Thou Shalt Worship All Things Local

From staycations in Manhattan, to finding Dame Agatha Christie in London, all the way to exploring embroidery in Cristiano Ronaldo's home island of Madeira, travel writer Daniel Scheffler insists that all things local are where the lessons in humanity lie for all of us. #travel

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi, and welcome to everywhere. I am your host. Daniel
Scheffler Today's travel commandment thou shalt worship all things local.
The way I see it, travel is both a noun
and a verb. But for the most part, I think
we use it as a verb to travel, to explore,

(00:25):
to see, to escape, to lose yourself, to find yourself.
I think of it so much as a very busy
doing word. So perhaps that's why travel has a connotation
of leaving home for another place, another country, another city, upstate, wherever.
But I'm also the biggest fan of traveling in my
own city. Maybe that's why I travel for me as

(00:48):
a noun, the concept of travel more than the doing
of it. Necessarily, As a New Yorker, I've slept in
roughly thefty hotels in Manhattan and a few in the
other borrows as staycations, because when you live somewhere, it's
so easy to forget all the beauty and excitement of
the actual place and why I chose to live there,

(01:11):
especially in a city like New York, because locals have
the joys of standing in line as a day trip
at the d m V somewhere in the Bronx to
get their driver's license, or having to do this crazy,
insane zig zag dance at the trade of Joe's and Chelsea,
which takes an entire afternoon, all fending off yet another

(01:32):
person accosting you to sign up for Dog Knows What.
Oh New York, The things you make me do. But
I have a serious love for a staycation. Let's call
that the noun of travel. And yes, staycation is a silly,
silly word, so let's rename it. Suggestions anyone, I'm taking

(01:55):
them at our email address, please. This desire for staying
in hotels in my hometown and for experiencing home almost
as a tourist, actually started for me as a young
boy right in London, maybe the greatest city on Earth.
I mean, you've heard the saying, right, if you're tired
of London, you're tired of life. Well apparently I heard

(02:16):
that loud and clear, and I jumped right into it,
making sure that travel without travel Darling London was as
exciting as possible. This was my method at age eight,
and I haven't quit yet. As an eight year old,
my needs were centered around Zone one, which is truly
the center of London. By the time I was a teenager,

(02:37):
I was heading far east in the city, which in
the early two thousands was a place for Sunday afternoon
rave parties that's spilt onto the streets by Monday morning
as the city was heading to their respectable offices. Now
that I'm an adult, or sort of an adult, all
of London feels like a staycation to me, but almost

(02:58):
as if I can't help it. I've always given all
my loving to old London Town, celebrating it like it's
my greatest journey yet. Top of the morning to you.
The Sunday afternoons of my teenage years were spent with
fat Boy Slim and duft punk, but at age eight,
my obsessions were more on the lines of Agatha Christie,

(03:20):
Rudia Kipling, the great Oscar Wilde and the original vampire
storyteller Bram Stoker are the writers of my early youth,
and in fact writers all with a love for the
classic Brown's Hotel in London, discreet, understated and tipping into
this sort of Edwardian past. The hotels for the literary

(03:44):
minded lover of old England, forgotten Old England, perhaps ready
to take reservations for locals like us to come and sojourn.
With no great big staircase to dazzle or giant ballrooms
with crystal chandeliers. This property is just a couple of
silly old London town houses posing up to form an

(04:07):
intimate hotel. So it's a young lad, the bookworm, as
they called me. I easily found my nook ride at
the fireplace in the front room. For the next twenty
plus years. The rooms decor changed every few years, but
the fireplace stayed in my nook remained mine. Mother appreciated

(04:29):
a staycation as much as I did, and where better
than a hotel where writers came, spent nights and wrote
their overtures. As an English major, she approved. In the
early years, I was so overwhelmed by the Jungle Book
and would stay awake many a night just imagining myself
as Mowgli in the forests of India, embarking on these

(04:49):
tree swinging adventures, all the while staying in the what
they now call Kipling Suite, named after yours truly because
this is exactly where Mr Bling was when he was
letting his mind travel to magical lands like I did.
But really, to be serious, it was Agatha Christie's character

(05:10):
Miss Marple, who in my mind was more of like
a Betty Davis than the scowling Margaret Rutherford. And I
guess we have to include bothersome Hercule Poirot, who taught
me about crafting interesting stories. I was mesmerized and followed
these two characters in the worlds that Dame Agatha Christie
created to solver who done it. I was, and I

(05:33):
still am, the proverbial amateur sleuth. It's annoying to most
of my friends when we traveled, because I'm always Nancy
Drewing or being a hardy boy and trying to uncover
something that may or may not have happened. I'll sidetrack
you for a minute to tell you a funny little story.

