566: Robert Sietsema’s Substack Era May Be His Best

28:29Like they have the tamales divorciados where they put one tamale on one side and one tamale on the other. and one has red sauce and the other has green sauce, the whole idea is that tamales are like a divorced couple. And they put a fried egg on the top of each one so when you cut into it, the yolk kind of spills out over onto the salsa and the tamale. It is the best thing you've ever eaten in your life. Well, maybe not. Well, if you're like tamales, of course, it's the best thing you've had because it's the best in New York. And to have that many different, They have tamale sandwiches, for God's sake, where they put like two or three tamales inside a soft roll.

29:12Yeah, what a great idea. Oh, man. Let's move on and talk about hamburgers because you also ranked New York City hamburgers. And I love this article. It's why you subscribe. And, you know, your rankings was good. I mean, I'm really interested. Three, Red Hook Tavern, two, Mineta Tavern, one, Joe Junior's. Got to go to Joe Junior's. You know, and that was a big surprise. It was. Because Joe Jr., it's just a diner. It is. It's like a little broken down diner, too. I'm surprised. What's it like? It's like 17th Street or something? Well, there used to be one on 6th Avenue. There were two. Oh, there were two.

29:48Owned by Cousins or something. But this one is on 3rd Avenue and maybe like 16th Street right in the corner. Yep, yep, yep. And it's even for a diner. You know, we have diners that are like cruise ships that are like kind of magnificent vessels. This place is just like a little dump. And but, you know, they grind their beef fresh. They're really careful. You know, this is the only diner where I can remember where they ask you, how do you want your burger done? Have you ever heard that in a diner? I mean, usually it's like gray, like crumbling cinder block. Yeah. But this one, they know how to cook your burger.

30:30And, you know, if you watch them work, you can tell, you know, you as a burger aficionado, I'm sure you know these same rules about burgers, that you don't handle the patty too much. The higher the fat, the less you handle it, the more recently it has been ground. These hamburgers are just, they would make you cry. They're so good. It's a great burger. And I have some comments on the list. I mean, first off, no J.G. Mellon at all on the list. And Hamburger America got like five or six. It was number seven. OK, number seven. You know, that's that's the one that, you know, New York Times puts really high.

31:07And George Motz has been on the show. I mean, if I put it in the top 10, you did. That's already pretty high. Fair enough. Like, we're not splitting hairs here. You know, making making Robert's top 10 is a big thing. No J.G. Mellon, though. I'm curious. Mellon has been in my list before. I love melon. The last time I went there, it was a little bit off. Yeah, sure. So I just I love burgers. I could eat burgers. It's such a good food. One time, my father, who was a snack food expert, used to go to Japan for Frito-Lay. And he had this friend named Mike who who brought popcorn to Japan and became a zillionaire.

31:47Mike sent his son to stay with me and my wife Gretchen in our Lower East Side tenement. And he came and all he wanted to eat were hamburgers. And he ate a hamburger for every meal for the two weeks he was here. And that shows in what regard people hold hamburgers. Many love hamburgers. And for a food that is quite singular and, you know, components-wise, pretty finite. It's not like there's that much nuance in it compared to all all the food in many dishes. You're absolutely right. Yeah. What is what is the percentage difference between the best hamburger and the worst hamburger? It's like, what, 25 percent?

32:27I mean, listen, I think fast food hamburgers have a place in our culture. And I mean, I think that they're they're mostly delicious just by by by by construction. Right. But you're making a top 10 and it's important that you do the work when you're walking these streets. I mean, Robert, you're putting miles on. What are you looking for? I love this way of doing reporting. And I think it's a classic way to do food reporting that many certainly don't do anymore. To begin with, there is nothing sweeter than finding a place. We used to say it wasn't on Yelp. Yeah. And now there's nothing that isn't on Yelp.

33:04I would say there's about 10 percent of the restaurants in the city are not on Yelp. But walking in an unfamiliar neighborhood, to begin with, you should always walk in unfamiliar neighborhoods just as a New Yorker. I mean, get on a train you haven't been on. I mean, there's trains whose letters remain unknown to the general public, like the Z train. The Z, baby. The M train, getting better known. But so get on the M train, go to Forest Avenue, beautiful view from the platform of Ridgewood. Descend and begin walking. I mean, you're going to see a place called Burek's Pizza. And it's not a pizza parlor.

