transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] I'm Josh Scherer.

Speaker 2:
[00:01] And I'm Nicole Inayiti.

Speaker 1:
[00:02] And we're the cooks responsible for all the strange dishes on the internet's most watched daily show Good Mythical Morning with Rhett and Link and our own YouTube channel, Mythical Kitchen.

Speaker 2:
[00:08] Between the two of us, we've worked almost every weird job the food industry has to offer, and we've developed some pretty strong opinions.

Speaker 1:
[00:14] The strongest opinions, Nicole. Opinions so strong, they need to be heard on an easily consumable auditory medium.

Speaker 2:
[00:19] Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Speaker 1:
[00:21] Are boneless wings just poser nuggets?

Speaker 2:
[00:23] Is cereal soup? Follow and listen to A Hot Dog is a Sandwich free on the Odyssey app and everywhere you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3:
[00:30] This show is supported by Blueland. We hear a lot about microplastics in oceans and food, but they can also come from products we use every day at home, including cleaning products. Blueland is on a mission to make it easy for everyone to make sustainable choices. Blueland believes that hard-working, clean products can be the norm, not the exception, so that you can do better for your family and the planet at the same time. From cleaning sprays and toilet bowl cleaner to dishwasher and laundry detergent tablets, Blueland's products are independently tested to perform alongside major brands, and the formulas are free from dyes, parabens and harsh chemicals. You'll love not having to choose between the safe option and what actually gets your house clean. Blueland is a certified B Corp and Leaping Bunny cruelty-free certified. Their formulas are EPA's Safer Choice certified, and many products have also earned Cradle to Cradle's Gold Material Health Certificate. If you're looking to make a small change in your routine, you can get 15% off your first order at blueland.com/prx. Get 15% off your first order by going to blueland.com/prx, blueland.com/prx. Not feeling the spring energy yet? You're not behind. With Grow Therapy, you can start small, like talking to someone who gets it. Covered by insurance, built for real progress. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, Grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent, licensed therapists across the US., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity or availability. And get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow helps you find therapy on your time. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans. Sessions average about $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growtherapy.com/prxtoday to get started. That's growtherapy.com/prxgrowtherapy.com/prx. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

Speaker 4:
[02:49] Hey everyone, it's Kenji and I've got something really fun to share with you today. I was recently a guest for a live taping of The Sporkful. It's a podcast I've been on many times before and it's hosted by my old friend, Dan Pashman. We were joined by the legendary comic Judy Gold, and we're dropping the episode here so that you can check it out. We got into a whole lot of fun stuff including the state of the bagel and babies eating straight up butter. I think you're going to really like it and I hope you'll check out more Sporkful episodes, including a recent one about the restaurant scene in China, which didn't really exist even 40 years ago. Dan taped it while he was in Beijing earlier this year. Thanks and I hope you enjoy.

Speaker 1:
[03:27] Serious XM Podcasts.

Speaker 5:
[03:35] So normally when we do a show, we don't know before we record whether anyone's gonna curse. And so if it turns out that people curse, we have a pre-recorded thing we can tack on to the start of the show. This episode contains explicit language. But since Judy Gold is one of our guests, I'm just gonna say it now. This episode contains explicit language. This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. And we're coming to you live from the Bell House in Brooklyn. Tonight, we're doing a live version of The Salad Spinner, our rapid fire roundtable discussion of the biggest, strangest, and most surprising food stories of the moment. We even have the official Sporkful Salad Spinner here on stage. Joining me tonight are two very special guests in addition to The Salad Spinner. She is a legendary comic whose work I have loved forever. She's also a writer and the author of Yes, I Can Say That. If you follow her on Instagram, you know she has no shortage of opinions about food and pretty much everything else, which makes her a perfect guest for A Salad Spinner. Please welcome the one and only Judy Gold. I'm just giving you a high five, because I can't stand up. No, I'm shuffling my microphone.

Speaker 6:
[05:13] Listen, I'm not cursing at all this episode. You fucking asshole.

Speaker 5:
[05:20] And he is the author of two best-selling James Beard award-winning cookbooks, The Food Lab and The Walk. He hosts a very popular YouTube channel in which he cooks with a GoPro strapped to his forehead, and he founded a series of live shows called Tasting Notes that pair food with classical music. Please welcome my friend Kenji Lopez-Alt. So it's great to have both of you here. Let's just take a minute before we get into salad spinner topics and just chat. Judy, I noticed on Instagram recently you posted a video about your love of borscht.

Speaker 6:
[05:59] Yes, I love borscht.

Speaker 5:
[06:01] Tell me more about, what's your favorite kind of borscht?

Speaker 6:
[06:04] Okay, they have this hot borscht, no. I like the beet borscht, okay, with a boiled potato and sour cream. It is so delicious. I crave it. I love it so much. At the Comedy Cellar, they have this restaurant called The Olive Tree, right? They used to have the cold borscht. I would literally hang out there, but I really wanted to do stand up, but I really wanted to eat the borscht. Now, they don't have it anymore. They have the hot borscht with the cabbage and the meat and the bone and I'm no.

Speaker 4:
[06:52] Can you just buy the hot borscht and wait?

Speaker 6:
[06:56] I'll do the jokes. Okay? Whatever.

Speaker 5:
[07:01] Kenji, you recently founded this thing called Tasting Notes.

Speaker 4:
[07:04] A couple of years ago.

