September 25, 2020 • 41 mins
’The Sporkful’ is toasting to its 10-year anniversary this week, so we sat down with host Dan Pashman to chat about how the show has changed over the past decade – and how the food world has changed along with it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we
have an interview for you with the host of The
Sport Full Dan Pashman. Yes, and you know what, I
have a very big regret about this interview. Oh yeah,
I actually think it's a really good thing. But we
didn't ask him about sports. Oh my heck, we didn't.
(00:28):
And we had that whole we found that whole website
that had those like sad poems about like how sports
are useless. Yeah, yeah, like lamenting the fate of the sport,
and not a single sport question was asked. Yeah. This,
we really fell down on the job. I bet he
gets that question a lot though. So it's pretty really good,
but it haunts I just want you all to know
it haunts my food podcast your brain that I didn't
(00:51):
bring that up. I think the only thing haunting my
brain about that interview was a man like I was
having a rough day and I felt like I wasn't
being human the entire time. Like do you ever feel
like that? Do you ever feel like you're like you're
talking hypothetically but you're not sure if what you're saying,
is coming across as like normal human conversation? Yes, I
(01:13):
not only do I feel that way over on stuff
I've never told you the podcast we just did an
episode about that. Really. Yeah, how interesting it is to
be in a medium where being a normal conversation, well
not normal necessarily, but conversational human is sort of the job. Yeah,
and what happens on days where you know that's just
not it's just for whatever reason, not firing off, not
(01:35):
how you're feeling. Yeah, well I think I like to
think that that's what gives us our charm. I like
I feel like your voice kind of indicate how you said,
charm captures our charm. There's sort of a note of
panic in there at all was to say it was
(01:57):
a delightful interview. I thought it was very fun. Oh
my goodness, yes I had. I had such a good
time talking with Dan. It was a very bright spot
in my day. And so so yeah, without further Ado,
let's get into the interview. You're joining us today, Dan,
We welcome to the show. Dan Pashiman of The Sporkfell. Hey,
thanks you guys, Thanks for having me of course, Um, yeah,
(02:19):
and you're you're you're joining us because the Sportfull is
ten years old. Yes, it seems like just yesterday. No
it doesn't. Actually it feels like twenty. But anyway, um, yes,
it's an exciting milestone. Hu um and uh you all
started out um so, so savor Is is a little
(02:39):
bit younger than that. Annie and I have both been
in the podcasting space for just about that long gosh,
but not in the food podcasting space. But it seems
like y'all started up The Sportful with a very similar
idea to why we wanted to start savor to kind
of like like remove food from from this pedestal or
like monolith that it seems to exist in and popular
(03:00):
culture and kind of make it more accessible because it
is accessible and it's worth understanding. Yeah, I mean the
motto of the Sporkfull is it's not for food ease,
it's for eaters. Um. And so you know, it's a
big part of what we do. And you know, yeah,
I I I'm not a chef. I waited tables for
a couple of years, but I'm not maybe an above
average home cook, but I'm not any great expert on food.
(03:24):
I um don't really care about celebrity chefs. I kind
of am very turned off by chef worship. I don't
care who has the hot new restaurant. I'm not gonna
wait for a table there or anywhere. I wanted my
food now. Um. And so you know, I started the
Sporkfull because right because I feel like there's a lot
(03:45):
of people who love to eat and are passionate about
food and maybe even passionate about cooking, but don't are
not interested in food as a status symbol, are turned
off by that world, don't care about fancy chefs. In fact,
for that, I think it was. I think it was
it was four or five years of the sport Full
before I interviewed my first chef. I had a rule
for years. I was like, I'm not interviewing any chefs.
(04:07):
I'm gonna do a food podcast without interviewing chefs. That
was my goal. And I made it a good four
or five years, and then I The first chef I
had on was this guy named Tyler Cord, who had
written a book all about broccoli and cooking and cooking
and eating broccoli and how much he loved broccoli and
his restaurant in New York. He was famous for a
broccoli sub and that all just seems so weird and
(04:29):
ridiculous that I was like, all right, I'll let this
guy in, Like he just seems too quirky. He's obviously not,
you know, not a snob. And what I learned from
talking to him, and then eventually under the wall came down,
I was like, all right, it turns out that actually,
like a lot of chefs are pretty down to earth
and they have the same kind of obsessive I for
detail that I have when it comes to eating, you know,
like I love to nerd out on the details of
(04:49):
the eating experience, just from the eater's perspective, not from
the fancy chefs perspective. And so it turns out that
actually a lot of chefs think about food the same
way I do. Oh yeah, I would say that. Well,
so I'm biased because my father was a chef um
or a cook or you know, like a guy who
stood around in kitchen smoking too many cigarettes however you
(05:10):
really want to phrase it, um but uh but you know, so,
so I've got a little bit of bias there. But
I would say the chefs are some of the demos
down to earth humans you could ever possibly meet. Um sometimes, yeah,
I mean, I I don't know, I haven't met that
many of the super super fanciest ones, but yeah, I mean,
(05:30):
you know, I I think it's one of those funny things,
like you know, they spend all all day at work,
cooking these elaborate dishes and taking care of other people,
and then really all they want at the end of
the day is just like to eat something like very
simple and homey and have someone else make it for
them so they don't have to do it and they're
very happy. So yeah, yeah, yeah, my by the time
you got home, my dad was down for cooking like
(05:52):
macaroni and cheese was and that was essentially it. I'm
sure people assume that you're you must have eaten really
well at home, but as your dad was a chef, yeah,
I mean, you know, when when he did go all
out for holidays or something, um, those those few holidays
that he wasn't working, it would be something um technically
beautiful um, but but it was it was so rare,
(06:13):
I mean, you know, like because usually yeah, he would
get home and he would just be like, I don't know, man,
like can we can we order like a like a
Philly cheese steak? Or something like, what's what's going on?
For sure? Um? And And you know, I do think
about it sometimes. I'm not totally positive because he had
he had entered into retirement, um starting maybe like five
(06:36):
or ten years back, and uh And I wonder sometimes
if he had grown up in in the world of
um of of of this pop culture fascination with with
chefs and restaurants, um and and the whole instagram ability
of everything, if if he would have survived in that environment, right, like,
(06:56):
what you would you have survived? What do you have thrived?
What have you done better or worse or the same. Yeah,
it is interesting to me the degree to which Instagram
influences food. You know that there are restaurants now, I
forget which magazine it was. Did there like, you know,
ten best new restaurants of the year, and the number
one was this restaurant in Oklahoma City. And the guy
(07:17):
who wrote the column basically said, you know, I wouldn't
even gone to Oklahoma City except for the fact that
I saw people sharing the food from this restaurant on Instagram,
and enough people shared it and it looked interesting enough
that I decided to go there and try it. And
now I'm naming it the best new restaurant in America.
And so you see that the power of that. But
so so I went to here, like that's great. It's
(07:39):
great that the restaurant in Oklahoma City, can you know,
can get noticed by you know, big national media that
are like predominantly on the coasts. So that's a good thing. Um.
The downside is that, like, um, you know, it puts
a lot of focus on the way, look, the presentation
of food has always been part of food, but but
so much onus on how does the food look in
(08:00):
a photograph? Um, And I think it also leaves to
a lot of sort of gimmickery and restaurants like you know,
let's bring someone out from the kitchen do some kind
of song and dance that people will will put a
video on Instagram. Remember Salt Bay. That was cool for
like five minutes. That's the best thing about COVID is
it probably shut that guy down, Like this guy who
comes out and like you know, does some sort of
(08:21):
dance and salts your steak at the table and double
for it, right yeah, I mean, like I don't understand
why that's like it was like and everyone instagrams didn't
go crazy, but um, so some of that stuff is
kind of grating. Yeah, yeah, I now it feels like
a ritual where whenever I used to get when I
(08:41):
used to go out with people, the food comes and
then there's like a four minute like lighting and switching
of like you no frame it like this, And I
kind of it's odd because I work in this world,
but I'm like, can we just eat it? We just
eat it right well, and and then we documented. Then
you have these people who are right like also like
the flashes going off and come on, like no picture
(09:03):
of the flash is gonna look good and like, but
restaurateurs don't have to think about the lighting because they
can't make it too dim because then people can't get
you know, like you need people to be able to
take good pictures of your food and share it because
that's like marketing. You need that. But it also means
it's certain dishes like Stew's um and a lot of
sort of like saucy dishes UM. I had this conversation
(09:24):
with Professor Christian end ray Is to share the n
y U Food Studies Department, and he was talking about
how a lot of South Asian food UM that tastes
incredible doesn't always photograph as well. You know, like a
like a bowl of doll or something like that that
can be so good and it's such a classic staple.
