600: The Jonathan Gold Question with Restaurant Critic Besha Rodell

23:40Some hate them, usually the ones who don't have as many as they think they should. But, you know, I do think that it's a really useful thing. And I thought about it in L.A. very much as like, how far should you drive to go to this place? Which was a nice thing to do for L.A. because, you know, fanciness is not L.A.'s strong suit. So being able to give four stars to a taco if you should drive from the other side of town was really nice. But, yeah, I wanted to. It's interesting because I think I looked at Los Angeles and said this town right now does not have a weekly critic who is going into the newer places.

24:14Or if a chef has changed or if a major, you know, something has changed and say, should you go here or not? That was just not there. Patrick at the magazine was doing it, but that was monthly. It was a longer piece. It didn't reach as far. So I wanted to do that kind of old-fashioned critic thing in L.A. And it worked. I think that that's how I found my voice there, and that's how I gained an audience there and gained traction there. It took a couple of years. Yeah, I loved reading your reviews, and we became friends when you were a critic there, and I went on some meals with you, and you wrote about my books.

24:50And I think you just did all the work. And it's amazing. Back to L.A. at this time in the 2010s. I mean, it was at a time when before L.A. was considered the best food city in America. Like now it's it's undeniable. And I've said it many times. But what's it like being in a city that still isn't getting the full national attention that it deserves? but you're like you're kind of parachuting in there and you've you're going to like strip mall sushi yeah and it's like better than the greatest sushi restaurant in atlanta where you came from 100 i mean it was great there was things about that that were fantastic it gave me something to say it gave me something to shout about you know i think that it's it would be so hard to come into a place like new york that is so well covered that has so many critics that are all doing a pretty good job, you know, and to make a voice at the time.

25:39Yes. But, you know, I think having that, here's something to say. And that was true in Atlanta, too. I felt like Atlanta really needed to find its voice when I got there. I feel like L.A., it didn't need to find its voice, but it needed certain things to be championed that maybe hadn't been. You know, I think people think of L.A. as this kind of very clear dichotomy. There's like the Kardashian L.A. and then there's the like street taco L.A. And but like most of us lived in between those things and those things weren't getting covered that well, I feel like the places that actual Angelenos go and eat.

26:19And obviously we all ate tacos, but there was a lot more going on there. And there was this really interesting kind of brigade of young chefs. You know, this is the thing that has been the most exciting thing to happen in the last 20 years in food all over the world, I think. But L.A. was an obvious place for it to happen. These, you know, the kind of second generation chefs who came up in, you know, American restaurants or under the brigade system or whatever, but had, you know, family culture from elsewhere afoot in each place and were really expressing that beautifully. That was all happening on the ground when I got there.

27:00And it was, you know, it was the beginning of places like Night Market. Kogi had been around for a while. But I think it was just, it was so exciting. And that was, I mean, it was a really rough transition to move to Los Angeles just for so many reasons. But like the food was the thing that kept me excited and kept me going. You know, you wake up in the morning and you're like, where am I going? I know. And you just can get in the car and just like I mean, you could you know, my son grew up in L.A. and we've now moved to Melbourne. And he is always, you know, complaining about how Melbourne is like everywhere you are in Melbourne feels like Melbourne.

27:38Whereas in L.A. you can be in Japan one day and then in China the next day and Mexico the next day. You know, it's like and there's so many worlds within that city. It's incredible when you talk about the chefs, too, just like the amount of talent that were kind of starting their careers. A little zoom out question. I mean, it seems like I was at a chef conference recently and we're talking about New York just not having enough critics. And it seems it's almost like you should think about it as like a public service for the restaurant industry. Oh, absolutely. To have like a full like if you're a publication and maybe you're not making a lot of money from your criticism, you're not monetizing it.

28:16But like think further than that. And like if The Times could have two full time critics, if you could have an Eater critic again, it's like a public service for this industry that you care about. It is. I've always said that. I've always said that if you, you know, the best critics are almost like, you know, consultants that you don't have to pay. Hopefully you are really considering somebody's work in a way that I don't think almost anybody else would. You know, I really am trying to get into the head of whoever is doing the restaurant, what they are thinking, what they're trying to achieve.

28:48How well are they doing that? Is there anything I could say that would help them do it better? Is there anything that they're not seeing because they're too close to it? And yeah, but man, it is such an expensive thing to do. And I mean, you know, you've got the salary, you've got the budget. The budget is often bigger than the salary because if a city like New York to cover that is, you know, it's an immense task. You're trying to go back to restaurants multiple times. I don't think that there are many places that kind of, you know, tit for tat, monetize it in a way that is smart or, you know, workable.

29:22But at the same time, it makes you a voice for the city in a way that I think it's very hard to be that in most other realms. Do you know what I mean? I think like film criticism is global, like even art criticism. It's a very niche thing, whereas restaurant criticism is about the way we live in our cities. It's about what our cities should be, what we want them to be, what we don't want them to be. It actually is really broad. And, you know, in Melbourne, where I'm working now, we put out a guide every year that has 600 restaurants in it and they're all ranked. And it's just like, I mean, what an undertaking that we do.

29:57But also, yeah, there's just I don't think people in Australia understand that like that doesn't happen anywhere else. And and it really is. We think of it as a public service for the city. I wish I wish more media executives would understand that, particularly ones who monetize other elements of food and monetize like the halo of the chef culture. But they don't actually do reviewing. Yeah. I mean, I think people are scared, too. And I understand why you do end up with these kind of feuds that happen. Wait, a good feud is good copy, though. It's great copy. No, I know. And that's like the business model.

