586: Scarr's Changed the New York City Slice Forever with Scarr Pimentel

24:24They just cut the line, do all that. I'm like, I can't do that. No. Just because they want those favors in return. But I don't blame that person because he worked at Tarlo Restaurant, Andrew Tarlo Restaurant. That's what, that's the norm for all these other restaurants. And I'm like, I'm not doing that. Nothing against Andrew. I love his restaurants. It's just everyone who's doing that. You know what I'm saying? Like, not just every other restaurateur of that ilk, for lack of a better term. That's what they do. You know, they have books with faces of you guys. Like, if this guy comes in, hook him up.

24:58Like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, you're really clearly painting a picture of different models for addressing VIPs. And like there's this whole ethic about like, you know, the customer comes first and you need to have your industry folks taken care of. I like your attitude better. It puts way less pressure on food writers who roll up and maybe get treated differently. It's certainly better. You want them to have a real experience. You don't want them to have like a manufactured experience. Like, you know what I'm saying? And I also don't think it's fair to other people that have restaurants or like to treat, to have the clicks and this and that.

25:34But I don't think it's fair to the other restaurants who put their life savings into opening up a spot. A lot of these places now, they're backing. They either come for money or know people with a lot of money, and they back them, and they open up these spots. And I grew up with nothing. I started this with nothing. You bootstrapped it down on Orchard Street. A couple of friends put in some money. I had a little bit of money saved up. That's how we did it. And we were in the red of how to borrow more money. That's scary, Scar. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we barely made it through the skin. Like, to be completely honest, we barely made it through.

26:08I know people are going to find it hard to believe, but we really barely made it. I can. Like, on numerous occasions. Believe it. I think that that story resonates with people who are on covers of magazines. Because this industry is crazy. What do you think about the New York City slice scene right now? I mean, it's better than ever, I would say, personally. I still think it's not as good as it should be. That is a different point, and I like that. Let's go there. Yeah. I think a lot of stuff is overbaked. And I think, you know who really ruined it, to be honest with you? David Portnoy in terms, and not because of who he is as a person, more as long as the type of pizza he likes.

26:41Crispy, he's the word. Crispy. Everyone's like, everyone's, everyone uses that term. It's so crisp. And I've tried all these pizzas. They're super dry. I don't know. It's just, for me, it's, I don't consider it New York style pizza. Bro, you're so right. It's not. It's like, you're not making a working man slice. It's like more of an artisan, breadier, like sourdough, you know, this and that. I'm like, people don't even, there's no real correct science that says that sourdough is healthier for you. Like, you could use a bromated flour and make it sour. You know what I'm saying? It's like, it's not going to.

27:11Oh, yeah, those health claims are bogus. Yeah, I think for me, it's just, it's a flavor profile. If you like sourdough, great, but it does not mean that it's healthy. It doesn't mean that it's used with, like, if you're not using organic stone meal flour, in my opinion, you're not creating a healthy pizza. If you're not using organic tomatoes or organic or local stuff, I don't consider it a healthy version of pizza. Yeah. I mean, let's talk about the way a slice should be presented in your style. We're talking about like the mouthfeel on that first bite, the texture of the of the of the dough, the you know, the crispy side and the wet side.

27:43Like what what's the ideal slice for you? I mean, for me, it's like no basil, no shaved parma, no cheese shaved. No offense to my friends that do it. But like I just I don't at that point, it's Italian stuff. You make it Italian, like really Italian stuff. The only thing that's New York at that point for me, it's you own a business in New York. That's what makes it New York. So it's like if you're shaving parm with the block, I've never seen that growing up. It's like everyone does it. Ever since DeFar was the first person to do it, everyone does their own version of it now. He had that oil can too, which I can't get behind.

28:15It's more of a marketing ploy because people see that and they think it's, oh, because he does that. He has the best ingredients in the city. Let's go there. I'm like, no, it doesn't. I'm like, you want to see the best? I'll show my invoices against anyone in the city, and I'll show you how much we pay for stuff and where we get it. If people think I don't use good stuff, I probably pay the most out of everybody. I know you do, and you charge for it too, as you should, and I think that's important. I actually don't charge as much as I should. Please correct me, yeah. Yeah, I charge a little. We were at$3.75 for a regular slide.

28:45You sure were, that's right. For an organic, mostly. But it's also our fault. We don't promote it either, so it's like if you know, you know kind of deal. Yeah, yeah. But now we're just, you know, we raise it up a little bit to$4 because people are charging, I see now,$6 or$7 for regular slice. I mean, it's hitting double digits now. Yeah. Is that one spot? I mean, I had to raise it. You know, I'm paying the guys. My staff gets paid. They make a lot of money, so it's like they get paid. I don't want to keep it that way. And we don't make as much as we should, to be honest with you, which is fine because I want people.

29:15I want it to be accessible for everybody still. I like that a lot. Back to, like, the slice. I mean, what about drizzling olive oil? Are you into that at all? that's fine. For me, it's fine. Overdoing it, some places overdo it, but they just douse it after it comes out. They'll do it all over the crust, all over everywhere. That's fine. It's just, but you know, I don't really need it. You don't really need it. Unless you're making a salad slice, a rugelach slice or some stuff, but you don't really. Nah. Do you want to put more scars in New York? Do you want to do a little expansion? Nah, I'm going to keep on forever.

