We recently celebrated our 50th episode of the Food Republic Today podcast! In honor of the monumental episode, we put together a delightful compilation of clips from some of our favorite interviews. Listen below!

Since launching the podcast, we’ve invited chefs, sommeliers, writers, distillers, musicians and even movie directors to join us in conversations about women in the restaurant industry, the #MeToo movement, natural wines, pasta-making with Italian grandmothers, gentrification, racism and much, much more. In this short Greatest Hits compilation, you can hear chefs and food personalities Evan Funke, Amanda Cohen, Gail Simmons and Esther Choi speak about a range of subjects.

We have so many more interviews we’re excited to share with listeners. So, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to FRT on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast fix!

This story originally appeared on FoodRepublic.com on February 28, 2018.

by Richard Martin

People talk about Oaxaca like it’s a mystical place. Like on your first night there you’ll experience some hint of magic and it’ll guide your journey and you’ll go home feeling not so much refreshed but changed. Maybe the world will be a little clearer. Maybe you’ll see in the Technicolor of the craft-made spirit animals you see street vendors selling in the square outside the Templo de Santo Domingo. Or maybe you actually haven’t managed to leave Oaxaca yet.

Me, I went for the mezcal and to check out the peeling-paint pastel décor and to warm up a bit after a few chilly Brooklyn weeks. I wouldn’t say I had some religious enlightenment due to the trip, but I will say that my limited time in Oaxaca just totally blew me away. (Scroll down for recommendations based on my visit and research.)

The hospitality of my hosts, Mezcal Unión, and their extended family of farmers and like-minded colleagues, made me even more ashamed of my home country’s offhanded dismissal of the Mexican people than I had been before. Led by Alejandro Champion Gonzalez, who everybody just calls Champ, Mezcal Unión is a sort of collective that stretches from Mexico City to pelanques (mezcal distilleries) out in the foothills 70 or so kilometers in some direction I didn’t catch, with stops in an around Oaxaca City. It encompasses restaurateurs, agave farmers, DJs, mezcaleria owners, an 8-piece teenaged marching band from out in the desert, chefs, urban farmers, a real estate genius or two, conceptual artists, photographers, human rights attorneys and liquor company executives on resiliency missions, American bartenders, marketing gurus and events experts.

Champ is a late-30s guy with a laconic yet charismatic delivery and a knack for addressing a crowd, for explaining the appeal, the mystique of mezcal. One morning, Champ appears in the courtyard of my hotel, Casa Vertiz, sidling in amidst the actual trees and tropical plants and that eerily real-looking fake parrot hanging from a branch in the corner. He leads us to a couple of shuttle vans, the brand’s logo stenciled on the exteriors.

A friend of Champ’s Mexico City crew, who resides in Guadalajara himself, plows through the aisle to the back row and pops the top on a Tecate with clamato juice, a morning pick-me-up to offset the opening night of our trip — a mezcal-drenched affair in the courtyard of Enrique Olvera’s entry into Oaxaca, Criollo, that includes probably the best carnitas tacos I’ve ever tasted. Back in the van, An Austin barman takes a liking to the Tecate concoction, and our new friend dubs it “Baby Jesus.”

An hour later we are still in that van, driving down suitably dusty roads, passing villages whose buildings are made of adobe brick and corrugated metal. It feels more and more remote, until we pass a town, San Baltazar Guelavila, and maneuver through a few more challenging turns — during which I’m lamenting my decision to stare out the window, which involves noticing our proximity to the edge of the precipitous road — and park gently along the bank of a ravine. We’re a group of about 25 or 30 this day, visiting the first farm that Mezcal Unión contracted to start making the spirit.

We wander out of the vans and collectively marvel at the setting: There’s an open-air structure a few hundred feet away, perched on a cropping, with two long tables set for us. There’s a pit with harvested agave plants around it. Off to the side is a winding stream with a rocky bank perfect for sitting and hanging out and smoking cigarettes and talking about Mexico City and Paris and Brooklyn and Chicago and Oakland. All while sipping mezcal or Pacifico beers. In other words, life doesn’t suck.

And it’s about to get even better. We sit for a convivial lunch of croquettes and mezcal. I’m down on one end with three of the owners of Williamsburg’s Loosie Rouge and the guy from Austin, whose mezcaleria is called Clyde, and the girlfriend of one of the Loosie guys. It’s totally casual. Time starts to blur. Champ encourages us to head down to the agave pit. Eventually, he props himself above us, with Don Pedro, the pelanque owner, and a longtime farmer by his side. Soon, Champ is telling us the Mezcal Unión story, how he and three friends from various creative fields decided that applying what they’d learned about hospitality and craftsmanship and marketing could allow them to make a great product while helping create viable businesses for farmers in formerly forlorn places.

LISTEN TO CHAMP TALK ABOUT MEZCAL UNIÓN’S SUSTAINABILITY EFFORTS AND MORE ON THE FOOD REPUBLIC TODAY PODCAST:

Food Republic Today: Phil Rosenthal

It’s the only message-y moment of our journey but nobody minds the sincerity, especially when Champ turns the proverbial mic over to Don Pedro, who talks about how he harvests the agave on the land around us to make his own mezcal, as well as Unión’s, and how the partnership has helped him thrive. Then one of his farmers thanks everyone for coming, and talks, in Spanish, for several minutes. My Spanish-speaking skills are shaky at best, but from what I can make out, he’s meandering around his tale of gushing gratitude; it’s utterly charming.

Then, the gathered crowd is instructed in picking up chunks of agave and throwing them on the smoldering fire. (But first there’s a warning about not touching a certain part of the agave, which can cause skin rashes.) One of the workers arranges the harvested plants, and after a raucous 15 minutes, most of the agave is in the pit; the workers arrange and stack it, then began to stuff the kindling-like cereal in crevices and around the agave before shoveling dirt over the entire production, creating a smoldering mound. It’s a lot more thrilling watching all this than it is to take part in a wine harvest or to blink your way through your 23rd craft brewery tour.

The next item on our itinerary is a hike, and before we begin the uphill journey, we’re encouraged to refill our mezcal vessels. It seems like dubious advice but I oblige. The hike lasts all of 10 minutes, and while it is rather steep, it’s gloriously short. Soon, we’re led to a clearing on the other side of the hill overlooking a valley. The Union folks had clandestinely arranged for coolers filled with mezcal and beer to be delivered here, along with a dozen or so oversized mats. We take our seats — a few people lie down, and at least one member of our entourage seizes on the rugged beauty, fresh air and intense silence of the setting to doze off.

Soon Champ is orating again, albeit with a solemnity that befits the current mood. He pauses and tells us to appreciate how quiet it is, and we all sit motionless, still and even breathing in a whisper for what seems like 10 minutes. It’s disconcerting for me, so used to the thrum of the city, and I’m guessing it is for most of the 20 or so people around me, as there’s a group meditation going on.

