Podcast

All Mixed Up: Righting Our Wrongs with Utopian Optimism

Dirt Candy is a vegetarian restaurant on New York’s Lower East Side that has become famous over the past decade for making eggplant tiramisu, kimchi donuts, and tomato fruit leather. But its chef, Amanda Cohen, makes one thing very clear—the restaurant’s mission is not about vegetarianism or health or politics. It’s just about making vegetables taste really good. In this episode, we talk with Amanda about the 15-year run of one of New York’s most important restaurants. We discuss her early experiences working with Moby and her deep understanding of how to run a restaurant in these modern times. Also, cookbooks! Will she write another one? We find out. MORE FROM AMANDA COHEN:Dirt Candy: A Visual Veggie Cookbook With a Memoir Mixed In [NPR]For Chef Amanda Cohen, Everything Is Out in the Open [NRN]This Is TASTE 33: Amanda Cohen [TASTE] FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW:instagram.com/dirtcandynycinstagram.com/mattrodbardinstagram.com/taste

Our pilot episode introduces the concept of the podcast and takes a close look at Sunburned’s iconic album, Headdress.

Ham El-Waylly is a chef, recipe developer, and video creator based in New York City. You may know him from the NYT Cooking channel, where he shares ingenious tips and whips up opulent feasts from niche ingredients alongside his wife, Sohla. But you probably don’t know Ham’s rich history in food, from growing up in Doha, Qatar, with Bolivian-Egyptian parents in the food business to running research and development at Momofuku’s Ando. Today we dig into it all, plus his love of graphic tees and live music, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.  And as you heard at the top, it's the return of TASTE Live, an IRL events series with our friends at Rizzoli Bookstore in Manhattan. Our next event is August 17 with authors Natasha Pickowicz and Claire Saffitz. Natasha and Claire will discuss what they are baking this summer, the making of their latest cookbooks, and much more. The event will be recorded live for this very podcast. MORE FROM HAM EL-WAYLLY:Chicken Stroganoff [New York Times Cooking]The World’s Smelliest Fruit? Sohla and Ham Try Cooking With Durian [Mystery Menu]What Happens When a Brown Chef Cooks White Food? [GQ]

A compilation of our interviews with Hip Hop pioneers Roxanne Shante and Easy AD (of the Cold Crush Brothers)

Hillary Sterling is a longtime New York City chef who is currently the executive chef at Ci Siamo, one of our favorite restaurants in all the land. We’ve known Hillary for years, and it was really fun to dig into her history to find out about her early food memories growing up deep in Brooklyn and her many cooking jobs in Chicago and NYC. We talk about traveling around Italy for research and her friendly rivalry (more of a friendly meeting of the minds) with chef Missy Robbins. We also find out what she loves most about running one of NYC’s hottest (literally—it’s live fire, baby) restaurants. MORE FROM HILLARY STERLING:Rekindling the Flame at Danny Meyer’s Ci Siamo [NYT]Italian Passion Front and Center at Ci Siamo [Gay City News]How Chef Hillary Sterling Runs Her 120-Seat NYC Restaurant Using Live Fire [Eater] FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW:instagram.com/chefhillarysterlinginstagram.com/mattrodbardinstagram.com/taste

SHEROES returned to Newport Folk Festival this year with special guest Neko Case, who just released the vinyl edition of her career-spanning retrospective, Wild Creatures, and discusses her many current writing projects : music for a Broadway musical, songs for a new album, a book, and her ongoing Substack, Entering The Lung. She and Carmel Holt talk about her relationship with her audience, and the importance of queer/BIPOC/women's spaces.