fever4flavor

In one hand, imagine I’m holding a slice of cake; in the other, a slice of pie. I’ve got a pair of reflective glasses on, and I’m asking you to choose. Which one are you going with?

For me, it’s going to be cake all day. I’m not a discerning person when it comes to cake; I’m going to eat whatever you put in front of me for dessert, and I’m probably going to enjoy it. But if it’s a one and a half pound slice of German chocolate cake from 4th Street Delicatessen, or a delicious cream cheese icing carrot, I’m going to enjoy it a whole lot more.

So when I came across the Sugary, a delightful little cake shop a block from Rittenhouse, and owner Lesly McDevitt agreed to talk to me, I was extremely happy. Before you even listen to this episode, stop now and go look at the photos of some of her cake creations at thesugaryphilly.com. And you’ll see what I mean right away - Lesly is making some of the most fabulous-looking, picturesque cakes I’ve ever seen.

We sat down at her shop, nestled into the cleanly decorated pastel vibes, and went down the rabbit hole - covering how these cakes are sculpted, how they’re layered, and how bullets are sweated out when they’re transported to a wedding.

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Produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

©2026 Sensational XP LLC.

If you’d like to support Fever4Flavor, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your input helps us make the podcast even better, points us to topics that are relevant to you, and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for Fever4Flavor, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Join me next week as we continue to explore the infinite world of food and flavors here on Fever4Flavor.

Do you have a relationship with social media? Because I do, and like all relationships I’ve ever had throughout my life with people, places, and things, it’s not a simple one. On one hand, I think that humanity is someday going to look back at this age of social media that we’re currently in—assuming we haven’t nuked ourselves into oblivion or heated up the planet to an impossible degree, or both—and very firmly recognize that social media was an absolute evil that drove a whole lot of divisive, mind-warping, polarizing spikes into our brains.

But hey: hilarious dog videos! Amirite? I catch myself scrolling all the time. I crack up at some of the ridiculous shit you’ll see on there. People chasing rolling cheeses down hills, endless highlights of the Eagles thumping the Chiefs.

And food. So much food. Juicy, squeezy, delicious, ASMR-scraping food beauty shots and video clips of people making and eating things that hit the eyes and the ears, although certainly not the nose and the tongue.

But on a podcast dedicated to flavor, why would anyone care about social media? Should we care? I think the answer is that we have to. And when I had the chance to drag Fidel Gastro himself, also known in real life as Marcos Espinoza, into a conversation with me, I couldn’t resist digging into the topic of social media with him. So we sat down together in a busy back room at Forest and Main Brewing Company and took up trying to solve the world’s social media food-born problems.

But flavor being what it is, there was plenty more to talk about too, of course. As it turned out, we both have the exact same opinion about the #1 best sandwich in Philly. So where is that sandwich from? Listen in, and you'll find out.

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If you want more content:

fever4flavor.com

[email protected]

Instagram | @fever4flavor

Produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

©2026 Sensational XP LLC.

If you’d like to support Fever4Flavor, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your input helps us make the podcast even better, points us to topics that are relevant to you, and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for Fever4Flavor, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Join me next week as we continue to explore the infinite world of food and flavors here on Fever4Flavor.

Let’s just go ahead and get this out of the way: I’m a meat-eater. I love a filet mignon and the smoked buffalo wings over at Ice Line. But I’ve often wondered how vegan or vegetarian restaurants approach their food. I’ve always kinds of assumed that they try to approximate the flavors and textures that us meat-eaters experience on a daily basis. Meaning, they’re probably trying to make a portabello “cheesesteak” taste just like an actual Philly cheesesteak made with beef…

Or are they doing something very different? Are they unabashedly creating from a flavor playbook and palette that exists uniquely unto themselves? Much of what I thought about vegetarian food changed the day I had one of the best sandwiches of my entire life, a portabello and broccoli rabe sub. It ended up being a creation from a chef named Rich Landau. You may know Rich better as the founder, along with Kate Jacoby, of Vedge.

Now Vedge is not just a vegan resturant; it’s an institution in Philadelphia, and one of the most important and ground-breaking vegan restaurants in the city. So Rich and I caught up out here in West Chester Pennsylvania. We broke the ice over a taste test of three kinds of sugars—piloncillo, jaggery, and a Chinese “old brown sugar” called hēitáng—then talked about the lengths that Rich has gone to to infuse flavor into the foods he serves, how some flavor combinations can reflect creative genius, why a pear is the perfect fruit, and more.

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If you want more content:

fever4flavor.com

[email protected]

Instagram | @fever4flavor

Produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

©2026 Sensational XP LLC.

If you’d like to support Fever4Flavor, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your input helps us make the podcast even better, points us to topics that are relevant to you, and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for Fever4Flavor, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Join me next week as we continue to explore the infinite world of food and flavors here on Fever4Flavor.

