666: Vittles Editor Jonathan Nunn Is Redefining UK Food Media

6 Oct 2025 · 1 h 9 min

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Podcast Episode Summary: This Is TASTE - Episode 666: Vittles Editor Jonathan Nunn Is Redefining UK Food Media

Episode Overview In this episode of This Is TASTE, hosts Aliza Abarbanel and Matt Rodbard welcome Jonathan Nunn, founder and co-editor of Vittles, a food and culture newsletter based in the UK and India. The conversation centers around the unique narrative of UK food media, the vision behind Vittles, and various food experiences shared by the hosts.

Key Themes

  • Vittles' Mission: Jonathan discusses how Vittles aims to provide a fresh perspective on food writing in the UK, emphasizing its non-American-centric approach.
  • Restaurant Experiences: Aliza and Matt share their recent dining experiences which incorporate a variety of cuisines and highlight the vibrant food scene in New York and beyond.
  • Food Media Landscape: The discussion touches on the challenges and opportunities within food journalism, particularly in light of social media's influence.

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Three Things Segment At the beginning of the episode, Aliza and Matt share three things that excite them in the culinary world:

Aliza's Highlights

  1. Elbow Bakery:
  2. Notable items: Potato knish and a unique sandwich (dark rye bread with cream cheese and walnut foillotine).
  3. Location: Lower East Side, NYC.
  1. Eng’s Restaurant:
  2. A personal recommendation highlighting the mid-century vibes and authentic Chinese-American cuisine.
  1. Russian Samovar:
  2. Described as a perfect venue for group dinners with live music and traditional Russian dishes.

Matt's Highlights

  1. Tom Sitt's Aang's Restaurant:
  2. A personal connection as it's operated by a colleague's family.
  3. Features a traditional Chinese-American menu.
  1. Hetty McKinnon’s Viral Tomato Dumpling Salad:
  2. A recipe that combines fresh tomatoes with dumplings, topped with a chili crisp vinaigrette.
  1. Heydoh Soy Sauce:
  2. A new soy sauce from Clarissa Way, praised for its unique flavor profile, specifically designed for finishing dishes.

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In-Depth Discussion with Jonathan Nunn Background on Vittles

  • Founding: Jonathan explains Vittles as a response to the lack of diverse and meaningful food writing in the UK.
  • Editorial Vision: The publication aims to cover food culture beyond just restaurants, including personal essays, long-form reporting, and recipes.

Approach to Food Writing

  • Audience Diversity: Vittles appeals to a varied audience, including older generations and an international readership, breaking the stereotype of the typical food media consumer.
  • Content Strategy: The team prioritizes thoughtful storytelling over rapid responses to trends, allowing for deeper exploration of food topics.

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Food Culture Insights London vs. New York

  • Jonathan shares observations on how both cities influence each other's food scenes while maintaining their unique characteristics.
  • He reflects on the importance of local and diasporic cuisines in shaping London’s identity.

Restaurant Recommendations and Critique

  • Jonathan discusses his approach to reviewing restaurants, emphasizing the importance of thoughtful critiques that capture the spirit of a place without overwhelming it with hype.
  • He mentions how the social media landscape has changed the dynamics of restaurant coverage and consumer expectations.

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Closing Remarks Upcoming Projects

  • Jonathan shares insights on the upcoming second issue of Vittles' print magazine, themed around "bad food," aiming to inject humor and absurdity into the narrative.

Final Thoughts

  • The episode concludes with a rapid-fire segment where Jonathan shares his favorite food spots and personal preferences in London, reflecting his deep connection to the city's food culture.

Acknowledgments

  • Hosts Matt Rodbard and Aliza Abarbanel thank listeners and encourage them to explore the vibrant culinary narratives discussed throughout the episode.

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Key Takeaways

  • Reimagining Food Media: Vittles is carving a new path in UK food writing by prioritizing diverse voices and unique stories.
  • Experiential Dining: Personal dining experiences shared by the hosts emphasize the joys of culinary exploration in both local and international contexts.
  • Culinary Conversations: The episode illustrates the importance of thoughtful dialogue around food culture, moving beyond mere trends to deeper narratives.

Links and Resources

  • Visit [Vittles](https://www.vittles.earth) for more insights into UK food culture.
  • Explore more episodes of This Is TASTE on platforms like [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com) and [Spotify](https://spotify.com).

Subscribe

  • For updates on future episodes and culinary trends, subscribe to the This Is TASTE newsletter and follow them on social media.

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Transcript

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0:00This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Resi is a digital platform that connects restaurants to restaurant lovers by elevating dining experiences, providing original industry content, and helping to fill some of the country's most exciting dining rooms. Because restaurants have always been more than just places to eat. The amazing world of restaurants is just a few taps away in the Resi app and at resi.com.

0:31we also don't publish a lot of american food writers either and that's a conscious decision not because we don't love them but because you know we really want to offer something that feels different to you know the wider ecosystem of american food writing that's out there and i think americans respond quite well to that as well i think they can tell that every article isn't sort of made for them. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel. Jonathan Nunn is the London-based founder and co-editor of Vittles, a food and culture newsletter based in the UK and India. Vittles is a singular source for incisive writing about contemporary food culture, from deep dives to restaurant reviews.

1:13And it's a pleasure to have Jonathan in the studio to talk about what's shaping their ever-growing coverage. 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 doing? I'm good, Matt. How are you? I'm great. Do you want to start with your first of three things? Do I want to start? Yeah, I can start. Okay. My first thing is that I finally went to Elbow Bakery, which is Zoe Kanan's bakery down Lower East Side. Have you been before?

1:48I have been. It was mile 11 of Clayton and I running the New York City Bakery Half Marathon. Sorry, have you been? Have you had a transcendental life experience at Elbow Bakery? No, I haven't actually been, Ben. I've sat outside and tried to drink water and basically was sweating the whole time. Yeah. Well, I went in a much less intense context, which was just to grab some pastries. And I have been, you know, kicking myself that I hadn't gone sooner because I really loved it. And the two best things that I had that I want to talk about are, number one, the potato knish, which I think is like the perfect size for a knish.