(05:53):
Just the other day, we were staying at this giant,
fancy hotel in Disney, Florida, were shipping all things local Orlando,
of course, like that blazing sun, when it became clear
to us that something was amiss. Deep in the night,
a woman was sitting at a little little desk with

(06:14):
an iPad. She was dressed in nothing memorable, and she
was handling the iPad in a normal Ipadian way. What
was odd was that she was sitting outside one of
the hotel rooms, right in the hallway. We walked by
a number of times in that I'm pretending to not look,

(06:35):
but I'm looking kind of way, mumbling your room number one,
sixteen one sixteen, over and over. Right, we've all done that.
Sex trafficking, said one friend another. Drugs, definitely drugs. I
know drugs when I see drugs. I felt more Nancy

(06:56):
Drewish at this point, so I was going with something wilder,
like she was checking people in for a gambling ring,
like Molly Bloom would. Of course, this was hours of
speculation and fun for everyone. Well, my friends found out
what was really going on the next morning, and it
was good. Even Miss Marple would have never suspected this.

(07:20):
A royal family from Africa was staying in a villain nearby.
The staff happened to be staying at our hotel. Of course,
what would royal families from African countries do when in Florida.
They would shop, So our lady behind the desk was
cataloging all their many, many purchases. Miss Marple would have

(07:42):
been flummixed. But back to London and Agatha Christie, who
in her novel At Bertram's Hotel, which is said to
take place at the Very Brown's Hotel, had Miss Marple
calling it the perfect mix of Edwardian and Victorian atmosphere.
Just think about but that even means if you're even
a slight anglophile. She was commenting on the prim staff

(08:05):
and elderly guests, and I am sure so many other things.
So here I am in my nook uttering similar sentiments
from my nook. I transported myself to Bertram's and I
played the part of Miss Marple, thinking I could solve
this murder mystery. In the very hotel I was staying.
The creaky staircase, the gaunderous hallways, secret passages between the

(08:29):
town houses, even the back entrances became movie sets in
my mind, all this fun without really going anywhere. See,
this is what I'm telling you. Travel is whatever you
decided should be. And to this day, this is still
my tradition. As I returned to the hotel every year,
I stealthily watch every guest who enters the tea room.

(08:52):
I pay careful attention to how they stir their cups
of tea. I even lean in to overhear their conversations.
At night, I peek through the curtains and look down
on the abandoned London street, wondering who's coming in and
who's leaving through the doors of this grand old hotel.

(09:13):
Over twenty years, it's here that I developed a taste
for murder mystery and for meticulously using clues to solve
my puzzle. I was taught just how to observe human behavior.
Why is that lady with the oversized handbag looking at
her watch? Was that Bellhart pocketing something he received from
a guest who left the hotel in such a rush.

(09:38):
Maybe life is all just a murder mystery. But there
are other ways to worship all things local too, like
traveling to a place and making it your mission to
find something so niche and appropriately of the place that
you can become a little expert. Like going to Japan
and learning anything you can possibly learn about much at

(10:00):
tea culture or incredible denim. What if you go to
Argentina and become this tango expert, exploring different styles, outfits
drinks to go with your dancing. You're getting my drift right.
While I chose something I knew nothing about. That's usually
how I choose my niche activities, not something obvious or

(10:20):
something I've been interested in before, but rather something totally
of my usual course of interest, And so I hopped
south to Madeira, Portugal's southern island, where the tradition of
embroidery is not only continuing for centuries, but is constantly improving.
Who would have thought that the home of Christiano Ronaldo

(10:42):
would open up embroidery to me during my quest for embroidery, linen,
and all things lazy. I also found a place quite
like no other. The world has fewer and fewer grand
dumb hotels left, but here on the cliffs of Madeira's capital,
form shall, I found Red's Palace, a hotel that withstood

(11:05):
two wars and the crush of social media, offering a
gig like me, an entire collection of all things embroidery. Okay,
so picture this a whole room with glass cabinets filled
with special embroidery. The hotel did for visiting dignitaries, every
possible royal family member from Europe, Hollywood starlets, and scary politicians.

