829: It’s Difficult to Talk About Soviet Food. Polina Chesnakova Is Doing It Anyway.

24:55Yeah, it was. Like, it really lived up to its name. It really did. Yeah. I hope they do another one. Oh, I hope so, too. Really great. I talked about it on three things. It was a great, great event. Okay, so you live in Rhode Island now, and you grew up around there. in that area. So when you're back in New York and visiting, because you've probably spent a lot of time here, what's on the list? What's on the hit list? You're traveling solo. Yeah, yeah. So I feel like for most of my 20s, my trips to New York City were very sparse. And I feel like only in the past year or two since I moved, I lived in Seattle for six, seven years, Virginia before that.

25:31And so I've only been coming to New York, to the city more regularly in the past few years. So I don't say, I don't have a place that I'm like, this is where I always go, or like, this is the area. But I do have a really soft spot for Brighton Beach, which funny enough, growing up, my parents would always take, my parents, my aunts and uncles, they'd always take day trips to specifically Brighton Beach, but they'd always leave the kids behind because, you know, it's much more fun. Yeah. They want to have like a date night. You have kids now, Right, right, right. And so I actually went to Brighton Beach for the first time last year.

26:10And it felt like stepping into home. You know, like the people, like it was like the same characters that I grew up with, like all the grocery stores, all the foods and ingredients that I was familiar with. And it just felt like immediately like a sense of like, oh, I belong here. Let's talk about home a little bit. You grew up in Rhode Island, and there's a great section in the book talking about the church banquets and potlucks and having so many folks from the former USSR in this community. But for our listeners who don't know your background, tell a little bit about how you ended up in the United States and your parents' background.

26:48Yeah, so it's always when people ask me, where are you from? It's like, how much time do you have? I didn't ask. I wasn't about to ask that one because I knew exactly what you're saying. So my mom is Russian. My father is Armenian. My mom was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. My father was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, but they both grew up in Tbilisi. And they emigrated. And I was born in Ukraine. Yeah. In southern Ukraine, a region called Kherson. And we moved here to the States in 1992. There was some legislation that passed that made it easier for people who were experiencing religious persecution to get green card status and refugee status and move to the States.

27:33So we moved to Rhode Island. And yeah, I grew up in a community of immigrants from all over the former USSR. you know the Russian language was sort of what brought us together culture I mean everyone yeah I had friends from Estonia from Georgia Armenia Kazakhstan Uzbekistan and but we all sort of just we have I grew up with this this understanding of nashi which in Russian means ours like our people and so there's like nashi our people and then everyone else like all the Americans. And, you know, that being said, like we were all from different countries, but we all kind of saw ourselves as part of one community, one group.

28:22And it was really special because I was exposed to all these different cultures, cuisines. Like you said, I grew up attending a Slavic evangelical church where for me, the best part was the potlucks and like the tea times after services and everyone would sort of bring their dishes from their home a lot of sort of soviet standbys and it was always this just a just like feast really uh and i didn't you know i just as a kid i kind of took it for granted i didn't really think about it you were just like hanging you just wanted to play nintendo right exactly and yeah i was like you know i was like grew up reading like pushkin and and tolstoy but i was also like playing yeah Zelda and listening to Britney Spears and really like not into my family's food at all.

29:11Like I was the pickiest eater. Like I was like 90 % hot dogs and Capri Suns. So I was like, I didn't, yeah, I was not interested in eating, eating that food as a kid. And it wasn't until high school that I started to develop my own interest in food. And at that time, you know, it was like this whole new world opened to me. I would go to the library, check out like a stack of cookbooks, read them from cover to cover. And I was interested in everything but my family's culinary heritage. And it wasn't until I left for college, like most immigrant kids, you know, they leave home and they start to miss their mom's cooking or their grandmother's cooking.

29:53And I started to take an interest and people were asking like, you know, where are you from? And I was explaining And they're like, that's, you know, that was, you know, 2010, 2014. When I'd say I was, my family's from Georgia, they were like, oh, like Atlanta? Yeah, big Braves fan. Yeah, yeah, right. And so I had to go, I had to go this, you know, deep dive of where we actually, you know, where Georgia is located on the map. It's so interesting, too, how to see now with not just the wine region, but just culture. It's really booming. It's really booming. Yeah. And it's great. And yeah, and so I don't feel like I have to explain as much.

