744: The Anarchist Who Built Zingerman’s, America's Greatest Food Store with Ari Weinzweig 

13:22Brad Hedeman:this episode is brought to you by masterclass you know how on the show we're always talking to people who've spent decades obsessing over one thing whether it's modern korean food new expressions of the Jewish deli, or the perfect vampiro taco in South LA. That depth of knowledge is the thing I find endlessly fascinating. And honestly, it's a big part of why I'm into masterclass. There are classes taught by some of the best chefs, writers, and thinkers in the world. People who've put in the work. And the lessons are short enough that I can actually fit them in. Thought leaders like Michael Lewis, Amy Poehler, and chefs Gordon Ramsay and Roy Choi all teach their own masterclasses.

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15:20Brad Hedeman:Right now, new members get their choice of organic beef, chicken breast, or shrimp in every box for an entire year. plus$20 off your first box. Go to butcherbox.com slash taste. That's butcherbox.com slash taste, and use our link so they know we sent you. Speaking of traditions, the Reuben and the corned beef sandwiches are their icons. And walk me through what great deli food actually means to you. Is it nostalgia? Is it the craft? Is it sourcing? I mean, what's your point of view on that?

15:54The hosts of This Is TASTE:Well, I mean, I guess my take, and again, it's in the food philosophy pamphlet, but it's pretty much impossible to make amazing food out of mediocre ingredients. And Lord knows there's many people trying, you know, oftentimes based on the belief that people won't pay, so they buy the cheaper alternative. You know, we've always opted, you know, we defined quality here at Zingerman's in 1991 as full flavored, which we defined further to mean complexity, balance and finish and then traditional. And so we're always pushing for that more flavor, more traditional. And they usually go together. And so, you know, we're just always looking to make the ingredients better.

16:37The hosts of This Is TASTE:And I know there's people who will say, you know, based on their emotional memories that it was all better in 1982. too, but there's no way because the bread is so much better because we opened the big house. The sauerkraut's better. I mean, just the corned beef's better because we improved the quality of the beef. I mean, all of it is pretty much better.

16:56Brad Hedeman:So I have to ask about your writing. I mean, I've subscribed to your e-news. And Ari, I mean, you are, it's not just prolific, you're profound too. Like you've got both. I mean, you really knock out the words. Yeah, you're welcome. Tell me, when you sit down to write, you're writing thousands of words a week for these newsletters. What's the process like for you when putting these out? Well, I just was up early this morning editing this week, which unfortunately is about loss that we experienced here.

17:27The hosts of This Is TASTE:But I guess I just pick a topic for the lead essay, and sometimes I know a little ahead, and sometimes I get to Friday, and I'm like, uh-oh. But, you know, I guess I've learned that there's so much interesting thinking in the world that it's if I just start looking like amazing things come up. And so I'm really rarely at a loss. And then once I decide what I'm going to write about, I just start doing research and I see what I can find. And then the research prompts more ideas, which prompts more research. and then you know I just start connecting dots you know whether it's my own emotion and what it's you know to always try to relate what it's like to lead so that it's meaningful to other people uh you know and comparing it you know because if you when you start to study interesting things in parallel they all connect so whether it's Ukrainian history uh the history of North Africa you know I mean all of these things are related and so it's just fascinating to me always to find the threads and then try to turn it into something that's helpful and meaningful to the person reading it.

18:38The hosts of This Is TASTE:And it's helpful to me too. I mean, I learned so much from each one.

18:41Brad Hedeman:Yeah. I think you put in the time, obviously, and it's part of your process to run Zingerman's is to always be learning. We will hear from Brad Hedman later in the episode and I asked him the same question about sourcing at Zingerman's. I mean, do you have a category that you're particularly proud of that you work in?

19:00The hosts of This Is TASTE:Well, I think anything we really put our minds to becomes really good. You know, olive oil is something we started with early on when not really anybody was, you know, a few people like Dina DeLuca were doing it, but not very common. And it remains, I think, quite good. You know, one of the things that sets us apart is that we really don't sell anything we don't believe in, you know which is quite different than most places which is buy what sells and then maybe add in a couple of their favorites like here if even if it's a big seller out in the world but we don't like it we just choose respectfully not to sell it um you know not out of arrogance but just it's hard to really sell something you don't believe in um but you know tin fish cheese uh you know we still the deli we still hand cut all the cheese when people order it uh we still you know working the counter in the old way.