You gotta really gonna know what you're doing to make
it look captivating in a photo. And that's sort of
(09:47):
that sucks because doll. Everybody should be eating more doll. Yeah, yeah,
we shouldn't need to have gold leafed doll in order
to make it more right, right, there shouldn't need to
be like a guy. You don't need the Indian Salt
Bay coming out from the back to like throw termeric
in from five feet away for it to be good. Like,
just make some good doll. Let's just become a hit job.
(10:11):
I'm that guy had to come out out. Anyone who
star rises that quickly is bound to fall. We're gonna
get hate mail from Salt Bay and I love it. Right,
you can get like a packet of like anthrax coated no. Well,
(10:33):
I guess speaking of you this, you've been in this
for ten years and you talked about how you know
you lost You had these radio jobs and opportunities and
you were trying to side, well, what should I do
a podcast on and you said idiosyncrasies. What's uh. I
think how you phrased it in your letter I'm very
interested by. But I'm just curious how it feels to
(10:55):
have gone from that to having people asking you to
weigh in on rat versus the burrito, and then having
someone claim that you don't have the expertise to even right. Right. No,
I mean it's it's the whole thing is crazy. Like
I mean, I started, you know, it was always my
dream to host a radio show that became host my
own podcast, but I kept getting laid off from jobs
(11:16):
in radio. So I said, I'll start my own podcast
as a ten years ago and at least no one
can cancel it but me. Um, And slowly but surely
it's grown, you know. But yeah, I I I. When
I first started, it was just like, let's just obsess
over the most ridiculous food minutia in search of new
and better ways to eat. Like I spent twenty minutes
talking about, you know, the ideal surface area to volume
(11:36):
ratio of ice cubes and what the best shape of
ice cubes is for different purposes. Since then, the show
has grown and evolved, I think, Um, but that was
what it was in the early days. And I'm the
kind of person who would think about these things even
though I was not a chef at all, Like I
wouldn't think about the ice cubes of thinking about what's
the best bite? If you take a sandwich and you
(11:56):
cut it on the diagonal, like like a white bread sandwich,
you cut it out on the diagonal, you have that
triangle in your hand, what's the best first bite? Should
you take it from one of the acute angles? You do?
You take it from the hypot news? You know, and
and I don't know there's a right or wrong. There's
pros and constant both, but it's sure is a fun
debate to have. Um. So these are my idiosyncracies. These
are the things that I think about. You know that
(12:18):
I was like, this might be a podcast, and so
it grew and you know, I also gonna come from
a long line of lawyers. So it became opinions about
you know, is a burrito a rap I say yes?
Is a hot dog of sandwich? That's a bit of
a tired debate now, But but I was in the
early I was in the early part of that was
a four front. I was in the forefront that the
hot dog sandwich debate, I'll have you know right, yes,
(12:41):
I don't think the responsibility for that. Um, I do
believe a hot dog is a sandwich. And so people
just love these debates. And yeah, like somehow, I guess
because I was one of the few people having these
debates early on, I was an expert by default because
there was nobody else talking about it. Um. I remember
when I was Giancarlo stanton On a baseball star I
(13:04):
think was in the Marlins at the time. He was
photographed taking like a four bar kit cat and he
bit into the whole thing. He bit across the perforations,
and the internet went insane and other baseball players were
giving him a hard time about it. And like Fox
five New York sent a news truck to my house,
like forty five miles outside New York City, just set
(13:24):
up a camera crew in my living room to get
my comment on this approach to eating a kit cat.
And I was like, this is really out of hand,
Like I don't know, there's got to be more important
news out there, but the is a burrito rap one
that one I got hired to be an expert witness.
I mean this is it was. It was hilarious. So
(13:45):
long story short, is this like strip mall in Canada, Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
And so often when a restaurant gets a lease in
a strip mall, there'll be a clause in the lease.
In the case, it was a peda place that said, uh,
it's called the PA pit. And in the least it
said that the landlord won't least space to any other
(14:06):
restaurant that would be too similar, that would compete. And
in their case, the least said they won't least space
to another restaurant that sells wraps. So the PA place
at the least that said, the landlord promises not to
give any other space to anyone who sells wraps. Well,
the landlord gave a lease to Holy Guacamole Burritos, and
the PA pit said, wait a second, burritos or wraps.
(14:30):
And the landlord said, no, they're not, and the pit said,
yes they are. We're taking your butt to court. And
I got hired to write an affidavit let's worn affidavit
in which I argued that burritos are in fact raps
and um the opposing sides rejoinder their response to My
affidavit was we don't think Passiman is an expert. So
(14:56):
but I'll have you know that the courts took our
side and we won. Okay. I was about to say,
did you already, like, did you do research to come
to this or did you already have like a knee jerk? No?
I think I had. I had been making this case before.
And I want to be very clear because people get upset,
especially people who come from from like southern California or
(15:16):
northern any part of California really well where burritos are
especially a big deal or that Text mex burritos are
a little different, but so but the point is, like
people who are passionate about burritos taking as an insult
for burrit to be called a rap because they think
of wrap and think of like an airport sandwich wrap,
you know, like like which is And I'm not this
is not a statement on quality. I'm not. I'm not
(15:39):
talking about quality. Yes, the vast majority of burritos are
better than pretty much all sandwich wraps. Um, It's just
about structure. What is how is the food made? And
if you're gonna take some sort of flower tortilla and
wrap anything inside it, you are making a rap. Some
wraps are better than others, but they're still all rap
(16:00):
at the end of the day. I can hear the lawyer. Yea, yeah.
My grandfather was a judge, my dad was a lawyer,
My brother is a lawyer. I'm sort of the odd ball.
Oh no, it sounds like you're absolutely following in their
footsteps right in my own weird way. Yes, Um, what's
(16:20):
your what speaking speaking of strong opinions that people may
or may not get mad about. So, um, So, this
whole cosmic crisp Apple thing, it's still happening and it's
just really kicking off now. I mean last year was
sort of the the the initial preliminary release new apples,
Yeah right, but this fall is the big release. Yeah.
(16:41):
So okay. So for for anyone who hasn't heard about this,
this is this apple that is twenty years in the making. Um,
these researchers have been trying to put together just the
best possible Apple, like hundreds of millions of dollars in investment,
a ten million dollar marketing budgets. Speaking of Instagram, they
have had in instant influencers out there talking up this apple.
(17:04):
What how have you had one of these I have,
I have well, and I had to kind of divide
them because I've had something that I bought at a
supermarket and then I had some of that the Cosmic
Chris people sent to me. The ones that they sent
to me were like pretty amazing, But I'm sure that
the ones they reserve for like press are like the absolute,
(17:24):
you know, most pristine samples. Um. The ones that I
bought in the store were also very good. Look there,
it's a very good apple from to my like, to
my taste like, and you know, when you think about
the you know, an apple, there's a lot that goes
into let me take a step back. You go to
the grocery store. There's green grapes and red grapes. There's
maybe a couple of kinds of oranges. There's maybe a
(17:46):
couple of kinds of tomatoes. There's pretty much one kind
of strawberries. There's one kind of celery. Um. And it's
not that there aren't other kinds of strawberries or celery
or bananas that exist. It's just that there's only one
that has sort of become the one that gets mass
produced and shipped to supermarkets. Apples are the one fruit
that has sustained even in our sort of mass market,
(18:06):
um big food industry world, that we have a wide
range of different types of apples, and that the average
consumer knows about them. It's not just some sort of
high end food ething, like everyone knows red delicious and
golden delicious, honey crisp, and then you may have a
few more. Depending on where in the country you are,
you get some other different ones. But I would bet
that most Americans can name five different types of apples,
(18:28):
and and and there are real differences. There's there's how
how crunchy or soft is the interior, How much does
the skin snap? Is it a shiny slicks smooth skin
or is it more that like dry sand papery skin.
How sweet is it? How juicy is it? How tart
is it? All of these things have to be calibrated.
And the cosmic crisp is like it's like the way
that our computer monitors keep getting brighter and brighter, like
(18:50):
the way the saturation keeps getting turned up to like comply,
not like they burn your eyeballs because they're so bright.
The colors are so vivid. That's the cosmic crisp. It's
like the juiciness, the sweetness, the tartness, the crunch, everything
has been turned up to eleven and like that's pretty great.
That being said, Like, yeah, they're huge, which sometimes like
too big, and they're not cheap. They're you know, they're
(19:11):
pretty close to honey crisp prices. You know. My wife,
my wife, I don't know about you guys. My wife
doesn't let me buy honey Crisp. She's like, we don't
make honey crisp money. Right, you're right, right, that's the
that's like a birthday. It's your birthday, you got honey Crisp.
So so so there are downsides, but like it's a
very good apple. I think. Didn't you describe it as
the technicolor apple. Yes, it's like tell you right, it's
(19:33):
like it's it's it's just that it's so vivid. Everything
Every metric by which you would judge an apple is
like amped up. You can tell there's been twenty years
breeding it for each one of these traits. I am
so fascinated by this. I it is um you know,
like like you have to pay royalties to grow this apple.
