549: Was There Ever a Bon Appétit vs. Food & Wine Rivalry? Dana Cowin Has Thoughts.

30:30She has a partner, Caroline Stein, who's extraordinary. The two of them have made a business of being true to themselves and just their persistence. But really, it's about the dedication to craft simplicity, the opposite of Grant Ackett's. It's not that there's one mold of what can make a best new chef or even a great chef, but someone who builds with it. From February 20th to March 7th, dive into Canada's biggest culinary festival, Montreal en Lumière. An exclusive partnership with the McCord Stewart Museum and its exhibition, On the Menu Montreal, a restaurant story. The 2026 festival invites food lovers on a flavorful journey through time.

31:21Montreal's top restaurateurs will reimagine 65 years of the city's iconic astronomy, crafting inventive, nostalgia-inspired dishes with a modern twist. Prepare your palate. World-renowned chefs, including several Michelin-starred talents, will team up with over 80 of Montreal's finest local chefs to create unforgettable, one-of-a-kind menus. The full program is available at MontrealOnLumiere.com, presented by Lotto Quebec in collaboration with National Bank. Today's episode is brought to you by ButcherBox. As a food writer, I can be a little skeptical about subscription cooking boxes you hear about on podcasts.

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33:15Visit ButcherBox.com slash taste to get this limited time offer and free shipping always. That's ButcherBox.com slash taste. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. In the community, with integrity, with love, with great partnership. And Suzanne, to me, exemplifies that. I love that. I got to do a dinner with Suzanne and Dookie in Los Angeles this past summer. And like, you know, work in the line. Yes. And this is in 2024. Somebody who is had a long career and has had a successful career working the line all service. What and I love her cookbooks. I've talked about her Brussels sprouts on the show a lot.

33:58Suzanne will be on the show at some point, but great call to. And really, this is like Italian cooking that has a real simplicity to it. Of course, you say that word, but it really is technically sound and so delicious. So delicious. She's in the, you know, she's in the green market every day. As all those chefs in L.A., my heart breaks for that community. And I don't know where this will lead. But, you know, you go to the Santa Monica Farmer's Market and you see all the chefs. Their connection to place is so profound. Yep. And Suzanne's a great ambassador to L.A. Okay, your third one. My third one.

34:41I'm going to say Anita Lowe because not who had a restaurant in New York City called Anissa. She was way ahead of her time with a women's focused wine list, with exquisite technique, with a small restaurant. And I want to shout out Anita as emblematic of something else completely, which is that we have this expectation of chefs that they will go on forever. They will be either on the line running a restaurant. They will be empire builders. And I believe there should be a place for someone, number one, who understands that they've made the perfect restaurant and they don't have to go on forever.

35:32And Anita is an example of that. The chawanmushi that she made at Anissa, one of the most delicious dishes, most memorable dishes, because it's something that I hadn't had before. Obviously, many people in cultures where that's classic would have had it. But the idea of going to this little place in the West Village and having your eyes opened and the hospitality and the wine list and understanding so deeply how those things went together and her pure philosophy. And the alumni who came out of the kitchen, too. We had Suzanne Cupps on recently, and she worked there for like eight years. And just from all accounts, a mentor to chefs who now run restaurants around the world.

36:23And I love that you brought up Anissa. I think Anita's been on the show previously, and we've talked about our cookbooks, but a great reminder. Let me transition and talk about something I hinted at earlier. You're at Food & Wine 95, definitively a print publication with events. It's a business model that really works well at that time. The internet really changes things in 2003, 2004, and then it really changes things in 2010 with social media. you're leading this publication during a great change in media not easy and I think it should be very clear that it was a very challenging time to go from these really heady days with with money coming in from all sources to not I like to get a sense of like reflecting on that transition until you left and how you handled it and you know you clearly did a lot right you probably did some things wrong or in hindsight you're you maybe second guess yourself talk about the the way food and wine changed with digital age so when i got to food and wine it actually was just a magazine and i worked seven days a week and i worked till midnight and i made the team do the same like we really wanted to make this one magazine work and i look back at the end so you know, whatever, 2016.

37:44And it's such a joke because at that point, the brand DNA was spread across so many different ways of communicating from events to books to digital. I believe that I had all the good years. So you talk about it being really hard. I didn't really see it that way. I felt so committed and so much pleasure in growing the brand and having it exist in different formats, in different ways, and being appropriate to those formats in ways. I mean, the only part that really seemed like a big drag was when we sort of formatted for the iPad. But whatever. That was an interesting time. Everyone really went hard for the iPad.

