589: Food Writers Talking About Food Writing with David Farley & Matt Rodbard

25:14It's like, you know, Lucian wants to run it with a rotating roster of 80 artists as the staff, which is interesting to have, like, not a permanent staff, but a rotating staff. I think Lucian wants this to be a very simple menu. Quote, it needs to be similar to a Chipotle bowl, which I don't know. I just think that it's a cool idea. to pay an homage to this iconic restaurant, but I agree maybe the concept isn't quite there. It will open eventually in Dime Square, and I'm sure people will grade it. But you live in Soho. You've lived there for 20 years. West Village, actually. West Village, sorry.

25:51Close enough. Train ride away. But what do you think about the idea that old Soho, old downtown New York is being represented in Dime Square? I guess, you know, I never thought about it, but I suppose Dime Square has an old Soho vibe. You know, like... Oh, I agree. You know, so I didn't think about it until I read the article. I was like, oh, yeah, he's that was the one thing that I kind of agreed with in that article is like, oh, yeah, he's he's right about that. I just we go to we go to restaurants for the ambience and the vibe and the food. But if the if a restaurant has great ambience and a vibe, but bad food, we're not I'm not going to go there.

26:25It's got to have all those things or maybe or maybe if I go to places because the food's great, but the ambience sucks. But if the primary reason why we go out, I think, is because the food. and so I just fear that he's emphasizing so much about the artists and the vibe and that people aren't going to go there for the food or they're not going to go there at all speaking of the food I think one of the dishes is quote Chinese chicken salad quote you really can't get that salad anywhere in New York I was like really I don't know about that Chinese chicken salad is around everywhere and there's some really good ones I love those like proclamations this is just a credit to Madeline Lung Coleman for writing a terrific piece and gives us a lot to think about.

27:04So that was a great one. I want to move on to the next topic. It's not really a piece. It's your book. And its title is Irreverent Curiosity in Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oldest Town. I thought this book when I read it back in 2010, it was such a Farley piece of writing that was in long form. and it was immersive reporting. It was a lot of funny lines, a lot of humor built into it. Tell us a little bit about this story, this book, and it's also in print still. I love it. It's in print. There's a documentary that National Geographic made about it. Tell us all about it. Yeah.

27:41So I was living in Rome for a while and I took a day trip to this village 40 miles north of Rome called Calcutta, C-A-L-C-A-T-A. So not to be confused with the Indian, the Bengali metropolis. Yeah. And it was fascinating because the village is like a bewitching, town on a hill, medieval town. And it was partially abandoned in the 60s and hippies and artists moved in. And today it's now these aging hippies and their children and artists and stuff. So I wanted, I was like, I should write a book about this. This would be great. But I didn't want to write with the typical, like that travel book where someone moves to a village like Peter Mayle a year in Provence and they're the fish out of water.

28:19And then they learn how to really live from the locals. So I was like, I would love to live here for a year, but I don't want to write that book. And then I found out that the village for about 400 years was home to a really weird holy relic until it disappeared mysteriously. And the holy relic was the foreskin of Jesus. You know, you never hear those words together, holy foreskin. So I was fascinated. Like I said, I have a master's degree in history and I love those things about history that kind of fall through the cracks that you just don't hear about. And I started doing research and I found out that Like from the Middle Ages on until the 20th century, this relic was like a big time relic.

28:55People made pilgrimages there to pray in front of it. Popes gave indulgences to pilgrims who would pray that saying that, you know, you'll have innumerable benefits in the afterlife if you come and pray. And, you know, people snicker about it, but it's also, if you're a believer, it's the only piece of flesh Christ could have left on earth after he ascended into heaven. So it's funny that it's a piece of his genitalia, but it's also like his own flesh. And, you know, I'm not a Christian, and I don't believe that that holy relic was really a piece of Jesus. You can almost see relics dealers in the Middle Ages going through the Bible, looking what they could have.

29:36And then they got to Luke 22, 2, I think it is, or 2, 22, where they mentioned Jesus was circumcised on his eighth day. and you could see a, you know, like sort of a light bulb moment or a candle moment flicker that they're like, oh, if we can get some poor soul's foreskin, we could say is Jesus's foreskin. So, and then by the Middle Ages, there were like, you know, 15 or 18 places around Europe, most of them in France for some reason, that claim that they had the holy foreskin. I love that part of the book because you kind of unwind it, slowly, slow play it, but then you realize that Calcutta is like one of many European cities that claims to have Jesus' foreskin in its church.