33:48It is just an attempt on the part of the person making the burik, which is a filo pie from Eastern Europe. That person wanted to convey that anyone might like this burik. So they put pizza on there just because they knew that it was like a clarion call. So anyway, you go to one of these neighborhoods you haven't been in. And you wander around, you look for, as Jim Leff might have said, deliciousness. Oh, Jim Leff, the founder of Chowhound. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Great reference there. And delicious was never enough for him. He always had to add extra adjectives to superior deliciousness or overwhelming deliciousness.

34:34I love that. Do you feel your subsect writing harkens back to Chowhound's era in some ways? Well, definitely, especially since without my$3 ,000 a month budget for dining, I am now, and because I'm paying for myself, I am now a true critic. I am paying my own money for things. I am thinking about spending, do I want to spend$25 on that sandwich? No, I'd rather spend$12 on a sandwich or$8. So luckily in New York, most places have a menu posted out front. To begin with, if they don't have a menu, screw them. Just go on to the next place. Many pretentious restaurants won't have the menu. But you look at the menu to decide, do you want to pay that much money for that food?

35:24Then you look through the window. Are people actually eating the food in front of them? Too many restaurants. You look inside and the people are just like playing with their food or or half a plate. Look, you know, remains uneaten. You should look through that window and see people shoveling food into their mouths like there is no tomorrow. It's such a great Robert test. I mean, we don't think about it, but but there is an eye test to a restaurant. Like also like if a restaurant is empty, even if it's been given every acclaim on social media. Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely. Like that happens because like maybe the word out is things aren't great.

36:02And the next thing you do is, this is the most important step of all, you open the door and you walk inside and you smell. A restaurant that doesn't smell good is not going to be good. I mean, really smell. I mean, appealing odors. You know, and if God help us, it smells like cleaning solvents, as many restaurants do. It's like you're walking into one of those like Times Square, like dancing. Bistros. Clubs or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the smell is the most important. And never, never be embarrassed to just turn around and walk out of a place if it just doesn't smell good. Great advice.

36:48I loved your writing about Pisa in Greenpoint. and I think the writing is really profound because I think you were talking about this restaurant that's been there for a while that is just sitting there that's in the shadow of in some ways of Chrissy's which is this extremely popular pizzeria we've had Chrissy on the show we love Chrissy's but it gave a real assessment of how we dine how we go to the newest place like moths on flame but we don't necessarily look around us to the second or third place that might be actually pretty good too. Oh, yeah. And the thing about Pisa or PYCZ or PYZA. PYCZ or PYZA.

37:33PYZA. Yes, thank you. To begin with, the ambiance of restaurants is much more important than people ever admit. This is a place that looks like, and there's a bunch of places like this still around. Um, Strycha, uh, in the East Village is the same way. You walk in and it's like a church basement. Uh, they have some paintings on the walls that look like paint by numbers. There's, uh, there's a, a counter in the back behind which a humorless woman stands. There's a menu over her shoulder written in Polish and in English. and you get to read this luscious list of things that goes from blintzes to schnitzels to, you know, breaded pork chops or veal or tripe soup or all these things.

38:27And they're translated. And you have to give her your order. And then she passes it through the kitchen. And then eventually it comes and she puts it out on the counter and she doesn't say a thing. You have to realize that it's your food and come and pick it up. And you'll be so glad you did because it's so good in a meat and potatoes sort of way. You're not judgmental about food that maybe doesn't look perfect for the gram. Oh, I love it if it doesn't. Yeah, I mean, Chang calls it ugly delicious. Is there any correlation between appearance as expressed in Instagram and TikTok, et cetera, and taste?