19:57The hosts of This Is TASTE:But also, you know, there's other things that are less well-known, cured meats, artisan pasta I'm a big fan of. I eat a lot of it. You know, but there's just great products like what we get from Mulan de Mahjoub through Roger's Collection, the Mahjoub families in Tunisia. I mean, all their stuff is incredible.

20:16Brad Hedeman:I love coming to Zingerman's, and this has been the case since the 90s when I first started visiting, that if you walk in, you show interest in a product, chances are somebody working there is going to literally pull it off the shelf and crack it and taste it. I love that ethic about what you fostered there. How has that been part of your principle? You don't see people pulling these expensive products off shelves, cracking it, but every time you go to Zingerman's, you get that experience.

20:45The hosts of This Is TASTE:Yeah, absolutely. Well, look, we've done it from day one. We do it in the restaurants too. If if somebody goes to the roadhouse and they want to try something on the menu, we bring them a taste. You know, it's just, it's really the guest's choice, you know, why do we want to pawn something off on them? If I love it but they hate it, it's not helpful. And, you know, if you really look at it, even just from a strategic business standpoint, if you sell them something they don't like, especially when it's not inexpensive, the outcomes are all bad, you know, so they may not return it, but they're not coming back, you know, or they tell other people and I'd rather have them decide before they spend the money because, you know, there's some things that are delicious.

21:31The hosts of This Is TASTE:I just don't like, I don't like beets, you know, it doesn't mean it wasn't a great beat, you know? So it's just trying to let people make the decision of their own volition and let them learn to develop their taste buds and they get to pick. And it's awesome because like now to your point where we've been here this long, we have like nine-year-olds coming in to taste goat cheese. And it's amazing.

21:52Brad Hedeman:It's so fun to see kids in the restaurant, in the shops. I have to ask about Jihae Kim. Huge fan. She's a good friend. And really, I think Miss Kim and Lil Kim, what you've done with Korean food in America through partnership with Jihae is remarkable. How did you guys get linked up originally? Well, I give GA all the credit for what we've done, but we met because she moved here from, I mean, she could tell her story better than me.

22:22The hosts of This Is TASTE:My recollection of it is she moved here from New Jersey with her then husband who got a job at the university. And she had worked in health care, you know, in quite a high-end job, but she was sick of it. And so she decided they were living near the deli, so she thought, I'll just get a job working the counter. And that's how she started, you know, because our vision is that we want people to open Zingerman's businesses with them as a passionate partner. She took us up on it and she did the work to make it happen. And one of the things I wrote about in my e-news last year is an idea that I learned and adapted from a woman named Carol Stanford who did some amazing work.

23:04The hosts of This Is TASTE:And it's what she called deep understanding. and deep understanding as I've come to interpret it is where you work in a field that already exists. So in G.A.'s case, she didn't invent Korean food. Then you adjust it through your own work by connecting it in new ways or working with better quality ingredients, like doing something to elevate it beyond what others do. And you do that in a way that helps others to have better quality of life and that helps you become yourself. and I think she did that with Korean food I think it's what we did with the deli in the beginning I have a new pamphlet coming out today on democracy and it's the subheading is about deep understanding because it's really what happened to me over the last few years as I started to agonize over what was going on around me was it made me you know I'm a history major so in a lot of ways I should know but I really went back and restudied all of it and really came out of it with completely different beliefs about what democracy meant and what we need to do about it.

24:10The hosts of This Is TASTE:So that idea of deep understanding, like it's not evil if you don't have it, but I think it really makes your life, your own life more meaningful and it allows you to make others' lives more meaningful in the process.

24:23Brad Hedeman:Well said. And you use the word pamphlet and you're prolific. You also use the term lapsed anarchist to describe your...

24:32The hosts of This Is TASTE:Or less and less laps, but yeah, less and less these days.

24:35Brad Hedeman:But I want to how does it how does a last anarchist actually lead an organization? It feels a little counterintuitive to me.

24:41The hosts of This Is TASTE:Yeah, well, you're not the only one, but that's mostly because most people don't understand anarchism. So there's nothing in anarchism that prohibits leadership. It just teaches you not to think hierarchically so that you don't like somebody needs to lead, but it doesn't make them a better person than the person who just got fired yesterday. So leadership still matters. It just needs to be leadership where you treat everybody with dignity, where everybody matters, and where you involve people in the organization and running the organization as opposed to the Vladimir Putin method where three people get to give input and nobody else, and they just make decisions.

25:22The hosts of This Is TASTE:So, you know, it's functional leadership. There's nothing in anarchism that says that that's bad. It's just when it becomes like a constant, a hierarchical passing down from one kid, one family to the next, or, you know, where it's giving you rights that the other people don't have or that sort of thing.

