811: 1990s Los Angeles and 2010s YouTube with the Internet’s Grill Dad, Noah Galuten 

10:24Mike Gennaro:Brother, yeah. Preach. I mean, Sutbul Jeep, they're doing like charcoal, right? Yeah. Yeah, they're only one of two places that have charcoal. It's them and Jaibudo, which does the crazy hagfish and all that fun stuff. Oh, man. Hamjai Park is closed now, which is so sad. That's a bummer. It's such a bummer.

10:40Noah Galuten:But there's like, Koreatown's an infinity hole. For my anniversary with my wife, we did a reverse version where we just took the day off, got massages in Koreatown, went to lunch. Meespa? Different one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Went to like a Korean chair massage place. And yeah, I went to Chunju Hanokwon for lunch and like got like a fun Korean coffee and did the crossword puzzle together.

11:03Mike Gennaro:That's really fun. And then let's just step back. Like you went to a massage chair. That's really fun. Yeah. So you can like rent the massage chair by the hour?

11:11Noah Galuten:No, no, no. It's like a foot massage where they just put you in a chair and they just rub your feet and shoulders and stuff. There's human interaction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a$45 hour long massage. That sounds great. And as a guy with lower back problems, I don't really trust most people to touch my back unless it's someone who's like proven themselves.

11:28Mike Gennaro:Yeah. You got to be careful about those. I mean, 40 bucks, that's a pretty good deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The award-winning American Airlines Advantage program rewards more than travel. It takes your whole life to new heights. Earn miles when you fly, as well as with thousands of your favorite brands. And then redeem those miles for flights, upgrades, and experiences worldwide.

11:51Noah Galuten:Advantage members also enjoy earlier boarding and free high-speed Wi-Fi in-flight. Join for free and start earning towards your next adventure at aa.com slash Spotify.

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12:33Noah Galuten:I'm Glenn Washington. This is Snap Judgment from KQED. When everything is falling apart, what do you do? Hurricane Helene shut everything down. No roads, no cars, no way through. But his daughter was getting married. And somehow, someway, he was going to walk her down that aisle. All systems down. A new Snap Judgment miniseries from KQED. Tap to listen now.

13:03Mike Gennaro:All right, we have to go back to your YouTube. Yeah. Tasted. Again, I was crushing them when I was prepping for this. That's so funny. And I just, like, I sucked in. And I felt like I was kind of like probably one of your audience in 2016, 2017. I was like, I want to hear what they have to say about these weird products. And like, you know, Noah, tell me about working online and YouTube like over a decade ago. Yeah. What that world was like for you.

13:27Noah Galuten:It was a very bizarre version of it. I mean, I feel like I've somehow kind of found a way to keep making video in some way or another just because I like making stuff. And so that one, though, came about totally randomly. I got a Facebook message from a producer asking me if I wanted to audition for a YouTube food news show on a channel called Tasted. So back then, like Google was trying to get people to make content on YouTube. Yeah. And so they spent money and they would give it to production companies. I remember this era vividly. I pitched a show with a friend that era. Absolutely. And so they'd make all these different shows.

14:02Noah Galuten:They had a movie network and things, this, this. And so they had me audition. I think they just like Googled, you know, food people in Los Angeles who, like they thought might look decent. I mean, they probably were like food dude, Los Angeles. Yeah, probably. And I was told, I don't know if this is true, but I was told at one point that apparently I beat out Joey Fatone for the hosting job, which is. God, I mean. I mean, if that doesn't tell us when it was.

14:28Mike Gennaro:That's competition. Joey went on to do a lot of hosting, I feel.

14:33Noah Galuten:Yeah, and then they wanted the show to be basically like a food news show, and it quickly turned into Noah is an elitist douchebag. Let's have him try pumpkin spice flavored vodka and Doritos Locos Tacos and say that capitalism is bad for America and then say this sucks and then people can write it and call me an asshole. That was basically the premise of the show, like me eating weird snacks and being mad about it. And then all this time went by. The channel went bankrupt. The production company went bankrupt. Everything kind of fell apart. And I was able to track down, because they had like 400 ,000 subscribers, track down who owned the rights to it.

15:09Noah Galuten:It was basically this fund in Texas that had invested in it and the rights reverted to them. And I basically reached out to him and was like, you want a lottery ticket? Give me the channel and I'll give you X amount of ad revenue and perpetuity. And let me see if I can do something with it. And so we started kind of with my buddy, Ben Levitt. We started kind of making stuff and seeing what we can learn from it. And YouTube is a totally different machine now. And I'm kind of learning that from a lot of amazing people. We kind of found a show that we like. We're hoping to make more of them. But then we also, like in this media landscape, you have to find ways to monetize things too.

