668: To Die For: Rosie Grant Is Documenting Gravestone Recipes

26:21Right. And you write about how it was a newspaper clipping, but she kind of adopted it as hers. And then in the family, it was thought of as hers. Exactly. So yeah. And it's a very funny story too. And I feel like I'll get comments from people being like, is it okay to make someone else's recipe, this sort of whole genre of secret recipes and literally taking a recipe to a grave, like, you know, people passing away and never sharing it. And it feels like in a lot of cases, just from the anecdotal stories I've heard. It's because the recipe was a Betty Crocker recipe or a Duncan Hines or like it was a pretty standard or normal recipe, but it was made special by being a secret recipe.

27:02And so in some cases, yeah, the family member, like in the case of the cheese dip, she never gave it because it was her special Christmas recipe that everyone would look forward to. And then after she passed away, she gave it on so that people could still remember her. But yeah, she did not give it out in life. And same for Naomi as well. She did not give that recipe out during her lifetime. Yeah, my family has a brownie recipe. That was my great Auntie Claire's brownie recipe that we all make in the family, but nobody shares like outside of the family. But I know I'll tell you later off the mic.

27:40Thank you. I won't share it. But what I will say about it is it's a very not-too-sweet, fudgy, undecorated brownie, which I think is great and my family loves. But my uncle put it in the brownie competition at the Iowa State Fair one year because he was there. We all were like, this is going to clean up. It's the best brownie recipe in the world. And, you know, completely like last place, like not honored at all because like the other brownies at the Iowa State Fair were these really kind of, you know, ornamental, like mix in cakey, like, you know, complete opposite of this very like plain, not too sweet brownie.

28:19And I think that kind of gets at this other idea of personal taste or family taste, right? And the things that we prize as being so important, like in a different context, they don't really kind of read the same or taste the same. It's exactly that. And what a shame to those poor judges because like I would take the like less sweet fudgy brownie any day. But yeah, it's so true. And like it'll be interesting to hear like a lot of people have been getting comments of like, I can't wait to make every single recipe and these are going to be my favorite recipes. And I'm like, I hope so. And it's okay if it's not too.

28:53Like, I think it's more the tradition of like, how do we preserve recipes? there is a very exciting element to trying different recipes that have come from a gravestone like objectively it's so cool it's just such an interesting way to be given information about a person but then at the end of the day of like it just makes us appreciate like yeah that personal like so your family has this brownie recipe I can't remember if this what came up the last time we chatted but my family's like personal recipe is this yellow cake that my grandmother would make for all of our birthdays. It's my favorite yellow cake.

29:28She would make it with homemade chocolate icing and sprinkles every single holiday. All 32 grandkids would get this for every birthday for years. And when she died, we were all so sad that we would never have her yellow cake birthday cake again. And my mom was like, it's just box cake. Like there's nothing fancy about this. It's literally just yellow box cake from Duncan Hines. And for us, we were like, no, we'll never have grandma's cake again. And so, yeah, it doesn't have to be anything fancy for it to be really meaningful. Yeah, absolutely. And I think something else that I thought was interesting in the book is in the beginning, you have this kind of section about encouraging people to be documenting their own food history.

30:14You have guiding questions. You could ask a family member kind of suggestions on how to make a personal archive. What inspired you to include that in the book? I think exactly kind of like what we were saying of our own personal food recipes. And again, this was born out of like I was in, so the reason why I was interning at a cemetery to begin with was I was in library science school studying to be a librarian slash archivist. I was taking a lot of community archive classes and I was very struck by the need for like personal story preservation, particularly food stories. So as I was featuring grapestones on TikTok, talk, I was getting, like, I've probably gotten thousands of comments at this point or personal messages and things to the effect of like, oh, my dad died last year.

31:00I wish I'd gotten his chili recipe. Or, you know, my grandmother passed away when I was a kid and we've been trying to recreate her cake or her brownies or whatever the recipe is. And so these things are very ephemeral and we will lose them if we don't write them down. And I think also that, you know, this was coming out of the pandemic, we're a lot more maybe as a whole society conscious of death and our own mortality. And I think it was, it was like, it struck me to me to be aware of like, it's okay to have these conversations. They're uncomfortable. We don't want to talk about it, but like there is something to be, there's something really healthy about having these like discussions with our loved ones of like, Hey, can we make your recipe?

31:43Cause this is important to you or, you know, know, food might not be the thing, but like, maybe it's music, maybe it's movies, like, how do you want to be remembered? What is your thing? And document it. And if we don't do that, it just gets harder to do over time. Yeah, I think it's really special that I think this book inevitably would prompt these questions of, you know, what would I put on my gravestone? Or what is your taste say about you? So I feel like including it in that kind of way makes a lot of sense. And I guess I'm curious, you know, it seems like you obviously were testing these recipes a lot when you were working on them, but I'm curious if your perspective on cooking or baking has kind of changed at all since you've begun this process of working on Ghostly Archive.

32:26Oh my gosh, so much appreciation for a home cook. Just like, and because again, I think like there's, I've done like some food interviews with these like professional chefs who, you know, spent their entire life cooking at these beautiful techniques and these beautiful kitchens. And like, that's incredible. Like I'm obsessed with people like that. And then on the flip side too, there are people who are just like everyday cooks who really love food. They use food to show love. They use it to, you know, celebrate someone's birthday or to celebrate a holiday and bring people together. And there's a real, um, like a labor side and gift side to it as well.

