776: Ghia’s Mélanie Masarin Will Never Stop DMing Restaurants Her Opinions 

7:40Melanie Masarin:You know, it's interesting. Obviously, to have a solid business, you need to be in retail. And that's been one of the most challenging things the past couple of years. It's also like the least, you know, fun for me. I don't particularly get excited about national retail, and it's something that I've had to learn. But it's so exciting to be at Whole Foods because it's a very mindful customer that, you know, likes quality. And it's also, as you grow and you expand the brand outside of New York City where there's such a, you know, bodega slash vanity grocer culture, it's really important for people to know where they can reliably find us.

8:12Melanie Masarin:And so Whole Foods has been really important for that. but we still have about 40 % of our sales that are online, whether it's subscription because, you know, subscription is obviously like a better price. So if people are very repeat, they'll usually just get it delivered. A lot of people don't like to carry drinks. Just our website or Amazon because some people want to have a party, want to get it quick and Amazon, you can't beat Amazon shipping. And the restaurants, you know, I think that if you're telling people that it's okay for them not to drink alcohol, but they have to do it from the comfort of their home, you're not completing the mission.

8:42Melanie Masarin:And so for me, like restaurants, it was always where we wanted Ghia to be created. I think I'm sure we touched on it on the first episode of the podcast, but we wanted to launch N50 restaurants on April 1st, 2020. And of course, like all the restaurants in the world two weeks before that shut down. So we pivoted. But the idea was always introduce this product through the culinary world, really make it a culinary product that pairs well with food, which is, you know, obviously like where the cookbook now is coming from. But if you have a super sweet drink, it's only in competition with your food.

9:11Melanie Masarin:Like you wouldn't have soda with a great dinner. And so having a drink that's dry and that perfectly complements it, that primes your appetite for the evening, that's super important.

9:20Nichole Accettola:So you have the soda and then you have the spicy soda. Is that kind of how?

9:23Melanie Masarin:Yeah. Well, the soda is the sparkling water. So I think we're going to rename it because it's consuming. But we have guia soda because it's like as if you took the bottle and added a splash of soda water to it. We have lime and salt. We have ginger. And we have our newest one, which is blood orange. And then our super spicy one is sumac and chili.

9:39Nichole Accettola:That's the one I like. Yeah.

9:40Melanie Masarin:Which is funny because food people love that one, but it's the most polarizing one.

9:45Nichole Accettola:It is because it is definitely a spicier address, but I love that so much, especially the end of a long day and I'm about to head into a great meal. I want that heat. Talk about getting into Whole Foods. What was that like getting into all these doors? It's a huge account for you guys. They're selective. What was that process like?

10:03Melanie Masarin:Well, it's interesting. It was a bit more gradual because we got into their flex space, which is like more regional. And now, you know, in June, we'll finally be on their what they call the core planogram. So anyone that's launched their, for instance, Whole Food knows it's a super big deal when you're in core. And they have a new buyer and I think they're really trying to build a category. So we're super excited. You know, they've also taken on Blood Orange. And in just a few months, Blood Orange became our number one, which is also proof that people do love a slightly sweeter, juicier flavor.

10:32Melanie Masarin:Blood Orange is my personal least favorite. but it's very much our number one right now because I think that it's just more approachable and it's also a flavor people can understand. You know, when you say a guia soda, you have to know what guia tastes like. Yeah. Gia soda is my favorite because it's just simple, super dry, a little bit more bitter. And it's very herbal. So it reminds me more of, you know, the aperitifs that you could have in the south of France.

10:56Nichole Accettola:Are the food service accounts happy? Are they like really, like are you seeing data come back or they're like just seeing it explode?

11:03Melanie Masarin:Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't know if it's an explosion because I think restaurants in general are just having a hard time right now. And we've been talking about it for years. And a big part of that is that people are drinking less. And the old adage was you put great food on the table so that people can order a lot of drinks. And, you know, with the sort of entire beverage industry like not doing as well, there's only so much that like our, you know, one placement on the menu can sort of recoup. But in general, I would say that we do quite well. We do very well in Italian restaurants. We do, you know, it's also good for people to try it without the intimation of buying a full-size bottle.

11:34Melanie Masarin:And you have, you know, hopefully like a bartender that makes an amazing cocktail. The execution is good. So I love being in restaurants. And I will never stop like DMing restaurants to try to get on menus.

11:44Nichole Accettola:Now, let's talk about like the pricing at restaurants. We can like focus on New York because I know it's market by market. But you'll see like a variation for this. Sometimes people will pour it into a nice glass and charge it, you know,$15. Others will just drop the can and have it be even half that. How does that work with you as the founder?

12:04Melanie Masarin:You know, it's hard because on the one hand, I started Guia because I decided that I didn't want to drink and I felt really excluded. And what I realized is when I was going out to dinner, I was paying for everybody else's drink anyway. So whether Guia was 8, 10, or 12, ultimately didn't really matter. It was more about the participation. So you're eating out right now in New York City anyways. You're paying$150, like, no matter what, you know, at best. But, you know, I did go to the Bill Bouquet for, like, a celebratory birthday evening a couple weeks ago. And I saw a Gia Spritz for$26. And I was like, we need to send a note to this restaurant just because it's not going to sell for that price, you know.

12:43Melanie Masarin:And, like, I know what it costs us to make it. I know how much we sell it for. And I want people that want it to be able to order it.

12:50Nichole Accettola:Yeah, that's exactly the kind of tension that I wanted to hear about. because I think you obviously want the operators to price it accordingly with their margins. But when you see it for$26, it makes you frown a bit.

13:01Melanie Masarin:1 ,000%. And what we see also is people are very price sensitive, which I can completely understand. And our product is a more premium product, but it's a product for a company to work. For beverage, people have to drink it every day. You have to have a super high repeat rate. And there is very much an inflection point on the pricing. So there's a lot of small courses in New York that price a four-pack for$24. and it really slows down our velocity. Meanwhile, we're at Trader Joe's for$15.99 for a four-pack and we crush there.

13:29Nichole Accettola:Yeah. Which is probably more important to you, to be honest. Of course, but it has to be everywhere.

13:34Melanie Masarin:Not everybody wants to brave the lines at Trader Joe's or can go there in person. They don't deliver. It's like, you know, I could see, you know, some families not being able to go there. And so it's really tricky.

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15:50Nichole Accettola:Quince.com slash taste. You told me that a couple years ago that 90 % of your consumers, your drinkers are actual alcohol drinkers. Is that still the ratio?

16:01Melanie Masarin:Yeah, it's funny. We just ran a survey at the end of the year and it was like 93%. So basically people are seeking moderation and want to drink fewer drinks but better. They're just more careful about what they put in their body. So there's also a bit of an ingredient component with guia because we have no, you know, stevia, monk fruit, any of that stuff. No sugar alternatives. It's really dry. So the 93 % is kind of interesting because obviously you still have that cohort that's like really sober, identifies as a non-drinker, kind of in the broad sense of the word. But otherwise, it's people that often say like, I like to have one a day.

16:33Melanie Masarin:And maybe on Friday, I put a splash of mescal into it because they like the taste of it. It's a very culinary forward palate.

16:38Nichole Accettola:Yeah, it's smart to actually put a little bit of booze in if you want to make it actually a cocktail. It's never thought about that. It's smart. So like Melanie, this stuff isn't easy. And, you know, you're great at social. I love that you've been so honest and like you're very like open about the business. Talk about the fights that you have. Not physical fights, obviously, but like what you have to fight for in this very, very, very competitive category.

17:06Melanie Masarin:For sure. and thank you for, you know, appreciating that. I think that we're, it's like a fine balance where you have to, you know, you want to celebrate the win. You want to portray things, you know, as going well. You want to create economic desire, but this is a really hard category. This is a really hard macroeconomic environment for a lot of companies in general. It's like a really hard time for consumers. You know, there's all sorts of things happening and, you know, you have to constantly fight for shelf space. Cashflow is very difficult. lots of you know at the end of the day even though we are non-alcoholic we can sell online most of our business comes from distributors that distribute alcohol and that serve restaurants and it's a bit of a cascading effect of people drinking less actually impacts us because people are led to pay us and then you can't like borrow against that stuff so cash flow is like a constant struggle as you're trying to grow the business um yeah i mean in general i think that But it's like we just haven't had – we're not yet at the size where, like, everything is easy.

18:05Melanie Masarin:I don't know if there's ever a phase like that. But it's a really, really tough.

18:09Nichole Accettola:But TAM is expanding, right? I would hope for sure. Yeah.