15:45Noah Galuten:And so, you know, we would make stuff that would not track on YouTube. But we knew it was good. And then we were able to license it to Tastemade. And so we have a thing there. And now because of that relationship, we're now making a barbecue show with Tastemade. So we're about to shoot season three and season four, I think, both looking like they're green lit. And people love this show. It's me and Kevin Bloodsoe cooking on the lake in Corsicana, Texas. And so we're just kind of finding ways to keep making stuff because, you know, it's just fun to make things.

16:12Mike Gennaro:It's really cool. And when you're thinking about, like, the fast channels, they're growing. Obviously, audience. And then they're all based on – this is, like, free television. And, like, it's the place you want to be. Yeah. And it seems like being part of like linear television or even plugged in cable that you have to pay for is not the future.

16:32Noah Galuten:But also being smart about finding other avenues to fund things. Yeah, totally. And so like doing licensing deals, doing stuff like, you know, having meetings with companies about like, hey, they need content to live on their homepage. And they only care about owning it for three months. So can they pay you enough to make the show and then you get to then put it up on your channel app?

16:51Mike Gennaro:Yeah, and then you can participate in the revenue for that.

16:53Noah Galuten:And see if it works. And if it's like, so you get to test stuff out on your own dime.

16:57Mike Gennaro:So, no, where does the professional cooking begin? Because I think you clearly, you know, have had a career like working in restaurants. And like part of the YouTube, you know, model or the concept of the show is that you really knew a lot about cooking. So there must be a base that your cooking came from.

17:17Noah Galuten:Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, cooking was always like a family thing for me. My mom taught me how to cook. Her mom is from Italy, but grew up in Schenectady, New York. And so it's like this Italian food filtered through California. And so I always loved cooking and then was a writer first and foremost and working in restaurants, bartending, waiting tables. But becoming a professional chef was totally by accident, as I feel like it is for a lot of people. But mine is especially weird. There was this, like we said, Bloodso's Barbecue in Compton. I went down to interview Kevin Bloodso for LA Weekly.

17:49Noah Galuten:We got along really well. I was like, you should be able to eat this food and drink a beer and watch a game in LA proper. And it would just crush. People would lose their minds. You know, coming from Santa Monica where barbecued chicken is a grilled chicken breast with Casey Masterpiece on top. And so he invited us to his granny's 90th birthday party in Corsicana, Texas. So like three white dudes show up at the Martin Luther King Community Center. Kev says the record scratched when he walked in. and all of a sudden cut to 3 a.m. and I'm drinking corn rye and singing Sam Cooke songs with 80-year-old women.

18:20Noah Galuten:We agreed to work together and I was going to be the general manager. So I showed up in Compton at four in the morning to learn and clean collard greens and peel potatoes and slowly learn the pits. And by the time we found a space, Kev said, you're the chef because you're the only person I trust with my food now. Wow. And it kind of grew from there. Bloodsos took off, helped open like Kofax Coffee and the burritos there and prime pizza and always kind of writing back and forth. And it's just been this kind of interesting thing where I get to, you know, I like to think that it gives me a certain perspective of having worked in all the different avenues of it that I get to hopefully think about restaurants from a standpoint of, you know, and writing too, hopefully, of things that I think should exist that don't.

19:01Mike Gennaro:Well, you're always writing along the way, which is cool. You've always kept that core while, you know, polishing your culinary chops. you're now like entering the world of grilling which you know we we see a lot of grilling books here it's not the first one this is not the first one i mean even cite aaron franklin who you know publish at crown uh as somebody you admire and we publish a lot of books my first question is

19:26Noah Galuten:is like what's different about the book yeah i mean look i always say that uh you'd think by now we'd have enough cookbooks and pornography, but we keep making more. And I think the reason that we do though, is because like people want to fall in love. People want to find their person they connect to and find the vein of what they're doing. Like you can look up any recipe you want now, but is it the person you want to learn from and the person you want to connect to? And so for me, you know, my first cookbook was kind of like this summation of the way I cook for my family at home, my mom's cooking, the way I kind of filter through all the different things.

20:02Noah Galuten:and it almost felt like when the band that has to do their second album and it's like how do you fill a whole life in six months to do your next album or whatever it is but for me grilling was always this thing that I loved and did at home and cooked that way and then started learning more and more about it from all these incredible people I've gotten to learn from from people like you know Jeremy Fox with vegetables from you know Kevin Bloodsoe with grilling and smoking with Ari Colander with grilling seafood and so you start to take all the things you care about in the world and all the ways you think about food and then learn little things along the way from other people.

20:36Noah Galuten:And so for me, it's really this book that is a lot more, I think, utilitarian and really more about using the grill as a way to make your life easier and more flavorful and oftentimes healthier and treating it as an extension of your kitchen and a thing that can be so versatile and helpful, especially with kids. Like the ability to cook things in so many different ways and so many different ingredients at the same time and be able to feed different dietary restrictions, This guy's dad is over and he doesn't eat this. You can put all these things on a grill and then you just brush it once and your kitchen is clean.