30:27But I did find that as I was starting to write about my family's culinary heritage, and really it was a way for me to preserve these recipes, but I started to kind of peel back the layers of it and see that historically we would just call ourselves Russian or use Russian as this umbrella term. It's interesting because the subtitle says so much for Chesnock, your terrific cookbook. It came out last fall and I love it. I spent a lot of time with it this week. And the subtitle is My Corner of the Diaspora. Right, right, right. And I think that that is important to call out because it's your story, though it's quite researched and authoritative.

31:13It still is your corner. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, it's this diaspora that is so multicultural, like it spans so many different cultures, so many languages, so many religions. And yet we all come together because of the Soviet Union's legacy. Right. And so for me, it was important to say my corner of the diaspora because I am speaking to this community, to this immigrant experience through the specific lens of my family's immigrant story and, you know, being, you know, this Russian-Armenian from Georgia. Yeah. I want to quote a line. You wrote a terrific essay in Bloomberg. And I think this really taps into the way you thought about this, the recipe list, really.

32:04Quote, I will be the first to admit that a certain tension arises. On one hand, I want to honor these ex-Soviet countries and their fights for sovereignty vis-a-vis Borsh or Plov. On the other hand, it would be disingenuous for me not to acknowledge the USSR's legacy. You landed on post-Soviet cuisine. Yeah. And it's hard to really write a cookbook about this cuisine that really is challenging. We wrote a story in 2018. Rachel Sugar wrote it. I love that article. Thank you for linking to it. I came back to it over and over again when I was reading that Bloomberg essay and the book. She did such a great job with it.

32:44But you followed it up with the whole book. And I guess, can you define simply this post-Soviet cuisine? Yeah, I mean, I write to that experience in the book and I call it an evolving identity because it is, I did kind of land on post-Soviet, but it is, I'm still having, the lovely part of this book is that it has inspired so many conversations and dialogue around like, who are we? And what is post-Soviet and is it an appropriate term? Because I think a lot of us who grew up in this community, and especially those like me who have a mixed background, I think many who grew up in the Soviet Union when it collapsed experienced this sort of identity crisis.

33:32And I think many of us are experiencing again when Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time in 2022. And it was, yeah, one of the biggest challenges of writing the book is like, how do I unpack this? And how do I write about in a way that is transparent and accurate without stepping on anyone's toes? And so I landed on post-Soviet because for me, you know, these are recipes, you know, many of these dishes are, you know, national, you know, pride of many of these nations like borscht is, you know, the national UNESCO protected dish of Ukraine. Bluff, you know, is the national dish of Uzbekistan.

34:15But on the other hand, you know, you have this population that grew up on all of these dishes. And at what point does it kind of become their own? And so for me, post-Soviet speaks to this confluence of cultures and cuisines that wouldn't have existed otherwise if it wasn't for the Soviet Union. Well, of course, you write about there's a canonical cookbook that was published in 1939 that was in many Soviet households. Yeah, I mean, I went through, I'm like blanking, like maybe 20 dishes and sold millions and millions of copies. It was like the cookbook. What's it called? The Book of Healthy and Tasty Food.

35:00So good. Very, very to the point. Yeah, and it was like so aspirational. Like the average person could not make like any of those dishes because you'd go to the grocery store and the shelves were empty. But it painted this picture, you know, at its heart, you know, it's propaganda. It's like we are this brotherhood of people. Look at our abundance and how we all come together around the table, around this food. But to some extent, it kind of did succeed in what it was trying to push. But it took out the gastronationalism. No, no. It stripped it out, right? I mean, but they did that on so many levels.

35:38I mean, they had to, the Soviet Union. But I find it interesting. Like for me, when I try to, I think the best example of the way it's manifested in this community is, and I think for people who live in New York will know, Tashkent Market. If you walk into Tashkent Market, all the people working there speak in Russian. You'll hear it between the customers. You see Russian Borodinsky bread next to the Georgian lavash puri. You hit the hot bar and there's Uzbek plov next to Olivia Salad, like Soviet potato salad next to the Ukrainian dumplings. And if you don't know about that community or immigrant experience, you wouldn't understand why all of these foods are under one roof, right?