25:42Brad Hedeman:Really, really clear there. I think that that's a really, that was a great description.

25:46The hosts of This Is TASTE:Well, I've written a lot about its application to modern organization, including a pamphlet I did. I've lost track four or five years, six years ago for Emma Goldman. I guess I could do the math. She was born in 1869. So anyway, but for her 150th birthday, so it would have been 2019.

26:05Brad Hedeman:Do you still go to origin? Do you still visit producers around the world?

26:09The hosts of This Is TASTE:Yeah, I mean, less than I used to just because we have a lot of dogs in our house, and that makes it hard for my significant other to travel with me. But yeah, I do. I mean, it's awesome to go. I still believe you can't really understand something until you go.

26:26Brad Hedeman:Yeah, I think that's well said. Well, you know, I'll speak with Brad later in the episode about the box that I curated. But really, truly one of my greatest honors in this career in food writing was to curate a box of Zingerman's products. And I'm linking to it in the show notes that listeners can pick it up. And I really appreciate the opportunity to put my stamp on Zingerman's a little bit.

26:51The hosts of This Is TASTE:Yeah, well, we're honored to do it.

26:53Brad Hedeman:It's really great. Well, Ari, let's pick this up another time. There's so much more I want to ask.

26:59The hosts of This Is TASTE:Yeah, absolutely. And I'll just share my email is ariaatzingermans.com. So people are welcome to reach out. And with all the books and pamphlets, we're off the grid. I'm not a big Amazon fan. So we're sort of like artisan pamphlets and stuff. So we do all the design here. Jenny Tubbs at Zingerman's Press does an enormous amount of work to make that happen. And then we print them locally and then we ship them, of course, from Zingerman's Press dot com or ZingTrain dot com. so we're eager to ship them around just we do it ourselves

27:30Brad Hedeman:yeah and you have that press and you're active with the pamphlets you also have written terrific books about bacon about olive oil and I've read those and I own those you've written deeply about culinary history it's just an amazing body of work Ari and again like let's pick this up again in some time I want to have you in the studio thank you so much for joining this is Taste

27:51The hosts of This Is TASTE:my pleasure Matt you have a great day

27:57Brad Hedeman:Brad Hedeman, welcome to This Is Taste. How are you?

28:01Ari Weinzweig:I am warm this time of year, which is crazy because I know most of the country is socked in by snow. Other than that, I'm doing really well. So why are you so warm? Well, because I'm in Michigan and when you're a Michigan boy and it's 33 degrees, it feels like spring, especially because it was like 10 degrees the other week. So you're like, oh my gosh, light coat weather.

28:21Brad Hedeman:I, I, as a Michigan boy myself, I totally, I totally get that. Uh, well, Brad, we're going to talk all about your work at Zingerman's and really talk about the collaboration that I got to do with you. And it's, it's been so much fun. Um, before we get to that though, I want to ask you like, give me a couple of delicious things that you've, that you've tasted in the past day or so.

28:41Ari Weinzweig:Oh my gosh. Well, I've got to do have to pull up my tasting team notes because we actually had a tasting yesterday. Oh, no way. So yeah. So one of the things we do is we, all of the product selectors like myself, there's my friend Alex, the cohorts at MailOuter, but then also the folks over at Zingerman's Deli that are also picking products. We get together all the time and to try all the things that are sent our way. So we got a couple of other things from folks we already know. So there's this wonderful producer up in Vermont, Blake Hill. I don't know if you're familiar with them, but every now and again, they make the Seville orange marmalade that I think is wonderful.

29:17Ari Weinzweig:I think marmalades are kind of hard. So love that one because it's bright. It was really fresh. It smelled so clean, which was just, you know, it just, it smelled like summer, but it still had that wonderful little bitterness in the end. So I thought that was great. We discovered this new thing. I don't want to say discovered. We tasted something I'd never had before, which was a green chili masala crisp. And I know all these chili crisps have been trending a lot very much but this one had much more of the indian spices so a little bit warmer you know still a little bit of that heat you know when you get just like you perspire under your eyes a little bit like just a little bit of that but the texture was much better you know some of those chili crisps can be a little dry tasting or something or the the spices aren't always as fresh or something like that so i thought that was really great i also tried a panettone, which is certainly not the season, but because we're in the cat, uh, the catalog world, we're always working so many months in advance that we have to start thinking about Christmas by like April or May.