21:08Noah Galuten:If you do that with saute pans on the stove, it's a nightmare. I've never in my life pan seared a chicken breast and put it on a salad. But I have grilled one 400 ,000 times.

21:17Mike Gennaro:Agree fully. And I think the grill as well is a community event. And I think that's a huge part of what you're doing here. Yeah. You know, bringing people together for outdoor cooking, not in a corny way, but like in a really meaningful way. I also think your book's quite literary, which is rare in the grilling space. I think a lot of these books are like all about utility and you've outlined how it is utility, shows utility in your book. But like there's like a great essay at the beginning. What does it mean to feed your family? Really terrific, man. Oh, thank you. This is great writing. And I love the line, anger is worse for us than Doritos ever could be.

21:54Mike Gennaro:And that's not really about grilling. It's about family. But what did you mean with that essay? Yeah.

21:58Noah Galuten:I mean, I look, I'm never going to write a book that doesn't have the way I feel about kind of cooking and the world at large and, you know, my family and the way that I approach things. When you have kids, I think it takes stuff you already cared about and it crystallizes it and makes it more important and more vital because you care more about the world you leave behind just inherently when you have kids. And so all these things that matter to you. And so it's like when you see a recipe and it says, be careful, don't turn this up too high or it'll burn. That's the author saying, I burned this.

22:39Noah Galuten:Here's what happened. And so when I'm talking about, you know, the ways to be better emotionally around your kids and how we feed them with how we act, like that's me trying to get better at that and trying to learn from this. I think kids are like a mirror to your own flaws. And, you know, I, you know, if you do everything you're supposed to do to be a good dad and you make the lunches, you, you, you show up on time, you drop them off, you make dinner every night, but you're in like a bad mood, then like you didn't do the job. The job is not complete. And so, you know, how we do things is often more important than what we're doing.

23:16Mike Gennaro:Very perceptive. And I think with cooking, you can show, by example, many traits that are beyond truly just making the meal. Yeah. Patience, organization. Yeah. Respect of sharp things.

23:29Noah Galuten:But also, hopefully, pleasure and fun. Of course. And like, you know, as, you know, somebody who cares a lot about the food that I make and, and it can be a thing that makes me angry when I mess up or do things wrong and trying not to put that on my kids. And also like as a person who has made a living making food for people, people pay me to develop recipes to cook for them, to get rejected by a four-year-old. It's like, it forces you to reconcile with your own flaws in a way you go like, it can't be their fault.

23:59Mike Gennaro:Yeah. Yeah. No, it can't be. I mean, it is, but it's. Well, no, I mean, they're the one who had to like take a poop in the middle and like burned because you were in the bathroom, like wiping some. Yeah.

24:07Noah Galuten:Or you did it perfectly and they don't like it.

24:09Mike Gennaro:Fair enough. Yeah. And like, yeah.

24:11Noah Galuten:They're four.

24:12Mike Gennaro:They're two. Yeah. Yeah.

24:14Noah Galuten:And so you always say like, as soon as you think you have a handle on your kids, it changes.

24:18Mike Gennaro:Word, man. So your wife's a touring comic, Eliza. What's it like around the dinner table? Like, do you have like, do you have like a timeout? We're not doing comedy. Like, because I always wonder like comics are, and she's great, like a fan of her work. She's funny and like some of his comics are just like always on. That would be really hard as a spouse. Thank God it's not that.

24:39Noah Galuten:Well, I mean, the truth is we have a two and a four-year-old. So dinner is our kids talking and us trying to get a word in and talk about our days at some point. So that's the hardest part right now. I was joking. My good friend Daniel Patterson opened his restaurant in L.A. He invited us to friends and family. And I was like, I'm so tired. and I don't know if I have like a three-hour, you know, like, you know, or two-hour, whatever it is, tasting menu in me anymore at this age, but I love Daniel. I'm so excited to have the food finally. And I was like, you know what? It'll be great. We can just sit and talk for two hours.

25:13Noah Galuten:And then we sat down and we were like, turns out we actually just needed 15 minutes. And the food is incredible. Daniel is -

25:19Mike Gennaro:Yeah, what's the name of it? Remind me, it's - Jacaranda. Jacaranda, yeah, yeah. I totally want to go.

25:23Noah Galuten:He and his wife, Sarah, who does the front of house and is like a legend of New York music.

25:27Mike Gennaro:Dude, I love, I knew Sarah, Ultra Girl, baby from early 2000s. We've been texting about having Daniel on. I just need to try the food first off in LA hopefully soon.

