753: On Eating and Not Eating with Amber Husain

28:11Matt Rodbard:When you say looking at how they're being used what does that look like in practice and we can say raw milk if that's like a fun one okay yeah sure sure i mean like with raw milk or again with with with many of the things associated with with make america healthy again like seed oils or whatever we could like spend a long time um you know debating what the actual um human requirement for these things are right like what's the nutritional value of these things? Are they actually healthy? Is raw milk gonna like make you really ill? You know, it's actually probably quite likely that it might. Is it nutritious in these other ways?

28:53Like maybe, but it's kind of like beside the point, like when the bigger question is, you know, one can, you could see like raw milk is connected to a kind of like suspicion of the kind of processing that happens to food and how, you know, certain like noxious substances have been introduced as part of the food system. It doesn't actually apply here. It's just this kind of like broader paranoia about process that has been like um extracted from uh a like healthy suspicion of the industrialized food system right um yeah it's it's like asking questions about like okay how is this how is this group constructing itself around this like it's telling you um well often it's like often often these things are very individualist it's like you know you should go your own way or there's a more pernicious thing going on to do with like, you know, this will make you a almost like superhuman person in a way that's like very racially coded.

30:01Like there's all these kinds of different things going on that don't really have that much to do with the food itself.

30:08Matt Rodbard:Yeah. And I also think about the level of effort that's required to access it. Like you have to kind of go out and search for it and clandestinely obtain it, or maybe I guess like buy it off of the ballerina farm website but like yeah there's a lot of money to be made right and it's like asking you to seek it out in a kind of way that I think maybe makes you buy in more once you've actually achieved it because you had to go to more effort than you know going to the grocery store down the block and buying it yeah you've invested you've invested yeah exactly and then it's it's this thing that was difficult to obtain and then it has maybe like more value to you as well I wanted to ask you about this kind of psychedelic mushroom therapy that you were writing about in the book as part of your recovery process.

30:57Matt Rodbard:I think psychedelic mushrooms are just kind of a fascinating topic in general and for me specifically. And I was curious if you saw an impact on the writing of the book by undergoing this therapy, if you feel like the psychedelics kind of opened up your mind to other potentials, or maybe that's kind of a difficult thread to tease out. It's such a good question about the writing. And actually, no one's asked me that specifically about it before, which is good. Yeah. I mean, so I mean, just for context, like a big turning point for me in my recovery was signing up for this clinical trial that basically sent me to outer space on mushrooms a number of times to see what effect this would have on my brain.

31:43um there was a lot of like scanning scanning my brain in various ways afterwards and you know I don't know what effect it had on my neurobiology and I you know it definitely didn't like cure me overnight if you if you even want to talk about these things in terms of like a cure um but I will say that the whole experience was very powerful in terms of prompting me to accept my condition and ask questions about it rather than just blame myself and urgently try and fix it. Because to be open to psychedelics in the first place, you have to practice a kind of open-mindedness, a willingness to take your own unconscious seriously, and I guess like potentially be exposed to, you know, something you could not even have imagined before.

32:39and for me I think it really helped me to recognize the I mean the incredible extent to which our thoughts and what we might think of as our pathologies are never private they're always part of this like vast humbling frightening but also incredibly profound and beautiful network of people and things. And I do think that's definitely a useful premise to write from. Like it's one that's pushed me to make more and freer and more daring associations, which is kind of a lot of what writing is. It's like making new and interesting associations between things. I mean, not like in a paranoid way, like everything is connected, but like in a way that at least kind of tries out some more connections and tries to get at the truth with a bit more curiosity.

33:36Matt Rodbard:Yeah, I think there's the we're all made of stardust, man, like side of things. And then there's the other side of things, which is that we are like all made of stardust. Like I think sometimes it feels obvious or, you know, corny or expected to kind of like buy into the there are connections we cannot see that exist mentality until you experience that. And then that's just kind of a basis to go off of and hopefully, you know, have a more curious brain for other things. Yeah, totally. It's like, it would be so boring if we just kept repeating that like the stardust line and that was it, like it, but it's such a great point from which to say more.