36:30And so for me, the book was a way of explaining and speaking to our experience in our table, which is very sort of a smorgasbord. Yeah, and you really cover so many of these dishes in the book. And I want to get into some of these recipes that intrigued me. But zooming out a little bit, the idea of neglaz, which is Russian for by eye, this idea that many of these recipes were written down by feel. I mean, Korean cooking, they call it somat. It's like hand cooking. And it's similar. And it's the ultimate challenge for a recipe developer to land on a version that feels truly of origin when these recipes are written very roughly.

37:19Right. Right. And it's really, I mean, the recipe, you know, I have recipes for these dishes. And if I called my mom or my aunts up on a different day, the recipe might have looked, you know, would have been different. but at some point it's like I have to put my foot down and it's like this is what we're going with but it was yeah I mean when everything is by eye by feel you know one of the first recipes I documented was the ideal tort and it was always I think like the recipe changed every time my mom made it and when I called her up she was like okay you start with five eggs and I was like five eggs last time you said four eggs And she was like, oh, well, okay, okay, let's just go with four eggs.

38:02And I was like, and then she was like, you know, one and a half cups of flour, you know, that orange mug with the red flour, like one and a half mugs worth of flour. And I was like, I don't own that mug. Like that is, you know, like give me more detail. And so it was a lot of hair pulling. I usually step away from that call with a recipe that's like half Russian, half English, like crossed out quantities. and at some point I just had to like get into the kitchen and just start cooking and I realized over time that you know anytime there was like a gap or a question like I would recall you know my you know seeing my mom measuring the flour or recalling how thick the batter was or you know my aunt would run the walnuts for the basha sauce three times instead of two and I and I started to remember like how the consistency of things or what thing and I started cooking na glas, which was really, really fun.

38:58And so it sort of kind of like came full. Yeah. You saw the reason why they were doing it. Yeah. After this repetition in the kitchen. Yeah. So many recipes to cover. I picked a few. Olivier salad. Yeah. Olivier salad is a very classic, probably the most, like one of the most famous Soviet dishes. It's a potato salad. It originally came, you know, was invented by a French chef working in a famous Moscow restaurant. And I think the original had like crayfish and grouse and, you know, it was very elaborate. And then as many of those dishes, they kind of were, you know, put through the Soviet machine and became very much more humble.

39:40And you see it also in like parts of Africa. You see it in like Israel. You see it like in Livia salads everywhere. Yes, yeah. In Spain, it's really popular. But, you know, at its heart, It's like a chopped or like diced potato salad with boiled potatoes, carrots, peas, boiled egg, and pickles. And for me, I mean, everyone will say that their family's version is the best. And it's like one of those issues that like, you know, people will break out in fights of like, do you use canned peas or frozen pickles or fresh cucumbers? Some people will add apple, chicken, bologna. There's so many variations.

40:24Everyone stands by their version. And for me, you have to make with canned peas. Frozen peas just throw the whole, the taste is off. They're too sweet. They're too sweet. They kind of make the salad watery. The other thing that I love about my family's way of making it is they add a lot of fresh dill, which you don't always see, and green onion. And it really brightens it. And it's not, I feel like it can be really heavy and just kind of like one-noted. Yeah, it's really, and it's like you have to have it for New Year's, but we sort of, it's like a very, like our party. Party food. You always have Olivia.

41:05I want to ask you about the recipe for Soviet home fries. Now, you have some like serious recipe developer chops because, holy shit, this recipe is long. I don't think I've ever seen a french fry fry recipe that is this detailed. Not just the head note, but the process. Why such detail for this on the surface, a pretty simple thing? Yeah, I didn't really realize it was long until you pointed out. And I was like, oh yeah, this is a really long recipe for potatoes. And it's like a full page. A full page, a full page. I know. I know I can be kind of OCD when it comes to recipe writing. I mean, I really want to.

41:47And bless you for that. And like, you know, I really wanted, you know, the book is for people who grew up with these dishes. And so I really wanted to present them the very best version. Obviously, that is subjective. But I really wanted to present the best version of these dishes. Pause for a sec before we get to the fries. You just said something so interesting. You wrote this book for people who grew up with the food. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was lost on me. And I absolutely love that. Yeah. That is your point of view. Now it makes even more sense and I love it that you're not trying to get everyone to cook every one of these dishes.