33:04And so So I think like I've just, I don't know, every day I just feel like I have so much appreciation for even my own family members who like use food to not only nourish me, but like give me some of my best childhood memories to connect me with others. I like food best when I'm like with a loved one or friend and we're having dinner or we're cooking. And I just, I think it's just given me a lot more of a sense of like how it connects us together. even thinking about taste like I just think I think like I'm not a very like I don't need the fanciest food to be satisfied like I love a fancy sushi meal I love like a very well-plated dish but I also love like a hot dish and a casserole and something that's just like made together and you get to share it and like eat it together like both are equally important yeah absolutely And I'm curious, you know, now that the book is out and the 40 recipes have been found, like, what is the future of Ghostly Archive?

34:06Well, since the book draft got turned in, 10 new recipes have actually come my way. So I'm shocked that that happened because here I was being like at 10 recipes where I'm like, wow, I found them all. And now I'm at 50 recipes. So I have new people to interview. I have new people to learn about. I just learned about my first European one, which is in Amsterdam. So I'm excited to learn more about this person. So yeah, I just have quite a lot more to learn about the cemetery world in general. I think for next steps for me, I would love to do a deaf doula training just to learn more about, you know, working with people going through grief and being mindful of healthy tactics for talking about these things.

34:56Obviously, food is such a healthy topic for the living. And so it feels like a really entry point for these things that it might be a little more taboo to talk about. so maybe between that and working on a second cookbook will be the future for ghostly archive yeah i love to hear it and i i can't help but suspect that after the book is in people's hands there will be even more people who are inspired to put recipes on their own gravestones in the future um and to close today i want to do a little rapid fire game with you so i'm just going to ask you a couple questions and have you play some favorites if that sounds good i love it Okay, your favorite cemetery that you've been to?

35:41Ooh, Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Why Greenwood? Oh my gosh, everything they do is perfect. I mean, it has all your classics. It's old, it's beautiful. You walk through the gates. They have a parakeet colony that lives in there. They've lived in there since the 80s. So you are just like charmed by these cute little birds that are just yapping away as you go through. They do really good preservation work. They do a lot of death education programming to get people more comfortable with topics of death and dying. They have a death doula. They have pretty much events almost every single night of the week.

36:17And it feels so welcoming to people as they're going in, whether they are curious or grieving or whatever feeling they need to experience. I feel like Greenwood is a great place for that. Definitely. Okay, your favorite gravestone recipe that you've tried so far? I mean, they're all my favorites, obviously. I feel like they're all perfect. Definitely the ones that I've made the most frequently are ones that I'm nostalgic to myself. So there's a woman named Annabelle who has a snickerdoodle cookie recipe and she's buried in California. My mom made snickerdoodle cookies when I was a kid. So it's one of my favorite cookies and Annabelle's cookies.

36:56The recipe makes like a hundred cookies. It's such a classic grandmother dish. So you will have cookies for days and they're so good. I love that. what you would say is the most unexpected gravestone recipe you've encountered? Unexpected. The Jack Daniels marinade, I think, is a really cool one. It was on the grave of a guy named Jono, who he owned a local bar, and this was his particular marinade. I also just in general love that his grave looks like it's handwritten, like in his handwriting. And a marinade is like just, there's no other marinades. It's also a gentleman, which I think is cool.

37:35It has a photo next to him of him grilling, which I really love. And it's just like, it's something that like, I want this gravestone recipe on a sunny summer day, like with corn and, you know, having like a beer or something with it. So I, yeah, I love everything about that recipe. I love that. And my final question is maybe obvious, but what recipe would you put on your gravestone? It's a tough one. It's a very tough one. For right now, I would put a nostalgic recipe to me. I love clam linguine. And I really love, I love everything clam-based. I loved clam-based things as a kid. My dad is a really good cook when it comes to just like throwing clams into a pot and with white wine and butter and parsley.

38:21And it's so good. So if I had to pick one today, that's what I would pick. I love that. I think we need more savory gravestone recipes, it seems. We do. I'll keep it in mind for myself in the future as well. There you go. And thank you so much, Rosie. This has been so great. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. This was such a delight. Hi there, it's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you. Do you have a guest request? A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on Three Things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair?

39:01You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible. That's the This Is Taste listener survey, link in our show notes. Today's episode is brought to you by ButcherBox. As a food writer, I can be a little skeptical about subscription cooking boxes you hear about on podcasts. There's big talk about cooking simplicity, but you're usually left with disappointment after smashing that promo code. Now, Clayton, have you ever tried one of those subscription boxes? Yeah, Matt, my friend gave me a code for that one that has all the chopped vegetables in little baggies.

39:39I felt like a drug dealer trying to cook dinner. Yeah, man, I have so been there. Butcher Box is a true exception. I was sent a box of premium beef and pork and was blown away by the quality and variety. There was 100 % grass-fed pasteurized ribeye, tri-tip, and ground sirloin for my favorite at-home smash burger recipe. George Motes, you better watch your back. For pork, they sent me a beautiful center-cut pork loin for slow roasting. I was super impressed, and I haven't even talked about the ribs, which I cooked in my Instant Pot. There was a rub of salt, white pepper, and togarashi, and I pressure-cooked with water and apple cider vinegar.