38:32You know, every time, Mink, Conde Nast, Fox. Yeah. What a waste of time. And it took so much time from the art department. But in any case, so starting with print and then I added overseeing all of our books because we had a really robust book program that Kate Headings led. Spectacular. Another shout out to another Kate. And then digital came along and we had a digital team. I don't think the digital at that time was our strong suit. you know, just at the beginning, and there's a lot of conflicting ideas about how to do digital best. And my instinct was to bring Food & Wine's DNA to digital. Inherently impossible.

39:18I'm just going to make the comment because you've got Eater, Grub Street, you've got all these, and then social, like early, early social, doing things at scale and speed. And if you're going to keep the DNA of a print publication, it's just not going to work. No, it was a bad idea. You know, I had a different idea, which I didn't entirely give up on. But my idea, which, as I said, we didn't follow through on, was that we can't compete with the scale and the speed. We're really just not set up for it. We're not best at it. What can we do that we're best at? How do we create a premium brand online that people would pay more for?

39:58So what we did instead was we chased scale and speed. And what happened instead was, you know, we grew that brand, but it was not, it's just not the same. It had the recipe backbone, and that's a very valuable resource. But we ended up doing a lot of things that were clickbaity and appropriate to the medium. And appropriate to the time and just an impossible era to negotiate. I mean, really, because you've got revenue coming in from digital only, you know, clients and sources and they want you to have traffic. It's a traffic era. It's an era of the banner ad. Oh, my God, the banner ad. And you're trying to maintain your brand equity and keep yourself whole.

40:56And, of course, we don't have the tools digitally. We don't have the iPhone. We don't have really anything to help you put this online. So it happens in, like, this 2010 era where you're chasing Facebook traffic. You're chasing all this fool's gold, really, because in the end everyone lost. And I recognize the impossible task you had. And also, you're getting pennies on the dollar to what you would get in a print ad. And so the pressure mounts from the sales and marketing side to really do something different and effective digitally. I think our real wins were expanding the events. And the real surprise was the continuation, at least I don't know where it stands today, but the continuation of a very solid program of annual books.

41:48So you had a lot of revenue coming in from that. You had the events as a way to spread brand love and satisfy sponsors and advertisers. And then you had the digital platform as something that we just needed to figure out how to do better. We left before that really got figured out. Our great success online was Justin Chappell's Mad Genius Tip series, so moving into video. And when I left Food & Wine, I felt like the most interesting thing that the brand could do, just understanding the headwinds, would be to turn into a video platform. Also, just seeing what Bon Appetit had done and created these video stars, which obviously has a...

42:36Well, after you left, that happened. Because at 16 there, I would say, you guys are on equal footing on the video side. Not accurate? No. Adam and Bon App did more than we did on the digital side, creating personalities. Yeah. But it just, in the same way that it seemed, you know, back in 95, the chefs would be the thing. I'm like, well, video is going to be the thing. So what could we do as food and wine to really blow out video? And then I left. You left at 16. I want to ask you, though, what's the rivalry like with BA? Because it's competitive. There's a lot of, of course, personal pride in the product and getting exclusives.

43:21But there's also just like the business. You have to, you know, you're competing for the same sponsors. You know, what's that like, you know, in the office looking at what BA is doing? And I can imagine it's the same way back looking at Food & Wine. What's that competition like? We're going back to a long time ago. I actually think the approach today is likely quite different. I wouldn't read BA. They were doing such a good job. And it was built on a lot of the foundational ideas that I had and taken to an extreme and in a different direction in terms of visual expression, written expression. And I was just jealous.

44:02I was like, it looks amazing. And I don't actually agree with what they're doing because it was very bro-y to tamp down on my jealousy. I just wouldn't look at it. And the Bun App team was very nice to the food and wine team. Like, we really didn't have personal rivalries. And I think that that was great. I mean, we were quite, like, generous and kind to each other, editorially. I mean, I'll just say this. Editorially speaking, editorially speaking, saying it twice, Adam Rapport ran a great magazine. He just did. And just incredible instincts. And, you know, the tone was certainly not for everyone.