34:16Matt Rodbard:I was curious when I was reading the book that the timeline of, you know, you're writing about undergoing this treatment and that's kind of nestled amidst this narrative and this analysis of lots of other things. Did you do the treatment before you started writing the book or was it happening kind of alongside? I did. I did it before. It's kind of, you know, like I was saying, the book is kind of sharing. It's like sharing an insight from a place of liberation rather than like trying to work it out in real time. But the research process did, it kind of like affirmed certain things for me that I'd sort of intuited by the time I got to that point, if that makes sense.

34:58The book is, you know, me looking for, it's kind of a retracing of this search for something to live for or something to eat for, or kind of like both things at the same time. a way of eating that would inspire me to live and also a way of living a way of thinking about life and about the world that would help me to eat and you know that's not something I had in mind when I entered eating disorder treatment because because most of conventional treatment is about just teaching a person to eat like quote unquote normally and be healthy whether or not you feel like you have anything to be healthy for but yeah I obviously had this in mind I had this in mind when I started writing the book.

35:43And the book is fundamentally an attempt to share that feeling of inspiration. And I think maybe that's why it includes so much writing on people I find exciting and inspiring. Like I already mentioned Audre Lorde, but there are others like Diane Di Prima. And also people who are maybe less like politically inspiring, but are compelling in other ways, like Nigella Lawson. I set out to share this feeling, But when I started writing and paying careful attention to describing the food these people cooked and fed other people and how it acted on them, it really did reconsolidate this new relationship to food and to the world for me.

36:25Matt Rodbard:Yeah, I think that's why this is such a successful narrative that you're able to talk about your experiences without them kind of, I think, bogging down the reader too much is because you are writing from this place of liberation with a lot of, you know, empathy for yourself and for other people that are experiencing that. And I think even this idea of this inspiration to live and this inspiration to eat being intertwined as opposed to the kind of predominant narrative of you eat the food and then your mind adjusts later on. I think it is such an important shift to have in the book. Thank you.

36:59Thanks. I really appreciate that.

37:01Matt Rodbard:I wanted to pose a question to you that you spend the final chapter kind of examining, which is around political demands. And you say, when and how should the act of eating be thought of as politically relevant? I think right now in media and in food media, especially this phrase like food is political is kind of like often repeated as an assumption. And I was curious when you think we should consider the act of eating as having political implications or if it always does. like of course all food is political in that it comes to us through a political system of land organization and production and distribution and also the service economy all of these things right but I mean most of the time when people are eating they are not engaged in a political what they're not really engaged in a particularly political act um I don't believe for example in the sort of like magical power of good consumer choices.

37:58I don't think the economic mechanism has as much power as is ascribed to it. But that said, I do talk in the book about the power of consumer boycotts as something different. Because like, unlike individual acts of shopping and eating, those are about tying consumption to bigger political demands, and about tying economic like pressure to social pressure, for example. So I think eating is politically relevant when it inspires people to join political movements or imagine new worlds or when it's literally part of a political action. So it might be that your preparedness to go on a hunger strike makes people take your demands seriously, or it might be that your pleasure in food makes it possible or makes it impossible to imagine other people going hungry.

38:53So you join a food justice organization. And like all of that can be totally transformative, even if it makes no difference by itself, like what I had for breakfast this morning.

39:05Matt Rodbard:Yeah, I think that is a helpful kind of framework. And it seems, you know, obviously intentional to me that this final chapter that you want to leave the reader with, you're talking about the success of anti-apartheid boycotts in South Africa or the BDS movement today or the grape picket lines that were being set up in California. Is that because that's kind of the closing statement you want people to have in mind is the ability to kind of choose when to make an impact with food? Yeah, absolutely. I think, I mean, I described it earlier as just kind of actually stating what doesn't get stated that often, which is not like how specific ways of eating create specific types of people, but just the fact that specific ways of eating can shape a person's relationship to the world.