We’ve been together nearly 24 hours as a group, but now, sitting on the hillside, we individually introduce ourselves to the group and talk about what we’re doing there. The speeches last between 2 and 10 minutes, and vary from first-person accounts of how a bar manager first had Champ walk into their establishment and encourage them to take a chance on Mezcal Unión to inspiring tales of setting up makeshift cafeterias to serve victims after the earthquakes hit Oaxaca and Mexico City to an artist who detailed the founding of an art fair with the assistance of the mezcal brand’s owner.

Even the guy taking a nap was called upon, and he somehow roused himself, spoke surprisingly eloquently about his introduction to Unión Mezcal, and promptly laid back down on the mat to resume his slumber.

It was all very moving, at times inspiring, and it made me think that if I were inadvertently being indoctrinated into a cult and that this would be my new home, it wouldn’t be such a bad way to live. Unless of course they didn’t let us drink the mezcal anymore.

Soon enough though, we were being led back down the dirt trail for more food, more mezcal, and a night of dancing, stargazing, dreaming. As dinner ended and darkness descended, Tonio, one of Mezcal Unión’s founders, showed off his skills in the DJ booth. The tables got pushed aside and at least half of the group, along with a few of the farmers, hit the dance floor. A few songs in, the lights began to dim and the music cut out; maybe getting a reliable generator out in the Oaxacan desert is too much to ask, even for folks who are clearly geniuses when it comes to planning and entertaining.

Not to worry, however! A fix is found and soon the music grows louder as the stars in the sky become brighter and the dancing becomes more frenetic and, well, when you find yourself to be lucky enough to be faux-moonwalking to a Michael Jackson song on a Mexican pelanque with a couple dozen newfound friends, you find yourself reflecting on what correct decisions in life led you to this place in time.

But wait! We’re not done with the evening yet. Down at the bonfire, people are starting to gather. Soon, a marching band and two of the giant puppets known as mojigangas are approaching our group from the path we’d parked on about 12 hours earlier. The mojigangas are about 10 feet tall and made of papier-mache; they’re depicting a man and a woman, and there’s also a celebratory ball made of the same material being twirled around by a third puppeteer. Meanwhile, the group of young musicians, who I find out come from the nearest town, play festive songs on their trumpets and trombones, a fitting accompaniment for the long-armed puppets who turn and sway to the music.

At this point, the night is becoming a blur, literally and figuratively, but I’ve learned a lot about mezcal production, as well as seeing firsthand how a responsible, apparently profitable and socially ambitious business could be run by a few friends and a supporting cast.

This wouldn’t even be my last day in Oaxaca, but it was surely the most soul-enriching experience for all of us on the trip. Some of us would stay another day, then another, then even another. Thanks to Aeromexico’s seemingly lax attitude about honoring flight plans and schedules, it’s not an entirely easy thing to get to Oaxaca, and more than a few people I’ve spoken to find it an even harder place to leave. I get that now, and while I can’t guarantee that you’ll have an experience that’ll lead to an all-night dance party in the desert, I can point you in a few directions to make your Oaxaca journey a mezcal-fueled success. See below for more.

Oaxaca Dining & Drinking Tips

You probably won’t find a tour along the lines of what I describe above, but the Mezcalistas website has some advice about trying to get out into the pelanques. As for other things to do in and around Oaxaca, there is way more than I can list here, but I’ve assembled a few recommendations for where to eat and drink. Some are places I went to during my four-day stay; others were recommended by Oaxaca regulars I contacted through friends in the food and drinks biz.

Criollo: The first restaurant in Oaxaca by Enrique Olvera, whose Mexico City restaurants are amongst the country’s best-known. He’s also behind New York City’s Cosme and Atla.

La Popular: A conveniently located corner bar with decent small bites, a block or so up from the Templo de Santo Domingo.

Zandunga and Biznaga: Two Oaxacan restaurants also conveniently located in the city and recommended by friends.

Mezcaloteca: A mezcal tasting bar where you can learn a lot about this special spirit, from the different plants used in distilling to the regional distinctions and more. Reach out in advance and plan for two or three hours of tasting.

Boulenc: A stylish bakery and café that doubles as a showcase for Oaxacan design. It’s a beautiful place to sit and have coffee and a delicious sandwich.

Itanoni: An all-heirloom corn restaurant. Because the world needs more heirloom corn.

Mezcalogia: Depends on who you ask, but some people say this is the best mezcal bar in Oaxaca, if not the world.

Amanda Cohen made a bold statement in the days following the revelations about John Besh’s sexual harassment scandal, writing on Esquire.com that it was now time for the media to pay more attention to women in the industry. That was back in early November, and since that article went viral, well, a lot has happened. Like, most notably, the still-unfolding sexual harassment allegations against Mario Batali and Ken Friedman, who co-owns restaurants with April Bloomfield.

Cohen, the executive chef and owner of New York City’s Dirt Candy, deserves to be known for her cooking, as well as for being a forward-thinking restaurateur. Dirt Candy left meat off the menu when it opened nearly a decade ago — a move that Cohen says isn’t because she wanted to be thought of as a vegetarian chef, but because she wanted to shine a light on the possibilities of vegetable-focused cuisine. Talk about ahead of her time; you’d be hard-pressed to find a 2018 trend report that doesn’t list some variation on “vegetable-focused” as a trend.

On our Food Republic Today podcast (or listen above), Cohen tells host Richard Martin that it’s not shocking that she doesn’t get the credit she deserves; most of the media is too busy regaling male chefs. Will that change now that sexual harassment claims have spurred conversations about change? And should patrons boycott the restaurants affiliated with accused harassers? These are some of the topics Cohen addresses, as well as how these issues have forced her to consider her own actions. Here, we’ve excerpted a portion of the conversation, with edits for clarity:

Let’s talk about your Esquire article, which we joked is now outdated. The title of your story is “I’ve Worked In Food For 20 Years. Now You Finally Care About Female Chefs?” Was the title your idea?
No, I think it was actually Esquire’s. I don’t think I put the lead in.

Is that something you feel is accurate?
Yeah, I do. I was like, “That pretty much sums it up.” You know, we female chefs, we’re here, we’ve been here. Every time something bad happens in the industry, that’s when we get noticed. We’re not the first chef people go to when they have a story to tell or that they want to tell a story about. It’s really the male chefs. You see a lot of women’s names come up a lot when it’s like, “Oh, look, there are all these awards and they didn’t get an award. Why are there no female chefs?” Now, it’s like, “All these male chefs are really gross. Ask a female chef about it.” Well, yes, thank you for asking and thank goodness people are telling their stories, but at the same time, hey, maybe if you had talked to us beforehand, maybe we wouldn’t be at this point because more women would feel comfortable telling their stories.