Speaker 5:
[07:05] Right. So you're cooking on stage while people are playing classical music?

Speaker 4:
[07:09] That's how the shows have been. Yeah. It's a live stage show that's sort of interactive. Yeah. The idea is that musicians and chefs are both creative crafts people. So when I had the opportunity to try and figure out a way to put them together, that's what we can with Tasting Notes.

Speaker 5:
[07:25] Are you going out there? Is there a plan for what you're going to cook and what music they're going to play?

Speaker 4:
[07:30] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[07:30] Like however the spirit moves you? No.

Speaker 4:
[07:34] I mean, it's scripted. So we do sort of discuss how, yeah, sort of the themes of each section of the show and how the music and the food relate to each other. The one we're doing in Seattle is going to be a lot more, it's a smaller show, so it's just me and a single violinist, my partner Tessa. It's going to be a lot of audience participation. So we have like 20 pounds of unflavored gummy bears. We have, everyone's going to get blindfolds. Everyone's going to get nose plugs. And we're going to do all kinds of kind of fun, fun, interactive things.

Speaker 5:
[08:01] And you did one of these at a circus?

Speaker 4:
[08:02] We did a small version with the musicians from Cirque du Soleil. It was kind of just like a friends and family fun thing. It was an excuse to go to the circus.

Speaker 5:
[08:11] You said it was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for you to be in the circus.

Speaker 4:
[08:14] I did want to be in the circus when I was a kid.

Speaker 5:
[08:16] What did you want? Which job did you want?

Speaker 4:
[08:19] So I learned to juggle. I learned to ride a unicycle. Like I learned to play my violin, pop a unicycle.

Speaker 5:
[08:24] This is commitment.

Speaker 6:
[08:25] I'm going to go with not that popular.

Speaker 4:
[08:30] I was not popular in the real world.

Speaker 6:
[08:32] Same.

Speaker 5:
[08:32] Judy, if you could have had any role in the circus, what would your role be?

Speaker 6:
[08:37] The tall woman.

Speaker 5:
[08:41] All right. Let's get going with the salad spinner here. We have our actual salad spinner.

Speaker 6:
[08:45] I feel like you talked to him for like, you know, 10 minutes, oh, and you're doing this show, and you're doing that show. And I get nothing.

Speaker 5:
[08:53] What else do you want to talk about, Judy?

Speaker 6:
[08:55] Whatever. Let's go.

Speaker 5:
[08:58] Judy, can I ask you to please give the salad spinner a whirl? All right, you can stop it now.

Speaker 6:
[09:07] OK.

Speaker 5:
[09:08] You're both native New Yorkers, so I want to start off today with a discussion of the state of the bagel. Not just in New York, but across the country. Judy, you first sum up the state of the bagel in one word.

Speaker 6:
[09:20] In one word?

Speaker 5:
[09:21] All right, whatever. Asking Judy to do anything in one word is a bit unfair.

Speaker 6:
[09:26] It's over the top. Over the top. I feel like I'm really upset about this whole pumpernickel bagel thing that's going on.

Speaker 5:
[09:36] The disappearance of the pumpernickel bagel?

Speaker 6:
[09:38] We're not going to have pumpernickel bagels. Pumpernickel bagels are the best bagels. They're sweet, right? They're sweet, and they taste so great with the schmear. I'm telling you, I'm really upset about the pumpernickel bagel thing, and I'm also upset about the like, these are the best bagels, these are the best bagels. No, they're not the best bagels, okay? A lot of these bagels are good for like 10 minutes, and that's it. It depends on how the water is, that's it. New York, New Jersey, bagels are the best. That is the end of the discussion, okay? And by the way, if you eat a blueberry bagel, don't ever talk to me again.

Speaker 4:
[10:21] How do you feel about cinnamon raisin?

Speaker 6:
[10:23] Cinnamon raisin, I mean, it's very guyish, but it's been around for a long time.

Speaker 5:
[10:30] So Judy, we've been talking about 10 minutes, and you've come out hard in favor of borscht and pumpernickel bagels. You're like a 102 year old Jewish woman trapped in the body of a 63 year old Jewish woman.

Speaker 6:
[10:42] Right. With constipation.

Speaker 5:
[10:47] Kenji, you were shaking your head when Judy was saying that it's the water.

Speaker 4:
[10:52] Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[10:53] Okay. You're not Jewish. Don't tell me.

Speaker 5:
[10:59] I am Jewish. I once interviewed Maria Balinska, a bagel historian, and she sent samples of the water to a lab, and they said that the water in New York is not special.

Speaker 4:
[11:10] The water in New York is not special. Well, the water in New York is also not...

Speaker 6:
[11:12] She's anti-Semitic.

Speaker 4:
[11:16] Depending on the time of year and depending on what neighborhood you're in, you're getting water from multiple different sources in New York, and they all have different dissolved mineral solids in them. So the water in New York is not even consistent, and it's not special.

Speaker 5:
[11:27] I think the real difference, because we've looked into this, is that it's more just that there's more bagel stores in New York with a longer history of bagel making, so there's more inherited knowledge and there's a more discerning customer base because we've been eating bagels for so long, and that pushes...

Speaker 6:
[11:41] That cannot be true, because I go to other states and the bagels are vastly different, okay? And the Montreal bagels suck. I know everyone thinks that they are, oh yeah Montreal, we have the best bagels. No, you don't. You do not have the best bagels.