39:56And I say that like, you know, it doesn't, you know, people could take that however they want, depending on what's important to them. But I think by laying out like what I see to be kind of the most, you know some of the really exciting things that are happening politically through food and through food justice organizing right now that's like giving people an idea of like just how far you could take that idea um and for you know for me that is the point absolutely i was curious you

40:30Matt Rodbard:know you've been on book tour you've been traveling having conversations just kind of experiencing how the book has been received by people? Have there been any conversations or interactions that kind of brought something to light that maybe you weren't thinking about in the same way before? What's been interesting is like just having access to other people's perspective on sort of what the book is. And it's really funny, like sometimes it is very much focused on the last chapter and on food justice organizing now. And sometimes it's sort of about, you know, eating disorders, which I really didn't initially see as kind of the focus of the book.

41:10I saw that as a kind of extreme example of something that provoked me to ask very kind of ordinary and accessible questions about, you know, food that would be applicable to everybody. And sometimes it's kind of more like one thing that has come up over and over and over again, it's almost everybody asks what I think about everything I eat in a day videos, which seems like the opposite, seems like kind of the opposite of what this book is because it's like guys it doesn't matter what we eat it's about like how we um but I mean like maybe that's maybe that's the point I mean it's like it reiterates like how um you know when you speak to food culture this is like one of the first things people think of and maybe that's maybe that's useful to recognize like how much we really are fascinated by what other people eat in the hope that that might tell us something.

42:04Matt Rodbard:Oh, I'm just, I'm so mad I didn't ask you this sooner because now I'm thinking about the like how we eat being, eating like online for other people's, you know, viewing of what you're eating and the kind of like, you know, is it even a performance if it's something you're actually doing it does that make sense like it's yeah I mean it's something that somebody's actually doing but it is amazing how much you can get out of it remotely and I don't know whether that speaks to something problematic about it being um you know food as a kind of a prop or a fetish or an instrument of um like identity formation or whether that's actually something that we could use really usefully?

42:49Like, maybe there could be more politicizing food content online. I don't know.

42:55Matt Rodbard:Yeah. And it is, you know, obviously just part of this storied tradition of people sharing about how they eat through whatever medium or media is available to them at that point in time. It's just that we have this super instantaneous, algorithmically kind of powered version. Yeah. And I think a thing I was resistant to was maybe kind of accepting that my book does kind of recapitulate this in some ways because it does talk about things that people have eaten like over history and it describes the meals and like if you know you you could probably get some of the same pleasures out of it it's it's just then also um kind of thinking about what it is that I think I am doing differently which is just trying to analyze it in a different way it's funny how often we will get drawn to those kinds of you know videos or um you know grub street diets or whatever um just without really thinking about what it is that is so compelling about them which it's just kind of like we know that they are and that's sort of also interesting in and of itself right you write about like diane de prima's letters and diaries and you know clearly there's been a human interest in kind of chronicling what we eat with some hope of like something bigger being like taken out of that or made by that or maybe it's just for the pleasure of writing that down but it is in a different context today yes um there is like the poet diane de prima has um i i think i'm remembering this right and i apologize if i've got this wrong but it's a section of a prose poem and it's called What I Ate Where.

44:33I think it's published in this book, Dinners and Nightmares. But there is something, I mean, very generative about, you know, taking that list and making it into a poem, like allowing people to make associations between these different things and different moments in one's life and moments in history.

44:53Matt Rodbard:Absolutely. Oh, that's so interesting. Well, now I have a whole other thing to think about for a long time about this book. Great. This episode is brought to you by ButcherBox. Spring is a good time to simplify. And for me, that starts in the kitchen. ButcherBox delivers over 100 premium protein options straight to your door. 100 % grass-fed beef, free-range organic chicken, and wild-caught seafood. Now, I've been in a burger mindset as of late and have been using ButcherBox's 85-15 blend for burgers in the cast iron. And of course I add a slice of Kraft Deli Deluxe American Cheese to each patty.

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48:21Matt Rodbard:Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. And to close today, I want to play a rapid fire game with you. So I'll ask you some kind of quick hit questions. Okay. Okay. Your favorite time to write? Okay. I don't really have a particular time of day where I think I work best, but I do need to have an entire day.