39:15I think that there's no correlation whatsoever. I mean, the two of them may be interrelated, you know, but you can't really tell. I mean, a plate of spaghetti and meatballs could have like almond or something or some like— Or it could be cold. I mean, like there's like lots of things that a butter doesn't say. or like there could be like a puddle of a liquid that should have been reduced in a certain way or a taco could be exceptionally dry even though dry photographs well. Like dry food looks really great on camera. Mushy, braised foods that we love don't look great. And of course the color shades.

39:52Like we look at reds and yellows and that pops. But browns, browns taste great. It's like caramelization, the Maillard, it's all there. Matt, you have a great idea for a book there. It's like a color theory of food. That would be like really great because you're right. Browns taste delicious. Yeah, browns taste. And no foods are blue. How could that be? That riddle does encounter, you know, we have this blue raspberry piece that I love. We published maybe like seven years ago that there are no naturally occurring blue foods. Well, blueberries. Where do you square that? People have said that a blueberry is not really blue.

40:32It's not really blue. It's like a color of kind of purple or something. It's more of a purple than blue. Yeah, exactly. It's not a true, like, you know, turquoise. Or a clear blue, a medium blue. Wow. You know, an electric blue. Electric blue. Robert, so you had this meal, this really unsatisfying meal. We're recording this, you know, late in the afternoon. What's for dinner tonight? Like, what's in your mind, especially after you have this meal that you're probably not going to write about or you won't write that much about it? Nothing about it. Nothing. No, I'm not going to. I mean, I would hesitate to foist it on anybody.

41:06I mean, I have a reputation to uphold. Yeah, and you have paying subscribers, for sure. Last night, I went with a couple of friends to this place in Jersey City called 52—62, excuse me, 62 Secret Kitchen. Cool name. And I had such a good dinner that tonight I'm just going to veg out at home and eat leftovers. Robert— you've just given me the greatest gift. Because I think about you and I'm like, and when I'm home not eating anything, but maybe food I've made, I'm like, man, am I doing my job? You made me feel good. Well, I'm sure you, like me, are a good cook. Yeah. I mean, you can't help but be a good cook if you, I mean, I long ago resolved to never eat a bad meal.

41:52Yeah. And sometimes I have, in spite of myself, like this afternoon, but in general, you know, I only make good things, But I have things that I make more readily than other things, like Italian food is like really fun to make and easy to make. Yeah. So, Robert, what keeps you writing? What keeps you doing this? I mean, you probably don't have to do a sub stack. I'm going to imagine that you could retire or do something else. I mean, you had this incredible run for decades, as I mentioned. But why do you keep doing it? Because it's so much fun. Yeah, yeah. You know, I spent up until my writing life as a food writer, I was like the world's worst writer.

42:35When I was in graduate school, you know, cranking out term papers about Thomas Pynchon and Robert Louis Stevenson and, you know, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and, you know, Shakespeare, I was just the most atrociously bad writer. I mean, in order to chasten myself, I have kept copies of my, like, graduate school papers. Good gut check. Oh, yeah. And I actually did some rock writing in New York Rocker early on, and that wasn't much better. But when I stumbled on food writing, I loved it so much that it was just easy. And as the best food writers have discovered, the best food writing is just like talking about food.

43:23It's like it's not like constructing painful sentences or you just like barf it out, just like what happens if you eat a bad meal. Yeah. I think someone like Helen Rosner, I feel like her vibe is like that. You know, it's just. Oh, yeah. Feels effortless. And it's just so terrific. You know her personally. She's a conversationalist. Sure is. The best writers are the people that like to talk. Yep. There really is a correlation. And you certainly, my man, can talk. I have to ask, like, is there a memoir? Because I feel like, you know, you have this incredible story and you have these eras of New York that you lived in and you've written so much.

44:02You have great work that you could go back to. On top of that, yeah, now that you mention that, I am working on my memoir. You are? OK, good. Up through the late 80s I have gotten so far. Oh, terrific. It's chronological. I'm very fortunate in that during several eras in New York, the celebrities were kind of like everywhere. So name dropping is like part of the whole thing that people want to read about in a memoir. So but I would run into Andy Warhol like once a week. And, you know, and celebrities back then, they they were really, really nice. I mean, name dropping in a memoir is like that bowl of sour cream, you know, isn't enough of it ever.