25:36Noah Galuten:I mean, Daniel, that's funny. He became a friend when he came to LA and I'd never had his food. And then I was like, it turns out Daniel Patterson's good at cooking.

25:45Mike Gennaro:Turns out Qua was not just like a myth. No, he's a terrific chef and by all accounts is a very exciting restaurant. So I'm glad you brought him up. Yeah, I love it. Back to grilling. Yeah. This PK grill. which I've seen in some books, but less so. And I love it because it's like not as expensive grill. And you really have a point of view that you want a lot of these recipes made, perhaps on the PK, it's worth investing in.

26:10Noah Galuten:Yeah, so it's more than a Weber, but it's also not gonna end up in a landfill in 15 years. So that's a big part of it to me. And they just cook so well. So it's Jordan McKay, who wrote Aaron's books with him, I got to know, and we were walking around randomly a farmer's market in Seattle together. And I was like, I think I'm going to write this grilling book. And he goes, you got to get a PK. And I go, what's the deal? And he kind of ran me through it, connecting me with them. They're made in Little Rock, Arkansas. It's like an old family company. It's changed hands a couple of times that people just really care about the product.

26:42Noah Galuten:And basically every state competition every year in America, the three finalists are cooking on a PK and it holds temperature really, really well. And for the smoke grilling, I do a lot in the book where you basically push the wood and charcoal to one side of the grill and you can essentially do like a reverse sear with like a two inch thick ribeye, but instead of just sitting in an oven, you're getting smoke flavor onto it. Then you finish on the hot side. I can smoke a turkey breast that I use to cut into cold cuts for kids' lunches in my book. And like you can make ribs and I've become, because I've cooked so many ribs in my life commercially for blood cells, that now my favorite rib is a grilled rib where you do, you get the smoke and you get the crispy edges and it cooks in like an hour and a half instead of three hours.

27:25Mike Gennaro:And you have, so you have a hot side and like a cold side, essentially on the PK?

27:29Noah Galuten:Yeah, so you can, it's just a bed, but you can move it around. There's enough space and it's ovular in shape. And so you can just push all the stuff to one side. And now, and you have air vents in the top and bottom. So you can essentially control. So the airflow goes up through the smoke and then goes over, over to the food on the side and then comes out. So it's like a kind of hot smoking. It's like, you know, not quite low and slow. It's not quite hot and fast. It's this kind of beautiful medium. And it's incredible, like doing like a version of like a Pollo Alabraza on that in the book. When you get smoke, but still crispy skin, you can do a pork belly that way where you smoke it, then you still get crispy skin.

28:03Noah Galuten:Like there's things you can't do in an offset smoke that you can do with wood chunks and charcoal on a grill.

28:08Mike Gennaro:It looks so cool too, by the way. It's a cool aesthetic. Yeah.

28:12Noah Galuten:And people get excited about it. The Aaron Franklin model is amazing too. He basically just added full sheet trays, places underneath. You can slide sheet pans underneath your grill, which it turns out is the best idea.

28:24Mike Gennaro:Yeah. And that's just to have like for charcoal, like just to have like for cleanliness, like to keep it clean.

28:29Noah Galuten:No, no. Like you can be stacking sheet pans and sheet trays of food under your grill so you can bring stuff under, take stuff off underneath. That's right. Now I see it. That kind of stuff is incredible. So smart. He's the best. I get to, I'm going to do a pop-up with him in Austin in September and that's going to be a lot of fun.

28:46Mike Gennaro:Tell me about the Chicago style char dog. you're arguing that it's the best hot dog.

28:51Noah Galuten:It's the best hot dog in the world. I mean, I have traveled the world and eaten hot dogs ever. I've had the Reykjavik hot dog. I've had the, you know, I've obviously, you know, love a grazed papaya. Yeah. You know, all those things. I've had the danger dogs in LA. You know, they're all great, but there's something about a Chicago char dog that is the best hot dog. And part of it is this extremes in contrast. So it needs to be a char dog. So you, you know, butterfly it, get it super kind of crispy and blackened. Then you run it through the garden, Chicago style. And all of a sudden, all these textures, the pop of the pickles, the celery salt, the tomato, and then crucially a steamed bun.

29:27Noah Galuten:So steaming the bun, charring the dog, pickley, vegetable-y, celery salt. Kaiser bun, right?

29:33Mike Gennaro:I mean, it's basically a poppy seed bun. Poppy, sorry, poppy. Yeah.

29:37Noah Galuten:So poppy seed roll, but steaming. And in the book I teach you too, because it's hard to find poppy seed buns in the West Coast, is you can just do a little egg wash, throw it in the oven for a few minutes and that adds it to it. And then yeah, steam your buns, man. So that all that textural contrast, it's just, it is the best dog.