2:26It's not, I'm like gesturing wildly in the studio right now. I would say it's like the size of the palm of your hand, maybe as opposed to like the volleyball sized knish you would maybe get elsewhere on the Lower East Side. And the ratio of filling, which is this really beautiful kind of like dilly, oniony potato filling, almost like a chicken soup kind of flavor to the exterior is really great. And then the other thing I got, which is what I've been kind of lusting after online, is this sandwich that they do. It's the only sandwich they do, I believe. It's dark rye bread, cream cheese, and walnut foillotine, which is basically little crispy crepes that are mixed in with this walnut butter.

3:07So you have this kind of creamy, slightly crunchy sandwich. Super good. Super good. We had pretzels there, the sweet potato pretzel. That was incredible. And I need to go actually have a proper visit. Seek out the sandwich, I would say. It's kind of an unusual sandwich. I've never had anything like it before. And I like the rethinking of the size of the knish because I agree. It's always been like a no-go for me because it's just too big and a little starchy. Yeah, it was great. What's your first thing? My first thing is I went to another Kingston restaurant that I want to shout out because I'm on a roll up there.

3:41I just love visiting it. I've said enough about Kingston probably because it's one of New York's finest food cities. I went to Ang's Restaurant, which to me is a little personal. My great colleague here, Jen Sitt, she's an editor at Clarkson Potter, edits many of the cookbooks we talk about on the show. It's her father's restaurant, her family's restaurant. Her father is Tom Sitt, and he's been operating this restaurant since the 70s. But the restaurant's been running in Kingston since 1927. And it is, first off, aesthetically, it's an incredible place. It has – it's like a preserved mid-century Chinese-American restaurant.

4:19Carpet, really cozy booths, big banquettes in the back or banquet tables. and it was so kind of pitch perfect in that vibe that it was the home to a very memorable scene from last season of Severance. They filmed there and they made it at one of the restaurants. But really the food to me is what stood out and it's really, really good. We ordered this amazing poopoo platter, this giant with a flame in the middle. It was, they're pulling out all the stops. It had fried chicken, which was perfectly fried, tangy Chinese spare ribs, fried shrimp and some other things, an egg roll in there. Loved that.

4:54I love the Singapore chow mein fun noodles and they do a tropicana shrimp, which I can only describe as fried shrimp in creamsicle form. There's like orange and cream there. My table mates absolutely loved it. Maybe not my dish of choice, but they loved it. Tom is in his early 80s and walking the floor and cooking every day. And I think first off, just the food is great and you should visit in Kingston. It's Aang's. Yeah, it's been on my list for a while, so I'm really glad to hear you had a good meal there. You'll dig it. Absolutely. What's your next thing? I'm going to shout out just what I think is the perfect big group dinner occasion restaurant that I went to, which is Russian Samovar.

5:37Oh, cool. Very close to the Penguin Random House offices. It is. Which I think it would take a lot for me to commute up to Midtown on a weekend night. But I was doing a special celebration for a friend who's getting married, and it was such a fun occasion. The reason why we went specifically is that on the weekends that I believe like 9, 930, they have live music with like Russian folk dancing. And my fabulous Russian hairdresser, Starlina, goes there all the time. And she always is telling me about it. So I said, this is the perfect moment. You got a big table. First of all, the music and the dancing is like such a high level of performance.

6:13And I actually emerged like from the bathroom as it was starting. And it was quite a lot to walk into. But great time. You know, definitely bring tips for that. But also the food was really good and kind of like, you know, better than I almost thought it was going to be. We had really good pickles. We had really good palmini, obviously sour cherry vodka. They do infused vodka and all these different flavors. The horseradish vodka, Starlina said we had to get. It was a lot, I would say. It was really like if you think normal vodka is fiery, horseradish vodka is even more so. But even like the chicken Kiev that we got, it was all so delicious.

6:50And I just think if you happen to be uptown or if you want to do like a proper New York night, go on the weekend, come for the music, stay for the Sour Cherry Vodka. I love that, Rack. Did you have a whole full bottle on the table? Yeah, you buy like, it's not a liter, but it's like a carafe, I would say. I do think it is watered down just based on the amount, to be frank, the amount of vodka that I drank to how I felt. Like, I don't, I think I would have been on the floor if it was not watered down, but it definitely has a lot going for it still. Has a lot going for it. And, you know, this is such an iconic restaurant.

7:20It was taken over in 1986. And Mikhail Baryshnikov is one of the owners of the restaurant. No way. They shot all of the, like, Sex and the City scenes when he was dating Carrie Bradshaw there. Even before that, it was this, like, celebrity hotspot in the 60s called Jilly's Canteen. So it really does feel like you're kind of going back in time. I've never been. I've always wanted to. Oh, we're right here. It's right here. We'll get some Pelmini. Yeah. Yeah. My next thing is I was prepping for my great conversation with Hedy McKinnon, which will air in a few weeks. And I was doing my prep. I was checking out some videos.

7:54And I came across this video for this from The New York Times for this salad that kind of went viral. We talked about in the episode. I had to make it at home. I love this salad. And I think in the video, Hedy says some people are making it three to four days a week. And I absolutely believe it like no bullshit. So here's the salad. It's basically tomatoes. Like you can mix like cherry and basically any tomatoes. And this is kind of a good late summer, early fall because we still have tomatoes for a good month. And, you know, season with salt and let it sit for a bit. And you make this vinaigrette with chili crisp as the base.

8:30And you pick the chili crisp you want to eat. So you pick your heat level. You know, it's really up to you. Rice vinegar and some soy sauce and a little bit of sesame oil. And you have that ready. And then you make some dumplings. You make some dumplings, you know, any way you want. You can steam them. You can fry them. Potstickers, you can fry them. I did that. And you basically, you marry these components. It's a cold or room temperature tomato salad, actually. Keep it room temp. And you add the dumplings to it. And you add this wonderful vinaigrette, toss it up, serve it hot. And it, you know, the heat does something.

9:03It really, it kind of instantly, you know, saturates the tomatoes with the chili crisps. because it kind of just like basically puts it in lightning speed for marination. It's really good. And it's kind of the perfect meal. And it made me realize how much I hate panzanella. You know, panzanella is such a waste. Like no one wants to eat like soggy bread. You don't want to put great bread in panzanella. Like it's just not for me. And I just don't like soggy bread. But I want more than like just a tomato salad. Tomato salads can be like too much acid. Just a lot going on. You only want a few bites.