Speaker 5:
[11:57] Kenji, what would you say about this current state of the bagel in America?

Speaker 4:
[12:00] So I think it's exciting in some ways, and also, you know, bagels are changing, right? So there's this LA bagel trend now where the bagels are more somewhere between a bagel and a baguette. I tried one of the bagels you got from Apollo.

Speaker 5:
[12:10] That was Apollo bagels.

Speaker 4:
[12:11] Yeah, I mean, that, like, if it didn't have a hole in it, I wouldn't recognize it as a bagel. But, you know, food changes all the time. And like, the bagels that we had...

Speaker 6:
[12:19] But they're not the bagel!

Speaker 4:
[12:20] No, come on. You moved to New York in 1984, and the bagels that existed in New York in 1984 were not the same as the bagels that were in New York in the 1970s, right? They started getting bigger. They started losing their hole.

Speaker 6:
[12:31] Everything was smaller in the 1970s. I mean, look at like the Big Mac or like, you know, you look at what a soda was when I was a kid.

Speaker 4:
[12:40] The Big Mac has always been 1.7 ounces per bag. You know what?

Speaker 6:
[12:43] You're so annoying.

Speaker 7:
[12:45] You're so annoying.

Speaker 6:
[12:49] Don't join the circus.

Speaker 4:
[12:54] I would say that, you know, I've lived in Seattle for the last six years. When I first moved there, there were no good bagels. But there is now like a bagel culture there. And I think that's the real important thing, is that in cities that don't have a bagel culture, the bagels end up sitting there, right? I mean, so you're not getting a fresh bagel. And, you know, like Judy said, bagels die really quickly. In fact, when I was at Serious Eats, we had this thing called the Heisen bagel uncertainty principle, which is that it's impossible to compare two different bagels because by the time you get them together, they've already changed. Their state has changed.

Speaker 5:
[13:26] I'm with that. To me, the biggest issue that I have with the current state of the bagel is that, look, if you want to try different flavors, different toppings, whatever. But to me, like a bagel is not just a roll with a hole in the middle.

Speaker 4:
[13:38] Right.

Speaker 5:
[13:38] It's a specific type of bread product that traditionally is made with high gluten flour so that it is chewy and dense. And if a bagel is light and airy, like inside is like a baguette or a croissant, it might be delicious, but that is not a bagel. Like that is the hill I will die on. If it is not high gluten flour and chewy on the inside, then it's bullshit.

Speaker 4:
[14:00] That's fair.

Speaker 6:
[14:00] Bagels should not assimilate. That's all I have to say. Also, I do not get my bagel toasted.

Speaker 4:
[14:08] No, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 5:
[14:10] Hold that thought, because Kenji and I have something. Hold that thought, Judy, because let's play a little bagel related game right now called Devil's Advocate. I'm going to read off a hot take about bagels. You're each going to give me your opinion. If you both agree, then I will be forced to argue the opposite side. All right, hot take number one. Any self-respecting bagel shop would never serve a rainbow bagel.

Speaker 6:
[14:31] Oh, great.

Speaker 5:
[14:32] Kenji?

Speaker 4:
[14:32] I mean, I think there are bagel shops that are self-respecting, but probably maybe not respected by people visiting.

Speaker 5:
[14:39] I have to say that I ate a couple of the trendy New York bagel places today in preparation for our conversation, Apollo and Utopia, and I liked Utopia much better, and they do do rainbow bagels. In addition to it, right now, as we record this, we're just a couple of days past St. Patrick's Day. They also do a green-

Speaker 6:
[14:55] Oh, God, no!

Speaker 5:
[14:56] I know, I know, I know. Judy, you're going to be apoplectic when you hear this. A green bagel with cream cheese topped with lucky charms and hot honey.

Speaker 6:
[15:09] No!

Speaker 5:
[15:11] I just threw up a little in my mouth when I said that. I can't. I can't argue the opposite side. We all agree. All right, next hot take. If you go into a bagel shop and ask them if any of the bagels are still warm, and the answer is no, you should leave.

Speaker 4:
[15:28] My take is, in New York, I'm presuming that they're all baked relatively fresh, that they're turning them around. If they're warm, I'll get them with butter. If they've already cooled down, I'll get them with cream cheese.

Speaker 5:
[15:37] But to me, some of the bagels in the shop should be warm. Like at least one of the varieties should still be warm. If none of the bagels are warm, then they probably weren't made there. They're probably old.

Speaker 4:
[15:46] That's fair.

Speaker 5:
[15:47] Sorry, I wasn't supposed to give my take before you, Judy.

Speaker 4:
[15:48] What's your take?

Speaker 5:
[15:49] I got too excited.

Speaker 6:
[15:51] I ask when they were made. And if they're not warm anymore, I bring them home and I put the convection bake on and I heat them up. I don't cut them first. I heat them up. And if they were made a few hours ago, they taste like they just came out of the oven.

Speaker 4:
[16:11] Do you run them under the tap or dip them in water first?

Speaker 6:
[16:13] No, not if they were made that day.

Speaker 5:
[16:17] If they are a day old, though, Kenji and I have both done this. You run them under hot water for three seconds.

Speaker 6:
[16:22] Right. Well, you can do that with bread. So don't act like, Oh, anyway.

Speaker 5:
[16:29] All right. One more hot take. If a bagel shop is good, they will not offer toasted bagels. Judy, agree or disagree?

Speaker 6:
[16:37] They all offer toasted bagels.