44:43You know, you know, something. But it's also too rich a diet. So, oh, you're you're completing the metaphor in the best way possible. But you got to name the names. I mean, come on. Oh, yeah. No, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you're like watching the Beastie Boys eat pizzas, pizza at Stromboli is watching them play basketball, you know, seeing Allen Ginsberg kind of like. And Odessa? Oh, yeah. He was a fixture at Odessa. Oh, he was indeed. Yeah. He's legendary there. Stromboli's still good. It's always been good. And the dirty secret is that because the original owners were Sicilian, they put a little bit of sugar in the sauce.

45:25And that's like opium. It's the American palate summarized. Our love of sugar. Not necessarily the same palate of Sicily, so to speak. So, yeah, I think our Italian-American food has been inspired by sugar so much. Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. It's so great. Well, we could go on and on. And again, I want you back on the show to talk about Down the Hatch because I have several issues in a pile at my desk at home. Thank you so much. We'll go over that this summer. Hi there. It's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you. Do you have a guest request?

46:01A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on three things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair? You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible. That's the This Is Taste listener survey, link in our show notes. 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. There's big talk about cooking simplicity, but you're usually left with disappointment after smashing that promo code.

46:39Now, Clayton, have you ever tried one of those subscription boxes? Yeah, Matt, my friend gave me a code for that one that has all the chopped vegetables and little baggies. I felt like a drug dealer trying to cook dinner. Yeah, man, I have so been there. ButcherBox is a true exception. I was sent a box of premium beef and pork and was blown away by the quality and variety. There was 100 % grass-fed pasteurized ribeye, tri-tip, and ground sirloin for my favorite at-home smash burger recipe. George Motes, you better watch your back. For pork, they sent me a beautiful center-cut pork loin for slow roasting.

47:15I was super impressed, and I haven't even talked about the ribs, which I cooked in my Instant Pot. There was a rub of salt, white pepper, and togarashi, and I had pressure cooked with water and apple cider vinegar. It was incredible. These ButcherBox ribs are amazing. For nearly a decade, ButcherBox has led the industry with meat and seafood that's antibiotic-free. As an exclusive offer, our listeners can get free protein in every box for a year, plus$20 off your first box when you go to butcherbox.com slash taste. Visit butcherbox.com slash taste to get this limited time offer and free shipping always.

47:55That's butcherbox.com slash taste. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. But 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. Robert, are you ready? I am ready. Wonderful. The best fruit? Raspberries. The worst vegetable? The watermelon radish. Oh, yeah. It promises so much and delivers so little. Absolutely agree. What is your typical breakfast? Well, I have a diner breakfast that I get whenever I go into a diner, which is like all the time. A contrast to my home breakfast, so I'll give you both.

48:36The diner breakfast is two eggs over easy, sausages, whole wheat toast in order to scrape the cholesterol out of my veins, and hash brown potatoes. Now, if they're real hash browns rather than the crap that they scrape around on the flat top all day, you know, and real hash browns, go to Waverly Diner where they have those. My home breakfast is banana, yogurt, and honey. Oh, great. Yeah. What's the yogurt choice? Well, always that. Lebna. Oh, yeah. You know, the fage, they call it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And always, I mean, I would never buy a dairy product that was not full fat ever, period, for any reason.

49:23The low-fat 90s destroyed the dairy case at the supermarket. What a truth. Low-fat. Screw low-fat. I mean, that's bad for you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, when you want yogurt, you want to go full steam with that. The best dessert. The best dessert I've had lately is at a place called Bread Story. Oh, no, I don't know it. It's on First Avenue and like 15th Street. And I love the French flan, which comes with a crust and is so fluffy and creamy. Oh, that sounds amazing. This is a big question for you, and we've asked it to many guests, but I have to ask you. A restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead?

50:07Oh, my God. Madras Woodlands. Amazing. I don't know it, no. Oh, okay. My brain is like, have I encountered that? No? Madras Woodlands was the first place that I ate the greatest dish of all time, which is the masala dosa. Madras Woodlands was over by the United Nations. I ate there in the early 80s before anyone other than South Indians even knew what a dosa was. And this place was kind of a grand place, so I had to scrape money to go there. But it was aimed only at, you know, United Nations diplomats. Wow. What was it like to eat a dosa for the first time? I think I went to Pangol in like the early 2000s.