I’m an obsessive food label reader. As a human concerned with my health and my longevity, and as a consumer trying to make sure I’m limiting the amount of hyper-processed garbage I put into my body, I’ve taken to reading the label on just about everything I buy. I do still buy and eat junk food, for sure. I love Oreos and Nutter Butters and don’t plan on not eating them anytime soon. But I also try to avoid unnecessary additives whenever I can.

And without a doubt, there are a lot of additives in food. But here I am and we’re already off to a bad start—thinking that every single thing that goes into our food is by definition either bad for you or not needed. And of course, that’s not the case. There’s just so much more nuance to it than that.

Who better to catch up with about the nuances, then, than an actual professional flavorist working at one of the world’s most well known specialty ingredients producers: Kate Southrey, of International Flavors and Fragrances. Kate and I sat down in the comfort of my own home, just a few feet from the yogurt and the strawberries in my fridge, and we talked about yogurt and strawberries. And a whole lot more through the course of this fascinating conversation and deep-dive into what flavorists do to help us enjoy all kinds of foods, conserve our world’s actual food resources, keep food costs manageable, and more.

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If you want more content:

fever4flavor.com

[email protected]

Instagram | @fever4flavor

Produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

©2026 Sensational XP LLC.

If you’d like to support Fever4Flavor, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your input helps us make the podcast even better, points us to topics that are relevant to you, and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for Fever4Flavor, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Join me next week as we continue to explore the infinite world of food and flavors here on Fever4Flavor.

Simply put, chocolate is one of the most important substances in the known universe. To say that I love chocolate is an understatement, and I know I’m not alone. You know you love chocolate. And everyone you know loves chocolate too. Or at a minimum, they don’t hate it. But what do you actually know about chocolate? And what do you actually know about the way that fine chocolates are made by a chocolatier—or actually, it’s chocolatier, if we’re to believe Melissa Crandley.

I stopped into Mecha Chocolate, one of Melissa’s stores, and went a bit buck-wild with what I saw and purchased. Raspberry almond praline ganaches, Japanese matcha ganaches, smoked habanero sea salt caramels, lavender vanilla caramels, and a dozen more delights beyond those.

But aside from a hefty bag full of chocolates… I also walked away with an exquisite curiosity. How are these little, finely decorated squares of power-packed flavor actually made? And how much fun is it to come up with the ideas for them? So I drove out to Melissa’s sparkling clean south Jersey production facility and we talked: about how’s it’s actually pronounced Mecha and not Mecha, what hand-dipping is, how to balance a raspberry ganache, banana flavoring, the horribleness of Circus Peanuts, and a whole lot more.

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If you want more content:

fever4flavor.com

[email protected]

Instagram | @fever4flavor

Produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

©2026 Sensational XP LLC.

If you’d like to support Fever4Flavor, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your input helps us make the podcast even better, points us to topics that are relevant to you, and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for Fever4Flavor, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Join me next week as we continue to explore the infinite world of food and flavors here on Fever4Flavor.

There’s something to be said for that feeling when you’ve unearthed a kickass tucked-away neighborhood bar. Where you can belly up to the rail with your friends, get a beer, watch a game, and grab a bite to eat. There’s something even more unique about that same neighborhood joint when it doubles as a hidden gem of a restaurant and has a regularly changing dinner menu driven by complex flavors.

That’s what I found when I visited Bad Brother, a converted 3-story corner restaurant in the Fairmount section of the city. So I sat down with chef and co-owner Justin Koenig. While the wooden floorboards of the second floor creaked as his staff prepped for dinner, surrounded by an an interesting collection of framed pop culture art that secretly appealed to my inner Popeye-loving nerd, Justin and I chatted.

We talked about his approach to the dishes and menu at Bad Brother… and it gave me a staggering look into the mind of a dedicated and detailed craftsman—along with a discussion about the surprising intricacies of a caesar dressing, how to really do zucchini without making it into mush, and one of the most gripping, eloquent, and thoughtful 3 minutes you’ll ever hear about a Philly neighborhood chef’s template for a perfect burger.

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If you want more content:

fever4flavor.com

[email protected]

Instagram | @fever4flavor

Produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

©2026 Sensational XP LLC.

If you’d like to support Fever4Flavor, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your input helps us make the podcast even better, points us to topics that are relevant to you, and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for Fever4Flavor, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Join me next week as we continue to explore the infinite world of food and flavors here on Fever4Flavor.

There are five basic tastes. You've probably heard of them: Sweet, Salty, Sour, Bitter, and Umami.

But there's an incredibly vast world of food and flavors. So what exactly is flavor? And can I, just a regular guy, really figure out how to understand and enjoy food even more than I do? So I talked to some experts and it turns out that I can, and so can you. But you have to start somewhere. I'm Evan Young, and this is Fever for Flavor.

Season Premiere on 10/8/2025!