18:13Melanie Masarin:It's interesting because Gen Z is now growing up, right? Exactly. And it's, like, very clear that they're not drinking wine. So that's, like, completely cemented. But, you know, are people, like – did people figure out that they can drink water if they're price sensitive? Sure. Like, that too, you know?

18:28Nichole Accettola:Yeah, they want to order the dessert instead of the cocktail at the beginning. Definitely. It makes sense.

18:32Melanie Masarin:And you know the other thing, and we'll see, but we're in a time of war right now. And in times of war, alcohol sales go back up because people are like, what am I going to do? You know, might as well drink, which I understand.

18:45Nichole Accettola:Yeah, it does help the category in some ways, that general malaise about culture and society.

18:49Melanie Masarin:And people travel less also. So then they celebrate more at home. So in general, I think we'll see if our product is recession-friendly like alcohol. because in general it's followed the trends of alcohol. Or if people are just like, well, might as well booze.

19:03Nichole Accettola:Is Ghia staying really tightly aligned with beverage?

19:08Melanie Masarin:Yeah, you know, we have some lifestyle stuff because I can't help myself. And I think that in general, we've always tried to have the brand be – it's really important to me that our customer is the hero and not that the product is the hero. And so we just want to be a catalyst for a good time. So it means that the plate you're eating from or the glass that you're eating from and the music you're listening to, like that all has to play a part in making this occasion celebratory, especially because I think that there's this idea that when you're not drinking, there's like this idea of cessation and restriction that we really are up against.

19:43Melanie Masarin:So with Gia, we never really talk about what's not in the bottle. And instead, we just talk about all of the joyful moments that come with having a Gia.

19:50Nichole Accettola:That's smart. I could see like there being some kind of CPG like bar snacks or something. Yeah. I could see you like innovating.

19:57Melanie Masarin:I mean, we had the Nutella and, you know, the cogs just became way, way too expensive. And the problem is also because we go through distributors that carry beverage. We couldn't put it through our normal network.

20:06Nichole Accettola:You had to pick up a whole new distribution network. I know. And that's a new learning.

20:08Melanie Masarin:So we could ship to our direct accounts. But, you know, those are fewer and far between because now we get territory exclusivity with our distributors. Anyways, it's all the hidden boring stuff.

20:16Nichole Accettola:It's not boring for us, though. So, and speaking of cost of goods, like with tariffs, I mean, do you import a bit of, like, what's that picture like for you?

20:24Melanie Masarin:You know, it's really interesting because the tariffs definitely impacted our business in an indirect way. We were kind of like at the beginning of a fundraise when the tariffs happened and it's like our fundraise like literally disintegrated. It was a bit of a disaster. But we actually even buy our cans in the U.S., which because I was psychotic from the beginning and, you know, everybody's seen this reel with the can of Coca-Cola that's like melting and there's this plastic liner inside. And we just have this really good supplier in the U.S. that we really like. But it will have an impact on, you know, aluminum prices.

20:55Melanie Masarin:There's just not that much aluminum that's being made here and things like that. And the only thing that we import and that was tariffed was the glass bottle. And so it's like a matter of a few cents. It's not 10 or 20 cents. It's not that big a deal. Everything else is local.

21:07Nichole Accettola:That's very, very cool. I did not know that.

21:10Melanie Masarin:Our product is entirely made in the U.S.

21:12Nichole Accettola:Yeah, that's a good place to be right now. But still, you point out the challenges. Yeah. All right, let's talk about the cookbook. So writing a cookbook while running a$50 million company, it seems like a very difficult balance. I can't imagine it, actually. What was it like and what was harder, you know, the cookbook deadline or, like, you know, making that quarterly report in that meeting that you had to get to for the year?

21:39Melanie Masarin:Yeah, it's interesting. I think that I did it because I had no idea what it was going to be like. So I was like, sure, I can write a cookbook, you know, in seven months. I have all the recipes. These are family recipes. And I had written the proposal. So, you know, this process started like three years ago. Michelle, who is a literary agent that specializes in cookbook, reached out to me and we had a first meeting. I thought she was super lovely. she's been in publishing forever is that Michelle Krim? yeah

22:08Nichole Accettola:oh I know Michelle I was like yeah she's great

22:11Melanie Masarin:and she was like I really think you should do this and I was kind of like but I'm not a chef you know and she was like it doesn't matter and then she worked with Becca from Fish Wife and Jing from Fly by Jing and a few other friends and they convinced me they were like Michelle's amazing so I said yes I wrote the proposal and then I had like the craziest imposter syndrome and I never sent her the proposal and my friends were like we know it's in your phone. And so one day we were in LA and we went to Anna Jacques Tai and they ambushed me. And they were like, Michelle's in town. We want to all have dinner.

22:44Melanie Masarin:It's very casual. And then at the dinner, they said, Melanie, show Michelle your proposal. And I had it on my phone and she said, you don't need to make any changes. Just send it to me. And then she shopped the book around. Yeah. And we got a few offers and we went with HarperCollins. And, you know, I think that for me, I was kind of like, this is going to be a ton of work. But I, but they paired me with a ghostwriter. And then the ghostwriter was also writing his own book. And so he got too busy. And so like a few months before the manuscript was due, he was like, I'm so sorry, I can't do it.

23:14Melanie Masarin:And I was like, I guess let's go, you know. But I had never measured anything. Like the way that we cook in France. I grew up, so for context, like I grew up, my mom had me quite young. Her mom had her quite young. And so my grandmother was like a second mom to me. And I loved being with her. and my parents would just ship me to her house for the entire summer and then come visit whenever they could. And we would like wake up, we would go to the beach, we would go to the markets, we would cook lunch, we would take a nap, we would cook dinner, we would go to bed. It was like the best life ever.

23:45Melanie Masarin:But I just learned to be her assistant in the kitchen and I learned all of the tips and tricks through her kind of garlicky fingers. I never measured anything, you know. It was like, if it is like this, add a little bit of that. And so that's kind of how I approached the cooking. And I said, you know, this is my sister's cake and whatnot. And it was just a little bit of this and a little bit of that. So there was a lot of, like, development that needed to happen. But I had her cookbook. So my grandmother started writing this kitchen notebook when she was 18 years old.

24:14Nichole Accettola:And you have a beautiful photo of it in the book. It's very cool to see. It's very well-loved and used.

24:18Melanie Masarin:I mean, she literally wrote it up until the day that she died. So her handwriting even evolved over the years. and my grandmother, you know, she had like, I don't know what it's called in English, a blood clot that went to her heart. She died very suddenly and she didn't have anything precious really, but she had four kids and I was, you know, grown up when that happened and my mom said, okay, like, we don't want anyone to fight over anything. Like, why doesn't everybody write on a piece of paper one thing that they would like from her? And that thing is dibs, that's your memory of her. You get to like pick it first.

24:51Melanie Masarin:And all four children and myself asked for the kitchen book. Which was like so surprising because it has zero value. She had like a few jewels or things that you could have thought were more precious. She had these ceramics that she loved from the South. But everybody asked for the kitchen book. And my uncles and my mom decided that because I was the youngest and I was the one that maybe cooked the most with her in the past years, I should have it. And it's been like my most precious heirloom. I mean, when the fires happen in L.A., like the first thing that I said is I called my assistant and I said, if you do go like to the house can you just grab a cookbook oh so you were out of town when it was happening yeah i was like we left the day before and he was like do you want me to go pack up some stuff everybody's packing like silver lake is safe but we never know there's like arsons and i was like just go get the book it's here you know like i didn't care about anything else like there was

25:38Nichole Accettola:there was nothing that mattered i mean little did you know at that time when you acquired that book that it would actually be the the foundation of a nationally published cookbook well i had to

25:48Melanie Masarin:gotten the book deal then but i was just like this is like all the memory it's like my heart you know is in is in that book and so we picked some recipes from the book but i had evolved a lot of the recipes over time because my grandmother was very heavy ended with sugar and you know i grew up in lyon which is very like heavy cream heavy but the recipes that i wanted to honor were the ones from the south they were very summer forward recipes and you know i think we a lot of i think like just being an adult in 2026 is also like dealing with inflammation and dealing with a lot of different things.

26:19Melanie Masarin:And the Mediterranean diet in general is just so good for you in a way that never feels restrictive. It's actually the perfect pairing for a guia spritz. It's like food that feels really abundant and very generous and is really simple. Most of the recipes have less than 10 ingredients and often they have less than five.

26:36Nichole Accettola:Let's set a little geography here. So when you say that you're going to the shore or the beach with your grandmother each summer, you're living in Lyon, which is more central or landlocked. Where are you going and how do you define the Riviera, the French Riviera?