44:47But, you know, in terms of visual identity, covers, bringing the right art directors, hiring Alex Lau, hiring so many people who've been on the show. Editorially speaking, Adam Rapport ran a great magazine. He just did. Well, thank you for sharing all of that about your history at Food & Wine. I mean, really tremendous, tremendous conversation we just had about the history of food media. you ever going to write it down in a memoir? Never. I love it. Very quick. There's been a lot of food memoirs. I'm reading one right now, a great one from Lori Wolver. Like, you got stories, though. Why never?

45:24I actually tried. During the pandemic, I'm like, ah, this is my time. You know, a lot of my projects were on hold. I'll see if I can write a food memoir. And it just bored me. Like, I know what I did. I just don't think it's actually that interesting to a general audience. And I have a lot of things that I find more interesting and more valuable to put in the world. Love that. I mean, knowing that right away is like the key. And you clearly are a tremendous editor because editing is all about that. Knowing when to cut losses and move on. Terrific. I'm happy that you know that for yourself. Yep.

46:01Zero chance. I love this. So I want to close and talk about Progressive Hedonist. I mean, the name is is it says a lot. So or says I need to know actually what then what it means. Let's turn it back on you. Like you hear progressive hedonist. What do you think it means? Well, I think it means somebody who enjoys the best things in life, but maybe with a conscience. Good. That's great. I actually asked chat GPT because I wanted to know what chat GPT thought. And it came up with essentially the definition of progressive hedonist, which is that I want to encourage a world where we enjoy pleasure, but never at the cost of people or planet.

46:47And that has been the mantra guiding the last two years of my work, research, and efforts. Because it turns out that so many of us, for a variety of reasons, are focused only on today. We can't really put our brain into the future. And when we're talking about taking care of people and planet, it's not really a today problem. We're really anticipating a tomorrow problem. And so trying to put these two ideas together and share them through events and editorial has been my mission. And it's been so gratifying to go all around the country to talk to people who also are at the, as you would say, the tip of the spear.

47:47Who is leading the charge saying, today, I want to do what is going to benefit all of us tomorrow? What's the action plan then? I know we have like five minutes left, but for our listeners, what's the action plan to live a life, to live a progressive hedonist lifestyle? The lowest on the food chain of actions to take is to stop wasting food. And I say that because we all waste food. And I was talking to Dana Gunders, who runs something called ReFed, which is focused exclusively on the topic of food waste. And I said, Dana, I am working with every single person all across the country that I talk to.

48:37And I say, I want you to completely reduce your food waste. And she looked at me and she said, 20%. Excuse me? If you could encourage people to just reduce the amount of food they waste by 20%, it will change the world. So number one, when you eat out, when you cook at home, don't waste food. The second thing that I encourage everybody to do is to gather. And it seems like, wait, gathering? That doesn't seem like it's going to help the future. But the future is local. The future is local everything. So the future is local food, is local energy, is local money. And it is really knowing and caring deeply for the people around you.

49:35Where you live, where you rest your head every night. We'll call that local. The people within your radius, your block or your few miles. Or even your building. Your building. Figure out what your radius is, what is local to you. Local food, local money, local energy might be wider than that. But the times ahead are challenging. We're in very challenging times right now. These relationships that we build and strengthen and support through sharing food are the relationships that are going to uplift us, not just get us through, but uplift us. So the events that I've been doing around the country are potlucks, and they're called Potlucks for the Planet.

50:18And there's a gathering guide if people want to go to my website. And I encourage everybody to gather at the potluck. is this idea of just getting started with sharing what you can do with others, what they can do for you, this mutuality around food and a potluck. So gathering is the second thing. And the third thing is being a conscious consumer. And that means I today can't eat, shop, do anything without asking myself the question, Has this the process of getting this product here been extractive or has it been regenerative? And I am on the extreme. But the thing that I would ask is when you go to the when you go to the market, is it in season?

51:12We've thought about this forever. But what are the can you spend a few minutes to understand the practices of the people and places and ideas that you support? Because you could just spend a little bit of time. And again, I'm going to go with Dana Gunderson 20 percent. Give me 20 percent. Yeah. I mean, that's a big number. I'm even 10. Well, I'll take 10. Okay, take 10. When you talk about food waste as a home cook, how do we do that? What's the biggest element of our home cooking practice that's making us waste? The biggest element of our home cooking practice is actually our home shopping practice.

51:53Of course. And if you can change the way you shop, you can change your refrigerator. And if you can change your refrigerator, you can change waste. So Andrew Zimmern, who was on my podcast the other day, had such a funny thing. He said, take a drawer out of your refrigerator, have less space, keep a notebook, buy the kitchen garbage, and write down what you throw out. So, for example, I found that I was throwing out a lot of parsley. I'm like, why do I keep buying parsley, thinking I'm going to use it? And then it always ends up in the garbage. And then stop yourself from buying the thing. You skip parsley.

