595: Saveur, The New York Times, and On the Road in California with Journalist Betsy Andrews

26:26I love that you brought this. Thank you. Yeah. Very cool. So this is also from that aforementioned sandwich issue. It's called Golden State of Sandwiches. She wore sunglasses. Her blonde hair was long and wavy. Her skin was burnished deep copper from the sun. When she approached me on the beach that day in Malibu, she wore nothing but a macrame string bikini. Over her shoulder, she carried an ultra-suede fringe bag from which she pulled a sandwich. Sprouts, avocado, tomato, and jack cheese, she said. three dollars. She handed me a plastic baggie containing the ingredients she had assembled herself in her home kitchen and tucked between slices of multigrain bread.

27:13I gave her my dollars and she moved on. But I have never forgotten her. It was 1979. I was 16 years old and newly vegetarian, an East Coaster on holiday from a mother who had taken to clucking. I just don't know what to feed you now. Back home, the beach was littered with the mustardy ends of hot dog buns sold by sweaty guys and boardwalk stalls. I unwrapped my sandwich and took a bite. The sprouts crunched. The tomato tasted bright. The avocado was creamy and nutty. The waves glistened and curled in the sun. Things sure are different in California, I thought. I love when you flipped it first I think it's it's always a tight a tightrope walk and I really really love that that image that you painted with your words and you did a terrific job thanks for sharing that yeah sure thanks for giving me the opportunity I feel like you can get old savors on eBay and I suggest just going back you could go back to the 90s you could go back to the 2000s or go back to this era of like 2008 through 2012 The India issue is something that I just think about a lot.

28:28You know, we got a little bit of the story behind it in the Savor Week, but that seemed like a wild episode. Tell me a little bit about India issue. Yeah. So many of us traveled for that issue. Jim asked me where I wanted to go, and I said Kashmir. Yeah. You know, there were no Westerners in Kashmir. I mean, it was like a military zone. I went through six checkpoints getting out of there, and it was the most exquisitely beautiful place I've ever been. What would you eat there? Was there a dish that— Lamb, lots and lots of lamb. We went to a wedding, and there's a particular chef who creates dishes for the wedding.

29:11So we had 19 different kinds of lamb dishes. Wow. I mean, let's talk a minute about photography, too, because what Savora was doing with reportage and documentary style photography, huge influence on my work in cookbooks and writing. And how did you as executive editor work with your photography team, especially with a time when, you know, digital was not as common and it's more difficult to produce photography? Yeah, we did this thing that people don't do so much anymore. We traveled with photographers. Yeah. Yeah, that's hard, you know, because sort of the work you're doing, the work photographers are doing are oftentimes really different.

29:51I did the same thing for this cookbook, which we'll talk about. But, you know, I had worked with her before and we had a really good rapport. With some photographers, it's very hard to do that. They just don't want you anywhere near them when they're working, you know. And their job is exhausting. they're taking 2 ,000 photographs a day you know and you're trying to get somebody's name and they're like get out of my shot yeah so that could be really stressful but but it could also really kind of be a beautiful thing where you know as as the writer or the producer of the story essentially we were producing our own stories we were calling people and you know and and we would hit the ground.

30:35Like, you know, I worked with Todd Coleman a number of times. We did a Mexico issue. We got to Puebla. We went to the place where they grind spices. You know, a guy just has a big industrial grinder and he's grinding people's spices for mole. And we just said to people like, can we come home with you? And we found a woman who let us come home with her. And that, you know, we would do that all the time. And so that we could get everything done right there. You know, know we have the photographer there we have the writer there and we just made the story up on the fly that's that's it's definitely uh the way i work and the way i prefer because you know when you just send a shot list of photographers six months later it just doesn't have that that that magic but it is so much more difficult you have to find the right photographer who works fast yeah it's just about speed yeah um but yeah please go back and check out those those issues and find them because they're incredible.