Speaker 5:
[16:40] There's a handful that refuse to toast bagels. Would you hold those higher esteem?

Speaker 6:
[16:44] Yeah, I would. Yes, I would.

Speaker 4:
[16:46] Yeah, I agree. A bagel should not be toasted.

Speaker 5:
[16:49] You said, Kenji, once and I always think of this, that toasting a bagel is like it's an equalizer. It flattens the quality. So if you have a bad bagel, toasting it does make it better. But if you have a really good bagel, then you shouldn't be toasting it.

Speaker 4:
[17:01] Yeah. All the characteristics that make a good bagel good, that contrast between that really crisp thin outer crust and the chewiness inside, all that disappears when you toast it.

Speaker 5:
[17:13] Right. Quick postscript to this conversation regarding pumpernickel bagels, which are in fact disappearing, as you said, Judy. Hot new bagel spots like Apollo, Pop-Up, and Gertie are not bothering making pumpernickel bagels. The owner of Gertie told Grub Street, quote, not a single person has asked about pumpernickel. Sorry.

Speaker 6:
[17:32] I hate him. What's his name?

Speaker 5:
[17:36] He's the owner of Gertie. I think I know him. He's very nice. You should be nice to him.

Speaker 6:
[17:39] No, he's not that nice. Okay.

Speaker 5:
[17:42] Last thing about pumpernickel, it's a German word. Do either of you know what it means? It loosely translates as goblins fart.

Speaker 6:
[17:53] Is that true?

Speaker 5:
[17:54] Yeah. I can't imagine why no one wants them. Coming up, the salad spinner keeps whirling. We'll cover recent revelations about abusive conditions at the Copenhagen restaurant Noma. Then later, we'll get to a new trend, babies eating straight up butter. And we'll debate the limits of the term sloppy Joe. Stick around.

Speaker 2:
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Speaker 7:
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Speaker 3:
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Speaker 5:
[19:31] Welcome back to The Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman. Last week on the show, we dive into China's recent move to ban imports of Japanese seafood and what that looks like on the ground in both countries. I actually taped this episode on a trip to Beijing and Tokyo earlier this year. One person I talked to in Beijing said that the ban on importing Japanese seafood set off a panic among sushi chefs in China.

Speaker 8:
[19:52] If we don't have Japanese fish, we can run a Japanese restaurant.

Speaker 5:
[19:56] People are almost saying, if we don't have Japanese fish, how can we make Japanese food?

Speaker 8:
[20:01] During that time, I interviewed some, I write articles, and I interviewed a lot of the Japanese chefs. They felt crazy. They think, oh, it's just like a tragedy because they don't have fish.

Speaker 5:
[20:16] As it turns out, though, the ban might have actually improved sushi in China. Lucky for me, I get to try some at an omakase in Beijing. That episode is up now. Check it out. All right, we're back with cookbook author Kenji López-Alt and comic Judy Gold, and we're here live at the Bell House in Brooklyn. All right, let's keep it moving. Kenji, spin the spinner. We're getting that on the mic. Is that loud enough? All right. All right, we're gonna get a little more serious here. In March, Julia Moskin of The New York Times wrote an expose on Renee Redzepi and his past behavior at his Copenhagen restaurant, Noma. Noma has long been considered one of the very best restaurants in the world. The Times talked with more than 30 former Noma employees who alleged a pattern of physical abuse. Among other things, they say that when Redzepi was upset with one of his workers, he would punch them or crouch down in the kitchen to avoid being seen by diners, then poke his employees in the legs with forks. Now, there have long been critiques of labor practices at Noma. Many young chefs have moved to Copenhagen to intern there for literally no pay, and they work such long hours that they can't have another job. The restaurant was already slated to close by the end of this year, but since this news broke, Redzepi has stepped away from the restaurant and its other ventures, including a limited-run pop-up in LA. Kenji, you've been posting a lot about this on Instagram. You're a chef. You've worked in restaurants. You've owned a restaurant. First off, just like, obviously, the restaurant industry is not the only industry where this is an issue, but it does seem like certain industries have more of a problem with this than others, and the restaurant industry is one of them. Do you have a theory on why?

Speaker 4:
[21:56] Yeah, I mean, I think this kind of stuff happens in any sort of hierarchical system where there's a lot of pressure. Most restaurants operate on really thin margins, and they're also very volatile. When the weather is bad, your money goes down. When beef prices go up, your money goes down. The way restaurants are set up, like the people at the bottom, and the servers who rely on tips and stuff, they're the first people to suffer from those volatile swings.

Speaker 5:
[22:23] Even in a well-run restaurant that doesn't have abusive conditions, there's a lot of pressure. When you got a bunch of orders coming in, there's fire, there's knives, there's deadlines. Even a well-run kitchen is an intense place to work.

Speaker 4:
[22:38] Yes, and when you're running your restaurant in a way that you don't have a contingency plan for when the pressure starts to come on, or when a little mistake happens, then there's some amount of chaos that ensues. And because of the way restaurants have historically been run in this really strictly hierarchical system, that ends up boiling over and turning into confrontations, which with the wrong people can become violent.

Speaker 5:
[23:00] I wonder if part of it also just is that restaurants, and I say this to someone who's also worked in restaurants, and Judy, you've worked in restaurants, all three of us have worked in restaurants, but like, I feel like restaurants kind of attract misfits. You're working nights and weekends. You're kind of like, your whole life when you work in a restaurant, it's kind of like you're working when everyone else is not working and vice versa. So you're kind of like on the outskirts of society.