“This is an important thing: There are just as many women who start out in cooking as men do. Then the women are the ones that slowly drop off.”

One of the things we’ve all had trouble grappling with is, are there just not as many women chefs because women haven’t felt comfortable in these kitchens? Would there be more women chefs if they didn’t feel like it was a danger zone to go into these places?
I think there are a lot of reasons for why there aren’t enough women chefs. I think, yes, women leave the industry because they’re like, “This isn’t a safe place for me.” I think women leave the industry because they look around and they go, “Well, where am I going to go? There’re no female chefs that I can look up to.” There aren’t enough of them. There seems to be 10 spots where female chefs keep getting slotted into and there aren’t enough heroes for them. So, they’re like, “There’s no point. I might as well go do something else where I’ll have more success.” I think women leave the industry because we, as an industry, aren’t quite an industry. We don’t have a lot of rules or regulations. Women sort of hit an age where they’re like, “Maybe I’d like to have children.” And they have children and they look around, “Well, how am I going to come back to work?” We don’t provide maternity leave, really, in the industry. We don’t provide workable hours. So we haven’t quite figured that out.

This is an important thing: There are just as many women who start out in cooking as men do. Then the women are the ones that slowly drop off.

It’s probably is a variety of reasons, but certainly these allegations that are coming out now are showing the darker side of it. These are some of the top restaurants in New York City. If you’re a woman or a man, you’d want to go to these places to try to advance. Obviously, women have had to play this game.
There’s a two-pronged attack that they’re getting. A lot of these kitchens, they’re probably not great places to work in in the first place. There’s probably a lot of verbal abuse. So, women are getting a lot of verbal abuse and sexual harassment. You’re getting both coming at you at the same time and I think it’s just like, “What’s the point?”

Yeah, maybe go into marketing or something.
[laughs] Well, I also think what’s interesting about this is that chefs do have a voice. I’m looking at Twitter and I’m like, “This is one of those industries on Twitter where people are really vocal, in the chef industry.” I think about other industries, and I’m like, “I think this goes on everywhere.” It’s just that those other industries don’t have as much of a voice like actors and comedians do on Twitter. I’m sure there are other groups that I’m forgetting. Chefs are out there on Instagram, that’s what we do.

At the end of the Esquire article, you listed 62 women who are executive chefs or owners of restaurants in NYC. Since the article’s been published, the number one person you put on that list, April Bloomfield — her partner, Ken Friedman, is one of the guys who went down this week. There’s been a lot of talk in the media and on Twitter and social media, “Where was April?” It’s obviously a complicated thing. It’s certainly not as easy for women to get their own restaurants. You’re one of the few owner/operators that don’t have to answer to a man in some way. What do you think about that?
I think it’s a really complicated. I want to believe that April didn’t know very much and what she knew, she dealt with. I also think that she could’ve been in a position where she couldn’t say anything. Ken is the main investor. He does sort of run that industry. She is the back-of-house. For a long time, she probably felt that, it’s not that it wasn’t her place, but her position wasn’t necessarily secure. I hope at this point she does feel like her position is secure and this really goes for a lot of other women because April’s going to take a lot of heat for this and probably well-deserved. But women who are in the same position, I think April will come out on top. She’s an amazing chef. However this group deals with this, either she runs it on her own, she leaves, she does whatever, she will have a career. I’m hoping other women who are in the same position will say, “Look, this is what’s gonna happen. April’s gone on, she’s had another career. I need to turn around my company and see what’s happening in it.” And say, “This isn’t okay.” Then deal with it. This is an issue that affects everybody on so many different levels.

What do you recommend to women, and to guys, who are trying to figure this out? Some people have called for a boycott of all the restaurants in Mario Batali’s, John Besh’s, and now Ken Friedman’s orbit. Do you think that’s a good technique to support people who aren’t implicated in this? Or any other thoughts about how people should react?
I don’t know. That’s a hard one, too, because part of me is like screw you all. You’ve all gotten a lot of attention, and there are a lot of really good restaurants out there and we should be supporting a lot of good restaurants. Attention and articles, that all could’ve been written about other restaurants — you guys took that. And you abused it. You filled up our public imagination for so long. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who work there and I’m not sure it’s fair to punish those people. They have jobs. We’re talking about thousands of people being out of work all of the sudden if all the restaurants are boycotted and it’s not their fault and they shouldn’t be punished. At the same time, maybe before you think about going to those restaurants, you can also say, “Hmm, I wonder what other restaurant that’s similar, but didn’t get as much attention, that I could go to.” Not totally boycott, but expand your horizons.

The other part of this is that the media — I feel like a lot of the women I’m seeing on Twitter who are going after these people have had the opportunity to support women more and have not. Even though a lot of the food magazines don’t put people on their covers, a lot of the dishes are from the hot young guy chef or the hot established older guy chef. Very rarely are you seeing — like Missy Robbins is great, so we’ll do one of her dishes on the cover. Even though a lot of these magazines are run by men, there are a lot of women who have a voice and work there and could really push for that.
And a lot of publishers and editors are women for a really long time. Seeing both the men and women, it’s like no one cares about promoting women chefs. It certainly didn’t change when the men editors came into power. You’re like, “Does nobody want to hang out with me? I’m just a lowly female chef?” Not only did male chefs probably keep a lot of female chefs down, those editors and writers, they kept a lot of female chefs down by not writing about them. They didn’t allow them to have the career that they deserved.

These are complicated issues. I don’t know where it all ends or if it’s just beginning. I don’t know what’s going on.
I think it’s just beginning. It doesn’t have a good ending yet. We’re all at this moment like, “Yeah! Rah! Rah! Rah! It’s all going to change!” Some things will change and some things won’t. I’ve already seen things where it’s like, “I can’t believe that just happened today.” In this moment when “It’s time to celebrate chefs” and “Why do we keep celebrating the same people?” I just saw an article by someone like, “Really? That’s appropriate to publish right now?” When you could’ve chosen something equally as successful who was a woman. So, I think we’re going to make some three steps forward, two steps back, three steps forward, two steps back. This didn’t happen overnight, it’s not going to change overnight.

How is it at Dirt Candy? Do you have men working on staff there?
Oh, yeah.

How do you vet them to make sure they’re not the kind of guy who would contribute to a bad atmosphere?
I think that they know that I would kill them.

[laughs] You’re Canadian, but you’re not that nice.
I’m not that nice. I know how to use an ice pick.