29:49That was always the plan. That's cool. My expansion is, we're opening in the Venetian with Mason. We were all opening in the Little Foo Huts, Ivan Rahman, Mason, Holland Ray's in the Venetian Hotel. Very cool. By the entrance of the sphere. That was a no-brainer for me because I love Vegas. Yeah. So that's going to be, that's opening in June and then Tokyo. And then I think we're doing Dubai, London, and Paris shortly after. Just like standalones. Like basically the idea is to do the new modern version of a pizza parlor. Like, that's why we moved also to a bigger space. I wanted to be, like, an actual pizza parlor, like a modern version of them.

30:28So that way also the ones in the other city, like, if we have friends that have cool concepts and, like, yo, we want to try that, you know, we want to do a pop-up in Tokyo. We want to do a pop-up in Dubai. They could also come and do it in our spot. You make it more like a community space. You align with, you know, fashion industry and do, like, collabs and all that. They always want to do, like, the fashion people always want to do, like, a pop-up. But we never have the spaces for it. So it's like, which is kind of tough. So now we're going to have the spaces for it. I love Koki Sato's photography in this book.

30:56Really, the book is cool because if you get to the end of it, you've got a lookbook style, which is a real tribute to Orchard Street and your neighbors and really cool documentary photography. Yeah, our goal with the book was never to do a real cookbook in a sense. It was like more of a, not in a traditional sense, more of an alternative book. where a lot of people don't know my backstory, so I added a little bit of my backstory to it. A lot of people don't know our neighborhood. Add a little bit of our neighborhood. You know, it's like we wanted to, when it came to the recipes, I just wanted to create a recipe that gave you an option.

31:31I was actually talking to a friend about this because he was like, what are you doing? Why did you make it so simple? I was like, because I wanted it to be simple for someone to make it at home using fresh-billed flour. You know, if you don't make it simple enough where if you didn't want to use fresh-billed flour or you want to use King Arthur or whatever, you could still do that as well. So it was like an easy recipe for people. But it was more, you know, we were fighting with the publishers, your bosses, over like we didn't want to. I might have heard a thing or two. I wouldn't call it fighting.

31:59I think it's just a collaboration that has strong visions. Yeah, we didn't want to put cookbook in the title. They wanted us to do that, which is fine, whatever. We got to work together. I think we got to work together. You understand as a small business owner, we're not as small, but we are a business owner. and we got to like come to terms on the style of it. Because, you know, you want to put it in the right place in the cookbook section, right? Yeah, and I don't, but also I want it to be something where it wasn't a cook, traditional cookbook per se. Like, you know, my original concept was going to be a zine, cookbook zine in a sense.

32:31Yeah, yeah. And yeah, that didn't fly, so. Well, I'd say this, Scar, I think you came to a really cool point where you got a lot of photography in there. It's really, the design is Lizzie Allen. Yeah, Koki's never done a shot food ever. That was his first. Oh, it was cool. That was his first. His pictures, he shoots for Popeye Magazine mostly. Yeah, in Japan. Yeah, for himself. But he's an amazing, I saw his work, and we met through a mutual friend, and I saw his work. I was like, I got to use him for the, my wife actually was like, we got to use Koki for the book. I was like, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea.

33:03Yeah, it's a great book. Pick it up. I mean, it tells your story. It's got some great recipes. It's a document about downtown New York, which I like. It's a good storybook in a sense. I tell people, it's like, you should read this. I'm proud of it. You should be. It's good. Kim also, my co-writer, she did a tremendous job as well on the book. Scott, this is Taste with Guest and Brother Discerning Taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid-fire Fast and Furious taste check. Are you ready? Shoot. The best fruit? Sumo oranges. Nice. The worst vegetable? Beets. Why? I hate beets. I don't know.

33:39Yeah, not good. I just ate so much of it as canned beets as a kid. being poor. Oh, yeah. I just got sick of beets. Yeah, yeah. I can see that. Canned is not the best way to do a beet. No. What is your typical breakfast? Black coffee. I really don't eat breakfast, but if I do with my wife and son, like, we go on a weekend, we go to Quarter Bar, we get egg white omelet. That's a nice choice. What's the best dessert? Oh, sorbet. Like seasonal fruit sorbets. Very nice. Is there a restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead? You know what's funny? All the good spots are still open. Okay, okay.

34:13New York, it's like all the spots I really love. I'm happy to hear that. Lottos are still running, Balthazar's still open. Yeah. I mean, I'm glad we don't have to celebrate a loss here. I mean, yeah, there's not really any of the places that have closed. Honestly, the places that have closed in downtown have like kind of had to close at some point. Follow you. Your favorite city outside America to visit for food? Tokyo. That's easy. Yeah. Last one, your favorite sandwich? The sandwich spot or just the style of? It could be at a specific spot if you'd like to answer that. Chicken parm. Yeah. Spicy.

34:47I like making it spicy. Scarpimantel, this has been a real pleasure. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thank you for having me. It's been fun. 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. Montreal'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.

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36:42There was a rub of salt, white pepper, and togarashi, and I 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. That's butcherbox.com slash taste. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. What a packed house on a rainy afternoon.

37:25We're recording this live for our podcast, This Is Taste. Okay, first off, how many special projects members are in the house? Raise your hand. What do we got here? Okay, we're about like, I would say third, Craig. Wow. So I like this. So there's some folks who maybe know about Craig's work and support Craig's journeys, but also some who maybe just have heard of Craig. So we'll go into a lot of areas here. Just love the book. Congratulations. Thank you. Just incredible story about your friend, Brian, and we'll get into that. But you, Craig, you hold place so closely to you in your writing, and I've been a fan of yours for five years, six years.