48:59I need to have entire days and evenings to myself to write anything good. Because if I try and do a bit here and there between emails and my freelance jobs, I lose a thread. I can't get deep enough. Um, I also work best when I've had a coffee, which I sounds really normal, but like I have to ration them to once or twice a week cause I have really bad migraines. So when I do have caffeine, I basically, I get really high and it really gives me this like kick that I need to keep putting the energy that you need to keep putting into one really long thing, like a book. Um, yeah, it's, it's actually a drug.

49:40Matt Rodbard:Yeah, caffeine really is. Okay, a book that you read while working on Tell Me How You Eat or that you referenced in this book that you think more people should read? Okay, well, I think I already mentioned it maybe, but I would say Audre Lorde's book Zami, which is, you could call it an autobiography. She calls it a biomythography, which is a beautiful term. But yeah, this was a real inspiration to me. It's a very, very vivid story of growing up and how it takes a sort of very strong and curious mind to try and understand yourself and what's happening to you without just accepting the narratives that want to crush you.

50:27And it's so good on food and its connection to sexuality and race and dignity and pleasure. It's just really great. People should read it.

50:36Matt Rodbard:Yeah, I wrote down several titles while reading this book of other things I wanted to read. And that was my first one. So I, oh, that's great. I totally got that takeaway. Sandwiches play a big role in this book. And you end the book with talking about bringing a sandwich to a protest. So a sandwich that you would pack for a protest. okay it changes but um I would say very broadly like a vegan version of banh mi or something like that um I really love all this sort of crunchy limey salad and then something with a really tangy marinade tempeh tofu something like that and I had one recently that had this um that I didn't make for myself but it had this like mushroom pate in it that was really delicious and creamy.

51:24And yeah, just like something that has all the things. I think just because a sandwich is vegan, it doesn't mean it can't have all the elements that it needs to be perfect.

51:34Matt Rodbard:No, I think that sounds great. And then the crusty bread also will make sure that it can kind of hold up for the duration of the protest, which is important. Exactly. Durability, very important. Okay. A favorite restaurant in London? Okay. I have to say two because they have very different functions. So for really, really good food, there's this place down the road from me, where I live in South London, called Knife's, where they have like a set menu. There's no choice. And it is the most beautiful, inventive food you could possibly want. And it is all vegan. And it's also really great booze and the people are really nice.

52:18And that is my treat for special occasions. But then on a more kind of workaday level, when I lived in a different part of South London, I used to often go to this place with my friends called Bonington Cafe, which is a community run cafe with different cooks on different days of the week. And it's like, bring your own bottle. It's always very fun. The food is very home cooked, which means that sometimes it's great and sometimes it's a disaster. But I kind of like going for dinner and knowing that it's not just about like paying for a service, but it's also about being part of something and having a nice time and whatever.

53:03So those are my two tips.

53:06Matt Rodbard:I love both of those. Okay, final question. Is a fictional food scene like from a book or a movie or something made up that you wish you could magically eat in real life? this is this is quite weird because the scope for delicious food and fiction is so boundless but since I was a kid I I've always really loved that scene in the Lion King where Timon and Pumbaa are eating the grubs and the insects and like Simba thinks it's really gross but they're just loving it so it makes it look so delicious like they're these like huge gummy sweets or something and I think that's actually kind of quite in the spirit of the book that it's like it's not what you're eating it's your attitude and they do make it seem really delicious you know I I think you're so valid for saying that and I asked this question to all my guests and you're actually not the first person to mention this so I think you're on to something oh my god not to make you less of an individual but rather to say that like the gusto with which they're eating the grubs really does kind of transcend the fact that they're eating these giant grubs.

54:15So, you know, that actually does make me feel good. It makes me feel really like it does make me feel valid.

