This Is TASTE

This Is TASTE

If you're a fan of smart and lively conversations about food, home cooking, and culture, this is the place. We interview the most interesting characters in the world of food, media, and cookbooks and release episodes several times a month. The program is hosted by TASTE editors Aliza Abarbanel and Matt Rodbard, and is sometimes recorded live at Rizzoli Bookstore in New York City. Visit TASTE online: tastecooking.com

Episodes

December 22, 2025 73 mins
We wanted to close the year by talking about the year in dining in Los Angeles, a city that always inspires with new openings and truly singular legendary spots. We are joined by Jenn Harris, a columnist and critic for the Food section of the Los Angeles Times. The paper just released its annual 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles list, and we talk about many of the selections. Also on the show, we speak with Jordan Okun and Max S...
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We wanted to close the year by talking about the year in dining in our hometown of New York City. Matt has a great chat with New York magazine food editor Alan Sytsma. We talk about the magazine’s best new restaurants list as well as some long-standing favorites. Next up, Aliza has a wonderful conversation with Mahira Rivers, who covers the city through her Substack, Sweet City, and by reviewing restaurants in the pages of the New ...
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Yara Herrera is the chef-partner at Hellbender, a Mexican-American restaurant in Ridgewood, Queens. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she honed her skills in the city’s fine dining restaurants like Wolfgang Puck’s Spago and Providence before moving to New York in 2018 to work at Momofuku Ko, Xilonen, and Sobre Masa. Today on the show, we talk about Yara’s culinary journey, running Hellbender, and creating her distinctive approach to ...
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For over two decades, Andrew Zimmern has starred in some of the most thoughtful and compelling food television being made for TV and online. He’s the longtime host of Bizarre Foods and a number of other food travel shows that defined a generation of programming. He’s also a longtime friend of mine, and it’s crazy that this was his first time appearing on the show. We go in so many great directions with this conversation, including ...
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It was so much fun having Carla Hall in the studio. Carla Hall is a chef and TV host who is currently serving as judge on Fox’s Next Level Baker, a show that tests both professional and home bakers on their baking bona fides. In this episode, Carla shares some great baking ideas for the holidays, and she answers the question that some of us have been asking: What is Gordon Ramsay like in real life? And, at the top of the show, it’...
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Zoë Kanan is the baker-partner of Elbow Bread, a very special Jewish-American bakery in New York’s Lower East Side. She’s produced some of the most important pastries in New York over the past 15 years, from being one of the first-ever interns at Christina Tosi’s Milk Bar to baking bagels at Sadelle’s under Melissa Weller and running the bread and pastry programs for the Freehand Hotel. Today on the show, we talk about what it’s li...
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It was really great to have Jessica Koslow in for a conversation. Jessica is the chef and founder of Sqirl in Los Angeles, a pioneering breakfast and lunch counter that serves inventive rice bowls and jams on toast and that inspired a whole generation of all-day cafés. In this episode, we talk a bit about Jessica’s early career before going into her exceptional jam business and hearing some big news about changes at the restaurant....
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What better way to talk about the year in cookbook publishing than by speaking directly with the source: the booksellers. Today on the show we are joined by Matt Sartwell of New York’s Kitchen Arts & Letters and Ken Concepcion of LA’s Now Serving. Matt and Ken tell us about what is selling in their stores and name some of their personal favorite titles from this busy year. Subscribe to This Is TASTE: ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Spotify⁠...
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Book editor Michael Szczerban joins us in the studio to talk about The Talisman of Happiness, a book he worked over a decade to have translated from Italian into English. As we find out, it’s an iconic (and quite unwieldy—1,680 recipes!) text that its author, Ada Boni, originally published in 1929. The book’s influence cannot be overstated, and for first-time readers, it gives insight into the foundational Italian cooking that we s...
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December 3, 2025 37 mins