40:18It was incredible. These ButcherBox ribs are amazing. For nearly a decade, ButcherBox has led the industry with meat and seafood that's antibiotic-free. As an exclusive offer, our listeners can get free protein in every box for a year, plus$20 off your first box when you go to butcherbox.com slash taste. Visit butcherbox.com slash taste to get this limited-time offer and free shipping always. That's butcherbox.com slash taste. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. Vanessa Anderson, welcome to This Is Taste. It's so nice to meet you. It's nice to meet you too. Thanks so much for having me.

40:58We're in LA and I was looking at our schedule and I'm relatively new to what you're up to, but I had to reach out because I'm fascinated in your approach looking at international grocery stores around Los Angeles, some of your background as a line cook in New York, and just like you're great at what you do. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I manifested this by, I think you posted like a KitKat or something. And I was like, I'm going to respond to this because I want to have a longer conversation with Matt. I love that. Well, I appreciate you reaching out and please reach out if you have comments about snack foods.

41:34I'm always down. I'm always posting away. Before we get to talk about Grocery Goblin, I have to ask, we're here in Los Angeles. I'm having a wonderful time at restaurants. Vanessa, where are you going out right now? What's exciting to you? I'm going to this place in Alhambra called Wayang Halal, W-A-Y-A-N-G. It's an Indonesian restaurant and it is just fantastic. And it was recommended to me by a friend who doesn't even live here anymore. It's run by these like really sweet women. I wrote a little thing for Emily's plugs about it. And I think I said like the coconuts are always cold and the vegetables always look like they've given up.

42:14and I don't know like they have like a really like crispy snappy like gato gato salad where the vegetables are all like kind of like lightly blanched but still have the snap to it that's like just like weighted down with this blanket of like really delicious peanut sauce they have everything is kind of like surrendering to this like deeply spiced like curry situation and then peppered in with these like really punchy sambals and I have it on good authority that they can like use the support. And I just think it's an amazing place that like nobody knows about. And there's always parking and there's always seats available.

42:48And I just think it needs to be full all the time. I'm so happy you mentioned that place. We were out here last December doing work for Visit California and we were touring SGV and the Yon was on the list, but it was closed the day we were there. So we missed it during that great episode and SGV they can go back to and listen to. I love that rec. Are you out in SGV a bit? Yeah, I try to go out there as much as I can. I really like it out there. And I also like to drive. And so I like to just like drive around and wander around out there. There's just like some cool like, I don't know, LA is so fascinating to me for so many different reasons.

43:26But I really love like the signage that has kind of like emerged from the sprawl and the weird little pockets that have emerged from the sprawl. And I think you can see that in like all of the cities, valleys, very explicitly. But you weren't born here. No, I was born in upstate New York. You're born upstate New York. So you're relatively new to living in Los Angeles. I love that point of view as a new person who really loves food and you're a cook yourself, a chef. Tell me about just moving here and getting into that driving vibe to discover food. For sure. I moved here two and a half years ago.

44:03um i had never had a car before that so i found like a deep like independence in my vehicle named dad my vehicle's name is jasmine i love the carola um and um there it's the vehicle's named jasmine because they're i used to go shop um at the glendale whole foods and they they planted jasmine all over the parking lot and i used to take my little kitchen shears and snip it off and like put it in my dashboard because my whole car would like smell like jasmine for the day and it would like wilt by the next day. But anyway, I don't know. I found it very liberating to be so mobile. And I was living in Berlin before that and then New York City before that.

44:45So cities with amazing public transportation, which is incredible not to be understated, but like there's something really special about being in your car. There's something special about calling your mom in your car and listening to music in your car and just being able to whip around really easily. So yeah, I don't know. It's like one of the reasons, one of the ways I found myself exploring the city was through driving to all these different grocery stores. I think it's magical when you can just dial up Google Maps and 20 minutes later, you're in this new neighborhood. Absolutely. And you didn't have to wait for the seven.

45:19Totally, totally. Although there is this beauty in what happens when you're waiting for the seven. Agree fully. Yeah. So it, but you can't really have both. You can't. I think, but also for grocery shopping, we'll get to that. Like having a car allows you to buy things and not have to put them in a Kia bags. Totally. The big blues. You ever use the big blues? I definitely use the big blues. I use the carts in the city. I called it the perpetual schlep, which was like part of the reason I cited when I moved. I was like, I'm done with the perpetual schlep. I'm leaving. New York's fried. I'm leaving.

45:50No more schlepping for me. And I'm now, of course, schlepping in a different way because life is a perpetual schlep. Jasmine is filled to the brims with discoveries. Why did you move here? I wanted to give the West Coast a try. It was always kind of fascinating to me. Yeah. It doesn't have to be more than that. Totally. That's great. It seems to be like the siren call for a lot of people to come out here. A lot of New Yorkers are out here in the last five years, especially in food. Let's talk about your interest in international grocery stores. Just tell me what caused you to create Grocery Goblin and take like a very, I would say, meticulous approach and a very reporter's approach to these amazing spaces.