29:52Mike Gennaro:Do you put ketchup on your hot dog?

29:53Noah Galuten:No.

29:55Mike Gennaro:Correct answer.

29:56Noah Galuten:Yeah.

29:56Mike Gennaro:Absolutely correct answer.

29:57Noah Galuten:The second best hot dog is just a hot dog with mustard on a bun.

30:02Mike Gennaro:So good. I love that. I mean, I want to hear about just this research trip to Mexico, which is on the YouTube channel. I love the documentary that you created. Really beautiful work really, really with Bill Esparza. Oh my God. It was incredible. Really, really smart stuff and really well, well done. I mean, it's a full doc. Um, but from that trip, you, you got some recipes that you put in the book.

30:24Noah Galuten:Yeah. In fact, if you come closer, I probably still smell like mesquite charcoal from my book launch event in LA last night. Um, uh, Eloy, the chef, um, and Bill Esparza were both up in town to, to do this kind of carne asada cookout last night and it was incredible. But, so yeah, I mean, I grew up in California. I've eaten a lot of carne asada. You kind of get this expectation of what it is. And I remember asking Bill Esparza, saying, hey, you know, I'm writing this grilling book. I feel like I should learn more about carne asada before I put it in a cookbook. And I have to have carne asada in a grilling book in California.

30:56Noah Galuten:And he goes, yeah, I'd love to help you. We have to go to Hermosillo. And I went, oh, I don't have time for that. And he goes, okay, then don't ask me for help. That's very Bill. And I was like, all right, let's figure it out. And then my buddy who I make stuff on Tasted with, I just got him and our camera buddy friend to come along. And we just got a last minute. It was like during the fires, like we went down to, we took a train to San Diego, crossed the border, flew from Tijuana to Hermosillo. And Hermosillo like blew my mind because it changed everything I understood about carne asada. It is like ground zero for carne asada in Mexico.

31:31and everything from street stands

31:34Noah Galuten:with incredible charcoal grilled carne asada all the way up to fine dining steakhouses with like wine cellars and dry aged Chateaubriand that are still carne asada. And the beef is incredible in Sonora. The tortillas with that Sonoran wheat and the beef tallow are incredible. And so Eloy became our kind of guide and we became very dear friends. And we ended the trip with him teaching me how to make his style of Hermosillo style carne asada in his backyard. and that ended up becoming the recipe in the book. And he became such a close friend. And the video that you referenced was so well received that ended up screening for two weeks at the Cineteca Sonora in Hermosillo.

32:15Noah Galuten:And so I knew there was no better way. Eloy got to fly up and we did an asada together last night. That must've been fun. It's the best. And I'd learned, I mean, you know, it's read the book, but it's, you know, really good steak. natural sea salt and mesquite charcoal. And that's it. That's it. And the salsa bar and the tortillas and all the other stuff around it. But like, we were so raised on this, like this arrachera, there's like skirt steak marinated to death. And, you know, you can make delicious steak that way, but this is like the pure carne asada. And it's incredible.

32:47Mike Gennaro:Is the actual beef, like the quality of the beef different than you'd get in the US?

32:51Noah Galuten:I mean, at a cheap taco stand in LA, for sure. Like there, you can get that quality of beef in LA if you're willing to pay for it. it's the equivalent of like you know usda prime but they don't have those delegations in that way designations yeah that's or delegations either but also you can get you know like a picanha or a new york strip or a ribeye like they make incredible carne asada and so like it's you know it's the old thing of like this idea that mexican food is supposed to be cheap and you know like let's reject that and uh yeah you should be able to get a seven dollar incredible taco it doesn't need to be$1.50.

33:26Mike Gennaro:Definitely not. And I love the enthusiasm you showed for the restaurant that was like resembled a Denny's. Oh, yeah. And I was like, that's the attitude I would have. Oh, my God. I was like, holy shit, because he was like, it's this restaurant that's focused on steak. El Leñador.

33:40Noah Galuten:Yeah. They're called Paquete restaurants and it's like family style. Yeah. So it's like they bring you this like giant, it's almost like a sizzling fajita platter. Yeah. But it's like all these different cuts of steak and quesadillas and the salsa bars are incredible. And it's like you go with a family of like six and you eat for a reasonable price and it's amazing i and then

33:59Mike Gennaro:the salsa bar too salsa bars are super elite um is there like one recipe they're like this is why you buy the book like this is like the recipe and and like the recipe that you're not going to find in like you know aaron franklin's book yeah i mean honestly the carne asada is like yeah is the

34:14Noah Galuten:mixture of like journalism and and personal connections and something i really care about on top of it. But also, there's some fun. I don't think Aaron has a big salad in his... I don't know why we're pitting me against Aaron.

34:26Mike Gennaro:I did not. It was truly a joke. I love Aaron and love his books. No, he's amazing.