(11:29):
I just settled in at a little table with a
handy magnifying glass and my little gloves when I noticed
an elegant lady dressed in navy and a little heel,
walking over to the notice board near me. She seemed
to pin something on and off she marched with a
gleaming smile, throwing my way. Of course. Within seconds I

(11:50):
was up and scrutinizing the notice born seeking card player
of excellent skill, willing to play bridge, canaster and rummy
Games Room, five pm sharp. Sincerely miss edith Ainslie. Of
course for my show, I changed her name out of deference.

(12:12):
I cleared my busy embroidery schedule immediately. At moments to five,
I rolled up at the games room, dressed in a blazer.
At least, the softly lit, carpeted room was overly quiet,
and there was this cool breeze coming off the ocean.
The balcony doors were flung open, and there was this

(12:33):
mystery woman seated at a four seater card table facing
the sea. I miss edith Ainslie, and I hope you've
come to play cards with me this evening. She rung
a small buzzer on the table and informed me that
someone will be by shortly to offer me provisions her advice,
a pink gin, of course, and no cell phones please,

(12:55):
She added, Oh, and now since we're card companions, she
offered that I'm I call her Edith. So Edith no
longer placed any orders. Every staff member knew exactly what
she'd have and went precisely to deliver it to her
part of the furniture, as only I could wish. Her
hands rolled like she had worked casinos her whole life.

(13:18):
Please grace me with your presence, she smiled. I sat
down and I didn't get up for three hours. We
worked our way through most serious canaster of my life.
She killed me every round. I was a mere jack
in her game of aces. Baby. So Edith had been
a guest of Red's Palace since n and this was

(13:41):
not her first rodeo on some young one on the cards.
At nearly a hundred, she spends the majority of a
year at the hotel. As she says, when the English
weather turns miserable, I swooped down to the island. Her
mind was filled with the past. Yes, of us, I
appreciate embroidery, Edith kept telling me. In fact, I have

(14:05):
my very own set of linen here at the hotel.
They hand embroidered it for me, not too much, just
simple patterns that I could tolerate. She told me about
her childhood and her husband who passed away many years ago,
her love for little dogs and gin. And then she
told me how many years ago Sir Winston Churchill arrived

(14:27):
at the hotel slightly unannounced. If you could believe that, well,
she said, I offered him my sweet after all, this
feels like my home, and it's awful queen and country,
isn't it, And so we quickly had special linen hand
embroidered for him here in town. Of course, it was
the talk of funchal even Edith was worshiping all things

(14:50):
local in every possible way. As I said this to her,
she said, why, yes, that is what you do when
you travel. You smoke locals cigarettes, drink local wine, even
if they are both terrible, and you never hobnobbed with
other tourists. I of course invited Edith to join me
for dinner, which was this lavish affair under a cloudy,

(15:13):
frescoed ceiling sky. Can you say the words snazzy. I
had a dinner jacket, she had a divine dress, and
we had this appetite for twirling. Edith was still the
gem on the shiny sea of dancing and my dream
hotel guest. As we whilst we romanced all things from

(15:35):
the past in our simple movement, we could trip the
light fantastic as I worshiped the now local herself. I
dressed for both myself and the atmosphere, Edith said, And
with that, Edith's cup overfloweth offering just a peep into
the bygones. The ocean was her company with simply the

(15:56):
quiet lull of afternoon teas served on the very the
and the mountains slightly covered with mist was the entertainment.
Days were unnamed and unnumbered evenings all wobbling into one.
Smoking wasn't banned for anyone yet, and drinking before noon
wasn't even beheld. Problems were Atlantic oceans away, and attention

(16:19):
spans stretched into eternal summers of loving. Meeting someone like
Edith is the very reason anyone should travel. There's an
Edith at every old world hotel. She's to be found
on the dance floor, at the dinner dance, or at
the card table in the game's room. And it's exactly
there over a chop chop game of bridge, where you'll

(16:41):
be in the moment without having to think about it
too much. She'll talk and you'll actually want to listen,
not way to speak. She'll remind you to make time
for beauty and laughter. She's the original hostess to a
good time. Her wit will ensure it in every hand.

