619: Aimee France Has The Internet’s Attention

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. I think when passion becomes career, you can become really stuck in a routine and you lose the inspiration to make what you like originally were loving to make. Like when I started posting more food videos, I was discovering and kind of feeling that excitement around food again. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbinell. Amy France is a cake baker and internet personality based in Brooklyn. You may formally know her on Instagram as Young Kombucha 420. Her distinctly bumpy cakes and elaborate eating habits have won over many fans online.

1:12And it's so fun to have her into the studio to go deep on her singular perspective on food, from her three drink minimum breakfasts to unexpected sources of inspiration. And at the top of the show, it's the return of three things, where Eliza and I talk about what is exciting us in the world of restaurants, cookbooks, and the food world as a whole. Eliza, we're back with Three Things. How are you? I'm good, Matt. I'm ready to talk Three Things. Do you have a rec for me? I'm going to start. I just got back from Barcelona. We were doing taste travels there and had an amazing trip. Wonderful travelers, great tour guide.

1:48We do these a couple times a year. We're doing one in September with Mauricio Leo. but I got to sneak away from the group and have a couple meals but this one meal was the real highlight it was my birthday I was dining solo done that before June is a busy travel time for work so I've been on the road during my birthday and Eliza I have a place that I think you will like it's called Ultra Marina's Marin seafood is the star wow what did you eat? I had so many great things A little bit about the restaurant. It's from a chef named Borgia Ordono, and he is a chef that he used to work at Axtabari and in some of the great Spanish fine dining temples.

2:33And he, a few years back, took over kind of a dive bar is what I've read about. And Matt Golding gave me this recommendation to help me with the reservation. He have Roads and Kingdoms and he's been on the show. So thank you, Matt, for doing that. But what I've read is it's a restaurant that started very humbly and casually and has now become a real go-to. It's kind of a restaurant in two phases. And during the day, and I was dining there at night, so I didn't get to see this full grill on display. But it's all about grilled seafood and long fermentation and kind of coupling these crudos and raw fish along with the grill of whole fish.

3:10And wood smoking is the thing. So I didn't get to experience that, unfortunately. But what I got to experience, it was all seafood on the plancha. And I was sitting at the bar and I got to get got to hang out and meet the meet the guy working the plancha. And what what a world changing seafood meal for me. I'll go over some highlights. I think what they do so well is they know temperature. They're either cooking the seafood extremely quickly or they're cooking it hard and hot for texture. So they're thinking a lot about texture, and one of these dishes was the red shrimp, which was just kissed on the grill, probably 20 seconds each side.

3:46So when it arrived, it was pretty much raw, but the head was seared. So you had that little bit of smoke, but you're eating this very, very custardy shrimp. What's great about the restaurant is that it's not just the seafood with a little bit of citrus or lemon. They're all about their garum. They're using the Roman-style fish sauce, but it's their house garum. So it's not just the fish sauce. And it actually presented very differently from Roman fish sauce, which can be quite one-dimensional and great. But they were adding, and he would not tell me, I asked him three times, but they're adding other components.

4:19So there's more acidity and sweetness in the sauce. And he's got these giant squeeze bottles. He's squeezing the plancha before the seafood hits the grill. And then after it, he's grabbing a second bottle and he's dressing it. So the seafood is very dressed. And I loved this about it. I saw this technique time and again. There was a cured bonito, like a really small tuna belly that had a little bit of garam on it as well. Loved that. Then I kind of shifted away from seafood and had a couple. I had a wonderful jamon berico and a beef tongue that had been thinly sliced, perfectly presented with some great Spanish cheese.

4:59And for the main seafood, I had like a rockfish. It was a local fish, and it was a half fish that was seared hard under weight. So you get that sear when you see that fish where it's kind of flattened out. The head is flattened, and it comes to your table, and it came simply dressed with salt, a little bit of garum, and a side of lemon. And it was deboned really properly, so it wasn't battling bones. Well, Isaiah, it was so good. For dessert, there was this tocinillo. All it was was egg yolks, sugar, and water. It wasn't really a custard. There was no milk in it. So it was really intense and the eggs were really, really, really yellow.

5:37And it was like the richest dessert after this kind of light seafood meal. So I walked away. I was so full from the dessert. But I just love this place. Ultra Marino's Marin in Barcelona. That sounds so great. I'm glad you had a nice birthday meal. Thank you. It was great. What's your first thing? My first thing is I went to Santo Taco, which is the new taqueria upstairs at La Esquina. Yeah. Which I just need to say on the record, I think there's been a lot of concern that La Esquina is closed and it is not closed. The downstairs restaurant is still open. They've just given the upstairs section to Santiago Perez, who I think most people know in the restaurant industry here in New York as a partner with Enrique Alvera at like Atla and Pujol and Damian.