26:50Melanie Masarin:For sure. So, I mean, I think different people define it in different ways. But I think the Riviera for me is between like Marseille and Liguria probably. My grandfather lived in Nice and my grandmother lived in Cannes with the rest of the family kind of spread out along the coast. and I went to school in Lyon with my parents, but it was like we would go like most weekends every holiday the entire summer. So like Rome really felt like the Riviera. One of my uncles was a chef. My grandmother used to have a restaurant. And so it was, I would say, like a very kind of like food forward, you know, family.

27:29Melanie Masarin:But the food, so my dad is half Italian and, well, my dad's Italian and my mom is French, But the Riviera is very infused with Italy. It's like really where we say, you know, France and Italy meet for a kiss in Nice.

27:42Nichole Accettola:I love that you also wrote. France relaxes into Italy. Yes. I love that line so much.

27:47Melanie Masarin:Yeah, it really does. You know, it's like it's because there's a lot of things that are very rigid about French culture. But actually, like I think my favorite food in the world is in Nice because it has like all of the influences at once. and like if you get to go to dinner at Che d 'Avia, it's like top five restaurants in the world for me and it's just like a simple tablecloth restaurant, a white tablecloth restaurant. It is like delicious, but it's really simple. It's unpretentious and it's just so flavorful and you feel good after. And so I think I wanted to kind of honor that.

28:20Nichole Accettola:I love that memory of Nice. And I just want to be clear, we talked about in the first episode, like you came from humble means, like you didn't grow up wealthy. And I think Americans assume the Riviera, I think about Cannes and like the whole like celebrity element that it's only for very wealthy people. But that's like the opposite. And you write about it in the book. I mean, you're just like somebody who grew up in Lyon in middle class world and you go to the shore to visit your grandma.

28:45Melanie Masarin:Yeah, definitely. You know, there's this glitzy part of the Riviera, which, you know, of course, like when I was 14 years old, I was like invited to go into Saint-Tropez with my friends, you know, to their houses or whatnot. But for us, it definitely wasn't like that. There's a lot of people that, you know, work there. And I think I read Roger Verger, like, wrote something about how, like, you know, the Riviera, the coastline is the storefront for actually all of the people that work in Provence. And so all of the food comes from Provence. And then it's just, like, displayed very beautifully on the Riviera.

29:20Melanie Masarin:And even in, you know, in Cannes, like, my grandfather's apartment is, like, on the Croisettes, which is, like, where the festival happens. But they would just rent out their places during the festival because it becomes, like, so, you know, fancy. But it's, I don't know. There's a richness to the Riviera that goes beyond that, I think. It's like opening your windows and having the blue of the sea. And, you know, I mean, Marseille is very gritty. We were just talking about it. We shot half the book in Marseille and the other half in Nice. These two beautiful hotels, Tuba Club and Hotel du Couvent.

29:49Melanie Masarin:and I dream of getting married at the Hotel du Couvent. So, you know, discussions because it's a very special place. And it's, I don't know, there's just something about being so close to the sea.

30:01Nichole Accettola:I love Marseille. I've only been there once, but I spent like four or five days there. And I think like we'll talk about the Soupe de Poisson, but I mean, there's the flavors of Marseille that is so different from Paris and Normandy and other places in France.

30:17Melanie Masarin:Totally, and port food, you know, is such a thing. And I think that it's funny because there's a lot of elements that match with port food when it's like fish is so cheap. And soup de poisson is like all of the fish remains that there's a recipe in the book. But to be honest, like fish soup, it's like it's the first meal that I have when I get to Cannes. And it's not fancy. Like the plates are like, you know, it's not like curated aesthetic, but it's like the best. Like my first fish soup of the summer. It's so salty. It's so good. You put the little Gruyere and the Rouille on the toast and you let it melt.

30:50Melanie Masarin:And it's just like, there's like nothing like it, you know.

30:53Nichole Accettola:And it is that kind of France relaxing into Italy. Because in Marseille, you could be in parts of Italy and not be confused. Yeah, definitely. For sure.

31:06Melanie Masarin:In a way that Italy is also very gritty. And like you talk about Italy and you can think of Diamalfi and you can think of, you know, those like really expensive hotels. But like Italy is actually like in many ways like a third world country and like things don't work there. And it's like amazing. And it's just like, you know, I don't know. It's stuck in time and very inexpensive. People always ask us why we don't bring guia to Italy. And it's like with the way that we produce it in the U.S. now, if we export it, it would be like it's a completely different market. People can have non-alcoholic drinks for like two euros a glass there.

31:39Nichole Accettola:Yeah. And because of the regulation, there's so much local food in Italy as well. Yeah. So like to import a drink from the States just doesn't make sense for Italian food culture. Tell me more about this like southern cuisine, this coastal cuisine that is really inspired by this hug or this kiss between Italy and France.

32:00Melanie Masarin:For sure. You know, I think there's obviously there's a lot of pasta, but there's also just a lot of vegetables, like a ton of olive oil. So my grandmother like only ever cooked with olive oil, but because she had spent some years in Lyon and we came from Lyon and she always said that the best flavors are when you have both. So there's a lot of dishes that are very indulgent. But it's like, you know, really honoring like food that's in season. And so it's like the tomatoes, the zucchinis, the eggplants, the like ratatouille, really using the juices. And there's also this concept of Cucina Provera, which I know has been very talked about in years, which is kind of like nothing would ever get wasted in her kitchen.

32:37Melanie Masarin:Like the idea, we would not buy, you know, breadcrumbs or anything like that. Like she had, we had bread from the market every day and then the leftover bread would be toasted and ground and it would be going on top of like a pasta gratin or everything would be recycled. Like she made bread puddings all the time. So you just really didn't waste anything. and so I think I really learned to cook in that way. I think also French culture in general, we have this culture of freezing a little bit more, like frozen meals or just keeping things in the freezer. And so when I make a batch of something, I make for two and then I just have it for later.

33:11Melanie Masarin:Just pull it out, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I remember I have vivid memories of my grandmother and my mom. Every year, a friend of my grandmother had, I don't know if you call it an orchard, but she had a ton of lemon trees and they basically all get into the season early and it's citron menton, So it's this very specific type. It's completely untreated. And her and my mom would go and fill the trunk of the car with lemons. And I had to, like, you know, help carry it. And then they would make limoncello. And I would help kind of, like, you know, zest the lemons. They would do it for days. And then these big jugs of water.

33:44Melanie Masarin:And, you know, you had to buy, like, hard alcohol from, like, the pharmacy. But, like, you had to know people to get this much. Like, they were making gallons of it.

33:53Nichole Accettola:That's amazing. And they gifted it in the holidays. Yeah, exactly.

33:55Melanie Masarin:And then it'd be like, they would give, anyone who would come by the house would get a bottle. Or it'd be like, bring your bottle. And she'd fill the little bottle from the huge jug, you know. And we had like pharmacist friends that would help them buy all this booze, basically. It's like, you know, maybe the origin story.

34:12Nichole Accettola:Yeah, you were in the beverage business as a young person.

34:16Melanie Masarin:But it's also like, oh, like this was a moment that happened every year and was celebrated. It was like the lemons arriving, you know. And so I think for the culture of the Riviera, just like eat what's in season, like they really pride themselves on their lamb, for instance. And it's like, don't go tell someone from Cannes that, you know, your lamb is the best lamb because their lamb is for sure the best lamb. And so there's just, you know, I think a lot of recipes that honor that. But it's also like I never, ever witnessed either my mom or my grandmother be stressed around the kitchen, even as we constantly had people around eating.

34:51Melanie Masarin:And I think that it's this nonchalance that I was also trying to kind of foster in the book, which is like, it can be easy.

34:57Nichole Accettola:I mean, it's also just this innate skill of the Italians and the French in the kitchen. I feel like growing up and you painted the picture really well, like how you were with your grandmother on her hip while she was cooking and this idea. And I mean, there's Americans who do this too. Don't get me wrong, but like there's an effortless style when you see Europeans, French and Italians cook.

35:19Melanie Masarin:For sure. And it's also like there was never too much of a good thing. You know, if I mean, I love Pomodoro days because I love the smell of tomatoes. I always love tomatoes. They were so amazing. I got to use the fun meal that, you know, she had this very special technique and she made this tomato sauce that was just basically like pulp and garlic. And she knew that when it was Pomodoro Day, I would have a whole bowl of Pomodoro if my mom wasn't here to protest because there was not too much of a good thing. And she loved that. I loved it. And she was like, you made the Pomodoro. So this is your reward.