46:33I love that you think deeply about them. You write about them and you know a lot about food and it really shows in your sub stack and on reels. But what interested you in it? Thank you for saying that. But yeah, I guess like, I mean, if I were to go briefly way back, I used to have this book that I used to read when I was a kid called Hungry Planet. I don't know if you're familiar with it. I don't know it. It's written by this guy and photographed by this guy. I think his name is Peter Manziel. But it's a book in which he would go around to all these different countries and take photos of families in their kitchens with like every grocery item spread out in front of them.

47:07And I was fascinated with this book. I could not get enough of it. I was like, I constantly had my nose in this book. and then I guess like the fascination just kind of like continued and it's part of what really inspired the project and a lot of different facets of the project I originally started the Instagram page as a way for me to archive like cool packaging design because I'm obsessed with different types of graphic design that different cultures use to to you know market their products and then when I moved to LA I was private chefing for a while and I was just in the grocery store all different types of grocery stores a lot and I started noticing just different design elements or little kind of like weird clashes of color mashes up of these cultures kind of like running into each other that is like so prevalent in LA and so I started taking some videos I made like one TikTok that was kind of a come with me like thing.

48:06And it went like niche LA viral. And I was like, oh, well, what if I take this a little bit more seriously? I've always been really interested in culinary, always known that that's like the industry that I wanted to settle in. But I've also really been interested in writing and storytelling and documentary filmmaking. So this was kind of TikTok, really low barrier to entry way to do that and to have it seen in this way. So I basically think of the project as a way it's like a kind of indexing project and like short form doc project in which I use the lens of the grocery store to examine American consumer and culinary culture.

48:41Totally see that. Well said. Really beautifully said. And I love that we're using come with me voice. Totally. I like I've departed from the come with me voice because I think like TikTok, while I'm obsessed with like slop and just like manufacture content, like theoretically, I love analyzing it. I think it's really interesting. And I think it's like a really good reflection of where we're at culturally. But, and I think it's not to be dismissed, but I do think that like TikTok can be a serious platform and it can be a platform where you can just like take a thesis and really explore it. And people are, will be interested in that.

49:14Yeah. And I think it's not just sloppy. Well said, it's definitely is a version of cultural anthropology. It's journalism even, you could say? Totally. Like you're doing journalism here. Oh yeah, absolutely. I would definitely categorize it as that. And you could effectively teach a class about it too. It's like, that's what journalism is today. And if you're too snobby to reject that, then like, fuck you, because it's really important for food writing to not be stuck with text on the page. Certainly. Yeah. I want to hear about the private chef thing. Like give us some examples of the grocery stores you were going to just by name.

49:48I'd love to give our listeners just a little bit of a survey of Los Angeles, these amazing places. Yeah, for sure. The first video that I made that kind of like popped off, for lack of a better term. Popped off? Like we're talking like a million? We're talking about 500 ,000? No, probably less, honestly. But that's fine. Popping off can be like, you know, 25K. Totally. What is popping off? What is, you know, let's analyze popping off metrics. Popping off. Yeah, totally. It's this place called Epicurus Gourmet. It's in North Hollywood. And it's just like a warehouse of like gourmet foods. They have like a really crazy Edmund Fallow mustard collection situation.

50:25They have like the beurre baudier like going on, the minis and like everything. They have like pretty amazing cheeses and charcuterie and stuff like that. So it was like a place that I had been going to for events and private clients. And it was a place that I was hearing a lot of chefs talk about. But I figured that a lot of my friends who weren't in culinary didn't know about it. And it's still a really good place to go for a party of that sort. but I don't know LA is filled to the brim with so many amazing grocery stores um we were talking about this earlier but like it's really rare to live in a city where I mean for me when I was private chefing and I would get like a text from a client or what have you and a request for a dish from a certain cuisine or an event or whatever and the ability to be able if you're willing to drive a little bit to be able to go source that ingredient and you don't have to like order ahead is like for the most part is very, very rare.

51:18So, I mean, I guess like thinking about other stores in the area, have you been to Laxey? It's other people call it by the other name, Thai Costco. Okay, cool. And it's just like the size of an airplane hanger. Cool. Really is just like, if you are to start a Thai restaurant, you could like go there. You could buy literally everything, kitchen equipment, kitchen equipment, everything like that. There's like, I did a LA Times piece about, there's a fish section there in which there's like five like rusty knives hung on on the wall in the fish section each have like a date underneath the earliest one i think it's like 1998 and i was always like fascinated when i was going to this story like what is the story with these knives it like what are they are they just from the fish section like who decided to put them on the plank and who decided to date them and like what what's going on here and so i like kind of took that as an idea.

52:11So the first piece I wrote for LA Times was about like collections of ephemera in grocery stores and how they kind of act as sun-stained museums. Oh, no doubt. Did they have like retirement ceremonies for these knives and those dates after the monger? I guess like in my reporting, I didn't get a clear answer. It seems like the fishmonger who did that doesn't live here anymore. And, you know, it was kind of like one of these things where it was like important to him. And it was like a very human reflection of like this person's story that in very ephemeral and you've kind of gone the next day. And I don't know.