50:52That was my first dosa. And I was like, this is a food I can totally stand behind. What was your first time like? My time was like that. To begin with, when you go inside the crisp outer shell, which is made by adventitiously fermented dough made of grinding up lentils and rice, and find that it's got potatoes, anything with potatoes rules. So the fact that in India, they made like a samosas the same way, that potatoes which arrived late in India were incorporated very adventitiously. What a great memory. I feel like you probably have a lot of restaurants that you wish you could bring back from the dead.

51:32The best restaurant of 2024. I would have to say Carnitas Ramirez, you know, because everything is there, the homemade tortillas, the choice of pig parts that runs from the most obvious kind of pig leg to things like pig uterus. So you can take a walk on the wild side or you can go conservative. And it's just the fact that they only do one thing, which is pig, is just so efficient. And there's so many, you know, it's like Fergus Henderson. I mean, you're really. You focus on one thing, you do it well. Yes, exactly. Last one, your favorite sandwich. My favorite sandwich, I would say a meatball hero, a meatball parm hero.

52:23and I won't say where you could get it because you could get it almost anywhere. Even pizza parlors make good meatball heroes. Those meatballs are seasoned correctly, right? Well, by the time they get covered with garlicky tomato sauce and get put in a toasted bun. It doesn't really matter. Yeah, yeah. I love it. Robert Seeds, what a pleasure. Please come back. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thanks, Matt. Always like talking with you.

52:52Eliza, how are you? I'm good, Matt. How are you? I'm really great because I just returned from Tucson, Arizona. I was at the Tucson Festival of Books. I mean, 100 ,000 people. It's not just culinary. There's a culinary tent. It's not just people demoing recipes and great conversation about food. But there's all sorts of other authors, lots of fantasy. There's a lot of nonfiction. I would say like 20 tents where conversations are being held. We're signing books. You know, Christina Cho, Joe Yonan, and I were sitting and people are coming up and buying books and I love it. But then we're sitting next to the author of Red, White and Royal Blue.

53:28Casey McQuinston. Yeah, Casey McQuinston. Humbling experience when you're next to this like star fiction writer and literally there's an assistant handing books and it's like a limit of 10 seconds. And there's like 600 people waiting in line. And, you know, I didn't have a Sharpie and I went over. Casey had like four Sharpies and I was like, can I just grab one? and very, very kind, allowed me to take the Sharpie. But I believe they probably ran out of ink out of all the other Sharpies. Impressive, I think. Have you read that book or seen the movie? I haven't seen, I know. The Netflix movie is honestly so fun.

54:01I watched it with my mom and we were just giggling the whole time. I love like a beach read like that. And it's so, I think must be cool to be at a book festival that has so many different kinds of books there. Yeah, it was amazing. And I really would like to go back. And I took the opportunity, though, between sessions to really dig into the Tucson food scene. I'm sure you did. I did. You know how I like to roll. And like if I have spare time, I like to go to a restaurant and get to see some incredible authors just have stop and chats with and meals with Joe Yonan and Carolina Gellin and Ben Mims.

54:37And it was a lot of folks you've had on the show were there presenting. And it was so fun just to be in the sun. And, you know, I'm going to start by by saying the places I didn't get to go to because I really I couldn't go to all the places. And one place I missed was Barrio Bread, which is James Beard award winning a bakery run by Don Guerra. And and I just couldn't go because the lines were like an hour long and I just couldn't do it. But I really want to go back next time. And the other place was Tito and Pep, which many people had told me was one of the city's final restaurants. You know, this mesquite grill, much of the food in Tucson.