9:38But when you add the dumplings, it's like I can eat like a full tomato with that dumpling and it's beautiful. I knew you were going to talk about the dumpling tomato salad when you started down this path because I think it's one of Hedy's most prominent examples. I think all of her salads are so great. I'm excited to hear the episode. I'm new to it. I'm admitting my newness. And really, Linger is just a wonderful cookbook. I have it now. It's on my kitchen counter. And it's one of my favorites from the recipe point of view of the season. It's great. I love that. And I can't wait to listen to your episode.

10:10My last thing that I'm going to talk about today is a really great new soy sauce that I got to try. It's a new soy sauce brand from Clarissa Way, the fantastic cookbook author who, when I met her in Taiwan earlier this year, she told me that they were kind of working on developing this soy sauce. It's a single origin, traditionally fermented black soybean soy sauce brand. And it's called Haydo. And it is using specifically the number five black soybeans from Tainan, which I believe she went on like a whole excursion to find the best possible soybeans for this application. But they do this one soy sauce that she calls like silky finishing soy sauce.

10:49It's brewed twice. So first in saltwater and then in soy sauce. And it has this really like dashi, like caramel. There's a little bit of cane sugar in there, but like less sodium than a traditional soy sauce. It's like a drizzling kind of finishing soy sauce. And she just sent me a bottle, which is awesome. And I've been using it at home just kind of like, you know, for dipping. You can even just pour it over rice. It has like a really just incredible flavor. They also are doing a more kind of workhorse everyday soy sauce, which I think is cool. But I think they're kind of starting to roll out distribution here in the U.S.

11:22They saw online, but also they have a great kind of roster of stores, certainly. here in New York and elsewhere across the country. Can we put a link in the show notes to buy it? We'll definitely link to it in the show notes, and it's called Hey Dough. Hey Dough. I love not all soy sauces created equally, and to have Clarissa doing one is really, really cool to see. Yeah, and I think her team is great, and it's just kind of fun to see single origin being at the forefront. I think you can really actually understand the full expression of flavor when it has that kind of specificity in terms of where it's coming from.

11:54Love that. My last thing is a short RIP to Marion Burroughs. I think Marion is somebody I always wanted to have on the podcast. I know her health was declining in recent years and it couldn't happen. And I think many folks have written about this, her incredible plum tort, which is a recipe she published in the New York Times in the 80s and is the New York Times most popular recipe. And it's terrific. I actually made it this weekend. But really, I wanted to talk about her because she was an incredible journalist. She reported and was a staff writer and editor at the New York Times and Washington Post.

12:30And Marion was somebody who really had journalism ethics at the core of her work. She was famously involved in an investigation about a bread company that was basically incorporating wood shavings into the bread and was able to report on this misdeed and what caused obviously a big uproar. And it was like one of the first major food investigations in a major newspaper. And that's her legacy. I think also too important to note is her association with AFJ, the Association of Food Journalists, which was a great organization that sadly folded in 2020. And this organization published a code of ethics.

13:15And I'm going to link to in the show notes. It's worth checking out. And I just think that Marion is somebody who we should remember beyond this single recipe, the plum tart, as great as it is. She was one of our finest journalists. And rest in peace, Marion. Yeah, I think what an incredible legacy. I'm thinking a little bit about my interview with Rosie Grant that I just did about her ghostly archive, which is a project that's kind of enshrining recipes that are carved onto gravestones. And I don't necessarily think that's the case with Marian. But I think like what an incredible legacy to have a recipe that so many people know.

13:48And I also enjoy cooking every year. So thank you for mentioning her. Thanks for sharing your three things. Yeah, 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.

14:39The 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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16:00That'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. Jonathan Nunn, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. A pleasure. Thank you for having me. I'm very delighted to have you here. I love vittles and talk about it all the time. So it's a treat to get to talk about it with the person behind it. Before we get into that, I think every New Yorker wants to know when people visit what they think of New York as a food city.

16:35I'm curious if you have had any good meals here or if you think there's anything that like New York does especially well when it comes to food. So last time I was here was a year ago. And I came back from being here kind of like quite down on New York. And I was just thinking, you know, God, it's like London, but just like harder, like a harder city to like exist in. And I don't think I don't think I ate like amazingly well. And I was wondering about this at the time because the first time I went to New York was 2015. And, you know, I must have been 25. And, you know, just suddenly being in the city where all these things that you've heard about for so long suddenly exist.

17:24And so I was going, as soon as I got off, it was like Mama Fuku Sam and then Milk Bar and then Cats' and so on. And then, you know, everything was great. And then last year, I just felt I'd seen everything. And, you know, it's a consequence of London and New York becoming so close to each other. And then this time around, I've just been bowled over again. And I do actually think it is as simple as the weather. I'm just like an animal. And like, you know, February, like everything was gray and I couldn't be able to be outside. and then I'm here at the tail end of summer turning into autumn and it's beautiful.

18:06I've eaten really well S &P again,

18:14which I'm quite glad doesn't exist in London. In some sense, I would love something like that. But in another sense, I want to come to New York and feel like it's a foreign city. We just can't do that line cooking. there's nothing close to it in London. And so that's a place that I love to come to. I love their tuna melt. It's my favorite. Tuna melt is fantastic. Everything I've had there has been sort of exactly as you would want it to be. I went to the Bronx to get Lechon the other day. We were staying in Flushing, which I've always wanted to stay in, because every time I come to New York and go to Jackson Heights and Flushing, you have to think about getting back.

18:55And so this was just nice being there. I love Flushing. I think that's like my most like favorite food neighborhood to go to in the city, probably. Yeah. So just off the plane, go to Maxi's Noodles, which is just like nice to have like straight off the plane. I feel there's like restaurants and bars where whenever I bring them up to a New Yorker, they're just like, I love that place. And like no dissension. I think it's S &P, Maxi's Noodles, Long Island Bar. The best. Yeah, just everyone loves them. I think the burgers, maybe, I think it could be better at Long Island Bar, but I go there all the time because it has like the whole dining experience that you want to have.