37:59And I just, those pop-ups happen and I just read every one, every word. I just have to ask you when you're in New York, when you're walking around New York in the last couple of days, are there any places that you go to that you observe, any rituals? Because you're a guy of ritual. Not really. I, you know, it's like my, I spent a lot of time in New York 15 years ago, 12 years ago. And I look at my Google Maps, which I was saving stuff back then. And they're all permanently closed now. There's so many. It's like a graveyard of Google Maps. Like there was a great cafe in the West Village called, I think, Minerva that I used to go to.

38:42It just had this weird otherworldly vibe. It was like a little bit European, but not in New Yorkian. And I just kind of sit there and everyone's kind of surly. it's kind of like being in Paris but not in Paris and it was so loud outside but it was just kind of this hushed nice environment I go there and I write with me and Malcolm Gladwell probably who's probably nearby but that's gone and so thankfully was it Three Lives and Co has renewed their lease and they're around for another 10 years or so right which I love it's one of my favorite places in the city we're going to have a lot to talk about with the book.

39:21And I really wanted to start and talk to you about the writing process of Things Become Other Things, because it's really unique in publishing. You know, you start out, it starts out as a pop-up newsletter, and then it becomes a fine art edition. And then it becomes a random house trade hardcover that is out tomorrow. You know, you've written extensively about digital publishing. We're not going to talk about that. But I just want to ask you about how you have written this book in this very unique process. Yeah. First of all, I would not recommend it. This is definitely not the recommended process.

39:58But I went on a walk four years ago, almost to this day is when the walk started. It was May 10th, 2021, in the sort of height of COVID. You know, Japan had been locked down for over a year at that point. There was no, Japan didn't have the vaccine yet. So I remember everyone was kind of talking about when they were going to get the vaccine. It was coming in a couple months. And, you know, I was being careful and I was like, well, let me go on this walk and let me go do this and, you know, checking and being very, very above board about everything. And I basically had the peninsula to myself. And then I did this pop-up newsletter along with that walk.

40:36And it's funny, you know, you can go back through if you're a member and you can see the archive of it and you can find passages that became chapters in this book. but you know it was basically i did that walk did the pop-up newsletter wrote 30 000 words probably on that walk um came back i thought i was going to finish the book in three weeks and uh it took you know another two years for the fine art edition to kind of come together and then from there okay so let's go from there i mean that's an interesting journey because you released a fine art edition you start with a thousand what do you end up at how many fine art edition of things you're gonna 2 ,500.

41:15So you ended up at 2 ,500. But then how do you end up at Random House and then this expanded version? You know, for those who own the Fine Art Edition, it's very different. It's very different. And very expanded and very surprising. And we'll talk about how Brian played a role in the Fine Art Edition but also in the trade. But how do you get to Random House? Well, it's kind of embarrassing. Because it's like having all of my drafts public. Exactly. The pop-up was one draft. The Fine Art was another. not a draft but like more realized version and then this this version is very different than than both of those but you know it was like two years ago right about now i was out in new york trying to find an agent uh i didn't i didn't have an agent uh trying to find a publisher and i'd spent many years just getting rejected from everyone um crazy and the reason i did the fine art edition was because everyone rejected me on that trip uh two years ago and i was sitting around just going, all right, well, look, what I was, what I really wanted was like a partner.

42:15I just wanted a buddy. That's what I realized. It wasn't about like, oh, I need the validation of an agent or I need a big publisher to like, you know, you know, kind of like bless me or knight me or anything. It was just, I just wanted a buddy to work on this stuff with. I'd been working alone for my whole life essentially and sort of doing all my indie work. And I just wanted that buddy and it was crushing i mean it was really about two years ago right now i was in a it was a really dark place and then i was like all right i'm just gonna do this myself i'm gonna do the fine art edition as you know i'm lucky enough that i'm friends with some of the best book designers in the world amazing editors you know i know how to put books together and i have great relationships with printers in japan i know how to do these things um i have you know a warehouse that can fulfill orders and you know shopify set up and craigstarter and all this love the videos from the warehouse, by the way.

43:03Have you guys checked out the videos from the warehouse? They're incredible. So you can see Kisa by Kisa's production videos and stuff like that. So I was in the middle of, I'd finally gotten over, I was like, okay, I have to do this on my own. Everyone's rejecting me. That's okay, fine. You know, kind of go for runs by the ocean and scream.

43:23And I had met with the printer. We had like said, okay, this is the printing schedule we're going to commit to. and then like two weeks after that Random House reached out to me and was like oh we finally got around to reading your book and we like it we really you know we want it so at that point it was a little weird because I had already internally committed to the fine art edition and then I have this like preservationist scarcity mindset psychosis pathology where I'm like I have to protect everything you know it's like I can't give up control I need to so Random House was very generous and we were able to I was able to say, hey, look, I don't think these editions are in competition with one another.

44:04And I need to maintain this autonomy. And my, you know, look, I'm going to be selling my book for 100 bucks a copy. And then we can do a bunch of rewrites and expansion and stuff. So it'll be a totally different thing. And God bless, you know, Andy and Molly. They came around and we were able to come to this agreement. And I maintained fine art rights and Random House got this. And in the end, I like I'm just so, so proud of where this thing landed. It's incredible. Those listening to the podcast, like publishers do more of these deals because it really brings fresh talent in. Enough book talk.

