41Wonderful. Well, let's move to Thailand because I wanted to hear a little bit about your trip there and your first time there. And how was the street food, the outdoor dining situation there? because that's what I take away most from Thailand is eating outside all the time. Yeah, certainly the night markets or vendors that are on the street. I mean, everything is so delicious. I really love Thai food. That was kind of the whole reason for the trip was feeling like if we were going to be going to Taiwan to see Shirley's family, we were already going to be in Asia, we might as well make the most of being on the other side of the world and go somewhere else.

1:04:15And then we wanted it to be warm and we wanted to eat a lot of Thai food. So it was kind of perfect in that way. And we went to Chiang Mai in the north. So we got to have some really good khao soi. Oh, cool. I didn't know that. You went to Chiang Mai. Yeah, we went to Chiang Mai for like three days. No way. Ate a lot of khao soi, had some really good crispy pork noodles that a friend Kelly of ours recommended, whose family is from Chiang Mai. And so we kind of walked out of the city very far one day and had the most incredible kind of bowl of noodle soup. And then we went to Bangkok, which was also incredible.

1:04:45and I feel like a common theme maybe in Taiwan, especially in Bangkok, which is such an international global city, is that in addition to having really great Thai food, we were also able to have fantastic Japanese food. Their Chinatown is the biggest Chinatown in the world. They have the largest immigrant community of Chinese people outside of China and we stayed in Chinatown for a couple days and had just really incredible kind of Thai-Chinese fusion food. Also, the mall culture is super huge. I remember. Yeah, I recall this years ago, having some mall fried chicken that was pretty great. Yeah, I mean, there's like 10, maybe more, very gigantic, popular malls across Bangkok.

1:05:28And a lot of them really establish food vendors from Bangkok or from other parts of Thailand have a second location inside these malls. They're air conditioned. They're open very late. And so they're a huge part of the Thai experience is going to the mall with your family or going to go get some food just because of the ease of being able to go there. And it's so cool to be somewhere where mall culture is so vibrant. You know, I think in the U.S. you always hear about mall culture is dead. Yeah, what mall do you go to? But that's really awesome. And so I enjoyed that as well. We went to four malls, but there were so many more that we didn't have time to go to.

1:06:05It is such a big city. It's kind of like L.A. in that kind of way that there's a lot of sprawl. And so getting across it is not the best. You kind of stick to one side. What are the fit checks in the malls? What are people wearing in contemporary Bangkok right now? What's the style like? The coolest outfit. Yeah, yeah. Everyone had just incredible baggy pants and bag charms. I have a, oh, I don't have it with me. I got a pom-pom purrin. Do you know who that is? No. He's like from the Hello Kitty universe. He's this little dog. I'll show you a photo. But in Thailand and in Taiwan, everyone has these little stuffed animals or charms like dangling off of their bags.

1:06:42And so I really felt like I needed to get one. And this little dog who's shaped like a pudding. Oh, that's adorable. I got him at 7-Eleven. Also, the 7-Eleven culture in Thailand and Taiwan is both fantastic. Just the amount of really good snacks or fresh food in Taiwan at the 7-Eleven. You can get roasted Japanese sweet potatoes or soy marinated eggs instead of the hot dogs. Yeah. Fried chicken you can get also. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I think. And the variety of drinks, too. Yes. Malted milk. Yeah. Apple milk. All kinds of things like that. Yeah. The malted milks of Taiwan. Yeah. I don't drink milk, so I didn't buy it.

1:07:23But I was excited to see it because I knew that that's not really something we have access to here. I mean, I'll just close. Like, I know our listeners like to travel. We certainly we had a survey last year and many people love to travel. And like, can you offer a recommendation of traveling to Taiwan? Just like in general, how would you do it just with this one trip in mind, like where you would start? And do you rent a car or do you take the public transit? Yeah, I mean, I would say for both for both Thailand and Taiwan, I think they're really amazing places to travel to. It's so easy to get around both Bangkok and Taipei.

1:07:59I think if you were going to travel to those two countries, I would focus on those cities. just because there is really good transit opportunities. I had really good health care in both of those places provided to me, like much better than I would have gotten in the United States. The people in Thailand, I think Bangkok has been such a big travel destination for so long, and it's such an international city. I heard so many people who were from Korea or Russia or Germany or Japan that were all speaking English as a common language with Thai people when traveling. And so I think as people who speak English in America, It's a really easy place to go to.

1:08:33And I think Taipei is super under the radar comparatively as a travel destination. I saw much fewer tourists when I was there, especially outside of Taipei in the south, in Tainan or Kaohsiung or Taichung, which we'll talk about on this episode. Because I think all of those cities I went to are really special, and especially Taiwan is not that big of a country. So you can take the bullet train and be from one city to another on the other side of the country in 45 minutes, which is so awesome. That's amazing. We could have that here in the U.S. Yeah, wow. And we really, you know, did a lot of traveling around Lunar New Year when a lot of people are taking the bullet train to visit their family if they live in a different city.

1:09:09And just it makes it so easy to do that, which is really nice. So I would definitely recommend going to both of those cities. And I think once you're in Taipei, it's really so easy to get around. There's so many subways. They're all really clean and orderly. And you can hear the classical music, which I love so much. Yeah. And start there. And I think, you know, I'm really happy to have Shirley come on the show. I've been speaking about her as somebody that I cook with and go to restaurants with for years. So maybe there's a listener out there who feels like they're getting a guest episode from someone that's been mentioned on the show before.

1:09:43But I think I'll get to speak with her more about just what we found to be meaningful and exciting when we were traveling there and some places we would recommend going to. Well, I can't wait for the episode. Thanks for sharing. We're going to go off the mic now and talk about severance because you're almost caught up and we have theories. But we're going to chat. Well, thanks for sharing. Yeah, thanks for asking.

1:10:07This 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.