52:30There's no need unless it's like Passover and you put it on the Passover table. That's the only time I'm using parsley, to be honest. And then, you know, the idea of what is usable in time and looks needs to be reassessed. Yes. So, for example, as you know from cooking, with a carrot, you're going to cut off the tip and the end. But I would say, why? You can actually trim the green from the end of the carrot. And what's wrong with the tip? So I think we need to reevaluate what we're trimming in pursuit of perfection, in pursuit of the way it looks, and use everything. And then, of course, there's a really simple things like the clean out the refrigerated soup.

53:17Yeah. Right. You cook with what you have. Cook with it. Let it stretch. And of course, you know, if on the economic side, you know, if you shop smarter, buy less, you're going to save money. So there's like obviously an economic advantage. I love the money saving part of it. I have really reduced my grocery bill by doing what you just said, which is instead of cooking what I want, cooking with what I have and never allowing the phrase, oh, my God, I don't have anything to make tonight when I have a full pantry. Yeah. Banished from my life. And a full freezer and a full, you know, vegetable drawer.

53:54Exactly. What a great convo. I mean, you're going to come back. I'm so ready to come back. We're going to do this again and we're going to get some more updates. On This Is Taste, we ask guests about the discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious. Taste check. Dana, are you ready? I'm so ready. The best fruit? Apples. When, where, what kind? Tell me more. I love apples because they're crunchy and they're infinitely transformative. So apples are my favorite dessert. An apple pie. I eat them as a snack. And I am really embarrassed to say that my favorite apple is a Honeycrisp.

54:31It really shouldn't be. I will tell you what it should be. It should be my local apple or my fallen apple. We actually have an apple tree, and it was covered with black, what I thought was soot. It turns out it's a fungus, but it's still a delicious apple. So, yeah, I love an apple. The worst vegetable. I'm going to say Brussels sprouts, unless you make them the Dave Chang way. I, you know, I came from the 70s where everyone hated Brussels sprouts, then everyone loved Brussels sprouts. But I just give up. I like the Suzanne going away with balsamic and pancetta. Yes. Braised slow. There are so many ways to rescue a Brussels sprout.

55:14But basically, why should you invest your time in a vegetable that needs to be rescued? The best dessert. A single peach Chez Panisse. The best. That's such a cool answer. I love it. Speaking of David Chang.

55:30I love it. Your favorite city outside America to visit for food? Boring, but Paris. Not boring. A very good answer. I love this question for you. A restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead. Oh, my God. La Caravelle. And in fact, I did bring it back from the dead. I love this. First time we've ever heard this. That's such a great flex and I love it. I was at Chef's Club for one year after Food & Wine. Oh, yeah. And we reached out to Rita Chamea and said, let's bring it back. She had everything in storage. The plates. We brought back the maitre d'. We brought back the dishes. It was so great, but that was only one time.

56:12I'd like to have it live forever. Chef's Club was amazing. You know, it's currently, it's where Therese is now in that space, that iconic space. What a ceiling. airspace. The whole space was great. Just a crazy space. But I really liked Chef's Club. You know, it was a rotating cast of restaurants and chefs coming in and really nice eye for talent. Why didn't it stick around? I feel like it should still be here with us. We did a great job in the private dining room bringing chefs from all over the world. Aaron Rispay, really a brilliant curator of talent. And then we had a menu that was the best ofs from chefs all around America based on Best New Chefs originally because the concept was started by Food & Wine in Aspen.

56:56Really fun place to go. It was a really nice time. And David Rockwell did the design, which I got to work on, which was really top notch. I think the idea at the time of having a menu that was top dishes from chefs all around the country that changed was just not strong enough. We didn't have a big enough draw. And the private dining room with these great one-offs was fantastic, but it didn't end up driving to the restaurant. Yeah. So the core restaurant was these greatest hits. And that's hard. It's like, you know, book publishing doing compilations or - A thousand percent. It's just not, they don't sell as well as - It's like the essay version, right?

