This Is TASTE

Flynn McGarry is only 27, but he’s been cooking seriously since he was nine years old, turning his family’s living room in California into a pop-up supper club and landing on the cover of the New York Times Magazine before he was old enough to drive. He came up through some of the world’s best kitchens, moved to New York City, and built a passionate following with Gem and Gem Wine before opening Cove, which has quickly become one of the more exciting tasting menu restaurants in the city. There's also a documentary that captured his unconventional adolescence and put his story in front of millions of people—something we dig into, along with what it’s like to grow up entirely in public, and how all of it shapes the way he cooks today.

Also on the show, I speak with Chloé Grigri, who is behind some of Philadelphia’s most creative restaurants and wine bars, including The Good King Tavern, Le Caveau, Superfolie, and Supérette. Chloé joins us to talk through her Resy Top Five, where she shares the top five dining experiences that have shaped her career working in restaurants.

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Wolfgang Puck arrived in Los Angeles in 1975 with French technique and Austrian instincts, and he became the chef at Ma Maison in West Hollywood—a restaurant so exclusive the phone number wasn’t listed—where Orson Welles ate lunch every day and a generation of Hollywood royalty witnessed the birth of California cuisine. Then in 1982, after a falling out with the owner, he opened Spago on the Sunset Strip with a wood-burning oven, a funky dining room, and a smoked salmon pizza that changed everything. What followed was two James Beard Awards for Outstanding Chef and 32 years of feeding the most famous people on the planet at the Academy Awards Governors Ball. We talk about all of it—the early years, the big swings, and what it feels like to be America’s first celebrity chef.

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Our friend Tanya Bush is back. The Brooklyn-based pastry chef, writer, and co-founder of Cake Zine visits the studio to talk about her incredible debut book, Will This Make You Happy: Stories & Recipes from a Year of Baking. It’s part coming-of-age memoir, part baking book, and the rare cookbook that is also a page turner. In this episode we get into the year of Tanya’s life that inspired this book and get into what is exciting at Tanya’s restaurant, the acclaimed Little Egg.

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Ham El-Waylly is a chef, recipe developer, and video creator based in New York City. His New Orleans–style seafood restaurant Strange Delight is a Brooklyn favorite, but his wonderful new debut cookbook is decidedly for the home cooks. Today on the show, we talk about how the book draws from his fine-dining background and third-culture childhood—growing up with Bolivian-Egyptian parents in Doha, Qatar—with lots of hot takes about cooking tools, cross-culture cooking, wrestling, and more. 

Also on the show Matt has a great conversation with Paula Houde, Executive Director of The Trotter Project. We talk about her time working alongside the legendary chef, and some great scholarship opportunities for culinary arts, hospitality, and agricultural students. Applications are open now.

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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 Emma Orlow. Emma is a founding journalist at Caper, the new food media startup covering the restaurant industry and food culture with a fresh set of eyes. We talk about why she joined the team, what Caper is doing differently, and this exciting era in food journalism. We also discuss some recent food writing that caught our attention.

Discussed on the episode:

My Dinner Date With A.I. [NYT]

Would You Wait 8 Hours for This Waffle? [New York Magazine]

Uncovering an Underground Cheese Sample Sale [Caper]

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