[laughs]
I think just by virtue of working for a woman — my general manager is a woman, I’m a woman, my sous chef is a woman and I have two junior sous, one of them who is a woman. I think by virtue of so many women being in management, you kind of get the idea that’s not what you can do. This is a really big moment for us in the restaurant. When this happened, Jackie, my manager, and I, we sort of stopped and we were like, “Okay, what have we done? Are we okay? Do we need to look internally and figure out if we’re assholes?” And we’re like, “No, no. It’s fine.” We really did. I had a moment when I was like, “Do I yell too much? Am I abusive? Have there been signs that I’ve ignored?” And I have to assume everyone’s doing this. We sort came out on the other end and like, “No.” We really do have a strong handbook that we make everybody sign and read. I’m not really sure if everybody’s read every line in that handbook; we have to make sure that we make them go back and really review our policies. And I don’t think we’ve ever ignored anything. However, if we did or if something happened, I’d hope that my staff would feel comfortable enough to come to one of us. We’ve also told them that there are outside people that they can go to, because obviously if I’m the asshole, who’s going to come tell me?

You’re giving people a lot of credit, because part of the reason this is all happening is because a lot of the chefs did not plan for that. I mean the John Besh case has gotten a lot of people talking about these issues. They had over 1,000 employees and no HR department, reportedly.
Well, I understand that. Jackie and I would love to have an HR department and not have to deal with all the crap that happens in the restaurant. HR is a really big thing. I just assume that the moment you have more than like, I don’t know, 100 employees, you have an HR person. The John Besh thing is ridiculous. That’s a lot of restaurants, that’s a lot of employees. It’s really hard for a small restaurant to have an HR department. There’s no extra money. That’s why you have to have these handbook policies. These handbooks, in context, cost us $10,000 to put together. We have to have a lawyer look it over, we had to deal with it a couple of times, we had to update it. It’s not cheap. But in the long term, the point is that it saves you money. But yes, if one can have an HR department, one should have an HR department to deal with all this.

Given what you said earlier about Dirt Candy, you’re not in the expansion mode, but would it be ideal that business got so good there that you’d get into a position where you could expand and open more restaurants?
Yeah. I would love to, but that opportunity hasn’t really come up yet. And I’m going to say that that opportunity probably hasn’t come up yet because I’m a female chef. And those opportunities don’t come our way very often, and instead go to male chefs who probably have less experience.

by Richard Martin

I’m not going to lie: A business decision spurred the launch of Food Republic Today, our daily podcast. At a time when print and digital media is still struggling to convert audience into dollars, podcasting offers more promise. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, and podcasting is an increasingly crowded space to be sure, but we saw an opportunity.

There are several great weekly podcasts covering various areas of the food world — I’m a fan of The Splendid Table, Prince Street Podcast, House of Carbs, Eater Upsell and at least a few from the Heritage Radio Network. For the past two years, I’ve appeared as the North American correspondent on Monocle 24 Radio’s The Menu, which offers a valuable overview of the global culinary landscape. And Food Republic recently partnered with Talkhouse for a culinary-music mash-up that’s supported by Sonos; an upcoming episode features chef and restaurateur Paul Kahan and Pavement’s Mark Ibold.

But at a time when the New York Times’ The Daily is the talk of the podcast universe — it reportedly had 3.8 million unique listeners in August — there wasn’t a food podcast appearing each weekday. I realized that given our resources at our parent company, Zero Point Zero Production, we could do it! I appreciate The Daily, like many listeners, but I also operate foremost in the food space — and while I pay attention to politics and world events, I often need a break from the oppressive news of wars, corruption and natural disasters.

So I devised a daily weekday podcast that would feature food and drink news at the top of each episode, with a co-host (my colleague Krista Ruane, with whom I’d often discussed food issues with around the office). This segment would look at food from every angle: restaurant trends, sustainability issues, whether Taco Bell’s latest kitschy creation had stepped over the boundary of good taste. Then, when possible, we’d follow the news with “Field Reports,” or short takes on intriguing topics such as natural wine or why venison shouldn’t be a mass-produced meat or how venture capital is affecting snack start-ups (to give a few examples of topics we’ve since covered). Each episode would orbit around a main interview, “10 Questions,” with important culinary and cultural figures as guests in our studio.

So that’d be the guts of the podcast, and the concluding segment would be a take on the lighter side of food, with recurring features such as comedians telling stories about their awkward adjustment to foodie culture or chefs ranting about trends. Our producer Katie Guhl came up with another closing bit, “Bad Reviews of Good Restaurants from Yelp,” where she’d enlist coworkers to read takedowns of venerated institutions like The French Laundry and Alinea as posted on the review site.

The kicker? Each episode of Food Republic Today would aim for a 25-minute runtime. So no rambling interviews with endless tangents, and a goal to pack information into the length of an average urban daily commute (or half of a commute, if you ride the perpetually beleaguered F train like I do).

Today, I’d say we’re off to a great start, with 8 episodes available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Soundcloud and, any day now, Spotify. They’re averaging 24 minutes, even tighter than I’d anticipated. We’ve already logged thousands of downloads. We’ve discussed important, relevant topics such as the sexual harassment scandals plaguing the restaurant industry, the prescient role that chefs have played feeding communities in the wake of hurricanes and wildfires, and the upsurge in media devoted to cooking with cannabis. And I’m most proud of our guest list, in part because we’ve managed to avoid the usual New York-based media trap of relying solely on local voices. It’s been amazing to get the opportunity to speak face to face, in our podcast studio, with impactful people from around the world.

We’ve featured chefs, restaurateurs and others with ties to the culinary scene from Boston (Matt Jennings), the Bay Area (Daniel Patterson, Kyle Itani and Chris Cosentino), Atlanta (Ford Fry) and London (Isabelle Legeron). The rest of this week is no different, as we chat with Los Angeles comedian, director and screenwriter Cathryn Michon of the film Cook-Off!; Connecticut-based chef-activist Daniel Giusti; 3-star Michelin chef Joshua Skenes from Saison in San Francisco; and LA pasta wizard Evan Funke.

When my colleague Rob Sheard (also our future beef jerky correspondent) first floated the idea of a daily podcast, I asked myself whether there was enough going on in the food world to sustain the amount of content necessary to fill even such concise episodes as I ended up planning. This forced me to consider how much culinary news flowed through blogs, magazine websites, newspapers, radio, television and podcasts every day.

Which led to a reckoning: we’d try to provide listeners as obsessed with food as we are the news and ideas affecting our world every day. And we would do so in a newer, easier to use format than a blog or digital magazine, which requires a lot of reading and link clicking for context. Power up the Food Republic Today podcast on your way to work, or during your cardio workout, or as you’re getting dressed in the morning, and you can be up to speed and well informed.

