582: Food Writers Talking About Food Writing with Kat Kinsman & Matt Rodbard

25:29And then they finally have the French or Italian version or the Welsh or whatever it is and have this moment where everything goes from black and white to color and really, you know, opens up. So, I mean, all of it is, I mean, it's, I've been very, very stressed about this. And actually, I left Hags brunch a couple weeks ago and had a friend in town. And we went to Kalustian's to try to figure out what are the things that are going to be unaffordable soon or less affordable and really stuck up on that. And I've been asking chefs. That's a good reporting piece right there. See what's going to actually change.

26:05Yeah, we've run some pieces recently to say, like, what should you get now? And a lot of it is oils and, you know, very particular things. But, yeah, I got a bunch of things at Cluestands. I'm going to go back and buy more. Yeah. Well, I love those thoughts. Let's move to the next story. Not Too Sweet or Too Sweet to Fail, a story on taste by our friend Mahira Rivers. Liza and I worked on this with Mahira for a while, and it was just a really wonderful experience. I mean, it talks about the great sweetification of Asian cuisine. And, you know, she taps into the idea that, you know, sugar was not pervasive in Asian cooking even 50 years ago.

26:40But in recent times, it's exploded. You know, sugar, in theory, is not an ingredient that should stand on its own, Mahira writes. It is merely there to rein in, you know, the pungent fish sauce and Thai and Vietnamese sauces or tamp down the spice of a Sichuan stir fry. Even dessert, I think many people agree in Asian cultures, has been praised as being, quote unquote, not too sweet, which I think is a really great point. But of course, this is all changed and changed rapidly. And Mahira observes in Walking the Isles of H Mart how much sugar is really apparent in these pre-made sauces and pre-made Korean barbecues.

27:18I was visiting with a Korean chef in Atlanta a few years ago, and I won't mention her name, but she was just like, this food is inedible. speaking of American, Korean-American cuisine. And she was just disappointed in this like over-the-top sweetness in the cuisine. And at the end of the piece, Mahira speaks with Nicole Ponseca, who runs a great Filipino restaurant, Jeepney. It's now in Miami. It used to be in New York. And she's just like, quote, it's not a sweet cuisine, exclamation point, exclamation point, referring to Filipino cuisine, while, of course, some Filipino dishes in America have become quite sweet.

27:53It's a tough topic. I think Mahira did a great job of like balancing tradition with modern and trying to get a sense of is it too sweet? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I can't I can't say if I have an opinion. I really feel like modern Korean food is pretty great as it is. What do you think, Kat? First of all, if it has Mahira Rivers byline on it, it's going to be good. That is the seal of approval. That is like really anything she writes. I know that that is going to be high quality in there. You know, it's again, it's one of those interesting things. if your entry point into a particular cuisine is this other version of it, that is this maybe Americanized version, that is this more modern version, that, you know, a lot of things come about because of economics and what is, you know, what is the more inexpensive sweetener to use?

28:40Like there are reasons why our food has changed. And also memory is a really, really funny thing. And I'm constantly trying to figure out, did this thing change or did I change? Did my taste change? Like, you know, you have something that you had in childhood and it might still hit or it might have, you know, just some other factor to it. And you think, oh, that isn't mine anymore. And, you know, and often these decisions are driven by the market of things. But if you say or somebody who has grown up in one of these cuisines, you can palpably and emotionally feel what this shift has been. And so long as you can still get versions of that thing, people – I mean, if some of the sweetness means that more people are going to get to experience this cuisine and have a gateway into it, I think that's a very, very good thing.

29:32And they might then veer off and find some of the things that maybe are a little bit less sweet. But I can also see the heartbreak of having the thing that you love fundamentally change. And then if those products are coming in and they're squeezing out the availability of all the other things in the market and you can't get that, that is a loss. That really, really truly is. You know, we ran a piece within the past couple of years about the writer's family had a Thai restaurant. And people would come in with expectations because of other Thai restaurants that they had been to. And they, you know, had to come to a place of compromise.

30:13OK, do we meet the people and accommodate their taste or do we stick to our guns and then maybe have fewer customers? And, you know, I don't envy anybody who is in that particular thing because it is – and food is one of the most emotional things that we have. It's so tied into our sense of self and identity and when any of that changes. And just the frequency of it. We eat between three and seven times a day depending on what your day is like. Yeah. Food is always around us, of course. And, you know, and things are trend driven. I keep hearing the word swicy. Yeah, swicy is interesting. So I think that some of that probably, you know, falls under swicy.