54:21Matt Rodbard:This has been such a fun conversation. Amber, thank you so much for for writing this book and for speaking with me about it. Yeah, thank you so much. I've had a great time. Eliza, we're back with three things. How are you? I'm good, Matt. How are you doing? I'm great. I'm feeling like it's spring and I'm like going out a lot now. Yeah, there's a lot happening. I just walked through Central Park. The tourists were out. It felt good. Felt right. Feels right. New York's definitely out of winter. And yeah, it's a great time to go dine at restaurants. I think we're going to talk about a lot of restaurants.

54:53Matt Rodbard:Yeah, I certainly have a lot of restaurants to share. You want to start? Yeah, well, I will start here in New York. I finally got to go to Bistro Ha, which is the larger restaurant from the Ha's Duck Biet team that I think has been kind of awaited ever since they opened the little snack bar. I went on St. Patrick's Day, which I did not think would really mean anything until I stepped foot into the restaurant and remembered that Sadie Mae Burns, who's one half of the duo, is in fact a good old Irish-American girl. And there was fiddle music exclusively on the whole night I was there. Everybody on staff was wearing green of some kind, and they had corned beef and cabbage as a special.

55:30And I bet it had a little bit of a twist or felt special. Yeah, to be honest,

55:34Matt Rodbard:I didn't order it. You didn't order it. I really wanted the steak frites, which they were doing as a special up until St. Patrick's Day came around. So I felt a little betrayed, to be honest. But I was assured that the corned beef was just a one night only type situation. But I did have a lot of other things that I enjoyed. First thing I really loved would be the lobster volavant, which I think they've been doing a volavant in different forms for a while now. That's that really kind of beautiful french puff pastry situation this one is filled with like almost a very aromatic lobster bisque kind of situation some chunks of lobster the claw on the top which is very nice they do a braised leeks in a grubish sauce which i famously don't like eggs but this grubish has a lot of maggie seasoning going on in it so i honestly didn't mind it because it didn't have really that egg flavor just that kind of body that pate mong chong which is their steamed Vietnamese like meatloaf kind of take on that but in pate form which they've done at the snack bar for a long time and I always enjoy having and the last thing that I had that I really enjoyed is also something I've had from them in the past which is this beautiful steamed fish that's served in like a sweet fish sauce like gingery kind of broth I sat at the bar it was really fun to kind of look over the whole dining room I also very much enjoyed the bathroom downstairs which is like my dream bathroom kind of it's this like peaceful oasis like big tiled bathroom in the middle of this kind of busy restaurant so i had a good time there it was fun to get to go it's it's so cool to hear about this evolution for this like super buzzy small restaurant the the snack bar expand into this this full-fledged restaurant yeah and i've been meaning to go back to the snack bar because i know that they've um you know rotated some of those menu items that i just mentioned off and they have more kind of standing room, less kind of seated reservation type situation.

57:19Matt Rodbard:So I think it's cool to see one half of the evolution and then hopefully get to go back and look at that other part. And they may be coming on the show at some point. Yeah. You know, I've been chatting with them about it for a long time. So I'll have to like make a harder pitch now that I've been in Bistro Ha and we could talk about both of them. I think that's great. I'm sure there would be a lot to discuss. Yeah, definitely. What's your first thing? My first thing is a restaurant upstate. It's in Pauling, New York. It's called Cornerstone, brand new. And it's from the chef Harris Meyer, who is a friend of mine and a super talented dude.

57:50He's behind Creamline in Chelsea Market. He had Polkies Barbecue also in a market. He also worked at 100 Acres and Five Points back in the day. And he's honestly one of New York's, I think, sleeper chefs. He's so talented. And I just, like, really love this restaurant because it is truly an upstate restaurant. but it's not like twee and cute. It's like, it feels like it's super fully formed. Like they're doing brunch and like five nights a week. And it doesn't feel like some of the upstate spots I've been to in the early days, they start a little slower and that's fine. Nothing against that. But I just love how we went out of the gates, really like guns a blazing.