(19:54):
Like right, that's one of the interest things I learned
about working on this episode of the work Folle, which
is that um yet. Now, this is the way apples
are made, is that there are these apple clubs and
a university in the case of Cosmic Crisp, at the
University of Washington or or some sort of collective. They
develop the apple and then they license the right to
(20:15):
grow it to a select number of growers, and so
you have to pay for the right to grow it
and the right to you And the name of the
apple is trademarked. It's not just like a generic plant name,
and so you have to pay for the right to
use the name and to sell it under the name.
But the flip side is that that controls supply and demand.
So so what what the apple club says is, look,
(20:36):
you pay us for the right to grow these apples,
but what we're gonna do an exchange is that we're
gonna we're gonna put a bunch of money behind marketing
this specific type of apple, so that gives you an
incentive to get in. And also we're gonna control the
number of growers who can grow it, so you don't
have to worry about the market being flooded. You're getting
something special here, and so that that accessent is a
pretty good incentive because in the past it takes a
(20:57):
couple of years for an apple tree to bear fruit.
So if you have you know, and look, most apple
growers aren't getting rich. If you're gonna say, look, I
got X member of trees that are making me a
pretty good living, it's a big risk to start swapping
out the varieties and you have trees that are taking
a while, and then you don't know anyone's going to
buy that apple when the apple comes out. So these
(21:19):
apple clubs are trying to counteract that and and it
so it makes me this kind of interesting business model.
And the Cosmic Crisp is in line to make the
University of Washington quite a lot of money. Huh. That's
a pretty great name. It's it's like because it looks
like stars, right, cosmic party. It's like literally, I mean,
to me, looking at stars were a little bit of
(21:39):
a stretch. I think the way that someone else described
it was good. It was freckles. They look like little
yellow freckles on the red surface. And I mean maybe
if you get the right one, it could look a
little bit it could look kind of like stars. But
there's like a speckling a dust. But but yeah, but
what a name? Right, that's like a that that sounds
like a high sea flavor that I would have been
really into when well, it's also funny, Like I feel
(22:03):
like this is you see a general trend in the
way that foods are named now. I think it's a
trend in marketing and branding in general, which is that
things are less literal and more evocative. So like it
used to be, would name an apple red delicious. Well
let's look, okay, it's red, and we want people to
think it's delicious. What should we call it? You know, like,
let's not break the budget. Let's just go with red delicious,
(22:26):
you know. And and and I. When I was a kid,
gatorade flavors were actually like orange was a flavor, like,
you know, not just a color. You know. Now Gatorade
flavors are like Arctic Blast, Like no, but Arctic blast
isn't a flavor, you know, that's an experience. But that's
what they want you to They want to describe how
you're gonna feel when you consume this drink, not what
(22:48):
it tastes like. And the same iody with Cosmic Crisp
of of this sort of idea that it evokes an
emotion more than it tells you what it's going to
be like to eat it. That's interesting. I've been thinking
a lot about um, oh, those dreaded millennials and everything
they've ruined. Um, which I am one, but like this
whole Instagram kind of tying in with that of like
(23:08):
wanting an experience and and that being a separate thing
than just being at home and I'm tired and I
just want to eat something that's good and easy. Um,
but kind of seeing both of those things play out
at the same time and often in the same like
I I can be guilty of instagramming food, and I
can also be guilty of just eating mac and cheese
(23:30):
and loving, loving every second. Yeah, but I wonder, like
if mac and cheese were named something different first gained
national would I mean, Mac and che has been around
for a very very long time America a hundred couple
hundred years, but you know, in some form, but like
(23:50):
if it was called something different, you know, like, um,
what would be what would be a modern day version
of a name for mac and cheese? Like if blue
gatorade is whatever, like Arctic freeze. What's like, like you
feel like it's very cozy. Yeah, it's like a comfort
hug with ye like warm blanket. Maybe maybe I would
(24:15):
call it cheesy hug. Cheesy hug hug. You know, that's right.
I would buy a product called cheesey hug. I would
buy it right now all the time. Yeah, Like that's yeah.
That's another interesting point though, because that comes up a
lot on our show of how a lot of these
foods that were considered like poor foods get elevated and
(24:35):
then you're paying like ten dollars for your mac and cheese,
or you're because now as a different name, and maybe
it's been made instagram able and suddenly got truffle oil
and yeah right right, yeah, you know totally those things.
What a scam. Well, that's what much to say about this,
because like, first of all, like lobster's a perfect example,
Like lobster used to be plentiful in Maine. They would
(24:56):
serve it to prisoners. It was called the cockroach of
the sea. Now they put lobster in I can cheese,
which is also like the dumbest thing because like you
can't taste lobster, Like I'm not even the biggest lobster fan,
Like I like lobster rolls more than I like a
big fancy steam lobster. But but like you, you if
you put lobster in a giant thing back and she's like,
you're not tasting that lobster, you're wasting your money. And
(25:18):
also most truffle oil isn't even made from truffles. Goodness, Yeah,
lobsters are like worst crabs. I don't understand the entire
fascination that we're gonna get a lot of interesting list
but I love it. We're all about strong opinions, so yeah,
this is great. We do have some more of this
(25:40):
interview for your listeners, but first we have a quick
break for word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
you sponsor. Let's get back into the interview on a
perhaps more serious note. Um, you know, this summer has
(26:01):
it's fall now it is officially fall. But um but
but we have had just just a lot of things
happening out there in the world that of of course
have touched the food world as well. And one of
those was I think that the intersection of the Black
Lives Matter movement with um Bonappetite, one of the you know,
kind of mainstays of food journalism, um, food entertainment journalism
(26:22):
in our country. You've talked to a few guests on
your show who were involved in that, right, Yeah, when
when when all that first started going down, there were
a lot of people probably heard, but if you haven't,
there basically allegations of systemic racism and bonappetite which had
kind of been on a low simmer in the food
world for a long time. But um, when a photo
surface of the editor in chief in brown face was
(26:45):
a photo for many years ago, but it sparked a
lot of people coming forward with a long list of
serious concerns about the way things have been done there
for a long time leading right to the present, and
he was forced to resign and other executives forced to
resis ee um And at the end of the day,
wasn't about the brown face photo. Is about all the
you know, that just was the spark And we did
(27:07):
an episode about that on the Sport Fill that turned
out to be the most downloaded episode we ever did.
We kind of tracked what happened. Um. We interviewed Sola
l Wali, who was fantastic. She's one of the stars
of the BA Test Kitchen videos, which I mean for
younger people, Like most younger people know about Appetite from
the b A Test kitsching videos, and they're not reading
the magazine. And so I think that there's just a
(27:29):
certain level of reckoning around race that's happening everywhere, I hope, um,
but it's happening. It's even more pointed in the world
of food because, at least in part, because food is
a stand in for identity, and so it's a very
it's a very short leap from the food of person
cooks to who a person is, where they're from, where
(27:51):
they're you know, what their culture is. And and so
when the decisions to get made about which foods are
considered better, which which foods get more attention, which chefs
get more attention, how the hierarchy of the food world
is is set. Um. You know a lot of those
questions are just like so glaring the questions around race,
(28:13):
and why aren't some foods considered as good as others?
Why don't some chefs get the same opportunities that others get.
And those are the kinds of questions that were coming
up at Bon Appetite, you know, Um, which frankly, I
think like I mean, I I did not know the
depth of it, but I mean I think the people
in the world of food knew that Bon Appetite was
the place that had issues. Yeah it, um, you know,
(28:35):
it's one of those experiences I just called a magazine
and experience that's great. Um uh, it's it's it's it's
one of those things that you that you get and um,
you know. I was charmed by it as as a kid,
but as I got older, I started realizing that the
way that that some of these publications frame things is
always from this extraordinarily white standpoint, um, looking at anything
(28:57):
like as far out as a curry as this exhost
experience for you to have, um, and just thereby completely
erasing the experience of the billions of people for whom
that's a normal, everyday food. We should all be eating
more doll It shouldn't need to be packaged to something
exotic like you know, right. So that was one of
the issues that that bonabateet head um, which was when
(29:19):
they would feature any dish that, first of all, it
was rare they would feature those kinds of dishes from
non white cultures. When they did it, would sometimes be
presented as like look at this, you know strange, look
at this exciting exotic thing like which right? Um, so
there was that, but then often they would hire white
chefs to be the people presenting these dishes. Um and
(29:40):
to be clear, you know, um no, you know some
people hear that. And one of the responses I hear
often from white people as they say, well, like that's
just the world of food. You know, people experiment. You
know who says, don't tell me I can't cook Indian food.