(17:01):
Who knew Madeira the hidden middle sister of Portugal? Home
to Edith. It's in fact where the literati British delightfulness
came to elude Europe's glitzy sets in London's pell Mell Pace. Today,
Maderia holds exactly the same charm beyond the afternoon tea

(17:21):
and fancy silverware. So leave your technology, behave like a local,
dress like you care, and come waltz through the past.
So fair. Let's take a break to hear from our

(17:42):
sponsors and we'll be right back with more travel from everywhere.
Thanks for sticking around. Here's more of everywhere. I'm here
with Harlly Fry, who I tripped the light fantastic with
two all the time. I've yet to waltz with her,

(18:04):
but the days could happen. It could happen at any moment.
One of the things that I think is interesting. You know,
I know you spent time living in London. How much
did you engage with its history while you were there, Like,
do you have a favorite historical spot? I have a few.
What are they? Well, I have this thing that I

(18:27):
really love, Jack the RiPP Um, as do many. I've
gone on these like crazy historical walks where you can
like seeing all the places that Jack the Ripper killed people,
which is so macombon amazing. But that's London Town well
because it's so old, right, I mean it's literally hundreds

(18:49):
and hundreds and thousands really if you want to go
back to like its earliest foundings of years old. So
almost any human experience you can imagine has happened there
at some point in time. That's why there's been plenty
of maccab things to explore if that's your jam. So
I have that, And then the Victorian Albert Museum so good,
so good. And then there's stupid little things that I love,

(19:13):
Like there's like a Princess Diana plaque in one of
the parks and I walked by, and I think she
was such a beautiful representation of grace and good manners
that it's like a lovely reminder to walk past the
park and see this kind of historic like new historic thing. Yea,
so there's that. And then did you know that London

(19:34):
has these underground tunnels? Oh yes, of course that you
can go and tour and all of London used to
be one surface lower, so it's been raised over time.
Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart. We're all thinking
in some way or another, Right, I love fight Club. Um,

(19:56):
here's the thing that I think is interesting is you
can find almost anything in London, like I said, to
represent some part of some human experience. That might be
your thing. I know you do not like lists, but
I have not a list, but just a few things
that are examples of the kinds of things that people
could explore should they want to. Did you know that
you there is a service online that will show you

(20:19):
where all of the plague pits of London words, and
you can just walk around and find them based on
a plague pit. Right, It's quite fantastic. Like they even
have a full social media representation, so you can go
check out Historic UK on Twitter and they will show
you where plague pits are. I mean, in many cases,

(20:40):
what you're going to go see is obviously not an
active plague pit, Like it's not gonna be a hole
in the ground, things have been built up over it.
As you said, the city has shifted in many ways.
But for me it's always important because I like history,
even if they're not necessarily visible examples immediately available to
my eye. Just to take a quiet moment and stand

(21:01):
in a place like this and recognize that you are
in the same place where something significant happened is can
be sometimes very humbling, very moving, but also there's just
like a part of it to me that it's like
this isn't to diminish the sadness of something like a
plague pit, but like it's really neat that we have
the information available to us that we can travel the

(21:22):
world historically as well as just geographically. Well close to
where I spend a lot of time in Permlico Road
is where the original Chelsea Bun House, where Chelsea Buns
were invented, and that you can go and find in London,
like so things that are seemingly silly, it's all part

(21:42):
of like London history. Yeah, I mean you can also
go visit, uh the place where the execution doc used
to be located, where pirates were hung. Also another fascinating
thing and the thing that I love about these is
like there's there's no cost to it. You can just
looking up online and you're often running do you know

(22:03):
about the blue plaque thing? So you've probably seen them
because you lived there and they've been there for a
long time. The Blue Plaques of London are like historical markers.
It was started in the eighteen sixties actually like this
idea of having these particular plaques that will mark historically
significant places where particularly historically significant people did things. And

(22:26):
the fun thing is you can just walk around London
and if you have an eye out for them, you'll
see them on various buildings and it it might give
you, you you know, an interesting point of reference. Like I said,
they're more than nine hundred of them around London, so
odds are good. No matter what neighborhood you're going, you're
gonna spy one. The group English Heritage actually runs it
now and they have even made an app so that

(22:47):
it's kind of interactive and you can one. It will
help you find things if you're looking for particular types
of historical places, um like if you want to look
at the plaques that mark women who are involved in
the suffrage movement, you can literally make your own tour
that way or you know, literary people or any number
of other things. But also you get like a little
free education basically along the way. And again it costs nothing.