30:35Yeah, it's like difficult to be a critic. I mean, listen, your job when you're putting yourself out there, you're putting yourself you're up for any kind of criticism. It could be anything about your writing. It could be about you personally. Yeah, no, it's it's not great. And I think it's it may be a little harder as a woman. I think that is partly just the way that female critics have been portrayed in like movies and stuff forever. But I think, you know, it just that people are a bit uncomfortable with, especially in such a male dominated culture of chefs with a female with, you know, authority and power.

31:12But you have to have a pretty thick skin. And, you know, I've got a pretty thick skin over the years. I don't like the I hate the kind of when it gets to that point where you are in a rivalry with somebody or you've said something that somebody hates or that you have to say, you know, whatever. But I also, again, think, you know, it's a responsibility that you don't take lightly and you think through really hard and you do what you feel like needs to be said. And that's a position of privilege. Let's go back in time a bit. In the memoir, you write about working in the industry. So it's cool that you've worked in many different stations and restaurants and you have a deep understanding of restaurants.

31:54But you worked at this cool restaurant. Some may remember it called The Grocery on Smith Street. I used to live near there. So I went many times. And it's a remarkable place. And you wrote very colorfully about it. Didn't it get like some big award out of the blue? No. What happened, and it was right after I left, I remember calling the chef Charlie from North Carolina when I was pregnant because Zagat came out. Zagat. And they got a 28 in Zagat, which is the highest. It was at the time the highest score in the city. It was that and, you know, Le Bernardin and one other thing. And it was just like such it was so out of the blue.

32:28And Charlie was just like gobsmacked. I just yeah, I remember calling him and being like, what the hell? But, you know, people who loved that restaurant really, really loved that restaurant. And it was such a great place for me to learn about, especially about wine. You know, there was 13 tables there and they overstaffed it, you know, which was not great for our tips, but was really good for the service. So, you know, you would only have three tables. You would get to know them really, really well, which is the kind of fine dining model, but it wasn't fine dining prices. So, you know, it really taught me the fine art of like the emotional intelligence that's needed to be a really good server to figure out what your table needs or wants from you.

33:15Do they want the song and dance? Do they want to be left alone? You know, and the food was great. And, you know, it was it was a very weird kind of dynamic there, as I think it usually is. If you work for a couple, it was a couple at the time who were running it. And you got kind of we all got caught up in their their own personal drama. I mean, every couple has their own like psychodrama. And you just become part of that if you work in especially a restaurant that's that small. And they fired me multiple times and then would like rehire me. And it was like family, you know, slightly abusive family, but family.

33:50Well, I wanted to ask you about it mostly because it's a time in Brooklyn. It's like over it's like 20 years ago, basically. Like when you walk Brooklyn now, the streets of Brooklyn, I mean, it's like unrecognizable. Like what's it like working in a well-rated but like neighborhood restaurant Smith Street in early 2000? It was so great. And I just, again, feel like I was there at this exact right moment where Brooklyn was starting to become what, you know, there was very few restaurants that people would go to Brooklyn for at that point in time. Like, I remember I had an aunt who was living in Washington Heights at the time, my father's sister, and I took her to Brooklyn and she had never been there before.

34:33She had lived in New York City for like 30 years at that point. And, you know, people still had never been to Brooklyn. It's wild. It was wild. I will fully admit I lived in the East Village in 2002 and 2003 and I literally never went to Brooklyn. Yeah, no, it's crazy. It's wild. But, you know, it was the grocery had opened, Aldila had opened. I was there when Blue Ribbon Brooklyn opened, which was just a huge deal. So just to be able to see it become what it was becoming right from the ground, you know, and just it was such a great education for me. I write in the book about how I made a venture, went to work at Savoy in Manhattan and just hated it.

35:11I hated the pace of it. I hated the competitiveness of it. I hated that we were, you know, I mean, it was a great restaurant. Wow, what a great restaurant in Soho. I learned so much. Yeah, I learned so much. But I was in over my head and I realized that, like, I don't want to do that kind of restaurant work. I want the kind of restaurant work where you can make a connection to the customers. And I think that's why people loved groceries so much. It was an easy place to be a regular. It was an easy place to feel like you were taken care of. And like average check at that time, it's like under. Yeah, it was 90 bucks or something.

35:42If you drank wine, it was crazy. It's crazy how things have changed. Well, this leads to kind of the start of your writing career. And I wanted to share this memory. You know, Time Out New York is where I got my food writing started as well in 2006. And you write about writing early articles for Time Out New York and the team there. And also eGullit. Yes. I love that you were on EGOLA in the early 2000s. Talk about actually your early writing career and how you kind of started. You transitioned from working at restaurants to actually writing about it. So I was going to college at the new school, which was why I had moved back to New York, and I was going for writing and literature.

36:21But I know, and I was doing the things that you're supposed to do, pitching, kind of cold pitching people. I got this internship at Time Out, which was a lot about just fact-checking listings at the time. You know, it was kind of pre-internet almost, and so Time Out was very much about the listings. and every now and then they would throw me, you know, a small story to write, a blurb or something like that. But I also was working in literary agencies and but I kept on going back to the restaurant like I kept on going back to the grocery and taking shifts and I realized it was I mean it was partly monetary but it also was just because I really didn't want to let go of that conversation that around food and wine and I just kind of had this, you know, light bulb moment where I was like I really need to marry these two things.