55:13And, you know, this cooking is informed by wood-fired cooking over mesquite. And there's a lot of raw seafood there. And I can't wait to go to T-M-Pep. So I didn't go to those places. I have to shout out friends, Tavel Bristol-Joseph, Joy Jacobs-Klein, Jennifer Slow-Howard. Those were my folks who I reached out to. They gave me the list, and I hit them up. I'm sure you did, but where did you go eat? I'm going to start with Seis Kitchen at Mercado San Agustin. Really cool place run by Erica and Jake Munoz. Seis represents six culinary regions of Mexico, and the menu is informed by this point of view.

55:52And I tried one dish because I was trying to limit that so I could make these visits. And I had a Mexico City-style quesadilla with cheese and green chili. And the menu read. It was all over. There's Oaxacan dishes. There's dishes from the Yucatan. And I just really loved what they were doing. So around Mercado San Agustin, I got to go to Lestria Bakery, which had marnitos, which are these pig-shaped gingerbreads. And I had never had it. And I saw all over Tucson, several of the bakeries there. They're so cute. They're so cute. And they have like different – some are like really clearly a pig and some of them are a little more abstract version of a pig.

56:28What I liked about the three that I tried around Tucson was that there's ginger, but it wasn't too sweet. It was perfect with the coffee. It didn't really ruin the palate with too much sugar. And I just loved this bakery. This bakery had won Menry Awards. And I had a little snack there. And Presta is a local roaster. Their coffees are terrific. And I had a really nice espresso shot. They have beautiful milk drinks. And I was like, wow. This is like early in my visit. I was like, wow, Tucson is amazing. Better than Phoenix. I mean, I had a pretty good time in Phoenix. But Tucson is really impressing me.

57:00So many more places, though, to mention, Eliza. I've got a list here. Shall I continue? Yeah, I would love to hear more. Okay, so a great recommendation from John Birdsall, who I got to hang out with, who lives in Tucson now. So fun. And I got an advanced copy of his book about queer food in America, history, and I'm just starting it now. I can't wait to have John on the show to talk about it. And he recommended La Mesa Tortillas, which I got to visit with Joe Yonan, and we were kind of like, we need to have some Sonoran-style tortillas. Joe was on a hunt. You know, Joe's the food editor at the Washington Post and is very curious about food, as am I.

57:37And this place was so cool, milling their own flour, doing Sonoran style, which are like handmade and fired and had like little, you know, burnt marks on the outside skin. And they're a little bit more bitter and sour than some of the tortillas I've had, the flour tortillas it is, to be clear, in like New York or parts of Texas. And I just loved this place. They were so lovely, the staff there. But I think they're known mostly for their tamales. And I got to try a couple of them. They do a red chili beef and a green chili chicken. And holy shit, they were good. They are available to order. They're frozen and sold there, but you can get them shipped to you.

58:19$60 shipping, okay, that is a large amount for shipping. But I would say, check this out. The link is in the show notes. If you're looking for tamales for a party, I would highly recommend ordering these by the dozen. Have them shipped your home, pop them in the freezer, have that party, have them available. So good. If it's a flat rate fee, I would get together your neighbors and friends by many dozens because they freeze really well. You can steam them whenever you want. Yeah. And like you're just not going to get this quality of corn and the nixtamalization and the way that they're they were really spectacular.

58:53And that's la mesa tortillas. More to talk about, Eliza. More to talk about. I know that you eat at so many places. Where did you go next? I would say this. I eat at many places, but I'm very measured. I feel like I can't get full, so I like to try a couple things, get the vibe, report back, maybe for future writing. When I go to a city, I just love that. You do it for us. Am I implying that I'm doing it for us? Because I feel like I'm doing it for us. No, I mean like the larger, the royal us of everybody listening to your recommendations. I appreciate that. I just want Tucson to be given its shine because it's a great city in America that doesn't necessarily get the attention of Phoenix and Los Angeles and other cities.

59:32And they get this great book festival. This place I went to next was Time Market. It's been operating since 1919. It's right near the campus of University of Arizona. And I really – I love so much about this because the way that they ran their operation, you order the counter, get the number, they bring you the thing. Incredible. Like I love a well-run market. Like it can be chaos if like one person is off. Wonderful staff. But what I like about it, it's a bottle shop, all natural wines. They've got a cooler filled with mineral water from there's Mexican mineral waters and throughout Europe. A great, you know, coffee shelf.