30:16Yeah, exactly. To me, it was just fascinating because also people until recently would go to this church to pray in front of it and they really believed that it was his flesh. And so that fascinated me as a student of history. Yeah. And I believe there was like some really interesting food scenes in the book too. I feel like you were - I could not escape writing about food, of course, because I was in Italy and one of my best friends in the village was this guy named Pancho. He's American, but he's lived in Italy all his life and he ran a restaurant there. He was a chef and I used to hang out and help him cook sometimes and wash dishes and he'd pour me wine and we'd have great long philosophical talks about stuff.

30:56So it was great. It's a trivia book I'm linking to the show notes. You got to check it out. Would you ever want to go back to Italy and write a book like this? Yeah, I'm kind of done with holy relics, I think. Yeah, not relics, but just like going back and doing it in bed and kind of figuring out what the broader is. Yeah, for sure. 100%. I mean, you have a talent for it. Another story I want to talk about is one you wrote for Taste a couple years ago. Everyone who invented the everything bagel in 2019, you published it. I'm just going to read from your intro. Poppy seeds, sesame seeds, dried mince garlic, and onions and sea salt.

31:28These five ingredients aren't necessarily the heroes of the spice world, but in the bagel reality, they are enough. In fact, they are everything. Mixed together, they revolutionized the bagel world sometime in the early 1980s, or maybe it was the early 1970s. It depends on who you ask, because no fewer than four different people claim to be the Everything Bagels inventor, including restaurateur Joe Bastianich. I can't believe I'm saying that dude's name. Love this story. I'm linking to it. I love the reporting. Tell us about what you found out about Everything Bagels. It was really interesting.

32:00It was interesting that all four of them were so willing to talk, and they knew that there were other people who claimed that they invented the bagel too. and Joe Bastianich, too. He had such confidence about it. They all had a very similar story. So they all said basically that as teenagers they were working in a bagel shop. It seemed like they were either in Queens or Brooklyn and in the 70s or early 80s. And at the end of the day when they're cleaning out the bottom of the oven where all the seeds fall, one day they just got this idea that they said, what if we put all of these seeds on a bagel and see how that tastes?

32:39And then that was the birth of the other thing, bagel. The only thing we don't really know is who did it first. The earliest guy is, oh, Brandon Steiner. He said he did it in 1971. Seth Godin said 76. Joe Bastianich said 79. And David Gussin said 1980. Wow. So what I think is that, this is before the internet obviously, is that I think they all probably invented it. But they didn't know about each other yet. You know, it wasn't, there wasn't a way to like find out about this stuff. Exactly. And there's like, there was a moment when the internet happened or it became a television thing and like it became pop culture, right?

33:17There was like a moment in like the 90s probably. Exactly. And then they all kind of claimed, oh, I had this idea forever. I mean, you get an everything bagel if you have like bagels in a bag that aren't separated. I mean, basically, you know, everything mixes together if you have a mix of. And now Trader Joe's sells all kinds of everything. everything spice that was part of your piece it's like the the cooler sibling to pumpkin spice or something yeah well pumpkin spice is like the live laugh love of oh gosh i love that piece it was great well we're going to return to one of our favorite segments on this show it's what would you pitch 1997 graden carter today we all know that graden carter ran vanity fair during the glory years of the magazine industry and at times would assign stories at uh fifty thousand dollars $100 ,000 of story plus expenses.

34:06So you're pitching Graydon. You've got them. You're readying your facts into the Vanity Fair offices. David Farley, what would you pitch? 1997 Graydon Carter. I'm really interested in food origins. So I've written a ton of articles about food origins, and especially when there's a twist in the story. So I would do something that would incorporate as many food origins as possible so that I could just travel all around the world and write like a 10 ,000 word or maybe 15 ,000 word piece about that. So let's riff on some origins. What are you thinking about? Like, for example, there's a Portuguese battered green bean dish called, I'm going to butcher this Portuguese word.