44:36Let's talk about the walking itself. I feel like I want to get your take on these. These walks are extraordinary. They they're very there's rules. They're very they're minimalist. You're not you're not on your phone during these 20, 30, 40 kilometer walks. You're observing and taking photos. But then you like dash to your hotel room and knock out on deadline. No copy editor, right? I imagine. No, no. 3 ,000 to 5 ,000 words after. It's like an extreme sport. And the work is extraordinary. Like it is gripping. And when you talk to these people, and we'll get into how you can talk and how you interview.

45:16I mean, how did you come to this formula for these very minimal walks? but then their content engines, they're incredible. Content engines. Yeah, that's a terrible word. Very, yeah, just very reluctantly, again, like just a series of rejections forcing me to do this stuff. Like almost everything I'm doing and the way I'm doing it is because I was just rejected by everyone. You know, it's like I really wanted to write about walking in Japan and I started going on these big walks and I started just, the world was opening up to me. And I spent a good nine months working on this huge piece for a magazine I won't name, and then got ghosted.

45:54And that killed me. I mean, it really killed me. And again, this whole, this idea of, okay, pathological scarcity complex, like how do I protect it, protect myself? And so I started the membership program. Thank you, everyone who's a member. I mean, this is a direct product of that. Like I can't do any of this stuff without the membership program. I started the membership program to give myself autonomy because I was Like, okay, I need to create almost like a boot camp. You know, what would it be like working in a newsroom where you're on a deadline? Like, hey, you know, write about this, write about this, you know, that sort of thing.

46:28And so the walks accidentally became that. And so my rules are, you know, no teleporting, basically. So no social media, no podcasts, no music, no news. I did a huge walk. I walked from Tokyo to Kyoto during the 2020 election. So I've done Tokyo to Kyoto three times now. and the 2020 election, I was like, okay, I'm going to, it's going to be right like a week after I start walking. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell all my friends, don't tell me who wins. Don't tell me the results. And like, and my theory was some farmer in the middle of nowhere in Japan was going to be like, have you heard?

47:02Like, you know, so this guy won and, and I was convinced that was going to happen. And it turns out nobody in Japan cared. Like I was, it was a week after the election and I was still did not know what had happened. And, you know, it was obviously complicated and sort of messy, but, uh, no one, no one was screaming from the fields. And, um, and finally I texted a friend. I'm like, all right, what happened? You know, he's like, Oh, you don't want to know. Three weeks later? Yeah. Like, like a couple of weeks after it, after it all went down. But anyway, just being, there's something about removing yourself from that maelstrom of chaos that we can kind of all be engulfed in, especially with the phones and teleporting.

47:42And I try to on these walks basically just meet everyone where they are on the road. So I can communicate with everyone. I've been living in Japan for 25 years. I can speak well enough to, you know, fluently, you know, talk about anything with any of these people. And I just say hello to everybody. And I have this like rule, take a portrait of someone before 10 in the morning. It'll be like 9.45 and I'll be, oh my God, so I'm taking a picture of someone. And I'll like just, you know, yell to a farmer. I'll knock on a door. I'll go in a satami shop. I'll be like, hey, can I take your picture? But then you create, you'll write a thousand words about the interaction.

48:13Yeah, yeah. On deadline again. Yeah. Yeah. And someone asked me the other day, they're like, isn't, you know, you're trying to be in the moment and attentive. And yet you're thinking about all this writing you have to do later. And isn't that at odds? I'm like, no, no, no. It's totally in conversation. And it just gets me to look harder. It gets me to be to perk up about incredible turns of phrase that these people are kind of throwing at me. or just weird things that are happening throughout the day. And it's given me this almost like theological belief that you can rest something interesting from any day.

48:48The onus is on you to get that interesting bit out of it because I'll do these walks. I'll be 30, 40 days on the road writing every day. So walk for eight hours, walk 30, 40, sometimes 50K and then get to the hotel and you just got to start writing, editing the photos, do the draft you know and as i'm walking i'm dictating into a note that just kind of keeps expanding and i'll get to the hotel or the inn and then you kind of look through the notes go oh yeah right that's the thing i want to write about there you go i mean it's a great lesson for writers i mean you're you're basically publishing first drafts and it's just like it's a reason why sometimes the first draft is kind of good and sometimes those natural instincts on the first draft work so the final chapter in this book i wrote on like it was the last day of the walk and i had walked i think that day was like 45k and i was so tired it was such a crappy start of the day i mean it was just terrible the road the route was terrible it was hot it was i i didn't have enough water i was you never shy away from complaining about the heat in your writing.

49:56You're not shying away from your disdain for weather, which I love. No, I don't complain. That's one of my rules is that I'm not allowed to complain about it. You're not complaining, but you... I mention it. You mention it in a way that we're like... I'm just mentioning. All right, Craig's going through it right now. It's hot. It's hot. I mean, Japan is gross. Don't go to Japan. Basically from June 15th to like October, don't go to Japan. That's my... Honestly, don't go. So, you know, there's another big walker person who emailed me and was like, hey, when should I go? And I was like, don't go in July.