31:27Hi there. It's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you. Do you have a guest request? A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on Three Things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair? You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible. That's the This Is Taste listener survey, link in our show notes. Today's episode is brought to you by ButcherBox.

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33:24Visit 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. I want to talk about Coastal. Terrific book. Like, I've given it some serious time. And Betsy, your team, you and the chef Scott Clark have created this kind of document about the central coast of California that really tells the story of a region that I would say has become quite popular as a travel destination. We hear all about Central Coast in, like, travel journalism and some food writing. But first, just tell me a little bit about Scott Clark.

34:07So Scott, you know, I met him because there was a PR person who was, you know, just sort of smartly would send me out to California every year. She would have like one client who had the money, send me out there. And then she would introduce me to all her clients and I would get some stories out of it. So she told me to see Scott, who was not the guy paying for the trip. Scott and I went and saw him and he's an East Coast guy and I'm an East Coast gal. We both love California. And we started talking about all the little places we love on the Central Coast. And I said, wouldn't it be great to do a road trip story?

34:38You know, you surf. We stop at all the little spots. And I said, I know a photographer who's perfect, Cheyenne Ellis. She is a stunt woman. She's a fourth generation Californian. And Scott's in Half Moon Bay. She was living in Half Moon Bay because her husband is a big wave surfer. He surfs mavericks. So we had this sort of perfect team. Scott had been a Michelin star chef. He worked at Vidalia in D.C. He worked at Restaurant Eve in Alexandria. Then he moved to San Francisco, worked at Bennu, and he worked at Cezanne. He went through every single position at Cezanne and he became chef de cuisine there.

35:20And he just burnt out. He had a five-year-old he was never seeing. He was sick of getting beat up in Michelin kitchens. He was sick of working 80 hours a week. You know, so he found, he rented a caboose on the side of the Cabrillo Highway in Half Moon Bay and opened this destination, sort of burgers and, you know, sandwich and salads and pie shop. Very light framing. Much more going on than just burgers. But Betsy, tell me about the geography a little bit just for our listeners who maybe don't know exactly what the Central Coast is. When you're talking about doing this road trip, what's like the starting point, ending point?

36:06What towns are we hitting? So for us, we started in Half Moon Bay, which is where Scott is, and went down the San Francisco Peninsula, sort of Pescadero. And then, you know, down, you know, Monterey and Big Sur, Santa Cruz, Sloe County, Santa Barbara County and out to the Channel Islands to sail and then back up to have Moon Bay. And the book really feels like a road trip. I think the photography, the documentary style, and just the light food styling makes it feel extremely real. And, of course, you hit that light. You nailed the light. Yeah. I mean, it's terrific. I mean, that's all Cheyenne.

36:55Yeah, Cheyenne is terrific. I'd love to meet Cheyenne because this book, it just jumps out of the page. When you're thinking about the recipe list with Scott and you've got this restaurant, but you've also got this trip to take. How are you thinking about, I mean, the range of cuisines covered in this book really represents California in many ways, the multicultural nature of this incredible state. How do you land on this recipe list? Because you could read it as random, and that's a pejorative term. I'm not calling it that. I'm calling it eclectic and very rad. But you wouldn't expect some of these recipes out of a caboose restaurant, right?

37:38This is the way Scott cooks. You know, and he his format is necessarily lean and pared down at dad's. But he's got all these recipes in him, you know, from from his many years in in these sophisticated restaurant kitchens. And he's inspired by everything. So this this this is absolutely organic, you know, and we sort of came up with the adventures first. We're like, hey, you know, here's all the things that we love to do on the Central Coast. I mean, it looks like a travelogue because it was a travelogue. We literally went and did everything. And then he would just come up with, like, all of these recipes to organize around those adventures.