30:18Ari Weinzweig:Uh, so we started a wonderful panettone from a Gentile, which is also a pasta company that we, uh, that we work with. I think they've been great pasta. So that's great. Barnacle foods.

30:28Brad Hedeman:I bet you've probably, Oh, barnacle foods is amazing. Yeah. But like, before we get to barnacle, I want to go back to the panettone because we love panettone here. I Verona and tour with the Olivieri guys and see how they make it. And when you're tasting Panettone's and you're thinking about next holiday season, what are you looking for?

30:46Ari Weinzweig:By this point in time, I'm looking for exotic flavors almost. We carry six or seven different flavors of Panettone. So there is always that classic candied fruit, you know, a lot of citrus, kind of that Oliveri. I do that, their classic one, which I think is wonderful at that size. but then we also have one that's laced with a balsamic cream and one that has brandy cherries inside one that has maroon glace from northern italy um that one's out of uh osti so i think we've opened up the pandora's box of panettone for our folks and i always every year think we've hit the threshold but then we bring on another flavor and those all sell out as well so i feel like we're becoming a sort of clearinghouse for panettone very excited about that one because I don't have that as a producer.

31:33Brad Hedeman:I love that. And a new pentatoni on the block is a good thing. And you're finding that consumers really like pentatoni these days?

31:40Ari Weinzweig:Absolutely. I'd say for the last 10 years, we've been selling them, but I've noticed certainly in the last two where it really seems to have found a foothold here, if that makes sense. A lot of producers here even making it, which I think they're doing a great job. Yeah. And then Barnacle foods we tasted, it's a chocolate bar, the sea salt and kelp chocolate bar, which I thought was, honestly, I didn't think I was going to like it too much. And I always try to check those kind of beliefs at the door when we taste things. And then I was really impressed and really enjoyed eating it. And I think that's one of the things when you really kind of walk away from a food, well, it still lingers, you know, maybe on your palate, but you kind of think about it and it was an experience you weren't expecting.

32:28Ari Weinzweig:And I think for folks, chocolate and kelp is definitely not going to be an experience they've had before.

32:34Brad Hedeman:Well, Brad, tell me first off, how did you come to Zingerman's in the first place? And how do you describe your day-to-day? Wow, that's a great

32:41Ari Weinzweig:question. I came to Zingerman's in like a Dickensian way. Got just a quick moment. It was my parents were divorced very young for me when I was very young. And then my dad lived with a woman and then when I was about seven they they separated so I didn't see this person who I really loved for a very long time about 12 years and then I came here to the University of Michigan here in Ann Arbor Michigan as a freshman and I needed a job and I reached out to my dad and I was talking to him he goes well you know Deborah who was this woman I was just crazy for he said she works at Zingerman's you should go down and ask so I did I'd never been to Zingerman's before and I went on a Friday and it was very busy and I took a number and I recognized her.

33:25Ari Weinzweig:But like I said, I was six by the time she saw me. So when she finally kind of came around, I introduced myself after a lot of tears and hugging. And she's like, what are you here for? And I'm like, well, I came to see you found a job. And she's like, oh, you're hired. I mean, I can't really say that. But we went through a whole thing and I didn't work for her, I started in the bread box. And this is 1994.

33:45Brad Hedeman:Amazing. Oh my gosh, Brad. Damn. Damn. Damn.

33:50Ari Weinzweig:I fell in love with it immediately. I was just thinking about this the other day. To jump on what I do now, the title that I always put into my emails is marketing and product selection. So I get to travel around and meet the producers. I'm going to go to Barcelona here in about five weeks, and I'm going to go down to Granada and see the folks at Omed. They do olive oil, they do vinegar, and they're really great producers. So I can't wait to see that. But I've helped with olive oil harvest. I've been in the caves where all the cheese is being aged to pick the very batch and the kind of set the flavor profile that we want to taste.

34:26Ari Weinzweig:So, you know, four hours in a 40 degree cooler, tasting the same cheese over and over, making your notes and then deciding, okay, we like the ones that are made on like July 13th on Tuesdays. We like the Tuesday cheese is best. So it's been amazing for me to be able to meet all these people because that's really who we work for, the people that are making this food. And those people feel very much like the friends and neighbors I grew up with in Michigan. We're pretty rural. You're going to know farmers. You're going to kind of understand their life. And a farmer is a farmer is a farmer everywhere in the world.