34:44It's like a piscine de orta, which is like little fish of the garden. And sailors in the 16th century, 15th, 16th century, used to take them with them because they preserved well. And also during Lent, they would eat them because they couldn't eat meat and they kind of tasted meaty to them. And so the Portuguese were in Japan for 100 years in the 16th century. And then they got kicked out by the emperor for proselytizing Christianity. But, of course, they left a lot of their influence there. And one of those things they left was this recipe for the fried green beans. And so the Japanese took that and then they started battering other things and it became tempura.

35:18And so I just think stuff like that's fascinating. Also, like the taco al pastor is like Middle Eastern in origin because the Ottoman Empire fell. and in the crumbling of that, some people immigrated and some went to Mexico and they brought their turning spit. Yeah, from like Lebanon. And lamb with them. Yeah, and then the Mexicans took it, turned it into pork. Instead of putting in a pita, they put it in tortillas and it became taco al pastor. You know, just stuff like that. Like about the larger forces of history shaping these things that are still part of our, these little things that are part of our everyday life are just, to me, are fascinating.

35:51Yeah, I would like to see some modern foods in there too. something like foods uh like who invented the ecto cooler all right do you remember that or the corn dog i mean i think ecto cooler is this like iconic 1990s even 80s probably 90s uh high c box but who invented oh right okay i know it's a little bit it's not really an origin story i'm being a little bit basic here but i love this idea i think it could become a book yeah in fact i ran that idea by my agent relatively recently. And she's a hard one to get stuff by her because she will say, you know, I like that idea, but here's why I can't sell that book.

36:31And this is one of the few that she said, I could sell that book. Yeah. So it's just a matter of me putting together a proposal. Yeah, get working, David Farley. That's great. I love that. I feel like Greenwood would have taken it, probably. Maybe. Maybe. So what's your... I've gone over mine recently on the show um i think the last one was it was the history of taco bell um i remember that but honestly right now uh i've been i've been thinking about japan as well but i would love to write a story about uh of a golden guy this like neighborhood in japan that had uh this like iconic like these really tiny bars um that i i believe i was talking to craig mod recently just put out a memoir and he was telling me about it it's basically it was in the post-war it was like a place where uh like american gis and such would hang out i'm really paraphrasing the history of golden guy this is like this is me pitching a story with i didn't actually research but But I got thinking about Golden Guy now because right now it seems like an extremely torched tourist trap of a neighborhood in Tokyo.

37:45And though there's still like remnants of Golden Guy still there, at least the physical spaces. So if I was going to write this big story, I would love to like go to Golden Guy in 2025 and talk to some of the old timers who are still there. but also get into some color about the folks who are going there and why are you going to Golden Guy and I think the narrative would be like TikTok. TikTok would be the the reason why people go to Golden Guy because it's this this neighborhood that is very TikTokable and you can go into a three-seat four-seat bar and and have a have a couple drinks and it just seems like it's ready for the the the selfie moment and I just would love to write a long piece about this this changing neighborhood and how social media kind of clearly has destroyed something that japan was so well known for and it was a really seedy place too i have to say that that golden guy used to be a place for a lot of prostitution and it was a place that had just a lot of um you know yakuza hanging out there so uh and now it's like a bunch of uh like influencers so there's like something rich about it they're like if you spent like 20 nights in golden guy i'd call it that something like that and you actually spend a lot of time getting to know the people.

39:04There's something really interesting about this rapid change of a historical neighborhood. Right. That's cool. I was in Tokyo recently, but I didn't go there. Yeah, I didn't go there my last trip. I had food poisoning, so I was in bed for 10 days with an E. coli infection. 10 days? Were you on a work trip? It was six weeks. I went there. It was part honeymoon and then part assignment because I was writing a magazine story about the origins of pho in and around Hanoi. And on my penultimate day in Hanoi, I went for breakfast for pho. And then I thought, that's it. And then in the morning on the way to the airport, I started to feel knots in my stomach.

39:37And it was the beginning of a really almost deadly food poisoning infection. Wow. Yeah, I had to go to the doctors and they wanted to hospitalize me. But I didn't have international health insurance. Oh, yeah. And they're like, okay, well, if your kidney fails on the flight home to New York, you're going to die. I was just like, oh, my God. but I didn't die. Wait, so you took the risk of dying? Yeah, well, they said, they did more tests and then they got back to me and said, your tests look better than we thought. So we're not gonna insist you get hospitalized, but go to a doctor as soon as you get back to New York.