50:27And he came in July and he had to abort the walk. He walked for one day and then he was like going to walk for two weeks. He had to go home. He just left Japan. He just left the country, I think. Wow. It's terrible. But the point was, is that I got to the hotel. I'm disgusting. I smelled like death. My feet hurt. Everything hurt. and there's no universe in which I would have been like, great, let's do 2000 words now. Except I committed to the pop-up and there was ostensibly an audience waiting for something. And I sat down and I was in this totally hallucinatory state and I wrote this thing and that thing became the final chapter in this book.

51:14So again, I think about that a lot. It was like 11 15 at night i just wanted to go to bed but i had to do that i promised i made this covenant with myself you know it's like you know it's weird thing like your members too it's like they're waiting for it kind of yeah there's the pressure i mean like did craig bail on day 31 like you don't want no well and the member the weird thing that came out of the membership stuff and when i started it was very small and everyone's like hey i want to do a membership should i do it how do i do it i'm like don't do it don't do just definitely don't do it it's just so depressing and sad unless unless you're I don't know unless you're selling hundreds of millions of books and you're going to start off with 10 ,000 subscribers.

51:54It was so few people. And it took me about a month to realize like, OK, these people are paying me and I can divine a permission from this to go do these weird things, these big walks. And so it came out of that. So yeah, there is there's definitely it doesn't feel like an obligation, but it feels like I want to honor that permission. Well, I want to many in the room have read your pop ups, but an element that you aren't writing about in the pop-ups is your friend Brian from childhood. And it's really when I got to read the book in advance, I was stunned about the story about Brian and your life as an adoptee and just really how you were able to weave your early childhood with your time in Japan.

52:33So I think that's like a really, for fans of Craig's writing, this is going to be the biggest surprise that Craig has this other part of his life. So how did you come to this idea that your early life and your relationship with Brian related to your walks of the Key Peninsula over the years? Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of the risks of writing and publishing in real time is that you feel maybe like you're unable to take certain risks or investigate certain things. So I think thinking about Brian, I mean, Brian was... You set up who Brian is. Yeah, Brian was essentially best friend. I'm adopted, only child, parents couldn't have kids.

53:12And then they got divorced immediately. It was a very weird thing. And then Brian, I essentially met in first grade and we were basically best friends all through elementary school. He was a brother. He was as close to a brother as possible. And then I sort of tested a little better. My town had no funding. It was kind of a mess. And Brian just didn't test well and kind of ended up going in a very different direction. And we graduated. And I mean, I talk about this sort of in so many things now. It's sort of a little bit of a spoiler. We graduated and basically a week after we graduated, he was murdered, right?

53:41So this was pretty common, not super common, but it wasn't that big of a surprise. You could imagine this happening to a lot of people in my town. And, you know, you're 17 and essentially half of your heart is gone from element, you know, it's like all of my childhood memories were with this kid and he was my brother, you know, and I just didn't have the tools to process that. And I started, actually, the first thing I ever had published was a short story about Brian. And, you know, I could see looking back at early writing, I was like, I want, I was trying to figure out how to work through this.

54:14I didn't know how to. And so 25 years later, you know, I'm doing this solo walk through COVID on this peninsula. And the peninsula is pretty economically depressed and it kind of mirrors the kind of blue collar tone of my town. And you see kids and socioeconomically, everyone's kind of at the same level as we were, but the violence is gone. There is a social infrastructure there. There's support there. There's something happening there that we didn't have. And just walking alone, again, not teleporting, not having news or other things pulling your brain in other directions, you just start meditating.

54:47I'm like, why does this area lack the violence and those paths that we were sort of embedded in? And so the pop-up was great to in real time think about the peninsula and then when I started thinking about what the book could be Brian started sneaking in and then the first editor I worked with on the fine art edition was reading a draft and he was like hey man this is a book about Brian he's you know he kind of he sort of was it comes in later in the fine art edition and then so if you read the fine art edition there's just so much more to Brian in this edition in this release yeah this book's a letter to Brian that's how this book is framed so it opens just straight to brian and in doing that the fine art edition doesn't shift to brian until the last quarter and this the whole book is to brian and that allowed for a lot of other interesting narrative things to happen because we were trying to protect brian in the fine art edition but now that brian is foregrounded completely um it allows me to talk about history more about what i've been doing for the last 25 years about friends like john my friend john who's a really important person in my life.

55:55Book of John gets to appear. So Seamus makes an appearance. Seamus, the priest, the Irish priest. If you remember Seamus from a pop-up, I was so surprised to see an extended Seamus moment in this book. It's really just lovely to read when you know Craig's writing and you remember these moments from these pop-ups and you're like, well, there's more to that story that's in this book. Yeah. Yeah. I want to talk to you about voice because Craig, you have obviously a singular voice when you're writing about yourself or just observing the world. But then you do something that's really unique. You, with your language skills, your Japanese language skills, you can create like syntax and grammar of the folks living in the key peninsula that I think many, if not, I don't think any English speakers can have done.

56:39Like I, it's an incredible feat and they're very comical, the way you describe your interaction. So how does, how do you think about the exchanges you have with these, these folks who are farmers and shop owners, barbers. How do you think about translating their voice into like a faithful version of it? Yeah, because it's so Japanese, you know, it's sort of like British English or whatever you have, like BBC English, and then you have all the dialects. And Japanese kind of has that too. And you get away from Tokyo and it gets really just syrupy and weird. And people are just funny and sing-songy.