42:21No. I mean, it's impossible. I mean, there's so many dishes in this canon that I could have included and I didn't. But it was really sort of like what are the dishes that we all kind of grew up with? If I went into Tashkent Market, what are the foods that people will see? and I wanted to make sure that those were part of the recipe. And so many people have, since the book has come out to me, it's like this is the food that I grew up with and because this generation cooked the glass, like we never had it written down. And there's a big diaspora. And it's such a huge diaspora. Right. And so, you know, the best compliment is like when someone says, like this reminds me of my grandma's cooking or like my mom's birushki.

43:03So it was really, you know, to encapt. And again, like I set out when I set out to write this, the book, initially it was to document and preserve these recipes for myself so that they wouldn't get lost. And I was like, you know, if no one reads this book, at least I have it for myself and for my family. And on the other hand, it's a chance for me to speak to this immigrant experience that has been largely overlooked or misunderstood in our country and also media, specifically food media. Back to the fries. Yeah. So why are these fries so special? So I feel like that recipe is such a good example of when you are getting a recipe from a home cook, and especially from that generation.

43:54You don't realize how particular they can be. Oftentimes it's like whatever we have in the fridge, that's what we're cooking with. But they can also be super exacting and particular.

44:09And so that was when I called my mom. That was the way she explained to me to make it. And I took that framework and then used my stopwatch, my timer, and all that just so that it could be reputable. So what are the fries? Why are they so good? Yeah. So they're nothing special. And it's like if anyone saw that my, you know, like if my mom saw that my recipe was that long, she would laugh because she's like, this is a recipe that doesn't have a recipe. But it's potatoes cut into matchsticks and then they're shallow fried. They're not deep fried. and you end up because it's shallow fried and you're sort of the entire the whole the whole goal is not to over not to burn the potatoes um and not to cook them so like not to burn them and also not to have them turn into mush so difficult that's why yeah most fry cookery is left for the pros right right right um and it's kind of hard to make this like this dish um for it to like turn turn out and it takes practice but for me the best is like when it's you know you have some some matchsticks that are nice and brown and crispy other ones are kind of soft and melt in your mouth and then they sound kind of like the starch kind of glues them together and so you have these clusters of varying textures and it's just i mean it is it is home food in its essence but it is one of the most like spectacular food like if you put it on the table like i will promise everything else will just be second fiddle.

45:46What's the condiment? Do you have anything? Do you put anything on it? I mean, as a kid, I loved it with ketchup. Yeah, yeah. But now I'll eat it with kemali, which is a sour plum sauce. And I'll make that with the roasted chicken and a tomato cucumber salad. And that is like my, if I had to pick a last meal, that would be it. Well, speaking of chicken, the tobacco style ajika chicken, this condiment. Ajika, yeah. Have you tried it? I haven't, and I'm running to Klusian soon to get it. Or go to Tashkin Market. Or Tashkin Market. I'm going to go there as well. It's a cool, slightly unique way to do a spatchcock chicken, and it's definitely a very cool marinade.

46:28Yeah, so Ajika, for those who aren't familiar with it, it's a Georgian condiment. I would say it's like what Harissa is to our North African cuisine. It's a very fiery, chilly condiment. And I mean, it could be like a paste. It comes as a relish, as a dry spice. It packs a lot of heat, but it's also very, it's spiced. There's a lot of coriander, blue fenugreek. It's very, there's a lot of flavor in it too. It's a spice blend. Right, right, right. And so we mix that with mayo. So that's like our Soviet roots coming through. What kind of mayo? We're partial hellmands. Yeah. Yeah. That's like the only.

47:10That's the only one you use. It's the only one. I guess on the West, it's best food. Best food, yeah. Yeah, but you're not using any products brought in, mayonnaise products. No, no, no. I mean, yeah, you could get mayo at the Eastern European store, but - You use Hellman's. Hellman's is, you can't get much better than Hellman's. I agree, I like it. This is not an ad for Hellman's. No, no, it could be though. It could be, yeah. You and I, let's link up, let's do it. Yeah, so you have mayo, fresh cilantro, garlic. I add honey which is my addition and I find that honey really sort of ties all those flavors together and it adds a nice char to the chicken as well and salt and pepper and that's it and the mayo really like it's such a great carrier for flavor and it also locks in all the juices and it's by far one of the most popular recipes from the book and anytime I make it I use it so we have shush flake which is our like meat kebabs and I'll usually do a pork version and I'll do the chicken and I'll use that marinade and people just lose their minds.