19:40The booth, the drinks, all of that. But for me, it's not necessarily the food. It's like it's the bar aspect of it, which is something that we don't do as well in London. Like we have great bars, but they tend to be, you know, at the high end. so you're like you're talking about like places like dukes um in mayfair where they you know have like a insanely strong martini but it has a dress code or you know they they tend to be like quite avant-garde and uncomfortable um whereas this is just like a very comfortable bar serving reasonably priced drinks and like it's just a place that you want to be and that's something we don't have enough of.

20:21And I think you might know this, but maybe someone listening doesn't. The bar director of Long Island Bar was the bar director at the Odeon in the 80s and invented the Cosmopolitan. And they do really good Cosmopolitans at the Long Island Bar. And they do in the summer a frozen Cosmo, which I don't know if you've had that before, but I think it's actually the greatest frozen drink. I didn't have it, but I came in when Ruby was having the tail end of it, but I didn't get to try it. It's very like tart. And I think most frozen drinks I love the idea of, but about halfway through, it just gets way too sweet for me.

20:53So it's kind of a perfect one. Okay, I'm glad to know you had some good New York meals because now I want to talk a lot about London. And I guess on the other side of things, on the London side, what do you think makes London a great food city? I mean, it's pretty much the same as what makes New York a great food city, which is variety. you know it's one of the great diasporic food cities of the world and you know the confluence of you know that unique immigration pattern and then history and geography like we you know since the late 80s we've been you know very lucky to have this kind of renaissance in british food um you know chefs looking to our history and to you know native ingredients and to what we do well um and the kind of concurrent revolution in produce um which has really changed the way um changed the way that we at every level but you know especially at the restaurant level um you know we we're blessed with having a lot of great produce but also we're you know in a position between you know geographically between Europe and America and you know we're constantly looking to New York on one side for inspiration and you know on the other we're so close to Europe so we have a you know access to European produce access to great wine you know there's been a fantastic renaissance in in wine bars over the last 15 years or so and you know we have variety at kind of every level so if you if you want fine dining we can do you know can do great fine dining but for me like the the marrow of London is in its in its smaller restaurants and you know particularly in its outer boroughs yeah I guess Vittles and is in some sense at least the restaurant aspect of it feels to me like trying to connect those two worlds which I really love in London which is I guess, like the scene of restaurants and also, you know, it's diaspora restaurants as well, which I always feel should be in better communion with each other.

23:13Yeah, I think totally as a reader of Vittles, that's the perspective that I see embodied in it. I'm wondering maybe for a listener who's unfamiliar, hasn't read Vittles before, could you speak a little bit to like the larger editorial vision point of view that you think plays out in the newsletter? yeah so we're a small team where it's me and four other editors um rebecca may johnson shiranya deepak adam cochlan and orin o'donohue um and you know we all have sort of like different interests and different remits within the publication i think some people when they hear like the word vittles they're thinking of something very specific sometimes it's restaurants I think particularly for people in London, it's restaurants.

23:58But I think for other people, it's, you know, the wider work that we do. So we're a food and culture publication, but we pretty much publish everything. So everything from, you know, long reads, from reporting, personal essays, recipes, restaurants. And, you know, our restaurant, you know, vertical is very much dedicated to covering London. to cover London in the most expansive way that we can. But, you know, outside of that, you know, our remit is really anything that we're interested in. For us, that has to be the, you know, the bottom line that we're really interested in. And we also have, you know, a strange relationship with American media because, you know, we're so influenced by it.

24:46You can't not be influenced by American media in Britain. And, you know, inspired by it, but also we really want to have a sensibility that is not American, that really feels unique to us. So I think it's a mixture of British sensibility, but also South Asian sensibility. You know, Sharanya is based in Delhi. I have a South Asian background. Um, and, um, yeah, we also don't publish a lot of American food writers either. And that's a conscious decision, not because we don't love them, but because, you know, we really want to offer something that feels different to, you know, the wider ecosystem of American food writing that's out there.

25:36And I think Americans respond quite well to that as well. I think they can tell that every article isn't sort of made for them or geared towards them. Yeah, I think you're trying to fill a gap that exists in the UK as well. You know, certainly I think media around the world and in the United States is not being funded or supported in the ways that it ought to. But, you know, like Eater doesn't exist in London anymore. The larger landscape of food writing in the UK is different than it is here in the US. I think that like maybe Americans being told this actually isn't for you. There's something like perverse about that that we actually enjoy.

26:13I think so. I think every time I talk to Americans about food media, American food writers, you know, I think they can be quite down about it, which I think is completely fair and right. However, like with British food media, imagine that for like 10 times worse and kind of with very little redeeming features. you know I don't know if Avittles could work in America I'd like to hope that it could you know a publication coming along with like the same kind of remit or like you know an independent publication covering New York but we came around at the right time we came around at a time when there was really a hole within the British media food media ecosystem.

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27:06And, you know, we've been trying to fill it for the last five years, I guess. Yeah, I want to dig into some examples of stories that you think maybe like, have a good encapsulation of what Vittles does. Well, I think to me that it really is like, great writing no matter the form, but there is a kind of difference between the kind of like servicey lists that you do. I think one of the ones that went quite viral was, I don't know the number, like a certain number of places to eat in central London that aren't Pratt. And then you also do these kinds of like more deeply reported feature writing, personal essays.

27:39Like what's a story that you've published recently that you think you enjoy and that is like really like classic fiddles? I think actually the two projects that we've published recently, one was projects about food and children, which Rebecca mainly edited and kind of spearheaded. And the other one was the recent guide we did to Paris, which came out two weeks ago. And I think they're both kind of emblematic of what we do in terms of the range of voices and styles of writing contained within them. But also the Paris project is, I think, very much like classically like what we do. It's a city guide trying to cover Paris, again, in the most expansive way possible that we would try to do with London.

28:37And so we've got everything from covering university canteens to covering Rungis, the huge wholesale market, which is just outside the city proper. um we've got like a great long read on the death of french restaurant criticism which is something that i've wanted to know for a very long time kind of like well what is you know food media is so anglophone um and you know i think for most even for you know me as a kind of plugged in like reader of food media i don't really know what's happening in in paris in terms of its food media so that was a really fascinating um fascinating thing to come across learned that like food restaurant criticism in France was rooted in the aftermath of the Nazi aligned Vichy government, because, you know, all the journalists who like supported the Vichy government and collaborated with the Nazis, you know, were banned from journalism afterwards, except in the food and travel sections, because they thought it was not political.