6:18And this is his own kind of solo restaurant. And they're doing some really nice just kind of like perfectly executed tacos. are like their steak trompo taco that they're doing, which is like strip and sirloin and avocado salsa. Also their mushroom taco. I love a good mushroom taco that feels like juicy and hefty. And I think they're doing a mix of shiitake and cremini, but it gives you this really nice, like juicy, earthy flavor. And you can just kind of like sit on that corner and eat your tacos. Also, they have a really nice agua fresca that's like a pineapple, cucumber, lime situation. What's the vibe like there?

6:54I mean, are people lining up? Because Ryan Sutton wrote a really long post about this restaurant, and I was instantly interested in going. Yeah, I was there on like a Thursday early evening, and there was not a line like down the block, but there were certainly a lot of people in line. And, you know, it's like a quick turnover kind of. Eat your tacos, you go on your way. So it was moving, but there certainly were a lot of people there. And Santo also, or Santiago, I don't know if he goes by Santo. Santiago was working the line, passing things out to people, which I think to be someone who's such a hospitality veteran but has been maybe, you know, further removed or higher up to like be in that kind of service capacity, it seemed like he was really enjoying it.

7:33I love that rec. I'm going to have to go. I've heard great things about it. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Yeah. What's your next thing? My next thing is I'm sticking in Barcelona, but it's a little different. It's not an exclusive restaurant where you have to know somebody to get a reservation. This is a food shop. It's called Via Vinoteca, and it's right in the Gothic neighborhood, right where the tourism happens. And listen, Barcelona is a city of tourists. Lots of cruise ships, lots of people for a reason. It's gorgeous. It's lots of history there. It's wonderful to walk around. But if you're going to Barcelona, I'm giving this rec because, you know, you often when you're traveling, you want to bring back gifts for friends, for colleagues, for co-hosts of podcasts.

8:12and I loved this shop so much. The Hamon Berico selection is, of course, legend, and there's like seven or eight different varieties, all vacuum sealed to take home, which is not legal for the record, but you know, you can sneak it in your bag if you're not going to ask just saying that. Lots of conversation with our travelers about if it's legal or not. Well, it's not legal, but just don't tell anyone about what you're packing away. But really what I like about this place is you can go there and buy conservas and there's like cockles and mussels and tuna and just so many great little tins of fish that can be brought back.

8:47I bought some Spanish mayonnaise. I bought some wonderful hard cheeses there, and you can get soft cheeses if you're staying locally in an Airbnb or a hotel. You can get soft cheeses. But if you're there too, you can get your own cheese plate made for you and have a great glass of wine or an NA beer, really casual little cafe there. I just think if you're in Barcelona for a short time and you're in really that tourist area, which is littered with restaurants I probably wouldn't recommend. This is the place, Via Vinoteca. Love it. Great rack, honestly. Yeah, thanks. What's your next one? My next one is I went to Tashkent Supermarket yesterday when I was down in Brighton Beach.

9:24And I think a lot of people have been talking about their new location that opened off of West 4th Street, which is great. But I do think there's something to be said for going to the source and being surrounded by all of the aunties and grandmas that are picking up their food for the week. It does mean that you have to be like really on what you want at the hot bar. But I, you know, went off the beach and then picked up a bunch of things for dinner. I got a lot of pickles. I got their grated beet salad, which I really like. Oh, yeah. Stuffed cabbage. And then plov, which is like the kind of rice pilaf meat situation.

9:58Those are the main things I got. But I really like blacked out in the pastry aisle and I bought so many. It's like a rage blackout in reverse. It's like a joy blackout. Yes. Yeah. I just, you know, I feel like I completely forget. what's in my basket. Like to me, I have an empty basket and I just keep filling things up with object permanence. I have no object permanence. Yeah. When you're shopping for pastries in Brighton Beach. Their baklava also is incredible. It's the best baklava I've had in recent memory. And I brought one to my Greek friend who I think is very proud of Greek style baklava.