38:25I want to jump into a couple of recipes in particular. And I just I picked these not at random, but they just kind of maybe have a little anecdote. And, you know, two that come to mind, there's the California PBLT and then the California Muddy Buddies. And, you know, that's like puppy chow in the Midwest, but that's a little East Coast speak there. But these two recipes are two of many. But talk about these two dishes that you wrote about. So both of these come out of some California inspirations for Scott. The California PBLT is a bacon, lettuce, tomato, and pineapple sandwich. Pineapple. Let's just pause for a second.

39:07Yeah. That's very cool. Very, very cool. Adding pineapple to it. Cool, and it's like a grilled pineapple, you know? Yeah. So he, in college, went on a trip to San Diego, and there was a place called Ho Dad's there. And it was doing the bacon the way that he does it here, which is you grind it up and you make a smash burger out of it. So but this is Scott's cooking. So it's all scratch cooking. So if you do it all yourself, you are making the bacon. Right. You are oven drying the tomatoes for this oven dried tomato mayo. there's a lot of sort of and then to make the mayo you're making this umami this umami oil then to make the mayo that we make I mean there's, it's a sort of continually receding thing, but you can also if you need to you know, use regular mayo yeah, and use regular bacon and do the same technique but it's also so this is a pay-on to Southern California But it's also about the tomatoes of the Central Coast.

40:19It has both fresh tomatoes and these jammy, delicious oven-dried tomatoes on it. Beautiful. And about the Muddy Buddies, what's the California spin there? Yeah. So, you know, this is in the road trip snacks chapter. This is Muddy Buddies' East Coast mom would make these for him and his brother, you know, to kind of keep them quiet in the back of the car when we're driving around. But when he was at a restaurant, one of the chefs had left white chocolate in the sous vide machine for a really long time and it had turned like almost like black. And it was really savory. and so he makes his Muddy Buddies with that and tahini and almond butter, almonds being like, you know, a major crop in California to make a super savory version of Muddy Buddies that also is sweet but is balanced.

41:17Yeah, I love that using almond butter. I never thought about that with this dish that I make every holiday season. I just love making it and it's cool and like the Saison resume comes out in a lot of these recipes. Your skill is really to make it for the home cook, and it really is cookable. You know, it's not multi-page recipes here. It's very smartly written. One other recipe, the kimchi opino, which, you know, I've written some Korean books, and I just have never seen this application. And I think it's really smart. He worked at Bennu, so he obviously had some, you know, a real incredible Korean background in that cooking style.

41:56But tell me about this a little bit. He also was for a while the R &D, the research and development chef at Saison. So he did all the fermentations, you know, and he's really, really into them. Yeah, the kimchi pino. So this recipe to me, like, absolutely exemplifies his cooking. It's super smart, super funny, and a paean to both the 19th century Italian Genoese fishermen immigrants to San Francisco and Korean immigrants to San Francisco. So in that sense, it's this love letter to kind of the Bay Area. And it's super, super delicious. There are all these techniques. So you use sort of his techniques to make this gorgeous fume, this gorgeous fish stock.

42:50And you make the kimchi. You don't have to make the kimchi, but if you make the kimchi, it's just so much more gratifying. And then you're adding all the seafood in there. If you're from California, you're using spiny lobster or you're using dungeness crab. But we give you substitutions. You know, if you're on the East Coast, you might want to use an American, you know, lobster. Or you might want to use blue crabs. Or you can even use, I've used snow crabs a number of times. And it's so crushable and delicious. The person who cross-tested this for us, who is a former chef and a good friend of mine, has made it many, many times since because they were just sort of blown away by it.

43:31It takes a few days. Like, you know, if you make the fumet, I mean, it doesn't take a few days. But it's a commitment. Yeah, if you're making fish stock, you can always make a bunch and keep it. And then put it away. Exactly. There's a lot of that in the book. Anyway, it's a bit of a meditation, and then it's just so delicious. Well, I want to also ask you about, you know, getting on the boat. Because there's a whole section. And I think, like, when you think about cookbooks, you're like, oh, we should do a boat section now. I've thought about it. It's really hard to photograph on a boat. You know, it feels a little, like, abstract if you don't own a boat.