I can cook Indian food if I want. And I
think the what people miss is for us of all, Look,
(30:01):
you can cook whatever you want in your house, No
one cares, um, do whatever you want. The issue happens
when when you talk about white chefs who are putting
who are putting themselves forward in the public eye as
experts in a cuisine and in many cases haven't put
in all that much time and all that much work,
(30:23):
and don't really have that deep of an expertise, and
you have these food media outlets that then hold them
up as experts, present them as experts, give them more credibility,
and these people often don't really know what they're talking about.
Or have only very surface understanding, and even if they
do know what they're talking about, why not, Like to
be featured in Baropotite is a huge career opportunity for
(30:43):
any chef, So why not give that opportunity to one
of the chefs of color who have a much deeper
level of expertise in this cuisine and can contextualize it right, right,
And so those are some of the issues that they
were running into. You know, they would do things like
um al Us in Rome and the white chef had
a recipe there for something called flaky bread, and the
(31:03):
whole recipe is presented as if it's her idea, as
if she invented this new type of bread. If you
and if you read it and didn't know any better,
you would think, oh cool, Alice and Roman developed this recipe,
she has this way to make bread. What turns out
that like this, it was inspired by a Yemeni flatbread.
But like there's it's also like it's similar to a parata.
You know, all there are huge regions of the world
(31:26):
that do some variation of this bread. Alice and Roman
didn't invent it. It's fine for her to do it,
but she should at least say like this was inspired
by these other dishes in these cultures, and here's how
I learned about it. Like, give us some context, Um,
don't act like you invented it. We've got a little
bit more of this interview for you, but first we've
got one more quick break for a word from our sponsor,
(31:54):
and we're back. Thank you sponsor, and let's get back
into the interview. As part of your ten years Speak milestone,
you're re releasing um. Three of the listeners voted on
their favorite episodes, UM, and all of them just have
amazing stories to tell. Also, is it true you're learning
(32:17):
to make a rue? It is true, yes, yes. So
for our tenth anniversary, we listeners voted and we picked
three all time favorite episodes for us to re release,
each with a brand new update. UM. So we're doing
one called Searching for the Aleppo Sandwich. This was the
number one vote getter. This was our quest to find
out what happened to a beloved sandwich shop in Aleppo, Syria.
(32:41):
What was this sandwich shop, what made it special? What
was in those sandwiches? And what happened to it? Are
the owners alive or dead? And and what can the
Fate of this shop tell us about the fate of
Aleppo UM. So that was one of the most popular
episodes ever, so we do an update on that one.
We did update on one called Katie's Year and Recovery
(33:01):
in which we follow a woman who's in recovery from
a serious eating disorder over the course of a year.
So that was like followed over the course of and
then we have a more current update. And the last
one was Notes from Young Black Chef with Kwama and Watchi,
who has an incredible story in the original episodes really
just him telling his life story, which is he's a
great storyteller, thoughtful and hilarious. Even though that was only
(33:24):
only aired less than a year ago, so much has
happened in the world of restaurants. He's been one of
the leading voices speaking out for a stimulus built as
poor restaurants UM and so he we had a lot
to catch up on with him. So that was the
three things we did for the tenth anniversary and it's
it's all culminating with an Instagram Live tenth anniversary party
tomorrow night, Saturday, September nine pm Eastern, six pm Pacific
(33:47):
with solo l Wali formerly about Appetite and Carla Hall
and Sola is going to be teaching me how to
make a rue? It is true, any I have made
it ten years as a podcast host of food podcast
host without knowing this most basic culinary task. I was
not judging. I've only done it once and I can't
(34:08):
remember a successful And I hear that the moronically simple,
but I I it had become a sort of point
of pride and the same thing that I didn't interview
chefs at the beginning. I was like, I'm not you know,
all the other food podcasters know how to make a rue.
I'm not gonna do it, you know. Well, so I
certainly wish you the best of luck on that. Yeah,
(34:29):
I have total faith in you. Yeah. And if you
if you miss the Instagram live, will post it to
I G t V. You can follow me on Instagram
at these pork full and you can watch it there later. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah, um, well,
I love all of this. I love that, um that
these episodes that you're bringing back the people voted on
are such globally influenced episodes and that those are the
(34:51):
ones that really struck home with people. And I and
I hope that that's indicative of of these past ten
years that you've spent in podcasting and how the world
is kind of turning around to be a little bit
more self reflexive about about food and what it's doing
with that. Yeah, I I it's a nice way to
put it. I think. I hope, So, I hope, so,
you know, I think that Certainly the show is evolved
(35:11):
a lot since I started it ten years ago, and
in the early years was probably very narrow and its focus.
It was mostly like food that I eat and you know,
grew up eating. And at a certain point that got
tired and I was like, I want to broaden our audience.
I want to connect with listeners on a deeper level
and be more thoughtful and just make the show more ambitious.
(35:34):
And so that's sort of taking us into this new
to some of these episodes that we're talking about for
the tenth anniversary, and and yeah, it's just kind of um,
I still keep learning. Like I when I started the podcast,
I was a little worried because I was like, I
love food, I love to eat. If this becomes my career,
will that take the fun out of it? You know?
And that was really I was really worried that that
(35:56):
would be the case, but I think that I can
now say that has not happened, and in fact, the
opposite has happened, which is that I've learned more and
more about food and culture and people, um, and that
has only increased my fascination and now I'm more interested,
more passionate. There's more that I want to know and
more that I want to learn. So as long as
that's the case, I'll keep doing it. Yeah. Yeah, and
(36:19):
that's great because that's how you started. But you know,
focus more on people, were on eaters, and it seems
like through this time that that's only strengthened. And we
definitely see it when we get letters from listeners and
it's always so beautiful. It's like I could have just
mentioned that as a kid, I did this growing up,
and five people right in and oh I have a
story that connects to that, and you brought back memories
(36:40):
to this and just these human connections people form over
food and food experiences. Yeah, I mean I remember learning
that lesson when I was a producer at Air America
Radio years ago. I produced Mark Marrin's show there, and
you know that was supposed to be like a news
in politics and like political comedy show, and that's most
(37:01):
of what it was. But then like you know, once
an hour, Marion would like say something about his cats.
He had adopted these like feral cats, and the phone
lines would light up, you know, everyone like, tell us
more about the cats, and we're like, when are we
even you know? So you know, um, you know, it's
just like but people love to connect with other people
(37:21):
around things like that, you know, those little personal details
m hm. And people have opinions about food. People have
opinions about burrito rap. I love it. Yeah. And if
if anyone out there is involved in any sort of
lawsuit and you need an expert witness, I'll write a
great ALFI David, I'm want to know I'm undefeated. There
(37:43):
you go, there you go. You could have a nice
little side gig so um in the future. In the future, Uh,
why do you have planned on the horizon? Aren't starting
a network? I think? Yeah, I mean network probably makes
it sound more impressive than it is, but yes, I'm uh.
We've announced that I'm launching something called spork Full Media,
(38:06):
and so we got a couple of projects in development.
One is a new food podcast with Stitcher, whom happy
to produce the sport Full with and um, that will
be one that I will help create and produce but
will not host. Still be a nice opportunity for us
to you know, give other voices in the world of
food and opportunity and hopefully use the sportful to help
grow that show. And then I'm developing a TV show
(38:29):
with zero point zero productions. They're the same folks who
do w km out Bell CNN show, they do David
Letterman's Netflix show. Um, they did all of Athny Bourdain's shows,
so they do fantastic work. So yeah, So we're gonna
develop concepts with on those two fronts and then kind
of see where it leads. You know, I don't have
some there's no investors. I'm not hiring up a giant staff.
(38:52):
But I'm excited to start producing other things and you know,
to just sort of like follow it where it leads us.
I don't want to like grow just for the sake
of growing. Um, I want to grow because it's an
opportunity to do fun, exciting new projects. Absolutely well, we're
excited to see where all that goes. Thanks yeah, yeah, yeah,
(39:14):
thank you. Um We're big fans. We I've used your
writings and podcasts and research before, so thank you. I
appreciate Yeah, take it, Take anything you want? Yes, yes, yes,
yes yeah. Um. Is there anything else you wanted to
touch on? You always shout out social media or where
people can find you. Subscribe to this work full podcast
(39:35):
wherever you get all your other podcasts, and I'm on
social media at all the places at these porkfulle That
brings us to the end of this delightful interview. We
hope it was as delightful to listen to as it
was to do. We covered a lot of ground. We
went bouncing all over as as as a good interview does. Yes, um, yeah,
(40:00):
So so do check out that live stream UM on
Saturday September What day is a Yes, that's if you're
listening to this episode as it comes out that is tomorrow,
UM and if you if if you if you miss
it when it's live, then check it out later on YEP,
and go check out sportful if you have it already.
(40:21):
And also if you want to contact us, you can.
We have an email albright shiny email and it is
hello at savor pod dot com. We're also on social media.