Speaker 4:
[23:19] Right.

Speaker 6:
[23:20] Try being a comic. You know, it's the same stuff.

Speaker 5:
[23:24] And I feel like in the world of comedy and entertainment, that's another field where you have disproportionate issues with this kind of behavior. Do you have a theory on that, Judy?

Speaker 6:
[23:31] I think, don't get mad at me. I think it's overwhelmingly men who behave like this. I think it's entitled people who behave like this. And it doesn't, in any, I'm saying in any profession, there are so many high pressure jobs. But just be nice. It's not hard to be nice. It's not hard to apologize. It's not hard to say, hey, we need to talk. There's no reason for behavior like that. Zero in any job. And it's really, it's awful. It's not, and I read this article and I'm looking at, they were showing video of like the workers standing there for hours like putting a, you know, a tulip in the, whatever. No, it doesn't have to be, you can do the work and learn the craft without being abused.

Speaker 4:
[24:30] I haven't worked in, on the line in a restaurant now for 20 years. So I've had a lot of time to sort of think about this, you know, and thinking back, you know, there are people who are like, well, you know, if they don't like that, they can just leave. There's nobody, no, nobody's locking the door. They're not forcing them to stay there. The reasons I stayed in restaurants is you go into restaurants and you end up isolated. You lose all of your friends. You lose all your family. You don't go to, you're working when most people are playing. And so your whole life just ends up being the restaurant life. Yeah. And in that structure, you know, there's only one person there, the chef, who is a judge of whether you are qualified or not. You know, and so you end up in this cycle where you almost feel grateful that the chef is like humiliating you because it means that they see something worthwhile in you.

Speaker 6:
[25:16] It's negative attention, but it's attention.

Speaker 4:
[25:18] That's the thing you get in your head. And the most abusive chefs that I've known are also the most charismatic. And they're the ones that have these abilities to tell when they're just about to push someone over the edge and then give them that little bit of praise and say, oh, like, that's a nice plate or like, you're ready to work on saute or whatever it is. And then the moment you feel that it's like this incredible high. And it's not just it's not like a fake feeling you like you really feel great. Knowing myself now as someone who has a history of addictions, it really is similar to various addictions where it's like, you know, something's not right. You know, it's harming you. You can make the choice. There are many times when I said, OK, like, I'm going to quit. I'm going to quit working at this place. And I go in to the chef's office determined to quit. And then I walk out the door 15 minutes later, thanking them and like, truly feeling grateful, you know? And so I think in many ways it reflects what people experience with, with, you know, domestic abuse and domestic violence.

Speaker 6:
[26:11] Yeah, I was going to say, you know, I was looking at these workers that and hearing, you know, reading their stories about being abused. And you think, why didn't they speak up? And this happens to women all the time, where, you know, they're afraid to tell their story because, A, no one's going to believe them, they have to prove it. And the person is more powerful than them.

Speaker 5:
[26:35] If you're at Noma, even if you're getting abused, you have 500 friends from culinary school who all wish they could be you. It's interesting to me, Kenji, that you used to talk about that those people are often the most charismatic.

Speaker 6:
[26:46] Well, psychopaths are charismatic.

Speaker 5:
[26:48] Right, right. But like Rene Redzepi always struck me as sort of like a charlatan, like a very charismatic person who had put a lot of things over on a lot of people. I mean, this is a guy who is serving reindeer brain custard and candy pine cones. Anyone who can convince people to pay thousands of dollars for candy pine cones has to have some sort of...

Speaker 6:
[27:08] Will you just gloss over the reindeer brain?

Speaker 5:
[27:12] Well, that at least feels like something that could be expensive.

Speaker 6:
[27:16] Oh, my God! You're going to eat Rudolph's brain as a dessert. No.

Speaker 5:
[27:22] And not only that, they're paying thousands of dollars for the privilege.

Speaker 6:
[27:25] This reminds me, my son plays professional basketball. He's had different coaches since he's a kid. And a lot of the coaches are extremely abusive. But I noticed through coaching, which coaches get the most out of the players? And they're not the abusive ones.

Speaker 4:
[27:45] So in restaurants, I think, I mean, part of the problem is that legacy media and organizations like the Michelin Guide, which I think should just be abolished, but the Michelin Guide, World's 50 Best, even the James Beard Awards, they don't look at what's going on in the kitchen. And when places like Noma that, you know, for a long time, their kitchen staff was almost half unpaid interns and interns were locked into three month periods. And, you know, at that point it's not, it's not a stash, it's not an internship. It's like, it's a business model, right? Where if you rely on unpaid labor to make your restaurant work, like that's a business choice you're making. So the people who are able to attract that kind of free labor, be able to put all those man hours into a single plate of food are the ones that win these sort of 50 best things. And so it encourages the next restaurant, the next chef to push even harder because they don't get punished for doing the bad things that get them there.

Speaker 5:
[28:38] Right. Well, on that happy note.

Speaker 6:
[28:40] Hey now!

Speaker 5:
[28:42] Judy, it's your turn.

Speaker 6:
[28:42] God, I'm hungry. I want some reindeer ass on a pumpernickel bagel with honey and...

Speaker 5:
[28:55] With a side of borscht?

Speaker 6:
[28:56] Yeah, with side of borscht, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[28:58] I've had biolis that look kind of like reindeer ass.