57:33Like every bookseller will tell you, you can't sell a collection of essays. And we were selling a collection of recipes, which for something like Wonder, which is fast casual and has a collection of dishes from star chefs, but they're greatest hits in a very generalized way. These were greatest hits in a very specific. Yeah, and cool idea. I mean, I think in time this idea could work. I believe it could. Yeah, I think you just were really early. That's the theme. A little bit. When you're good at publishing, you have some wins. Best New Chefs stuck around, but then you're too early on some things.

58:14Signed of a great editor. Okay, big one. Your favorite New York City restaurant of 2024? So many, but Sailor. Yeah. April. April Bloomfield. In that kitchen, the perfect meal. I just, there are, when I was the editor of Food & Wine, I never went back to a restaurant twice in a year. And I live by that pretty much to this day. So it's only in my mind that I revisit because there are so many great restaurants, particularly in New York City. But Sailor is one that causes me pain that I can't go back. You really follow this rule. I mean, mostly. But people come into town and then I get to repeat. And that's what happened.

58:55Oh, that's the rule. That's good. A little bit of a caveat to the rule. Exactly. It's a good rule. Support your restaurants, guys. Go to new places. Go to established places that you haven't been to. It's a great, great way to dine out. Your favorite cookbook of all time. I'm choosing my mittens, how to cook everything, because it was the first time I felt like I could cook anything. And that was such a great foundation. It's not that the recipes were unique. It's not that it had so much character. It was that that was the cookbook that helped me cross over. So favorite, just in my personal story of going from someone who is really scared of and not interested in cooking to someone who is like, of course, what do you want me to make you?

59:40There's a recipe for that in this book. What a pioneer in formatting, you know, in the format of recipe writing. He tried some things that did not work, but for the most part, Mark's ability to make a cookbook accessible to many people and just the clarity of the voice there. Much credit to Mark Bittman. I love that you brought that up. Yeah. I mean, there's just so many cookbooks that have unique perspectives and I read them, you know, in bed or I cook one recipe. But I think one of the things that's interesting about a cookbook that makes a difference is when you cook more than two or three recipes.

1:00:20Absolutely. Great point there. Last one, your favorite sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly. Take me through your peanut butter and jelly. I like a really dumb peanut butter and jelly. I'd like it on whole wheat toast. Toast, very important. Very cool. And so that the bread is warm and then the peanut butter is crunchy and it melts. And then like a very chunky jam. So you got the two chunky things. They're actually warm. They actually kind of blend and they're really satisfying. You might have sold me a chunky with this prep. I love this. Oh, yeah. What's the peanut butter choice? You know, make it grind it yourself.

1:01:06You're doing that. Okay. I like knowing what's in my peanut butter. I don't like stabilizers. Yeah, yeah. You've really sold me on the crunchy peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Oh, yeah. The jam also has to be chunky because that way you actually feel like you're eating two whole foods rather than you're eating just two slimes that come together. Agreed. And you're putting a lot of jam on there. Yeah. I do love a sandwich. I mean, grilled cheese, second. Number two is grilled cheese. Number two. Tina Cowan, what a cool conversation. I really love this. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste.

1:01:47Thank you for inviting me to Beyond This Is Taste.

1:02:00What's up, Eliza? How are you? I'm good. I'm really excited because I just got some breaking food news from my neighborhood in New York. Well, let's get right to three things. You start. Give us that breaking news. I would say I'm not even going to count this as one of my three things because I don't want to be counting my chickens before they've hatched, so to speak. But I was just reading Eater New York and I saw that Mariscos del Sumerino, which is like one of my favorite like seafood, ceviche, tostada kind of restaurants in New York, is opening a new location in Clinton Hill, which is the neighborhood that I live in.

1:02:31And when I like walk around the neighborhood and see restaurants that have closed, open storefronts, and I play the game of what would open in the neighborhood, this is always one of the things that I talk about. And so I'm just bursting with excitement. Oh, my gosh. Marisa goes to go? Yeah. I mean, to stay, to go to the park. They said it's going to open. I can't even talk. I'm so excited. They said it's going to open soon. I don't know when. But, you know, I will be walking by often to check and see. and hopefully I will be able to follow up and let you know what this location is going to be like.

1:03:04I feel like we should have the chef owners on the show. Oh, I would love that. I will try to befriend them. Befriend them because exactly like come on the show and now you know them and then you can maybe like get to know them and you're their new neighbor. I would love that. They have the original location in Queens. They have the second location that opened last summer in Greenpoint on Franklin Ave. And now the third one is going to be coming in by Pratt. so that's like I guess my point five thing my thing to come start us out on a proper three things oh I can keep going you can keep going I love it my first thing that I actually have consumed and experienced is I got to go to Honey's Bakery for the first time yesterday H-A-N-I is how that honey is spelled and it's owned by Shilpa and Miro who are just incredible pastry people in New York.