48:11So you can do it with a spatchcocked whole chicken? Can you do it with like thighs and legs? Any chicken preparation. Yeah. Thighs, breasts, whether you're grilling, roasting, pan frying. Yeah, spatchcocked because so the tapaka, chicken tapaka is a very popular dish in Georgia where it's a spatchcocked hen. It's a smaller bird that they cook in essentially a cast iron or clay skillet under a brick or some sort of heavy weight.

48:46And so we sort of take in that, but instead of the stovetop, we cook it in the oven. That's cool. So you weight it and then you roast it? No, we don't weight it. We just spatchcock. We just keep it easy. The interesting thing is that when I wrote it, mom's like, oh, the chicken looks different. I'm like, what do you mean? I didn't realize that she doesn't take the backbone out. She just cuts it through the breast. And I remember seeing that. I'm like, that's wrong. That's not how you spatchcock a chicken, mom. You're doing it wrong. And she was like, whatever. This is how we always made it. And when I went back to Georgia, that is how they prepare the dish.

49:23They cut it through the breast and not the backbone. but you know the book was already published and yeah I mean just like more of an affinity for meat on the bone yeah in Georgia and it's also more like more quick yeah exactly better easier to prep briefly herring under a fur coat yeah it's this it's either love it or hate it yeah exactly because I think it's like polarizing in maybe some circles I know it's beloved yeah I mean it's it's like cured fish with mayo and boiled veggies yeah but I would say if you're in particular right Right, right. But I would say if you love like smoked salmon or like a whitefish salad on your bagel, like you will love this.

50:05And I really think like the potatoes and the onions kind of cut the fishiness. And so it's more of a subtle flavor. And then the beets and carrots add this really lovely sweetness to it. I like it. And it's beautiful. It's a very show-stopping dish. All right. So let's talk about the honey cake. You write about it in a cool way. And really, you know, this Soviet era honey cake, it's really proliferated on social media. It's, you know, visually stunning, many layers. That great San Francisco bakery did it. Yes, 20th Century Cafe. I feel like when Samin Nostrat wrote about Michelle Polzine's, yeah.

50:42Michelle Polzine, yeah. Sorry, I forgot her name. Michelle's amazing. She is amazing. And when her book came out, I love her book. It's one of my favorite baking books. When her book came out, I was still working at Book Larder in Seattle, a cookbook store. Love Book Larder. We've done a couple of things there. Yeah. And they had me interview her. And it was like peak COVID. So it was through Zoom. And she was telling us about her journey in developing this honey cake. And she tried it in some, you know, central, like in Hungary or Vienna, in some, you know, beautiful cafe bakery. And she went down this rabbit hole trying to create it.

51:17And it took her months. She listened to these YouTube videos and like not even like in her own language. And then and like and she was like in one video, I saw someone like pull out a can of cooked sweetened condensed milk. Like what we call dulce de leche. And it was like this eureka moment for her of like this is the key to the cake is is. And I was like, that's so funny because all I had to do was call up my aunt and she just sent me a photo of her index card of the recipe. And like we know to use dulce de leche in the frosting. It was just like a very different process. I mean, I actually haven't tried her honey cake version, and it looks spectacular.

51:56But it was just two very different ways of coming to the same cake. Yeah, and now it's been repeated. I know Michelle should be credited with bringing it to the forefront, at least in the restaurant setting. I mean, it was a homemade cake. They didn't sell it in the stores. They used honey because they didn't have access to cane sugar. and it was, yeah, it was just very much this whole, I mean, it took a lot of, you know, time, but it's a very actually easy cake. It just is, you know, tedious and making those layers, but it's a home dessert. And so it's, I mean, and you see that all the time across cuisines and dishes, like something that we've all kind of grew up and didn't think twice about and now all of a sudden it's like discovered.

52:39Do you like making it? I love making it. I have two little kids, so I don't always have time. Yeah, yeah. But when I like teach a cooking class on it, it's always a great - Oh, I bet. It's a great - You do classes? I do classes, yeah. I sort of stepped back. My daughter was born last year, and I just moved her down, so I'm figuring out the format and all that. But I was the culinary director at Book Larder, so I was in charge of the cooking class program. Yeah, I mean, please go to the store if you're in Seattle. Yeah, it's fantastic. I love the way the kitchen is part of the store. It's really cool.