35:49Melanie Masarin:And I would get like a bowl of the Pomodoro that I would eat like a soup. Like, is there anything better?

35:53Nichole Accettola:Oh, no, there's nothing better when you're doing sauce. Sauce Day when you're eating the raw soup. I mean, the raw sauce. It's so good. I want to hear about panisse. I feel like it's something that we maybe see in restaurants here. like you know niçoise style cooking but like i think king makes the best one shout out king

36:09Melanie Masarin:i remember when king opened because i lived at 26 king street uh very close by and i had gone to college with claire and so i knew her and she was testing the panice and i was just like yes i mean she honestly she does it way better than me because she makes it like very long and beautiful but people are scared to make panice panice is so easy it's basically a chickpea fry there's different you know ways to do it i think the one i make the version i make at home the most is actually a socca because socca is much easier because you can put it in like a flat hot pan but panice i think the trick to a panice is you just like you can't undercook it and it's not like it needs to be cooked it's just that you have to have enough water evaporate that it's not going to disintegrate once it cools down and you can actually cut it and it holds its shape and i just shallow fry it in olive oil which i know people are like against frying in olive oil

37:00Nichole Accettola:Oh, I love frying in olive oil. Oops. It smells good.

37:03Melanie Masarin:You know, it's like you choose your toxins and I choose fried olive oil. I also like avocado oil, but I like olive oil more.

37:10Nichole Accettola:Yeah, come on. I mean, wherever you're from, you got to cook with olive oil. French Louis does a really good soca. Oh, okay. Really? Like in Brooklyn. Yeah. They've always done a really great soca. Nice. Yeah. It's hard to find. And I think at home, I'm going to cook your recipe because I think you do, you lay out a really nice technique. I want to talk about the iconic French green salad. I feel with the vinaigrette that you have a really specific recipe here. I wanted you to break it down. And like how do you get that French, you know, that French salad style that we all love so much?

37:42Melanie Masarin:Okay. So, you know, I will be the first to admit like I'm not a chef. My knife skills are awful. I am like kind of a messy like kitchen countertop person. I'm learning to clean as I go. But like, I'm like really good with salad because I hate wet salad. So, and I don't like wasting food. So it's like I go to the market or like I get my farm box and like I immediately wash my salad and I wrap it in these towels. And then I store it like this in the fridge and then you can just have salad as you go. And it lasts such a long time because you've removed like every microbe from it and it's like just moist enough.

38:20Melanie Masarin:And so that's, first of all, the lettuce not being wet is really important. I also think you need to have just like a tiny amount of dressing, very well covered everywhere on the lettuce. And you need to have like little grains of salt that you peel. So like flaky salt. I cook a lot with flaky salt. But I really like to, you know, break down either shallots or garlic with vinegar because it just takes like the big bite off of it. In like a mortar and pestle? I just do it in a bowl. Yeah, I mean, I use my mortar and pestle enough. So it's like, you know, salt, pepper. And then I really like the kind of like shallot and red wine vinegar, which is like very French.

38:59Melanie Masarin:But I also like to use a little bit of mustard. My grandma used garlic more than she used shallots. And then just like let it sit there for 10 minutes with your acids because it will take down that like bite. And I think in general, like we use so much garlic in the south of France. But it's not that really overpowering garlic that people think of, even though like I love that in small doses. Like my grandma would always, you know, toast stale bread and then like rub the garlic with her bare fingers and then her fingers would smell so strong. And like to me, that's the smell of her kitchen. But, you know, I confit a lot of garlic and like confit garlic, even if you cook down like that lamb shoulder.

39:34Melanie Masarin:And then you have that, we call it en chemise when you have the whole like garlic. The whole bulb, yeah. The whole bulb. And then it just like you spread it with your knife. Like that's like, that's sweet, that's sugar, that's caramelized like goodness.

39:46Nichole Accettola:So you'll confit garlic like routinely and just store it for a couple days? Yeah, routinely.

39:52Melanie Masarin:Literally as soon as the cherry tomatoes are good at the market, like I will go and I will ask if I can buy an entire tray of them. And usually like late August is when I do it. And every year I think I make enough that I'm going to have like enough for the whole year, but I never do. And I just make batches and batches and batches of tomato sauce. And I confit cherry tomatoes and like it's just the best ever.

40:11Nichole Accettola:And you freeze them.

40:12Melanie Masarin:And I freeze everything.

40:12Nichole Accettola:That's why my mom's been doing that for years in West Michigan. so she's got a little bit of French style.

40:17Melanie Masarin:And it's like, you know, sometimes you're like, I don't know, it's like the winter and it starts to get cold or like you're like sick or someone near you is sick and you like bring them like a fresh tomato sauce and like I also always have homemade pasta in my freezer because I love to sometimes make it. I don't always like eat homemade pasta or like when I make it, I try to make extra and it's like you just dump it in like boiling water and it's like so amazing.

40:41Nichole Accettola:It's so good. What are the iconic Southern French pasta dishes that you're going to find in Riviera?

40:46Melanie Masarin:Well, so interestingly, I decided to put a trophy with pesto in it. And so we have, there's a lot of pesto in the book, but there's pesto and pesto. And pesto is the French version, which doesn't have the pine nuts. And yeah, correct. And so there's a soup. That's kind of like our version of a minestrone. And then you basically add the pesto at the end and it's just so good. But when, you know, a lot of this kind of cooking and sharing the cooking happened during COVID because I was just like home alone in LA, and I was making pasta for everyone in the neighborhood. And I started posting it, and that's kind of how, you know, I built, like, a little following, and also people started, like, knowing me for my cooking.

41:23Melanie Masarin:And I got obsessed with learning to make this pasta by hand. That wasn't really from my childhood. Like, we would just buy the pasta at the market. And I started making trophies, which are really tough. But then as I started traveling, you know, to Liguria and whatnot, like, trophies with pesto became really one of my favorite dishes. So I put one of those in the book. And then there's also a pasta limone. which is just so simple.

41:45Nichole Accettola:I love that recipe. I noted that one. I love that. So you traveled to Goria? You're into that?

41:49Melanie Masarin:Yeah. I mean, I love, I went on a whole road trip from Cannes to Florence last year. And like, you know, my boyfriend's also Italian now. So it's just like, we can't escape it. And I think like my heart is really on the coast. And interestingly, my grandmother who was French was obsessed with Italy, spoke fluent Italian also. So I think that just, there was always kind of like infusions of all of these different cultures. And my dad's family is from Venice area. Although I haven't spent much time there.

42:15Nichole Accettola:Right.

42:15Melanie Masarin:They were more trying to be French, you know. They were immigrants.

42:19Nichole Accettola:It's so great that your personal background embodies this France and Italy, this hug that you mentioned earlier.

42:26Melanie Masarin:Sometimes people know Gia and then they meet me and they're like, oh, that makes sense.

42:30Nichole Accettola:Yeah, totally. Because you are channeling this Florentine culture, the aperitivo culture, which is so, or it would be Milan, I guess you could say. But you're French.

42:42Melanie Masarin:Yeah.

42:42Nichole Accettola:Yeah, it really does make sense. The Tien Provençal, which is based on this very iconic cookware. I love it. I love this idea that you can take farmer's market vegetables and bake it. Take us through that.

42:57Melanie Masarin:It's basically like a lazy person's ratatou, right? Which, you know, I love a ratatou. It's my favorite dish. I think I prefer a ratatou to a tion because you just get like more control over the cooking. But my grandma was constantly feeding tons of people. And so, like, just you take a mandolin and you just slice everything as evenly as possible. Eggplants, tomatoes.

43:17Nichole Accettola:Eggplants, tomatoes.

43:18Melanie Masarin:She actually loved to put potatoes in there, which is like, and she did it like horizontally. But if you want to make it prettier, you can make it like a flour with the slices vertical. Zucchinis, it's honestly like kind of whatever you want. And I think a lot of these dishes, they're very versatile. You know, like I did the measurements because like HarperCollins made me. But you could do, they're really designed that you can swap things. You can use whatever you have in your pantry. Like the goal is, I think a lot of people use recipes for inspiration, you know, more than the actual measurements.

43:47Melanie Masarin:And like they were developed and they were tested by five people. So I feel really good about the actual measurements if you're like a recipe follower. But for the tiens, just get the best vegetables that you can find at the market or at Whole Foods or at wherever you get your food from, you know, and like just slice them thinly. And I think that there's like a few different ways. Like you can, some people say that they want to put like a sauce at the bottom. But I keep mine super simple. Garlic, lots of really good herbs. And then you put it in the oven and everything just kind of melts into each other.

44:18Nichole Accettola:With olive oil?