1:03:56Miro is ex-Gramersi Tavern. Shilpa is a recipe test kitchen editor at Bon Appetit. And I've had the pleasure of trying Miro's cake before, before the bakery opened. But I got to go by yesterday with Tanya and it was popping off. There was a line outside. There was lots of people inside. They have seating, which I think is nice for a bakery. But just the sheer amount of cake that they're moving out of this place is it's insane. And they have so many people working there and they're all doing the most beautiful like precision cut carrot cake etc this is a bakery that really like they have some bread they have some savory but really they're doing cake pudding cookie etc so a slice of cake to go yes well we had um many things because we met up with shilpa and she very kindly loaded us up but i think some of my favorites one of them was the pistachio halva rice crispy that they're doing wow which i've never had halvan or rice crispy before, but I think that kind of like short crumbly texture works really well.

1:04:53They're doing a smoked salmon focaccia. That's like their take on a bagel with box, basically. It's this really beautiful kind of everything bagel seasoned focaccia with a little bit of cream cheese and the salmon on top. That was really good, especially if you need something savory. Also the carrot cake. I really love carrot cake. There's this beautiful, it's like a layer cake in a way that I haven't really seen carrot cake done before. These beautiful kind of perfect rectangles. And when we were there, people were buying whole cakes and taking them to go. It really just seems like it's become a huge part of this already flourishing pastry neighborhood in downtown New York area.

1:05:30So big fan. I can't wait to visit. And our shared love of carrot cake. This is new to me. I mean, was it cream cheese frosting? Of course it was cream cheese frosting. It had a little like dollop of what I think is carrot puree on the very top of the it. It was not too sweet. It had a nice bite of the carrot. Everything that I had really, I thought was so well done. And it's also cool because if you want to go to Libre or La Cabra or from Lucy, like there's a lot of other baked goods around there. So you could do a little crawl. What's your first thing, Matt? My first thing is a novel that is out this week.

1:06:06And I am so excited to talk about it now. I'm excited to have the author on the show. We We publish it here at Crown, and it's called Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley. Everything about it is extremely my shit, I must say. It is a book that is based around a Berkeley student in the year 2000 who loves music deeply, writes about it, knows song structure, but is not a musician, has no musical skills. This is me, Eliza. Yeah. I mean, not really me. I don't have that much. I mean, it's an incredible character, and I certainly don't have the knowledge. But really, I was in college at that time. I wrote about music when I first moved to New York.

1:06:48And this story follows the narrator in this kind of relationship, this creative relationship, with a musician named Joe. They meet at a bar. They become friends. And the narrator helps Joe write a song. And throughout the novel, this song becomes important. and Joe's career, you know, grows and expands. And, you know, the way that Holly is able to weave in both older music and contemporary music of the time, and, like, it really, the deep cuts is really about the idea of deep cuts, how albums have singles, but then they have deep cuts, and I just love the writing about this song from The Shins, 2001 album, the song Weird Divide, which I think is a true deep cut.

1:07:34What an incredible, it's the third track on the album, and Oh Inverted World is the name of that album. And there's just like time after time of these references to music in this really real world. I really liked the kind of idea of the music blog in the early 2000s and it took me back to like reading Ultra Girl and Miss Modern Age and it got me just like, you know, thinking about this time when blogs were influential and music blogs actually changed careers and the narrator has her own blog. and Holly's going to be on the show and we're going to talk about some of her inspiration and we'll get some food stuff in there too.

1:08:10But I just love this book. It's so readable. It's so enjoyable. It's called Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley. Wow, I can't wait to read it. And I hope that you guys make a little playlist go along with that episode when she comes on. Oh my gosh, we're going to do that. That's such a great idea. I love that. We're definitely going to do a playlist. I feel like I've already like messaged with her about the book because I was loving it so much, but we got to do the collaborative playlist. Yes. Great. What's your next thing? My next thing is that I went to a newer bar downtown over the weekend called Funny Bar.

