Lettuce Wrap

Update: Thanks to your purchases, we raised $1,800 to support the work of Planting Justice! Thank you for supporting this effort.

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We’ve joined thousands of other #BakersAgainstRacism supporting the #BlackLivesMatter movement by doing what we know best: making delicious food! All profits from the purchase of our brownies and spiced nuts supports Planting Justice, a non-profit organization with the mission to “Grow Food. Grow Jobs. Grow Community” by empowering “people impacted by mass incarceration and other social inequities with the skills and resources to cultivate food sovereignty, economic justice, and community healing.” On this brief episode, we share our reasons for joining this movement, and why we chose Planting Justice to receive our donations.

Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram:

or email us at [email protected].

That’s a wrap!

Amazon and other links may be affiliates. Purchases help support the show.

We’re back! We didn’t plan to be away this long, but the world changed, quickly. In this episode, we share what it’s been like running three essential businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how we’re coping with all the changes it’s brought about.

We’ll have more episodes throughout 2020, so thank you for staying subscribed (or for resubscribing)!

Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram:

or email us at [email protected].

That’s a wrap!

Amazon and other links may be affiliates. Purchases help support the show.

In our final episode of 2019, we take a break from interviews to talk about our favorite (and busiest!) time of the year: The holidays! We get personal and chat about our holiday history, how we prepare (business-wise and personally), how we celebrate, and what we miss. Along the way, we admit a few shocking truths, from Tammy’s feelings on pumpkin pie to Christine’s childhood Halloween costume, and we wrap up with a holiday-themed Wrapid Fire and a heartfelt thank you to you, our listeners!

Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and see you in 2020!

(Recorded in November just ahead of Thanksgiving.)

Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram:

or email us at [email protected].

That’s a wrap!

Amazon and other links may be affiliates. Purchases help support the show.

Sponsored By:

• Spice Hound & NeoCocoa:

In 2007, Anucha Kongthavorn stepped off a plane in San Francisco from his native Thailand, and got a job cooking the same day. He's spent his career in the service industry, from restaurant busser to cruise ship butler, culminating in opening his own Thai food take out, Mae Krua. He joins us to talk about his journey, shares his philosophy on serving others, provides advice on starting a restaurant, and explains why his restaurant regulars asked about his emotions before ordering.

In this episode, he tells us

Our thanks to Anucha for joining us. We wish him the best of luck in whatever he decides to do next.

The holiday season is upon us, and as a special “thank you” for being a Lettuce Wrap listener, we’re offering you 25% off all items at both NeoCocoa and SpiceHound online stores! Listen to the episode for the special website and discount code!

Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram:

or email us at [email protected].

That’s a wrap!

Amazon and other links may be affiliates. Purchases help support the show.

Special Guest: Anucha Kongthavorn, Mae Krua.

Sponsored By:

• Spice Hound & NeoCocoa:

This episode we talk about something we both know a bit about: farmers’ markets. Both NeoCocoa and Spice Hound owe their early success to these neighborhood marketplaces, and we firmly believe they’re an amazing way for new food entrepreneurs to get started. We visit a local market to chat with vendors and shoppers, ponder their growing popularity in urban areas, and share our experiences from over a decade of being behind the table.

The holiday season is upon us, and as a special “thank you” for being a Lettuce Wrap listener, we’re offering you 25% off all items at both NeoCocoa and SpiceHound online stores! Listen to the episode for the special website and discount code!

Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram:

or email us at [email protected].

That’s a wrap!

Amazon and other links may be affiliates. Purchases help support the show.

Sponsored By:

• Spice Hound & NeoCocoa:

Dan Mills turned his hobby of collecting commercial kitchen gadgets into Tinker Kitchen, a makerspace for community cooking. He joins us to talk about his inspiration for the space, why entrepreneurs need grit in the face of never-ending roadblocks, and how his very understanding girlfriend provided the (literal!) space he needed to succeed.

Our thanks to Dan for joining us. You can find him at tinkerkitchen.org, and follow him on Twitter (@tinkerkitch) and Instagram (@tinkerkitch).

Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram:

or email us at [email protected].

That’s a wrap!

Amazon and other links may be affiliates. Purchases help support the show.

Special Guest: Dan Mills, Tinker Kitchen.

Kelly Zubal of Inticing Creations made a custom guitar birthday cake for Journey guitarist Neal Schon, and appeared on TV next to Martha Stewart. Now she’s here with us to talk about how she got started in her sculpted edible cakes career, her experiences as a “reality tv star”, and why her husband “Home Boy” Pete is her third favorite kitchen tool.