34:31Noah Galuten:We were doing a pop-up together for my book tour and he actually blurred my book, which is incredible. Yeah, he's a great guy. But yeah, this is the way... I mean, my book is 40 % vegetarian. Yeah. And it's because it's the way that I cook at home. I'm not an anti-meat person. I'm generally a less and better when it comes to meat guy. And so some of the big salads in this book, There's sort of a maximalist spicy grilled chicken Caesar with garlic bread croutons that is amazing in the book. But I generally love all the recipes in this book. And Kristen Teague, the photographer, is incredible. And we literally every single recipe has a photo, which is something we really wanted to do for this book.

35:04Noah Galuten:And it's just a dream. I'm in the offices downstairs of my editor, too, Lexi Bloom, who's like, I mean, who else can say that someone who edits Murakami translations also edits her book?

35:17Mike Gennaro:I love Lexi, man. And great to show her out here. And she's a terrific editor, no doubt.

35:21Noah Galuten:And so like, you know, I've worked on a lot of cookbooks with a lot of amazing publishers, but there's something with Lexi that literally no one else I know does. And we have calls every two weeks when we're working on a book together. And sometimes as we talk about the state of the world for 40 minutes, they go, anyway, so hot dogs. But this feeling of like working together with someone you respect and care about and developing a book so that when you're handing in the manuscript, you're already on the same page and everyone's excited about it. And so it's like desk process with her. I'd love working with her.

35:49Noah Galuten:I will do every book with her that I can if she'll have me.

35:52Mike Gennaro:That's the best when you have an editor-writer relationship like that. Yeah. Glad Lexi got some shine on our show. I mean, she's the best. Yeah. Cast iron has been a staple in kitchens for generations, and Smithy is bringing that tradition into the modern kitchen. They craft vintage-inspired cast iron that, unlike the rough and bumpy cookware you may be used to, is polished smooth for a naturally nonstick cooking surface that only gets better with time. As a listener of This Is Taste, we're excited to offer you free U.S. shipping on your order with the code THISISTAST. Whether you're searing the perfect steak, baking cornbread, or cooking Sunday breakfast for the family, Smithy Cookware is built to perform for a lifetime.

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38:09Mike Gennaro:No, on This Is Taste, we ask guests whether it's turning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid-fire Fast and Furious taste check. Are you ready? I'm ready. How fast does it have to be? It can be, you know what, you can get that rant in if you want to. We talked to Mike. If you want to hit that button, hit that rant, it can happen during this time. We'll see what happens. Going to open the door. All right, the best fruit.

38:28Noah Galuten:Okay, asshole answer, but tomato. Can I take all tomatoes as a category? Because the thing about a tomato is it's incredible raw. It's incredible canned. Which almost no fruit is great canned. You can dry them. You can make sauces with them. I'm writing a cookbook with Sarah Minnick right now, who's a legend who I adore. And she's taught me all about like different types of tomatoes. And there's sort of like sauce tomatoes versus raw tomatoes. And any tomato that's not that good raw, like dry it. And it becomes the greatest thing in the world to throw in your freezer. And like putting that in like a shrimp pasta or whatever.

39:04Noah Galuten:Totally.

39:05Mike Gennaro:Like dry it, meaning like slow roast.

39:07Noah Galuten:No, like put it in a food dehydrator. Oh, dehydrator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's unreal. And the flavors you get, it's just, it's incredible. But also you can slice it and put it on white bread with mayonnaise and it's one of the best sandwiches in the world.

39:17Mike Gennaro:Definitely. You're blessed with great tomatoes in LA too.

39:21Noah Galuten:Yeah. And if you want the sweet fruit answer, it's just whatever's the best and in season right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like right now it's cherries. In a few weeks it'll be nectarines.

39:29Mike Gennaro:The worst vegetable.

39:31Noah Galuten:This is another weird answer, but it's bagged pre-trimmed green beans are the worst vegetable.

39:38Mike Gennaro:Yes.

39:38Noah Galuten:Because they're always rotten.

39:40Mike Gennaro:They're always slimy.

39:41Noah Galuten:They're always slimy and rotten. Like, I don't know why we decided we had to cut the tips off green beans before we get them to people. It drives me crazy.

39:48Mike Gennaro:Because, yeah, the ends are always brown. Yeah. There's always a little bit.

39:51Noah Galuten:The bag is greasy on the inside.

39:52Mike Gennaro:Yeah, you got to wash. If it says pre-wash, guys, you got to wash your greens.

39:56Noah Galuten:Yeah.

39:57Mike Gennaro:Don't believe the pre-washes.

39:59Noah Galuten:So does that count as an answer?