1:08:37Have you heard about this bar? Funny Bar? Yes. Wow. I've not heard of it, but that name is ungoogleable. It is. It is a very funny bar, actually. Okay. Do tell more. It's on Essex. It is operated by Billy and Tom, who have babies all right. And it is technically a piano bar and that there is a grand piano in the bar that is played upon occasion. But I would really just say it's more of like a very sceny downtown bar that I think has become popular in the past couple of weeks. And I was at my friend Natalie's birthday there. You walk in and there's a front room where there's kind of like a ad hoc coat check situation going on with somebody working it.

1:09:16Then there is the bar and then there's just this giant room. It's a huge space and there's just banquette tables and booths with white tablecloths and paper on top of it. And I'm pretty sure the only food on the menu is steak frites. Oh, ill. Love that choice. I think that's it. I was there for cake and drinks, so I didn't even indulge in the steak frites. But there was copious steak frites around. There also is a DJ booth that's built with almost a sunken dance floor. And I think the guy who designed Paragon and a bunch of other notable clubs in New York did that design. It's a very unusual space.

1:09:52It feels like going back in time to me to an era of New York that I was not around for. in terms of just the steak frites of it all, the split between the bar and the restaurant area. And it just feels kind of interesting and fun. So I figured I'd mention it. I love the mention, and especially following the mention of Deep Cuts, it reminds me of a time in early 2000s in New York that there's a bar opening on Essex. What the hell? Yeah. What the hell? I mean, it's like Lurie's Side is like not a place I think about. There are a lot of cool places opening all the time. I mean, I'm thinking about Cake Shop and the Annex back in the day when these really important venues and bars were open and people went there.

1:10:29Now I think Brooklyn has most of the cool spaces. And wow, it's like funny bars. Sounds like it's going to be a new spa. And Babies, of course, in South Williamsburg is legendary at this point. Yeah, when I showed up, it became apparent that this was known to people and that I did not know about it. And then I was there and I was like, oh, okay. This is where this group of people is going and hanging out. And yeah, I don't know. I'll go back for the steak frie. I've got to try the steak frie. And by the way, that comment about how other people know about this bar. That is me for basically everything.

1:11:00So I'm glad you can finally feel. No, I'm just kidding. Like, it's like really how I feel about downtown New York. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the great things about New York is that things are always evolving and changing. And yeah, I'm sure a lot of people at this bar were probably like time again over the summer when it was nice out and migrating around to different places. I met a group of girls there who had come from like some gallery shows and kind of had that crowd. So I figured it was worth a mention. What's your next thing? I love that mention. It's another book. It's a memoir that I've had in my queue for a long time.

1:11:32Came out a year ago. I think the paperback is just released as well. And it's the memoir by Edward Zwick. Hits, flops, and other illusions my 40-something years in Hollywood. Does that name ring a bell to you, Ed Zwick, the director? Unfortunately not, but I'm worried to say that. No, it's totally okay. Because for me, when I saw the name Ed Zwick, I was like, okay, I know that name. but I don't know the face behind it. This is a remarkable career. So Ed is famous for TV. He co-created 30-something What a Show and he produced My Soul Call Life which was around for one season. It was later reheated on MTV and is still to this day a cultural phenomenon.

1:12:14It is referenced in pop culture and What a Show. But on the film side, he directed About Last Night, Glory, which is a tremendous Oscar winning film. The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, Defiance and many others. And, you know, there's like a lot of like Hollywood memoirs that are floating around and plenty of good ones. I liked this. I think I read an excerpt in Airmail over the summer. I was like, I got to read this book. You know, the guy names names. And that's like what's most important in a Hollywood memoir. Yeah. He has thoughts about Julia Roberts when he was producing Shakespeare in Love.

1:12:50Julia Roberts, of course, did not star in that film, and we get the story behind it. Doesn't play so well on Julia Roberts. Talks about Matthew Broderick having, I would say, a very nervy introduction to him and having his mother be part of the negotiation about many parts of the film. But I think he writes it with great empathy and really he's self-deprecating and he admits his mistakes. He talks about working with Brad Pitt on Legends of the Fall. Works with Denzel Washington throughout his career. Ed Zwick's career is so interesting. and he has such a deep voice with his films. And he's one of our great directors that I feel still doesn't get, you know, he's not a Scorsese or a Spielberg, but he's, you know, been involved in some of our most important works.

1:13:33And I just love the book. And I think, I hope it gets adapted. I think it'd be a great, you know, some kind of maybe a television show. Maybe Ed will direct and produce his own series based on his life. That'd be very cool. Yeah, I will remember the name. And I love that you're on this book recommendation kick. It's super fun. I feel like, you know, I get some notes from listeners. You know, it's nice to recommend books when we're talking to great, you know, cookbook authors and chefs and having so much food. Let's bring in some reading. You know, we read here. We do. What's your last one? My last one is, well, it's an eating thing.