30:49And again, like, you know, Filipino food has always been great. Now there are other people who are putting their hands, you know, in it as well. And, you know, I'm always very, very curious to see what sort of third culture kids are doing with things. But again, like, you have to do a certain amount of compromise if you want to sell a certain amount of units of things. I will also note that I was glad that she called out Gotham Grove as a purveyor, which is owned by my friend Jen Yu. And she imports directly from Korea. They import the best products. Absolutely, Gotham Grove. Really and truly.

31:18And I hoard that stuff. Yeah, that's a great call about Gotham Grove. That's our piece on taste. The next piece I want to talk about is one that you wrote a couple years ago. Where You Go, Chef Rocco Dispirito. Now, I love this piece. It's long. It's reported. And I remember reading it before I had Rocco on the show. and I remember thinking, wow, this was a really, really, really personal story for you. So you're here talking about food writing. Kat, tell us about Rocco Despierdo and how you ended up reporting this really important piece. Oh my gosh. So Rocco Despierdo, you know, we all have our, you know, we're all Captain Ahab with our white whale.

31:55We are. The people we want to write about, the things that we want to do. I had had a transformational meal at Union Pacific. in, it was a restaurant week in probably 2004. And I'd been hearing about him for a long time. I moved to New York in 1996 and I would hear about this hot young chef and, you know, and I was so interested in who he was and what he was doing. And people were talking about Union Pacific as this pinnacle of, you know, of cuisine and experimentation. And of course he had, you know, the show The Restaurants. Yeah. NBC network show, probably one of the first mainstream food shows ever in American television.

32:37Yeah. And I think it might have been on early cutting edge of reality food shows. Absolutely. You know, and he took a lot of hit for doing that show. But I wanted to go in and experiment with this. And God bless Restaurant Week. I was, you know, still trying to find my footing economically and went in and had this lunch that blew me away. And the guy I was dating at the time, who I'm still friends with, was he was getting annoyed because he was saying, like, why does everything always have to be the best? The most welcome to Catland where everything has to be the best, the most amazing. Can't you have something that is just fine?

33:13And I was thinking. What a curmudgeon. Did not deserve your presence. He's great. He's fine. OK, great. He's fine. No, we're friends. It's good. But, you know, it just it really stuck with me. And then Rocco left the restaurant. He sold it. He made a profit. Yeah. And, but then he was, he was gone. He popped up on Dancing with the Stars. Oh, yeah. Or he would be various other places and, but he wasn't cooking in a restaurant. And this was eating me alive. I remember I met him at the first New York Wine and Food Festival. And I was like, oh my God, it's Rago Espirito. And like losing my mind. And I was, and he was sort of enigmatic to me.

33:54And I was just dorking out over this because, you know, I also knew how other chefs had always regarded him. Food and wine, 1999, best new chef. And just somebody who had tremendous respect and awe of his peers. But he had fallen into a place where he was not in restaurants and people were being unkind about that. And, you know, Anthony Bourdain, I think maybe they eventually met up, but like sort of had a – he was mad because he was like, Why would you waste talent like that? Not cooking. And, you know. That's really hard for someone to hear, I would imagine. Rocco must have really put that away, all those snipes about a guy who's like truly just trying to make a dollar and maybe didn't want to work in restaurants, maybe wanted to be on television.

34:40Well, I found out what the real story was because I had my suspicions about this. So we got a press release saying like, oh, he's going to be cooking at The Standard. And I was like, oh, my gosh. It was sent to a colleague in mine. And I said, I am so sorry to big dog you here, but this one needs to be mine. I wanted to write this story forever. I need to experience this again. So I went, had an absolutely bang up meal, really tremendous. And Rocco came out and said hi. And he had sort of like fairly guarded posture and things. And I thought like, OK, I think I know what's going on here. And so I begged his PR person, like, please let me write this story.

35:20I desperately want to write a story about where he's been. And I had to basically earn his trust for this because he'd been so crapped on by media, just speculating about him forever. And we sat down eventually, like, because I do a lot of work with chefs and the mental health realm and just try to, you know, make sure people know I'm never going to do the gotcha. I'm there to do, you know, make people feel heard and understood. So I sat at a table in the restaurant with him and I, as we talked through and I said, like, look, this is going to be, you know, you have control over this and stuff like I'm not here to burn you or anything.