(23:11):
You just go run around the city. You don't have
to pay for a tour. It's all self guided. You
stop and have lunch when you want. But you can
get like this way deeper understanding of the area, even
if you just want to keep it like the neighborhood
or your hotel is there were going to be plaques
there almost definitely, and it just again it gives you
that sense of like we're all part of something bigger.

(23:32):
We talked about that all the time, that our place
in the world, our place in the world is that
we're all making history in some way or another. We
we don't have to sit in a seat of government
or be you know, part of a royal family. Everyone
is part of the story of history and this is
kind of a nice way to engage with that. And
that's what I really love about it. It makes history
way more real when you're standing in the place where

(23:54):
it happened. I have to sweet London stories to tell you.
One of the things that I love most about London
is that did you know as much as I'm in
uber slash lift person, black cabby drivers do a rigorous test.
When you want to become the famed black cab driver,

(24:16):
you have to do a test called the Knowledge and
it involves memorizing every single street in the entire capital.
Believe it, you cannot make a mistake. So their knowledge
is when you get into a black cab, you can
give them any street and they would be able to
find it. Love it. The other amazing thing I have

(24:37):
to tell you is I used to spend a lot
of time in Permlico and Warwick Square and one day
I saw this man and he had falcons on his
arm in the park and he told me that he
runs the Falcon Society off London, like these are just
random people in the city. And I was like, how

(24:58):
many falcons are about to arrive on your arm? And
he was like three and three falcons like swooped down
and like sat on his arm, and he was like,
I am here to train anyone who would like to
learn about falconry. They live in the Tower of London,
which there's other birds that live there too, but these

(25:19):
particular falcons live there. And he told me this like
insane story about what he does with the falcons. He
trains them to send messages. That's fantastic. That's like old
world London and you can go and experience that. But
that's the stuff that I really love about London, Like
it has a little something local for everyone. It's like
the obvious Bangers and Mash wonderful pub on the corner,

(25:41):
but it's also all this other weird stuff that's like fascinating. Yeah,
and I really think, like what's beautiful about it? I
mean we both just talked about a bunch of things
that have no like admission ticket or booking time required.
Oh you really have to do is just keep your
eyes open. That history is still living all over London. Right,
what else should we talk about? Holly, give us more

(26:03):
London history things. I have a slightly more modern history
thing that is actually am It's like a warehousing museum,
but it's very much up my alle of fun. It
is called God's Own Junkyard. Yeah, it's the best. It's
a Neon museum. It's just old Neon signs that have
been decommissioned, but they're cared for and kept active and

(26:24):
taken care of and to me, that's another great way
to kind of look at a city's history because commerce
drives development in almost any big city in the world,
and as a consequence, you really get a sense of
what things have been important in terms of being economic
drivers in a city at various points in time, versus

(26:46):
what things have fallen out of favor, And to me,
that's like part of the great thing. But also it's
just a great place to go because you get a
big sense of how artistic styles have shifted over the years,
which again kind of informs your knowledge of like local flavor.
And it's just I like sparkly things anyway, So from
that angle, its beautiful, but it is just a fun

(27:06):
it's kitchy. But then when you think about it in
those terms about like what it's telling you about what
has been popular in and necessary in the past versus
what has also become passe, it becomes an interesting exploration
of the local history of the area. Right. Well, there's
this thing called Secret London where there's like all these

(27:28):
strange like fighting lane yeah, right, and like French cannons
as street ball ods. Like I love that London has
and celebrates all this weirdness where like I feel so
many other cities are trying to modernize in a way
that they lose all the silliness, Like I really miss
living in America, Like I really missed the kind of

(27:49):
wittiness and silliness of British humor because the stuff is
seen as so much part of the culture and so
much part of of being local London that it's really
really celebrated. New York doesn't celebrate that thing, right there
are I feel like there are pockets of that type
of celebration throughout the United States, but I don't feel

(28:11):
like any one city really has it as part of
its identity the way London. Like London has the Clown's Gallery,
which is a tiny, tiny, little weird museum about the
famous clowns, because who doesn't want to see that, which
is great and super fun, wonderfully odd, great way to
spend an every mean, they even have like carrying Potter's

(28:34):
platform nine and three quarters. That's a real thing that
they've put in at King's Cross. But no other city
will actually go and implement that, right, Like you can
go and see where Harry would get onto his fictitious train, right,
I mean, I fucking love that. I love it as

(28:55):
another museum that I think is super cool and I
have not been to this one, but it is on
my list to go when I am next. There is
pollockx Toy Museum. Do you know that one? Because I
love toys and my husband and I collect toys. Um,
you know, I have a little problem and it's largely
Victorian toys. But it's a museum and a little toy shop.