37:09The two things that I'm doing with my life, one is around words and one is around dining. And so I realized that I should probably be trying to be a food writer if I was going to be trying to be a writer. And I applied to be the food writer at Time Out. And that's a whole rigmarole story. Yeah, internal politics. Yeah, yeah. Which didn't happen. But then I got pregnant. And so, you know, it's funny whenever I talk to young journalists about like, oh, how did you get your start? I'm like, I got knocked up and dropped out of college. That's how I got my start. So I was kind of lurking on eGullet a lot, which was, you know, this great forum that was just real punchy.

37:51And, you know, a lot of dumpling bros on there fighting it out. Yeah, it was like a lot of like pro-ply guys. Yeah, yes. That was the thing. And honestly, Eagle in the early days was where you found the good shit. Absolutely. There was no social media, obviously, and really very few internet sites that were writing about food. But man, you find people who are so passionate. Yeah, a lot of dumpling bros. I'm going to go around the world in a day. Yes, exactly. Stuff like that. And so I just got on there and there was this restaurant that had opened called Bistro St. Mark's that had got a review in the Times.

38:25And honestly, it was a big deal for a Brooklyn restaurant to get a review in the Times those days. And I went back kind of six months after they had opened and had just an awful experience there. And so I wrote a review of it. And it was funny because, like, a couple of the people on eGullet, especially because I had been a lurker. I wasn't somebody who had, like, a lot of posts or anything. And they were like, who are you? Like, they didn't. They were like, no, this is somebody who's, like, a writer that is, like, you know, which was nice. Like slumming it in the section. Yeah, totally. And which was a nice thing.

38:57It was fun. And my mother was living in North Carolina at the time. She knew an editor at the Alt Weekly there and she sent him that review and he really liked it. From the Eagullet post. From the Eagullet. Which is really just a post. Yeah, it was just a post. And he really loved it. And I ended up back there when I got pregnant. We moved back to North Carolina. That's where my mother was living at the time and where my partner's family lives still. And I eventually just because of that post on Eagle, it started writing for the Alt Weekly in North Carolina. And this is where your career takes a really cool, you know, change of direction.

39:34And which I love the way if you care about food writing, especially your memoir, really covers an era that isn't written about. Yeah. And this Alt Weekly culture. You meet Bill Addison, who's the critic at Creative Loafing. He's up in North Carolina doing a story. You guys hit it off. I mean, obviously Bill's Bill, so you're hitting it off with him. And you end up replacing him because he moves on to San Francisco. And you're kind of, you know, you parachute into Atlanta as the critic. And I want to hear about the time at Creative Loafing. It's another wonderful city. Atlanta is one of our greatest food cities.

40:11And you get to cover it robustly. But the story takes a little bit of a darker turn, not personally, but just the economics of it kind of caught up, the economics of Alt Weekly's caught up. Yeah, I really came in at the very end of the boom era for Alt Weekly's. And that ended with the launch of Craigslist, basically. It was also, you know, the beginning of social media. The way that I kind of got into criticism and was able to be anonymous is because it was like right after Facebook had launched and I was never on Facebook. Well, my face was never on Facebook. Yeah. And so, you know, I got there just as like the crash started to happen, I feel like.

40:55And I got to watch that in real time. The owner of the paper and, you know, that paper was owned by this family. There's all this kind of like Shakespearean drama around the family and hostile takeovers, sons taking over their mothers and stuff. But the owner of the paper at the time, you know, borrowed$40 million within the first year I was there to buy the Chicago Reader and Washington City paper. And then Craigslist happened. A tough time to be buying print. Yeah, exactly. And so the paper eventually got bought by venture capitalists and kind of decimated. And, you know, that's the story of Alt Weekly.

41:35Like somebody decides they want to be a mogul and borrows too much or, you know, does something foolhardy. We were all very pressured into, yeah, you have to have blogs, you have to, you know, do all this online stuff. But nobody had really thought about how to monetize it at all. And, you know, I mean, it's one of the things that really still makes me crazy about the Internet is I don't think people in media, apart from a couple of very, very smart publications, have figured out how to make the experience pleasurable for readers and still make some money. You know, you think about the Glossy magazine.

42:12You read the Glossy magazine in part because you like the ads. Do you know what I mean? Like you're not going to go through 100 pages of ads if you hate them. whereas online they just nobody has figured out how to make people enjoy it i mean yeah the display ad is dead i mean that's the whole conversation i think there's ways to monetize your your publication and keep it whole but let's like talk a little bit about what you found in atlanta in the restaurant scene you know east atlanta is having a big moment i mean you're you're seeing you know not just beaufort highway but like places even outside in like duluth yeah i mean what a cool city to cover yeah it was it was weird because when i first got there i feel like atlanta really didn't know what it wanted to be.

42:47It was kind of trying to be like Miami, but no beaches or Vegas without casinos, you know, that kind of big glitzy restaurant kind of ruled supreme. No sense of place. And it was really weird because in terms of music, it was already definitely like the heart of the South. Obviously Nashville for country music, but for hip hop, it was Atlanta. And it was a cultural mecca. It was where all the cool kids in all of the South want to move to. I mean, black culture in Atlanta is it's black Hollywood. It's everything. And and so it was really weird to see that not being reflected very much in the restaurants.

43:26There were a couple of exceptions, Watershed, Bacchanalia, places like that. But when I got there, I really longed for more of a sense of place. And I hammered that quite a bit. And then Then you started to see people like Stephen Satterfield, Miller Union, Holman and Finch. The Optimist. The Optimist. Like, yeah. And it just, I was there for this period of time where it became what it was supposed to be, I feel like, and what it still is, which is, you know, definitely to me still the capital of the South. And you can go there and eat southern food in so many different contexts from, you know, very, very ground level on up to super fine dining.