44:05But you really made this, you created this universe of like cooking on a boat. And one of the recipes that really stuck out is a sea blanched broccoli. Betsy, tell me about just like writing this recipe literally sea blanched. It's super cool. So the reason this chapter works so well is this is absolutely from real life. My partner's family keeps a boat in Ventura, and we sail out to the Channel Islands every year to go scuba diving. The sea urchin and the scallops in that chapter, you know, her uncle and me, we dove for those. Scott, you know, caught the rockfish and the mackerel. The seawater blanched broccoli is actually a recipe from my partner's father.

44:54Yeah. You know, he would just like pull up a pot of seawater and overcook the broccoli in it. I know. It's like that. It's basically that. Yeah. And I told Scott about it and he turned it into like this gorgeous banchan basically. Yeah. You know, and it's really easy to make. You can make it at home. You just make like pasta water. You know, you just make a real salty, salty, you know, boil for your broccoli, blanch it really quickly. and then a little sesame oil and sesame seed, and it's just perfect. It's a terrific section, and now hearing your connection to it as well is really special. I love this book.

45:33I think it's one of my favorites of the season, and I just love the work you put into it. It's beautiful. Let me ask you about just traveling to the Central Coast. We have many listeners who are planning their summer travels or spring travels even. Where are we staying? I mean, I'm putting you on the spot a little bit. Is there a town or an area that we should Google first? Yeah, you should definitely go visit Morro Bay. Absolutely go to Morro Bay. Get a kayak at the kayak shack and kayak in that estuary. It has one of the largest gatherings of birds in the world, migrating birds. It's incredibly biodiverse and rich.

46:21If you go over to Morro Rock, which is sacred to the Chumash, you can see the otters there in the water. And then on the other side of the rock, which, you know, there's bay on one side and the other side is waves and you can watch the surfers. And then there's the Embarcadero where you can go to Morro Bay Oyster Company and get some just delicious oysters that are farmed out in the estuary. So definitely Morro Bay. You can stay in Cambria, which is a surfing town in Slow. And they've got, you know, kind of like a really nice boutique-y hipster hotel there to stay in. Yeah. I knew you'd come with a rec, like really specific rec.

47:03And that's how I would ask you as a friend. So thank you for sharing that. And what about Scott's Restaurant? So Dad's is open four days a week. It is a total destination. He likes to say that it's a vegetarian restaurant with a hamburger. You know, he likes to put a lot of vegetables on plates there. And maybe the most famous thing is his maitake sandwich. Wow. Which is just butter-griddled maitake, you know, cheese, tomato, pickled onion, butter lettuce, and his special dad sauce. I love it. And the recipe is like mushroom or burger. Yeah. Kind of like you can flip it either way. It's really smart.

47:48It makes me think of going to the farmer's market, buying some itake and doing a full burger. I love it. Betsy, and this is Taste We Has. Guests are brought to the discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious taste check. Are you ready? Yes. The best fruit. Mangustine. Tell me about this a little bit. What makes it good? Oh, it's so floral and so juicy and sweet. Not easy to find in the United States. For a long time, it was illegal. Yeah. And now you can get them. They're going to be expensive, but it's worth it. Where do you find them? Chinatown.

48:19Yeah. Yeah, that's what I thought. Yep. Find your Chinatown. Support your Chinatown. Buy some magazines. The worst vegetable. Any that's sprayed with synthetic pesticides. Hard to come by or not. Disagree. What? Unsprayed vegetables. Almost every vegetable. Any vegetable that's not organic is sprayed. Yeah. So just buy that organic vegetable. Okay. It's a question, but I've never had that answer. So thank you for pointing that out. Do you have a typical breakfast? Leftovers. All right. So you're a doggy bag person. Yeah. For restaurants or just leftovers from cooking? Doggy bag person from restaurants because I don't like food waste.