10:29And she begrudgingly admitted that it was really good. Sidebar, what makes great baklava? I'm really curious about your answer. Good question. I think for me, I like it to be, you know, certainly like sticky honeyed but i don't want it to be like overwhelming honey flavor i want the nuts to still be really coming through and they have like a really generous amount of pistachio and this kind of flaky pastry but then it is kind of held together really well like sometimes when you pick up baklava the top comes off and this is sandwiched on you have when it kind of melts in your hand or deconstructs in your hand it's totally a bad sign i agree with you with the honey thing if it's overpowering and just too sweet you're not tasting the nuts you're not tasting any of the the the finesse there it's it's bad if it's only one note so i agree with you fully yeah that's my recommendation is going to have a little beach day and going to tashkent after tashkent baby what's your last thing my last thing is i was in chicago for the james beard awards and we had a really nice lunch at fatu uh which is in the avondale neighborhood it's a great carolyn restaurant i've been now listen i'm not like super up on like every restaurant new york City, like every restaurant.

11:36But to my knowledge, there isn't like a standout Carolyn restaurant in New York City that I have am going to seek out if I'm incorrect, please write in. But I love Carolyn food. I got to collaborate on a cookbook with a Carolyn author, Asha Gomez. And I have always enjoyed the way coconut, coconut oil and the way, you know, fried chicken is done there. And I am just I'm loving this restaurant. The chef is Margaret Pak. And she her husband is from Kerala and she's been studying the cuisine for a very long time. And I had a great sambar, which I think a great sambar is is something that you want to judge a restaurant by.

12:13Of course, there was the fried chicken that came with chatter tots, which were dusted with chopped masala, which I had not tried that combination. And I was like, this is really, really smart and good. And then there was a kandala curry with roasted coconut gravy and two sides, a delicious appam and some jira rice. And I loved this meal. I want to go back for dinner and try it. I got to – it was a little celebratory lunch of James Beard nominees and got to sit next to Carolina Gellin on my left, Nicola Lamb on my right. Got to catch up about cookbooks and I just loved their company. So the restaurant is thought to – and while we're at it, we haven't talked about this on the show, but Taste was nominated for two James Beard Awards.

12:56I want to recognize Luke Pineson for his nomination in Personal Essay. And Adam Reiner won a James Beard Award for his feature on Trader Joe's and how Trader Joe's likes to steal IP. I'll just leave it at that. I think you probably read the story when it came out last year. But Adam gave just the most gracious speech about the people in the piece. He was giving credit to them, which I thought was so gracious of him. major congratulations to Adam on that and to Luke as well for the nomination. And I was only in Chicago for a few nights. And this was a real highlight. The restaurant is Tatu. Yeah, they're both such great writers and such important pieces.

13:39And I'm glad that you got to celebrate there. It sounds like a good meal. It was a great meal. What is your last of three things? My last thing is, did you know that Natura is doing event catering? No idea. And I bet it's not cheap. It's delicious is what it is. I was at Faccia Bruto. They did a party for their fifth anniversary at their headquarters. And I walked into this warehouse and avoided my friends, avoided the bar, went directly to pick up some of this most delicious fruit. They had like a platter with really good salty flaky cheese and plums. They had pizza, like a burrata salad. They had snap pea, crudite, pasta salad, all these incredible things.

14:18And I went up to my friend Tavo, who was doing the PR for the event, and started telling him about how incredible all the food was. And he told me that Natura had started doing catering, which if you're listening and you're not familiar, they're a really great grocery delivery service for restaurants, but also home cooks kind of in New York, but also around the world to a certain extent. We've had them on the show to talk about their incredible sourcing practices in the past. And I think it just made so much sense to me that at least here in New York, they would be expanding into, you know, not only providing the raw ingredients, but cooking them, arranging them, having them be as part of a party.

14:51And it really was just like the first time that I had so many fruits of the summer. Like I got to cross like seven things off my bucket list that I've been wanting to eat. So it was very exciting. It sure is great. They have wonderful produce delivery and the fact that you could just dial up a fruit basket or a crudité plate from them. I like that. It was awesome. And also, you know, it went so well with Faccio Bruto. I really love their drinks and I had a delicious spritz and it was just such a lovely way to kick off summer. And what branding. That brand, they just got that on lock. They've got it dialed in.

15:23So good. Well, thanks for sharing your three things. You too. From February 20th to March 7th, dive into Canada's biggest culinary festival, Montreal en Lumière. An exclusive partnership with the McCord Stewart Museum and its exhibition, On the Menu Montreal, a restaurant story. The 2026 festival invites food lovers on a flavorful journey through time. Montreal's top restaurateurs will reimagine 65 years of the city's iconic astronomy, crafting inventive, nostalgia-inspired dishes with a modern twist. Prepare your palate. World-renowned chefs, including several Michelin-starred talents, will team up with over 80 of Montreal's finest local chefs to create unforgettable, one-of-a-kind menus.