35:59Like I'm here to, you know, I just genuinely want to know why and what are the conditions on this. And he told me like he, his mother had a heart attack and he was her caretaker for a long time. So he dropped out of everything to take care of her. And we remember the show. She's a big figure in his life, like a big star on the show with him and important. I mean, this is like most important person in his life. Truly like so family oriented. And he, you know, was still doing other things. He went on Dancing with the Stars because it was his mother's favorite show. He was an early person doing like pet food things and he took so much crap for that.

36:38And he's been, he has written so many cookbooks. So he's always been doing that, but he was taking care of her. And then in the course of this, he was not taking care of his own self. So he was in a wheelchair for a while and he had to relearn how to walk. And also this was the thing I suspected. Tremendous. And I will say this and I will talk about this because he's now since been open about it. Huge social anxiety. And, you know, he had always been portrayed as this person in, you know, in restaurants and stuff who is like Mr. or a man about town and stuff. Like, no, he had to take acting classes to get comfortable with that.

37:14And he was always just happy sort of behind the line there. Yeah, like in true chef form. Really, truly. So I wrote this profile. I had filed it. I'm on my way to the Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium in Oxford, Mississippi. And I get, I don't remember if it was a call or a text from somebody saying, because it had closed out saying like, okay, so he's back and he's back at the standard. and I got a text saying, he's leaving the standard. And I had filed the text and I was like, ah, my plane took off. So I, once we landed, I, you know, I woke up, but I got down to like a bunch of texts from his PR and from him and saying, sorry, I wasn't actually able to tell you that.

37:55He was at the end of his contract and decided not to go on with that. So I had to very quickly rewrite the story. That does happen. And it was wild. And then we found out that there was going to be an eater piece the next week that was going. So I had to, unfortunately, not attend some of the symposium and write this story and change what the ending was going to be. And that was, whew, just adapting on the fly. These things happen when we're in these weeds, especially with people with PR teams around them. It happens. These stories shift quickly. And then your weekend gets a little bit shut down a bit.

38:36And this was for print. I'm glad I hadn't gone to print yet. Yeah, true. So we, you know, got the new version together, ran it online, and then it appeared in print in the new version of it. And the course of it, I mean, the life that it took on made me so, so happy. People were overjoyed to see him back, to hear about him. The wave of love for him was so huge. And because I think it's so easy to say things about people when you don't know the real story and because there was so much mystery around it, like he had, you know, to some degree there was a punchline sort of thing that was not fair.

39:17It was never fair. People are allowed to prioritize other things in their life. So this was, it felt really good to me to be able to do that. And I went in, I, good God, I did so much research, the digging I did, you know, for that. and Karen Shimizu, genius editor. Shout out to your team. And Pete Wells, God bless that man. We've been friends for a thousand years. And he's like, do you want extra eyes on it? And I was like, yes, yes. Oh, that's cool. He's a genius editor. Yeah, he's a great editor. And I will say also Rocco has ended up taking on a big role in my life too. No way. Are you serious?

39:52Yeah. You guys are in touch still. He's become a really dear friend. And so I got to interview him for his last book that came out, which is absolutely brilliant. and I owe it to him that Douglas has the cardiologist that he does because I told Rocco what happened and he got him in with the practice that had treated his mom. Oh, that's wonderful. This whole time. So I was making risotto a couple weeks ago and there was sort of legend at the standard that every single plate of risotto had to be made by him who was like sending him video of like, is this right? It was like, I cannot believe I went from like doing this to be able to text him and say like, Rocco, how's my risotto?

40:31I love that story. Well, I'm going to link to all these stories in our show notes. I have one more, a great story from Annika Shokat on the great, on the great new Upstart newsletter, Best Food Blog. My old co-host, Anna Heasel, is one of the team members there. Do you eat clockwise, top down, or bite by bite? And Annika has a great take here. She writes about a divide in her marriage, so to speak, while her husband takes a dish like a burrito bowl and mashes everything together. Annika has a more methodical process, enjoying each layer on their own. You know, Charlie, who prefers a jumble, the contents of this bowl into a mushy amalgam like a barbarian, calls my methodical and decisive approach to eating psychotic, quote unquote.

