670: New York’s Brunch Recession on Food Writers Talking About Food Writing with the New York Times Nikita Richardson & Matt Rodbard

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.

0:32I am currently testing out the idea about whether or not we might be in like a brunch recession. Now fewer and fewer restaurants are introducing brunches or they have gotten rid of brunch entirely. Like Bonnie's famously had brunch for like the blink of an eye and then got rid of it. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbar.

0:59Nikki DeRichardson, welcome to This Is Taste. How are you? Good. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat with you. This is food writers talking about food writing. Yeah. And we don't know each other. We just met today. Internet people, though. We are internet people. We know of each other. We know each other. We know each other. I know your work and respect it. I think the big part of your job was launching these tremendous newsletters. at the New York Times and thinking about newsletter as a form and how that is possibly more intimate than other forms of writing. How did you land in that role as a staff writer, senior staff writer at New York Times?

1:38Well, I was previously at New York Magazine and Grub Street. But during the pandemic, I switched over to the strategists and was writing about kitchen and dining. That's like their shopping site. And at some point, like, I guess they had opened up two senior staff editor roles. And funnily enough, Ligaya Michon, who's now one of our co-restaurant critics, she reached out to me and said, hey, like, I think that you should apply for this job. And I thought she wanted me to apply for a writer, a reporter job. At that point, I was kind of sick of being a reporter. Like, now that I've met great reporters, I was like, I was good.

2:20I was never that, I was not that level of great. And I knew I wanted to be an editor eventually. So I said, no, thank you, but thanks for thinking of me. And then the Times reached out to me again. And I was like, no, I don't want to be a reporter. And then the third time, Emily Weinstein, who's the head, like the editor-in-chief of the section, she ended up emailing me. She said, hey, we want you to apply for an editor role. I said, oh, OK. I love it. And that's how I ended up applying for that job and doing it like everyone else did it. The edit test, there's a very difficult edit test. Oh, I've heard.

2:56I've never taken it, but I've heard. Yeah, it just requires a lot of knowledge of grammar. And if you've come from a publication like I did, New York Magazine, where we had copy, copy desk, it's like I knew my grammar, but I didn't know my grammar like that. And so but then, you know, all the other typical edit test stuff. And it was like a months long process. But I landed the job and that's how I ended up at The Times at the end of 2020. Nice. And you find a role writing these newsletters and overseeing these newsletters. Tell me about what this newsletter, where to eat in New York City, how it evolved and what your current team is up to right now.

3:35Yeah. So, I mean, the initial idea was in 2021, after having all these restaurants have been closed through 2020, a lot of them didn't make it onto the other side. And then slowly at the end of 2021, you could start to see the, you know, like after a wildfire, the green shoots of restaurants starting to kind of pop up. And the Times has traditionally covered restaurants through like Florence Fabricant doing Off the Menu, which is her openings column and the restaurant review. But since I joined and since 2020, there's been a big push to kind of expand our restaurant coverage. The national restaurant list that we do now of like the 50 best restaurants of the year was part of that.

4:35And I was kind of just thinking in a more, you know, granular way, how can we cover restaurants beyond the review? Because coming from a place like Grub Street and, you know, food media in general before that, you know, you're covering the day-to-day of restaurants and not just this restaurant now or, you know, in a fleshed out, you know, article. And so, and I also felt as if I didn't know what the restaurant landscape looked like anymore. And maybe there were other people who felt the same way. Like, where do you even, what came back? It was a full reset moment. Exactly. Like, what's around?

5:18And the idea was, okay, well, why don't we, so in the summer of 2021, I pitched Emily Weinstein. I said, I think that we just need a restaurant's newsletter. Like we already had what to cook, which is the Times like recipes newsletter. And I said, we could call it where to eat. And it would just be, you know, about, I don't know, like not necessarily tied to what's new, but also just a broad adoration of New York City as the, you know, beautiful dining heaven that it is. And you know that if you've ever had to like go home to your hometown in the suburbs and be like, where do I even go eat? and we have just so many choices and I guess the idea was to make people like they don't have to be so obsessed that they're following all these restaurant Instagrams but if they read it every week they would know more than the average person who doesn't really pay attention to this and that's how it was born and so I wrote it for well I didn't want to write it I just wanted to edit it I did want to edit But, you know, if not me, then who?