34:59Ari Weinzweig:The things that the farmers in Italy worry about are the same thing that the farmers around Kalamazoo worry about. And that connection makes it really easy. And then you have this food that you connect over on top of it. So I think of my job as really getting to bring back the stories and the flavors of the people that are making it. And I was reminded of this, like the very first time I ever tried food was with Ari. So everyone at the deli, we were crazy about food, of course, and there was a lot to discover, especially in the nineties. It really wasn't a big deal yet. It was right on the cusp, right?

35:33Ari Weinzweig:So the amazing thing about Ari, especially at that time is he would go to Europe and And he would go to some town and ask, oh, does anyone make olive oil here? And they'd point up the road and say, yeah, maybe about three miles up on the left-hand side. Well, he'd go three miles up. There's no one there. So he'd kind of come back. And he'd just whittle his way down until he met a producer, ended up at an estate, kind of introduced himself, got to know them, became friends with them. And then he would bring these flavors back. And then we would all taste them together. And the very – I mentioned that tasting team meeting where we all get together.

36:04Ari Weinzweig:The very first time I remember doing that, I was 18 years old. It was up in the office above the deli. And Ari just pulled out a bunch of stuff from his bag, right? All these things he'd kind of gathered on his travels and just set them up there. And we began tasting. And I think normally I would have been really intimidated. But there was really, there's this amazing thing about Ari that he makes everything feel approachable and that you can understand it. And I think that's one of the great legacies we've had at Zingerman's is to demystify sometimes. these flavors that a lot of us have grown up with thinking are just beyond our reach you know beyond

36:39Brad Hedeman:our capabilities i mean i love that sentiment from the 90s and like this pre-foodie era and i think david camp writes really well about this in the united states of arugula about this era because you're kind of working in concert with dean and de luca at that time and being some of the first to bring in these these european products and sell them to americans and part of your job i think what you do so brilliantly is you're a writer as well. And you write about these foods and in the catalog and you have a newsletter and you've been doing it for so long and we take it for granted now. But like back then, it's hard to write about this stuff.

37:15Ari Weinzweig:Oh yeah, well, you had to explain it. I would talk to people for 15 minutes about what olive oil was and how they could use it, right? And they'd still go, well, it's$8 at Kroger. I'm like, okay. But now you talk to people and they'll tell you they have three different olive oils. you know, from all over the world and they use them for different things. And that kind of, I guess, education and experience and know-how in like 20, 30 years is kind of amazing how we've really embraced this across the country. When I first started, I mean, you had to throw stuff in people's mouth just to get them to taste the cheese.

37:50Brad Hedeman:And now you have this mail order business, which is, is it growing? I mean, I imagine every year.

37:57Ari Weinzweig:We, yeah, that. So the wonderful thing about mail order is that our customers are the country. So everyone else is a brick and mortar. They can only really handle the people that can get through their doors. But we're the way that we can, Zingerman's in general, can reach everyone. If you're in the corner of Seattle or somewhere down in New Mexico or Montana, you can still get access to great food and still kind of have the Zingerman's experience wherever you are. And we're very lucky, right? Because Ann Arbor is the home of the University of Michigan. And there's people coming through here, 50 ,000 different people coming every year for the school.

38:30Ari Weinzweig:And then they leave and they remember what Zingerman's was like. They remember that Reuben sandwich or they remember that one cheese they discovered on some busy Saturday afternoon. And then they think of us. That's the wonderful thing. And I really love my role because I get to be all of the Zingerman's. You know, I get to be the bakehouse and the coffee company and the candy company. And I, when you talk to customers, they think we're just this one magical building, right? With the telly here and maybe mail orders upstairs and the bakehouses in the back. And I love that idea. And I never try to change anyone's mind about that because that is what we are.

39:06Ari Weinzweig:And I get to be at the center of all of that as far as mail order is concerned, I think.

39:11Brad Hedeman:It's very, very special as a mail order recipient for the past 35 years, probably. Let me ask you about just Zingerman's as a company. Is there a category that you specialize in that you personally just love?

39:26Ari Weinzweig:Well, I personally love tin fish and cheese. But when I think about the products that we probably do the most of at Zingerman's, it really has become our baked goods. I always think of what we really sell at Zingerman's mail order as nostalgia. We have delicious nostalgia. but i think i'd keep in mind that when folks receive our sour cream coffee cake right probably the most delicious and certainly a foundational coffee cake from zingerman's bakehouse when they get it when they see it when they taste it they love it but i think what probably comes to mind is grandma right what comes to my mind when i have um one of our scones is my grandmother's kitchen when i was eight because she was one of those grandmothers that once you walk through the door, she just started feeding you.