(29:17):
That's again a great way to look at the history
of a place, like what was marketed to children along
the way. I mean, I think about when the people
of a hundred years from now look back at like
game Boys, what on earth will they think of us? Similarly, though,
we have the opportunity to look back at like Victorian
England and be like what, why, why did you give

(29:37):
your child back? But also, you know, there are so
many beautiful, precious, innovative things that were made simply for joy.
I mean that speaks a great deal to like the
values of a time period. Well, I guess with Brexit
and the kind of uncertainty that's been in British politics

(29:59):
for such a long time, one wonders what London now represents.
So many people have left, others are fighting for this
kind of staunch Britishness, but that identity is being challenged.
So it's very much what is Britain versus what is
London like? And London is somehow caught up in the

(30:21):
crossfire of all this because it's the capital. But to me,
London is so different to what anyone thinks England is.
I mean, that's probably part of the problem, but it's
the the way that New York is not America. It's
it's very own thing. London is very much then and
growing up spending so much time there, it's this reminder

(30:44):
of like everyone's there and everyone's part of this beautiful thing.
With every single person, you could possibly imagine every iteration
of human anyway, Well, thanks Holly, I love spending time
with you for history. Holly's your girl. Yeah, you can
come and check out stuff you Missed in History class,

(31:05):
which is my regular podcast. We published two new episodes
a week, plus one of our classics on a Saturday,
and you can find us on social media at missed
in History. Great. I could brush up on some history.
Everybody could. Thanks Holly, Thanks my love. Let's take a
break to him from our sponsors and we'll be right
back with more travel from everywhere trade tables up. You're

(31:31):
returning to everywhere land. Welcome back. I have a few
interviews for US today, starting with my friend and neighbor
Jessica Galen, who knows cheese. In fact, she has a
master's and cheese from n y U. Tell us, Jessica,
why why do people travel for cheese? Well, cheese is

(31:55):
an incredible representation of place. It's one of the most
beautiful all expressions of taroar. People talk about it with
mine all the time, but she's is such a piece
of the place that it comes from. If it's made
with care and it's made by artisans who are attending
well cared for animals and well cared for pastures. So

(32:18):
the really exciting thing about American cheeses is that there's
been this tremendous exploration of what it means to have
American tarar through cheese. It's one of the few categories
of food where tar has been explored in the US
in every single state. So that's an exciting opportunity for
Americans who are looking for a local food experience. Well,

(32:41):
because people go to France to go and eat cheese
right like a pilgrimage to cheese. Many Americans travel full
niche products. They travel for wine. They make a pilgrimage
full whiskey to Scotland, or they do a pilgrimage to
Germany for beer. Right, and maybe some people would do

(33:02):
a pilgrimage to Spain for the cured meats. So my
whole thing is that I think we could send people
on a journey of America through cheese. I love it
because I've gone to Montreal to buy cheese back because
you can find all this incredible raw I'm pasteurized cheese.

(33:23):
But you corrected me today when I asked you whether
you can get raw cheese in America because I thought
everything had to be pasteurized. You can. And two of
the three cheeses that we're having today are raw. Okay,
So why would I want raw cheese opposed to pasteurized. Well,
pasteurization kills all of the bacteria, all of the microbial

(33:44):
life in the milk, which was an incredible public health
innovation when it came into popularity before getting very very
sick from milk, So this was really amazing to discover
a method of making milk safe to drink on a
massive scale, particularly as industrialization came into play an agricultural
products started to be distributed on more than a farm

(34:08):
by farm scale. People started collecting their milk all in
one place and then selling it under a different brand name.
So there could have been multiple varying qualities of the
milk that was brought into the communal that and then distributors.
So you can imagine if you had one farmer who
wasn't taking care of their animals well and then all
of their milk got combined with other farms milk, and

(34:30):
then that milk was sold to many many families and
many many people could get sick from one contaminated bat.
So pasteurization was really important innovation. But many academics have
argued that we've gone too far towards this Pastorian ideal.
And you know, as with many other areas now people