53:12Well, I want to talk about the war a little bit because, you know, as outsiders like myself without a family connection to the region, you know, I just read things and see things and form opinions. I think that's natural. And I just want to ask you directly, you know, is there something that maybe our listeners should know about this ongoing conflict? You know, you read about it every single day in the paper. It's heartbreaking. The loss and what's happening there. and this is your home. This is where you were born. You were born in Ukraine. So I'm not trying to put the pressure on you to like solve anything, but I really think you have great perspective.

53:51I'd love for you to share. Yeah, I mean, on so many levels, it's black and white, right? Like what Putin is doing is so wrong. And it's really because of one man's ego that tens of thousands of people have lost their lives and their livelihoods. And, you know, my own family has been affected. A large part of my family moved to Ukraine in the 80s and settled there and had, you know, really big families. And they've since lost, you know, Kherson is one of the occupied regions of Russia, but they've since lost everything. Their house has been bombed. Their lands have been flooded. And they've had to since move.

54:34And either they've been internally displaced or they moved to Germany or Estonia. Yeah. And I write in the book, like this war is particularly painful for those of us who came from that part because, you know, between Russia and Ukraine, you know, we have a lot of shared history and a lot of and maybe shared like culinary and cultural touch points. And we've all kind of lived peacefully for many decades, centuries. And I'm not saying it was always peaceful. And there is a lot of, you know, there is a lot of strife.

55:13But, you know, all my best friends grew up with Ukraine. And I have family members that are half Russian, half Ukrainian. um my cousin i have cousins who like lived on the border where they like lived in russia but did their shopping you know the neighboring ukrainian city and vice versa and so there's so much and all of a sudden all these like yeah brothers and sisters who live on on you know opposite sides of the border all of a sudden pitted against each other and it's like no one wants this uh and so that's that's like really painful because i think one of the sort of invisible effects of war is that it for it it makes people drop walls between each other when there previously wasn't and and i think you know this this this tendency to like claim this dish is ours or like how do we figure out like how we're other from each other you know in some ways it's important like it's it's important to to preserve your culinary heritage especially when one country trying to erase the others um but on the other hand like on a you know your daily lived experience like i don't there's no enmity between just the common people so it is black and white but it's also just so nuanced yeah no of course and do you find yourself uh traveling back home um i'm not I've always wanted to go back to Ukraine to where I was born, but I don't think that's in the cards anytime soon, unfortunately.

56:43I have been back to Georgia a handful of times. And that is, you know, I arrive and I feel like I've arrived home. Yeah. And it's such a special country if you ever have the chance to travel. Yeah, I'd love to go one day. What's it like visiting Tbilisi and traveling throughout the country? Yeah, I mean, it's a super vibrant city. You have so many, you know, it was historically this crossroads between the East and the West. So Georgia has a really lovely way of, you know, they've really preserved who they are in their culinary and cultural sensibility. But there is so much influence from, yeah, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

57:23It's really like, I think, a city that is in a bit of like growing pains. Like it's trying to be modern, but there's so much history and it's – there's a lot of cars and smog. And so I wish there was a – Yeah. I know. I mean they're marketing it to New Yorkers. Yeah. But I mean it has incredible restaurants. Yeah. Wine is like just incredible. And it's also so small and I'm always – it's like a little bit larger than the state of West Virginia. But it's so geographically varied. Like within three hours, you can go from like four hours, you can go from Tbilisi to the Black Sea and be in this like subtropical humid environment.

58:07You can go to the Caucasus Mountains where there are peaks larger than like the Alps and like skiing is like second to none. You go, you head east and you have wine country. you have in the south this like really cool um like almost like um high altitude plain with all these like like this lake region like there's just so there's so many different ways to experience yeah we gotta do a taste travels yes Georgia yeah maybe you'll come along yeah let's do that I think it'd be great it's a place and also just like the people are just so yes I mean like they really see like a guest as a gift from God.

58:47Like they, if you come over, like they will give you, you know, they will feed you, they'll, they'll give you their wine, they'll give you their shirt off their back. And only afterwards will they be like, oh, what's your name again? You know, like they just, they just love to host and I, and there's a symbol, um, Cartes Deda, which means, uh, the mother of Georgia. And it's this huge statue that stands on, um, it's like perched top a cliff that's overlooking the city of Tbilisi. And she's holding a bowl of wine in one hand and a sword in the other. And the bowl of wine is, you know, they represents their hospitality and their generosity.