49:00Yeah, yeah. And also I cook all the time. Yeah. I literally had eggplant parmesan for breakfast this morning. God bless you. What a great breakfast. Homemade sauce, I imagine. No, no. That was from a restaurant because I was with my mother in Philadelphia. Oh, cool, cool, cool. The best dessert? In summer, a really, really juicy ripe peach. And in winter, a really, really juicy ripe pear. Oh, yeah, pears. Is there a variety of pear that you seek out? I mean, I kind of like any pear. Yeah, yeah. I like a juicy bosque. Yeah, those are great. I really wanted to ask you this one because you've covered New York for so long and you have seen many restaurants come and go.

49:43Betsy, is there a restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead? Nick and Eddie. Tell me about it. Nick and Eddie was on the corner of Sullivan Street and Spring Street. It was a celebrity like sort of hotspot. Like everybody came there. But it was really kind of down home food. Like literally like Johnny Depp and Kate Moss would be eating mashed potatoes and meatloaf. It was kind of a wild scene. And, you know, my girlfriend at the time worked there. I had a lot of friends who worked there. And I spent umpteen nights there at the bar. It spawned actually an empire because the Brombergs, Bruce and Eric Bromberg, were the chefs.

50:30Oh. They moved across the street, opened Blue Ribbon, and, you know, well, we— The energy transferred to Blue Ribbon and it became quite the legendary hotspot as well. Where I spent so many of my—after, you know, I mean, I was a waitress and a bartender in New York for a long time. I would just go and spend all my money at Blue Ribbon, and we would watch the sun come up in Soho all the time. What's your most memorable bartending job?

50:58Let's see. Oh, God. I worked at a place in Philadelphia where, you know, it was so bad, this place, that I bartended, waited tables, and bust the entire restaurant. And one day a rat crawled out of a wall, expired in the dining room floor. The owner came out, swept it into a paper bag, walked away, and didn't comp anybody anything. Yeah. That was a short-lived job. I want to, you gotta write some of these stories down if you haven't already. So good. Couple more. Your favorite city outside America to visit for food? Tokyo. Great. How do you do Tokyo? Oh, man. You know, it's really interesting because Michelin started paying attention.

51:45So like there's a Michelin starred tonkatsu place. There's a Michelin starred ramen place. One of my favorite places to go is actually for drinking. It's Genyamamoto. It's a Ginza fruit cocktail. You go for a cocktail omakase. You get four drinks or eight drinks. It sounds like a lot, but those are really low ABV, and they're focused on the fresh product. It's amazing. How do you get the reservation at Gem? Seems hard. Yeah. Yeah. You're giving me that I'm a writer face. Yeah. It's fair. No, I'm kidding. I put you on the spot there. But, yeah, Gem is incredible. I've been able to have a drink there.

52:20Last one, your favorite sandwich. Well, as I said, I am a Philly girl. But I am not. I'm going to betray my hometown and not say cheesesteak or roast pork, broccoli rabe. I am going to say mufuleta. Oh, but so in New Orleans. Yes. Oh, wow. Why do you like it so much? It's got mornadella on it, man. Yeah. And the good stuff, too. Yeah, so good. And also, like, it sits there marinating and sweating, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's really, I mean, it defies what a lot of Americans think, which is that you can't leave a sandwich out. You can't leave the cold cuts out. Yeah. You know. I mean, how many times have you gone to Central Grocery and then had that in your packing, in your carry-on?

53:08Well, you know what? One time I went and I didn't have time to go to Central Grocery and I got on the plane and somebody opened their mufaleta on the plane and I was like, damn you. Do you have a, I mentioned Central, it's the famous place, but is that where you're at? Absolutely, absolutely. That's the one you go to. Please come back. I'd love to talk to you more. This is such a pleasure. Thank you, Betsy Andrews. Thank you for joining This Is Taste. Thank you so much.

53:35This Is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Barbanal 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.