1:00:08They sell cookbooks there. Great coffee. Had a great kale salad. So I didn't eat a lot there, but I really like this market. And if you're like staying in Tucson, Time Market is definitely a place to go. I also popped by Anello, which is a pizzeria that came well recommended. I'll just say this. I did not eat the pizza. I did not eat the pizza. They were sold out or they were booked, something like that. It was a little bit later. I'm surprised you didn't have the pizza. I wanted to have the pizza. I'm just going off of what people told me and what I observed. I had a really nice chocolate tart, very Claudia Fleming.

1:00:44You know what I'm talking about. But what I'm going to say about Anello is that the pie is Neapolitan, But the really kind person at the counter was telling me it's not quite as like, you know, thick and spongy and chewy as a classic Neapolitan dough. It's a little crispier. People seem to be loving it. The pro tip is that next door is Crooked Tooth Brewing Company. And you can order your pies, walk them over there, have a beer. Don't wait in line. Just didn't have time to do that myself because, again, they were very late in the night and they were kind of done with the dough. But that's called Anello.

1:01:18And I recommend it. Okay, where else did you go? Well, I'm going to close with my taco crawl. I went to six taquerias, trucks. I went to restaurants. Some I liked and some I didn't. The ones I didn't like will not be mentioning. But most of them I liked. And again, this is a Sonoran-style taco at most of the places using that style of tortilla that I mentioned, a little bit more sour. And I just loved the three I'm going to mention. Can I ask like a logistical question? Sure. Do you try to order like the same taco everywhere to see how it compares? Do you just go for whatever you're gravitating towards on the menu?

1:01:58Great question. I mean, I think like a guy like Robert Sitsima would have more of a methodology. Yeah. Some of our great food writers who put in the work and do the crawls and do them properly do that. And absolutely not. I'm not one of those writers. Your heart is leading you. I just want to have a good time and I kind of want to order what they're known for, talk to the server, see what they're known for, do a little research. BDA came up quite a bit in Queso BDA as well. And I think folks who know Los Angeles, South Bay style tacos, SGV tacos would recognize some of the things I found there.

1:02:37but then there's a lot of wood-fired like crispy tacos like either on corn or on flour but corn seemed to be the way i was going mostly the first place that i want to mention is casa asada and i like this place a lot the chicharron carne asada is definitely the star and then the chile verde was definitely this the the special and what the server told me to order tacos can be done Lorenzo style, which is a corn tortilla toasted over wood, or a Carmelo, which is a flour toasted over wood. I've heard the margaritas there are quite nice from a few friends who recommended it. I love this place. It was like really good carne asada.

1:03:16Like, what can I say? It was terrific. It sounds really good. And I want to give a bit of context. I feel like you probably know this and people listening, just if you're not familiar with the geography of Mexico, Sonora is the state of Mexico that's on the border with Arizona. So it makes sense that there would be a lot of this kind of flower-style tortilla because it's originating probably not even 100 miles away. Well said. Thanks for pointing that out. It's very close to Nogales and the border is right there. And you're getting that Sonoran influence in many of the restaurants, also in Phoenix as well.

1:03:49I'm going to keep going with the taco crawl. The next taqueria I visited was Juanito's, and that is where I had Quesabedia. I thought that the story of this place is cool the guy started a taco truck in the San Fernando Valley in the 1980s moved to Tucson in the 1990s and this has been there ever since the space is very large it was a fast food style counter and I could see that they were doing volume I was there on a quieter night but there was like probably 100 seats available which is a great sign wow yeah totally not much parking though I was like man if this place is full where are you parking but that's always the equation when visiting popular restaurants.

1:04:26And I really liked the media. It was, I tried one taco. They had the, of course, the ring of crispy cheese around the edges and it was beautiful, served in a plastic basket. And that's Taqueria Juanitos. So my last stop on this mini taco crawl was El Rustico from the chef Juan Almanza. One of my favorites because it was a really special scene. It was late at night on a Sunday. There was a group of gentlemen enjoying the end of the week drinking cervezas and just hanging out and great music was being played. And it's kind of a restaurant with a couple personalities. They can do quesopedia. They can do all sorts of tacos.