6:26If not now, then when? And so I ended up. You hesitantly. I raised my hand. I said, OK, I'll write it. And so I was writing that newsletter and being a full time editor at the same time. So which is very difficult. If you know anything about how, you know, journalism is laid out, it's like editors edit reporters report. And it's rare to be both and to do them at the same time. Usually it's one or the other. And so I was doing both. And I had a wonderful editor, Mark Josephson, and we worked together on it for a while. And then it got to a point where I was like, I don't know if I can keep up this pace because it's once a week and recommending three restaurants.

7:14And you physically are going to. And going to like, but after work usually, because I would need to work during the day. And a lot of restaurants aren't open in the middle of the day. So you have to go after work. And so eventually we brought on my colleague, Becky Hughes, who actually leads up our social media team, but loves restaurants as well, has lived in New York for quite a while. And she, you know, started switching with me every other week. And then over the summer, I finally stepped down as the lead writer of it. And we brought on Luke Fortney, who had previously worked at Eater. And he now writes it three times a month.

7:51And Becky writes it once a month. It's a great cadence for those two writers who I really respect. I love their work. They have unique voices and points of view. I love that Luke is doing these videos now, too. It's a smart wrinkle. The videos are looking tremendous. He just has a ton of energy. and yeah you know I I landed at the times when I was 30 and by that point I did not want to be out anymore and now I'm 35 and I really don't want to be out like that and Luke is five years younger than me so I'm like you have all the energy and you're freelance so you like you can go do this and I love pointing somebody in a direction and like run um yeah and that really works and so now I get to, you should never turn your, like, your hobby into a job.

8:39And I actually turned my hobby into a job. Yeah, it makes you hate your hobby. It makes you really want to run away from your hobby. I want to ask you about just the reviewing of the Times. You know, I've had the Gaia and Tejal on and Emily and the whole team. I love having Times editors on and writers. When that announcement was made of your new co-critics, there was a little hint in the press release that there would be more restaurant reviews. news um is that where you was that kind of the the luke and becky role or will there be more like smaller reviews at some point do you think um i can't exactly get into it because that as emily would say that's proprietary information but um i do know that there's you know people feel like the times doesn't cover new york city enough like that it's like oh well especially because la guy is not just doing new york she's also covering you know she went down to dc and covered the new Kwame Anuachi restaurant she went to Chicago and reviewed Alinea and so which kind of has always been insulting to me because like what has my newsletter been for the last four years yeah we've been covering New York every single week totally every week we don't have weeks off we we even over like the week of Christmas you'll get a newsletter from us so we are constantly covering it it's just you know if if you think that reviews are the only way to cover a city I think that's a very narrow view of how to cover it because we've been covering it every single week in Where to Eat since March 2022.

10:10And now and like that was also it's also a newspaper column. And then, you know, we we do these huge we try and do these big tentpole stories about like, you know, 57 sandwiches that define New York City or like best pizza or the best croissants. You're working on those features. Yeah. So we've had those come out and, you know, we we don't. The thing is, like, there's a lot of listicles out there. So for me, I really want it to be like beyond just a listicle. Like, how can you tell a story through a list? So like when we did sandwiches. Yeah. That was kind of telling the story of, well, New York City culturally has so many different layers to it.

10:52And we're just using sandwiches as a common denominator. It's not even about best. Best is fine, but best is kind of like it's a pat way of describing food. It's like anti-intellectual. When there's so many different ways to talk about food. And it's not about being exhaustive. It's about having a point of view. I love that you did that with the croissant feature that Mahira Rivers wrote. The croissants. She's incredible. She's amazing. And I think to your point, you really hit the objective, which was talk about New York as a city, as a multicultural city through croissants. And I love that you clarified that.