Rich Torrisi is the prolific New York City chef and empire builder behind some of the most buzzed-about restaurants in the United States, including Parm, Sadelle’s, the Pool, Carbone, and his most personal venture,Torrisi. Matt was a fan of Rich’s breakout restaurant, Torrisi Italian Specialties, when it opened at 250 Mulberry Street in 2009. What a restaurant. That mozzarella! In this episode, Rich takes the Resy Questionnaire, an...
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Vaughn Vreeland is a cookbook author, NYT Cooking writer, and longtime video personality—or, as he writes, “that guy from that thing I saw once.” His first book, Cookies: The Best Recipes for the Perfect Anytime Treat, was published in collaboration with NYT Cooking and includes 100 amazing cookie recipes from Vaughn along with a deep bench of recipe developers from the New York Times orbit. We had such a fun time talking with Vaug...
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It’s the return of Food Writers Talking About Food Writing. Every couple of weeks, Matt invites a journalist to talk about some favorite recent food writing as well as their thoughts on the industry as a whole. In today’s episode, we talk with Chris Crowley. Chris is a senior writer at New York magazine covering food and culture around the five boroughs. We’ve long admired Chris’s work and wanted to have him in the studio to talk a...
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There is no food writer we would rather talk to about Italy—and maybe about food in general—than Katie Parla. Katie is the author of several books, and her latest is a return to her hometown of Rome. Rome: A Culinary History, Cookbook, and Field Guide to the Flavors that Built a City captures the history and modern culinary spirit of one of the world’s greatest cities. In this episode, we speak with Katie about her independent book...
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Hannah Taylor is the fast-growing culinary creator known on TikTok and Instagram as LilyLouTay. She is the author of the New York Times Best Seller Measure with Your Heart, and she joins us in the studio with a really fun conversation about her Southern cooking roots and her journey from being a working mother of three to a social media megastar.   Also on the show, Mina Park and Kwang Uh of Baroo in Los Angeles take the Resy Ques...
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November 24, 2025 67 mins
Samin Nosrat is a chef, teacher, and author of the bestselling, James Beard Award–winning cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and the star of the very popular titular documentary series on Netflix. Now, she’s back with a truly excellent new cookbook: Good Things. Today on the show, we go deep on the journey that led her to Good Things, why recipes are like rituals, and the dishes she makes at home on repeat. And, at the top of the sho...
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Anna Ansari is a former New York international trade and customs attorney and now lives in East London. She's written a fascinating debut cookbook, Silk Roads: A Flavor Odyssey with Recipes from Baku to Beijing. It covers Anna's life growing up in an Iranian American family in Michigan and traveling throughout Asia from a young age on what she describes as the many silk roads. And, at the top of the show, it’s the return of Three...
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Tom Colicchio is a longtime chef who has operated some of America’s iconic restaurants, including Craft, Gramercy Tavern, and dozens more. He’s also the head judge on the show Top Chef. We welcomed Tom back to the studio to talk about the current restaurant landscape as well as the release of Think Like a Chef, the 25th anniversary edition of his debut cookbook. The book is a classic and so worth reading today. Tom talks about his ...
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Gabrielle Hamilton is the chef/owner of Prune restaurant in New York’s East Village and is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef and the cookbook Prune. Her moving new memoir Next of Kin is an unflinching portrait of her dynamic family and its dramatic dissolution through death, betrayal, and time. It is a chef’s memoir with barely any food but plen...
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It’s the return of Food Writers Talking About Food Writing. Every couple of weeks, Matt invites a journalist to talk about some favorite recent food writing as well as their thoughts on the industry as a whole. In today’s episode, we talk with Maggie Hoffman. Maggie is a cookbook author, editor, and founder of the terrific Substack The Dinner Plan (and podcast). We talk about her days working at Serious Eats and Epicurious, and we ...
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Cha McCoy is an entrepreneur, educator, and sommelier from Harlem. She is the founder of the wine event series the Communion and, later, the brick-and-mortar bottle shop the Communion Wine & Spirits. Now she’s sharing her wine knowledge in her first book: Wine Pairing for the People: The Communion of Wine, Food, and Culture from Africa and Beyond. It’s an invaluable guide to pairing wine with food, anchored by Cha’s own experience ...
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