44:12And it's just it's one of my favorite cities in the world. I just I adore it. Yeah, I adore it, too. I would love to live there. I talk to my wife, Tamara, about this all the time. I would so live there. It's so green. Yeah, no, it's like a city in a forest. It's in a forest. It's culturally interesting. It's the people are amazing. I love it. And really, a lot of East Coasters, like, shade it because they've never been. Yeah, no, it's incredible. I mean, and also, you know, because I was there in my early 30s, it's where, like, most of my friends live. But, you know, there's nothing to do there, media wise.

44:44There's no chance. Challenging now, yeah. I mean, it's definitely eroded a bit. Hi there. It's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you. Do you have a guest request? 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.

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46:45Visit 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 zoom out a little bit. You wrote this brilliant kind of, it was an essay or it was just a lot of thoughts about chef culture. And I've never thought about chefs this way. And you really crack a code here. You are lumping chefs into two categories. the devotional versus the ego driven and it made me think and i kept i just like went through a list of checks in my head i'm like who um who are these people are they devotional or ego driven especially explain what you meant there so i think that the easiest kind of way to look at it and there's obviously a lot in between but you know there's the like evan funky who's like um in la who's like i am going to learn how to make pasta like the nanas in this tiny village i am going to devote my whole life to learning how to make pasta.

47:46That's the devotional where you are just devoted to a certain cuisine and getting it, you know, absolutely right. I think, you know, Andy Ricker is, you know, you can think of a lot of folks like that. And then on the opposite end of it, I would say is, you know, Jordan Kahn at Vespatine, which is like, I am going to reinvent the whole idea of food. You are going to eat it and you're not even going to feel like you're eating food like it's coming straight from you know my muse it's coming from my genius and um and I think that you know there are some there's there's quite a few chefs that have layers of both but I think most chefs it's usually kind of one or the other um and I love both of those things I think that you know there is brilliance in both of those things but it's a very different approach to cooking.

48:36It seems like in New York now, and I live here, so I know a little more than yourself, but there's more devotional. Yes. And I think it really dovetails with just so many chefs embracing culture and their own, or it could be others, but mostly just this idea that I'm going to study, I'm going to travel, I'm going to bring regional Vietnamese cuisine and cook it the way that I want to do and represent my culture. It seems like that those are the types of restaurants that at least the media and listeners are more into than these these broad proclamations. Yeah. Of like changing the concept. Sure.

49:15I mean, I think that the thing to be said about that is like that's a risk that is it's really it's really risky to do that. It's much safer to say, you know, I'm going to do this thing that there are books about that can teach me. There are people who can teach me. There are things that I can learn. But, yeah, I think both are necessary to kind of push culture forward and to keep diners interested. And I certainly, I mean, if I think about the way I want to eat most of the time, yeah, I would rather go eat a really good pasta or a really amazing, you know, southern Thai curry that is comforting and just done really beautifully than I want to eat, you know, something that is like an alien spawn or whatever.

49:59But when the person does that alien spawn well, that, I mean, that is incredible. Like that's when food kind of changes. And so, yeah, but I do think it's easier to get tripped up with the ego driven food. For sure. I wanted to give one example of Susanna Kopp's at Lola's in New York, like clearly a devotional show. I think of her as cooking her Southern heritage and her Asian heritage together. But like somebody who just works 80 hours a week towards the perfect salad or the sourdough cracker that is using their own methods of fermentation to get a great flavor. Yeah, absolutely. And and I mean, I also kind of relate to that because of my penchant for like research and like being obsessive about something.

50:47I mean, I think the other kind of food you can do that, too, but it's like all in your own head. I mean, it's just it's like, you know, classic jazz or improv jazz, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. That's good. I also like, Bashi, you were very early to write about American heritage restaurants. You wrote loving tributes and well-researched essays about Waffle House, Cracker Barrel. You write about Howard Johnson in the book. And I think food media has caught up and it's almost like a cottage industry to reflect on why TGA Fridays is cool. But you were really early. So I want to give you credit for somebody who is not born in America, but you're somebody who's really interested in American food history.

51:25Yeah. I mean, I think that not being born here is probably part of why I was interested in it first. I've always been just fascinated with American culture as a bit of an outsider. And it was always very baffling to me when I arrived as a teenager. There were so many things that I was like, oh, I thought that was just from the movies, but you guys really have pep rallies or whatever. But so, you know, yeah, I just got really interested in and I'm still really interested in the way that most people actually eat as opposed to the way that food media portrays the way that we eat, you know. And a lot of it is just so fascinating because it's all about like wars and, you know, commerce and highways and, you know, these much bigger cultural push and pull that we have.

52:10It's not about some genius chef coming along and writing a cookbook that everybody bought. You know, that's not that interesting of a story, frankly, to be like, oh, yeah, Julia Child came along. She was on TV and then people started cooking French food. Like, great. But like that's not nearly as interesting to me as being like these things happened because they invented refrigerated, you know, cars on trains and were able to then do this. Like this is how beef became so prevalent in the Midwest. It's not a media story. It's a story about the real foodways. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, so much of the way that households eat is because soldiers came back from certain wars with certain proclivities, you know, that kind of thing.

52:53So that to me just became really fascinating very early on. And it's still just one of my main kind of muses in life as a writer is to look at those things and to dig into them and to find those weird little stories that it's so fun. And it's been fun doing it in Australia, too, because nobody has done it there. So it's like I get to start again. I get to go and say, like, why do we have canned beetroots on everything? You know, and like figure it out. And nobody's ever done it. Speaking of beets, you wrote a great story about beets and gochis for taste. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. And I was looking back.