11:31And I feel like now I'm like really satisfied because I guess in my head, kind of like an old head way, I'm like, bring back Hungry City, do shorter reviews of Outerboro restaurants. but like you're literally have been doing that since 2020 and i read your newsletter and then for whatever reason in my head and it's literally printed in the paper right yeah it is so like it's there guys i'm saying this to myself guys because i'm the one who keeps bringing up you haven't covered new york yeah so happy you came on to really enlighten me about that uh well let's get into the the food writing but first let's just we've been talking so much like broadly about restaurants but what is one restaurant that you've been to recently that has excited you um let's well i went to honestly i put this on the newsletter this week but i am currently testing out the idea about whether or not we might be in like a brunch recession which is that my colleagues have heard me go rant about this for a while rant on it might be a bit shaky but the idea being that it used to be that a restaurant of a certain like echelon or you know or that was trying to appeal to a certain crowd would you know you start with dinner service you and then eventually you introduce brunch and now fewer and fewer restaurants are introducing brunches which means or they have gotten rid of brunch entirely like bonnie's famously had brunch for like the blink of an eye and then got rid of it um hearts in bedstoy where i live used to have brunch before the pandemic they've never brought it back an r.i.p because it was a great brunch but um i just like and which means that the best brunches are now extremely hard to get into right because we don't have a plurality of great brunch um we have a lot of average brunch but not great and so i've been kind of go i'm testing out my theory by going to brunch lately and i ended up at sedel's which i have i had never been to even though it's been around forever um and i found like a random reservation on like a friday morning and my sister and i went and the pancakes were actually the best pancakes I've had in so long.

13:36And I had recently had the Chez Maton pancakes. Oh, that's the legend. Which have been the standard for a while. But when I had them, like, I'm not like, no Tino Shade, like, I think it was just like, they were not as crispy as I remember them being. But the Seidel's pancakes were very crispy. Pancake tip, nice. I think the pancakes were, I am still talking about them. Weeks later, me and my sister. Stissing House had a short-lived brunch as well in Knudsen Valley, and they killed it. I just think there's got to be a bigger story here. You're an editor. I'm sure you'll sign it. I mean, what I've been told is that, you know, like, for the – like, the margins on brunch are just not nearly as high.

14:16And also people don't drink as much at brunch as they do at dinner. Yep. So if you're not – unless, like, boozy brunch works, but boozy brunch and quality do not go hand in hand. man. So because no one wants to spend seventy five dollars on brunch and people exactly. And so it's like, OK, I'm going here for brunch. The food is amazing, but I'm not going to get liquored up. And that is really hard to justify when you could just have your staff, you know, start their day at a reasonable time and, you know, be done for the night by 10, 11 midnight and like start opening your doors at five. It's also like the worst shift to work.

14:56I'll just say I understand why, but I'm still hurting inside. You're hurting. Well, I'll take it, too. I was just in Los Angeles, and my meal that I want to talk about is at Etra, which is a restaurant that I've seen a lot online. But really, I didn't know much about the format. And I just wanted to put eyes on it because I think some friends had said it was great. And it was. It's from a chef, Andrew Lawson. He used to work at Estella here in New York. and when you walk in, it feels like New York in Los Angeles. It's kind of tight. There's candlelighter, very mood lighting. It's noisy. It's got great music, and it feels kind of countered to L.A.

15:34I sat on the patio, which was very L.A., so I was like, I don't need to sit in a crowded restaurant in Los Angeles. No need for that. But I love the cooking. It's an Italian restaurant. That's all I really got to say. It's not flashy, and I hope that's a compliment because I think it's a very accessible place, the limon pasta was a real highlight. And to me, Los Angeles has a new neighborhood restaurant. The New York chef diaspora is real. Yeah. That's how the Hudson Valley became a great restaurant scene. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Give me your top three in Hudson Valley. Oh, I don't know if I have a top.

16:08I haven't been in a while. I'm actually trying to go next weekend. I haven't been there in a little while, but I think I would go. Okay. This has been a while. On the spot, Nikita. Okay, I got it. Okay, I got it. so actually Sissinghouse is that girl always has been that girl will always be that girl Sissinghouse is if you're ever in Pine Plains you actually have to go I love Sissinghouse so already thank you for reminding me before I even said it obviously I know everyone ruined it but like Cafe Mutton I know it was great but it really is good that's how I want to eat I haven't been in a while though I might try and go back I haven't been in two years and I love it it's so creative but I know that the restaurant industry I know that restaurant media we ruined it because we put it on best of lists and then no one could get in.