1:05:10But also they're well known for their smoked pork ribs. And they have a big smoker in the back. I did not try them because I was quite full, if you can imagine. But I loved the way that these guys were just loving the ribs and the vibe in there was great. The highlight of the entire trip happened on this visit. And it's a simple thing but something that's so difficult to pull off. It was a complimentary basket of perfectly fried tortilla chips and a bean dip. A bean dip can change everything when it's perfect. And it was warm in a styrofoam cup, a really small one. And clearly they knew what they were doing.

1:05:46It was like all bean, salt, a little bit of fat. It was like kind of, to me, a revelation about how great bean dip can be. And I think the warmth of it was something that it was like hot. It was served kind of hot. And then, of course, it cooled over the course of my snacking. And I just loved it. It was like one of these like, wow, bean dip can be so good when it's so good. The bean dip, is it like a refried bean kind of situation? Yes, correct. So thank you for clarifying. So it's not one of those bean dips that's liquids and full beans that you can sometimes get at Grape Tuckerias. No, it was definitely a refried bean, which Joe Yonan and I were chatting about the origins of refried beans.

1:06:26Joe Yonan knows his beans. Joe Yonan knows his beans. The author of the cookbook, Cool Beans. And he was telling me, and it's clear, refried beans are not fried twice. It's extra fried is what that means. Yeah, it's like recooked. Recooked, yeah, exactly. It's not really fried, but it's recooked. It's not like you set it aside and fry it twice. It's not the way it goes. It's just extra. So a little fun fact from the bean guy, Joe Yonin. I loved it. It was definitely more solid. It would be in that the emoji of refried beans would be this styrofoam cup of beans. It sounds so good to me. Refried beans are one of my great comfort foods, and I make them at home pretty often when I make beans and I have them left over.

1:07:11but hearing all of these recommendations, the taco crawl alone makes me really want to go to Tucson. Yeah, Tucson's cool. Like, I mean, average age, 71. Awesome. Just being clear. I love Palm Springs. I'm not shy of my love of Palm Springs. The food in Tucson, it just leaps and bounds better. And I just absolutely think as a place where you could slow down life, have great weather, have amazing food. I'm a huge fan of Tucson from this. How do you make your refried beans? I use bacon. Unless I'm making them for someone who's vegetarian, because my beans are normally vegetarian. I'll start off by frying off some bacon, take out the great bacon once it's crispy, and I have that rendered fat.

1:07:57And then I put the beans in with that and kind of like, you know, fry them off in the fat. I'll put some of the liquid in also and then just kind of mash them down as they cook. and ideally I have more of that bean liquid and I can be adding in more of it till it gets to the consistency that I want. I don't know if it's the most traditional way, but I do think it's in line with the general ideology of making refried beans. Do you add any alliums to it? Sometimes I will like fry off some garlic or onion or something when I'm putting in the beans, but normally like my beans, my cooked beans that I'm making refried already have that kind of flavoring from when I made that pot of beans.

1:08:36So I find that it doesn't necessarily need it. But I will do like onion, I would say. We have a great recipe on taste from Cristian Reynoso. And I cook this one often. It is a vegetarian version and from a can. So this is a quicker version. Yeah. And you're using that liquid in the can. Exactly. Using liquid in the can. It's a quarter cup of olive oil, one onion sauteed. Add the beans with liquid, you know, cook away and then start mashing and reintroduce, you know, liquid in. if it's even a little bit of water if needed, but any kind of stock you may have and reintroduce it a little bit and just keep cooking and cooking away.

1:09:13Add some heat to it, add a little Serrano chili at the end. Yeah, I do put red pepper of some kind in basically everything that I cook. So I feel like that's happening at the end. But somehow I feel like it's not gonna hit in the same way that the beans did at that place. Definitely not. I wish I could, maybe I'll call them up one day and write something about it. But that's Juice on Arizona for you. I had a great time. Thanks for letting me share. Thanks for sharing.

1:10:04and 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.