In the early going, I feel like we’re delivering on this mission. I hope that you’ll subscribe and give it a listen, and let me know how we’re doing. At the very least, every episode of Food Republic Today will leave you informed, inspired, and if we do our jobs right, hungry.

by George Embiricos

After almost five years spent working on the editorial team at Food Republic, I devoted my last nine months to a full-time, graduate-degree program studying Restaurant Management at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. While in school, which was targeted towards eventual first-time restaurant owners, I learned about the day-to-day operations of the business side of restaurants via units such as menu design and concept, marketing, food safety, staff management, purchasing, financials and accounting and wine certification. Though the program was intended to be taken over the course of two years, I opted for the “expedited track,” graduating just earlier this week. So here I am, about to become a restaurant-industry professional.

If I envisioned a life in such a fast-paced world, I figured, why not tackle the necessary first step in the most efficient way possible? This choice resulted, predictably, in lots of days spent pouring over seemingly nonsensical numbers and nights spent wide awake, wondering just why I ever envisioned a successful future as a restaurant owner, coupled with repeated realizations that one must be equal parts passionate and crazy to devote a life to this career.

And yet, despite countless warnings from chefs and restaurateurs alike about the severe, multifaceted difficulties of entering the hospitality industry, I emerge today more excited and determined than ever to crack into the field. Naïve? Absolutely. And can classroom lectures, readings and projects actually prepare me for the tireless hours I plan to soon spend working in actual restaurants? Absolutely not. After all, hospitality professionals — rightfully — dislike nothing more than a culinary-school graduate who believes that he or she already knows it all. I can say with certainty, however, that I’ve learned a great deal about the challenges that lie ahead. Well, one of the first lessons was to be aware that one cannot possibly prepare for all of the challenges that lie ahead. So, let’s amend that and say just some of the many, many challenges. With that clarified, here are some interesting, mostly general tidbits for aspiring restaurateurs that I can offer from my studies. Good luck! You’ll need it.

1. “80% of you will fail.”
Remember when your high-school teacher told you some seemingly unbelievable statistic about you and the two students seated on either side of you? This statement — which one professor greeted us with on our first day of class — is sort of like that, except chances are that all three of you will strike out, should you each decide to open a restaurant. Welcome to the industry! (Yes, tuition had already been paid in full.)

2. Have a general capital budget in mind? Now double it, add ten…
Sure, there are basic opening-budget templates out there for different sized restaurants, but each spot is obviously incredibly unique. It’s impossible to anticipate each and every delay in construction (and there will be lots), but in the incredibly wise words of renowned Boston chef Tony Maws: “Plumbers, carpenters, masons, electricians, equipment installers, multiple engineers of every specialty, architects, HVAC experts, designers, painters, tilers, floor layers, window installers, sign hangers, computer wirers, telephone technicians, point of sale system programmers: all working in the same building, often at the same time, and their collective efforts need to be coordinated.” In other words, be sure to have a plethora of money set aside for working capital and contingencies.

3. Break even in Year One? Congrats!
Seriously, well done! The majority of restaurants will find themselves in the red after the first year of operation…if they’re not already shuttered. Keep your expectations low while preparing for and expecting the worst. If you manage to generate zero — yes, zero — net income in your first year open, feel free to give yourself a pat on the back. And then shoot for the stars and thus a 2–3% increase in income per year, until you reach the impressive profit margin of somewhere between 6–8%. This figure means you’ve effectively made it. Keep in mind that even the slightest of miscalculations or the smallest of decisions can lead to a significantly lowered bottom line. Let that all sink in for just a moment. Along with the fact that you’ll have been and will continue to work harder and longer than ever before.

4. Social media is a blessing…and a curse.
Yes, everyone from your colleague to your neighbor to your grandmother is posting his or her thoughts (ramblings?) daily on Facebook. While it may feel like we’re more disconnected than ever with the rise of technology, social media does bring us together — for better or for worse — in a multitude of ways. What does this mean for you, the first-time restaurateur? Sure, you’ll certainly receive some free (or low-cost) publicity from social-media “influencers” that will hopefully drive new customers through your doors. But it’s your job to make sure these diners actually come back.

You’ll also have to learn pretty quickly how — and perhaps more importantly, how not — to deal with negative public feedback, be it on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Yelp or an (gasp) actual publication. Hiring a PR firm is, by all accounts, a smart and necessary step, but this is your project and you’re going to want and need to be involved in direct customer interaction. This is the hospitality industry, after all. You’ll be required to juggle the intricacies involved in being seen as hospitable, the challenges of resolving disputes amicably and the ultimate need to turn a profit.

5. The longer the lease, the better. Mostly.
Don’t hold back when negotiating the length of your restaurant’s lease. You might have heard that a handful of acclaimed New York City restaurants closed in the past year or two because landlords were demanding up to ten — ten — times the rent following the lease’s expiration. Look for a space — ideally, an existing restaurant space with working ventilation — that offers something in the range of a ten-year lease. Or, at least, a slightly shorter period with the option to renew for a previously agreed-upon price. Then count on your legal team to work out specifics regarding the terms of breaking the lease early (typically not a big deal) — which often includes the option of transferring it to another business. And remember that it’s a two-way street: Good landlords really do appreciate good tenants.

6. Staffing a restaurant properly is a complete mess.
Complicated shift schedules. Lack of flexibility. Unreliability of employees. Massive turnover rates. Constantly changing and confusing wage laws. It’s a downright nightmare to ensure that your restaurant is staffed properly at every hour of the day. We’ve all eaten at an establishment that’s clearly understaffed: It’s not a fun experience for anyone. But in an industry with razor-thin profit margins, you also don’t want to be doling out extra hourly shifts at less-busy hours of the day. It’s a very, very fine line that might take a while to figure out even remotely effectively. Along with food costs (for which you’ll struggle to find a “par level” of purchasing), plan for labor costs to be higher in the first year while you learn on-the-go and navigate through difficult days and weeks.

7. Vendors really know what they’re doing, a.k.a. “Be careful.”
This isn’t your vendor’s first — or tenth — rodeo. Chances are that the company provides products to tens, hundreds, even thousands of restaurants, depending on the size of the city. It’s important to check all deliveries thoroughly, whether that requires a scale and/or personal inspection for each individual package. Don’t feel bad sending back products for any and all reasons you determine to be worthy. Cultivate a personal relationship with your deliverymen, and be aware that they are sure to report back to their companies which clients gloss over certain details or regularly accept spoiled products. Put it this way: If there are 1,000 heads of lettuce on a truck, somebody’s going to receive the 999th and 1000th freshest ones. Don’t let that somebody be you!

8. Being first isn’t necessarily best.
So you have an idea for a concept that you’re sure does not yet exist in your target market and you believe has massive potential? Great, you might very well have just that. The demand might be out-the-door (figuratively and literally) over the first few months, but is it sustainable? Or might you just be touting a “fad” food that has a short shelf life, soon fading into oblivion after some time headlining Instagram feeds and “trendy” food articles? And even if your concept does stick, realize that you don’t have any sort of patent or trademark on the signature item. You might have a leg up on the competition due to building name and brand recognition, but what’s to stop a stream of others from replicating your concept, all while using their ideas about your perceived strengths and weaknesses to improve upon it? That’s right: absolutely nothing.