16:55And then James Beard two years in a row finalists. So it's probably chilled out by now. It's chilled, yeah. Also, I mean, I haven't been in a while but I remember the last time I was in Kingston I felt like the restaurant scene there was better than Hudson. I thought Kingston had so many good spots. I don't know them off the top. I haven't been in a while and I wrote this newsletter about it like two years ago but I do like when you're leaving the area to like go to Moon Burger yeah and cause it's right off the highway and even though like I think that they used to be vegan I don't know no they're actually beef based now now they're yeah they're I know but they still have they still have a vegan oh they got a vegan burger for sure yeah this show thank you for bringing up Kingston we talk about Kingston all the time on the show I don't live too far from there It's what food media does.

17:46No, and I love that town, and we don't need to keep talking about it, but I'm glad you brought it up because I just went to Ang's recently, which is a historical Chinese restaurant in Kingston. It's amazing. Hi there. It's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you. Do you have a guest request, a restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on Three Things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair? You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible.

18:27That's the This Is Taste listener survey, link in our show notes. 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-star talents, will team up with over 80 of Montreal's finest local chefs to create unforgettable, one-of-a-kind menus.

19:13The full program is available at montrealonlumiere.com. Presented by Lotto Quebec in collaboration with National Bank. Okay, let's get to some food writing. First story we're going to talk about, Bring Back the Coffee Shop Tip Jar Even If It's Digital by Alan Tietzema in New York. At New York Magazine, Alan is the longtime editor there. And my former boss. Your former boss, I know. And I have to say, I love that Alan is writing a lot these days. He's writing, I think, a column or a semi-frequent column. He's writing for Grub Street. I think he's taking over writing Eating New York. I think there was literally just an ounce about that yesterday.

19:53Oh, cool. I missed that one. So that's great. I love Alan. It was yesterday, so. Yeah, there you go. It's in your inbox right now. news. Alan is the new eating New York writer. I love that. I think Alan should be writing. He's got a terrific point of view, a lot of history, and has great taste. So Alan writes this great story about this recent Square data that stated for the first time since 2015, the average amount that customers tip at any Square's payments, terminal, and kiosks has dropped below 15%. He acknowledges that there are some reasons for this. It could be tip fatigue. It could be diners experiencing economic worries.

20:31There's, of course, the inflated price of goods, which make the$1 tip less than it once was. He also thinks the screens are too complicated, which I have to agree with. So he's proposing bringing back the tip jar, which we love, you know, throw in a dollar, throw in some change. He's like, well, we know that people don't really carry currency anymore. So maybe it should just be a digital version. His suggestion is to basically say, OK, yes, I will pay for this thing. And here's the card. And would you like to add a tip? Simple question. Would you like to add a tip? Hit yes. How much? Hit the amount.

21:04That is what a tip jar is. Nikita, what do you think about this piece? In the broad scheme of journalism, anything about tips causes ruckus lately. People feel angry about them. I think Alan famously also wrote a story like that while like years ago about how like if you can't afford to pay like it like do a 20 percent tip then you shouldn't be dining out at all. I mean I'm I'm not I don't disagree with that. I think I think like my broad assessment is that it's hard to extrapolate from that data point why people are changing their behavior. um i think like with coffee shops it's it's so weird because at my local coffee shop if you just get a coffee then it says like one two three dollars okay and um i historically was sipping two dollars but i need to chill with that because i get coffee there a lot um it's two because it's for each of the baristas working i like that who i who i love hey nikita that i like that mentality but the coffee already costs like five dollars it's seven dollars if i go there four times a week that's 28 dollars it's crazy um but i love them shout out little roy love you um great granola and uh but then say if i like get a coffee and i also get a topo chico lime then it takes it as like a broad cost and it says 15 20 25 and i said well i'm only tipping for the coffee i'm not tipping for the drink i just pulled out of the fridge so i have to go in and i'm gonna make it one dollar two dollars like not whatever 218 yeah though i guess why am i fighting for 18 bingo i think that's the point i think it's like we're talking about like like less than a dollar differences but i i see your point especially if you like bought a bag of coffee and then it's like 15 20 25 you buy a bag of coffee you get a free cup of coffee though well so that's that's what good coffee shops their roasters do as well i think that's smart i just think that having that simple like would you like to add a tip yes how much it like allows you to type in a number yeah and i wonder if that would provide more tips because i think a lot of people are just skipping the screen at coffee shops i might get arrested for this but if somebody like leaves up the tip screen and they walk away i tip for them is that fraud is that wow i mean i literally it's like they walk away and if they leave it i'm not saying if they if they don't tip at all okay but if they left it up and they just walked away i'm i assume that they meant to tip and so i just i like this i just hit it with a i mean they could be distracted and just like trying to get on with their day and you know maybe it's pre-coffee their brain is not fully firing i'm with you on that i would but you do 25 or 20 if you're tipping for somebody else in front of you oh like i'm not a monster i'll do like 20 22 22 but it's like usually 20 i don't know if we need to push it up for inflation at this point um yeah but i i mean i'm just talking about i'm literally only talking about coffee shop like if it was a 20 25 i would not touch somebody's i'm just talking about coffee no no of course i know yeah but like a dollar two dollars three dollars i'll be like here's a dollar guys yeah that person what would the barista would do interesting the baristas will never do it themselves so they need me to be their robin hood yeah do it for them and because yeah i love them and i mean if the person would come back and be like fraud i didn't tip you one dollar they could blame me i suppose but i think if you do that i'm like i'm not gonna clear the screen i'm going to just give the tip yeah you're you're i love you're off the way i don't know i'm jail let's talk about the next story.