40:11And I didn't, I was fine. You were fine. So how long were you in bed? Like 10 days. I lost like 20 pounds. 10 days you were in bed, man. Yeah. What were you doing in bed? I was watching TV, reading, you know, doom scrolling. Oh my gosh. while you're in this incredible city where you could be. I know. I didn't get to see Tokyo at all. But I was also in Kyoto and Osaka, so I did get to experience parts of Japan, but just Tokyo was completely like just my hotel room. Well, I'm glad you're feeling better. Yeah. How'd the story turn out? Good. It's coming out in the AAA magazine, Westways, in the fall.

40:48But yeah, I love doing that story because, again, it's another origin story. Yeah. And when you get to origin stories, when there's people still alive who remember things about it or maybe their grandfather talked about it or whatever. It's really interesting because it gets murky and there's usually more than one origin story and they're competing against each other. And, you know, it kind of becomes fascinating. What's modern Hanoi like? I haven't been there in about 10 years. I love that city. Yeah, I love Hanoi. It's one of my favorite cities in the world. In the center of town, it's a little bit annoying because you can't walk five feet without someone screaming at you to buy something or to say, hello, massage, stuff like that.

41:25But then once you get out of the center, no one bothers you at all. They don't even think about you. So that's good. But yeah, I really, I just, I love eating in Hanoi so much. And I like Vietnamese people. Yeah, it's a great, I love Vietnam. Man, got to go back. 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.

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44:08I think we're going to wrap with our taste check. Okay. What do you think about this? Sure. Yeah. So on This is Taste, we ask guests or brother discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, Fast and Furious, Taste Check, Media Edition. Are you ready? Mm-hmm. What is the first thing you read in the morning and where do you read it? Right. On my couch, on my laptop, and it's the New York Times. Yeah. Are you reading the homepage? Are you reading the newsletter? I'm always – well, I do get a couple newsletters, but I am always – just go to right to NewYorkTimes.com and just see.

44:41like, you know, what's on fire in our world. Yeah, yeah. Do you read anything on actual paper? Yeah, I subscribe to a few Buddhist magazines. Like, for example, why can't I think of it now? That's all right. Tricycle. Oh, yeah, Tricycle. Tricycle. I subscribe to The New Yorker. Like, they always have these deals in The New Yorker. You get it, like, for, like, a dollar an issue for a while. Yeah. And then when that runs out, I unsubscribe until I get another nice offer. And then I subscribe. Game recognized game. Like that move. Yeah. That's a good one. What was your favorite food publication growing up?

45:16I didn't have any favorite food publication. No? When I was growing up, I wanted to be a rock star. So I was reading music publications and I was playing my guitar as much as possible. Oh, sick. So what was in rotation for music banks back then? There was Cream. Yeah. And there was Rolling Stone, of course. I've been a longtime subscriber to Rolling Stone. What else was there? There were a couple of heavy metal magazines that I can't remember what they are. Thrasher. Thrasher, yeah. Yeah. No, that was a skateboarding. That's skateboarding, right. Duh. Yeah. What am I thinking about? There's something ER.

45:46Yeah, right. Anyways, I don't know. But no food? No, I only got into food maybe when I went away to university or something. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, I was curious about food. I was a good eater. I wasn't a picky eater at all. But I didn't have the fascination with food until I became an adult. Do you remember watching early food TV? Do you have early memories? No, I don't. No? I was never watching any of that stuff. You weren't a food TV, no PBS for you. No, I watched, I used to watch Rick Steves on PBS when I was like in high school. Yeah. And that's, I have to credit him because that's how I first started to get a sense of wanderlust.

46:22Yeah. He only did Europe, but I was like, wow, all these places look amazing. And he really got me to start thinking, oh, maybe I should, when I can afford it and I get a little older, maybe I should go traveling. That's incredible that Rick Steves had an influence on you. Because, I mean, you're reporting in that kind of style for all these travel publications you write for. Yeah. Do you still feel... And I've met him a couple of times. He's a nice guy. Is he? What's his deal? Is he cool? Yeah, he's nice. You know, he kind of looks like, kind of has this Ted Flanders vibe. Yeah. Or like your neighbor who's a Lutheran minister or something.