29:49So you had all these like far right people move into food media in a big way, which, you know, is not dissimilar to the situation in Britain. So that's like sort of classically what we do. But then the Kids Project, I think, is something that we could not have done three, four years ago. So it was a really different way of looking at things. And certainly in terms of, you know, Vitals monetizes mainly through its restaurant coverage. You know, in terms of the restaurant coverage that we chose to do with that, it was really like not about, you know, I think when I write about restaurants, I can get really, really obsessive and like trying to find something that I really love personally.

30:41and I'm often looking for something very particular. I'm not really thinking about, you know, that much about whether anyone else will like it. I'm often thinking about, do I like it? And if I like it, then I think other people will as well. But with the Kids Guide, it was really like just going back to, you know, what do people need? Like what do most people with kids need? They're not looking to go to a Zone 5, Zone 6 restaurant. they're not looking to for a place which is uncomfortable they're looking for you know certain things you know surrounding children whether it's you know types of menus whether it's like the attitude of staff whether it's accessibility or just like somewhere that's comfortable somewhere that gives them dignity so that was like a really different way of us working and that's something that you know Rebecca yeah really spearheaded and um yeah I feel like we couldn't have done that yeah I think there's a really like the commonality between those is a level of thoughtfulness and care in terms of like what is the specific way that you want to make this project like who is it really serving I'm curious if you think about like who is the Vittles audience like is it a monolith are they different kinds of people and how much of the work that you're doing is specifically trying to serve them versus what you said about, you know, chasing something that you're personally interested in writing about?

32:07It's really surprisingly varied. I think when I started, I had in mind that, you know, the Vittles reader was probably a Londoner in their 30s. That's what I would probably guess also. Yeah. And it turns out it's not really that true. Like we, one thing which really like heartens me whenever I hear it is when I hear about people's parents or grandparents being obsessed with vittles. Because I think, yeah, when it comes to food and food media, it's so wrapped up in aspiration, like where people think is cool. Lots of things which don't particularly interest me. But I think we certainly do have a readership in our restaurant coverage, which you know is certainly like aligned with that like you know they're reading us to find out like you know where they should be eating but i find with that older generation they just don't they don't give a shit like they just you know they're just reading it because they find it interesting and they don't have that sense of that aspirationism about you know where they want to eat or what type of writing they want to read they're reading it because they find the content really fascinating so i really love it when i hear um about older people reading vittles and you know we have i think 25 of our readership is in america um which is quite substantial um so yeah we have i think there is no archetype of a vittles reader which is which is quite pleasing to me yeah i think that must feel kind of freeing in some kind of way because you don't have to be overly thinking about who is the base what are they served by if you've been able to build a big tent then you can keep on doing all kinds of stories and hope that that tent kind of keeps expanding yeah i think the only way we we know how to work is to just keep commissioning stories that we are personally interested in without having to worry too much about you know issues of like timeliness and you know tying it into certain things you know in some sense it's maybe we'll get into this later but you know some sense I worry about it because we're not so reactive as a publication and it sometimes means that we can be a bit slow or like you know not be reacting to the moment as much as we could do but on the other side of things I think it makes the articles we publish a little bit more sort of timelessness yeah timeless is there is there something that happened recently that you were like oh i wish we had been able to respond to this more quickly i mean there's so many trends going on in london um you know things like and they're going on in new york as well you know things like the the massive resurgence or not even a resurgence just the surgeons in matcha yeah which is something that fascinates me because I come from a tea background and I've been kind of waiting for this my entire life.

35:18And I edit more than I write now. But, you know, if I've been writing, that'd be the kind of perfect thing for me to tackle. Right. But I just haven't been able to. Or, you know, the rise in Dubai chocolate, which is also a London story as well. It's my understanding that one of the kind of inventors is a Londoner. um but you know those kind of things you know because of like the time scales we're working on by the time the article comes out it's you know who knows what um is going to be big in london by the time i return from holiday right yeah you have to be very quick um to get that your take in i think i guess my stance is it helps to be the first person to write about something But if you have something different to say with maybe more historical context or social context or just your own point of view, like you've built vittles kind of in your own image.

36:13And I think there are readers who just want to know what Jonathan has to say about matcha or Dubai chocolate or something. So I guess maybe selfishly I'm part of the 25 percent of American readers who would want to read your take on that. But I think some trends do stick around also. Like we don't wear kale sweatshirts anymore, but kale is still on restaurants. But this is like one of the things I've been thinking about a lot because I don't think, you know, in an age of social media, in an age of like video content, like no one can ever be the first to cover a restaurant. You know, even if you're just as quick as possible off the mark, the time it takes to write something like someone would have beaten you to like putting on video.

36:54so whenever I write review I'm never um thinking about like being first or even being quick um in a way that maybe I used to sort of five years ago um but trying to write the thing that explains the moment that this restaurant has opened into um which is a much more difficult and slower thing to do but you know as as you said it can be really um it can be a positive sometimes like we did a piece recently um called uh white people spicy um which was commissioned a long time ago because it was reacting to um is reacting to something that happened in denmark with denmark banning uh baldak uh ramen yeah for being too spicy and it got loads of coverage at the time and like most of the coverage was very funny um kind of like you know it writes itself like you know the danes can't take spice right and um you know they've had to ban packet noodles and while that coverage was very funny like none of it really got into like well what is actually going on here right who makes the decision about banning these type of things like is there such thing as like you know a item which could be too spicy for like human um for humans to eat it and you know who's making these decisions is their regulatory body um you know has there been an increase in food items getting banned for being too spicy and so the article was all about that yeah and um you know in the end it was just a much richer article for having taken that time and not reacting immediately to that story.

38:43Yeah, I really enjoyed that piece. And again, maybe this is because of the global reach of Vittles, but I don't think the news about Denmark banning this Korean ramen made it here, or at least I didn't know about it. So when I was reading that, that was kind of new to me. And I think also this idea of how are cuisines, ingredients regulated across cultures, it was just such a fascinating topic, especially because, you know, here in New York, we have like these hot sauce stores that sell like ghost pepper hot sauce. That's like definitely, I don't even know, 20 times as spicy as whatever that ramen was.