41:19I have to admit I have a similar relationship with my wife Tamar. I think that we have different approaches to some items, mostly desserts. I think Tamar has been a bit of a masher in the past, especially with like a chocolate sundae or like a pile of mode where there's like a little bit of a cold and damp and a dryer. And they somehow become one before the first bite has happened while I'm a little more meticulous. And I think that this story really gets me thinking about the way we eat and the styles. And it's a really funny piece. I'm linking it. Annika did a great job. Oh, it's such a great piece.

41:56And that is like such a joyful publication. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, just like folks who I just think the world of are involved in it. And this was such a fun piece because like this is so observational. And like all great food stories about so much more than food. So I've been with my husband for 20 years. And I met him online in the early days of online dating. and uh they had a section blank is sexy blank is sexier and i said eating is sexy eating with your hands is sexier so i went in there like with you know i get my hands dirty like if i didn't have to use utensils i wouldn't i am i love to i love to eat with my hands and pick things up and it was and i i do notice how other people eat just because i you know looking for those those kinships and things like Kate Crater and I uh once the first time that we ate together we sat down we realized that we each sit and like pick bites off like with our hands oh I love that one I'm like that too yeah and I really really love that so I will eat like chicken with my hands and I will also chew off the cartilage and I will do all these things Douglas would never he's he's a very meticulous eater he and I just always staring at like bones he leaves like meat and gristle on the bones and It makes me.

43:10You've got to clean the bones. It's the best part. So I, you know, and it's funny, like we have a particular group of friends where we cook and eat together a lot. And so, but the great thing is we all know each other so well that, you know, often we know sort of who's going to get which piece of which thing by how each person eats. But we've all figured out our harmonies. So people aren't sort of fighting too much. But I think it's I think it's a beautiful thing when you can figure out your your rhythms with that. And I'm sure I just seem like an absolute beast. But I, you know, I save that for at home or, you know, not at a restaurant so much.

43:46Well, thanks for sharing that. Well, that concludes our round of stories. We're going to be back in a couple of weeks with another guest and we'll go over some food writing. I want to transition to the segment I did with Eric. I'm keeping it around. And it's in honor of the Graydon Carter memoir. And we're calling it What Would You Pitch 1997 Graydon Carter Today? The idea is that in 1997, Graydon Carter was sending reporters out on the road for$75 ,000 assignments,$100 ,000. You know, these types of stories, plus expenses, of course, spend two weeks, two months, two years on the story. So, yeah, Graydon's on the horn.

44:22He's on the phone, Kat, and it's 1997. What are you pitching and what's the dream story? So on September 4th, 1982, Craig Claiborne threw himself a 67th birthday party that was also the 25 year anniversary of his tenure at the New York Times. The guest list for this. And I own an original invitation of this that I found at a U.S. bookstore. This was in the Hamptons, right? Yeah, out in the Hamptons, co-hosted with Pierre Frigny, who is his usual collaborator. You've got Jacques Pepin. You've got Zarela Martinez, Madher Joffrey. It is, oh my gosh, I'm like blanking on it because it is just, it is.

45:10Is Beard there? I don't think Beard was there. Edna Lewis was there. And I would want to pitch to Graydon Carter. Okay, let me recreate these with everybody who's still with us and still alive and have long form interviews with all of these people and look both at 1984 or sorry, 1982 as where were we in food then? Where are we in 1997? And ask each person how they felt in that moment. Because my hobby these days is any time where I get the opportunity to speak to anyone who was there and cooked or participated. Like, please tell me what that was like. I was asking Zarela Martinez about that. She went off on Diana Kennedy.

46:04Was it like a rivalry? Was it like a like a just a personal beef? Oh, she had some things to say there. But, you know, the thing is like, you know, Diana Kennedy had passed by that point. And, you know, Zarello was being salty. I love Zarello. She was being really salty about this. But a lot of it was, you know, I sort of, these are the people who are my idols. And I think I would have had such imposter syndrome being anywhere in that company. And so actually what Zarello is telling me, she had worked for Paul Prudhomme, who had suggested her as another talent to be involved in this. So you can see, you know, this is an incredible, you know, document of history and who sort of like, you know, who was at the forefront of all of this right now, where all of these cuisines were intersecting, you know, who were the Psalms, who were there.