Kelly also tells us

Our thanks to Kelly for joining us. You can find her at inticingcreations.com and on Twitter @kellyzubal.

Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram:

or email us at [email protected].

That’s a wrap!

Amazon and other links may be affiliates. Purchases help support the show.

Special Guest: Kelly Zubal, Inticing Creations.

We discuss the state of “plant-based meat alternatives” then taste seven different burgers, beef and not-beef, to see if we like (or can even identify!) the plant-based ones from Impossible Food and Beyond Burger. These are definitely not your old-school alternatives like Boca Burger or Gardenburger. Do these lab-engineered foods actually taste like beef? Can a self-described carnivore and a non-beef eater find common ground in these patties, or will we be left asking “Where’s the beef?!”

We start off talking about the explosion in the public consciousness about “plant based meat alternatives”, driven in part by Burger King, Carl’s Jr., White Castle and other fast food places including them on their menu (and the generally positive reviews they’ve gotten). Then we dive into the healthiness of eating plant-based burgers compared to beef burgers, talk a bit about the general squickiness we feel about eating foods engineered in a lab, and briefly explore their environmental impact.

Then we get to eating! Producer Jason, a self-professed burger lover, joins us in the taste test, where poke, prod and closely examine each burger to figure out which is which, while debating the definition of “burger” and “meat”.

We wrap up this episode with a philosophical discussion on knowing vs. not knowing what we’re eating, if beef will always be our first choice, and whether the next generation will consider animal flesh to be the weird thing to eat.

Our thanks to Producer Jason for joining us. You can find him on Twitter @jasonanthonyguy.

Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram:

or email us at [email protected].

That’s a wrap!

Amazon and other links may be affiliates. Purchases help support the show.

Special Guest: Jason Anthony Guy.

Growing up in a big Greek family, cooking for large groups was a natural part of Marissa Daskalakis Tsangaropoulos’ youth. She eventually turned that passion for bringing people together over food into a business, Fete Fraiche, first as a personal chef, and now as an event chef and caterer for the likes of Google and Stanford. Marissa shares the challenges of unanticipated growth, why saying no is such an important part of success, and the reason she’s such a gigantic fan of… lists and spreadsheets?

We start by talking about being born Greek, growing up in Queens and Chicago, and learning to cook at her grandmother’s side. Her best friend’s graduation gift led to a California visit, where she met her husband and they now live with their four kids. Before she started her cooking career, she earned two degrees (in Philosophy and Industrial Organizational Psychology) and started an MBA. After living in Florence, Italy for a minute (where she got her first chance to cook in a commercial kitchen), she returned to the States and completed her culinary training at the legendary California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. A stint at Michelin-starred Commonwealth, Ladies Who Lunch, and a few other local establishments, and she was ready to strike out on her own, creating Fete Fraiche.

She didn’t initially plan to do catering and events. She started as a personal chef, making meals for for families in their home kitchen. Her clients loved her so much, they started asking her to cater large gatherings and events, eventually requiring her to sublease a commercial kitchen to handle the unanticipated growth.

We chat about how her nightmare scenario of arriving at an event without any food almost came true, and the value of word of mouth in both marketing and hiring (especially when your website is “incomplete”!). And while her time in CCA didn’t completely prepare her for running a catering business, it turns out leading weeks-long holiday events for your kids’ schools most certainly does.

We wrap up with a frank discussion about the challenges of educating customers who want custom catering for less than what they’d pay at Chipotle, and the importance of telling those customers it’s not me, it’s you....

Our thanks to Marissa for joining us. You can find her on Instagram @fetefraichecooks and www.fetefraiche.com.

Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram:

or email us at [email protected].

That’s a wrap!

Amazon and other links may be affiliates. Purchases help support the show.

Special Guest: Marissa Daskalakis Tsangaropoulos, Fete Fraiche.

The lack of decent lunch options led Koji Kanematsu to launch Onigilly, serving onigiri—traditional Japanese rice balls—to busy American workers. He now has an ambitious mission to build Onigilly into a nationwide chain of at least 500 locations, as a healthier alternative to Subway and McDonald’s. He joins us to share his vision, how his early career in high tech and mobile gaming prepared him for the food business, and why the death of his childhood friend inspires him to always move forward.

The end of this episode mentions the death of Koji’s friend by suicide. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “home” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “home” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

Our thanks to Koji for joining us. You can find him on Twitter @onigilly and www.onigilly.com.

Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram:

or email us at [email protected].

That’s a wrap!

Amazon and other links may be affiliates. Purchases help support the show.

Special Guest: Koji Kanematsu, Onigilly.