52:46I love that story. I mean, there's every grocery store has like longtime employees and they leave things on the walls and they leave like signage. And the fact that you're so interested in this is really cool. Talk about the requests that you receive from private clients. I'd be curious about the types of cuisines or the specific dishes that they're like, Vanessa, like I'm having a craving for Oaxacan, you know, salsa. Totally. I wasn't getting so many of those requests. I was cooking like a lot of meatballs and like chicken parm and stuff like that. A lot of like family friendly food too. But I think like one thing that was really interesting is just the ability to, I don't know if there was just like a little bit of an interest to be able to like go full throttle all the way.

53:27and just say like, well, I heard you like this. So let me try this out. But you would have a request for a dish that you felt like needed this special ingredient. And that's what got you into a market, Mexican market, Korean market, et cetera. Totally. Yeah, I love that. Let's go back to the wild air days. You know, you were working the line. What is your professional background? It's very cool that you're working the line. You're working for a chef staffing agency. Your career is very, very cool. Thank you. Um, yeah, I've always been in culinary in some, in some capacity. When I kind of first moved to New York, I was working for this company called the Colonistas.

54:05It's a private chef staffing agency. Um, and then, you know, I was doing some like e-commerce consulting for a while for a few small culinary companies. And then I felt like a huge hack because I hadn't worked on the line. And so, um, and I think if you're a curious person, you can do that job forever because you will never learn everything. There's so much to learn. There's people who dedicate their entire lives to a singular dish. And so after I hopped on the line at Wilder and like learned so much, and I worked under some really incredible people and met some really amazing people. It was like a very formative experience for me.

54:41But then I kind of just kept cooking. And it's not to say that I don't enjoy it and have so much respect for the craft and all of these things. But I think ultimately like what um was so special about me moving to LA and being able to like kind of do this is like I've always been interested in storytelling and using culinary as a storytelling vehicle not necessarily I'm never someone who's wanted to open a restaurant or be a chef by any means um but that being said I think that perspective is really integral to the reporting that I am doing oh definitely you gotta have some reps and just understand how what chefs chefs do were you working on that hazelnut chocolate tart at while there I was not working on the hazelnut chocolate tart, but I was doing a lot of shellfish and I had this hat that said ocean navigator and there would be times there would be like a muscle clam on oyster day and so I would wear the ocean navigator hat and I would show up to work and like just talk about bivalves all day.

55:32It's good to be into the ingredients while you're like working on prep. You have to be chipper about it while your hands are going numb. Yeah, a lot of muscle cleaning is gotta be. A lot of muscle cleaning. I got the muscle muscles now though. Definitely the muscle memory for the muscles. Totally. Talk about some other reels or TikToks that have popped off like that you feel like maybe specific places that you really felt you connected with the audience. So one of the things that I'm really interested in about the grocery store is I think that like there are a few inalienable realities to the human experience.

56:05One of those is everybody's got to eat. So the grocery store is a space that everybody interacts with in some way. You have to, even if you're ordering grocery delivery, you're still interacting with it by proxy. So in that way, it becomes kind of like a perfect composite of the community in which it resides in. And it also can become like an embassy of sorts if, you know, it's a grocery store from a different country or providing products from a different country in a different country. Like when you move somewhere, like what are the first two businesses you build? You build a church and you build a grocery store.

56:39Yeah, sure. So anyway, another thing I've been trying to do is really like pick kind of like topics and see how they relate back to the grocery store with the thesis that like everything does. So one of these things is I went down to El Cajon, which is a suburb outside of San Diego, because I was fascinated with this religion called Unarius. and some people call it a cult, but it's a religion or cult in which they believe in past lives and reincarnations in different planets. And it was started by these two clairvoyants and they make these like wacky psychedelic, like short films to promote themselves.

57:18And it's just like super trippy and very Californian and interesting. And so I had this idea like, okay, this is super interesting. I want to make a video about this, but how does it relate to the grocery store? So I went down there a few different times and found out that it is smack dab in the heart of Little Baghdad in El Cajon. So this wacky intergalactic cult is smack dab in the largest Khaldan Christian Iraqi community in the United States, if not in the world outside of Iraq. And they pretty much have no idea of each other's existence. So I went to the grocery store that was closest to Unarius and just interviewed people there and kind of noticed a lot of parallels between this Iraqi store and how they were marketing themselves and the Unarians and how they were marketing themselves and what they were eating and kind of like what they were talking about.

58:11So that was kind of, that was very fascinating. And I think it resonated with a lot of people because there is this fascination with like the occults and just like esoteric, like religious stuff in LA. But also finding this Iraqi community too, who maybe had, you know, it was its own, obviously culture as well. And each were quite defined. It's very defined and singular and like not related to each other whatsoever. But I'm like, where else? Like, it's so American that these two communities can just exist side by side and kind of just like brush past each other and not necessarily interact. It's also like, that's like a very Californian thing too.

58:46And it was just extremely interesting to notice a lot of these parallels. Did you link up with any Unarians while you were there? Linked up with so many Unarians. So many Unarians. I learned so much about Unarius. I was told that maybe I was like a fisherman in my past life. Okay. They really were linked to me. Because of the oyster stuff. Right. Exactly. The muscle stuff. That's exactly. They were like, they knew from like, they put the pieces together, your hat and your time with the muscles while there, that you were a fisherman. Had any of them gone to the market? None of them had been to the market, but they were eating hummus at their gathering, which was funny because it wasn't hummus from the market.