40:11Ari Weinzweig:Right. And so there's this connection with food and connection to memory and connection to nostalgia that I really think is at the heart of what we do. We give you that connection to, to recreate that memory, to live it again, to, to take a bite and kind of probably close your eyes and think about that family table that you were around, maybe that one Easter or someone's birthday. And you get to eat this delicious, I mean, make no mistake. I I think our food is some of the best tasting stuff you're going to find around. I'd never say it's the best, you know, to each his own.

40:44Brad Hedeman:Give me a category that maybe you excel in that is like a sneaky strength of yours.

40:50Ari Weinzweig:My own sneaky strength is probably sauces. Yeah, and it's very, there's a chef at Zingerman's Deli that I've basically grown up with, Roger Bowser, who's one of the managing partners now. And he always says, if it's fresh, talk to me. If it's in a jar, talk to Brad. Because we do, we ship all these things around. And I've seen in the last few years, and I've used them a lot in my home cooking, simmer sauces of what I would consider to be really traditional, very flavorful sauces from different parts of the world that we rarely see here and would never probably take the time or have the ingredients to make.

41:28Ari Weinzweig:I've got a wonderful pastor simmer sauce that comes out of Oaxaca. Wonderful cake. No, that's already ready to go. So if I make my chicken and I saute or cook it about eight minutes, and then I put this whole jar into the pan, it flavors everything. And so street tacos, whatever's the real big flavor at the moment, it's a lot of pastor, that pork and the pineapple kind of a flavor. So those are wonderful because I can feed the family in 20 minutes and they think I ran out to the best Mexican restaurant in town. Or mafi sauce from our friends at Kitchens of Africa. no one tastes that and it's one of those sauces that would take folks all weekend to make and then you would kind of eat it and enjoy it all week long until you had to make a whole nother batch to have that in a jar that you can just whip up um that's amazing these are all shelf stable i imagine these are all shelf stable and they're so simple to use that you don't you don't need to have a culinary degree or even understand where they're coming from

42:28Brad Hedeman:you just have to be able to simmer in a pan yeah yeah no we see a lot of that in uh you know know, the work we do at Taste, this like semi-homemade kind of vibe where you, you know, maybe prepare your protein and chop your vegetables, but you can use this really great anchor sauce from the jar. Yeah, it's smart. Well, I wanted to talk to you about our collaboration. You were so kind to invite me to collaborate on a box, and we're linking to it in the show notes. Ari and I talked about it a bit before this interview. And I really, really, really appreciate the scope of products. Of course, you mentioned the conservas and the jars of pre-made sauces.

43:07Brad Hedeman:You've got the fresh cheese counter. You've got the aged cheese counter. And of course, you've got the breads. So it was really hard for me, Brad, to pick these products. I think we collaborated on the selection. I think it maybe sent you like 20 to start. But I want to talk about a couple of them because maybe you can demystify them a little to me. I really personally love all of them. And I, you know, if you have the budget, check it out. It's a really nice selection. The first one is this terrific collaboration between Cabot and Jasper Hill. Tell me about this cheese a little bit more.

43:43Ari Weinzweig:Yeah. So folks might've heard of Cabot Creamery, right? It's a very big co-op in the Northeast and they make, you know, good cheese. You're going to find it in the grocery store. They'll probably make a sharp and an extra sharp and a double sharp. But the folks at Jasper Hill Farm up in what they call the northeast corner or in the North Kingdom. North Kingdom, Vermont. North Kingdom, right. They're small, right? They are artisan and have been around for about 22 years. And they're working with local farms all around them. But small folks and helping them get their cheese or their granola or whatever it is they're making.

44:18Ari Weinzweig:helping them get to a distribution point where they can actually start to make money because there's nothing up in that part of vermont two lane roads brew pubs and pizza joints that's all they have so they've taken up this um leadership role for all the other producers in the area but cabot is very capable of making delicious cheddar cheese and even though they've got this big maybe reputation of being big um they can still help produce things that we would consider to be incredibly artisan and might put back in Somerset, England, like it's from the home of cheddar. So what they've done is use a lot of those traditional methods.

44:58Ari Weinzweig:Cabots used their milk and they've wrapped it with the cloth and they've put the lard on it. And then Jasper Hill takes it and ages it. And it's that role of being an affineur, a finisher, if you will, right? The one that can coax out as much flavor of the cheese and has a vision for what it's going to be in 12 months 18 months in france it's a very big role right it's it's kind of the last person that touches the cheese and they're often considered to be quite quite experienced and really good at what they do so to have jasper hill in that role working with something that cabot knows so well which is cheddar and then bringing in these old world techniques to produce something that oh it's beefy it's got that umami i love a cheese that it kind of makes you salivate inside your your cheeks every time you bite it right so and and then you know with my personally i've been to somerset and i've i've talked to jamie montgomery and that's one of the big aging warehouses where we tasted a lot a lot of the same cheese so connecting that memory to what they're producing here like i said you could take the pepsi challenge with these two and you would never be able to tell that this one was made in England or this one was made in Vermont.