44:19Melanie Masarin:Tons of olive oil.

44:20Nichole Accettola:Yeah, olive oil, herbs, garlic. And is there a cheese element to yours?

44:24Melanie Masarin:In Tian?

44:24Nichole Accettola:No. Yeah, no. So no cheese.

44:25Melanie Masarin:My grandma would add potatoes and cheese because she couldn't help herself. But no.

44:29Nichole Accettola:Yeah, I like it. Because I think we come across like August, September and we have so much. We have farmer's market boxes and we want, we think fresh where we think like soups, but like roasting it.

44:41Melanie Masarin:Yeah.

44:42Nichole Accettola:It's so easy. So easy. And I think in the summertime we get a little bit like we can't turn on the oven, but no, you got to turn the oven on.

44:49Melanie Masarin:Yeah. And by the way, it's also really good like room temperature. And I think like I'm very much someone who's like, come over for dinner, come over for dinner. And I don't like to stress about it. And I think that with any dinner party, there should only be one meal that requires, one dish that requires like very active kind of like. So it's like whatever I can make ahead, I make ahead. And so room temperature tiens is so good.

45:08Nichole Accettola:Melanie, how do you think about dessert?

45:09Melanie Masarin:You know, I'm very specific with my desserts. I think that, first of all, I'm not a pastry chef. I'm not going to try to be a pastry chef. I love a make ahead dessert. I love a frozen dessert. I would say that they're definitely like, and it's funny because I love savory food. But still, when I was making the book, like, there were a lot of dessert recipes and we had to cut a bunch. But I love a fruit tart. I love a chocolate mousse. It's actually was my dad's favorite dessert. So I feel like I learned to make the chocolate mousse, like, really well because it was the one that I probably made the most.

45:42Melanie Masarin:And then I stole some recipes. Like, my mom hated cooking daily, but she loved cooking for a crowd.

45:46Nichole Accettola:Oh, fun.

45:47Melanie Masarin:And so there's her frozen raspberry tiramisu, which is, like, very much like a cheater's tiramisu. you and she just puts it in the freezer and it's basically like frozen whipped cream with raspberries and then she just takes it out when the dinner begins and it's this sort of semi-fredo style it's like i mean it literally takes like four minutes to make you know and it's one of my

46:08Nichole Accettola:that combination of just like cream and raspberries i know and like also like homemade

46:12Melanie Masarin:whipped cream like seems so complicated but it's like it literally takes 30 seconds if you know how to do it you know so it's all these tips and tricks really that are in the book that's like meant to be really simple. So there's a lot, there's a lot of desserts and there's like, you know, and I think the idea with dessert is it's not like too much, but I love a fruit tart the most. Honestly, it's like for me, it's like if there's rhubarb at the market, there's like a tart.

46:36Nichole Accettola:I love that you love rhubarb. So there's a little bit of a cocktail drink section and I just love like broadly that you didn't do a Gia cookbook. It's so smart to tell your story and talk about the drinks a little bit.

46:49Melanie Masarin:Yeah. I mean, who wants to read a guia cookbook you know what i mean like let's be real it's like um not me and i love guia more than anyone and anything um i think that this is you know guia again is supposed to be a catalyst for these moments so then it's like how do you build the rest of the moments and um you know i hope that as people people are cooking these recipes like they kind of like are in the mood and they're you know they feel like they can cook and they can share and they can celebrate with alcohol, but I roped in my friend Leslie, who does disco cubes to develop some of these recipes, because I'm also not a mixologist.

47:25Melanie Masarin:I think that the idea behind Guia was how do you take the intimidation out of making a drink? It's like, you can just pour it out of the can, or you can just take the bottle and do a Guia soda, which is like my favorite way to drink it, although lately I've been very into a heavy pour of the Guia bottle and then Fever Tree Alder Flower Tonic.

47:43Nichole Accettola:Really incredible spring combo.

47:45Melanie Masarin:Like, so simple. I get it on Amazon.

47:47Nichole Accettola:Yeah.

47:48Melanie Masarin:And, you know, Leslie developed some, like, more advanced recipes. When I lived in L.A., she would make these amazing punches. And the punch is kind of the version of the kind of Gia cookbook for sharing because she would basically, like, leave it and forget it. And so I called her and made a few recipes together. And, like, she's so amazing.

48:07Nichole Accettola:That's really fun. Well, I love the book. I love Gia. And I hope you can come back.

48:11Melanie Masarin:Thank you.

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49:53Nichole Accettola:individual results may vary on this is taste we have guests about the starting taste so to close this interview here's a little rapid fire fast and furious taste check are you ready okay yeah well i don't know if i like prepared for these but it's fine it's fine the best fruit rhubarb You've proven that You've proven that You've proven that in the book Yeah

50:11Melanie Masarin:I don't know if it's a vegetable though Uh

50:14Nichole Accettola:Well then Fact checking I think it's probably

50:16Melanie Masarin:Is tomato a fruit?

50:18Nichole Accettola:Tomato is definitely a fruit But we call it a vegetable So it's We'll call rhubarb the same

50:21Melanie Masarin:Okay

50:21Nichole Accettola:The worst vegetable Okay

50:23Melanie Masarin:I really hate this thing called Salsifi Do you know what it is? It's like a dead person's fingers Is how they also call it in French I hate it

50:34Nichole Accettola:We have Buddha hands Which are cool and then you've got the dead person's fingers, which is salsa feet. Super into that. What is your typical breakfast?

50:42Melanie Masarin:I like to have like some bone broth if I have it in the morning. Otherwise, I'll just do like two scrambled eggs and like a little bit of avocado.

50:51Nichole Accettola:Nice. Bone broth in the morning is great. That's not what I thought. Not yogurt?

50:58Melanie Masarin:So one of the big dramas of my life is I'm like a little bit lactose intolerant. And so I have yogurt when I'm in France. But when I'm here, I try to like just not have it daily.

51:06Nichole Accettola:Super fair. I only ask because, you know, the French yogurt is just epic.

51:10Melanie Masarin:Exactly. And I'm not like, like in Greece never makes me sick. Like I love on the weekend, maybe I'll have like a yogurt with granola and fruit. Like my boyfriend loves that. I love to make it. I also love to make granola. With like right now, I'm very into putting like just coconut in it. But not daily because I try to pick and choose.

51:28Nichole Accettola:The best dessert? Rhybark tart.

51:32Melanie Masarin:Actually, honestly, okay, this is maybe controversial, but like I sometimes go to like with these really amazing restaurants in New York and I'm like, you need chocolate. You need a chocolate dessert on the menu. Like it's mandatory. And we have this really incredible chocolate cake in the book, which was like mixing. You know, everybody has an amazing olive oil cake recipe. They're so easy. They're so soft and delicious. and I had my grandmother's like extremely sweet but so decadent chocolate cake and sort of had roped in a few people to help me test the recipe to develop like a blend of the two and it's sort of like crackly on the top but really soft on the inside and I think it's like an unsung hero of the book because people don't make chocolate cake that much and it's very much like a chocolate cake that like disintegrates, you know?

52:20Melanie Masarin:It's not like your birthday cake that stands really tall. It's like you spoon it out.

52:26Nichole Accettola:It's a flat one, but it's very moist, and it has, I know this style with the crackly top. Yeah.

52:30Melanie Masarin:So I love the chocolate cake.

52:32Nichole Accettola:Yeah, it sounds very good. A restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead?

52:37Melanie Masarin:Uncle Boone's.

52:38Nichole Accettola:Yeah. I think about that place a lot.

52:40Melanie Masarin:That was really good. It's good. And, you know, I'm on a Thai diner kick, so it's like reminiscent, but Uncle Boone's was really special. Crazy space, too. Even for as hard as it was to go in.

52:49Nichole Accettola:Go in and then like the crazy space, the grotto style was definitely unique. I love that place. When you're craving fast food, where are you going?

52:57Melanie Masarin:Okay, so there's this smash burger place in Paris called Dumbo, and my brother and I are, like, I would say regulars.

53:05Nichole Accettola:Yeah. It's very close to my place, so they also deliver, and it's just, like, the, and I don't know, like, the bun is quite thin.

53:11Melanie Masarin:It's very much like a lady burger, so we'll order three for two.

53:14Nichole Accettola:Oh, yeah.

53:14Melanie Masarin:And they put, like—

53:16Nichole Accettola:A little bonus half.

53:16Melanie Masarin:Yeah, exactly. With bro. A little bonus half. The French fries are always really good, but, like, the patty itself is just, like, really crispy.

53:23Nichole Accettola:Yeah.

