This Is TASTE

There aren’t a lot of things on the internet that have been around since 1999. But David Lebovitz’s blog (and now Substack), full of quips, stories, and recipes from his life in Paris, is one of them. David is the author of many cookbooks, including The Perfect Scoop, Ready For Dessert, Drinking French, and the iconic My Paris Kitchen. This is such a fun conversation, full of life and stories about pastry in San Francisco and Paris. David is one of our all-time favorites, and it was so fun having him in the studio. We hope you enjoy this conversation. 

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Alison Cayne is the founder of Haven's Kitchen, a pioneering culinary school, café, and consumer brand that has been at the center of the New York City food world for nearly a decade. We absolutely loved catching up with Alison about her journey to launching the company and some of the wild events she has hosted over the years. We also talk about her pivot to the world of consumer packaged goods and how she makes it all work in this very competitive world. 

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Banza is the chickpea pasta with the bright orange boxes that have become nothing short of a phenomenon, changing the way we think about gluten-free pasta forever. Matt is a legit fan of the rotini and the penne, as well as the brand’s expansion into pizza, and he invited Banza’s founder, Brian Rudolph, into the studio. They talk about the founding of the company, how Brian landed on the iconic branding, and what makes a great pasta sauce. We hope you enjoy this conversion.

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Eunjo Park doesn’t necessarily need kimbap, but kimbap most certainly needs her—or fans of kimbap need her, at least. When Eunjo, a veteran of Per Se and the three-Michelin-starred Gaon in Seoul, was opening the first Momofuku restaurant to explicitly focus on Korean food, Momofuku Kāwi, located on the far west side of New York in Hudson Yards, one of the very first dishes she and her boss, David Chang, wanted to focus on was kimbap. And focus she did, which we talk about on this great episode. We also talk about her amazing career, and how she is thinking deeply about modern Korean cooking. We love Eunjo and hope you enjoy this talk.

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Rie McClenny is a video host and cookbook author who rose to acclaim in the test kitchen at BuzzFeed, where she hosted video series including Make It Fancy. On this episode, we find out about her journey from Japan to professional kitchens in Los Angeles to YouTube stardom. We also talk about her terrific debut cookbook, Make It Japanese: Simple Recipes for Everyone. We hope you enjoy this conversation. 

Also on the show, Matt catches up with his old friend Evan Wittenberg. Evan is passionate about the Philadelphia food scene, the Netflix works of Phil Rosenthal, Cormac McCarthy novels, and playing the drums. He is also 13. It’s fun catching up with one of our younger listeners to find out what is good.

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Sana Javeri Kadri is the founder of Diaspora Co., an equitable—and highly useful—spice company paying an average of six times the commodity price to 150 farm partners across India and Sri Lanka. On this episode Sana unpacks exactly how Diaspora Co. has expanded their scope and scale while remaining true to their mission, plus moving back to Mumbai and much more. 

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Klancy Miller is the author of For the Culture: Phenomenal Black Women and Femmes in Food, a fantastic new anthology pairing recipes and reflections that began as a magazine with the same name. Klancy is also a trained pastry chef, a recipe developer, and the author of Cooking Solo: The Fun of Cooking for Yourself. We’ve long admired Klancy’s work, and it’s a thrill to have her on the show to talk about creating the book she wished she had access to when coming up in the industry, her love of Paris, and much more.

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Kaitlin and Sarah Leung join us in the studio to talk about their long-running online food blog The Woks of Life. For anybody who has ever held a wok over high heat, The Woks of Life has been a steady hand helping you along the way. In this fun episode, we talk about how the pair went professional with their blog and how they wrote their debut cookbook, The Woks of Life, with their parents. That’s four authors—two parents and two siblings—for those who are counting. We also find out some answers to life’s biggest burning Chinese home cooking questions. 

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Dan Frommer is the founder and editor in chief of the New Consumer, an influential publication that covers the intersection of technology and consumer brands—and many of these brands live in the food world. We wanted to have Dan on the show to talk about his year-end consumer trends report, as well as just to shoot the shit about the big stories of 2023: the big moves in consumer packaged goods and retail, and what the future holds for our current United States of Ozempic. It’s so great catching up with Dan in the studio. 

Also on the show, Aliza and Matt go over some of their cooking resolutions for 2024, including making bread, working that pizza, and much more.

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Emily Sundberg has a knack for writing stories that get people talking. The freelance writer and mind behind the business newsletter Feed Me has an expert eye for trends in the food space and beyond, like the return of whole milk and the rise of the “shoppy shop”—you know, those cute, curated grocery stores that all seem to carry the same made-for-Instagram products. We wanted to have Emily back into the studio to talk about the year in food and drink retail—the products, the trends, and all the media that flows around them. We also talk about the future of Bon Appétit, and how food media is struggling to fight for your "time and your tabs." Emily is truly one of our favorite voices on the food internet (and really online as a whole), and we were excited to have her on the show. 

Also on the show, Aliza and Matt discuss the year in new (and kind-of-new) products and call out their favorites. These include Diaspora Co. pumpkin spice mix, Confusion Snacks popcorn, Cabi Foods dashi soy sauce, OLIPOP everything, Taiwanese soy paste, and Lexington Bakes brownies.        

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