16:10The full program is available at MontrealOnLumiere.com, presented by Lotto Quebec in collaboration with National Bank. This episode is brought to you by Aura Frames. If you're one of those last-minute shoppers, you might know the feeling. Ideas are running low and the clock is ticking. Here's a fun idea. Aura Frames. Aura Frames is the solution with a gift that feels personal, a little curated, and sent with love. And a gift that can be purchased in no time with a few clicks of the mouse. Aura Frames are great. They sent me one to check out, and it was really cool and dumb simple to set up. I loaded photos using the app, and it was displaying them instantly.

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17:30That's A-U-R-A frames dot com, promo code TASTE. The deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Amy France, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to have you in the studio today. I feel like you're someone that I have so many random little food questions for, and I'm excited we get to chat. Yeah, me too. I feel like we have, like, random, like, memories as well. like the cake scene party so long ago that I made the cake for at Farm to People.

18:08That was such a crazy, that was like the second cake scene event. So I think we were still understanding the full scale of what we were embarking upon and what it feels like to distribute cake to a very large crowd of excited people. And you handled it like a pro. Yeah, it was fun. Do you remember the cake that you made? Yeah, it was, I did like a take on peanut butter and jelly because it was the fall time. So I think I did something with like grapes and cranberry jam and then a black sesame buttercream. It might have just been like a plain olive oil cake. But I remember it was black. Yes. It was the Wicked Cake party.

18:49So I think a lot of people embarked on a kind of spooky, scary kind of cake situation, which is why it was black. But I remember it just being delicious and realizing that we were going to have to deconstruct and pass it out to people. in real time, which is such a like honestly harrowing experience. But you seemed fine. Yeah, it was chill. I looked back on videos that people took. I feel like I was like my eyes were like bugging while I was cutting it. I couldn't stop giggling. But it was like a beautiful experience, a great memory. We're trauma bonded forever. I want to ask you before we talk about anything else, what you had for breakfast today, because I think that people who follow you on Instagram have a really strong interest and fixation on your breakfasts.

19:32And I'm one of them. I love that. Thank you. Okay, right now I'm in the yogurt granola bowl fixation because it's summer and there's just so many cool and interesting berries at the farmer's market right now. So I had some Greek yogurt with a plethora of berries, golden raspberries, black raspberries, blackberries, and I got alpine strawberries at the market. Cherry Lane Farms had them. they're like this like variety of really tiny strawberry but they taste like grape nerds whoa the candy so cool um so i had that and then a jammy egg just like i always need to have a savory element with it obviously the three drinks three drink minimum green juice had a a mint tea and then in the summer I like to have an Americano and I put a little bit of honey in it just to kind of cut the acidity a bit so it's not like a super sweet coffee drink but it just like makes it not as as bitter and intense I guess do you make the green the green juice or you buy it I buy it from I wish I had a juicer I really do I just like don't really have the space in my apartment for it.

20:52You would be too powerful if you had a juicer. That would be iconic. If anyone wants to send me one, I would take that. But there's a grocery store in my neighborhood that I call the Erwan of Bushwick. And they have a juice bar, but they sell just like little bottles of juice that you can buy. And they have great green juice. Is this the Hana Market off of the Jefferson Elm? No, I'm going to gatekeep it, though, just so not to dox my location. Okay. But I can tell you off the mic. Off mic. Yeah. I appreciate that. And I appreciate the plethora of berries. I have a follow up question, which is I don't think I've ever had a black raspberry before.

21:30Does it taste any different? It's in the Bramble family. And I would say it's similar to a raspberry. Think like a raspberry, but a blackberry had a baby. So it's not. I feel like blackberries can be like super sweet. and this is definitely a little bit more tart. I grew up, like they just kind of grew, they're super invasive in New England and they just kind of grow on the street. And for the longest time, when I wasn't super knowledgeable about foraging and like the difference between a bramble and a blackberry and a black raspberry, I always thought they were blackberries. And then I learned more and I was like, oh my God, these are kind of like a coveted item that's just growing everywhere.

22:17so it's always really fun when they arrive at the farmer's market do you think if you were blindfolded and you did a taste test you could tell the difference between a normal raspberry a golden raspberry and a black raspberry i think so i wish i had them all in front of me but i didn't know they i know we should have done a taste test i'm interested in hearing more about how you grew up and i'm wondering if you have a early food memory that you could share with me that you think shed some kind of light into the way that you thought about food or think about food? Yeah, so I grew up in New Hampshire and just like, I always say it's like a Boston suburb because I literally lived on the Massachusetts border.