39:18And I think there's parallels with like Panera that was making the like energy drink lemonade that killed someone. Like I think there have been a lot of like questions of regulation around stimulants or substances in food. But the kind of larger question of like how do these ingredients make it to different places? how are they consumed by the culture and then how are the kind of things like intervening in that like that kind of summary of topics was new to me yeah and i think in many ways it's like a kind of classic example of what we're looking for when we sort of commission a story is for one the most surprising take on that story that hasn't just been hashed out you know very quickly But also, yeah, how food plays into this confluence of these massive forces going on around us, whether it's economics, migration, regulatory bodies.

40:13I would love more articles on regulation and try and make it interesting. Just because these are the forces that shape the way we eat. It's always the unromantic stuff. Yeah, absolutely. I want to talk about restaurant writing a little bit more because I know that that's something that you must often be thinking about and doing research for. I know we are saying that it's kind of hard to be the first, but will you go cover a restaurant if it's been covered in the more like mainstream media already? increasingly yes um increasingly i want to change the view that people have of what we cover or the assumption that we only cover a certain type of restaurant and when i started writing which was only about seven years ago i started writing for eater um i was mainly writing to cover what I felt was a huge hole in British media coverage.

41:09And as I keep writing, I think the writing has moved away from that kind of, I guess, like antagonistic aspect of it to like, you know, to be a counterbalance to what's going on and to simply be like, what am I interested in? like no matter what and as that has happened like certainly over the last year I think our coverage has shifted to covering still covering like diaspora restaurants within London but also covering what is going on in the scene and trying to really explain what's going on as well because you know we have as ludicrous a restaurant scene as New York does um and you know So we're whims to trends and Carbone has just opened in London.

42:00And of course, everyone has rushed out to review it. And I don't know if we will review it because I actually think it's a bit like, you know, kicking a puppy at this point. Too obvious. Everyone's going to do it and everyone's going to hate it. What if you love it, Jonathan? Well, I mean, maybe this would be the fun take to do. I know some like very bold name food people here in New York who like unironically love carbone. So it could be possible that you would feel that way too. But I've never eaten there. So I wouldn't know. But one thing that interests me actually is that fine dining has completely vanished from food coverage.

42:37Like the real high end of fine dining. Yeah. So the two, the three Michelin stars. and I don't know if I will but it'd be kind of funny to for Vittles to be the only place covering it I mean I think that's a real service that is lacking because especially like I don't know if you're talking about the cost of going to a restaurant not just paying for the meal but getting the reservation getting yourself there that whole element like there's so much more at stake for a diner at a two three star tasting menu restaurant than a quicker meal so I think it actually is more useful to be helping people understand if this is something that they're actually interested in or is like quote unquote worth it yeah and ruth richell came to the times with you know the express aim of you know bringing down that veil on fine dining like how does this world work um and you know what 20 30 years on in some sense you know maybe that kind of coverage is needed like not i think british restaurant criticism is very um very combative very you know mocking like very skeptical of you know of fine dining and like most of the time with good reason um but it's it's very much um very much satire for people who are never going to go to that restaurant or people who will never um never even think of going to that restaurant it's kind of you know look what's going on in here yeah in like you know these rich london restaurants which you'll you'll never go to um but i also think it's interesting to to take these restaurants seriously and you think about well what are they actually doing um you know are i mean one of my big problems with fine dining restaurants is that i with very few exceptions fundamentally do not believe that the chefs want to be cooking that type of food certainly lots of the fine dining that i've had in london yeah um but but then you come across you know every now and then like a two or three star where you know you fully believe that like you know it feels like it really is an expression of what the chef wants to cook and not what the chef believes michelin wants them to cook and at that point I think it becomes special yeah but that's like that's the thing that unites all kind of good food I think you know is is the chef like able to in an unmediated way cook the food that they really want to cook um without all these things interfering with it 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.

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47:21That's butcherbox.com slash taste. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. How do you approach dining? Like, are you kind of always researching or do you ever get to just go to a place you go to all the time and turn off that part of your brain? I'm never not on. Okay. Which is frustrating. and it's it's um you know even on this trip i'm i'm on yeah in some sense are you taking mental notes real notes i'd never take real notes i think like any anything that you anything important that you have to say about the restaurant will survive i think yeah you'll remember it um i think jonathan gold said something like would you take notes during sex it's like you know it's a visceral like physical thing yeah and you you remember the the important things and if you don't remember it probably wasn't important in the first place unfortunately like everything is content like in my life everything I eat you know has the possibility of being content so it's very difficult to turn that off but yeah I research a lot increasingly I've moved from kind of physical research by which I mean like heroic eating which is I can't do anymore um for various reasons um many of which have to do with health but um I can't do that eating where you know start at one place go on to another go on to another go on to another and like have that comparative eating which was very useful for me in the beginning because it really helps kind of um sharpen your own sense of taste right and and what you really love and why you love it or why you don't love it and i think you need that kind of bedrock of eating um but now i'm you know i do a lot of um a lot of like written research and you know i will do a lot of research pre going to a restaurant before just because i you know i can't do that type of eating anymore yeah yeah i mean i think it's great to mention jonathan gold because he obviously is a huge forebearer for food media in general and i think certainly your point of view in vittles and he certainly later on had scouts right who would go to restaurants and kind of report back to him do you have like a formal or informal version of that not really i've wondered if i should like do it i think what i would rather do is for you know those people to just write for vittles yeah which is like which isn't you know having the publication is just a nicer way of doing it rather than people coming to me to to write it up so our restaurant coverage as well you know has really blossomed from being just me to being a whole group of people you know across London who want to write about food so yeah in that sense you know I there's a kind of constellation of restaurant writers yeah um but i'd rather do it that way i mean that's the benefit of being an editor of a publication as opposed to just a restaurant critic right like you have the bench to share with people exactly do you ever decide to gatekeep a restaurant um as a general rule i don't particularly believe in gatekeeping um simply because you know of course there is a there's a lot of um interesting tension between who operates the restaurant who the restaurant is aimed for or who the first kind of um customers of the restaurant are new customers you know whether a restaurant can keep up their quality or you know keep up their mental health with an influx of new customers but every restaurant i've ever written about at length I have gone to them and asked them like I am writing about you here's our this is how many people like read us if you agree to being written about then you may start to get you know influx of new people who wouldn't have necessarily come before coming to the restaurant like are you okay with this and knowing that um if they say no i will just have to pull the review and no one has ever said no and i do just think that most food businesses are there to make money they're there to like find a customer base and with very few exceptions like they will all say yes I think there are a couple of places I haven't written about just because I do think they would really struggle.

