On this week's Special Sauce we talk to Dan Barber, executive chef and co-owner of Blue Hill, about the huge changes being brought about in the food culture by the Covid-19 pandemic. The startling conclusions he's come to are the result of a survey he and his team sent out to more than 500 farmers. The farmers' responses made it clear that the effects of the pandemic will have catastrophic consequences for many of them. As you'll hear, the usually pessimistic Barber has some ideas that can help both the farmers and the thousands of out of work restaurant cooks in this country.

The articulate Mr. Barber is followed by our very own Kenji Lopez-Alt, who answers a Serious Eater's question about the use of dried versus fresh herbs. Surprisingly, for certain uses of some herbs, Kenji turns out to be an advocate for the dried variety.

--

The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/07/special-sauce-dan-barber-farms-1.html

On this week's Special Sauce we're once again talking about selling cheese during the pandemic with cheesemonger Anne Saxelby of Saxelby Cheesemongers and cheesemaker Sheila Flanagan of Nettle Meadow Farm and Artisan Cheese. Without a hint of self-pity, Anne and Sheila talk about the nimbleness and the optimism required to keep their businesses going. You can support both Saxelby and Flanagan by buying cheese directly from their websites, you won't be disappointed. After our inspiring cheese talk, we once again stay on the dairy theme when Kenji Lopez-Alt answers a Serious Eater's question about the differences between American and European butter.

--

The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: 

https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/07/special-sauce-anne-saxelby-sheila-flanagan-cheese-2.html

This week on Special Sauce we are returning to the topic of the horrendous toll the pandemic has taken on the food culture. Today, we’re talking cheese. In the first of two far-ranging interviews, I spoke to cheesemaker Sheila Flanagan, co-owner of Nettle Meadow Farm, and Saxelby Cheesemongers owner Anne Saxelby.

This episode of Special Sauce also marks the return of our "Ask Kenji" feature. Today, given our interviewees, I thought it was only right that Kenji answer a dairy-related question, about butter. (Sheila Flanagan, in addition to cheese, makes a delicious, lightly salted butter, too.) 

So enjoy the cheese and butter talk on today's episode of Special Sauce. And please stay safe and healthy. 

--

The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/06/special-sauce-anne-saxelby-sheila-flanagan-cheese-1.html

"A jukebox is the musical equivalent of a well-stocked pantry," says Alexander Smalls. Poetic riffs on the relationship between food and music are just par for the course with Smalls, who's both a Grammy and a James Beard Award winner (not to mention a Tony winner, too). In part two of our interview, we talked about everything from hanging out with James Baldwin and Nina Simone in Paris to the guests he'd invite to his last supper. How does a table with the aforementioned Baldwin and Simone, along with Toni Morrison, Jessye Norman, Aretha Franklin, and Gloria Steinem sound? Pretty damn swell to me. 

  It was such a pleasure and an honor to hang out with Alexander Smalls, who is truly a national treasure. His new book is titled, Meals, Music, and Muses: Recipes From My African American Kitchen, and it belongs in every household's collection. Just like last week, we'll play the episode out with his stunning, soon-to-be-released rendition of Wade in the Water.   --   The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats:  https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/06/alexander-smalls-2.html

The last Special Sauce I recorded in a studio before the coronavirus pandemic hit was with the multi-talented chef, opera singer, and restaurateur Alexander Smalls. He was just about to publish his new book, Meals, Music, and Muses: Recipes From My African American Kitchen. It was March 11th, and after an hour-long interview I found myself in awe of Alexander. We hugged in the green room at the studio as we said goodbye, and that was in fact the last hug I have received from anyone besides my wife since. It was an extraordinary interview, befitting an extraordinary man, who I think is the only person in the world to have won a Tony, a Grammy, and a James Beard Award.

But now, three months later, given what's transpired in the interim, we thought it was time to check in with the remarkable Mr. Smalls. We were very confident that he would have a lot to say about our current state of affairs. And as you're about to hear, he most certainly did. But before you hear all that, we decided to include a big chunk of our initial interview in this episode.

Next week you'll hear more about Alexander's new book and recording. I think Serious Eaters will find both this week's episode and next week's to be must-listens. How lucky we are to hear Alexander Smalls's story in its entirety at this moment.

--

The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/06/special-sauce-alexander-smalls-part-1.html

Special Sauce has obviously changed a lot with the advent of the pandemic. But before we changed the format a couple of months ago to adapt to the times, we'd already recorded a couple of great interviews. One of them was with my old friend, cookbook writer and food stylist extraordinaire Susan Spungen. Susan's new book, Open Kitchen: Inspired Food for Casual Gatherings, came out 17 days before New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued his stay-at-home order. Susan's bag was already packed for a national book tour, but obviously that tour never happened. With the country slowly opening back up for small gatherings, I thought it would be a great time to check back in with Susan. I figured she might have some interesting things to say about what a properly socially distanced gathering would look like and what we would eat there.  As she says, we've arrived at a moment when "people are craving togetherness and they like to eat together and be together." We should note that Susan's comments and mine are impressionistic and most assuredly not prescriptive. People should consult trusted sources like the CDC to find out how they can gather and eat. We also went back in and edited some of her original interview into this episode. With so many people out of a job today wondering about what the future holds for them work-wise, I found it comforting to hear about Susan Spungen's circuitous career path. She went from dropping out of art school to making omelets to order at a hotel buffet to working side by side with Martha Stewart for ten years. I hope Serious Eaters will find it comforting as well.