53:23Melanie Masarin:I love it.

53:24Nichole Accettola:Your French apartment remodel was epic on social. I did follow along. Thank you.

53:28Melanie Masarin:It's honestly like the best. If I have anything to show for the past decade, my place in Paris is like my pride and joy. It's like every detail I sweat through. I bet.

53:38Nichole Accettola:Do you spend a lot of time there?

53:40Melanie Masarin:Not as much as I would like, but I would like to spend more time there. I've been renting it out just to kind of like make back the money from the renovation.

53:48Nichole Accettola:Yeah, that's the way to do it.

53:49Melanie Masarin:Yeah, but it's amazing. And I think I'll spend like all of July there.

53:54Nichole Accettola:Do you follow Tour de France?

53:55Melanie Masarin:No.

53:56Nichole Accettola:You're not a cycle. Because, you know, they ended last year. I think they're going to do it again. They ended the race in the streets of Paris, not just the loop around the Champs -Élysées. Oh, that's cool. So they actually were in the neighborhoods. I'm sorry. I'm just bringing a little Tour de France.

54:10Melanie Masarin:I mean, there's also like the World Cup here, but Italy didn't make it. So someone in my life is very upset.

54:15Nichole Accettola:But France should be pretty good. They should do all right. A few more. Your favorite city in the world to visit for food?

54:23Melanie Masarin:Mexico City. nice I feel like we had that last time probably

54:27Nichole Accettola:yeah I like to ask repeat guests because sometimes it does change but if I can't

54:30Melanie Masarin:I can't say Paris I can't say the south of France because those places are home so they don't feel like I'm visiting them but I really think that Mexico City has like the most incredible food

54:39Nichole Accettola:is guia in Mexico City is it poppin?

54:42Melanie Masarin:no why? just expensive to export yeah there were a couple places that would like there's a few hotels that exported because I think that there's some regulations where you can like ship it to Miami and they can cross it over the border but But everything is hard internationally. It's hard. And our product's really heavy.

54:58Nichole Accettola:Well, that's the challenge. We didn't even get into that of RTD. It's just the weight.

55:03Melanie Masarin:You're shipping water around, you know?

55:05Nichole Accettola:Yeah. It's really, really hard business. I can't believe you do it. It's crazy. Respect. Last one, your favorite sandwich.

55:12Melanie Masarin:Like in New York? Yeah. Okay. Well, so there's a place. My parents live in this little town in Provence called Egalier. And there's a place called Chez Émilie. that's like a cheese shop and she makes the most insane sandwiches. But actually in New York, my boyfriend and I like to go to La Biciclette and have a ham and cheese because they have the$2 baguettes there. And it's like, it's not like Paris, but it's like Paris and New York. And I love ham and cheese and pickle.

55:39Nichole Accettola:I love that. Melanie, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste.

55:43Melanie Masarin:Thank you.

55:47Nichole Accettola:Nicole Acetolo, welcome to This Is Taste. How are you? I'm doing great. Great. Thanks for having me, Matt. Really excited to chat with you. We have a lot to cover. Scandinavian Everyday is your new book. So many questions. Everyone wants to travel to Scandinavia, right? It is a popular place right now. It hasn't always been like that, but yeah, lucky strike, I guess. It has a lot to offer. Absolutely. Clayton and I just were in Copenhagen and we did a full episode, Taste Travels Copenhagen. Amazing. Really wonderful time there. And really, I think this is such a cool conversation because you moved there in 1999 and you have a lot of thoughts.

56:27Nichole Accettola:How do you like to describe modern Scandinavian food? What are some of the dishes and just the impulses there? Yeah. So for me, modern Scandinavian food, when we're not even, I think a lot of it has to do with ingredients. But I think even if we go just one level higher than that, it has a lot to do with the intentions behind it. So I see modern Scandinavian food as something that involves care, not only for the ingredients that you're going to be using, but the ritual of cooking it. I find it very meditative to be in the kitchen and making food. The person that's going to be enjoying it are the people that you're going to be serving it to.

57:13Nichole Accettola:And then as we get closer to the ingredients themselves, it's about the connection to the landscape, to nature, the seasons. It's real food. Um, and then when we talk about the ingredients, we're talking about things that are not manipulated in a huge way. It's, um, it's, um, seasonality, uh, preservation where, you know, for historically there's lots of preservation that goes into the food in terms of smoking and salting and curing and that kind of thing. And it's a nice combination of the components of the dish that create great contrast and texture and flavor. So there's acidity and there's sweetness and playing off of those things.

58:02Nichole Accettola:Like you would have a Scandinavian meatball or a Swedish meatball and you'd have the lingonberry sauce on the side, but you'd also have some pickles as well. So you get some acid in there. Just like stimulating so you get full in a different way. So it's not only something that fills your belly, but it's also a sensory filling up. And then there's lots of grains, whole grains. I've never seen such a wide variety of grains as there are in Scandinavia. When you really start digging into what people are growing out there, small farmers that are really trying to bring these new grains to light. Lots of seafood as well.

58:40Nichole Accettola:You know, we all have, there's lots of challenges out there with seafood. And I think one thing that Scandinavia is realizing is that so much of it was being exported for, you know, to other parts of the world. And it's really about embracing what's there now and how we can use it instead of shipping it away. Okay. And then, yeah, like I said, seasonality of the vegetables, the herbs, and just presenting things very much in line with the way that some of the restaurants are here with the California mindset of, you know, keeping it simple, straightforward, uncomplicated, without excess, that kind of thing.

59:17Nichole Accettola:Yeah, we saw that a lot during our visit. You know, we had some fine dining, but mostly we were eating at smaller places. And really, the more traditional places we dined at were sticking with the simplicity that you speak about. And it's really, this book is really needed because I think there's so many misperceptions about Scandinavian cuisine. I think we get stuck in that rut of assuming that every Scandinavian meal is fine dining is, you know, could name five places that come to mind all the time. But when you visit, in fact, it is much more like, you know, coastal California could be like the Midwest in some ways, too.

59:50Mm-hmm.

59:51Nichole Accettola:Yeah. And, you know, I'm glad that you had those experiences. And I also feel that there's a need for this kind of book because we're very familiar with, you know, the high-end restaurants that shine there as well. And they have a place and a role. But I feel as though there's also something that needs to be for that everyday, the everyday rituals that happen and the ones that really nourish us. And I think that, you know, when I first moved to Copenhagen, I was presented with a cuisine that was quite heavy and I would say maybe liken it to maybe British food, you know, like heavy sauces, roast meat, potatoes, that kind of thing.

1:00:35Nichole Accettola:And in fine dining, it was not at all Scandinavian. It was all French. We were speaking French in the kitchen. And it was that was, you know, for a lot of people, that was what fine dining was about. And I think that this kind of changed my focus. Having those years in Denmark, I was there for 16 years. Having that those years there really transformed my idea in the way that I saw food, because it wasn't with my fine dining background. You know, special meals were about, you know, shipping in ingredients from the other side of the world. And for Scandinavians, it was becoming, you know, that first potato that had been harvested on this little island outside of Copenhagen.

1:01:19Nichole Accettola:You know, that kind of thing. That's what making special food is about. Well, take me back to moving there in 1999. I mean, you're there at really the dawn of a very interesting time for the city of Copenhagen. I mean, it's virtually unknown to the food world, meaning like food writers and travelers were certainly not going there. What sent you there and what were you up to? Yes. So previous to going there, I had I had been working in Boston in upscale restaurants and having a good time with that. I had gone to Boston University for hotel and restaurant management and thought, you know, like as was common.

1:01:58Nichole Accettola:I don't know if it's as prevalent today as it is, but, you know, there were a lot of of my friends from from college from. I also went to the Culinary Institute that were going abroad to be able to get some European experience. You know, you would do a year maybe in Italy or in France. Usually those were the two hot cuisines and they're still very, you know, especially cuisine is just like never enduring. I had this thought of I would really love to just immerse myself in another culture at the time. And to be honest, feeling very burnt out about what was going on, even though I was CDC at a very prominent restaurant at the time, I thought to myself, I need some balance.

1:02:45Nichole Accettola:I remember just thinking, I need balance in my life. This is crazy that I'm working 80 plus hours. And it's just like this. I feel like I'm in a, you know, what are you, not a treadmill. Hamster wheel? Hamster wheel. That's what I was in. And one day would just flow into the next and time would go. and I wasn't really feeling I was really filling up. I had a friend that was an exchange student in Ohio where I grew up, and she and I had become best friends when she was abroad, and I had visited her a few times in Denmark, stayed for a few months the first time I was there. That was amazing during the summer after I finished high school, and really just thought this was a fascinating place.