52:18I've made the decision. I do just think they'd really struggle to keep up with an influx of new people. One of the ones I almost didn't write about until I talked to them was a place called Come Back In, which is in King's Cross. and it's just these Hong Kong students who have a tea room on in an art gallery and in the basement they have a restaurant and they'd been operating on by delivery as a dark kitchen for a few months which is how I found out about the menu and then they kind of opened secretly and I went in like the first few weeks and you know the restaurant was so new you could like smell the plaster on it like they had just one chef you know even with you know one table in the restaurant like service was slow and I waited and so I went again and it was a bit better that time and then I got talking to them and I couldn't work out before talking to them whether you know they wanted to they wanted to remain a secret whether they wanted it to remain like a thing between friends which would all be completely fair enough.

53:32But it turned out like their whole thing was they wanted to share it with people and people, because of the way they'd advertised where it was, people didn't know it was a restaurant and they weren't coming in. So it was the opposite of what I thought. They actually were looking for new business and they were looking to share the food with as many people as possible. So I ended up writing about it. But even then you have to write about it in a responsible way. I think hidden gem culture is so pervasive on Instagram. And here was like an example of an actual kind of hidden restaurant. But you can't like start this off by saying, you know, this is the most hidden restaurant in London.

54:17This is the best Cantonese food you'll ever have. It kind of has to be realistic and fair to the restaurant. and that is something you can still do in writing I think it's very difficult to to do that kind of nuance in video because you're competing with so many people like everything has to be the most something yeah and you have such little time and you are kind of like at a mercy to the algorithm in a different kind of way I love even hearing that you're calling and getting permission because I think that like there's just an element of getting permission from people that's been lost with social media.

54:57Like especially walking around New York, you're just getting in the background of people's videos all the time. People are running up to you on the street. People are recording in restaurants. And I think about, you know, Shopsin's here in New York, like back in the day, their original restaurant, the family did not want press. The press would call and they would hang up the phone on them. Like they were like, we have our regulars. We have enough. Like we don't want more. And I remember reading Tamar Shropson's memoir and like hearing about that. And it was such a foreign concept that a restaurant would be like, we don't want press.

55:26I think it's such a hard industry, especially with rent in London and New York today, especially with all the love of competition with hype that I think a lot of people just assume, well, this is something that they must want. But I think it is still a social contract that you're entering into. I think also the way that hype operates in the social media age is actually so different to, you know, how it used to with press. Like, even like the most powerful paper in the UK has a set circulation, has a set readership. you could be covered in the times and you know it would still only reach you know a certain number of people which you know as the editor what type of people they are where they're located what instagram does and tiktok does you know with algorithms that um you know tailor are tailored individually towards people is that if a video hits the algorithm right it could there's no upper limit to how many people can view that video the kind of potential for virality is infinite essentially and that's something which has always stopped me from going into video because i don't know how to do it um in the way that i want to there's so many video creators I love yeah and you know I love Rob Martinez um I love Nicholas Nuvan um to be honest all American I don't actually like any of the British ones yeah um you know I feel that what they do is um really using the medium to do something that writing can't and they're doing it in a way that feels responsible they're in those communities like they're not like Nick for example he's not trini but he's been doing so much trini reporting that he basically has a trini accent when he interviews people now like even though they're not necessarily of that community they are aware of the fact that they are reporting on a community yeah and i think the job he does is so um so important in you know in a world which you know we're going down the same route as america we're on the verge of probably a far-right government london's become like the bogeyman of the entire UK, to see someone cover the city with that amount of joy, to see someone cover the diversity of the city as a strength without any apology for it.

58:01I think that's such an important thing to do. It's something that food writing can do as well, although it doesn't do enough. And I would love to see that kind of video content in London. I would love to see it and support it but i i've often thought about you know can i translate what i do with a review to to video and i think there is a way of doing it but i've always held back and i don't i it's i don't know whether it's to do with um you know just being an old fogey when it comes to it comes to video and just an old man shaking at a cloud um or you know whether it just needs a bit more thought well also i wonder i know that like a lot of critics and probably yourself included have a kind of complicated relationship with anonymity and like knowing what people look like or not and i think the success of all these video creators we're talking about is it's front-facing camera like they're taking you along the journey how much do you want to be anonymous um well i'm not anonymous um to my annoyance um because i never thought that this would be my job ever so you know you can look there's pictures of me around but increasingly i you know i don't show my face anymore you are not going to show your face for this for this episode thank you um and my my aim is to get fatter and balder so that all the all the photos of me will be hilariously out of date you're going to become jonathan gold exactly yeah but south asian um so and and the reason for that there's plenty of reasons for that but um i think i want to primarily among them i i want to avoid the parasocial relationships that being so public um can bring up um you know it's incredibly powerful to you know boost your own profile or boosts the readership.

1:00:07But it's something that I've had and I don't want it. I think it's not conducive to good writing. So that's the primary reason. But no, I think if we ever did video, it'd be something, I don't know, like a Frederick Wiseman film or something, much more process focused, much more focused on the actual people cooking the food and their stories. That's what interests me. And it feels like there might be a gap for that. I know to go back to what Rob does, you know, that's, although he's in his videos kind of briefly, like they are all about process and people. Yes. But if you say his name, like I can picture his face right now.

1:00:52You know, he's still like your kind of way in. But I think I would like to see more of what you're talking about. And I think it doesn't have to happen right away, but maybe that's another thing Vittles can be thinking about. Down the line. And before we close today, just while we're talking about Vittles Projects, I wanted to ask you a little bit about the print magazine that you guys released. What made you want to do something in print and how did you kind of approach that medium differently? Boredom, I think. We've been doing the same thing for four and a half years. We're, you know, a newsletter that operates through Substack and that comes with its own set of limitations about what we can publish.