Speaker 6:
[29:02] I don't know what a reindeer's ass looks like, so...

Speaker 4:
[29:05] Kind of like a bioli.

Speaker 6:
[29:07] Thank you for that visual.

Speaker 5:
[29:10] Coming up, Judy and Kenji each share a food hot take, including one about spaghetti, so you know it's going to get controversial. Then we get to the lightning round. Stick around.

Speaker 1:
[29:25] Time to cook up some advertisements.

Speaker 5:
[29:37] Welcome back to The Sporkful, I'm Dan Pashman, and let's get you right back now to this week's Solid Spinner taped live with Judy Gold and Kenji Lopez-Alt. Judy, it's your turn to spin the spinner.

Speaker 6:
[29:48] Oh my God. I really give it a spin.

Speaker 5:
[29:53] All right, good. You can stop. I asked each of you to bring in a hot take or story to share. Judy, you're first. What would you like to talk about?

Speaker 6:
[30:04] I don't know if you know this. I was on Chopped, All Stars. I've competed on a bunch of food shows. I lost on Chopped, All Stars. I knew they thought that I was going to make it to the next round because the next round, one of the ingredients was matzah. I swear to God, and no one knew what to do with that. I would have been like, I would have made matzah brine and I would have won. But anyway, I lost. But I used to make the kids sloppy joes all the time, and I used the man witch. And now that-

Speaker 5:
[30:36] Are lesbians allowed to use that?

Speaker 6:
[30:42] All right, I'll give you that one, but that's it. It's now called they witch. Anyway, so now I cook all the time. I love cooking and I was like, I'm going to make homemade sloppy joes. So this past Sunday, I made sloppy joes, and they were so delicious. And my friend is gluten free, annoying. So I made smashed potatoes and put it on top of the smashed potatoes, and it was delicious. And then I'm talking to these guys backstage, telling them, and they're like, well, it's not really a sloppy joe because it's not on bread. But I don't agree. Don't you think you can have sloppy joes on potatoes?

Speaker 5:
[31:25] That's a tepid applause.

Speaker 4:
[31:27] I think that's saying...

Speaker 6:
[31:27] Oh my god.

Speaker 5:
[31:31] It might be delicious. It might just not be sloppy joes. Kenji's got a great recipe for crispy smashed potatoes if you need one, Judy.

Speaker 4:
[31:38] You do? Yeah. We could combine my potatoes with your...

Speaker 6:
[31:42] Oh my god...

Speaker 9:
[31:43] .with your joe mixed in.

Speaker 6:
[31:44] And then we can open a restaurant together.

Speaker 5:
[31:48] What's the secret to good crispy smashed potatoes, Kenji?

Speaker 4:
[31:51] Well, you cook them twice. You cook them once. You boil them. Yeah, you can boil them and then smash them. Then you let them cool and then you cook them again.

Speaker 5:
[31:59] Oil them and put them in the oven.

Speaker 4:
[32:00] Lots of oil and hot oven.

Speaker 5:
[32:02] All right. Kenji, what's your hot take or thing you want to share?

Speaker 4:
[32:05] My hot take, I don't think is a hot take anywhere except on a stage with you. Okay. Which is that spaghetti is great.

Speaker 2:
[32:14] Oh, man.

Speaker 5:
[32:15] So just to fill you in, Judy, I mean, I invented a pasta shape which I gifted to you backstage. In the process of inventing it, I studied many other shapes and I decided that I think spaghetti sucks because it doesn't hold any sauce. It's impossible to keep it on your fork.

Speaker 6:
[32:28] Oh, my God. No. That's all I have to say.

Speaker 4:
[32:33] Can we go through? You have three defined criteria for what makes good pasta. We can go through each one of those in terms of spaghetti and I can explain myself to you.

Speaker 5:
[32:42] Why don't you lay them out for Judy?

Speaker 4:
[32:44] Okay. So there is fork ability.

Speaker 5:
[32:47] Which is how well does it stay on your fork?

Speaker 4:
[32:49] There is tooth sink ability. And there is sauce ability. Alright. So fork ability. So first of all, I would say, so you're really into sort of this total food experience, right?

Speaker 5:
[32:59] That's called eating well, Kenji, but yes.

Speaker 4:
[33:02] The experience, like the sensual experience of twirling spaghetti on your spoon and like the memories it brings up, like the lady in the tramp stuff, like all of that. I really enjoy twirling spaghetti on a fork and watching the strands roll up, pulling it up. When you get that perfect fork of spaghetti where it's twirled up and there's just a little bit hanging down, so mostly if it's in your mouth, but you get a little bit of a slurp at the end.

Speaker 5:
[33:24] Yeah, and that happens like one out of every 10 bites.

Speaker 4:
[33:27] Well, OK, I would argue that maybe you don't know how to use a fork very well. Now, tooth sinkability.

Speaker 5:
[33:38] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[33:38] Let's talk about tooth sinkability. So that's like the bite. Right. And I agree, if you're eating a single strand of spaghetti, it's spaghetto. Spaghetto, yeah. Not not much tooth sinkability in that. But nobody eats a single bite of a strand of spaghetti. It's just the individual strands combine together. When it's sauced properly, they combine together and you get this mass. And it's almost the same way that like if you were to take a single layer of a croissant, you know, it doesn't have much texture. But you take all those layers together and you bite into it and you feel that you feel those little sinks and you feel that space between them.