40:00Mike Gennaro:It's a great answer. It's very specific. I mean, and also, like, you're a fan of green beans, too, I'm sure. Yeah. When they're good.

40:05Noah Galuten:They are the most annoying vegetable to prep in a large quantity. Yeah. They're really hard to line up.

40:10Mike Gennaro:Yeah, you're right. But they're great. See, I like just throwing the knife aside and just snapping. Yeah, for sure. I'll take the extra couple minutes just to have that hands on. If you have like two pounds of green beans. You're doing two pounds. If you're doing more, obviously you bring the knives out.

40:26Noah Galuten:It's a little bit of a pain.

40:27Mike Gennaro:Two pounds is a lot of green beans. Is that for like a restaurant thing?

40:31Noah Galuten:Yeah, or you grab too many handfuls at the farmer's market and now it's going into a giant pot of minestrone.

40:36Mike Gennaro:Does anyone ever finish the bowl of green beans? Like even a pound is too much, I feel.

40:43Noah Galuten:Again, that's why you got to cut them and put them into a minestrone.

40:46Mike Gennaro:Indeed. Well said. All right. The best dessert.

40:49Noah Galuten:I'm not a huge dessert guy. I have two answers. I think one is soft serve with a chocolate dip. Yeah. And the other is banana cream pie from the apple pan. Oh, I've never had it. It's great. The one? It's kind of like a sort of slightly green bananas. So they kind of have firm and vegetal. And it's just like that little bit of custard, the whipped cream. It's not an overly sweet dessert. That's a classic.

41:11Mike Gennaro:That's great. So it's a pie. Yeah, banana cream pie. It's not the layers. I like that. What is your typical breakfast?

41:18Noah Galuten:Fluctuates depending on the day and what the kids are eating. The answer is probably a bite of whatever I made for my kids. But typically, it's either like a scrambled egg and maybe a piece of toast from Roxanna from friends and family makes the best bread and really high whole grain percentage. Love it for the kids. I'm also really into buying whole oat groats. And then from a small farm in Illinois, it's the worst answer anyone's ever given. It's great. And then because of, again, of Sarah, she sent me an oat flaker from Germany. And so you hand crank oats in the morning and it's completely changed oatmeal to me.

41:51Noah Galuten:It's, I've never, it's like what oatmeal was supposed to taste like. It's like if you'd lived your whole life only having like pre-ground black pepper and somebody gave you a pepper mill and you went, oh my God. Ah, great comparison. And so it's like freshly flaked oats. I keep them in the freezer and I flake them with some good butter and salt is the best.

42:09Mike Gennaro:How do you get these oats? What is the farm? Is this?

42:12Noah Galuten:So I have Jamie's Mill in Illinois.

42:17Mike Gennaro:Either Jamie's or Jamie's Mill. You just hit it up on Apple Pay or is it like you call them?

42:20Noah Galuten:Yeah, I do it through their website. Yeah, their website. I do it and I'll bulk buy and just have that dad freezer in the garage and just have four bags of oat groats. I love that. A restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead. I hope that this is one that you've been to. Obie Bear.

42:35Mike Gennaro:Were you ever in Obie Bear play? Yeah. I didn't realize. First off, I didn't realize it closed. Yeah. Second off, yeah, we shot Koreatown there. I think we have some photos from Obie Bear in the book.

42:45Noah Galuten:So we were talking earlier about, you know, the, you know, there's one of the flaws of LA's food scene is there aren't a lot of great sports bars where you can actually watch sports and eat good food. and so Obie Bear was a perfect sports bar great Korean bar food also it was like an NBA themed focused bar so the owners so that's my sport so being able to go there and then they burned down and I don't know if you can get sued on this show but I think the word on the street is it was definitely an insurance scam to get out of the business

43:18Mike Gennaro:we'll say that that is your conjecture not the show's

43:21Noah Galuten:that is what I've been told by other people as conjecture but honestly Honestly, like if you pulled it off, congratulations.

43:27Mike Gennaro:I think we watched the 2014 World Cup there that summer, and it was like lit. I mean, the Korean fans were in full force. You're just eating. And to be clear, it's in Koreatown. Yeah. You have to like say that too. Oh, yeah, yeah.

43:40Noah Galuten:You're eating wings and pajeon and like dougboki. Yeah, it's great.

43:44Mike Gennaro:I didn't realize it burned down, man. Good answer. When you're craving fast food, where are you going?

43:49Noah Galuten:So the answer is I don't really crave fast food in general, but I crave in and out like twice a year. And it's double-double animal-style whole grilled onion, sport peppers.

44:00Mike Gennaro:Whole grill. And you can get sports peppers on there? Yeah, yeah. How do you do that? Ask them for the hot peppers. Just ask them for the hot peppers.