57:17There's so much like, you know, kind of like, like song to the language that never gets captured. And so all of my, you know, in the middle of these pop-ups were sort of the foundation for this. But I started hearing, I spent a bunch of time in North Carolina randomly. So Western South, Southwestern North Carolina, kind of near Asheville and hanging out with an old, one of my best friends in my 30s was this 80 year old lawyer who lived in this little town in North Carolina. and I would go visit him once or twice a year and we'd hang out for a week. You had the best friends. Yeah. Just like straight up.

57:51Like you make them really good. He was nuts. He was so smart. He was a Bernie Sanders supporter. He carried a gun for most of his life because he had all these people who wanted to kill him. And he just had these bizarre stories. Anyway, and I loved his voice and I would record all of our conversations secretly. No, I'm just kidding. And so I kind of have his voice in my head a lot when I'm walking in these kind of remote areas. And so I've tried to transpose middle of nowhere Japan to kind of Western North Carolina, Appalachian sort of English. And that's what I hear actually, you know, when I'm talking to these people.

58:31And I think it's pretty true to who they are. Yeah. I mean, because we are exposed to translation of Tokyo, Japan. Yeah. Everything kind of in, you know, in Osaka, Ben, is different from Tokyo. and, you know, Miya Koukoukami, all of her writing in Japanese is really wacky and dirty in a way that I don't think the, you know, the English translations are amazing, but it's hard. Like there's certain things that are untranslatable and it's like, you know, verb conjugations and, you know, word selection and stuff like that. So I've just tried to take the vibe of these peninsula people and give them Southern American English.

59:10Do you stay in touch with these folks after your walks? Yeah, I just did. Yeah, I mean, well, because I keep going back. Yeah, right. So, you know, I've been to the peninsula 20 times, you know, and I keep staying at the same places and that's kind of, that's critical is building these relationships. That's actually kind of, I see them as the most important thing of these walks and people go, why are you doing that walk again? It's like, well, because I want to see, you know, Nakajima-san. I want to see this guy. I want to see this person. And in February, I wanted to do a photo book of the people of the peninsula so I've been not photographing the people for some reason I just hadn't photographed that many people so I kind of called everyone I knew all these inns that I've been going to for a decade I said hey can you help me photograph some pearl divers and you know tuna tuna market tuna market people and you know boat repairs and uh truck drivers or whatever and everyone was so excited to help me and so I went I did this 10-day uh actually drove which was kind of revolutionary I rented a car and I drove 800 kilometers but I was photographing from 4 in the morning till 8 at night almost every day you know these markets were open real early and you know they introduced me to these pearl divers these female pearl divers called Ama has anyone here seen Tam Popo the movie Tam Popo the movie about ramen amazing hilarious 80s movie about ramen so there's a scene in there where you know they meet the pearl divers and like basically the women in that movie were the women I photographed because there is no next generation.

1:00:46So they were in their 60s. One woman was 75. She's been pearl diving for 60 years. She started as a middle schooler. It's incredible. And so, you know, seeing them and because I have these close relationships with the inns that work with them, they trust me immediately and they just bring me into their world. And so that is, I mean, that's the gift of doing this. And that book will be released soon, right? Yeah, so I photographed in February. And again, this pathological scarcity mindset, you know, maniacalness, laid it out, sequenced in March, went to press last month, and it goes on sale next week.

1:01:23So, yeah. You got the metabolism, man, to publish. Just go, go, go. This is all about books. Can we take a little aside and just talk about the New York Times and putting Morioka on the number two, or you didn't put it on there, but you wrote about this city. and then you became like an overnight, you were known in Japan. Not really. Not really. Sorry. You were known for your writing, but you became like a celebrity in some ways. You were on television and like it was because of this one city you kind of plucked from Japan and it became the number two of 52 most travel, like travel, where you should travel.

1:01:58That's a crazy story. Well, because I was doing these walks and they were very linear, right? So I'll walk from Tokyo to Kyoto, I'll walk from Kyoto to Tokyo, I'll walk the peninsula and it's like a thousand kilometers or 800 kilometers. And it says day after day after day. And I don't take any transportation. And I just thought, well, okay, what are some other shapes of walks we can do? And I said, okay, what if I pick 10 flyover cities, Japanese cities that you would never get off the train at, but maybe your train would stop there because you're on your way somewhere else. What if I pick 10 of those cities and force myself to walk 50 kilometers in each city, spend three nights, four days, and just see what happens.

1:02:33And on that walk, on that project, I did this Hakodate, Morioka, Sakata, Matsumoto, Tsuruga, Onomichi. Onomichi got here. This guy knows everything about Onomichi. He's great. That city seems rad. Onomichi, Matsuyama, Tsuruga in Saga, and then Karatsun Saga, and then Kagoshima. Anyway, in the middle of all that. And Morioka, I kind of randomly picked these cities. I was sort of a certain mid-sized city. And Morioka, I went to, and it was just great. It was just wonderful. There was lots of cool independent shops, great coffee. People were lovely. I got an amazing buzz cut from the most gentle, tender haircut I'd ever gotten in my life.

1:03:18It took like an hour to shave my head. I was moved. I was so moved. That guy became the most famous buzz cutter in Japan by far. Because you went back and went TV. He was so overwhelmed. Yeah, we went with the TV crew and everything. And so the New York Times asked me, they're like, hey, can you recommend a city in the world to go visit? And I was like, yeah, obviously Morioka, you know, you should go there. And then they don't tell you where they're going to put it because they're masochistic like that. And then it comes out, and you find out when it comes out. And number one was London, and then number two is Morioka.