46:55So I would ask him, first of all, build me a time machine. But, you know, barring that, what is the recreation of this thing we do now? And then like if I was pitching that now, I would have to think who would be in that modern day group of people and find out who is still alive, have them all there, but have them each then nominate who was their successor for this. because I always love the notion of people cooking with their mentor and their protege and see what things have changed. We have this section of the Food and Wine Classics where we revisit recipes that have run since we started in 1978.

47:37And if the person is still alive, we ask them, like, how would you change anything? How would this dish differ? What a great project. Oh, we have so much fun. I just wrote one about Emeril and this Mofolata, but used it as an excuse to go and see his career trajectory from his early cooking show. Gave me a chance to nerd out and look at old Emeril shows. So I would pitch Graydon Carter. Yeah, I love that story. I feel like it would have fit perfectly into that nostalgia. And, of course, the Hamptons. You're good at pitching Vanity Fair in 1997. Thank you very much. Great work. Well, I want to wrap up our convo.

48:12This has been really fun. Oh, my God. I'm having a blast. Live on YouTube. Check it out on YouTube. And if you're there, comment. Maybe you have some links to share. Say what's up. But I love to end all episodes of This Is Taste with a taste check on Food Rears talking about food writing. It's a taste check media edition. So let's do it. On This Is Taste, we just got some really discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious. Taste check. Kat, are you ready? As I'll ever be. What is the first thing you read in the morning and where do you read it? Oh, my God, on my phone, which is right next to my desk.

48:47I check and see if anybody texted. I usually, depending on if I've woken up in the middle of the night, I will continue with Spelling Bee, which flips over at 3 a.m., which often I have done some with Spelling Bee. You got the Queen sometimes? On occasion. Yeah, tomorrow's the same. Yeah, I will also have just after midnight done Wordle, sent that to my friend Simone Reggie and done Connections. I love Connections. Yeah, it's so great. So I will look at that first, then look and see what the Times is highlighting. I'll look at Slack and just check and see if there's anything I need to know for today.

49:22Check and see just because I have friends in different time zones, see what they have texted overnight. And unfortunately, it's all on my phone. Yeah, it's a phone format for you. Yeah. Do you read the actual paper ever? I am a New York Times print subscriber. Blue bag special. Sure is. And luckily I have dogs, so I put those blue bags to use. I've used that too for our cats. What's your first section then? Food. I mean, so on that particular day. Otherwise, like, you know, I'm looking at A1. I'm always like a styles and culture person. I love reading about TV. Yeah. And I listen to a ton of podcasts about TV.

50:00Yeah. And I mean, that's the other part of my media diet. I listen to so many podcasts. Are you like a fan of podcasts about formats that you're not like, you're not watching all the TV shows? You're more interested in the actual like industry slash what's good? Sometimes. Oh, yeah. There are a whole lot of podcasts in The Ringer where sometimes I'm like, I'm not even super acquainted with this show, but I like hearing smart people talk. Me too. Yeah, I'm with you. Yeah. So actually before this, we were geeking out about Bandsplain, which is Yassi Salik's podcast. And that'll go to like 12 hours sometimes.

50:30You know, my friend Joanna Robinson hosts a bunch of, you know, a lot of like genre kind of stuff at Prestige TV. So I have a lot of that. I will listen to pop culture happy hour every day. That's how I find a lot of recommendations for things. I listen to The Daily. I listen to normal gossip. Oh, yeah. How's the new host at normal gossip? Love her. Oh, my gosh. It took for a second just to make like, OK, new energy. But like she's I feel like she's really gotten into the swing of it. And it's it's so delicious. I love it. So how do you listen to pods? What's the format? Like, is it on walks? Is it in the bed?

51:01What are you doing? I have a speaker in the shower. Love it. I'm that sort of dork. Otherwise, it's if I'm doing things around the house, I just have it on my playing on my phone. Otherwise, headphones, I do like over ear headphones, the occasional bud, but I don't love those. And then if I'm in the car with my husband, we listen to it there. But I mean, I had actually regretted that I had stopped listening to music so much. So I've been trying to get back to a balance of that. But I'm just always looking for new podcasts. And then on the weekend, I will often binge like a series of something.

