The Sporkful

By Dan Pashman and Stitcher

Arts

What's The Sporkful about?

We obsess about food to learn more about people. The Sporkful isn't for foodies, it's for eaters. Hosted by Dan Pashman, who's also the inventor of the new pasta shape cascatelli. James Beard and Webby Award winner for Best Food Podcast. A Stitcher Production.

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The Brewer Rewriting The St...

03.20.2023

Zahra Tabatabai’s parents grew up in an Iran that would be unrecognizable today. “The pictures I see of my family in Iran in the sixties and seventies, they're in bikinis at the beach, drinking beer,” she says. Now, after the ...

The Sporkful episodes:

03.20.2023 The Brewer Rewriting The Story of Beer In Iran Zahra Tabatabai’s parents grew up in an Iran that would be unrecognizable today. “The pictures I see of my family in Iran in the sixties and seventies, they're in bikinis at the beach, drinking beer,” she says. Now, after the ...
03.13.2023 Raina’s Disordered Eating, One Year Later A year ago we spoke with a young woman we’re calling Raina, who felt she was on the verge of developing an eating disorder. For context and perspective, we spoke with comedian Margaret Cho, who's struggled with eating disorders much ...
03.06.2023 Should Fine Dining Exist? The Copenhagen restaurant Noma has consistently topped lists of best restaurants in the world. People fly in from all over the globe to pay $500 per person for the hyperlocal tasting menus dreamed up by chef/owner Rene Redzepi. But a ...
02.27.2023 The Last Big Mac In Iceland When Alexandra Yingst plopped down at a bar in Reykjavik after a 10-hour drive through a blizzard, she saw something unexpected: a Big Mac, in seemingly perfect condition, under a glass dome. It turns out that Big Mac tells us ...
02.13.2023 Alan And Arlene Alda Bonded Over A Fallen Rum Cake "Flirting over food is really the best way to flirt," says actor Alan Alda, and he would know. He met his wife, Arlene, at a dinner party in college. A rum cake fell off the top of a refrigerator, and ...
02.06.2023 A French Chef And Cincinnati: A Love Story When the French chef Jean-Robert de Cavel died in December, hundreds of chefs wore their white coats to his memorial service in downtown Cincinnati. It was a testament to how many people Jean-Robert had inspired in the thirty years he ...
01.30.2023 The Boom And Bust Of Meat Alternatives We’re entering the third wave of meat alternatives. First, there was the Gardenburger — a hockey puck-like object that made it less annoying to be a vegetarian at a barbecue. Next came the meat substitutes that really tried to replicate ...
01.23.2023 Mission: ImPASTAble 9 \| New Shapes From Old Places The number one question Dan has gotten since inventing cascatelli is: Are you going to invent another pasta shape? The answer is probably not — the sequel is never as good as the original. Instead, he gets a better idea: ...
01.13.2023 Gas Stoves Have Ignited A Firestorm This week, a federal regulator called gas stoves a “hidden hazard,” saying a ban on them was in the realm of possibility. President Biden and the Consumer Product Safety Commission quickly walked back that statement, but not before it ignited ...
01.09.2023 What ‘The Bear’ And ‘The Menu’ Say About Restaurant Culture From the show about a thirst trap chef at a Chicago Italian beef joint, to a movie about a luxury restaurant planning to kill its customers, 2022 was the year of ambitious, experimental, and downright weird food TV and movies. ...
12.19.2022 New Year’s Food Resolutions 2023 What foods do Sporkful listeners resolve to eat more of in the new year, and why? And what’s Dan’s New Year’s food resolution for 2023? All is revealed in our annual year-end spectacular.
12.12.2022 Rick Martínez Hates The Word ‘Authentic’ When Rick Martínez was growing up in Texas, he and his mom would drive across the Mexican border to go to mercados and buy dried chiles. One winter break, they spent two weeks recreating Rick’s grandma’s recipe for tamales, using ...
12.05.2022 Illyanna Maisonet Is Always Pissed Off Growing up in Sacramento, Illyanna Maisonet felt distant from her Puerto Rican roots. Eventually, through food, she found her connection to the Puerto Rican diaspora, and to the island’s rich culinary history and diversity, which she says are often overlooked ...
11.28.2022 Claire Saffitz Doesn’t Need To Defend Dessert (Live) Beloved dessert person Claire Saffitz joins Dan for a holiday baking-themed extravaganza and tackles some of the most pressing baking questions of the moment… What’s the best way to roll out pie dough into a uniform shape? How can I ...
11.21.2022 The Firehouse Chef Who Still Burns His Toast Firefighters face plenty of high-pressure situations — including cooking a lunch for their crewmates that’s hot, filling, and on time. The pressure is even greater for A.J. Fusco, a firefighter in Harrison, New York, who moonlights as a chef in ...