1:03:50And this would be like, I don't know, it would be like putting like Woodstock or something after, you know, after London. I mean, it's such a random city that it's like, oh, that's kind of cool. But like, you know, why should it be number two after London? And then they just pushed, you know, and there was a soba shop guy up in the city who lived in New York. And no one in Japan was really paying attention. And he was like, holy crap, this is this is incredible because all of his friends in New York were messaging him and saying, dude, your soba shop is in the New York Times. Because I wrote up this little thing and I put a soba shop in it.

1:04:23and he's like, this is a huge opportunity. He went to the mayor, he went to the governor and he was like, dude, this is incredible. They're like, what? What's the New York Times? Japan is really provincial. We forget how provincial this place is. And he kind of pushed all this and then he found out I spoke Japanese and he was like, whoa. And then suddenly it was this avalanche of just every media outlet, every TV show. I was in the middle of a Tokyo walk. I was doing this seven day mega Tokyo walk and people were like coming to my hotel room with like camera crews and like you know these are hotel room was the size of this stage yeah and they invited me up to meet the mayor and i was like oh this would be cool i'll just go you know say hey you know congrats on your town this is a lovely town and uh they didn't tell me anything and they bamboozled the hell out of me i showed up and press conference holy crap dude it was like it was like uh you know and no prep at all and And they were like, oh, yeah, Mr.

1:05:22Mudd. And here's the entering here. And they opened the two doors. And it was just like a room like this, just full of like reporters. And, you know, and like it was like paparazzi style, like rapid shot, like, you know, it's like 10 cameras on me. And it flashes going off. And I'm just like, what the hell is going on? And the mayor's sitting, you know, on the stage over here. I walk over. I shake his hand. He gives like a two second speech. And he goes, all right, he's all yours. Then he leaves. He leaves me. And then, you know, the questions start and they're like, oh, Mr. Mudd, how do we solve poverty?

1:05:59And I'm like, ah, you have the wrong guy. I just like your coffee. You have great coffee. Don't know how to solve poverty. But you have health care. That's cool. That's good. That was great. You would slide into health care. When you ask these banal questions, you would slide. I always go into health care. Yeah, so I've done like 100 TV shows, and I did a TV show with the most famous guy in Japan, this guy Tamori-san, and his team emailed me, and I just ignored the email because I don't have a TV, and I've never watched any TV. And his team emailed the message to the soba guy, and they're like, dude, Craig won't respond to us.

1:06:36He's like Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg all in one, right? He's been on. He's like huge. He's been on TV every day for 50-plus years in Japan. He's like the uncle of Japan. and so we ended up my friend was like you have to do this he won't come to Morioka unless you do this with him and I was like I don't want to do this but I was like all right fine for the people of Morioka and I went we walked around for two days in Morioka and it was like walking around with John Lennon it was insane this guy this tiny he's so tiny he's 80 they first shot we did was in front of the station and they're like all right motor's on stand here and then we've got you know six camera this huge 40 person crew morison stand here okay sure sure and there was like another like announcer person and then they're like all right bring him out bring out tamori like they take him out of like some like i don't know coffin or something he like comes up he's like dracula and he comes out and uh like no introduction at all and just he stands next to me and they're like all right go it was like you know it was like lost in translation and he goes i'm tamori and then the other person goes i'm morison and i just go ah and i just i grab him i grab him i just start shaking him.

1:07:39And I go, dude, we got to say hello before we start this. And I don't think anyone had ever touched a Morisan in the history of his career. It was really intense. I have food podcasts. I have to ask you, you know, you're usually after 2030 K, you're going to Konbini, you're having a few snacks and you're pounding it away. But sometimes you get to have incredible food while on these walks. I do. Give us one example of a recent walk that you had a meal that really threw you away. Honestly, on a lot of these walks, my favorite meal is Mossburger. Oh, yeah. Which is like Japanese healthy McDonald's.

1:08:18Yeah, no, that's good. They have an amazing fish sandwich and a great salad, really good salad. Really good onion rings. But you're just eating every day. You're kind of eating a lot of fish, a lot of grilled fish, a lot of sushi. and the Isayji, which is one of the main walks I'm doing in this book, the Isayji is kind of the walk I tell everyone to do. If you're going to go, you want to do kind of a seven-day, eight-day walk, go do Isayji. And I've written about it a bunch. I have a whole itinerary. It's easy to set up. But the food is just incredible because that peninsula, that area is known for Isay-ebi, which is technically Isay.

1:08:55It's Isay shrimp, but it's lobster. And so some of these inns you stay at, I mean, the amount of food they give you is absurd. It's like, you know, a lobster the size of this table they cut in half and the brain is kind of on display and you're supposed to slurp it or something. Oh, the best. No, I can't. No, you don't do brain? You don't do brain? I don't do brain. I took like four bites and then they look shocked because everyone goes to this area to eat this monster. Yeah. But then there's another inn I go to and it's run by a husband and wife, father and son, or husband, wife, and son and daughter-in-law.