1:03:28And one of the times I had visited her, I came to meet this man that I also was quite interested in.

1:03:35Nichole Accettola:And so I thought, you know what, I need to escape. And to be honest, I would rather be going to Italy or France to get some culinary education. But right now, this is my only inn I have. I can stay at her place. I can stay at his place. I'm going to figure something out. We'll take it as a year. I'm going to go for a year and see how it goes. I need to get out of this because this is not leading me anywhere. And I ended up going over there. And as you said, the food was nothing to talk about. Nobody was talking about it. And I went over there and thought, well, I'm going to get, I had heard that the work week was 37 hours.

1:04:09Nichole Accettola:And I thought that's less than half of what I'm working right now. So I'm going to, you know, get that balance that way. Most people in Denmark, also in other parts of Scandinavia as well, they start a job. You get five weeks of paid vacation. Some get more. I mean, a lot of times you're not bargaining for a higher salary. You're actually bargaining for more time off. And it's all about that balance, work-life balance, which is so important to be able to come with inspiration and really jump into your work when you're at work, but also let it be when it's not time. So I thought this is going to be really healthy for me.

1:04:47Nichole Accettola:And I went there and I ended up going into, I headed right for the first Michelin star restaurant that I could and got a stage there. I was working there, speaking French, was the only, I was the only female in the kitchen. In some ways, I felt like I was going back in time. I thought geez you know there were plenty of females in the kitchen I was working at in Boston what's going on here and I remember the head chef came over to me and you know I had been CDC at this restaurant in Boston and thought you know I've got a good you know something to offer this restaurant and I remember he came over and looked at my mise en place I was in the process for if you're familiar with the term I was tournée cucumbers yeah wow not an easy and not an easy knife knife not no so he would have me scoop it out of the seeds in the middle and then i'd have this curved outside part of the cucumber which he then would say you have to cut it into three or four sticks and then you have to tournée those so we're talking about small small and he came over i'd been working on it for about an hour and a half and he came over and looked at it and said this isn't good enough and threw it away and said start again i thought okay this is where we're at Yeah.

1:06:24Nichole Accettola:honest, the meals that I found most exciting at that time were the ones that I was experiencing in people's home kitchens. You know, what people chose to serve me to show me what Scandinavian food was about or what Danish food was about. These dishes that like, you know, they were very familiar with and they could do because they could almost do them blindfolded. They'd done them so many times, but ones that I'd never seen before. And it was really exciting to see those and to learn the stories behind them. And that wasn't modern Scandinavian. This was very traditional. But then as things started emerging, farmers markets started popping up in the city.

1:07:05Nichole Accettola:And, you know, to its own right, a place like Noma being established where they're talking about with big letters about new Nordic cuisine, and we're going to make change the cuisine of this region really did have a huge impact on the way that people were eating, both in restaurants, but also at home trying to encourage them to eat. Instead of flying things in from France, why is that luxury all of a sudden? We should be eating what's around us. That can also be luxurious in a different way. This is such a great context for those who've kind of experienced the discourse around NOMA and not the labor.

1:07:45Nichole Accettola:We're not going to talk about that. It's more about, We won't go there. But we'll talk about the importance of Noma. And I think with all this news, people kind of get – it gets lost that this restaurant was championing local vore cooking when, as you really lay out, it was not the case in Denmark. And the fact that you were saying it actually inspired home cooking and grocery shopping is so remarkable. So you're working in other restaurants at this time? when you step away from the Michelin places? What's like that 15 years in Denmark like? Yeah, yeah. So I ended up falling back on what I had been doing before.

1:08:24Nichole Accettola:I had been working with, you know, because as I said, there was no Scandinavian food in Boston at the time. So I was doing Northern Italian, Southern French cooking at a restaurant called Number Nine Park. And that was what I'd been doing. I'd been doing that for years with that cuisine. I'd been working with Todd English at Olives in Boston and things like that. But so I went to a casual Italian place that was a local place not far from where I lived where I could bike over for my shifts. And, you know, it was kind of the thing where I could do my shifts in the kitchen and then come home and not have to think about it.

1:08:58Nichole Accettola:That was extremely. And at the same time, I could start I could get into language school and start learning the language because I really had this desire to speak another language. It didn't have to be. But since I was there and it looked like I was going to be there at least for a year, I thought it could be really fun to learn a language. And by that, so I downshifted a bit. Yeah. What a language to pick, by the way. Not easy. Not easy. No. No. There's a real disconnect between the way that some words are written and the way they actually sound. Well, give us a quick paraphrase about the next 15 years and how you end up back in the States and in San Francisco.

1:09:40Nichole Accettola:I'll try and keep it short. A lot has happened. But basically, so I worked in restaurants for a little while, finished my education with learning Danish. And then I was pregnant with my first child. I, you know, we never had, he ended up, we ended up getting married, this man and I. We ended up getting married so that I could, it was like specifically for the reason that I wanted to stay more than three months. I applied for a work permit. I didn't get it. So we got married and we said, okay, it's a year abroad. I'm going to stay for a year. We never had a conversation at the end of that year.

1:10:16Nichole Accettola:Things were going really well. It was the place I wanted to be. And then I became pregnant with my daughter, and I knew I was going to be there for a while. You know, there's a one-year, full year of paid maternity leave, which is also amazing. And having a child and having to give them their first foods and make those choices for them and introduce them to different things really also enhance this feeling of we need to come back to the basic ingredients, the good ingredients. and then I for a number of years once I started getting back into the workforce again now I'm on those these 37 hours a week I was making food for children I was being in preschools nursery schools things like that where I'd make food for the biggest school I worked at was for 240 kids I was the head chef there I had two cooks underneath me we would serve four different meal times for these kids including snacks and things like that all organic farm fresh, you know, like unbelievable parameters that were beautifully built into the budget.

1:11:24Nichole Accettola:It was, we were capable of a lot. And then I was headhunted by, or I was brought into an organization that was called Copenhagen Fahouse of Food, where I became, in a way, I guess, a culinary instructor, but also a consultant that would go out in the field and talk to people who were making food for the children of Copenhagen. Wow. My specialty was preschool and nursery food. And I would go out and talk to them about the choices they're making instead of buying bag off bread. Why don't we try and, you know, bring you into the Copenhagen House of Food. We had beautiful instructional kitchen. Why don't you come in for a couple days?

1:12:05Nichole Accettola:We'll teach you how to make bread from scratch. We'll teach you how to, you know, plan it into, work it into your daily schedule. So it doesn't mean you have to work longer hours or anything like that. But like it's all about structuring your day so that you can make it work. And we're boosting the nutritional value and the quality of the food that they're making. So I did that for a long number of years. And it was, you know, as you can imagine, there's a lot of – there are actually a lot of politics behind an organization like that that has to have funding from the state to be able to go out and have consultants going out.

1:12:45Nichole Accettola:And we had the whole greater Copenhagen area. We were a few teams with different interests or different specialties. And depending on the political agenda, you know, it was favorable for us to continue or not. And it came to a point where my position was likely going to end at the end of 2014. So my husband and I saw this coming, and I said to my husband, you know, we've got three kids now at this point. what would it look like if we took six months off? He had just sold his business. Six months off and we moved to the United States. So we kind of shopped around. Where are we going to move? What would we do?

1:13:27Nichole Accettola:Our kids had only been in the United States on vacation, you know, a week here, a week there, that kind of thing. And so it would really, and I would speak to them in English, but they would always answer me in Danish. So I thought this would be great to be able to have them be immersed in my culture, get to know me. world. And so we decided on San Francisco. I have some family in the Bay Area, and we moved here six months. And after three months had gone of those six months, I said to myself, and then later to my husband, this is going so well. We're not going in three months. We've rented out our house in Copenhagen, but are we really going to start picking up things?

1:14:08Nichole Accettola:Before you know it, a month before we leave, we're already packing our bags again and preparing for this transition back. And so I don't really know what happened between that idea of let's keep it open-ended and then, hey, let's open a restaurant. I don't know. Maybe it was a hefty glass of wine. I don't know what happened. But it was just like we're talking about big things, like life things. And my intention has always been to return to the kitchens. And I wanted to become a chef. And I thought it was a dud of a way of ending of like, you know, a career where I'd otherwise spent many, many years previous to having children in restaurants, and then to have it kind of just like, okay, well, that was that, where I really felt like more than ever having Copenhagen House of Food and those experiences, I really felt like I had, I was able to make an impact.