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
savor pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
(40:43):
for my Heart Radio, you can visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks to our super producers Dylan Fagan and
Andrew Howard and the entire sport Full team for helping
make this happen. Thanks to you for listening, and we
hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we
have an interview for you with the host of The
Sport Full Dan Pashman. Yes, and you know what, I
have a very big regret about this interview. Oh yeah,
I actually think it's a really good thing. But we
didn't ask him about sports. Oh my heck, we didn't.
(00:28):
And we had that whole we found that whole website
that had those like sad poems about like how sports
are useless. Yeah, yeah, like lamenting the fate of the sport,
and not a single sport question was asked. Yeah. This,
we really fell down on the job. I bet he
gets that question a lot though. So it's pretty really good,
but it haunts I just want you all to know
it haunts my food podcast your brain that I didn't
(00:51):
bring that up. I think the only thing haunting my
brain about that interview was a man like I was
having a rough day and I felt like I wasn't
being human the entire time. Like do you ever feel
like that? Do you ever feel like you're like you're
talking hypothetically but you're not sure if what you're saying,
is coming across as like normal human conversation? Yes, I
(01:13):
not only do I feel that way over on stuff
I've never told you the podcast we just did an
episode about that. Really. Yeah, how interesting it is to
be in a medium where being a normal conversation, well
not normal necessarily, but conversational human is sort of the job. Yeah,
and what happens on days where you know that's just
not it's just for whatever reason, not firing off, not
(01:35):
how you're feeling. Yeah, well I think I like to
think that that's what gives us our charm. I like
I feel like your voice kind of indicate how you said,
charm captures our charm. There's sort of a note of
panic in there at all was to say it was
(01:57):
a delightful interview. I thought it was very fun. Oh
my goodness, yes I had. I had such a good
time talking with Dan. It was a very bright spot
in my day. And so so yeah, without further Ado,
let's get into the interview. You're joining us today, Dan,
We welcome to the show. Dan Pashiman of The Sporkfell. Hey,
thanks you guys, Thanks for having me of course, Um, yeah,
(02:19):
and you're you're you're joining us because the Sportfull is
ten years old. Yes, it seems like just yesterday. No
it doesn't. Actually it feels like twenty. But anyway, um, yes,
it's an exciting milestone. Hu um and uh you all
started out um so, so savor Is is a little
(02:39):
bit younger than that. Annie and I have both been
in the podcasting space for just about that long gosh,
but not in the food podcasting space. But it seems
like y'all started up The Sportful with a very similar
idea to why we wanted to start savor to kind
of like like remove food from from this pedestal or
like monolith that it seems to exist in and popular
(03:00):
culture and kind of make it more accessible because it
is accessible and it's worth understanding. Yeah, I mean the
motto of the Sporkfull is it's not for food ease,
it's for eaters. Um. And so you know, it's a
big part of what we do. And you know, yeah,
I I I'm not a chef. I waited tables for
a couple of years, but I'm not maybe an above
average home cook, but I'm not any great expert on food.
(03:24):
I um don't really care about celebrity chefs. I kind
of am very turned off by chef worship. I don't
care who has the hot new restaurant. I'm not gonna
wait for a table there or anywhere. I wanted my
food now. Um. And so you know, I started the
Sporkfull because right because I feel like there's a lot
(03:45):
of people who love to eat and are passionate about
food and maybe even passionate about cooking, but don't are
not interested in food as a status symbol, are turned
off by that world, don't care about fancy chefs. In fact,
for that, I think it was. I think it was
it was four or five years of the sport Full
before I interviewed my first chef. I had a rule
for years. I was like, I'm not interviewing any chefs.
(04:07):
I'm gonna do a food podcast without interviewing chefs. That
was my goal. And I made it a good four
or five years, and then I The first chef I
had on was this guy named Tyler Cord, who had
written a book all about broccoli and cooking and cooking
and eating broccoli and how much he loved broccoli and
his restaurant in New York. He was famous for a
broccoli sub and that all just seems so weird and
(04:29):
ridiculous that I was like, all right, I'll let this
guy in, Like he just seems too quirky. He's obviously not,
you know, not a snob. And what I learned from
talking to him, and then eventually under the wall came down,
I was like, all right, it turns out that actually,
like a lot of chefs are pretty down to earth
and they have the same kind of obsessive I for
detail that I have when it comes to eating, you know,
like I love to nerd out on the details of
(04:49):
the eating experience, just from the eater's perspective, not from
the fancy chefs perspective. And so it turns out that
actually a lot of chefs think about food the same
way I do. Oh yeah, I would say that. Well,
so I'm biased because my father was a chef um
or a cook or you know, like a guy who
stood around in kitchen smoking too many cigarettes however you
(05:10):
really want to phrase it, um but uh but you know, so,
so I've got a little bit of bias there. But
I would say the chefs are some of the demos
down to earth humans you could ever possibly meet. Um sometimes, yeah,
I mean, I I don't know, I haven't met that
many of the super super fanciest ones, but yeah, I mean,
(05:30):
you know, I I think it's one of those funny things,
like you know, they spend all all day at work,
cooking these elaborate dishes and taking care of other people,
and then really all they want at the end of
the day is just like to eat something like very
simple and homey and have someone else make it for
them so they don't have to do it and they're
very happy. So yeah, yeah, yeah, my by the time
you got home, my dad was down for cooking like
(05:52):
macaroni and cheese was and that was essentially it. I'm
sure people assume that you're you must have eaten really
well at home, but as your dad was a chef, yeah,
I mean, you know, when when he did go all
out for holidays or something, um, those those few holidays
that he wasn't working, it would be something um technically
beautiful um, but but it was it was so rare,
(06:13):
I mean, you know, like because usually yeah, he would
get home and he would just be like, I don't know, man,
like can we can we order like a like a
Philly cheese steak? Or something like, what's what's going on?
For sure? Um? And And you know, I do think
about it sometimes. I'm not totally positive because he had
he had entered into retirement, um starting maybe like five
(06:36):
or ten years back, and uh And I wonder sometimes
if he had grown up in in the world of
um of of of this pop culture fascination with with
chefs and restaurants, um and and the whole instagram ability
of everything, if if he would have survived in that environment, right, like,
(06:56):
what you would you have survived? What do you have thrived?
What have you done better or worse or the same. Yeah,
it is interesting to me the degree to which Instagram
influences food. You know that there are restaurants now, I
forget which magazine it was. Did there like, you know,
ten best new restaurants of the year, and the number
one was this restaurant in Oklahoma City. And the guy
(07:17):
who wrote the column basically said, you know, I wouldn't
even gone to Oklahoma City except for the fact that
I saw people sharing the food from this restaurant on Instagram,
and enough people shared it and it looked interesting enough
that I decided to go there and try it. And
now I'm naming it the best new restaurant in America.
And so you see that the power of that. But
so so I went to here, like that's great. It's
(07:39):
great that the restaurant in Oklahoma City, can you know,
can get noticed by you know, big national media that
are like predominantly on the coasts. So that's a good thing. Um.
The downside is that, like, um, you know, it puts
a lot of focus on the way, look, the presentation
of food has always been part of food, but but
so much onus on how does the food look in
(08:00):
a photograph? Um, And I think it also leaves to
a lot of sort of gimmickery and restaurants like you know,
let's bring someone out from the kitchen do some kind
of song and dance that people will will put a
video on Instagram. Remember Salt Bay. That was cool for
like five minutes. That's the best thing about COVID is
it probably shut that guy down, Like this guy who
comes out and like you know, does some sort of
(08:21):
dance and salts your steak at the table and double
for it, right yeah, I mean, like I don't understand
why that's like it was like and everyone instagrams didn't
go crazy, but um, so some of that stuff is
kind of grating. Yeah, yeah, I now it feels like
a ritual where whenever I used to get when I
(08:41):
used to go out with people, the food comes and
then there's like a four minute like lighting and switching
of like you no frame it like this, And I
kind of it's odd because I work in this world,
but I'm like, can we just eat it? We just
eat it right well, and and then we documented. Then
you have these people who are right like also like
the flashes going off and come on, like no picture
(09:03):
of the flash is gonna look good and like, but
restaurateurs don't have to think about the lighting because they
can't make it too dim because then people can't get
you know, like you need people to be able to
take good pictures of your food and share it because
that's like marketing. You need that. But it also means
it's certain dishes like Stew's um and a lot of
sort of like saucy dishes UM. I had this conversation
(09:24):
with Professor Christian end ray Is to share the n
y U Food Studies Department, and he was talking about
how a lot of South Asian food UM that tastes
incredible doesn't always photograph as well. You know, like a
like a bowl of doll or something like that that
can be so good and it's such a classic staple.
You gotta really gonna know what you're doing to make
it look captivating in a photo. And that's sort of
(09:47):
that sucks because doll. Everybody should be eating more doll. Yeah, yeah,
we shouldn't need to have gold leafed doll in order
to make it more right, right, there shouldn't need to
be like a guy. You don't need the Indian Salt
Bay coming out from the back to like throw termeric
in from five feet away for it to be good. Like,
just make some good doll. Let's just become a hit job.