11.14.2022 A New Jersey Whiskey Mystery A bottle of whiskey with no online footprint. A bar that’s long been closed. An address that doesn’t exist.
11.07.2022 Wendy Osefo Is A ‘Real Housewife’ Who Actually Cooks It’s not just her three graduate degrees that set Dr. Wendy Osefo apart on "The Real Housewives of Potomac." It’s also that she loves to cook. She says her castmates see her as “the only person on this entire show ...
10.31.2022 Nigella Lawson Orders Food Like A Method Actor Nigella Lawson is a domestic goddess of the highest order. She strikes the perfect balance between aspiration — a beautiful garden, perfect lighting — and accessibility — sheet pan dinners and a disdain for pretentiousness. Nigella reveals how her own ...
10.24.2022 Southern Cooking, Via Gujarat And Oakland Today, we talk with two chefs who are putting their own stamp on Southern food, each refusing to be pigeonholed in the process. Vishwesh Bhatt was born and raised in Gujarat, India. He moved to Oxford, Mississippi, for graduate school ...
10.10.2022 How To Export Coffee In A War (Pt 2) As civil war erupted in Yemen, Mokhtar Alkhanshali found himself imprisoned, with $5,000 stuffed in his underwear and his coffee samples confiscated. To get those samples to the biggest specialty coffee expo in North America, he’d have to survive more ...
10.03.2022 How To Export Coffee In A War (Pt 1) Mokhtar Alkhanshali was a doorman in San Francisco when he saw a statue that changed his life. The statue was of an Arab man holding a cup of coffee, and it led Mokhtar to learn about the origins of coffee, ...
09.26.2022 Celebrating Shabbat At Wendy’s Shabbat — the Jewish Sabbath – begins every Friday at sundown with a meal. But in all the years that Jews have been having Shabbat dinner, there’s no record in the rabbinic texts of it happening at the fast food ...
09.19.2022 Inside The Consumer Reports Test Labs Dan goes inside Consumer Reports, the independent nonprofit that tests and rates everything from toaster ovens to frozen pizzas to luxury cars. CR takes testing very seriously, and Dan gets to see their process in action. It all starts with ...
09.12.2022 Malcolm Gladwell Only Drinks Five Liquids Author and podcast host Malcolm Gladwell immigrated to Canada when he was young, the child of an English father and Jamaican mother. He’s always felt like an outsider. He hated maple syrup, in a town that hosts the largest one-day ...
09.05.2022 This Man Can Identify Pizza From Its Grease Stain By day, Scott Wiener leads pizza tours around New York City. By night, he shares his Brooklyn apartment with his world record-holding pizza box collection. Since going all in on pizza, he’s visited tomato farms in California and buffalo farms ...
08.29.2022 Why Desk Lunches Are Illegal In France In France, you either leave your desk during lunch, or you’re breaking the law. Which makes Kaitlin Plachy, an American expat in Strasbourg who secretly eats at her desk most days, an outlaw. So why do the French have this ...
08.22.2022 Sohla And Ham El-Waylly Settle A Pancake Dispute Chefs and YouTube stars Sohla and Ham El-Waylly first met in culinary school, where they geeked out over hydrocolloids and molecular gastronomy. Since then they’ve gotten married, opened (and closed) a restaurant together, and spent countless hours collaborating in the ...
08.08.2022 When Opera Rejected Alexander Smalls, He Opened A Restaurant After 15 years as an opera singer and winning a Grammy and a Tony, Alexander Smalls got turned down for a lead role at the Metropolitan Opera. He’d hit the same glass ceiling that held back many Black opera singers ...
08.01.2022 The Problem With The International Aisle (Live) What has to happen for Vietnamese lemongrass barbecue sauce to take up as much space as Texas barbecue sauce on an American grocery store shelf? There’s a whole generation of young entrepreneurs — many of them women of color — ...
07.25.2022 Traveling Back In Time For Coconut Cake Dan goes on an adventure around Los Angeles, starting at the airport. Where is he going? He doesn't know.
07.18.2022 Phil Rosenthal Has A Menu Strategy Wherever Phil Rosenthal goes, he wants to eat — which explains the name of his Netflix show, Somebody Feed Phil. He travels the world with wide eyes, an empty stomach, and a bottomless supply of delight at the people and ...
07.11.2022 2 Chefs And A Lie: Canadian Prime Minister Edition Dan gives up the hosting chair and becomes a contestant in our most popular (and only) Sporkful game show, 2 Chefs And A Lie! The game is simple. Dan talks with three “chefs.”
07.04.2022 A Quick History Of American Barbecue Barbecue is America’s culinary national pastime. Dozens of books have been written about it, food writers criss-cross the country looking for the best places, and people wait hours to eat at the most famous spots. In his book The Cooking ...