53:26I totally forgot you wrote a bunch of stories in 2018 for taste. They're great. I'm going to link to them because they're really, really great. Let's work on more stories. Yeah, totally. I love collaborating with you. I love it later in the book and listener like by the book and read the whole thing you get this story and there's this character Michelle you only give her first name and she's part of your life going back to North Carolina and you write about you had a difficult beginning to your relationship and then you eventually became close and this is Michelle Polzin from 20th Century Cafe in San Francisco absolute legend in the game so you kind of do this slow play and reveal who Michelle actually is.

54:07And really that section is a must read because it really is real talk about what it's like to run a restaurant that strives for perfection, that works with staff from many different generations and you could even say millennials and Gen Z. And the difficulties of it. And now the cafe closed full time and now there's pop-ups and I'm sure there's gonna be some updates. But I love her work. I'm a huge fan just from going to 20th Century Cafe. But why was it important to write about Michelle's story? So I feel like that chapter is one of the reasons why I felt like I had to write a book. Because that chapter initially I was trying to write a story about her for the San Francisco Chronicle.

54:49And I ended up writing this thing that was too long and too weird and just didn't fit any – like it could have fit as a New Yorker story, I think. That's the only place I could think that it might have run in its original form. Just too weird for a daily, too whatever. You know, I wanted to think about this one person's story, this one person who had this, you know, was just ahead of her time in so many ways over and over and over again. She was, you know, a pastry chef before that really was getting any, you know, it just wasn't being covered the way that it is covered now. She heard that Michael Bauer didn't want to review her when she opened 20th Century Cafe because it was not open at night.

55:34You know, all of these kind of old school things that we just don't pay attention to anymore. Like there are no rules now about what we cover and what we don't. And she was really trying to, after 20 years in this business of dealing with so much misogyny, so much abuse, you know, bad money, bad vibes between front and back of house because of the pay disparity. She was trying to solve all these problems within her own business and really couldn't. Like she couldn't. And it just it was so upsetting to me because I look at this industry and I look at the people in it who have the right ideas and the right heart.

56:17And Michelle is not somebody who's like super PC. You know, she's just like make it sluttier. Yeah. And she is really has no time for the kind of, oh, we have to have better work life balance. She's like, if you want to be good at what you do, this is your life. Like, deal with it. Very cancelable. Yes. Cancelable language. Yeah, totally. In our current time. But she clearly doesn't give a shit. No, she doesn't. She's so punk rock. She's the most punk rock person I've ever met. She's amazing. But like she also just I think that she's right. Like nobody has figured out how to do it without the hard work.

56:52Like it is a hard job. And if you sign up for it, and I know it's kind of this kind of tired cliche of like, you know, the military and whatever, but you don't sign up to go to the army to have like good work life balance or get paid very well. Like you do it because you are called to do it. And I think that's how she feels about kitchen stuff. and she really just struggled with being a boss, struggled with, you know, and I could see it from so many angles because I had been, you know, the receptacle of her wrath and it was really frightening and, but, you know, I also think, I know how hard she tried.

57:28I know how much she wanted to do it right. I know that she had all of the right intentions and she just couldn't make it work and I'm heartbroken about it, but she's happy. She's like, oh, I'm like so much happier. She wrote a terrific cookbook a few years back, which I love. Yeah, the book is great. And she's doing pop-ups, it seems. Yeah, she's doing pop-ups. You can still buy the honey cake from her. She's, you know. Legendary cake. Yeah. I mean, which she invented that you see everywhere in the world. You write about that. Let's stick there because you write about this idea that, yeah, like recipes were definitely being ripped off.

58:03You're seeing them in lots of cities. I mean, when you talk to her, how does she feel about that? She said, I did a therapy about it. She's like, I'm supposed to be happy that my, you know, ideas are so good that people would want to rip them off like that. You know, she's she's very conflicted about it. And she you can see her. She will go on Instagram if people post, you know, the New York Times often posts the recipe that Salmon did a version. And Michelle will go on there and be like, come on, like you got to at least name me. Like it is my recipe, you know. And, you know, if you go, if you click on it under the recipe, it does say that this was her recipe originally.

58:46But she also is like, look, defending the honey cake would be a full time job. Like I need to I've let it go. She's let it go. Michelle, come on the show. Like I want to talk to you. That would be amazing. She is the best. And she's very good. She has very good chat. Yeah, well, you wrote really great things about her. I'm really like honest and this is an honest memoir, not an easy read. And that's good. That's a good thing. I have to ask you in 2018, I think you had emailed me when you were doing this, but you were hired for, I would say in history, the most insane, probably the most misguided reporting assignment in the history of food writing.

59:29You were tasked with writing about 30 restaurants around the world and really trying to balance it out looking at the globe. And you write very brilliantly about this time when you're being asked to make these visits and you have this crazy deadline. Tell us about it. Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, misguided. We started doing it and we did not know what we would do. So that was the thing, right? I stand by the idea of it. And the idea of it was to take on the world's 50 best, take on Michelin and really do a guide. Needed. Yes, it's very needed. And do a guide that was like, if you were in this city, in this part of the world, where is the place you should visit?