25:01This TikTok food trend is more than 10 ,000 years old by Genevieve Coe in the New York Times. First off, did you write that headline? No, I did not. I didn't work on this story. Great headline. But we all looked at the pictures last week and she was like, I know this picture isn't very appealing because it's just like smoked salmon. It's hard to make sexy. I know, and we struggle with that at Taste all the time when you have a story with heritage and place and you have the art program and you're like, yeah, this doesn't look that delicious but you're telling the story. So whoever on your team wrote that headline, I love that headline.

25:33Maybe it was Genevieve. She's an editor, too. I might have, yeah. Might have been the writer. But this story I wanted to talk about is great. It's a terrific piece where The New York Times digs into the modern buzz around home salmon smoking, both cold and hot smoking. Genevieve has a great line to describe these videos. I would call them that they were making salmon big on TikTok which is crazy to say as someone who's loved salmon literally my whole life but quote self-described smoked salmon girlies pinched off pieces tugging them from the skin then took wide-eyed bites some licking and chewing suggestively when feeding bits to a toddler in between her own mouthfuls other mostly non-girlies grasped the fillet with both hands and pulled the meat off the skin with their teeth like a bear curious curious stuff there those images nice nice writing there uh i think the piece writes about how this moment on tiktok was possibly a stunt by an idaho-based company called solvice kitchen and today solvice kitchen has unusually high volumes of orders because of these tiktok influencers discovering smoked salmon i think the zoom out is really key here as is key in a lot of new york times feature reporting which we talk about on the show quite a bit.

26:47She points out that how freshly caught salmon is sliced off its bones, quickly wet brined and hung in cold smokehouses for days over slowly smoldering alderwood that doesn't emit heat but infuses the fish with its scent. That this tradition is old in North America. There's archaeological evidence of fisheries that date back 12 ,000 years. And really this piece is terrific to show this kind of tension between old and new and the native foodways, indigenous food ways is at the heart of the story and how smoking salmon is really important to indigenous food ways uh so i love the piece and we're linking to all these in the show notes uh what did you take away from it everything new is old totally nothing is new time is a flat circle we've never invented anything yeah we haven't invented it's very hard to do anything novel when you are this far into human history.

27:43I think, I mean, the thing is, though, we need this to happen because, like, Saul Zabar died this week, and somebody needs, like, I've actually been thinking a lot lately about how there was this whole, there was an article in the Times about how among the share of people who've been unemployed long-term, College educated people represent a third of that group of people. You're going to be like, where are you going with this, Nikita? And I have a place. I'm picking it. So I asked aloud, does this mean that we're about to have another wave of artisanal producers? Because if you remember in the early, like in the late 2000s, early 2010s in New York, when there was a recession and people didn't have a job, all of these people started all these artisanal companies.

28:36that they were selling their like homemade mustards and, you know, smoke, like these, they started these kind of cottage businesses and were taking what had been, you know, these old ways of doing things. And we're like, we're going to bring back quality. You don't have to buy XYZ major, like generic mustard brand. Like you can have artisanal mustard. And, you know, Not every one of those businesses has survived to today, but I wonder, are we about to face the next – are we going to have another artisanal wave coming? And is this the seedling of that, if that makes sense to you? I mean like that people are – it's good when young people are learning how to do something old.