(34:50):
are questioning whether being too clean is possible and are
sanitizing our environments too much. Yes, so we have to,
but we have to think about what are they good
microbes that are the bad microbes? Because there are plenty
of pathogens that are very very harmful, and how do
we cultivate the good ones while making sure that we're
creating environments that are not in hospitable to the harmful ones. Okay,

(35:12):
so now I want to know if I wanted to
go on a pilgrimage of American cheese, where would you
send me to. Well, Vermont is one of the states
that's done an incredible job of cultivating supporting a community
of artisan cheesemakers who are kind of exploring this concept

(35:32):
of American tarar and also um returning to the small
scale notion of how do we take this pasture and
that's really optimized for dairy animals, but help these farmers
do produce a product in a way that's financially viable
for them, because fluid milk is a really challenging commodity

(35:54):
to be producing right now, and cheese offers this opportunity
for farmers to be reducing a product that can earn
them at least a living wage compared to what a
lot of farmers are struggling with right now with footmolks.
So for month has been very supportive. California has a
number of incredible artism cheesemakers, but like I said, every
state in the country has artisan cheesemakers at this point,

(36:15):
which is basically only happened in the last thirty or
four years. It's become a phenomenon. Actual we will not
talk about it in the same way that they talk
about French cheese Italian cheese. I think part of it
is just this kind of self deprecating idea that Americans
have of our food culture, that we don't have one,

(36:36):
or that there's nothing further to explore about American food,
or you know, people kind of throw away the idea
of American food as burgers and fries. But the fact is,
there are artisans that are creating beautiful, beautiful food products
all over the country, and many of them are taking
inspiration from the European or other traditions, um but they're

(36:58):
innovating on it, which is that's what makes them truly American. Right.
They're taking these traditions and in many ways they're improving
on them, or they're pushing a limit on flavor, and
they're not bound by these same requirements of how you
can categorize certain cheeses. So sometimes that's carried through in
a way that is not quite successful, but in other

(37:18):
ways they're really pushing the envelope and ways that are
very beautiful. So so what is the right way to Okay, Well,
can we talk about cheese plates first? Okay? So I
like to choose the theme. So I want to American
Artisanal because it's a nice kind of through line offers
us an opportunity to talk about worshiping the local. I
like to bring in variety of styles, of variety of milks.

(37:41):
So if I had four or five cheeses, what I
would do is at least one cow goat cheap, potentially
a buffalo if I could find one water buffalo. And
you want to organize a tasting from sort of least
robust flavors to most robust. So if you had if cheeses,
you might start with a fresh cheese or a soft

(38:02):
ripon cheese and end with your blue or end with
your stinkiest. And you want to kind of guide your
guests through a tasting experience where they or not eating
a mouthful of something super stinky at first, which demolishes
the palate for everything else you would be tasted subsequently.
But people don't think of cheese in the snobby way,
like cheese is so more approachable than wine. Dated by wine.

(38:26):
When I was in Valda there in January, I ate
cheese from cows that were milked during winter, so we're
eating hay from sheds. And then I ate cheese that
was held back from cows that ate greenery from the
grass before winter, and the taste was so different, and

(38:50):
for some magical moment I was able to stop and
assess these two things, right. I mean, that's a beautiful
expression of your sense of place, and not only sense
of place, sense of time. It matters what time of
year this cheese is being made, how long it's aging for,
and whether or not it's pasteurized. If you that was
probably a raw cheese. If it had been pasteurized and

(39:11):
all of the microbial life was gone from it, you
might not have had quite as um prominent an expression
of the product that the animal was eating, because it
would have been more equalized between the two. I have
a whole new respect for cheese cheese making. Meeting you
and spending time with you has made me really appreciate cheese.
It's a really incredible art. It's amazing, and it's very

(39:34):
very hard, and we can't pay them enough for my perspective,
I think the amount of work that goes into these cheeses,
you could teaches and cheesemakers should get paid more. Absolutely
with you, So I was going to come big for cheese.
She has a real cheese, tell it she is kid.