Speaker 5:
[34:11] It's really good spaghetti cooked just right. Two sinkability is the one of the three that it can have.

Speaker 4:
[34:16] Sausability, again, like if, you know, so I feel like, you know, when you pair your pasta shape to the sauce. So I imagine it's like if I spilled this sauce on the floor, like what kind of tool would I use to clean it up, right? You know, so if it's like bolognese, I would use like a washcloth, right? And so like a pappardelle makes sense. If it's something more liquidy, I would use a mop, right? And that's where spaghetti makes sense. And if you cook your spaghetti properly, if you finish it in the sauce and you have that good starchy pasta water, then just the right amount of sauce does actually cling to the spaghetti. So if you have a problem with the sauce ability of spaghetti, either you like your spaghetti too saucy, or once again, just kind of user error.

Speaker 5:
[34:57] Wait, so let me get this straight, Kenji. You're telling me that if you got, even if I grant you that you got the perfect sized bite of spaghetti on a fork with no danglers.

Speaker 4:
[35:06] I want danglers, but yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 5:
[35:08] Okay. And there's all this sauce left on the plate, which is usually what happens when you're done eating spaghetti. You're telling me that if you take that fork of spaghetti and rub it around the plate like a mop, it's going to pick up sauce? You're just going to push the sauce around the plate.

Speaker 4:
[35:24] Yeah, but then what are you supposed to do with the leftover bread?

Speaker 6:
[35:27] Yeah, that's exactly right. I agree. I'm on Kenji's side.

Speaker 5:
[35:31] That's like you're compensating for a flaw in the pasta.

Speaker 4:
[35:34] No, it's all part of the experience. Any leftover spaghetti sauce, a bit of garlic bread, rub it around in there, that's like the best bite of the meal. And you would not have that.

Speaker 5:
[35:43] Oh, better than any of the bites of spaghetti? Yeah. Judy, what's your take on spaghetti?

Speaker 6:
[35:51] I love spaghetti. It's childlike and it's delicious and it's fun. I think you're being a little too serious about this pasta stuff. Seriously. I like pasta. I like the taste of pasta. I love spaghetti.

Speaker 5:
[36:10] Obviously, it scratches in nostalgia, it's because many of us ate it when we were a kid. But it's also like it's the oldest industrialized pasta shape and it's the most popular mass produced pasta shape, which to me makes it very primitive. It's like we're just eating the same shape we were kids. Like we're not going to try to do any better. The only thing that I took from The Lady and the Tramp, Kenji, is that it's spaghetti's pasta shape that's only fit for dogs.

Speaker 4:
[36:38] Listen, so Cascatelli, and I know you put a lot of personal work into Cascatelli, and I love Cascatelli. I think it's a great shape for many things. But if all you're doing is trying to optimize these three things that you arbitrarily picked, if all you're doing is trying to optimize, it's like if you ask AI to write a song for you, and it gets every point exactly right, but it's missing the human element. It's missing that little bit of a-

Speaker 5:
[37:06] Oh, now who lost the room?

Speaker 6:
[37:09] I know, wow.

Speaker 5:
[37:14] I think that any pasta shape, because of just the nature of dough, anything doughy is always going to scratch a deep itch. And there's always going to be a nostalgia factor when you eat any pasta, regardless of the shape. So I think that that, I would argue that-

Speaker 6:
[37:29] I think spaghetti is also really good with cherry tomatoes, cooked cherry tomatoes.

Speaker 5:
[37:33] Yeah, if you can get the tines of the fork out of the end of the ball of spaghetti, so you can stab those tomatoes. How do you get them in the bite, Judy?

Speaker 6:
[37:40] What is wrong with you?

Speaker 5:
[37:47] A lot of things, we don't have time for that.

Speaker 6:
[37:49] You have utensil psychosis or something.

Speaker 5:
[37:57] All right, let's spin the spinner one more time. Whose turn is it?

Speaker 6:
[38:00] I think it's yours.

Speaker 5:
[38:01] I think it's Kenji. That was very delicate spin.

Speaker 6:
[38:05] He's very gentle.

Speaker 5:
[38:06] Yeah, all right. Time now for the lightning round. Let's keep our answers short. According to The Cut, people are now feeding their babies straight up butter. One momfluencer said that grass-fed butter is the best snack for babies no one talks about. There is some scientific support for this because it is true that babies need a lot of fat in their diets. Judy and Kenji, you both have kids, although I think they're all old enough to have been weaned off of straight butter by now. Is there one thing you fed your kids when they were little that maybe sounds absurd or feels absurd in retrospect?

Speaker 4:
[38:40] Both of my kids' first solid foods were pizza.

Speaker 5:
[38:43] Okay. Would you have considered feeding them straight butter if it was a trend when your kids were little?

Speaker 4:
[38:51] No. I mean, I love my kids' taste butter because I like to taste butter. But you weren't like, dinner's served. No. My daughter, for her fourth birthday, I let her pick what she wanted for dinner. We went to the Japanese supermarket and she asked for a bag of salmon heads, and so we had roasted salmon heads for her fourth birthday.

Speaker 6:
[39:11] Oh, God. I just lost my appetite.

Speaker 5:
[39:15] Would you like some reindeer brain clusters?

Speaker 6:
[39:17] Yeah, I'd like that. Salmon and reindeer, a lot of people don't realize how good they taste together.

