Eater's Digest

Welcome to the first Best of the Upsell! hosted by Amanda Kludt and Daniel Geneen (aka apdan). 2:00 Amanda ate at Vespertine!! 6:30 J. Kenji López-Alt interview 32:00 Amanda and Dan talk about Dan being weird with guests 38:00 Nathan Myhrvold interview After getting his start in restaurant and test kitchens in Boston, Kenji created The Food Lab, a column on Serious Eats dedicated to lassoing the laws of science and riding them to home cooking success every time. In the subsequent six years, the “Kenji method” has blown up, but despite being a cult phenomenon and bestselling cookbook author, Kenji himself is just about as cool and down to earth as you can get. Air date: 2/18/2016 twitter.com/kenjilopezalt Nathan Myhrvold is the wildly successful businessman/scientist/tech guru behind Modernist Cuisine, a self-published culinary encyclopedia that demystifies the world of high-end gastronomy. Nathan also released a spinoff, Modernist Cuisine at Home, and he’s working on another volume focusing entirely on bread. Air date: 2/13/2017 nathanmyhrvold.com

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Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City and the recent Bright, Precious Days, was already a successful novelist when he started writing about wine more than two decades ago. This may be why his columns for House & Garden, the Wall Street Journal, and currently, Town & Country stand out from other writing on the subject and have been published as standalone volumes. On this week’s Eater Upsell, McInerney chats with Helen and Greg about possibly setting off the rosé craze, the trouble with maintaining a wine collection, and why New York is still the best restaurant city in America.

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Stella Parks spent six years developing the recipes for BraveTart. In the cookbook, the pastry chef, who has a blog of the same name, bakes iconic American desserts and delves into their histories. Listen as she chats with Helen and Greg about trying to recapture childhood food memories, what she’s learned from McDonald’s apple pie, and her running theory for why Oreos are called Oreos.

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Brian Koppelman loves restaurants, a fact that he’s made eminently clear as co-creator of the Showtime series Billions. On this week’s Upsell, the screenwriter and podcast host talks to Helen and Greg about why he admires chefs and what the audience can learn by paying close attention to the restaurants featured on the show.

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Aaron Franklin is the pitmaster behind Franklin Barbecue, the Austin barbecue restaurant that has had Texans and tourists lining up since it opened in 2009. Despite the high demand, Franklin is adamant about never opening up a second location, and on this week’s episode, he chats with hosts Helen and Greg about why that’s the case and how he’s expanding his business in a different way.

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Chris Shepherd is one of Houston’s most ambitious chefs. In 2012, he opened Underbelly, which highlights Houston’s diversity with cuisines pulled from its various cultures, and in January, he launched One Fifth, a restaurant that closes each year to reemerge with a totally new concept and cuisine. Right now, it’s a steak house. Next year, the theme will be “romance languages,” and in its third year, One Fifth will take on seafood. Shepherd sat down with hosts Helen Rosner and Greg Morabito on this week’s episode of the Upsell for a conversation that touched on everything from cooking across cultures to the benefits of a good pedicure. 

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Amy Traverso knows a thing or two about lobster rolls. The food editor of Yankee Magazine and co-host of Weekends With Yankee recently compiled her findings from an exhaustive RV tour of New England in an impressive feature called The Great Lobster Roll Adventure. Listen as Amy talks to Helen and Greg about why lettuce is the villain of the lobster roll saga, why Boston has restaurants with such truly awful names, and why she hates Jimmy Buffett. 

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Danny Meyer is the king of New York City hospitality. The restaurateur leads the prolific Union Square Hospitality Group, responsible for New York City dining stalwarts Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and the Modern, among others, and the global burger chain Shake Shack. On this week’s Upsell, he sits down with Eater's editor-in-chief Amanda Kludt and Greg to discuss leading the no tipping movement, how he comes up with each new restaurant concept, and explains why he makes his staff read his book.

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Writer John T. Edge is a professional “observer of the South,” and in The Potlikker Papers, his “food history of the modern South,” he looks at the ways in which the region’s culinary traditions are inextricably linked with its history. On this week’s Upsell, he chats with Helen and Greg about the restaurants that fail to acknowledge the South’s troubled past, his vision for a multi-cultural future, and why food is power.

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Charleston chef Sean Brock has been widely recognized for the Southern food he serves at his Husk restaurants and at tasting-menu spot McCrady’s. But, Brock has also made headlines for his personal struggle with an autoimmune disease and a recent revelation to the New York Times that he’s committed to sobriety after a stint in rehab. On this week’s Upsell, the high profile chef chats with Helen and Greg about taking time for self care, creating the “anti-tasting menu” tasting menu, and showing the world why Southern cuisine is the best on the planet. Check out the full transcript here.

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