58:32The cuisine is Abruzzin, which is Abruzzo is the region in Italy. And I was unfamiliar. I'd never have been there and I really didn't know a lot about it. And I think he's channeling like in his venison ricotta meatballs. I think that's a touch of there's some Brutzen qualities there. They have lamb skewers with like a spiced honey that I just loved. And that's an Brutzen dish. But I think the big dish that I posted and got a bunch of people like, whoa, on Instagram are these onion rings.

59:05Matt Rodbard:I love an onion ring. Me too. I love an onion ring. I also like a chef-y onion ring. And he's like the chefiest ones. They're called black dirt onion rings because the region is well regarded for their onion fields. Actually, where I live in Orange County is a big onion producing part of New York State in the black dirt. And he's doing this cool version where he's doing like a – it has like a charred leek ranch with a little bit of leek ash on it. It's like it feels like it could be Copenhagen in some ways with the ash, but really beautiful fry on it. and just like really like a show-stopping onion ring.

59:43He did some house-made semolina cavatelli with sweet Italian sausage. I loved that. And he grilled a perfect swordfish. And I think swordfish is one of those great underrated fish. And sometimes you think it's going to be tough, but if you cook swordfish perfectly, there's nothing better with giganti beans that were perfectly cooked. The restaurant's cornerstone. Harris is, he's a great chef.

1:00:04Matt Rodbard:Yeah, I think his food is so great. So I'm excited to hear there's a new spot. Yeah, what's your next thing? My next thing is over in L.A. I got to go back to L.A. for part of my cake scene co-founder Tanya Bush's book tour and catch up in a lot of good spots when I was there visiting my family as well. I went to Holy Basil, which is a Thai restaurant in L.A. that I've been wanting to go to for a while. They have three locations, one in Outwater Village, one in downtown, one in Santa Monica, which happens to be where I was staying. So I got to just kind of walk over there and they're doing basically Thai food with the best of California produce and a couple twists here and there in a way that I think is really cool and fun.

1:00:41Matt Rodbard:I've had my eye on it since the chef Do Arpar Pnopara has been on the Food and Wine Best New Chef's Lift in 2024. And I thought his food just seemed super cool. And when I went in person, I really enjoyed it. They're doing a khao soi paccheri. Oh, cool. So like that Italian, you know, fat pasta dish with the kind of khao soi almost like emulsified sauce on top. Super fun. Such good sauce too. I know. I mean, khao soi is my death row dish, to be honest. I love that dish so much. And this version I thought was really cool. They're doing really delicate crab fried rice, a Thai Caesar salad, just all kinds of fun things.

1:01:17Matt Rodbard:It has that really good kind of like smoky nuance, like wak he flavor. And when you're sitting in the dining room, there's just like a plume of fire that kind of shoots up from behind where I was sitting, which was really fun. No beer, just wine, which is interesting. And it's the kind of place that if I lived in L.A., I would go to very often because not only are they doing this great food, but Chef Do, who grew up in Thailand, is connected to all these really cool restaurants in Thailand and often is hosting them to do kind of pop-ups. So I think it's the kind of place that you can go to as a regular and there will always kind of be something new to try.

1:01:51I've always wanted to go to Holy Basil when they opened the Atwater location. I just remember it was a really tough reservation and all the press came from that. And I've never been able to make it out. Great.

1:02:00Matt Rodbard:Yeah, I loved it a lot. I think it's definitely worth visiting. So cool. What's your next spot? My next spot is in New York City, a restaurant called Bungalow. Heard of it? Yes, but I have not been. Me either. And this is my first visit. And for me, I'd heard a lot about this restaurant. It opened in 2024 to a lot of buzz. I think the biggest opening press was Priya Krishna's rave three-star review in the New York Times. And it's from Chef Fikis Khanna. It's a really cool story. You know, he was the host of MasterChef India for like six or seven seasons. So like the Gordon Ramsay character. Yeah.

1:02:40Matt Rodbard:And had a bunch of restaurants as well. Yeah, exactly. Really talented chef. And as I found out meeting him, he's super talented. But like we walk in. it was like a later reservation like eight o 'clock we had to wait like maybe another 20 minutes it was like really packed good for them dude was walking walking the floor being a great host took photos with 20 different people literally um a bona fide celebrity um in that in those walls but i think walking on the street might not be as recognized uh such a talented chef i mean i was blown away by this food i was i was expecting big things and opri has got a great palate and really wrote great things two years ago.