44:06Noah Galuten:And that's the one. And don't get the fries. Kevin Bloodsoe said the move is you go there and somebody else goes to McDonald's and you meet up at the car.

44:13Mike Gennaro:Kevin is a...

44:13Noah Galuten:And you get the McDonald's fries with the In-N-Out burger.

44:16Mike Gennaro:Genius. Absolutely true. Wait, would they ever do hot dogs there? No. In-N-Out? They have the sports peppers. I mean,

44:24Noah Galuten:maybe they're banana peppers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like a pickled, you know, spicy pepper. Could be a bit, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, those guys, they do what they want. They like willingly make french fries the wrong way and everyone's fine with it.

44:38Mike Gennaro:I mean, yeah. I think that there's a lot of, I think the fries game is pretty weak. It's just not how you make

44:43Noah Galuten:a french fry. You would never take a raw potato and put it in hot fry oil and say you're done. Yeah. Like if you bought a frozen french fry, it would be better. Agree. Five Guys is trash. Yeah.

44:52Mike Gennaro:Absolutely trash. It's not how you make a French fry. Nobody thinks that's how you make a French fry. Yeah, it's wild to me. They just need a point of view on it. That's the thing. They're obviously doing well with the burgers. Yeah. They're doing fine. They're doing fine. I guess they just want a point of view versus it being the same old frozen fries.

45:12Noah Galuten:Yeah, but so many fond memories as a kid. Eating In-N-Out after seeing a movie in Westwood.

45:18Mike Gennaro:Yes.

45:18Noah Galuten:Yeah.

45:18Mike Gennaro:A couple more. Your favorite city outside America to visit for food.

45:22Noah Galuten:There's a lot of ones I want to go to, and the answer is kind of obvious and easy, but the answer is Tokyo. I can go once a year for the rest of my life and never feel like I've scratched the surface, and I just love it. Just, like, give me a fully charged phone, and I will be able to get anywhere in the city on time. Nothing makes me happier than the subway systems in Tokyo. Like, it's just, I love organization done properly and followed.

45:46Mike Gennaro:Are you still going to Seoul this year?

45:48Noah Galuten:I wish. No, we're supposed to go for a USO tour, and I guess stuff got a little crazy, and so now they're switching it, and they want us to do Italy. I mean, twist your arm. Yeah, I think it would wrap in Sicily, which I've never been to.

46:02Mike Gennaro:Oh, that's pretty cool. So when Eliza does USO, what is the spouse's role?

46:05Noah Galuten:So typically, you're allowed to bring somebody if you want to, and I never want to just be a plus one on the military's budget. So my wife would do these USO tours, and so they asked me if I wanted to come along and do cooking demos for the troops. That's so cool. That's great. So I got to go to Okinawa last year with Eliza. And so she would do shows for the troops. And then I would do like cooking classes to help teach people who like, you know, they came to the military at 19. How to like when you get home, how do you make yourself like spaghetti and tomato sauce and how to do kind of simple things like that.

46:33Noah Galuten:But in fact, my book event at Coronado Brewing in San Diego on Father's Day this year, we're doing it with the USO and we're giving them a bunch of books and tickets for people to bring their families on Father's Day. And it's going to be a fun, fun thing. It's amazing getting to support. Support the troops, man. Yeah. And like, you know, I'm like the last guy you thought would ever be on a military base, like hippie, you know, Santa Monica kid, you know. But, you know, I can be anti-war and be pro, you know, troops learning how to cook and doing the stuff. And these people are, you know, risking their lives and going, you know, and it's like 19 years old going from, you know, a small town in Indiana to now being on a military base getting trashed outside of Okinawa is a funny world, man.

47:21Noah Galuten:They need like a hangover remedy. That part of being around military bases in other countries is a really fascinating and bizarre experience.

47:31Mike Gennaro:And with the food kind of like you have a little bit of local, but you want your home sick.

47:35Noah Galuten:I mean, there's like spicy tuna rolls. There's bull rides and like jello shots. And it was wild. Okinawa is a fascinating place. I would love to go there. When you get a little further out of the military towns, you also can discover some really cool stuff. I'm sure there's incredible.

47:47Mike Gennaro:I mean, that would be amazing place to go and visit. Last one, your favorite sandwich.

47:52Noah Galuten:another tough one but i think at the end of the day the answer is an italian sub like oh nice it's basically is like what i grew up on but i think that you know any great version i love basically is when it's fresh is great it's a nostalgia thing for me but also i lived in greenpoint for a while and i used to go to emily's pork store a lot that place like yeah okay go get your bread and hand it to me you know and uh that's like one of the great one of the great things. Like bringing that to the airport is always like the greatest life hack.

48:20Mike Gennaro:Noah, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste.

48:23Noah Galuten:Thanks for having me.

48:29Mike Gennaro:This Is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and 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.