1:00:13Like, where's the one place you should visit? And we had this amazing panel, global panel. So it wasn't like I was having to go in. You were given the list. Well, I wasn't given the list. I was given a long list. Oh, I see. And I would go to the restaurants and from the long list I was supposed to choose. But very often I'd be in a city and be like, well, I've been to these three places and none of them fit, you know, so let me do some of my own research quickly and try to get somewhere that that does. We were trying to balance it in terms of, you know, there's very few restaurants in Africa on those lists.

1:00:46Like, let's actually take a look at Africa. So I stand behind the idea behind it. The first year we did it especially, it was just a shit show. I mean, I was just, I was in, you know, I think it was 300 hours on a plane, like within three months, basically. Yeah, talk about like an itinerary. So, you know, I would get up in the morning. I wouldn't know where I was in the world. I would be like, oh, what day is it? Where am I? I would get on a plane. I would land in some city. I would get out. I'd be like, I don't know. Do I need cash? What currency is it here? Like, and I would get in a cab and go to a hotel and like shower and go to a restaurant and then come home and write notes and pass out and do it again.

1:01:33And talk about like where you I mean, you're like talking about like Beirut to Croatia to like South America to like America. Yeah, it was. I mean, yeah, the craziest was I was doing this in March of 2020 when COVID happened. And I write about how like I started in Brazil and then I went to Miami and then to Jamaica and then to Houston and then to Puerto Rico and then to New York City. And that was all within a week. That's insane. It was so crazy. I entered the U.S. three times in that first two weeks of COVID and didn't get COVID somehow. And then kind of hunkered down in Brooklyn with my friend Osai for a few days.

1:02:11And, you know, that was when everything was like, you know, Jean-Georges was calling and being like, yeah, we're not. Reservations getting cancelled here and there. And then they sent me home and it was good that they sent me home. I think I was on the last, you know, couple of flights before Australia closed its borders. But that kind of itinerary was the itinerary. That's how we did it. It was and it was just wild. I mean, and in the middle of all that, for instance, in Jamaica, I rented a car and was kind of driving across the top of Jamaica. And there was these flash floods and like mudslides happening all around me.

1:02:45And like I had never driven in Jamaica before. You know, it was just like. Yes, I was by myself. And it was just like there was so many instances like that where, you know, I was in Morocco and got dropped off at the, you know, at the edge of the Medina with my baggage and like my phone wasn't working because it's Morocco and I don't know where to go and I don't have any Moroccan money on me. You know, like it was intense. It was really, really intense. And I kind of knew it would be and it was a terrifying thing to take on. But it's also the type of thing you don't say no to. Hell no. I would never say no to that.

1:03:17Are you kidding me? You're interested in writing about food. I mean, did you end up netting out at a really interesting place with taking on Worlds 50? What happened? Is it still going on this list? Not that I know of. I mean, I have some Machiavellian plans in my head, you know. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah. I mean, look, I just need a sponsor. Somebody sponsor me. Yeah. Yeah, because I think I know how to do it right now. And I do think that it's really necessary. And the thing that was beautiful about that list is because, I mean, you look at those lists and I went to so many of those very fancy restaurants that are at the top of those lists.

1:03:53And some of them are pure misery, I got to say. They're just like not fun at all. And because it was in partnership with Travel and Leisure, it was very travel focused. And I loved the idea that like because of that, we could say, all right, we're in Beirut. Here's this amazing hummus restaurant you can go to for breakfast and have that on the same list that we had Noma on, you know. Amazing. And because not all cities are great for fine dining and not all travelers want fine dining. There was, you know, there was a certain number of those types of restaurants on that list. But I think it was less than half, certainly.

1:04:30And there was just a lot of stuff that was, you know, there's a taco truck in Tijuana. You don't go to Tijuana to eat, you know, at a fine dining restaurant. You shouldn't. Those places get missed in the list. I mean, the World's 50 is all about PR. It is, yeah. And Tourism Board is getting these voters to those locations and junkets. Yeah, absolutely. And I saw that so firsthand when the World's 50 Best came to Melbourne. They did it a couple of years ago. And that was the first time I ate at Attica. and like they had just booked out the whole restaurant for the whole weekend and were just shoving voters through there, you know.

1:05:02And I got to say, I used to, you know, vote for the world's 50 best. I don't anymore. You're not supposed to say that you do, but I think it's okay now that I don't anymore. And they have been trying to say, please put things on here that are, you know, that do whatever. You can put a taqueria on it. It's okay. But because it's a popularity contest, that's never going to work. You know, you have to it's just they tabulate the votes. And and, you know, one of my favorite restaurants that ended up on that list that we did for food and wine was this place in the jungle in Tabasco. And like I had to take a plane to this weird city that had nothing going for it and then get in a cab for 40 minutes.

1:05:42And then but the restaurant was amazing. There's just no chance in the world that that could get on any of the radar of any of these other places. And how that changes those restaurants when you get on an international list and it comes out and they're there. Yeah. Those are the kind of surprises that World's 50 tends to not have as much. They have sometimes and give them some credit. But, I mean, the voting is all about you have to physically go to the space to vote. And so to get to the space, you have to be either sent there by a tourism board or it has to be in a city that has this like apparatus.

1:06:16Yeah, absolutely. And we've seen it in Australia in recent years. We used to have quite a few restaurants on that list. And because of COVID and because our borders were closed for so long, we have nothing on the top 50 now because people just weren't there. It has to be. I mean, it's why New York is so highly representative, why Paris and London are. Yeah, there are great restaurants in those cities, but you visit those cities. Everybody visits those cities. So it just. Yeah, I would love to do it again and do it right. Like and I know how to do it. I've got it all in my head. I mean, OK, like we're talking on the show.