06.27.2022 After His Father’s Death, Carlos Frías Found Solace In Miami’s Ventanitas Fernando Frías was a successful cafe and restaurant owner in Havana, but when Fidel Castro came to power, the government nationalized Fernando’s businesses and imprisoned him when he tried to leave the country. Eventually he got out, settling near Miami ...
06.20.2022 Don’t Call Stephen Satterfield Brilliant. Invest In Him Instead. You might know Stephen Satterfield as the host of Netflix’s High on the Hog, but he’s also one of the only Black food magazine publishers in the country. Inspired by his work as a sommelier and in the South African ...
06.13.2022 Nicole Taylor Busted Through The Door Of Food Media When Nicole Taylor was writing her first cookbook, publishers were expecting her to focus on soul food — because she’s Black. Like Freda DeKnight, the Ebony food editor we heard about last week, Nicole knew that Black American food was ...
06.06.2022 The Table Freda Built Today ahead of Juneteenth we’re launching “By Us For Everyone,” a three-part series about how Black American food is represented in media, and how those portrayals change when Black people are in charge of them. In the 1940s and ‘50s, ...
05.30.2022 Lunchtime With The Simpsons Dan’s dreams come true when he visits The Simpsons writers’ room to talk about the role food plays on the show and behind the scenes. Turns out the writers are just as obsessed with food as all of the show’s ...
05.23.2022 Help! My Spouse Keeps Eating Old Eggs And Raw Meat When you’re served a plate with a variety of foods on it, should you put a bit of each on the fork to create one multi-faceted bite? Or alternate between foods? A married couple comes to us for mediation in ...
05.16.2022 Women Shouldn’t Cook For Free, Says Asma Khan The London restaurant Darjeeling Express is the place to go for an outstanding mutton kebab, and for celebrity sightings. But the chef behind this hotspot has no formal culinary training. Asma Khan started her cooking career hosting secret supper clubs ...
05.09.2022 Cold Case: Office Fridge Food Theft Edition It’s Elkhart, Indiana, 2001. Two inches of Heather Coleman's turkey club disappear from her office fridge. The thief is nowhere to be found.
05.02.2022 Where Houston’s Afghan Refugees Go For A Taste Of Home Over the past year, Houston has taken in more Afghan refugees than any other American city. When they arrive, Omer Yousafzai is there to welcome them. He owns The Afghan Village restaurant, which has become a community hub and gathering ...
04.25.2022 Jason Mantzoukas Sees Every Meal As A Threat Actor and comedian Jason Mantzoukas is known for playing characters that are overzealous, exuberant, and more than a little wacky. But these characters are the exact opposite of how Jason felt growing up — like a “boy made of glass.” ...
04.18.2022 Is Di Fara Pizza Worth The Wait? (Remembering Dom DeMarco) Ever waited in a crazy long line for some famous pizza or doughnuts or barbecue? Was it worth it? This week Dan goes to Di Fara Pizza with "Serious Eats" founder Ed Levine. Di Fara is a legendary Brooklyn pizzeria ...
04.11.2022 Duff Goldman Has Learned To Live With His Fear When Food Network star Duff Goldman got into baking elaborate cakes, he was just trying to pay the bills while pursuing his real dream of rock stardom. So what happened? This week we talk with the Ace of Cakes host ...
04.04.2022 How SPAM Became A Filipino Staple During World War II, wherever American troops were sent, they left the canned meat known as SPAM in their wake. When American GIs landed overseas, they often tossed cans of SPAM out of trucks to feed hungry people. Producer Gabrielle ...
03.28.2022 How ‘Frasier’ Got André Mack Obsessed With Wine André Hueston Mack is one of America’s best known sommeliers. But for most of his career, he’s felt like an outsider. In the rarefied wine world, he likes to wear Air Jordans and a Mickey Mouse watch.
03.21.2022 Are The Jell-O Heirs Cursed? Allie Rowbottom’s great-great-great uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor in 1899 for $450, then sold it in the 1920s for $67 million — nearly a billion dollars in today’s money. Lately, Allie’s been obsessed with how all ...
03.14.2022 Live: Kenji López-Alt No Longer Calls His Recipes “The Best” After two years of recording interviews from his basement, Dan is taking The Sporkful back on the road! Chef, YouTuber, and cookbook author J. Kenji López-Alt joins Dan on stage in San Francisco to celebrate the release of Kenji's new ...
03.07.2022 Is Halal Pork Impossible? Many of us grew up with rules or customs around food. For Aymann Ismail, a practicing Muslim, that meant not eating pork. But as he got older, he became curious about why eating pork was a line that even less ...