1:03:17But I think I'll start with the doll. You know, it was black lentils, kidney beans, had like butter and chili oil, and he brought it to the table. I mean, he's so sweet. He's like, and he's going to be on the show, and we're going to have a great conversation. Just a really kind human being. You can just tell, just like meeting him, and just like the way he interacts with guests is really special. And he was just like, this is my famous doll. It's like, way to set it up.

1:03:43Matt Rodbard:I mean, it probably is. Dude, it was so good. Like, for real, like, doll, like, I mean, I was like, this is, I was like, is this, I'm like, flavors of Mexico and flavors of India and, like, the umami and, like, the butter. It was very rich. It just felt like it was, like, a transformative dish for me. So delicious. We had a bunch of other things. I think this spice roasted pineapple, which was basically table side. They did a trolley of a really beautiful pineapple sauce over it. But it was basically just like a roasted half pineapple, which is a dope course just to have like a pineapple at that table.

1:04:20And, you know, he's really like cooking throughout India. I think his background is he's Punjabi. But this restaurant is not a Punjabi restaurant. It covers all the regions of India. And, you know, I just think it's a really fun place to kind of splash out if you want. If you want to do, they do like, I think, set menus or you can do a la carte. It's Bungalow.

1:04:42Matt Rodbard:Okay, I've been wanting to go, so I'm glad to know that I should renew my search for a reservation. Also, he goes to the Flower District every morning. He goes to like 27th Street and picks up fresh flowers and has like some colleagues help him arrange throughout the space. So in his front, like in the front of the restaurant, there's like a couple of displays. And he's got flowers throughout the whole restaurant. It's really beautiful. And it's the man. He smells so good, by the way. I believe it. He's like truly the best smelling man I've ever met in my life. Wow. Okay. You'll have to ask him what his scent routine is when he comes on the show.

1:05:14It's going to be covered. What is your last thing?

1:05:17Matt Rodbard:Well, my last thing is in classic L.A. form. I went to Chateau Marmont, which I've never. For food? For food. No shit. Okay. Which I've never been to before. I was with a group and three of us were born and raised in LA and none of us had been to Chateau Marmont before for drinks. Never at like high school? I don't know. I don't know. How would I go in high school? I don't know. It was like something that I don't know. I like, listen, I thought maybe like in high school you go there for like, you know. I definitely was not going to Chateau Marmont high school. I was going to get frozen yogurt and like Starbucks Frappuccinos.

1:05:53Matt Rodbard:But now that I'm an adult and that we were celebrating Tanya's book, her Hollywood classic request was to go and have drinks at Chateau Marmont. If you're listening and this is like not a familiar name for you, this is just a very iconic Hollywood establishment. It's a French kind of aesthetic hotel that was opened in 1929 and quickly afterwards became the spot for celebrities to stay at, to host events at. Beyonce and Jay-Z do an annual Oscars party there, I believe, every year. Vanity Fair Oscar party, all of those kinds of things. it is not an easy place to just walk into and get a drink at so our approach was that we called and made a dinner reservation and that way we were able to have a table and get drinks and some food as well when we had to change reservation because we wanted to add more people i called and pretended to be tanya's assistant and asked them to change so fun which i probably didn't need to do but i just felt like going you know full method while i was definitely hollywood we sat outside in this kind of like tented almost like pseudo renaissance fair type area got very good drinks um the food you know not the point of being there i would say i had a 45 cheeseburger um yeah that was you know certainly not worth that price but i guess you're paying for the table kind of more than anything else and the people watching obviously is very good what i did eat that we all said was incredible was their most famous dessert which is called nutty chewy sticky gooey which is an ice cream sundae that has peanut butter gelato brownie bites pretzels and hot fudge sounds great yeah i mean how could you go wrong with that and to celebrate tanya's book i mean having a great sundae seems like a great you know way to yeah the waiter was very um you know over the top and when we told him we were celebrating her book he said something along the lines of wow you can't even find a gal who reads in this town which i was offended as you know somebody born and raised in LA.