59:28And like, we want to host you and invite you into our homes. And then the sword is like, don't screw with us. Yeah. A reminder of whose country this is. Yeah, right. This episode is brought to you by ZBiotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic. Hosting a food podcast means I'm invited to a lot of industry dinners, book launches, chef pop-ups, and wine tastings that run four hours longer than planned. And I've noticed which of my friends in the industry handle those nights the best. It's often the ones who come prepared with ZBiotics Pre-Alcohol. It's the world's first genetically engineered probiotic, and here's how it works.

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1:00:55This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com. The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub, followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends and now that's next level.

1:01:35Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today. On This is Taste, we have guests about the discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid-fire Fast and Furious taste check. Okay. Are you ready? Yeah, I think so. The best fruit. It's summer right now, so my mind immediately goes to a juicy, ripe nectarine. I think it has just like, um, this really, this like meatiness to it. Like, it's just like, um, like very toothsome.

1:02:13That's just super satisfying and, and it's really great to bake with and, and like to use in savory applications too. The worst vegetable? Artichokes. That might be a, I don't know. I don't think I've, I don't think I've had like, it's really hard to prepare well. Well, yeah. Fresh if you're. Yeah. I've had many bad or like mediocre at best artichokes. What is your typical breakfast? Recently, it's been an egg scramble with some sort of leafy green ricotta, wedges of tomato and avocado. Love that. Wow. What a balanced meal. It's very... I feel really good about myself after I eat it. The best dessert?

1:03:01oh um i'm really partial to any sort of like baked fruit like cobbler crisp situation with like custard like a creme anglaise or ice cream and just like anything with custard really it just a restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead oh that's a hard one um when i moved to seattle uh every time i told someone's from georgia they're like you know what there was this one Georgian restaurant in this neighborhood called Pirosmani and it was absolutely amazing. And like if I had like a dollar for every time someone said that to me, I'd be a hundred dollars richer. So I really wish that that would come back so I could try it.

1:03:45Try it. A few more. When you're craving fast food, where are you going?

1:03:52I'd say Chick-fil-A, but also like an Oreo McFlurry. Can you get? Oh, yeah. Is there anything better than an Oreo McFlurry? I don't know. I haven't had one of those in years. Today would be the perfect day for it. Today would be a great day to have one. Your favorite city outside America to visit for food?

1:04:12Montreal. Oh, great. Yeah. It's so close to us in New England, and it's like an international experience without actually having to change time zones. And it has such a great food scene. They have this really lovely way of taking French traditions and sensibility and combine it with the local produce. And it's hard to have a bad meal. And their bar scene is incredible. And they have really great bakeries. Yeah, the bakery is Jean Jalon Market. Yes, yeah. What about Rhode Island? Rhode Island. Where do you live? What's the story? Yeah, yeah. I live sort of like border of Providence and Pawtucket.

1:04:53called Pawtucket the Bucket.

1:04:58I've seen the Housewives and I don't know much more about Rhode Island. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a really big Portuguese and Cape Verde immigrant community and so you have a lot of that, a lot of Italian, obviously. It's like a really hidden gem. I think people always tell me, when I tell people I'm from Rhode Island, they're like, oh, I've driven through it. And I'm like, stop, stop sometime. And the coast is amazing and there's great beaches. Yeah, beautiful beaches I've heard. Last one, your favorite sandwich? Turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado. Yeah, what's the bread? Yeah, it's a classic.

1:05:38Just like a sandwich, like a good sandwich, like white, soft. Yeah, yeah. And a really basic, but. That's what you like? Yeah, that's what I like. With probably some Hellmann's. Some Hellmann's, some yellow mustard, not Dijon. Gotta have the... Love that. Heinz and Hellmann's. Heinz and Hellmann's. Polina, I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for joining This is Taste. Thank you.

1:06:10This 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 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. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT.

1:06:52Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode, available on Plus and Pro plans. I'm not giving up. I am selling the building.

1:07:26Matt Rodbard:The final season of FX is the bear. The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay. Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned. We have each other.