9. Internal theft is a legitimate, significant problem.
Almost every restaurant owner will confirm that he or she has lost sizable amounts of money at some point due to internal theft. The phasing-out of cash payments has limited this issue somewhat in recent years, but there are still myriad ways that employees can steal from right under you. Whether it’s charging for a top-shelf drink but only ringing up a well drink sale (and pocketing the difference), voiding receipts after closing out or simply skimming petty amounts of cash from the register here and there, bartenders, servers and managers who have spent time in the industry are at least likely aware of how to make some extra money at your expense.

10. Steakhouses’ food profit margins are surprisingly low.
Selling a ton of Porterhouse-for-Twos might do wonders for your total revenue, but the fact is that quality steak is one of the highest-cost items out there (generally, a decent amount over the rule-of-thumb 30% food-cost target). So, just how do high-end chains like Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and institutions like The Palm not only continue to thrive, but expand to other cities? High-priced sides. High-priced desserts. And, most importantly, super-high-priced cocktails and wine. Lots and lots of wine.

by Tiffany Do

From big dairy to completely plant-based vegan nut milks, Elmhurst Milkedhas done a total 180°.

For 90 years, Elmhurst Dairy, owned by brothers Max and Arthur Schwartz, processed dairy from local farms and delivered milk to New Yorkers. Fast-forward to 2016, CEO Henry Schwartz, son of Max, changed the company’s name and flipped facilities that once pasteurized milk and made yogurt into a home for mills. They grind cashews, almonds, hazelnuts and walnuts with water, then press and filter it. The final product is bottled up and shipped as Elmhurst’s cold-milled nut milk. We sat down with Henry to talk about the dramatic change of plans.

What prompted the change to plant-based milk alternatives?
I have personally been following a plant-based diet for several years now for health reasons. I decided to switch Elmhurst’s focus to plant-based beverages because I wanted to improve upon the plant-based beverages that existed on the market, and because I recognized the enormous potential that exists in the plant-based beverage industry from the perspective of delivering high-quality, sustainable nutrition to consumers.

What kind of research did you do to learn to formulating nut milks?
I surveyed the products offered by existing plant-based beverage brands and then recruited Dr. Cheryl Mitchell, a lifelong innovator in the vegan food space, to help me launch Elmhurst Milked. Dr. Mitchell has devoted her career to finding a way to extract nutrition from nuts, grains and seeds in a manner that delivers a delicious, appealing product to consumers without damaging the plants’ inherent nutritional value. She is a true expert on plant-based beverages, and we now proudly utilize her patented cold-milling technology to produce Elmhurst Milked’s line.

What did revamping the business look like? What changes went into the facilities?
The revamping process was fairly seamless, as our sister company has a great processing and aseptic packaging facility in Elma, New York from our yogurt processing days. This facility was a great match for the state-of-the-art equipment required to launch Elmhurst Milked, so we moved production from Jamaica, New York to Elma, invested in the equipment required for Dr. Mitchell’s cold-milling technology and recruited a fantastic team of food scientists and quality assurance professionals.

Did you find any trouble rebranding the name Elmhurst? Were any consumers confused at first?
Fortunately, we did not run into any branding issues when launching Elmhurst Milked. We have not seen any customer confusion, and in fact have seen many former Elmhurst Dairy customers embrace our new beverages as they trust our brand name and recognize that we are still delivering a delicious product that happens to be made from plants instead of dairy.

Where are you sourcing the nuts from?
We source our walnuts and almonds from California farmers, our hazelnuts from Oregon farmers and our cashews from Brazil.

How has making the switch to nuts helped on the sustainability front?
Generally speaking, plant-based beverages deliver nutrients from primary sources such as nuts, seeds, grains and legumes, which require fewer agricultural inputs than secondary sources, like cows. In the case of our products, the result is a more environmentally friendly beverage with a nutrient content on par with the highest quality dairy milk.

Dr. Mitchell’s milking technology has also enabled us to approach primary foods from a new perspective so that there is essentially no waste. Every part of the plant is used, from the fats, proteins and micronutrients that make it into our plant-based milks to the fiber that our sister company upcycles for use in protein bars and other products.

Other than health and environmental benefits, what other great things come with nut milk? (I know soy milk makes a great cappuccino since it foams up much better than traditional dairy.)
Plant-based milks are versatile — they taste great and can be enjoyed on their own as a high-protein, low-sugar beverage or used in cereal, coffee, tea and smoothies. They can also be used as a replacement for milk in cooking and baking, and their high protein content and foaming properties make them excellent for lattés and cappuccinos.

by Jess Kapadia

I’ve been cooking with mascarpone, and I can’t recommend it enough. Right off the bat, let’s get into what mascarpone actually is — other than the sweet star of The Tiramisu Show. Originating in Italy, it’s a cultured, strained dairy product like creme fraiche and cream cheese, with a high fat content and extra-creamy consistency. If that sounds delicious, it’s because it is.

Here’s how it began. A few months ago, I accidentally grabbed a container of Vermont Creamery’s mascarpone, thinking it was the Temp-Tee cream cheese next to it in the refrigerated section, and didn’t realize until I’d gotten home and toasted a beautiful thick piece of sourdough. There was no way I was going back out to the supermarket. Don’t roll your eyes; I’m watching you through your screen’s camera.

Resigned to my fate, I spread a generous layer of mascarpone on that toast, where it melted slightly into a thick, glossy schmear. It has all the tangy dairy pleasure of cream cheese with a smooth buttery quality that’s extra-welcome on warm, crusty bread, and now I’ve basically switched from cream cheese to mascarpone on toast. I also cook (or finish, really) with cream cheese a fair amount — that’s why I was going for the Temp-Tee in the first place. It doesn’t spoil nearly as quickly as heavy cream, has a pleasant burst of luscious tang, doesn’t curdle when heated and creamifies things more clingily, if you will.

Here are a bunch of ways I’ve made use of this white gold: Stirred into tomato soup, chicken tikka masala, grits or risotto just before serving; instead of heavy cream in a creamy pasta dish or macaroni and cheese; subbed out for bechamel in lasagna; spread on sweet quickbreads (particularly pumpkin); instead of mayo on a sandwich; poked into the folds of a hasselback potato, spread on pizza dough instead of tomato sauce, spiked with lemon as a dip for artichoke leaves or finishing sauce for fish, used anywhere ricotta goes (like gnocchi), mixed with tomatillo salsa for enchiladas suizas, in pimento cheese, in creamed spinach, mixed with ketchup and horseradish for creamy cocktail sauce, beaten with eggs for a scramble and blended with literally anything to make “anything cream.”