(10:11):
I'm that guy had to come out out. Anyone who
star rises that quickly is bound to fall. We're gonna
get hate mail from Salt Bay and I love it. Right,
you can get like a packet of like anthrax coated no. Well,
(10:33):
I guess speaking of you this, you've been in this
for ten years and you talked about how you know
you lost You had these radio jobs and opportunities and
you were trying to side, well, what should I do
a podcast on and you said idiosyncrasies. What's uh. I
think how you phrased it in your letter I'm very
interested by. But I'm just curious how it feels to
(10:55):
have gone from that to having people asking you to
weigh in on rat versus the burrito, and then having
someone claim that you don't have the expertise to even right. Right. No,
I mean it's it's the whole thing is crazy. Like
I mean, I started, you know, it was always my
dream to host a radio show that became host my
own podcast, but I kept getting laid off from jobs
(11:16):
in radio. So I said, I'll start my own podcast
as a ten years ago and at least no one
can cancel it but me. Um, And slowly but surely
it's grown, you know. But yeah, I I I. When
I first started, it was just like, let's just obsess
over the most ridiculous food minutia in search of new
and better ways to eat. Like I spent twenty minutes
talking about, you know, the ideal surface area to volume
(11:36):
ratio of ice cubes and what the best shape of
ice cubes is for different purposes. Since then, the show
has grown and evolved, I think, Um, but that was
what it was in the early days. And I'm the
kind of person who would think about these things even
though I was not a chef at all, Like I
wouldn't think about the ice cubes of thinking about what's
the best bite? If you take a sandwich and you
(11:56):
cut it on the diagonal, like like a white bread sandwich,
you cut it out on the diagonal, you have that
triangle in your hand, what's the best first bite? Should
you take it from one of the acute angles? You do?
You take it from the hypot news? You know, and
and I don't know there's a right or wrong. There's
pros and constant both, but it's sure is a fun
debate to have. Um. So these are my idiosyncracies. These
are the things that I think about. You know that
(12:18):
I was like, this might be a podcast, and so
it grew and you know, I also gonna come from
a long line of lawyers. So it became opinions about
you know, is a burrito a rap I say yes?
Is a hot dog of sandwich? That's a bit of
a tired debate now, But but I was in the
early I was in the early part of that was
a four front. I was in the forefront that the
hot dog sandwich debate, I'll have you know right, yes,
(12:41):
I don't think the responsibility for that. Um, I do
believe a hot dog is a sandwich. And so people
just love these debates. And yeah, like somehow, I guess
because I was one of the few people having these
debates early on, I was an expert by default because
there was nobody else talking about it. Um. I remember
when I was Giancarlo stanton On a baseball star I
(13:04):
think was in the Marlins at the time. He was
photographed taking like a four bar kit cat and he
bit into the whole thing. He bit across the perforations,
and the internet went insane and other baseball players were
giving him a hard time about it. And like Fox
five New York sent a news truck to my house,
like forty five miles outside New York City, just set
(13:24):
up a camera crew in my living room to get
my comment on this approach to eating a kit cat.
And I was like, this is really out of hand,
Like I don't know, there's got to be more important
news out there, but the is a burrito rap one
that one I got hired to be an expert witness.
I mean this is it was. It was hilarious. So
(13:45):
long story short, is this like strip mall in Canada, Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
And so often when a restaurant gets a lease in
a strip mall, there'll be a clause in the lease.
In the case, it was a peda place that said, uh,
it's called the PA pit. And in the least it
said that the landlord won't least space to any other
(14:06):
restaurant that would be too similar, that would compete. And
in their case, the least said they won't least space
to another restaurant that sells wraps. So the PA place
at the least that said, the landlord promises not to
give any other space to anyone who sells wraps. Well,
the landlord gave a lease to Holy Guacamole Burritos, and
the PA pit said, wait a second, burritos or wraps.
(14:30):
And the landlord said, no, they're not, and the pit said,
yes they are. We're taking your butt to court. And
I got hired to write an affidavit let's worn affidavit
in which I argued that burritos are in fact raps
and um the opposing sides rejoinder their response to My
affidavit was we don't think Passiman is an expert. So
(14:56):
but I'll have you know that the courts took our
side and we won. Okay. I was about to say,
did you already, like, did you do research to come
to this or did you already have like a knee jerk? No?
I think I had. I had been making this case before.
And I want to be very clear because people get upset,
especially people who come from from like southern California or
(15:16):
northern any part of California really well where burritos are
especially a big deal or that Text mex burritos are
a little different, but so but the point is, like
people who are passionate about burritos taking as an insult
for burrit to be called a rap because they think
of wrap and think of like an airport sandwich wrap,
you know, like like which is And I'm not this
is not a statement on quality. I'm not. I'm not
(15:39):
talking about quality. Yes, the vast majority of burritos are
better than pretty much all sandwich wraps. Um, It's just
about structure. What is how is the food made? And
if you're gonna take some sort of flower tortilla and
wrap anything inside it, you are making a rap. Some
wraps are better than others, but they're still all rap
(16:00):
at the end of the day. I can hear the lawyer. Yea, yeah.
My grandfather was a judge, my dad was a lawyer,
My brother is a lawyer. I'm sort of the odd ball.
Oh no, it sounds like you're absolutely following in their
footsteps right in my own weird way. Yes, Um, what's
(16:20):
your what speaking speaking of strong opinions that people may
or may not get mad about. So, um, So, this
whole cosmic crisp Apple thing, it's still happening and it's
just really kicking off now. I mean last year was
sort of the the the initial preliminary release new apples,
Yeah right, but this fall is the big release. Yeah.
(16:41):
So okay. So for for anyone who hasn't heard about this,
this is this apple that is twenty years in the making. Um,
these researchers have been trying to put together just the
best possible Apple, like hundreds of millions of dollars in investment,
a ten million dollar marketing budgets. Speaking of Instagram, they
have had in instant influencers out there talking up this apple.
(17:04):
What how have you had one of these I have,
I have well, and I had to kind of divide
them because I've had something that I bought at a
supermarket and then I had some of that the Cosmic
Chris people sent to me. The ones that they sent
to me were like pretty amazing, But I'm sure that
the ones they reserve for like press are like the absolute,
(17:24):
you know, most pristine samples. Um. The ones that I
bought in the store were also very good. Look there,
it's a very good apple from to my like, to
my taste like, and you know, when you think about
the you know, an apple, there's a lot that goes
into let me take a step back. You go to
the grocery store. There's green grapes and red grapes. There's
maybe a couple of kinds of oranges. There's maybe a
(17:46):
couple of kinds of tomatoes. There's pretty much one kind
of strawberries. There's one kind of celery. Um. And it's
not that there aren't other kinds of strawberries or celery
or bananas that exist. It's just that there's only one
that has sort of become the one that gets mass
produced and shipped to supermarkets. Apples are the one fruit
that has sustained even in our sort of mass market,
(18:06):
um big food industry world, that we have a wide
range of different types of apples, and that the average
consumer knows about them. It's not just some sort of
high end food ething, like everyone knows red delicious and
golden delicious, honey crisp, and then you may have a
few more. Depending on where in the country you are,
you get some other different ones. But I would bet
that most Americans can name five different types of apples,
(18:28):
and and and there are real differences. There's there's how
how crunchy or soft is the interior, How much does
the skin snap? Is it a shiny slicks smooth skin
or is it more that like dry sand papery skin.
How sweet is it? How juicy is it? How tart
is it? All of these things have to be calibrated.
And the cosmic crisp is like it's like the way
that our computer monitors keep getting brighter and brighter, like
(18:50):
the way the saturation keeps getting turned up to like comply,
not like they burn your eyeballs because they're so bright.
The colors are so vivid. That's the cosmic crisp. It's
like the juiciness, the sweetness, the tartness, the crunch, everything
has been turned up to eleven and like that's pretty great.
That being said, Like, yeah, they're huge, which sometimes like
too big, and they're not cheap. They're you know, they're
(19:11):
pretty close to honey crisp prices. You know. My wife,
my wife, I don't know about you guys. My wife
doesn't let me buy honey Crisp. She's like, we don't
make honey crisp money. Right, you're right, right, that's the
that's like a birthday. It's your birthday, you got honey Crisp.
So so so there are downsides, but like it's a
very good apple. I think. Didn't you describe it as
the technicolor apple. Yes, it's like tell you right, it's
(19:33):
like it's it's it's just that it's so vivid. Everything
Every metric by which you would judge an apple is
like amped up. You can tell there's been twenty years
breeding it for each one of these traits. I am
so fascinated by this. I it is um you know,
like like you have to pay royalties to grow this apple.