59:21It was a different hummus. So that was kind of like the, that was the thread between the two. It was like place beyond the pines, midway level redirect. Back to LA, are there other markets that maybe our listeners haven't been to or would be surprised at the scope of them in Los Angeles? Yeah. I visited this market a few times called Odessa. It's in, there's actually a few different locations. There's one in West Hollywood and there's one in Valley Village in the Valley. um it's a ukraine it's named after a city in ukraine it's like a ukrainian russian grocery store and um it's it's not massive but it's so bountiful it's extremely interesting i wrote this piece for the la times about the different candies that can be found in the grocery store um these individually wrapped little chocolates um that are so nostalgic for so many people who are coming from that part of the world um not because necessarily they like have such a fond memory of the taste or they do, but as they've gotten older and their taste buds have developed, they're like, this candy isn't like amazing, but they have this like really deep connection to a lot of the kind of like folk tales and fairy tales that are represented on the packaging.

1:00:31I was going to say the packaging is as important as the actual product. Just having that in your home. Absolutely. On your shelf in a candy dish is powerful. Absolutely. And I spoke to, shout out the Sosa sisters who came with me, two really amazing girls who translated for me during this episode, who were telling me that in their household growing up, like their mom and dad would eat the candy and then they would rewrap the little wrapper. So it looked like the candy was still in there and put it back in the bowl. So there would be a little collection of wrappers in their house at all times, featuring these little bears and little riding hood and swans, all relating back to different Russian Ukrainian poems and folktales and stuff like that.

1:01:12So that's a really interesting spot. It's also a great spot to get caviar. It's a great spot to get like any smoked fish. They're making like fresh bread. They're making piroshkis and all sorts of delicious prepared foods. Odessa, two locations, you said Valley Village and West Hollywood. What's your production like? How does it work for Grocery Goblin? Is it a solo operation? Do you have a team? And let's talk a little bit about your sub stack and how you're not just doing a social video. You have, you know, this wonderful place to keep all the thoughts together. Absolutely. It is just me. Great.

1:01:46Yeah, totally. Respect it. Me and my phone. Yeah. And my amazing Mike. Yeah. Does the Mike have a name? The Mike does not have a name. Mike. Mike. There we go. Jasmine and Mike. Jasmine and Mike. It's me, Jasmine and Mike on the road. There we go. I'm going to do it. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a little involved. Like I try to like do like a scouting trip before, introduce myself to a few people, buy something, you know, just like chat to a few people. And then I'll go back. What's been really interesting is like kind of like grappling with this idea of like I really do think that it's the most helpful to have a translator on site in a lot of situations.

1:02:26So working with people who speak the language and figuring out a cadence with them, like how to, you know, make sure that everyone's like story is being like. I like that. you know, accurately interpreted and received. And yeah, I learned Premiere and I added all the videos. I have an amazing friend, Cesar, who makes all of my music. And then I have friends who kind of help me out periodically with filming if I need to be on camera or something like that. But generally, it's just, it's kind of just me and the mic. And then usually the story, I'll have an inkling of what I want to talk about but I really try to go there because I think you really should be doing this with any kind of like nonfiction or documentary stuff or going there just like letting the story reveal itself a little bit more and not having a predisposed idea of what you're going to explicitly talk about unless it's like an event or you know it's a pre-pitched kind of thing yeah it's like a timing thing you want to like have like a little bit of an angle but it makes sense you want to meet people along the way great documentaries do that obviously totally it's good and talk about Substack what's how do you read it?

1:03:31What's on the sub stack? Totally. Right now, the sub stack is like kind of a little interesting mix of both like fictional stories about culinary that I've been writing as just like a hobby. I've also, I do this project that I'm obsessed with. It's very inspired by this Hungry Planet book that I was talking about earlier, where I'll like put on headphones and some music and I'll go on Google Maps and I'll just scroll in random countries and find grocery stores and then I'll go through the user submitted photos and like pick the best ones and I'll like archive them on the sub stack and honestly it has been performing very well and people are really resonating with these photos they're really kind of like haunting and like beautiful and human like just again like footprints like digital shadow footprints that people kind of leave and like don't really think about kind of like those knives right left on the wall and not really like thought about so much but i think that's the same way that that these photos are kind of like coming up for me um so that's another thing that i do and then also i've been doing a little bit of music writing because i think if you're writing about food you should also be writing about a lot of other stuff and it makes your writing better do you do some album reviews um some album reviews or just like analysis i love it yeah i'm a i'm a recovering music writer myself i started doing that before food so yeah a lot of people jonathan gold too gold was that gordonier there's There's some folks who did it.

1:04:51And I think writing about food is more interesting. Totally. But it's cool you're doing it. They help each other. There's different language that it's parallel in a lot of ways. Can we talk about Google Maps for a second? For sure. I love Google Maps. I spend on my phone and on my desktop probably between four and ten hours a week on Google Maps. What do you do on Google Maps? Oh, everything. I mean, first off, it's just thinking about where I'm going. If I have a trip ahead, I'm always looking at geography. Right, totally. I'm definitely looking at user-submitted photos at a lot of places, restaurants.