What I’m saying is it’s a really agreeable medium — it wants to do whatever you want it to do. All you need to do in return is keep it in the fridge and use it sparingly to make things creamy.

Am I aware that it typically contains between 60 and 75% fat? I am. Does that scare me? No, we’re talking like, a once-a-week two-tablespoon-max habit that makes whatever you’re eating more satisfying so you stay fuller longer. Also, no cheese scares me. None.

by Richard Martin

A story about Daniel Giusti could start with his unlikely rise to running the kitchen at Noma when it was the top-rated restaurant in the world, or with the day he approached his boss, Rene Redzepi, to tell him that he was quitting as head chef. Or it could begin with Giusti’s unexpected nomination as one of 10 finalists for the 2017 Basque Culinary Prize, which awards $111,000 to innovators who work to propel society in a better direction (the award went to Colombian chef Leonor Espinosa). But during a recent chat with Giusti, he relayed an anecdote that might be more relevant to his story than any of the above.

The scene: A middle school cafeteria in New London, Connecticut, where Giusti’s company Brigaid launched last year with a mission to improve public school food. He’d just asked one of the chefs that Brigaid had hired how students were reacting to a new butternut squash soup that had been introduced to the menu. The chef replied that he thought the kids liked it, so Giusti, wanting to confirm this, sought out student opinion. “I go into the cafeteria and I ask one kid who was about 11, and he took a bite of soup right in front of me,” Giusti recalls. “He was standing up and holding his cup, and I said, how do you like the soup? He starts walking and walking and I didn’t know what he was doing. And we get to a trash can and he just spits it out.”

Turns out pleasing American public schoolchildren can be trickier than satisfying diners at a world-renowned restaurant. Still, Giusti is committed to Brigaid, one of the most ambitious undertakings in the fight to get kids to eat better, with the ultimate goal of reducing childhood obesity. It’s a vexing situation. There are any number of bleak statistics to cite, such as 67% of middle school students who eat school lunches being medically classified as either overweight or obese. Meanwhile, only about $1 per day per student is allotted for food and drink (after labor and other costs) in public schools, where corporate food service companies generally manage menus and budgets with little regard for children’s health — or their tastebuds.

“There’s not enough money to spend on food,” says Bill Telepan, the New York City chef who serves as executive chef of Wellness In The Schools, a 12-year-old not-for-profit organization whose mission is to “inspire healthy eating, environmental awareness, and fitness as a way of life for kids in public schools.” WITS has 100 NYC schools that use its programs of training and menu development, and now operates in three other states. It also offers resources such as menus to 1,500 schools around New York.

Unlike WITS, Brigaid is a for-profit company, one that Giusti hopes to grow beyond New London to compete with corporate food service companies. The two groups share the idea that food made from scratch is healthier and tastier, and that an experienced chef may be the best conduit for changing the dreary image of school lunch — with its fatty chicken nuggets, soggy hamburgers and federally mandated ketchup-as-a-vegetable.

Giusti and Telepan are part of a growing legion of chefs to take up the cause, including Alice Waters, who founded Edible Schoolyard, and Hugh Acheson, who two years ago launched a resource and educational organization called Seed Life Skills. Telepan says he supports Giusti, and notes that they’ve had several conversations about school food issues. “I think what he’s doing is great,” Telepan says of Giusti. “To bring real healthy food to kids — he’s tackling that.” But can Brigaid actually succeed? Can Giusti’s startup reinvent a broken system and get kids who rely on public school meals to appreciate real food, to eat better and become stronger, fitter, happier people?

Dan Giusti grew up in New Jersey and landed his first head chef job in Washington, DC at 1789, which he describes as “this really kind of classic restaurant where the average clientele was like 80 years old.” At just 24, after three-plus years on the job, his ambitions grew, and he realized that changing the formula of a decades-old restaurant wasn’t his strongest move. So he did something ballsy. He wrote letters asking for a chance to try out for a job at just three restaurants: Alinea, The Fat Duck and Noma. Three of the best restaurants in the world, two of which are in Europe.

Miraculously, one wrote back, and he staged at Alinea in Chicago for a few days. Then he heard from Noma as well. After a two-week trial at the Copenhagen restaurant, he offered to stay on and work for free, and they accepted. He returned to DC, packed his bags and moved to Denmark. Soon, another chef left, and Giusti was on the payroll. Still, the grind of working in Redzepi’s meticulous kitchen began to wear, and after eight months Giusti approached the head chef and told him of his plans to move on. To his shock, the chef informed him that Giusti was being groomed as the next head chef, and that he was leaving in less than a year to open his own restaurant.

“It never was really about the title or the notoriety. I was just going with my gut and at that point my gut was to go as high as I could.”

Soon, this young American chef who’d never worked at a prestigious restaurant was Redzepi’s number two, the top man in the kitchen at Noma. “It was interesting, because the people I met at Noma, their whole career had been at these great restaurants — like out of culinary school, every restaurant they’ve worked at is amazing and three Michelin stars. Me, I went back and forth working in high volume restaurants to kind of nice restaurants. It never was really about the title or the notoriety. I was just going with my gut and at that point my gut was to go as high as I could. It was an interesting choice.”

Then, after three and a half years and several honors for Noma atop the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, Giusti made another interesting choice: to pursue moving back to the states to start a company that would attempt to change the public school food system from within. First, he researched the subject, and then made the decision to quit Noma. I ask Giusti how Redzepi took the news. “At first he was kind of bummed that I was leaving, because it probably took me a good two years to get to the point where I felt like I was really comfortable with the role, and Rene was comfortable with me in that position. It’s a hard person to replace. If I said I was going to work at another restaurant or anything like that, I think he would have tried to convince me to stay.” Instead, Giusti explained the scope of the problem in the United States — which he says Redzepi wasn’t fully aware of, given Denmark’s famed social services reputation — and shared an outline of his plan to create what would become Brigaid.

“He was just like 200% supportive, and he still is,” Giusti says of Redzepi. “Ever since I left we keep in close contact and he’s very supportive of the work, and that means the world to me because I have a tremendous amount of respect for him.”

Having made the decision to leave Noma, Giusti set out on a mission to find the perfect launching pad for his project — a public school district with multiple buildings from kindergarten through high school, where some of the children were living below the poverty line. He had a bit of an artificial push in that the Washington Post announced his intentions in a December 2015 article, which led to school districts around America contacting him to express interest. Giusti estimates that he logged 30,000 miles those first couple of months of 2016, traveling around and meeting representatives from school districts and touring facilities.

(Giusti also had to handle unsolicited outreach from the parents of private school students who tried to lure him to tonier institutions. “There were a lot of people who were like, ‘I’ve eaten at Noma, and my kid goes to so-and-so private school; we’d love to have you start this here.’” He says that when he politely declined such offers, noting that their daughter’s private school already had a chef, they would say things like, “Yeah, but they weren’t the chef at Noma.”)