46:10Brad Hedeman:I was extremely excited to see Jasper Hill on the list. Kathy Strange from Whole Foods Market introduced me to them, the people there a couple years back. And I was just like really happy to have that in the selection. I love that, love that cheese. They're amazing people too. If you ever see them, just buy whatever they've got. Oh, totally agree. Yeah, I agree. And at Zingerman's or Whole Foods or wherever your local market, yeah, definitely love Jasper Hill. And speaking of cheese, this was a personal favorite. I'm not sure if this is a popular item, but your pimento cheese, which is in the box that we're selling.

46:43Brad Hedeman:Holy shit, man. It is. I've had plenty of pimento cheese. I've been down to like Athens, Georgia, been in like the hill country. I've been to L.A., some of the finest, you know, restaurants in South L.A. Really good pimentos around. But for some reason, those Zingerman's hits different, man. What's going on with that cheese?

47:00Ari Weinzweig:You know, I will say that we always try to use the best tasting ingredients we can find. And I think sometimes when you get into a mixed cheese like this, where it's kind of a spread, maybe the tendency is to save a little bit of money. Right. Exactly. Like you can use a little less cheddar because you're just going to put mayo and all these spices with it. That's not the step we do. You know, that is we're going to charge what we need to charge. But what we make is something we're really, really proud of. And we think that flavor is going to go through. I think pimento cheese is awesome because to me, it's not fancy.

47:32Ari Weinzweig:Right. Everyone's got a version down south. as many versions as there's probably jambalaya. But it's so approachable. It's so easy to use. It's so versatile. But for me, I just dip pretzels into it. I dip chips into it. Or I probably slather it on a burger is probably as extensive as I go. But it's one of those things that makes great ingredients. And it's also one of those foods that even if you have no experience with it, you can start to use it right away. You can connect to it. I mean, you slather it on a piece of bread and then you start to go from there. But now, man, I love it because of how unpretentious it is.

48:08Ari Weinzweig:And it's still really flavorful.

48:10Brad Hedeman:Is there like a mayonnaise component that you want to share that's in it? Like, is it special or is that like yours, but you know, the way you, you use the Michigan brand?

48:19Ari Weinzweig:Well, I'll tell you, having also worked on the sandwich line. So I spent about three years on the sandwich line and made all of our sandwiches, the deli, and I believe it, believes in Hellman's. To us, that is the mayo that is, I don't want to say the platonic ideal, but probably close to that, where things like Duke's, it's very sweet to me. The miracle, the tangy zip of Miracle Whip is a little too zippy. But the Hellman's mayo, which is just straight up and hasn't changed in recipe for decades and all like that, that's the one we use. I love it.

48:53Brad Hedeman:I'm a Hellman's guy myself, so I appreciate that. Let's talk a little bread. We're including a loaf of sourdough in the box. I mean, there's so many great breads in America now. I know you were very pioneering and doing, you know, doing these naturally leavened breads in the 90s. Like you're kind of on one hand who is doing this, especially meal order. But why is this sourdough so special still?

49:14Ari Weinzweig:All of our breads have really defined us. Certainly is a huge deal at the deli. It's half the enjoyment of our sandwiches. but I think the reason that people keep coming back to our breads all the time is because they're consistently always ridiculously delicious there's no there's no preservatives in it and I think that's one of the most important things to kind of put out this is a bread that you would have had a hundred years ago the crust is the preservative so some of our loaves after a couple of days if they've just been sitting on a counter yeah they might kill a man you know It may be a good doorstop, but at the same time, if you were to just drizzle a little water on the crust and throw it into like a 325 degree oven for like five, 10 minutes, it resurrects into tasting like this fresh baked loaf of bread.

49:59Ari Weinzweig:And not only does that, it fills the whole kitchen with the smell of that fresh baked loaf of bread. So over the years, people have been buying in bulk. They freeze the loaves because they freeze incredibly well. And then when they're ready for it, they serve this incredible banquet with incredibly delicious artisan food. I think the reason people don't do this, like other bakeries probably around, is it takes a lot of time. I think one of the most important ingredients in all of the breads we make is time. It could be up to 18 hours that a dough is sitting around. It's certainly going to be at least nine.