1:05:23I've looked at markets. I like to see distance in non-America. I think I have a pretty good sense of America, but looking at Spain, I was looking at Spain recently and just how far things are. Definitely. I don't know. We don't need to talk about that. No, no. I mean, it's one of these public utilities that people take for granted and it's like they don't analyze it so much. like under like understand that going and doing a little scroll around google maps can also like i don't know because like i'm not super good at geography but but like it's really like it's totally shaped my worldview doing this like google maps processing exercise i think everyone should spend a little bit more time on google maps oh i agree get to know the world a little bit better we'll see like how roads are built to like there's infrastructure questions like how highways connect to cities and like the sprawl of cities definitely the sprawl of cities and also just like the patterns that you realize come up from country to country or the discrepancies between countries or similarities in countries that are like, you know, across the globe, um, that you can understand through that.

1:06:28Yeah. Did you ever play geocaching games? Like those games where like, yeah, they're the best. Wait, yes. Um, you mean like where you hide something? Uh, uh, or geoguessing. I love geoguessing and I also love geocaching. Do you know about geocaching? I feel like, tell me more. Geocaching was really big in like the late 90s, early 2000s. And it was a game, it still exists. I made a video about it using a market. Where you have coordinates and you have to navigate to those coordinates using like different clues. And then there's a little box and you like take something and you leave something in the box.

1:07:06Like little knickknacks or whatever. But people get really into it and there's different like difficulty levels and different clues. It's like Pokemon Go adjacent. It's like Pokemon. It was like the first iteration of Pokemon. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. But Geo Chasing or Tech? Geo Guessing. Geo Guessing, that game. I love that game. You still play it? I haven't played it. I love that game. It's a great game. I'm going to leave it there. We can, I think like Geo Guessing is part of this Google Maps combo. Totally. Learn a lot. And looking at grocery stores is very cool. So you're building, writing around the user generated photos that you're finding.

1:07:37I'm like building some writing around it and also just like archiving like 25 at a time. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that. It's great. I like when you do that. What about books? Have you thought about writing a book? Have you been approached yet about writing a book? Yes, but I don't think I'm ready to write a book. Yeah, you've been approached. I'm sure people, the agents have hit you up. I don't know what I would write a book about yet. I like that you know that. Yeah. I could see myself writing a collection of essays. Sure. As a way to start. But yeah, I don't know. I'm reading a lot of books right now.

1:08:10As you should. As you should. I mean, it'll come to you, obviously, if you want to write one, you write one. Totally. I mean, we're in the business of making books at Penguin Random House. So we are always looking at folks like you who are ambitious, full of voice and point of view. But I love that you know that you don't quite want to do it now. That's like the best move. Not yet. Yeah, totally. I love that. So what's the rest of the day like? Are you going out to the grocery store? Yeah. Well, yes. Or the next couple of days. Yes. No, totally. I am going to a grocery store after this. I'm going to Savon Meat Market in Glendale.

1:08:42I'm writing a piece about them right now for the LA Times that maybe will be out by the time this interview is out. That is about the kind of like generational divide, how grocery stores market themselves and how like when the kind of store turns over to the next generation, how the marketing changes. And this market has been making the most silly Billy Instagram videos on the planet. They are so funny. And I stumbled upon them. And it's also a fantastic meat market, Armenian market in Glendale. There's two locations. And so I'm going over there just trying to like tie up some loose ends with the piece.

1:09:19Very cool. Yeah. A little last minute fact checking. Totally. Do you have expansion plans on the sub stack that are in the next couple of weeks? You said you might have some things drop in. For sure. I am going to be putting more long form stuff up there. And then also I have a fun series, refrigerating series called Refrigerators. where I will be raiding the fridges of notable Angelenos and asking them about their shopping habits. I feel like you can nail, this idea obviously has been done, but I think with your fresh point of view and aesthetics, beautiful idea. Thank you. Can't wait. I also am desperately looking for somebody to sponsor me to drive from LA to New York and tell the next great American story through the grocery store.

1:10:03Brands? Yeah, whoever. Yeah. Do you have people working on your brand stuff? Or is it just you? Yeah, yes, yes. We have some brands listening. And check out Vanessa's work. If you work in grocery or CPG or Jason, maybe work in auto. It's a great person to collab with. I think you've got a great following and a point of view. Thank you so much. Do it. Thank you. Me and Jasmine against the world. You and Jasmine and Mike will be there too. Totally. Riding shotgun along the way. I mean, that would be really cool. Do you have a route in mind? You know, I haven't really done the Southern route so much.

1:10:39That's pretty interesting to me. But there are just like a bunch of places in America that I'm dying to visit that are interesting to me for a lot of different like anthropological reasons that I'm like, I can connect this to the store. Where do you want to go? I want to go to the Precious Moments Cathedral in Carthage, Missouri. Do you know Precious Moments figurines? You see them in thrift stores a lot. Oh, Precious Moments, sure. Yes, yes. There's like a cathedral built to Precious Moments. and Carthage is really interesting because there's this like massive pilgrimage of like Catholic, I believe Catholic Vietnamese people to Carthage and every year.

