This Is TASTE

Gail Simmons is a very cool human being—had to say that from the jump! While many know her best from Top Chef, Gail’s career in food expands way beyond a judge’s table. She trained at culinary school and went on to assist legendary food writer and columnist Jeffrey Steingarten. She also worked the line in busy New York City restaurants and is the author of two books, including her latest, Bringing It Home. We wanted to have her on the show to talk about her past in New York City restaurant kitchens and what we can expect on the new season of Top Chef.

And, hey, this is our 200th episode! While this is simply a round number and that’s it, Matt wants to acknowledge the team who helps bring the show to the feed many times a week. This show does not happen without cohost Aliza Abarbanel; our amazing producers, Shalea Harris and Pat Stango; our incredible editor, Clayton Gumbert; our amazing illustrator, Ellie Skrzat; and, most of all, all of you listeners out there. Thanks for tuning in each week. Thanks for all the messages on IG and the emails. And thanks for telling your friends about the show.

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Chef and budding TV personality Daniel Harthausen is one of the most exciting voices in food, having just won the first season of HBO’s very good cooking competition show The Big Brunch and running the roving pop-up Young Mother in Richmond, Virginia. Harthausen was raised by a Korean mother and a half-Korean father and “had a baseline of what really good Korean food tasted like, without really knowing it at the time,” he told Matt during a Zoom conversation earlier this year. He was visiting New York recently, and we asked him to stop by the studio for a really cool conversation about his travels, his loot (he won $300,000 on the show), and the delicate topic of Korean-Japanese relations. He’s got a lot to say, and we were so excited to have him in.

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Trigg Brown is the chef and co-owner of Win Son and the coauthor of a really great new book, Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook. Trigg and Matt share many mutual friends, and it was really cool for them to meet for the first time on the mic. We talk about Trigg’s early cooking career in Charlottesville, Virgina, and working in New York City with the Colichio crew at Craft and Colichio & Sons (shout-out to Damon Wise) before opening his own restaurant, Win Son, to great acclaim. We also discuss his time traveling through Taiwan and what makes a modern restaurant work. 

Also on the show, we have a great conversation with Rani Cheema. Rani is the founder of Cheema’s Travel, a boutique travel agency specializing in food trips. We talk about some of the destinations that are trending around the globe and get into how we can all travel better (with food on the mind). It’s a great conversation as we gear up for summer travel planning.

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How cool to have our old friend and former colleague Talia Baiocchi on the show. Talia has one of the sharpest minds in food media, and we talk about the publication she has run for nearly a decade, PUNCH. We wanted to ask Talia about so many topics related to modern drinking culture, including the explosion of nonalcoholic drinks, the issues with natural wine, and her take on the future of the cocktail. We also talk about her cookbook, Pasta, that she wrote with New York City chef Missy Robbins. It was a blast having Talia on, and we hope you enjoy it.

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Yay, it’s Smitten Kitchen day, and we’re really, really excited to welcome back our friend Deb Perelman. Deb is the writer, photographer, recipe developer, and driving force behind one of the internet’s most popular home cooking destinations. We talk about what she’s been cooking and how she’s been living her best life with two kids in New York’s East Village, and we discuss her wonderful new book, Smitten Kitchen Keepers. What makes a “keeper” recipe, you might ask. We get into that and a lot more on this really fun episode.

Also on the show, Aliza and Matt talk about spice blends, and how they finally deserve much more respect.

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Indian chef and Unapologetic Foods cofounder Chintan Pandya is a James Beard Award–winning chef and runs some of the best restaurants in NYC, including Adda, Dhamaka, Semma, Rowdy Rooster, and his latest Bengali triumph, Masalawala & Sons. We invited Chintan into the studio because, dude, we wanted to know how he keeps opening hit after hit. We wanted to talk about regional Indian cooking and how most American Indian restaurants focus on such a narrow spectrum of the recipe canon. And we wanted to find out about expansion plans—and a cookbook. And an upcoming trip to India. We really enjoyed catching up with one of the bright stars in the New York City restaurant scene.

Also on the show, Aliza and Matt talk about some recent favorites including S&P Lunch, pop rock cake pops for ravers, Queens SF, How Far the Light Reaches, and Cadbury Curly Wurly Squirlies.  

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Yes, Bill Addison is back on TASTE. We’ve long been a fan of Bill’s writing, going back to his well-considered restaurant criticism in Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco, Eater as a roving national critic, and for the past three-plus years as the head restaurant critic at the Los Angeles Times. Bill is our favorite critic, writing about our favorite food city in the United States, and we talk about what’s exciting about LA right now. We also get into his writing routine, some of his favorite slept-on gems, and what the hell is going on at The ROW? And what is up with Craig’s? This is such a great conversation, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

And to close out Restaurant Critic Week, Aliza and Matt talk about the state of the restaurant critic in 2023. Who are their favorites in the game? Which writers should be given a reviewing beat? And what about Tik Tok reviewers? There’s a lot to go over, and we cover it all.

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For years, Ryan Sutton was the chief restaurant critic at Eater New York, before his position was recently eliminated. Ryan is one of the most respected critics in the game, and we wanted to invite him to the studio to talk about his career and some of the memorable stories he’s worked on. Does Ryan have any reviews that he regrets? How does he stay excited about dining out each and every night? And what is next for Ryan Sutton? He answers most of our questions in this amazing episode. We hope you enjoy it.

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After working as a fact checker for years at the New Yorker and contributing to the magazine’s Tables for Two column, Hannah Goldfield was named the magazine’s first full-time restaurant critic in 2018. We welcome Hannah back to discuss her life as a New York City restaurant critic. We talk about some of her recent reviews and get some of her thoughts on that little film called The Menu—where a big-city restaurant critic is portrayed in the most curious of ways. Does Hannah find it accurate? Our producer Pat Stango joins to discuss. 

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On this very special episode, we catch up with the one and only Cathy Erway. Cathy is a prolific writer and cookbook author behind the great new book Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook, which she wrote with the cofounders of Brooklyn restaurant Win Son. During this wide-ranging conversation, we find out about Cathy’s cookbook writing career and her James Beard Award–winning work on TASTE. We also dive into her column, Shelve It, and find out how grocery store shelves tell us so much about our modern culture.

Buy: Sheet Pan Chicken

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