46:53Yeah. But he's a very nice guy, down to earth. And he's, you know, he can get philosophical very quickly. And, you know, I really enjoy talking to him. The first time I met him, I was almost starstruck because he had this kind of influence on my life. Once I started traveling, I decided, oh, this is how I want my life to be. I want to have a life of travel, either living abroad or a job where I'm traveling abroad all the time. And so I've done both, lived abroad and now I travel abroad. Very cool. And now it rolls back to a little bit of Rick Steves. I got respect for the guy. I think so many people ended up traveling the world because of him.

47:28Yeah, a lot of people didn't like him because the people who are really devoted to him are like people who are leaving the country for the first time. And they're a little bit, you know, maybe the right wing because they haven't traveled that much or whatever. I don't know. But that's his whole thing is he's trying to get people to travel for the first time and tell them the outside world is not scary. Not generally not. Oh, yeah. I think it's an able to hold. You don't have to fear going into another culture. It could open your mind. And so I had a friend who's a tour guide in Rome, and he said he hated getting the – when people would show up with their Rick Steves books because they're so devoted to him that he would say, let's go to this place for lunch.

48:04He would go, wait, wait, wait, go through their book. Oh, it's not in Rick's book, so we can't go there. That's crazy. That's how faithful they are. That's wild. I mean, I recognize Rick's power there and influence to this day. Yeah. And I think it was – and he just got a lot of people to get a passport, which I think is a very cool thing. Exactly. So, Farley, where are you at right now with YouTube and TikTok and the way food is represented on those platforms? You know, I just joined TikTok. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's weird. Well, you will not have any free time anymore. So I uploaded some videos that I've made for my Instagram account because I thought, oh, why not just join TikTok and see what happens?

48:44Because I've already got a bunch of videos that I've edited and stuff. I have like two followers. So, you know, so and as a result, I don't really look at it. So I can't really comment on TikTok. But I love looking at YouTube. Some of the food things are great. I love I go down these rabbit holes on a place where I find these YouTubers who go to like, say, you know, Saigon and they eat their way through it or they just focus on one dish and they're eating many different types of it. And I love I love that stuff. I don't have any particularly like favorite food YouTubers. But but yeah. Yeah, it's a great platform for short-form, long-form video of food.

49:25And I think there's really high production values now. Yeah. And there's one guy that I follow who's not really related to food. It's called The Honest Guide. And there's this guy, Janek, who's in Prague. And he started to just do a Prague-based YouTube channel for tourists. But then he started catching scammers on the street, people trying to do money exchanges and stuff. And his thing has kind of become like catching scammers in Prague. Oh, shit. And then or like corrupt taxi drivers or anything that goes on with that. And he actually, he does his episodes where he films his interactions with the scammers and gets them arrested and blah, blah, blah.

49:58And to me, it's fascinating. He's doing a very good deed. Yeah. He's like How to Catch a Predator, like Prague Travel Edition. Yeah, exactly. I like that. I've seen some of that on TikTok. That's like a little bit of a genre. Yeah. There's a woman in Venice, an older woman who's become popular on TikTok for being like, scammer, scammer, scammer. Yeah. Yeah. I hope she's right when she's, you know, claiming that someone's a scammer. That's all I have to say about that. That's the question. Where do you want to be in five years with your media career? I would like to just still be making a living doing it because I'm always not sure that this profession, I'm a food and travel journalist, is going to exist.

50:35Or it'll exist, but I don't know if I'll be able to make a living at it. I fear that. So I would like to just be doing what I'm doing now. I don't have wild ambitions to become the next Anthony Bourdain or something like that. I just want to – I love my life and I love what I do for a living. And every day I acknowledge with gratitude that I'm just so lucky to be able to do this, to have this life. And I'm very fortunate for it. So my wish is that I can just keep doing it and making a living at it and writing and learning. I love that. Yeah. Well, you're so great. I love your work. And maybe we'll work on something in taste.

51:17It's been a few years. We should, yes. I'll keep reading your work. Farley, thank you so much for joining Food Writers Talking About Food Writing. Thanks. I'm a longtime listener, so it's an honor to be on the show. Thank you.