1:11:13Cool. And so there's like a really big pop of like Vietnamese culture and food in this like town in Missouri. And there's also a Precious Moments Cathedral. There's a video there. You could hit a couple videos on that trip. I love that. Well, I'm going to continue following you. I appreciate you for joining. on this is taste we ask guests about the discerning taste so to close this interview here's a little rapid fire fast and furious taste check vanessa are you ready i'm so ready the best fruit cherry oh let's go are we talking like midwestern washington i like a rainier cherry yeah yeah they're good they're good oh the andes orchard cherries here really good oh everyone's loving andes they're great totally the worst vegetable carrot oh tell me more i have a problem i can't eat raw carrots.

1:11:57I don't like them. I don't think they're good. They're too sweet for me. I agree. They're too sweet. I don't know. I used to tell my mom I was allergic to them when I was growing up. She said, you can't be allergic to that. I've been feeding you that your entire life. I mean, baby carrots are kind of the worst. I just think, I just don't like carrots. No carrots in general. Yep. There's something wrong with me. Not even with ranch? No. Sorry. Are you pro ranch? Sure. Okay. You're good with ranch, but no carrots. Yeah. Yeah. What is your typical breakfast? It's usually just a vehicle for me to be able to eat toast.

1:12:28So like anything on toast, eggs on toast, goat cheese and honey on toast. Into it. Other stuff on toast. What's the bread choice then for the toast? I like a sourdough. I'm either going like Bub's or like Clark Street here. Super good choices. What is the best dessert? I like soggy cake. So I like tres leches and I like tiramisu, which is not cake, but whatever. I mean, it's like perfect texture. Soggy pastry. Yeah. I'm super into that. Yeah. I love that. A restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead. It's a restaurant in upstate New York where I'm from called Daniel's Austrian on Seneca Lake.

1:13:05And I just have like a very formative memory of eating a vinegary potato salad for the first time. And it was just beautiful. You could see the lake and it was like beautiful, airy dining room, bunch of kids running around parents like that were dear friends. And you would just like eat schnitzel and hang out. So you're from the Finger Lakes? Yeah, I'm from, yeah. Kewka Lake is where Ithaca is. Middle Finger Lake. Middle Finger Lake, Kewka is cool. I've been up there. I love the wine. The wines are pretty good too. It's like really remarkable. There's an amazing like infrastructure for winemaking.

1:13:38Farmers, you know, creating great produce. But there is a lack of like restaurants with perspective up there. Yeah. And I think that it's untapped and someone needs to do something up there. Fully agree. we get a lot of press for like Catskills and lower Hudson Valley, even upper Hudson Valley. But once you drive four hours from the city, no one's going up there. Chef wise. Hey, it's amazing up there. Crazy why. I wish that there were more people up there. I think it's just like a population density. Not a lot of airports there. That's for sure. But, you know, Cornell has like one of the best hospitality schools in the country.

1:14:11And it used to be that like when kids would leave there, they would like start their first project in Ithaca before moving to a bigger city like New York. and they just don't do that anymore. And I don't understand why. So you grew up near Ithaca? I grew up in Ithaca. So what's your take on Moosewood? Oh, I mean, like, it's like my childhood, like all my childhood memories are eating butter noodles and like the spinach basil dressing from Moosewood. And of course, like everyone has that cookbook and it's so important to so many people. Yeah, I mean, iconic place. Iconic, you grew up going to Moosewood.

1:14:41That's so cool. Buried the lead with that one, I did. When you're craving fast food, where are you going? Foster's Freeze. Tell me about it. It's cool. When I'm craving fast food, I usually am craving like soft ice cream and fries. So Foster's Freeze. I don't know if it's just Californian, but there's a lot in LA, Jane. Delicious soft serve. Into that. Is there a flavor of choice? Chocolate vanilla swirl with rainbow sprinkles. I love the texture of a rainbow sprinkle. Have you been to Awan for their ice cream? Yeah, so good. I just went yesterday. I don't know why I had to talk about it. It's really good.

1:15:17It's really, really good. It's unbelievable. And it's vegan. It's vegan. Yeah. It's really so excellent. I love vegan ice cream. I mean, Van Looen vegan is my favorite Van Looen. For sure. So Kuchibu Shah told me about Owan and I want to go back today. It's amazing. Have you had the coffee at Day Glow? I mean, many times. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I love Day Glow. I love milkshake coffee right now. Yeah. It's so good. I love Day Glow. They're pioneers in the game. few more your favorite city outside of america to visit for food i mean it's probably a city i've never been to yeah i don't know enough about but if we're going places i've been probably tokyo yeah we're yeah but what if it's a place that you just want to go oh my gosh i mean i have not spent like any time in paris really so i would love to go there i i hear it's some there's something I hear there's some things going on in the 16th.

1:16:09Last one, your favorite sandwich. I have to do this in a three? Fair. Okay, banh mi, po' boy, BLT. Oh, I love it. Banh mi was number one in our draft for sandwiches. Was it? Oh, it's number one. What's your three? Banh mi, BLT, and I would say grilled cheese with not tomatoes, but with pickled peppers. Yum. Yeah. Yum. Those are probably my three. Wait, we shared two. We share two. Our big three. Two of our big three. Two of our three. It's great. You're in LA, you know, sun, moon, rising. That's it. Vanessa Anderson, the grocery goblin. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thank you.

1:16:50This Is Taste is hosted and produced by Matt Rodbard and me, Eliza Abarbanel. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumber 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.