1:06:47you just need a sponsor to give you X amount of money and you have a formula and you have a judging kind of criteria. Is there one judge or are there multiple judges? I think that there are multiple judges and that there is probably one or two kind of final judges. You know, it should be somebody's list. It should be somebody should be able to stand behind it as a person or a couple of people. I think rather than this, there's too much safety in the kind of like, well, we just let the voters vote. You know what I mean? So I think that somebody should have to be able to speak to it. And why? Why were these things on this list?

1:07:22How much money do you need? Oh, a couple million bucks. A couple million, like a two or three million dollar investment. Yeah. And how do they monetize it as a brand? They want the halo to be part of this really well-researched and accredited list. Look, World's 50 Best has been pretty good at monetizing it. You know, there are all kinds of ways you can monetize it. But to me, the obvious is credit card companies because you give your cardholders access to these places. And, you know, those type of really high level cardholders are really invested in those type of experiences and those companies already doing that type of thing for those.

1:08:02It's a tiny amount of money for those people, you know. And I think, yeah, you think about Michelin. It's a tire company. They wouldn't have been doing this for the last hundred years if it wasn't working for them really well, you know, and that I mean, God, how much money do they spend? That's got to be tens of millions of dollars. So I think that there's a way to do this. So it would depend on what company it was. I think you could it could be an airline company. It could be a hotel company. A credit card company makes the most sense to me. Makes the most sense. Yeah. I mean, it goes back to the earlier sentiment how reviewing restaurants is a public service.

1:08:32Yeah. And if you're in the restaurant game, but maybe you're not writing about restaurants, but it's the halo effect of like the rising food culture. It's like, OK, maybe it's not going to be monetized to the dollar, but you're investing in restaurants. Yeah. And investing in restaurant criticism. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think, you know, that is for me also, I feel like because advertising is so wonky now and nobody really knows how it works and how it should work. The easiest thing is for the people who actually benefit the most from the content should just straight up pay for it, you know. So, you know, I think that's the Diageos of the world.

1:09:09That's the credit card companies of the world. You know, there's something to be said for like Rolex or whoever, but that's a different thing. Luxury is a little different. I think the list will not tip to only luxury. No, it won't. And that's the whole point. But I think like a financial services company. Melbourne, let's talk about what you're doing now because it seems that you are very active working in food criticism and editing. I haven't been down in years. I can't wait to visit you. Yes, come see. Everybody should come see me in Melbourne. Melbourne's just the best. It's so good. Love my hometown.

1:09:41I'm the critic at the Daily Paper there, you know, basic old school critic job. Review restaurants. Review restaurants. Yeah, we have hats, which are annoying. Wait, you have hats. Are these like, what kind of hats are these? It's like, it's basically, so we have a, it's a scoring system out of 20. And it's really frustrating. My paper's going to be so annoyed that I keep saying this. But like, because it's like 10 for food, five for service, three for like experience and two for value. And we do that. It makes it very difficult for us to then give. And then the hats are at the very top. So it's like if you get a 15, you get one hat.

1:10:19If you get a 16, you get two. And if you get an 18, you get three hats. So those are kind of like Michelin stars. The hats are, yeah. But, you know, the most exciting things to eat in Melbourne are not necessarily at that high end all the time. So it makes it very difficult. So now we have a critic's pick that is like not scoring. It's just too confusing. Wait, there's a critic pick? So you just need to pull one out yourself as a critic? If it scores pretty low. But I love it. then I don't put a score on it and I just say it's a critic's pick. Because, you know, we're starting to get almost okay tacos, you know, like in Melbourne.

1:10:52Austrians love Mexican food, though. They do, but the Mexican food there is terrible. Everything has mayonnaise in it. It's so bad. Ooh, ouch. Yeah, it's really bad. So I'm doing that. I'm also running this website called A+. I'm talking about the kind of setup financially that we were just talking about. It's completely funded by Asahi, but I have total editorial control, you know. And it's kind of supposed to be like Lucky Peach Meets Nation's restaurant news. You know, it's for the hospitality. Wow, that's a big deal. I love that. Yeah, I know. It's for the hospitality community. But we just do one long form piece a month and real deep dive into something.

1:11:31Love it. I just had a piece come out yesterday that's about how can a single restaurant change a town totally, you know, and looking at a couple of places in Australia where that's happened. And, you know, we've done deep dives on wage theft. And, you know, it's a really fun job. So I'm editing that and writing for them occasionally. But I'm the editor-in-chief of that. So that's fun. And then still freelancing like an idiot because I don't have time. But – Well, you love it. Yeah, I love it. You love the journalism. I love it. I do. And as much as it's been really good for me to be home in my city, you know, being able to swim at my pool every day, being able to see my family, I really do miss the broader, bigger cultural stories that you get to tell when you're doing travel stories for smart people or bigger cultural food stories.

1:12:20You know, this time I spent working for The New York Times in Australia was just so nourishing professionally. Yeah, I love that section. So, you know, Melissa and Priya are like are temporary now and they might be searching for a new. Are you putting your hand in the ring for that? The New York Times knows me very well. I think if they were interested, they would have told me, you know, I mean, it just seems like I was a critic for them for years. And so, I mean, that job, it's such a blessing and a curse, right? Like, I don't even know how I'd feel about it. It's, again, one of those things that you probably can't turn down if it's given to you.