1:14:59Nichole Accettola:And there was nothing here that was doing in Scandinavia, in San Francisco that was doing Scandinavian food. There was one restaurant actually a Swedish quite a traditional restaurant in a hotel but other than that nobody was doing like you know Scandinavian brunch or Copenhagen brunch that kind of thing that was really and I thought you know if I'm gonna return back to restaurants I wanted to have it be daytime and on my you know really just like small scale that kind of thing so this is the birth of canteen this is the birth of canteen we did do like we did do some pop-ups and things like that And we were at the farmer's market and things like that before just kind of test the market and see.

1:15:38Nichole Accettola:But it was like there was no – we were not in doubt. People were going to really – we're going to like this. And Canteen has its fans. I mean it's – Yeah, it does. I'm so happy. Yeah. So this life that you've made, I mean it's a remarkable story, Nicole. I mean this is the kind of flipping of the script and coming back to the States 12 years ago and opening this restaurant. is it's amazing and and when when do books start becoming um or your your previous book like become a reality and like you're now onto your second this is like another career shift for you um the book started i think it's always been in the back of my mind and then i think after coming out of the pandemic now the restaurant hadn't been open for even two years before the pandemic hit and we We were kind of, you know, things were, we were struggling a bit, you know, just like getting established as, you know, getting the word out and that kind of thing.

1:16:35Nichole Accettola:And then after the pandemic, we're kind of, oh, okay, we made it through. And then it was kind of feeling this wanting to continue, you know, we had worked with World Central Kitchen and done meals with that. And that whole kind of like outreach of like, we want to give to the community, we want to give. And here I am, you know, at the restaurant thinking, we've got all this, like, we're sitting on all this knowledge and all these connections to the people that would come in when they started coming in of like, you know, their past or their connection to the Scandinavia or even just their curiosity about the world.

1:17:09Nichole Accettola:And I thought, I want to be able to have, empower them to be able to go down some of those paths that I've gone down myself. And so we talked about, you know, should it be baking? Should it be savory? That kind of thing. And we chose baking. Baking was definitely, you know, something that was an eye opener for me, especially after I opened Canteen, because I would consider myself a chef before that, but much more a baker because things had just expanded and gotten a lot bigger on the baking front than I had anticipated. But I also found myself missing a lot of the baked goods. It's such a big part of the culture in Scandinavia.

1:17:46Nichole Accettola:And like saying, oh, well, if we're going to do that, then we should also do that other thing. And then all of a sudden we have like a whole display of baked goods. Yeah. Canteen. So it was a natural place to start. And I think, yeah, it really connected us with the Scandinavian community here. Well, for sure. I mean, there's definitely that. And there's people who are like, oh, my God, where have you been my whole life? I'm sure. And then, of course, it dovetails 2014 with the boom. I mean, Hygge. I mean, that takes us back a little bit. But like eight years ago, everyone was talking about Hygge.

1:18:19Nichole Accettola:Yeah. And of course, the fine dining. And like when you're writing this new book, Scandinavian Every Day, are you considering Hygge? And are you considering Noma? I mean, these are all the food. I mean, Magnus Nilsson. I'm just naming people here. But like, this is what a lot of cookbook buyers and food people assume Scandinavian food is about, but there's obviously so much more. There is so much more. And, you know, I actually try, if anything, I try and steer a little bit more clear of those things because I feel like it gets to be a bit mundane. We've all heard about hygge. And it's like we know what Noma is, or at least, you know, a lot of people, most people know.

1:19:03Nichole Accettola:and I don't want to come off you know one thing that I felt was a little bit of a challenge with this book was not coming off as like oh you got to do this because this is the best way to do it or you know kind of like preachy but I really feel like there are a lot of and I mentioned it in the book as well there are a lot of parallels between Scandinavian or Nordic cuisine modern Scandinavian food and something like the Mediterranean diet I mean, in essence, they're basically the same thing. And I think that many cultures should also embrace that, that return to the ingredients, the good whole ingredients that are there, and try and rethink and gain access to those things that bring us back to real food.

1:19:51Nichole Accettola:I mean, that's the bottom line. So there are many other aspects of the meal or about the culture that I think are amazing that have nothing to do with the actual food itself. Definitely. Well, I have some specific recipes I want to go over. One is the smorgasbord. I can't believe I'm here pronouncing. I mean, let me just tell you, Nicole, when we did our Danish episode and our Copenhagen episode, it was terrific. Great feedback. People loved it. People were all about all the places we went. And then there were the people who were like, how the fuck are you saying those words? Those are so wrong.

1:20:27Nichole Accettola:You're saying them so wrong. Like probably three of those comments. It was mostly positive. So I'm not attempting to pronounce Danish words. But tell us about this very unique Swedish sandwich cake. Yeah. Well, let me just say your pronunciation is really good. It really is. You're so generous. you know and i get the same thing because i've i've learned now danish but you know norwegian is very close to it swedish can be quite different and this is one of those swedish words where i'm like i don't know sometimes i call my swedish friend and say can you send me a voice recording of you saying this word 10 times so i can try and learn it so i have like a few of those saved on my phone yeah but smorgas torta is basically a savory cake sandwich where There's a lot of versatility in it.

1:21:12Nichole Accettola:It's basically traditionally white sandwich bread, crustless, that you layer up with different fillings. And it can be anywhere like an egg salad to a shrimp salad to smoked salmon salad. Something's kind of spreadable in between. You could also do it with vegetables with a pea puree or something like that. Something that's a little fatty that's going to soak some moisture into this white bread. And then you coat it with a mixture of cream cheese and sour cream, usually, or something. Some people also do just plain whipped cream, which I think is a little bit too much towards this sweet aspect of it.

1:21:52Nichole Accettola:But you kind of decorate it and make it ornate. So at a first glance, you might think, this is a cake. But when you look a little bit closer, like, wait a minute, that's actually not a marzipan rose. that's a piece of gravlax that's made to look like a flower. But it's a celebratory cake. It's all about this celebration, and it's kind of unhinged. It's festive and nostalgic, and it was created as a food that was good to put at these gatherings where all the work was done in advance. You preferably want to make this cake a day in advance so those layers can soak and the flavors can meld. Yeah. It looks great, by the way.

1:22:37Nichole Accettola:I mean, I love that combination of, I mean, it's like lox and cream cheese in many ways, but with a white bread in between it and not a bagel. And it just looks really, it's very, very elegant, the photo. I have another one, this chard and farmer's cheese tart with dark rye crust. Such a great, like, contrast in this rye kind of giving its full ryaness. Tell me about that. Yeah, well, rye is in so many baked goods. And I think in this one, that's kind of a foolproof way, even though there is some wheat flour going in there as well, just to make it a little bit easier to handle. But rye has this uncanny earthiness that I think just lends itself so well to the vegetables you put in.

1:23:19Nichole Accettola:In this case, it's charred, but you can also substitute some, you know, you could definitely put in some, I forget what they're called, but you could also put in beets or you know and swap up the cheese or something like that so and then there's a little bit of crunch we have rye grits in there um in the crust as well yeah i love that well tell me about the raspberry silk dark chocolate i mean this looked like something that i mean it's calling my name i love the photo it looks something you could definitely do ahead of time you could do it in ramekins you could you know chill ahead of time it looks really smart Yeah, it is really smart.

1:23:55Nichole Accettola:It's just something that, you know, my friends, there was a period of time when I first moved to Denmark where, you know, you kind of get this sweet tooth at the end of a meal. And it was something that we could easily pull together quickly. Yeah, with frozen raspberries, it has just a few ingredients, frozen raspberries, chocolate, a little bit of sugar, and cream. Four ingredients, that's it. No, totally. And like for the perfect like spring, summer dessert, you can make it ahead of time. You can portion it ahead of time. Just pull it out of the fridge. Absolutely. Ready to go. Four ingredients.

1:24:30Nichole Accettola:This to me is like the smart, efficient Scandinavian cooking that I think you're famous for. I think like it's obviously a place that like productivity hacking and process is so important to the culture. And for many, it's very soothing to see how things operate in Scandinavia. And this is like a dessert that follows that path. yeah you know i think that um you know in den in denmark as in other places of scandinavia i mean i think you it taught me that that cooking is kind of built into the daily life instead of treating it like an obstacle or like a production like now i have to make food it's just like shopping shopping is part of your day uh as is the fika afternoon coffee and tea or with a little piece of something sweet.

1:25:17Nichole Accettola:Well, Nicole, I love this book, Scandinavian Everyday. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thank you so much. I love it. It was so fun being here.

1:25:32Nichole Accettola: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 Skirzat 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. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but Anyone can get the same premium wireless for$15 a month plan that I've been enjoying.

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