22:59And I don't know, I feel like I don't have like a ton of early food memories for some reason. It wasn't like, like the things that I remember is my mom would make like meatloaf, like just like normal dinners. And then she would occasionally make some type of like Portuguese food because I'm half Portuguese. But she did like always bake my birthday cake every year. And she worked at a bakery in high school and then I think like early college. and there was this cake uh the bakery was called perry's bakery and it was a chocolate cake and she would always make it for my birthday and i remember being in the kitchen like watching her at the stand mixer making it and i was always really scared of the stand mixer it just intimidated me but i always liked watching her make the birthday cake like it was such a cool thing.

23:57And then I think as I got older, I started to use a stand mixer and I wasn't scared of it. And then I was like, oh, wait, I could like make this cake myself. In high school, I went vegan. And I think that was kind of a turning point of me getting into cooking because my mom was like, okay, you can go vegan, but I'm not cooking you a separate meal. And I think that got me more involved in like, you know, discovering produce in a way that I'd never seen it before, just because I was like eating such a plant-based diet. And I think that experience, like without ever going vegan, I don't think I would cook the way that I do now, even though I don't have any dietary restrictions anymore.

24:50Yeah, I think it's especially interesting to be a baker because I think there is this whole world of vegan baking, but it requires a lot of kind of knowledge and imagination to think about how do you constitutionally make a cake or something without those ingredients. So I think even though that's not the kind of baking that you do right now, it makes sense to me that you have that kind of knowledge or that kind of way of thinking about things. Yeah. And I think that's kind of how I started out everything because actually like a decent amount of the components of my cakes are accidentally vegan um the base cake that i make is vegan and a lot of the fillings just because that's kind of how i started out making them and they i mean you're just like you wouldn't really know um but i think it was cool it to learn the science behind kind of how do i like recreate this texture and the same mouthfeel and everything in a vegan version.

25:49And I think going un-vegan and then actually being able to taste the real thing and then trying to recreate it in a vegan version was like a cool food science learning experience for me. Yeah. Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. And I want to talk a little bit more about maybe what draws you to cake as a medium, because I think the reason why a lot of people know who you are today is through this cake baking business that you were able to launch on Instagram during the pandemic and have this really kind of strong I don't know viral is the right word for it but just kind of like a visceral reaction from people who are seeing your cakes like what made you want to be making cake and how did you land on the style of cake that you do I was making cakes for fun before the pandemic and I would just kind of post them on my like I I had like a private Instagram account and I was posting them.

26:45And then just kind of during the pandemic, I ended up being at my parents' house like by accident. I didn't like mean to be there. I was just supposed to go home for my birthday literally the day before the pandemic happened. And then I just couldn't come back to New York. And I was also in college. I never got to do an internship. so I was like maybe I should try to teach myself like everything about baking just because I have the time um and I just started making cakes for some reason I don't know why I was drawn to cake specifically but I just I don't know maybe because there was a lot of seasonal produce available and I was near a ton of farms so I would go berry picking with my mom and then we would make a cake with it or I'd make a jam.

27:39And I think I really like the process of making a cake and all of the thinking behind the flavor combination and everything. And just, I don't know, a cake, it's like such a celebratory thing and it's so beautiful when you have the end result. You have a sense of accomplishment. Yeah, exactly. That like, it felt good. Like you made it and you're like, okay, like I did this one, like what's next? Like what can I do next? And then when did you transition into having it be a business where people were ordering cake from you? So when I ended up coming back to New York, I had all of these recipes and I was like, I feel like I have an Instagram following.

28:20Maybe I could try to do a pop up and sell stuff. So I did Hester Street Fair when it was actually like still on Hester Street. And I just bought a table and I did a pop up and it sold out. and that was kind of a moment of being like whoa people there's actually like demand for this um and then from the pop-ups I was just like from word of mouth I got commissioned orders and it started being a steady thing and then I was about to graduate college and my parents were like okay like are you getting a job and I was like I think I can start a business like I have a decent amount of money saved and I'm like still getting orders and I kind of just took the risk and it somehow ended up working out I feel so grateful and when I talk about it it also like doesn't fully feel real still it's just I don't know just like a very interesting position for me to be in and I definitely think like other people that make cake similar to me that started around the pandemic time feel a very similar way to the whole thing how it's just like I don't know it really organically happened obviously cake is something that I have thought a lot about through the context of doing cake scene and I think one of the reasons why we wanted to start cake scene in the first place was that we were on Instagram at home on our phones during the pandemic and seeing your cakes and Gigi's cakes and all of these other cake bakers who were posting these beautiful creations and having this incredible response.