Speaker 5:
[39:25] Next up, The Great British Baking Show recently announced that longtime judge Prue Leith will be leaving the show and that Passport will guess Nigella Lawson will be taking over. My question for you, who would you choose to replace Prue? Wrong answers only.

Speaker 4:
[39:41] I've never seen the show.

Speaker 5:
[39:44] Well, who's someone who you think should be a judge on a cooking competition show?

Speaker 4:
[39:48] Judy?

Speaker 6:
[39:48] Yes, I agree, Judy Gold.

Speaker 5:
[39:50] Okay. Hey, I mean, is that?

Speaker 6:
[39:53] Yes, I've been. And I can fake the accent.

Speaker 5:
[39:58] You can't curse though, Judy.

Speaker 6:
[40:00] Did I curse that much? See? Yeah, I would love that job.

Speaker 5:
[40:06] You would be very good at it.

Speaker 6:
[40:07] I just love that job, you know? But don't they have to be mean?

Speaker 5:
[40:12] Is that going to be hard for you, Judy?

Speaker 3:
[40:14] I'm not.

Speaker 6:
[40:15] I'm not mean. I'm caustic and vulnerable.

Speaker 5:
[40:23] All right, next up, a recent article in The New York Times is about the new meal replacement trend. Bunch of products that are similar to Soylent, if you remember that, but updated for the age of Instagram. The article says, Aspirationally branded meal replacements are hitting algorithms and shelves in droves, targeting Americans who feel busier, more strapped and more health conscious than ever. One person quoted in the piece said that after drinking so many of his meals, he recalled a period of time when eating solid food would make his jaw hurt.

Speaker 6:
[40:53] No.

Speaker 5:
[40:56] Judy, what's the saddest thing you ever ate?

Speaker 6:
[41:01] What are those things? Those green gummies?

Speaker 5:
[41:05] Grooms?

Speaker 6:
[41:06] Yes. Grooms? And it's this packet of just green gummies, and there's a lot of them, and it's like all your vegetables.

Speaker 4:
[41:16] It's so...

Speaker 6:
[41:17] I have 17 bags of them at home, because they make you, you know, they make you sign up, and then I couldn't find out how I signed up, and I couldn't get them to stop, and I have like all these bags of grooms at home.

Speaker 5:
[41:31] You have a subscription, a groom's subscription?

Speaker 6:
[41:33] It takes all the joy out of eating.

Speaker 5:
[41:35] I know, it's so sad. Kenji, what's the saddest thing you ever ate?

Speaker 4:
[41:38] I don't know about the saddest, but I do get sad when I, you know, I don't get back to New York too often, but I love a New York hot dog from a street vendor and Subret's like best brand. What I really hate is when you go to one of the vendors that has a Subret's umbrella, but they give you something that's clearly not a Subret's hot dog.

Speaker 5:
[41:56] I have had a couple of protein balls in my day. That's always sad. You know, it's like we mashed up these different nutrients and put it into ball form. You know, it's just like, but like you're just hungry and you're on the go and you need something. Last item in the lightning round. Gothamist reported that a German tourist is suing the New York taco chain Los Tacos No. 1 because their salsa is too spicy. He complained that after eating a taco with their green salsa, his tongue burned, his mouth hurt, his face turned red and his heart rate soared. One important fact, a bit of context that I need to add here. It was the first time he ever ate tacos. A judge ruled in the restaurant's favor, but have you ever been tempted to sue a restaurant? And if so, why Kenji?

Speaker 4:
[42:41] So this reminds me, I've never been tempted to sue a restaurant, but this reminds me of a story. So when I lived in San Mateo, I lived near this bar called The Swing Indoor, which is like an English pub. They have like a burger with like their own homemade hot sauce on it. And if you eat it, you get your name on the wall, that kind of place. A few years back, somebody ate one of those burgers. It was really hot. And then they sued the restaurant. And everyone thought like, oh, that's like ridiculous. But then I went and looked up the court filings. This person ended up like, yeah, soaring heart rates, really like burning things. And then the capsaicin like burned a hole in his esophagus and he aspirated like some of the chili into his lungs. And he was in a coma for eight days before coming out. Anyway, I've never thought of suing a restaurant.

Speaker 5:
[43:28] My thanks to my guests tonight. Kenji Lopez-Alt is a cookbook author and YouTuber. Go check him out on Instagram at Kenji Lopez-Alt and on YouTube at J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. Big hand for Kenji. And Judy Gold is a comic writer and author. She performs all over the country. She has upcoming shows in Boca, Appleton, Wisconsin, Toronto and Charlotte. Follow her on Instagram at Judy Gold. That's spelled J-E-W-D-Y. Thank you, Judy. Next week on the show, I talk with someone who had a sudden anaphylactic reaction to red meat and more and more people in the US are falling victim to the same fate. What's happening? Listen next week to find out. While you're waiting for that one, check out our two most recent episodes about my trip to Beijing and Tokyo. I visit two restaurants in Beijing that tell the story of how China's restaurant scene has grown from essentially nothing in just the last 40 years. Let me talk about how tensions between Japan and China are playing out over seafood. Both those shows are up now. Thank you all so much for coming out. Good night. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. This episode was produced by me along with management producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andrés O'Hara. It was edited by Camille Stanley. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Our interns are Morgan Johnson and India Rice. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

Speaker 9:
[45:20] And I'm Shalini in Hamilton, Bermuda, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

Speaker 6:
[45:41] Radiotopia, from PRX.