1:12:55Exactly. I'd love to see you in New York. I love Melissa and Priya and, you know, they may take that role, but if they decide not to, I'd love to see you reviewing in New York City. I would love to come back to New York and be able to, you know, because this is where I started. Yeah, I know. And I love it. I mean, I've just been here for two days now and I'm like, God, I love this city. Happy to hear it. Yeah, yeah. But it's also, God, it's such a burden to take on that kind of responsibility. It's such a huge responsibility. It's a tough job. But I mean, but you're built for it, obviously. You've done it.

1:13:27I don't know how to do anything else. Yeah. Well, and also just respect for the critics, like all critics, putting yourself out there. Yeah. This gives some respect. Yeah. Beshan, this is Taste. We ask guests about their discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid-fire Fast and Furious taste check. Okay. Are you ready? I'm ready. The best fruit? Peach. The worst vegetable? Pawsnip. Why? It's bitter. It's like I'm not into that sweet bitter thing. Yeah, yeah. Like I'm not, yeah. It's, yeah. And you were reviewing in the days of the puree. Yeah. At its moment. Yeah, yeah.

1:14:01I just actually had a very parsnip puree heavy meal a couple of weeks ago. I mean, you know, I can tell if it's good. If people like parsnips, I'm not going to be like, this is bad because I don't like parsnips, but I don't like parsnips. As a side, where have you been going in the States? I should ask that at the jump. I mean, I have I have had I'm going to Kabawa tonight. Oh, cool. That's yeah. That's the thing that I'm really excited about is seeing what Paul's doing. In L.A., I just like shoved so many burritos in my face. That's all I did. And, yeah, I'm going to Atlanta tomorrow. So going to Ticonderoga, which is really exciting.

1:14:38Yeah. So I just go to the places that I'm nostalgic for more than, like, the new fun places. Obviously. Ticonderoga is a great little spot. All right. What's your typical breakfast? Coffee with milk. Nothing else? Nothing else. No. I got to save it. I would weigh 400 pounds if I just ate the way normal people eat and then ate the way that I eat. So, yeah, coffee. Coffee and then you're just getting to work. The best dessert. So my dad was kind of like an acolyte of Julia Child and he made chocolate mousse that had, you know, no gelatin in it, all egg whites and cream. And it's just like it was like so ethereal.

1:15:22Like you couldn't put it in the fridge. It would just collapse. You know, it was just like whipped egg whites with cream in it and so much dark chocolate. and then he would grate dark chocolate over the top. And it was just like, I've tried to recreate it. I can get kind of close. It's like a la minute? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you do, no, you do, you refrigerate it, but like it's really only good for like five hours, you know? I see, I see. I mean, it's still good the next day, but it's kind of deflated. And anyway, that's the best. I don't know where he got the recipe from. It might be a Julie Child, I don't think so.

1:15:53But anyway, I've been trying to recreate it. I can't. A restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead. Um, Grey's Papaya. I love that choice. I was so, like, I think I may have shed a tear when I had, because I went to school at the new school and I was so broke and like, I just lived on those hot dogs. Recession special. Yeah, that, it was like a slice or a Grey's Papaya or, um, or, you know, a bagel. That was, that was my dinner most days. When you're craving American fast food, where are you going? So the only fast, I know this is going to sound super snobbish of me, but the only fast food that I really crave is like a breakfast biscuit.

1:16:33Yeah. And I will eat that almost anywhere. Like, you know, there are places in the South that do it. Biscuitville is probably the best if we're talking fast food. But, you know, I will eat it at Popeye's. I will eat it at McDonald's. I will eat a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit from almost anyone. Biscuits, man. God, that sounds good. Yeah, I know. And that's one of the things that I don't have in Australia that I am really sad about. No one has brought it over? No. There was one guy who was doing a fried chicken sandwich on a big biscuit for a while, and people in Melbourne didn't get it, and now the fried chicken sandwich comes on a bun.

1:17:11Oh, they couldn't even roll with the biscuit. It's local taste. It just maybe doesn't work. What is your favorite city in the world to visit for food? Oh, Los Angeles. I mean, I know that. Yeah. And then if we're saying outside America, I would be remiss to not say Melbourne because I do feel that way. I also just, I mean, I really, again, such a cliche. I love Paris so much. And kind of like random, you know, what's really great is Brazil. Both cities and, you know, really, really incredible food there, which I was not necessarily expecting. That's one of the places that I'm like, need to go back.

1:17:52Yeah, I love that. Last one, your favorite sandwich. So much depends on what mood you're in or where you are in the world. But I'll tell you about the kind of most important favorite sandwich to me, which is if you go to Tarrytown, New York, and you go to the deli on Main Street, and there's like a bench outside of it that kind of looks over. It might be North Tarrytown, which is now called Sleepy Hollow, much to my horror. there's a bench that like looks out over the Hudson River and if you go into that deli and you get like a hero with turkey, monster cheese, lettuce, salt and pepper mayonnaise and you go sit on that bench and it's like, you know, Helen Rosner was talking about how like the best, the most important ingredient in a sandwich is air, you know?

1:18:38I love that. Yeah, it was very smart of her. And it just, it's got that, you know, the shaved lettuce So it's got like the air in it and then just like something. It's just that is to me like one of the most important sandwich memories in my life. And I try to recreate it whenever I'm in New York, anywhere in New York. Nobody else can do it. It's only a New York. Yeah, it's that lettuce and the space between the lettuce. The space between the lettuce and then the kind of fudginess of the meat with the cheese and then the creaminess of the. And then you've got to get like good salt and pepper. Always got a salt and pepper sandwich at the deli.

1:19:11Yeah. So, Beshordal, this has been so much fun. So great to catch up with you. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thank you so much for having me.

1:19:21This 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