51:35Like just during the day, during this. Yeah, doing housework or doing whatever it is. And I'll just listen to like, oh, this is a great six episode thing. I love that. I'm the same way. What was your favorite food publication growing up? So, again, I'm 52. So we didn't, you know, some of these things existed, but it just wasn't in my sphere so much. But I really loved food. And that has a lot to do with my dad, who happened to bring home a Madhya Joffrey cookbook once. And so my mother taught CCD, which is like Sunday school. And my dad would cook on those days. And he happened to pick up a Madhya Joffrey book that changed my life.

52:13And I just loved playing around with those ingredients. He was doing most of the cooking, but it changed a lot. And then I got this cookbook. I grew up in northern Kentucky, greater Cincinnati area, and there was this international folk festival that would happen every year. A couple of times I had to work at the Welsh booth because we were members of the Welsh Society of greater Cincinnati. I'm like an eighth Welsh or something, some tiny little crumb. Whatever. Own your eighth and have the food. I'm sure there's some interesting. Today will be 1 ,721 days of learning to speak Welsh, and I speak it like a toddler.

52:47But the great breakthrough there was they had food booths for all of these different cuisines. And then there was a – I don't remember if this was actually affiliated with it or not, but there was this incredible – I guess this wouldn't have been, but it made me interested in international cuisines. but as somebody somehow this came into my life and it was a book about the 50 states and their foods and i was like wait different places have different food than we have and i got absolutely fixated on that and then i started my mother had a lot of physical disabilities and stuff and she couldn't always cook so i took over a certain amount of the cooking so i had that betty crocker the better homes and gardens cookbooks and so my my food media generally speaking was cookbooks and then food section of the Cincinnati Inquirer, which I really, really loved.

53:39And I would just sort of eat up everything I could. And then once I moved to, you know, once I went to college and grad school, I just didn't have any money for this. I would read stuff in the Baltimore City paper. And then when I was upstating grad school, I would get the village voice. But then when I, the thing that really sealed everything in for me was Chowhound, the Chowhound message boards. And oh my goodness, I spent so much time and made friends on there. It taught me where to go. So it was just like. That's cool. Who were your friends with? Anybody who was in the industry now? So I was dating this guy named Stephen Stern.

54:12He's so lovely. And I'm friends with a lot of my exes. And he works at the Times. And he sort of brought me into this. So it's funny. Now I'll look back and be like, oh, so that's the person who went on to do that particular thing. So I would go out sometimes like Jim Leff would read expeditions out to things. So my twin passions were indie pop music and food. And that was my sort of really early community coming to New York. And then Stephen's good friend was Pete Wells, who then took a job at Food & Wine in 1999. And my world expanded and I started reading Food & Wine. But I had also at one point found the work of Seymour Britschke, who is my favorite food writer of all time.

55:00and I own, I buy his collections of restaurant reviews and read them for sport. They are so good. Tell us about this writer. I'm unfamiliar. I'm unfamiliar. So he died some years back. So he flipped careers. I think he worked in advertising, but he liked to play the ponies. So he made us - Out of Belmont? Yeah. Fridays at Belmont? So from what I understand, he made some money at the track. And so he started sending out a food newsletter. He was an independent food critic who everybody was fairly terrified of. He would write some for a New York magazine so you can find some of his things there.

55:40But otherwise, he subscribed to his newsletter. Like mailed in the mail. Oh, yes. So cool. And, you know, back in the days of food newsletters, I was talking to Jacques Papin recently and he told me he had a newsletter that came out. And it was absolutely wild. I actually own most of copies of that and the Rosengarten letter and all these. But so Seymour Britschke would do this. And then every few years they would be combined into a volume. And they are so – it's funny. I was interviewing Danny Meyer for something and he could quote chapter and verse what Seymour Britschke had said. Everybody wanted his approval.

56:17That sounds amazing. It is. I mean it is the most incredible thing. And so you can find used copies. I'll periodically like scan something in and post it up. Like he had a lot to say about Donald Trump. And some of the restaurants that are still around, I will find copies of those within there. I had written one of those classics pieces about Alfred Portali and, you know, his salads and things. So I was able to find a Gotham review that he had written. And so I gave him a copy with a Gotham review in it. And it's, I mean, it is the most delicious writing. someday I hope. I wrote a piece for Tasting Table that is still up.