Older episodes

The Sporkful

What's The Sporkful about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Sporkful episodes:

The Brewer Rewriting The Story of Beer In Iran

Raina’s Disordered Eating, One Year Later

Should Fine Dining Exist?

The Last Big Mac In Iceland

Alan And Arlene Alda Bonded Over A Fallen Rum Cake

A French Chef And Cincinnati: A Love Story

The Boom And Bust Of Meat Alternatives

Mission: ImPASTAble 9 | New Shapes From Old Places

Gas Stoves Have Ignited A Firestorm

What ‘The Bear’ And ‘The Menu’ Say About Restaurant Culture

New Year’s Food Resolutions 2023

Rick Martínez Hates The Word ‘Authentic’

Illyanna Maisonet Is Always Pissed Off

Claire Saffitz Doesn’t Need To Defend Dessert (Live)

The Firehouse Chef Who Still Burns His Toast

A New Jersey Whiskey Mystery

Wendy Osefo Is A ‘Real Housewife’ Who Actually Cooks

Nigella Lawson Orders Food Like A Method Actor

Southern Cooking, Via Gujarat And Oakland

How To Export Coffee In A War (Pt 2)

How To Export Coffee In A War (Pt 1)

Celebrating Shabbat At Wendy’s

Inside The Consumer Reports Test Labs

Malcolm Gladwell Only Drinks Five Liquids

This Man Can Identify Pizza From Its Grease Stain

Why Desk Lunches Are Illegal In France

Sohla And Ham El-Waylly Settle A Pancake Dispute

When Opera Rejected Alexander Smalls, He Opened A Restaurant

The Problem With The International Aisle (Live)

Traveling Back In Time For Coconut Cake

Phil Rosenthal Has A Menu Strategy

2 Chefs And A Lie: Canadian Prime Minister Edition

A Quick History Of American Barbecue

After His Father’s Death, Carlos Frías Found Solace In Miami’s Ventanitas

Don’t Call Stephen Satterfield Brilliant. Invest In Him Instead.

Nicole Taylor Busted Through The Door Of Food Media

The Table Freda Built

Lunchtime With The Simpsons

Help! My Spouse Keeps Eating Old Eggs And Raw Meat

Women Shouldn’t Cook For Free, Says Asma Khan

Cold Case: Office Fridge Food Theft Edition

Where Houston’s Afghan Refugees Go For A Taste Of Home

Jason Mantzoukas Sees Every Meal As A Threat

Is Di Fara Pizza Worth The Wait? (Remembering Dom DeMarco)

Duff Goldman Has Learned To Live With His Fear

How SPAM Became A Filipino Staple

How ‘Frasier’ Got André Mack Obsessed With Wine

Are The Jell-O Heirs Cursed?

Live: Kenji López-Alt No Longer Calls His Recipes “The Best”

Is Halal Pork Impossible?

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