--

The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/05/special-sauce-susan-spungen.html

On this week's Special Sauce, New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells, who's been used to eating out six nights a week, tells us about cooking lunch and dinner for his two teenaged sons now that he's home every day. Pete explains that he's really enjoyed returning to the kitchen every day; he notes that he originally got into food writing because he loved to cook. I asked him if his sons appreciate his culinary efforts? "At least they're not complaining," Pete says, which is about the best you can hope for with teenagers. But you'll also want to tune into the episode to hear Pete's thoughts about how the role of the restaurant critic will need to adapt to the restaurant landscape, which, as everyone knows, has been overturned by the coronavirus pandemic.

--

The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: 

ttps://www.seriouseats.com/2020/05/special-sauce-nyts-pete-wells-on-the-future-of-restaurant-criticism.html

What does a restaurant critic do when there are no restaurants to review? The San Francisco Chronicle's Soleil Ho has shifted to primarily covering how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting the restaurant industry in the Bay Area, while also writing profiles of people like the Indonesian artist known as Nao, who publishes drawings of toast that, according to Soleil, "have garnered her a legion of followers who swoon at the accuracy of her char marks, the glorious shimmer of her half-melted butter and the detailed brush strokes in her crusts."

And this week's Special Sauce guest, Pete Wells of the New York Times has similarly broadened the scope of his work. He recently wrote a terrific piece with Jennifer Steinhauer about the ripple effects of restaurant closures, particularly in areas where restaurant booms have helped sustain local economies. The story really struck a chord with me, so I decided to ring Pete up and find out more about what he's been up to for the last two months.

Our thought-provoking, far-reaching conversation covered so many bases that we've split it into two episodes. The first one covers how the restaurant industry has shifted, and how those changes have affected cities throughout the U.S.; in part two, which we’ll publish next week, you’ll hear more about how his job and life as a whole has changed.

And, again, if you care about the fate of restaurants as much as Pete and I do, please go to saverestaurants.com to find out what you can do. Or donate what you can to Jose Andres's organization, World Central Kitchen. Through its Chefs for America initiative, it has served over seven million meals to people in need during the pandemic and has activated many restaurant kitchens in the process.

--

The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/05/special-sauce-pete-wells-coronavirus-1.html

According to Ezekiel Vázquez-Ger, my guest on this week's Special Sauce, everything was going swimmingly at his new Washington, DC, restaurant, Seven Reasons. The place was packed almost from the minute it opened its doors in April of 2019. A rave review followed in The Washington Post in October, and then, a month later, Esquire named it America's Best New Restaurant of the year. It even survived a fire that started at the bar next door.

It was all good, until it wasn't. The coronavirus pandemic hit, and Ezekiel had to close his doors in March and lay off all of his employees. But, as you'll hear Ezekiel describe, he and his chef and co-owner, Enrique Limardo, along with their employees, banded together in creative ways in order to survive.

The Seven Reasons story is hardly unique. The pandemic is forcing independent restaurant owners and all the people that make up those restaurants' supply chain to tap their creativity to reimagine their businesses in ways that go way beyond take-out and delivery.

The outcome for these endeavors is uncertain, but if you care about the vibrant food culture we've created in this country, you can't help but root for all of these folks to succeed. We need as many of these people to make it to the other side as possible.

Once you hear Ezekiel tell his story, I'm sure you'll want to do something about the situation he and the hundreds of thousands of small food business owners, and their millions of employees, find themselves in. I urge you to visit the website for the Independent Restaurant Coalition to find out what you can do to help.

--

The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/05/special-sauce-ezekiel-vazquez-ger.html

In 2010, Agatha Kulaga and Erin Patinkin founded Ovenly, which they originally envisioned as a bar-snack business, providing bars with better alternatives to beer nuts and potato chips. Over the course of ten years, Ovenly transformed into a combination wholesale/retail bakery, with four retail locations and a healthy wholesale business selling to coffee bars and upscale grocers. By March of 2020 it had grown into a business with more than fifty employees and a new, about-to-open location at Kennedy Airport.

Then, when the pandemic struck, it had to close up shop both as a baked goods retailer and as a wholesaler. And in what Agatha called the most heartbreaking decision she has had to make as a pro-socially-minded businesswoman (many of their employees were people who have faced high hurdles entering the workforce), Agatha and Erin had to lay off just about their entire staff. On this episode of Special Sauce, we get to hear the Ovenly story in Agatha's own words. 

Once you hear Agatha tell her story I'm sure you'll want to do something about the situation she and the hundreds of thousands of small food-business owners, and their millions of employees, find themselves in. I urge you to visit the Independent Restaurant Coalition's website to find out what you can do. 

--

The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats:

https://www.seriouseats.com/preview?record=453144