1:14:04Oh, I love it. Yeah. Which I went to lunch at Strange Delight over the weekend, which I've been there for dinner before, but I was really excited to come and try the lunch menu because of the accessories that are involved, which is one of those old school divided lunch trays. Do you know what I'm talking about? Of course. I remember those vividly from hot lunch growing up. Exactly. So this is like the hot lunch that I never got growing up, but that I would have loved to have received. They're doing, instead of a meat in three, a seafood in three. So you can order blackened catfish, fried shrimp, shrimp cocktail, like anything like that on the menu, and then three sides to go with it.

1:14:42So I got mac and cheese and cornbread and a really good broccolini salad that they have going on. And it really is like such a fun way to do lunch. I was with a group of friends. Everybody got a different seafood and three. And then we had all of the sides. Also some really good rice pudding with like a almost like a pecan pie filling going on beneath the rice pudding. But I think it's just a really fun concept for lunch, especially for a New Orleans style seafood place. Very cool. Now, I imagine there's like a fixed price for this lunch. There's a fixed price for the lunch, but then depending on like what seafood you're getting, or if you're adding like shrimp remoulade or smoked fish, like you can kind of dial it up a little more depending on the fanciness of the sides and the fish.

1:15:27But I think it was like around 25, 28 maybe as the set for that. And they're very, the sections of the tray are large and generous. So I think it was like a really nice lunch. I'm really excited to try Strangely. I've not been yet. And it's been on my list for a long time. And having a fixed price for lunch or dinner, that seems I mean, first off, it's like takes the like splitting of the check in a way. If you're if you're that doing that, it makes it much easier. It makes like, you know, you're not paralyzed by choice if it's like a fixed menu. I mean, Kesa does it so well in downtown Manhattan.

1:16:02And I just like this idea of like showing up and seeing what they're going to make. And And Fish and Three has a ring to it. Yeah, it does have a ring to it. And I mean, the fish was obviously the focal point of this restaurant. But the sides were so good that I almost did all sides, which is my normal diner order. So man, and Ham O 'Whaley, what a chef. Yeah, Ham's doing great things. Great things there. What's your last thing? My last thing is I'm talking about food. This is a food show. So I got to close with one. We just had Valentine's Day. And I'm reminded of this company, this chocolate company that a friend, Michelle, had sent to us over the holidays.

1:16:38And my wife, Tamara, sent me or gave me a box of these chocolates. And I'm really loving this company, L.A. Burdick Chocolates. Do you know this company? I was unfamiliar before I received. I don't think so. They have locations in New York, Chicago, Boston, and a really prominent mail order business. All the chocolates are made in Walpole, New Hampshire by head chocolatier Michael Klug. And, you know, the guy has 23 years of experience as a head chocolatier. He also worked at Les Panas in Chanterelle in New York as the pastry chef. And I just love these chocolates. I think, you know, boxes of chocolates, there's lots of different varieties and they come in many different shapes and sizes.

1:17:18I just think for the chocolates that I like, which are like more savory, this is really hitting it. There's like a lot of bitterness. There's some flavored with whiskey. And I thought that like the caramel was really, really nice. It was really bitter. I mean, I think that's where it was leaning towards for me, from my palate, at least the pieces I tried. And we don't talk about chocolate enough on the show. Chocolate's such incredible art. Yeah, I grew up in a Seas chocolate family in California. So we would get the nuts and chews box of Seas candy. Oh, yeah. And then heatedly debate what we thought was in each one and which would be the right one to try next.

1:17:54So I love a new kind of box chocolate to try. It's such a great, great, great memory, too. I just remember going and getting chocolates from, you know, Russell Stouffer's even, like the grocery store stuff. And it being such a fun thing as a kid, just like, what is in here? What is in here? Yeah, my family has a legendary story about my mom's dad who would decide that the best way to decide what each chocolate was was to drive his thumb directly to the center of each one. And if it didn't have a nut and it was a caramel or something, he would just leave the carcass of the chocolate behind and go on to the next one.

1:18:26He was the nut guy. Yeah, he was looking for like the walnut pecan situation. That's a great memory. I love it. Well, thanks for sharing your three things. You too.

1:18:39This is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Logo and guest illustrations by Ellie Skrzat. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste. you