1:01:37It comes with its own limitations about, you know, how artwork can be used. The formatting is quite annoying, honestly. The format is very restrictive.

1:01:47And, yeah, we wanted to see, well, what could we do with, even with old content, because issue one is a mix of old and new content, what we could do in the form of a magazine

1:02:03where, you know, not every article has to like compete against each other, which is like the way that Substack is increasingly becoming, you know, it's becoming a sort of social media site where every article has to compete. Like, you know, every recipe has to compete now. And, you know, you're constantly thinking about metrics and read time and so on. And, you know, the fact that it often comes in your email, which is a place for most people of high stress i get people you know coming up to me apologizing for not reading like the latest articles because they've got it kind of clogged up on their email and so just to have something that you know where there's no metrics there's no um algorithm just something that people can read in their own time and at their own pace and where not every article has to make a case for itself and to you know put together a body of work and it was really fun it was it was really fun and now I guess the um now that print has become a bigger part of what we do um our big thing is now is you know how do we demarcate between newsletter and print um you know it can't just be the stuff we love the most is in print and then the newsletter is a lesser version of that it has to be about well what how does the format of the newsletter how does the format of print really benefit the article that we're we're working on and i i think what will probably happen is the newsletter will become slightly faster paced and the magazine will become a place for slower pieces, which, again, don't need to have the pressure of standing on their own.

1:03:54So we're in the middle of putting together issue two right now, which will hopefully be out at the end of the year, which is nice. It's themed as well. Will you say the theme? Yeah, it's bad food. um you know as you know like working to a theme is very fun i do we love it we love a theme i think um when there's so much kinds of food content and you do so many kinds of food content to be able to narrow in and then expand out at the same time is kind of fun yeah and as i said we get bored easily and the first issue was very tasteful i thought um the second issue is not going to be tasteful. I think it's going to be increasingly stupid and absurd and maybe slightly, um, a slightly truer reflection of our sensibilities.

1:04:44Um, yeah. Well, I'm excited about that and I wish we could keep talking forever, but I'm going to do rapid fire with you to close. Are you ready? Go on. Okay. Um, what you think is the best food city in the world? It's a very boring answer. Um, it's, it's, it probably is Tokyo. Um, and it's annoying to say so but it but it is that's fine the best food neighborhood in london um east ham um which is um an area in like i guess what would now be the true east end of london um which mainly has a south indian um diaspora and you know is where one of the places i first fell in love with food it's where i first had food from karela where i first had food in tamil nadu it's one of the few places in London that when you get out at the train station you do feel like you're transported somewhere in the same way when you get out flushing you feel like you've been transported somewhere as well and yeah a place which not enough Londoners go but I would recommend any New Yorkers coming to London if you want to see something yeah see something that you might not get in New York outside of say Jackson Heights um then yeah East Ham would be the place yeah I've actually been to East Ham and I think it's a special neighborhood so I'll co-sign that um for the uninitiated the difference between a cafe and a cafe so I've been thinking about this there's no there's no hard and fast answer to this because it's all in the eye of the beholder but a kind of answer to this is that both are places that serve casual food but a cafe is based around tea and a cafe is based around coffee and then you know that comes with all the kind of class connotations those things have but you know that another answer would be that a cafe is you know a british version of a diner in the sense that it's mainly serving kind of breakfast food um mainly fried breakfast breakfast food so sort of bacon egg sausages with you know additions of omelets or sandwiches or things like that but predominantly serving you know a working class clientele although you know that that is changing as well with i guess you know calf fetishism as well yeah um but it all comes from the fact that you know people of my dad's generation just refuse to pronounce french names um in the way they should do like he still says nestles when it comes to nestle um like a lot of that generation would do so caf is the kind of bastardization of cafe okay your favorite calf um my favorite calf is just the one closest to me which is crossroads cafe there's a very good chicken a scallop sandwich um which is like the unusual thing that they do like normally like cats have a repertoire of like only doing certain things and that a scallop sandwich is like an anomaly and it's delicious so i have like one every week or something your favorite cafe um i really love um i'm gonna say proofrock cafe which is a very important coffee shop on leather lane it was like one of the first um one of the first truly great coffee shops that london had um it's now owned cohen by James Hoffman who I don't need to explain who that is um and it was one of the first places I fell in love with with coffee as a tea person um sort of really learning about how um how agriculture and cultural practices change the taste of coffee something you order every time you see it on a menu chicken and scallops all the time uh your favorite bar in London i was gonna say long island bar to this one okay no um my favorite bar i really like uh a place called bar with shapes for its name it's um because like you see the name and it is just like shapes it's like a red circle and blue triangle everything they do is like um bow house inspired which means everything is super uncomfortable yeah i went there i felt like i was in like a david lynch movie or something yeah crazy but the drinks are great yeah your favorite special occasion restaurant in London the Ritz finally a fictional food scene that you wish you could magically eat in real life all the food scenes from the Red Bull series of books which Vittles takes its name from but yeah they were always eating stuff like well to be honest they sound like stuff like that is in any wine bar in London at the moment like these huge pies and yeah, elderflower cordials and stuff like that.

1:09:59But I think those scenes have been very influential on every British food writer over the last kind of 20 years or so. Definitely. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been so fun. Thank you.

1:10:17This is Taste is hosted and produced by Matt Rodbard and me, Eliza Abarbanel. 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.

From the publisher

Jonathan Nunn is the London-based founder and coeditor of Vittles, a food and culture newsletter based in the UK and India. Vittles is a singular source for incisive writing about contemporary food culture, from deep dives to restaurant reviews, and it’s a pleasure to have Jonathan in the studio to talk about what’s shaping its ever-growing coverage. 

And, at the top of the show, it’s the return of Three Things, where Aliza and Matt talk about what is exciting them in the world of restaurants, cookbooks, and the food world as a whole. On this episode: A great visit to Elbow Bakery, Eng’s Restaruant in Kingston, NY is all mid-century vibes and a Chinese-American gem, Russian Samovar makes for a real NYC evening, we made the Hetty tomato salad, Heydoh is a great new soy sauce, remembering journalist Marian Burros.   

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