(19:54):
Like right, that's one of the interest things I learned
about working on this episode of the work Folle, which
is that um yet. Now, this is the way apples
are made, is that there are these apple clubs and
a university in the case of Cosmic Crisp, at the
University of Washington or or some sort of collective. They
develop the apple and then they license the right to
(20:15):
grow it to a select number of growers, and so
you have to pay for the right to grow it
and the right to you And the name of the
apple is trademarked. It's not just like a generic plant name,
and so you have to pay for the right to
use the name and to sell it under the name.
But the flip side is that that controls supply and demand.
So so what what the apple club says is, look,
(20:36):
you pay us for the right to grow these apples,
but what we're gonna do an exchange is that we're
gonna we're gonna put a bunch of money behind marketing
this specific type of apple, so that gives you an
incentive to get in. And also we're gonna control the
number of growers who can grow it, so you don't
have to worry about the market being flooded. You're getting
something special here, and so that that accessent is a
pretty good incentive because in the past it takes a
(20:57):
couple of years for an apple tree to bear fruit.
So if you have you know, and look, most apple
growers aren't getting rich. If you're gonna say, look, I
got X member of trees that are making me a
pretty good living, it's a big risk to start swapping
out the varieties and you have trees that are taking
a while, and then you don't know anyone's going to
buy that apple when the apple comes out. So these
(21:19):
apple clubs are trying to counteract that and and it
so it makes me this kind of interesting business model.
And the Cosmic Crisp is in line to make the
University of Washington quite a lot of money. Huh. That's
a pretty great name. It's it's like because it looks
like stars, right, cosmic party. It's like literally, I mean,
to me, looking at stars were a little bit of
(21:39):
a stretch. I think the way that someone else described
it was good. It was freckles. They look like little
yellow freckles on the red surface. And I mean maybe
if you get the right one, it could look a
little bit it could look kind of like stars. But
there's like a speckling a dust. But but yeah, but
what a name? Right, that's like a that that sounds
like a high sea flavor that I would have been
really into when well, it's also funny, Like I feel
(22:03):
like this is you see a general trend in the
way that foods are named now. I think it's a
trend in marketing and branding in general, which is that
things are less literal and more evocative. So like it
used to be, would name an apple red delicious. Well
let's look, okay, it's red, and we want people to
think it's delicious. What should we call it? You know, like,
let's not break the budget. Let's just go with red delicious,
(22:26):
you know. And and and I. When I was a kid,
gatorade flavors were actually like orange was a flavor, like,
you know, not just a color. You know. Now Gatorade
flavors are like Arctic Blast, Like no, but Arctic blast
isn't a flavor, you know, that's an experience. But that's
what they want you to They want to describe how
you're gonna feel when you consume this drink, not what
(22:48):
it tastes like. And the same iody with Cosmic Crisp
of of this sort of idea that it evokes an
emotion more than it tells you what it's going to
be like to eat it. That's interesting. I've been thinking
a lot about um, oh, those dreaded millennials and everything
they've ruined. Um, which I am one, but like this
whole Instagram kind of tying in with that of like
(23:08):
wanting an experience and and that being a separate thing
than just being at home and I'm tired and I
just want to eat something that's good and easy. Um,
but kind of seeing both of those things play out
at the same time and often in the same like
I I can be guilty of instagramming food, and I
can also be guilty of just eating mac and cheese
(23:30):
and loving, loving every second. Yeah, but I wonder, like
if mac and cheese were named something different first gained
national would I mean, Mac and che has been around
for a very very long time America a hundred couple
hundred years, but you know, in some form, but like
(23:50):
if it was called something different, you know, like, um,
what would be what would be a modern day version
of a name for mac and cheese? Like if blue
gatorade is whatever, like Arctic freeze. What's like, like you
feel like it's very cozy. Yeah, it's like a comfort
hug with ye like warm blanket. Maybe maybe I would
(24:15):
call it cheesy hug. Cheesy hug hug. You know, that's right.
I would buy a product called cheesey hug. I would
buy it right now all the time. Yeah, Like that's yeah.
That's another interesting point though, because that comes up a
lot on our show of how a lot of these
foods that were considered like poor foods get elevated and
(24:35):
then you're paying like ten dollars for your mac and cheese,
or you're because now as a different name, and maybe
it's been made instagram able and suddenly got truffle oil
and yeah right right, yeah, you know totally those things.
What a scam. Well, that's what much to say about this,
because like, first of all, like lobster's a perfect example,
Like lobster used to be plentiful in Maine. They would
(24:56):
serve it to prisoners. It was called the cockroach of
the sea. Now they put lobster in I can cheese,
which is also like the dumbest thing because like you
can't taste lobster, Like I'm not even the biggest lobster fan,
Like I like lobster rolls more than I like a
big fancy steam lobster. But but like you, you if
you put lobster in a giant thing back and she's like,
you're not tasting that lobster, you're wasting your money. And
(25:18):
also most truffle oil isn't even made from truffles. Goodness, Yeah,
lobsters are like worst crabs. I don't understand the entire
fascination that we're gonna get a lot of interesting list
but I love it. We're all about strong opinions, so yeah,
this is great. We do have some more of this
(25:40):
interview for your listeners, but first we have a quick
break for word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
you sponsor. Let's get back into the interview on a
perhaps more serious note. Um, you know, this summer has
(26:01):
it's fall now it is officially fall. But um but
but we have had just just a lot of things
happening out there in the world that of of course
have touched the food world as well. And one of
those was I think that the intersection of the Black
Lives Matter movement with um Bonappetite, one of the you know,
kind of mainstays of food journalism, um, food entertainment journalism
(26:22):
in our country. You've talked to a few guests on
your show who were involved in that, right, Yeah, when
when when all that first started going down, there were
a lot of people probably heard, but if you haven't,
there basically allegations of systemic racism and bonappetite which had
kind of been on a low simmer in the food
world for a long time. But um, when a photo
surface of the editor in chief in brown face was
(26:45):
a photo for many years ago, but it sparked a
lot of people coming forward with a long list of
serious concerns about the way things have been done there
for a long time leading right to the present, and
he was forced to resign and other executives forced to
resis ee um And at the end of the day,
wasn't about the brown face photo. Is about all the
you know, that just was the spark And we did
(27:07):
an episode about that on the Sport Fill that turned
out to be the most downloaded episode we ever did.
We kind of tracked what happened. Um. We interviewed Sola
l Wali, who was fantastic. She's one of the stars
of the BA Test Kitchen videos, which I mean for
younger people, Like most younger people know about Appetite from
the b A Test kitsching videos, and they're not reading
the magazine. And so I think that there's just a
(27:29):
certain level of reckoning around race that's happening everywhere, I hope, um,
but it's happening. It's even more pointed in the world
of food because, at least in part, because food is
a stand in for identity, and so it's a very
it's a very short leap from the food of person
cooks to who a person is, where they're from, where
(27:51):
they're you know, what their culture is. And and so
when the decisions to get made about which foods are
considered better, which which foods get more attention, which chefs
get more attention, how the hierarchy of the food world
is is set. Um. You know a lot of those
questions are just like so glaring the questions around race,
(28:13):
and why aren't some foods considered as good as others?
Why don't some chefs get the same opportunities that others get.
And those are the kinds of questions that were coming
up at Bon Appetite, you know, Um, which frankly, I
think like I mean, I I did not know the
depth of it, but I mean I think the people
in the world of food knew that Bon Appetite was
the place that had issues. Yeah it, um, you know,
(28:35):
it's one of those experiences I just called a magazine
and experience that's great. Um uh, it's it's it's it's
one of those things that you that you get and um,
you know. I was charmed by it as as a kid,
but as I got older, I started realizing that the
way that that some of these publications frame things is
always from this extraordinarily white standpoint, um, looking at anything
(28:57):
like as far out as a curry as this exhost
experience for you to have, um, and just thereby completely
erasing the experience of the billions of people for whom
that's a normal, everyday food. We should all be eating
more doll It shouldn't need to be packaged to something
exotic like you know, right. So that was one of
the issues that that bonabateet head um, which was when
(29:19):
they would feature any dish that, first of all, it
was rare they would feature those kinds of dishes from
non white cultures. When they did it, would sometimes be
presented as like look at this, you know strange, look
at this exciting exotic thing like which right? Um, so
there was that, but then often they would hire white
chefs to be the people presenting these dishes. Um and
(29:40):
to be clear, you know, um no, you know some
people hear that. And one of the responses I hear
often from white people as they say, well, like that's
just the world of food. You know, people experiment. You
know who says, don't tell me I can't cook Indian food.
I can cook Indian food if I want. And I
think the what people miss is for us of all, Look,
(30:01):
you can cook whatever you want in your house, No
one cares, um, do whatever you want. The issue happens
when when you talk about white chefs who are putting
who are putting themselves forward in the public eye as
experts in a cuisine and in many cases haven't put
in all that much time and all that much work,
(30:23):
and don't really have that deep of an expertise, and
you have these food media outlets that then hold them
up as experts, present them as experts, give them more credibility,
and these people often don't really know what they're talking about.