56:55I think it's weirdly, I think they took my byline off it. Like a lot of things. I had to happen with a publication recently or publication I wrote for a long time ago took my byline off. Yeah, it was weird. Yeah, it's an odd thing. Strange, right? Yeah, but I think if you Google Seymour Britschke, that piece is still up. I'm going to do this today. B-R-I-T-C-H-K-Y. Was he like an R.W. Apple type character? Sort of like that, but he was very curmudgeonly. he went cafe loo was his big hangout so a little more steingarten then it was i'm trying to think like he didn't uh regina shrambling oh okay yeah good reference and he but the great thing was i went into cafe loo when it was still around just kind of like seeking his ghost because they were really there's i found some poetry written about him he was mentioned in various places is Regina, actually, when I wrote that piece, she talked to me about him, Drew Niparant did, because he could remember like what table he was sitting at and all of this.

57:52But I went in there to Cafe Lou and then the woman who owned it came up to me and I was like, is there any chance that you knew Seymour Britschke? And she said, he always called me baby. Oh, that's a great story. And so that's where he was. And she said she felt it the night he died. And I had gotten to actually speak with his widow at one point when I wrote this piece for Tasting Table and she shared this picture of him with me with kind of a groovy turtleneck on. And I just, he's my great lost food writer. I love this memory cat. I feel like this is somebody who I wanted to know. I think you would ask.

58:26This is somebody, I've gotten to know some of the old guard over the years and it's just fun to talk. I remember I interviewed Ray Sokolov long ago, old critic. He was interesting. I think he's still alive. Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, the only sort of establishment thing, He did write on and off for New York Magazine, but he wrote the Lutece Cookbook. Oh, is that right? Yeah. So he's a cookbook author too. Interesting. But I think there was only sort of one chef. I think maybe Andre Soltner was the only chef who came to the service because, again, everybody was kind. They wanted his respect and they were afraid of him.

59:02And I think that's the being an independent critic. Having fear is such a powerful tool when you're a critic in so many ways. Well, I want to, I mean, wrap this up. But like we've really, really had a great conversation here. Oh, I love this. And honestly, you're always welcome back. Thank you. I love what you're doing with your podcast. And I mean it when I say like I love what you're doing with the podcast. And with those on paper or on screen or whatever, like features. But like, you know, I heard you say on the last podcast, you don't know where people are with words on screen or on paper.

59:32God, we need them. We need them more than ever in the age of AI generation of things. We do. You know, I know I'm not trying to be a curmudgeon or whatever, because I know it's necessary tools for so many reasons. But there is nothing like sinking into a really good piece of writing from someone who has done the research, put in the time and put in the hours, put blood, sweat and tears into it. Like, I will always read those pieces and be grateful for them. And I hope other people will, too. I love that memory. Well, I want to close and ask you, where do you want to be in five years with your career?

1:00:04I really hope that this industry still exists. I hope so, too. You know, it's always so, so tenuous. We never know. I mean, I got a late start in it. I didn't get started until I was almost 34. I'd been a visual person, like on the visual side of things before then. You know, I was trying to think like if the rug was pulled, like what I would do. And my, you know, I've written stuff that is not food. Also, I wrote a book about anxiety. I've written a lot of stuff, sort of like cultural things. Like my main focus has been food, but it's, you know, it's never just been about the food. I hope I'm still allowed to write somewhere.

1:00:36I'd like to write another book at some point, maybe. But the flip side of it was I've always thought that if it all sort of went sideways, I would want to get a social work degree and specialize in people who work in hospitality because I've lost too many friends to mental health issues and suicide and things. And there's a pilot program through Southern Smoke that they have at Yeshiva University that I think is doing. Yeah, I've read about that. Oh, they're doing the most important work. And I got to sit down with the doctor who runs that recently. And it's just, you know, and it's such important work.

1:01:14And so, yeah, I mean, I really hope that like the people who I work with, the younger writers I am working with still have an incredibly robust career and so much runway ahead. I hope that we as a society have come back to really valuing the labor and the passion of things. And yeah, it's sort of a wish for everyone and a wish for the restaurant industry to keep on a track of improvement, for people to respect and love and treasure the joy of getting to go to a restaurant. and the field of food writing continue to be democratizing by all people realizing that there's a place for them in this. Yeah.

1:01:58I'm going to leave it with that. It's been such a pleasure catching up with you. This is such a joy. I am honored to be asked and I'm going to keep on listening. Thanks for joining. Appreciate it.