(40:00):
And next, if you believe that only New York has
good bagels, well let's remove your head from the sand
and let me introduce you to an old friend, Samuel
Kirkpatrick and a new friend, josh A Bellamy, owners of
the amazing bench warm of Bagels and Bolted Bread in Raleigh,

(40:22):
North Carolina. Um Sam Kirkpatrick, I'm one of the owners
of Bolted Bread and one of the owners of bench
Warmers Bagels and Coffee. I'm the new friends. My name
is Joshua Bellamy and I am also an owner at
Bolted Dread and bench Warner's Bagels. For me, the whole

(40:44):
the bagel shop is predicated on the like overwhelming drive
that I feel a responsibility to share with the community
that raised us what we have to offer. And so
when we opened Bolted Bread, the whole drive for me
was we we have to This is not something that

(41:05):
like we want to do, this is something we have
to do because Joshua and Fulton have these special gifts
and if we don't share these gifts then we're selfish.
If we're selfish, then we're bad people. So we have
to do the right thing. And then after a few
years of bolted bread, when Joshua worked out a bagel,
I was like, well, we have to show this to people.

(41:28):
There's no option. Sweet, tell me a little bit about
why people think you can have a bagel in myself. Okay,
this gives me really work up. So I thought about
this a lot because growing up here and then moving
to Vermont to like kind of learn how to bake

(41:49):
this sounds insane And I truly don't mean it in
any sort of like overarded thing. Um, but there are
a lot of people who were pretty rude to me
in Vermont because I was from the South and had
a Southern accent. And I don't really have a crazy
Southern accent, but have a slight one. And yeah, yeah,
that's that's true. Okay, annual a great point in my mind,
that's very utual, and um, I'm just American. But there's this, uh,

(42:15):
hopefully as a world, but especially as as Americans. Over
the last several decades in my adult life, we've like
moved in sort of a slow and study and like
a progressive path and how we've treated each other. But
there's still this like one vested just society where it's
okay to be a biggest And that's not how to say,
it's the only vest of just society where biggest you

(42:35):
still exist, but where it's accepted. And that's like the
culinary world, like, you know, we all work to build
each other up. But if you're from the South and
trying to bake a bagel, then you're in eating and
you're one what do you know about bagels? Like? And
this exists elsewhere to you know, trying to make biscuits
in New York. I'm sure it's the same way. But
for me is someone from the South, like that's how

(42:56):
I felt, you know, um, and so I guess the
fin like step back from it, there's UM in the South,
particularly in the Southeast where we're from. There's not the
same sort of like cultural history of bagel baker's um.
There's not this shared knowledge that has been passed down
from generation to generation. Generation. You can't get a good

(43:18):
bagel in the South because there aren't many bagels in
the South to begin with, But then there haven't also
been the decades and decades and decades of experience to
lend two good bagels being baked down here. But I
think it's important for me personally, and I hope it's
important for other people to to like push past these
uh culinary perceptions that we have. I've, in a very

(43:38):
intimate way, devoted everything that I have to baking really
good things, and bagels are an excession of that. And um,
I think that I hope that if people come down
here and try a bagel, and they can try it
with an open mine, like this isn't necessarily a Southern bagel.
It's just a really really good bagel. It's it's not like,
it's not an expression of your southernness, but an expression

(44:00):
of your craft, which you have dedicated your life too.
And here you are, well, that's the idea, right, So
travel allows you to let go of these prejudices, to
let go of this idea that something in the South
has to be sunning. The bagel, for me, is that
effective representation of that. I mean, the gift of travel

(44:24):
is that you are not home, You are not in
your own context, and it can be so lovely to
find something that reminds you of home while you're on
the road. But even more so, it can be so
lovely to just go out in the world and see
what's out there without judgment and without any preconceived notions

(44:48):
and without any agenda, and to just let the world
come to you that way. And when we get an
out of town or here, what we really want to
do is to be able to give them joy in
that moment. And we we think that we're pretty good
at that. We we like really are proud of what
we do because it's not based on our geography, it's

(45:11):
not based on sticking to what you know. It's this
is what we have. We're going to continue to push
to express ourselves. So the idea is that if you
can leave that concept of one of the haslive behind,
you may have a bad experience. You know, if I
comment on that well business on a new y being,

(45:33):
I'm ruding an experience with myself before you even set
foot in the door. And you are accurate also, but
it's not and that's okay. Well I had a good time.
I hope you did too. If you'd like to reach us,

(45:54):
go to Everywhere Podcast on Instagram, Everywhere pot on Twitter,
all the website, Everywhere podcast dot com Thanks for hanging out.
I'm Daniel Scheffler and I'll see you everywhere