50:32Ari Weinzweig:And I think in other kind of maybe higher volume kind of bakeries, that's a luxury you just can't afford, right? You need to get that bread out because you might have an order for$10 ,000. But for us, the way that I think we've controlled, especially at the bakehouse, these people are the very definition of artisan. And they are passionate about baking. They're not great at talking to customers, but that's why they're standing in front of hot ovens. It's like what they want to do. Their preferred time of day. Exactly. So I think that's, to me, they are. They're beautiful. And the only person doing this way back when we started was Michael London, who had a bakery in upstate New York.

51:13Ari Weinzweig:I don't think it's still there. But he was also teaching people. And so that's really where we learned. We learned from him. The sourdough starter that is still the sourdough that we use every day came from France. It was like a 78-year-old sourdough starter. So that's fed every day. They take some of the bread from the day before. They feed that into the starter. This is what keeps things going. So you could even think of it as terroir. The terroir of Zingerman's Bakehouse is that starter. And that starter influences more breads than just that sourdough. But the sourdough with that lovely honeycomb kind of interior and that just crisp, lovely crust.

51:54Brad Hedeman:It's a beautiful boule. It's amazing, amazing bread you got there. Lastly, this Finocchiana salami from Illinois. I cut into some last night and it's my friend. This is a special, a very special salami. And I'm happy that it's in the box that I'm offering that is part of this great collaboration with Zingerman's. Tell me about it.

52:17Ari Weinzweig:The finocchiona there is a very classic Italian one and it's fennel, right? It's got that lovely brightness of the fennel. So it's one of those kind of salamis you'll see. I taste a lot because it's one of the kind of flavors that were sent to kind of consider. But this one from Red Bear, I think, it just hits all the notes. And I'm always looking for a food, and I think the finocchiona is a great example, where I wanted to appeal to a novice and an aficionado at the same time. because I assume these are going to be at a birthday party or a wine night, something where there's going to be a lot of people together and they're going to have different experiences.

52:55Ari Weinzweig:I don't want anyone to be so intimidated by the food that they wouldn't taste it or that they don't think it's for them. I want folks to discover how delicious these things are and how it can really open their eyes to a whole new world that they might not have explored. So maybe to them, salamis, you know, I love summer sausage, So I'm not, but you know, summer sausage, maybe they're kind of Midwestern. They haven't come across a lot of these things, but then they see it. And then they're like, yeah, I'll taste it. That looks pretty good. And then their eyes open. Right. And they're like, wait a second.

53:25Maybe they go back for another, another bite.

53:28Ari Weinzweig:And then they're talking to people like, did you try this? Is it fennel I'm tasting? And it just starts this conversation. It starts this discovery that probably goes well beyond that birthday party. Right. Maybe, I mean, nowadays everyone grabs their phone and starts Googling. Like what is finuccio? Like it would happen right then and there. But to me, so much of the fun of food is the discovery. So much of it is finding out how you can turn this flavor into something you really love and you're going to use and you want to enjoy at home. So when I'm picking these products, I thought you did a wonderful job of kind of covering the gamut, right?

54:02Ari Weinzweig:Like giving people, I look at your box, I'm like, this could be opened right away and can entertain.

54:07Brad Hedeman:Completely agree. Thanks, buddy. Six people. Yeah. I thought I wanted it to be like that. I mean, we could have put a lot of cool conservas or processed ingredients, but I wanted it to be a box that you could open and eat most of it, if not all of it right away. Absolutely. Yeah.

54:21Ari Weinzweig:With your grandmother there maybe and maybe someone's kids too, right? And everyone would enjoy it.

54:26Brad Hedeman:Yeah. You did a good job, man. Thanks, buddy. Well, this is such an honor. I was joking with your team. Like this is truly one of the greatest honors I've ever had to curate a Zingerman's box. I'm being totally legit. I really appreciate the opportunity and really fun to get to know you, Brad. Yeah, you too, Matt. You too.

54:44Ari Weinzweig:If you have any ideas, maybe I should come back to you for a Christmas box when it comes back around.

54:49Brad Hedeman:Maybe we could talk. I like it, Brad. Well, thanks so much, buddy. Appreciate it. Absolutely, Matt. It's great talking to you.

54:55Ari Weinzweig:Have a good one, man.

55:01Brad Hedeman:This is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Barbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Episode portraits by Louise Zergon Pomeroy. Logo design by Ellie Skrzat and Ian Dingham. 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.