29:27I agree. Traditionally. Yeah. Because if we have – in the apocalypse, you have to have a skill. Yeah, yeah. And I think like cold smoking fish pulled from a stream is probably going to be the way we are surviving the apocalypse. I mean, I know how to weave, knit. I'm making clothing in the apocalypse. I made this sweater I'm wearing. Beautiful. Nice job. Thank you. I think that I don't like when we try and paint things that are old as new. Yeah. Like read a book. Even, I don't know, open a Wikipedia page. But like at the same time, it's net good for anyone young to be learning a traditional way to make something.

30:12Let's get back to learning how to make things. Very perceptive about this kind of mirroring of that post-recession moment in 2010 where you would see a lot of heritage ideas or heritage concepts repackaged for this newfound e-com world. Now we're a decade and a half past that and EECOM is table stakes truly and we're seeing it happen again. But I think you're right that seeing a younger generation embrace food ways and heritage while hopefully respecting it and acknowledging it, not just fully ripping it off. You see it quite a bit. People recognize heritage and in the branding there's tips to where it comes from as a place.

30:53I think it's good. And if you saw the salmon run this year in Alaska, it was incredible. It was. I heard from somebody. There's like record numbers. The record numbers of salmon. They came roaring back. And so I think that's good for us salmon fans. Love you salmon. Shout out. Shout out to the Alaska salmon fisheries. Next story. Very fun. Fellas, is it choogy to make a mug cake? This is by Anna Heasel, our friend at Best Food Blog. Really fun one from Anna. She's talking about choogy, which, you know, basic. Which has come up twice this week now. Tammy Teclamerian wrote Chugi in a headline too?

31:29Yep. I was like, they're friends. Are they talking? Are they reading each other's copy? I also wonder if Alan wrote that because Alan technically is her boss. Yeah, right. I wonder. I thought the same thing. This is so Inside Baseball right now. But this is food writing. You're talking about food writing. You're this far because you care about this stuff. No, I wonder if this reclaiming of Chugi because it feels like it's like 18 months past date, that term Chugi. Chugi became Chugi. Chugi became Chugi. That's Inside Baseball in the best way. but Anna writes about the mug cake how she was kind of mixed on it early on to remind everyone a mug cake is a microwavable pastry that can be made from a mix I think Betty Crocker has kind of a corner on the market for pre-mixed mug cakes but you can also do it from scratch they're easy to make you can make them under 10 minutes and I like the piece because Anna speaks her truth she has come around on the mug cake and how Well, Allie Slagle, New York Times recipe.

32:26The microwave sticky toffee pudding was Anna's entry point into the mug cake. What won't Allie Slagle do? Isn't Allie just the best? Not only is she an amazing recipe developer, she's a very kind person. She's a very kind person. You're absolutely right. And writes fan favorite recipes. And we publish her cookbooks here and she's amazing. I think this mug cake, it's probably 10, 15 minutes. There's some pulsing that is required, multiple steps. But it's a simple recipe with butter, brown sugar, cream, two medjool dates, which I like the specificity. I got to make one. I feel like I got to get into this too because after I eat dinner or like I feel like an ancestral pull to eat something sweet.

33:13And I never have anything sweet in my house right after. So it's like it sometimes it could be like granola and yogurt. Yeah. Or like I would love for it to be Chuck's cookies, but that's the whole thing. I have to like prepare those. Yeah. And I think maybe what I need to do is start thinking, start investing heavily and like in the mug, in the mug cake. Oh, mug cake. Yeah. You could do pre-mix. I think I'm going to do this Ali Slago one. You would think like working at New York Times, I would actually know about it, but I don't cook that often because I go out to eat a lot. Yeah. So, and like I live by myself, so I try and keep my cooking to a minimum because I don't like leftovers either.

33:55Oh. Yeah, these are, there's a lot of, I have a lot of piccadillas, if you will. I wouldn't, I like that you specify that you're not like a huge home cook because like. I love cooking for other people. I like love cooking for a group, but for myself, I'm like. Yeah, yourself. Right. I'm pretty like a plain Jane about it. I'm like a. Yeah. I don't go crazy. I think like there's roles in food media and they're not all the same. And like when you're working like the features restaurant B, you're maybe not thinking about cooking in the rest of the world. Have you had – okay, this is funny. Yasso, those yogurt bars?