1:07:43Also so typical LA server discourse. Like, come on. Like, that's the way it goes.

1:07:49Matt Rodbard:But, you know, I felt like we were all playing roles, so I didn't give him a hard time. I just kind of laughed along and like ordered a Paloma. But I will say my takeaway from this whole experience is that if you want to buy into the whole LA fantasy, it does hold up in that way. It's such a beautiful space to be in. And some of my LA friends were saying that they had never been able to get a reservation before. I think if you call the desk and it's a couple weeks out and you're pretty nice when you do it, like, it'll be pretty easy. So if you try to, like, walk up, they will not let you in, I think.

1:08:18Matt Rodbard:But... Gotta have that res. You know, Chateau Marmont. Gotta do it. I went to the bungalows once. I wasn't staying there, but I visited somebody there. It's cool. The bungalow... They've got the tower, which is, like, the iconic... Like, Anthony Bourdain stayed there all the time. It was, like, his vibe. But the bungalows are cool because they're all, like, mid-century, pitch-perfect everything. Like, all the objects, like, all the, like, barware and like the refrigerator and all that stuff. It's a pretty cool place. I mean, it's like a movie set kind of vibe. Totally a movie. And like, yeah, it's great that you went.

1:08:51I've never had food there, so.

1:08:52Matt Rodbard:I mean, if you could get a reservation and just do like drinks and dessert, I think that would probably be the best cost-benefit analysis. But went in Rome. On that note, have you been to like Sunset Tower or San Vicente bungalows? Any of those kind of similar places? You know, I haven't. And San Vicente Bungalows also just opened like an outpost in New York. So it would be interesting from like an anthropological perspective to go. It's really not the kind of L.A. that I come from. So I think it's like almost like me. It takes me being a now New Yorker of almost a decade coming back to L.A. on a work trip to go to this institution that's been opened in L.A.

1:09:28Matt Rodbard:for almost 100 years. But sometimes that's how you got to do it. Definitely. What's your last thing? My last thing is another restaurant in New York. It's called Bartolo. It's in the West Village. It's cool. It's from Ryan Bartlow, he also of Ernesto's. And my experience was, there's two experiences in the space. There's like a dining room in the back. And to remind anyone who hasn't heard, it's a restaurant that's inspired by the taverns of Madrid. And in that back room, they're doing coursed out, you know, very, very polished Spanish cuisine and with a little bit of a boss kind of angle. I think that's where Ryan spent a lot of time.

1:10:04And that's great. Like, I didn't have that experience, so I can't share what that was like. What I did do was I sat at the bar and had pinchos in New York. And, you know, there's great places like Chiquito comes to mind as a great pincho bar. But it's hard to find. I mean, it really isn't something that you're going to, you know, walk down the street and have a bunch of tapas or pinchos. And Ryan is such a talented chef. I loved he did a sardine with this butter, like basically just like sardines on top of butter that like permission to eat a lot of butter. you know that was I was given I was granted that the Gildas were great and there was also you could order a single cup of chicken consomme which I think is a nice like in between pincho bites just like a couple shots yeah it was so nice and he did this pork belly chicharron with marcona almonds that oh such a great pairing and I just love that style I mean it's just like a few bites and you move on you can have wine you can have just sparkling water and they had a great Spanish sparkling water on offering, which I was like super excited to have.

1:11:12And so, yeah, I hope to sometime sometime dine in the in the in the main dining room. But I think if you're looking for that experience at the bar, I really I really enjoyed it.

1:11:21Matt Rodbard:Yeah, it sounds like especially as it starts to get warmer weather in New York and people are looking to be kind of doing that, you know, walking around, popping in, grazing, perfect spot for that. And they have cafe seating, it seems. It was a rainy night, so it wasn't open, but you can definitely dine outside. I love that. Yeah, it's great. Well, thanks for sharing your three things. You too.

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