1:09:32And the son and father cook all day. They cook from 9 a.m. till 4 p.m. And the meal is just amazing. The inn is called misuzu. I have their portrait in here, actually, in this edition. And they're just full of so much love. And the food is so incredible. And they serve something called karasumi, which is almost like this pressed, it's almost like the body of Christ as like fish eggs. Yeah. And he says he has the best in Japan. Okay. He's convinced. And it's his delicacy. Yeah. It's pretty good. Where are we at with the kisas right now? Like, you know, you did a lot of work around, you know, these dying kisas throughout rural Japan.

1:10:15And also in Tokyo, I loved your jazz pop-up, which was about jazz bars and the death of jazz bars. And, you know, depopulation has been well covered in the press in Japan and Korea and other places. But as a journalist yourself, as somebody who documents the death of culture, I mean, that's a heavy topic. I guess we're checking in on Kisa's right now. Where are we at? Are they really going away as fast as you first wrote about? Yeah. So Kisa is short for Kisa-ten, which is basically mid-century, mid-20th century Japanese-style cafe. So the analog would be essentially like a New York diner. And like New York diners, you know, they're disappearing.

1:10:53and were sort of at the end of the generation who had committed their lives to it. You know, not because they, it's funny, you see these old Kisa that are left and people have been working at them. You know, the owners will be, have been there for 50 years, 55 years. And it's not because they, you know, were young and were like, oh my God, I have to run this Kisa. I love it. So it was because they didn't want to go to an office, you know, and there wasn't, there weren't other options. And so they kind of did it reluctantly. And there's sort of a survivorship bias of the ones that are left of just the ones that happen to be good.

1:11:22You know, there are a lot of bad ones. And so the ones that are left are kind of good. But it's the end. It really is the end of this era of people committing to a community hub like that. Again, connect with Cento culture. You know, a Kisa is a place where you have the regulars. They come, they smoke, they have the morning set, the gossip. And in the countryside, because of depopulation, a lot of villages, all they have left are barbershops and Kisa. That's it. And so when I do these walks, I mean, the whole reason I started writing about Kisa is just because there's literally nowhere else to go to have lunch.

1:11:53and they serve pizza toast. So I was eating a lot of pizza toast. Describe what pizza toast is. It's exactly what you think it is. I mean, it's a little, well, yeah, but it's like the Japanese version of pizza sauce. Yeah. Let's break it down a little bit. Thick sliced bread, like really thick. Milk bread. Milk bread. Right. The whitest bread you can, like, smush it. Japanese milk bread is kind of bomb. It's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally good. And just a really basic tomato sauce, maybe some peppers, a couple onions, salami, and essentially American sliced cheese. So like a yellow cheese? Yeah, basically, yeah, and in a toaster oven.

1:12:31I mean, the whole thing was post-war. These were mainly post-war institutions. So it's just what can we do with the smallest possible set of ingredients and also the simplest kitchen. So you just have a little toaster oven. You can kind of make pizza toast. You can do toast, pizza toast, and then they do naporitan spaghetti which is basically just spaghetti with ketchup and some sausages like a step above chef boyardee barely you know basically and the coffee is love legend and the coffee yeah there's you know pour over but also cloth drip there's a lot of cloth cloth drip at these quiza and then siphon you know in America in the last like decade there's been kind of this you can go to blue bottle I think the San Francisco blue bottle had a whole siphon thing And you'd go and it'd be$18 for a siphon coffee.

1:13:18But siphon was the standard for a lot of Japanese kisotan in the 60s and 70s. You go and it's like two bucks for a siphon coffee in a lot of these old places. So, Craig, what's next? I mean, you're on book tour for the next several weeks, I know. But again, your metabolism for creating books and pop-ups and content and everything is really high. so I know you you have mentioned on the membership that you have several book projects for members but what's what's the like roadmap right now looking like for you honestly just survive this that's it this is six weeks on the road yeah you know I'm doing it's like ten events I'll be in Washington on Friday off to San Francisco Seattle Los Angeles we're doing some dinners there trying to set up a members only dinner like a little thing for members over there I'm just trying to you know have fun yeah Just try to enjoy this and just be present.

1:14:12I'm treating this essentially as like a walk. Yeah, right. Again, try to stay off. No pop-up though at the end of our talk. No pop-up. No. No, I can't. I can only do the pop-ups because I finish walking at 5 and then I'm just silent. Yeah. From 5 to 10 or 11 just working. And so this is too social. So you're working on like the jazz bar record. Oh, for the other books? Yeah. You have some other books in the works. Yeah, the jazz Kisa thing. Yeah, I love that. I did three weeks of visiting these North Tohoku and Hokkaido jazz kisa. And I went to, I think, 20 or 21 of them two years ago. And already, I think four of them have disappeared because the owners have died.

1:14:53So again, we're at this... Literally in real time. We're at this stage where there's like 10 to 15 years left for whatever the originals are. It's incredible. And I was thinking, well, okay, now I have to go to Shukoku and I should go to Kyushu and I should go to, you know, all over Japan. I should visit these jazz kisa to do a book. And really, I should just write about northern jazz for now. Yeah, you have it. Just do it. And so, I mean, that's also interesting, thinking about what are the constraints for these projects because they can just keep expanding. Yeah, you got to like tamp down on it.

1:15:24So, you know, do northern jazz and I'll go do Shikoku Kyushu. Well, I can't wait to read that. Thank you, Craig. This book is incredible. Thank you so much for joining us, Craig. Thanks for coming out. Major congratulations.

1:15:39This 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.