Or have only very surface understanding, and even if they
do know what they're talking about, why not, Like to
be featured in Baropotite is a huge career opportunity for
(30:43):
any chef, So why not give that opportunity to one
of the chefs of color who have a much deeper
level of expertise in this cuisine and can contextualize it right, right,
And so those are some of the issues that they
were running into. You know, they would do things like
um al Us in Rome and the white chef had
a recipe there for something called flaky bread, and the
(31:03):
whole recipe is presented as if it's her idea, as
if she invented this new type of bread. If you
and if you read it and didn't know any better,
you would think, oh cool, Alice and Roman developed this recipe,
she has this way to make bread. What turns out
that like this, it was inspired by a Yemeni flatbread.
But like there's it's also like it's similar to a parata.
You know, all there are huge regions of the world
(31:26):
that do some variation of this bread. Alice and Roman
didn't invent it. It's fine for her to do it,
but she should at least say like this was inspired
by these other dishes in these cultures, and here's how
I learned about it. Like, give us some context, Um,
don't act like you invented it. We've got a little
bit more of this interview for you, but first we've
got one more quick break for a word from our sponsor,
(31:54):
and we're back. Thank you sponsor, and let's get back
into the interview. As part of your ten years Speak milestone,
you're re releasing um. Three of the listeners voted on
their favorite episodes, UM, and all of them just have
amazing stories to tell. Also, is it true you're learning
(32:17):
to make a rue? It is true, yes, yes. So
for our tenth anniversary, we listeners voted and we picked
three all time favorite episodes for us to re release,
each with a brand new update. UM. So we're doing
one called Searching for the Aleppo Sandwich. This was the
number one vote getter. This was our quest to find
out what happened to a beloved sandwich shop in Aleppo, Syria.
(32:41):
What was this sandwich shop, what made it special? What
was in those sandwiches? And what happened to it? Are
the owners alive or dead? And and what can the
Fate of this shop tell us about the fate of
Aleppo UM. So that was one of the most popular
episodes ever, so we do an update on that one.
We did update on one called Katie's Year and Recovery
(33:01):
in which we follow a woman who's in recovery from
a serious eating disorder over the course of a year.
So that was like followed over the course of and
then we have a more current update. And the last
one was Notes from Young Black Chef with Kwama and Watchi,
who has an incredible story in the original episodes really
just him telling his life story, which is he's a
great storyteller, thoughtful and hilarious. Even though that was only
(33:24):
only aired less than a year ago, so much has
happened in the world of restaurants. He's been one of
the leading voices speaking out for a stimulus built as
poor restaurants UM and so he we had a lot
to catch up on with him. So that was the
three things we did for the tenth anniversary and it's
it's all culminating with an Instagram Live tenth anniversary party
tomorrow night, Saturday, September nine pm Eastern, six pm Pacific
(33:47):
with solo l Wali formerly about Appetite and Carla Hall
and Sola is going to be teaching me how to
make a rue? It is true, any I have made
it ten years as a podcast host of food podcast
host without knowing this most basic culinary task. I was
not judging. I've only done it once and I can't
(34:08):
remember a successful And I hear that the moronically simple,
but I I it had become a sort of point
of pride and the same thing that I didn't interview
chefs at the beginning. I was like, I'm not you know,
all the other food podcasters know how to make a rue.
I'm not gonna do it, you know. Well, so I
certainly wish you the best of luck on that. Yeah,
(34:29):
I have total faith in you. Yeah. And if you
if you miss the Instagram live, will post it to
I G t V. You can follow me on Instagram
at these pork full and you can watch it there later. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah, um, well,
I love all of this. I love that, um that
these episodes that you're bringing back the people voted on
are such globally influenced episodes and that those are the
(34:51):
ones that really struck home with people. And I and
I hope that that's indicative of of these past ten
years that you've spent in podcasting and how the world
is kind of turning around to be a little bit
more self reflexive about about food and what it's doing
with that. Yeah, I I it's a nice way to
put it. I think. I hope, So, I hope, so,
you know, I think that Certainly the show is evolved
(35:11):
a lot since I started it ten years ago, and
in the early years was probably very narrow and its focus.
It was mostly like food that I eat and you know,
grew up eating. And at a certain point that got
tired and I was like, I want to broaden our audience.
I want to connect with listeners on a deeper level
and be more thoughtful and just make the show more ambitious.
(35:34):
And so that's sort of taking us into this new
to some of these episodes that we're talking about for
the tenth anniversary, and and yeah, it's just kind of um,
I still keep learning. Like I when I started the podcast,
I was a little worried because I was like, I
love food, I love to eat. If this becomes my career,
will that take the fun out of it? You know?
And that was really I was really worried that that
(35:56):
would be the case, but I think that I can
now say that has not happened, and in fact, the
opposite has happened, which is that I've learned more and
more about food and culture and people, um, and that
has only increased my fascination and now I'm more interested,
more passionate. There's more that I want to know and
more that I want to learn. So as long as
that's the case, I'll keep doing it. Yeah. Yeah, and
(36:19):
that's great because that's how you started. But you know,
focus more on people, were on eaters, and it seems
like through this time that that's only strengthened. And we
definitely see it when we get letters from listeners and
it's always so beautiful. It's like I could have just
mentioned that as a kid, I did this growing up,
and five people right in and oh I have a
story that connects to that, and you brought back memories
(36:40):
to this and just these human connections people form over
food and food experiences. Yeah, I mean I remember learning
that lesson when I was a producer at Air America
Radio years ago. I produced Mark Marrin's show there, and
you know that was supposed to be like a news
in politics and like political comedy show, and that's most
(37:01):
of what it was. But then like you know, once
an hour, Marion would like say something about his cats.
He had adopted these like feral cats, and the phone
lines would light up, you know, everyone like, tell us
more about the cats, and we're like, when are we
even you know? So you know, um, you know, it's
just like but people love to connect with other people
(37:21):
around things like that, you know, those little personal details
m hm. And people have opinions about food. People have
opinions about burrito rap. I love it. Yeah. And if
if anyone out there is involved in any sort of
lawsuit and you need an expert witness, I'll write a
great ALFI David, I'm want to know I'm undefeated. There
(37:43):
you go, there you go. You could have a nice
little side gig so um in the future. In the future, Uh,
why do you have planned on the horizon? Aren't starting
a network? I think? Yeah, I mean network probably makes
it sound more impressive than it is, but yes, I'm uh.
We've announced that I'm launching something called spork Full Media,
(38:06):
and so we got a couple of projects in development.
One is a new food podcast with Stitcher, whom happy
to produce the sport Full with and um, that will
be one that I will help create and produce but
will not host. Still be a nice opportunity for us
to you know, give other voices in the world of
food and opportunity and hopefully use the sportful to help
grow that show. And then I'm developing a TV show
(38:29):
with zero point zero productions. They're the same folks who
do w km out Bell CNN show, they do David
Letterman's Netflix show. Um, they did all of Athny Bourdain's shows,
so they do fantastic work. So yeah, So we're gonna
develop concepts with on those two fronts and then kind
of see where it leads. You know, I don't have
some there's no investors. I'm not hiring up a giant staff.
(38:52):
But I'm excited to start producing other things and you know,
to just sort of like follow it where it leads us.
I don't want to like grow just for the sake
of growing. Um, I want to grow because it's an
opportunity to do fun, exciting new projects. Absolutely well, we're
excited to see where all that goes. Thanks yeah, yeah, yeah,
(39:14):
thank you. Um We're big fans. We I've used your
writings and podcasts and research before, so thank you. I
appreciate Yeah, take it, Take anything you want? Yes, yes, yes,
yes yeah. Um. Is there anything else you wanted to
touch on? You always shout out social media or where
people can find you. Subscribe to this work full podcast
(39:35):
wherever you get all your other podcasts, and I'm on
social media at all the places at these porkfulle That
brings us to the end of this delightful interview. We
hope it was as delightful to listen to as it
was to do. We covered a lot of ground. We
went bouncing all over as as as a good interview does. Yes, um, yeah,
(40:00):
So so do check out that live stream UM on
Saturday September What day is a Yes, that's if you're
listening to this episode as it comes out that is tomorrow,
UM and if you if if you if you miss
it when it's live, then check it out later on YEP,
and go check out sportful if you have it already.
(40:21):
And also if you want to contact us, you can.
We have an email albright shiny email and it is
hello at savor pod dot com. We're also on social media.
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
savor pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
(40:43):
for my Heart Radio, you can visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks to our super producers Dylan Fagan and
Andrew Howard and the entire sport Full team for helping
make this happen. Thanks to you for listening, and we
hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
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