What he saw in those visits to public school cafeterias would have deterred most people — low-budget, untrained staff operating in some places with the barest of kitchens. Yet Giusti maintained a positive attitude. “When I went to a school and started to see a lot of things where I was like, wow, that’s in bad shape, I started seeing the same amount of things where I was like, that’s not a hard thing to fix…you start to realize that some of the challenges they’re facing, chefs are appropriate to fix.”

When the school year started, Giusti faced “a tremendous amount of skepticism.”

In February 2016, Giusti opted to launch Brigaid in New London, a coastal city of a little less than 11 square miles with a population of about 30,000. He had clicked with schools superintendent Manuel Rivera, and while he’d never even been to Connecticut before, he felt that the district was on the right trajectory for Brigaid to have an impact. (Since our interview, Rivera, 65, retired from his post after just two years, to the consternation of the community.)

When the school year started, Giusti faced “a tremendous amount of skepticism,” from kitchen workers concerned about their jobs to parents who wondered why the school district needed a chef from such a luxurious place as Noma. “Some said we should send our kids to school in limousines rather than in school buses,” he recalls.

Brigaid proceeded with its plan to install a professional chef in each of the school district’s six buildings, to achieve the stated goal of “cooking delicious food from scratch” while meeting National School Lunch Program budget and dietary guidelines. The chefs would also have to navigate the tricky waters of a kitchen that had run without the type of discipline or agenda that a professional chef provides.

“When it comes to the food, you have three main challenges,” Giusti says. “You have the budget, you have the fact that we have to follow these pretty strict nutritional guidelines dictated by the USDA, and then the final one, after you’ve met both of those things, is do the kids actually like the foods?”

In the case of the 11-year-old who spit out the butternut squash soup, not so much, but Brigaid made progress during its first year running New London’s public school cafeterias, when it served more than 800,000 meals, according to Giusti. The idea of having one chef in each school facilitated relationship-building with students, faculty and the community. “They are believing what we’re doing and that’s building trust,” he says, adding that by year’s end, students were more willing to try new dishes. Especially older students, who have come up through the system and were dubious about any sort of change.

And as Giusti says, “Things vary all over the place in terms of success rates,” depending on students’ ages and grade level. Still, he says that Brigaid introduced a chicken curry dish that became a favorite, and transitioned from pre-made to from-scratch pizza dough during the course of the year, also gaining approval from students. The menu of composed salads found fans as well, with one of the bigger schools in the district selling 70 per day, an increase from 10 or 15 a day earlier in the year.

While that might not sounds like a revelation, any parent will concur that changing children’s eating habits is about as easy as playing scratch golf. The results have been solid enough that Brigaid is considering expanding soon, and Giusti says he’s looked at introducing his system into another school system in the northeast.

In the meantime, as he and his team prepare for the start of a new school year next week, Giusti at least has some earned knowledge to build on.

“As much as you think that these kids don’t even care and they’ll just decide that they’ll eat this or they’ll eat that, there’s quite a rhyme or reason why they do and don’t eat things,” he says. “And if it tastes better and there’s more flavor, then they’re gonna eat it.”

by Seamus Mullen

Seamus Mullen is one of the most outspoken voices in favor of healthy food within the celebrity chef world. His latest book, Real Food Heals, is a follow-up to 2012’s Hero Food, which seeks to teach home cooks how to make the most nutritionally dense food while leaving out the stuff that slows you down. Mullen continues to chronicle his journey to healthful living through delicious food. Looking for a slimmer waistline and an energy spike? Follow Mullen’s healthy kitchen guidelines — they’re not hard! — and usher in a new era of nutritional prowess.

“When I help people look at how they cook and eat and how they might make some positive changes with their relationship with food, I try to stay away from hard and fast rules. Instead, I just help set up some structure,” he says. “After all, we’re all very different and what works for one person may not work for the next. That said, there are some basic tenets I like to follow whenever I’m planning and prepping my meals.”

Reprinted with permission from Real Food Heals

Kitchen Guidelines

• Make food delicious. When cooking becomes a task no less utilitarian than putting on a raincoat when it’s raining, you’re in trouble. Food is meant to be pleasurable. Along with sex, it’s one of the most indulgent things we can experience. Take a few minutes to put some extra love into your cooking and the result will pay dividends on your health.
• Consider the origins of your food. If you can’t pronounce it, you probably don’t want to cook with it. I know this sounds pretty basic, but when you’re looking at a label, think about what the ingredients are. If you’ve never heard of them before or they don’t sound like food, it’s best to stay away.
• Make cooking quality time. We can’t overlook the health value of stopping our busy lives and cooking and eating together, engaging with other humans. Let’s not forget how important it is to break (gluten-free) bread with others.

My Chef’s Tips For Making Healthy Food Delicious

I’m a firm believer that first and foremost, food needs to be delicious. There is simply nothing very inspiring about a bland bowl of flavorless quinoa. Yeah, perhaps it might be “healthy,” but who really wants to eat it? Where is the joy? Where is the pleasure? As a professional chef, I’ve watched from a distance as the Internet has exploded with end-less recipes for healthy food. And while there are a lot of great ideas and great dishes circulating, I find that the little tricks of the trade that we chefs learn growing up in kitchens are often overlooked. Armed with a little bit of savvy and a well-tuned palate, you can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.

• Season, season, season. One of the most common mistakes home cooks make is not being assertive enough when it comes to seasoning. Often, a little extra salt and pepper or even some lightly chopped herbs will go a long way to bringing out the natural flavors of a dish. Just imagine a roast chicken without salt and pepper. Blech! Now add some coarse sea salt, cracked pepper, crushed thyme and rosemary, lemon zest, maybe even some coriander seeds and sesame seeds. Suddenly, that pedestrian bird has become a flavorful masterpiece.
• Season as you go. You want to add salt in stages to build flavor. Taste your salt to see how salty it is and adjust the amounts you add to your dish accordingly. Keep in mind that teaspoon for teaspoon, finer salts tend to add more saltiness.
• Start with good salt. I prefer sea salt for its complex and concentrated saltiness and its abundance of minerals. My friends at Jacobsen Salt Co., in Portland, Oregon, harvest all their salt from the pristine waters of the northwestern coastline. I often finish dishes with Jacobsen’s flake finishing sea salt and really like Jacobsen’s specialty salts, particularly the one infused with ghost chile.
• Think of the four points of the compass of our palate: salty, sweet, sour, spicy. Playing spicy off sweet (think: mango and chiles) or sour off salty (think: salt-and-vinegar chips) can make a dish really feel balanced and craveable. I don’t always have these elements in equal parts. Sometimes you want one flavor profile to dominate the others, but having a balance makes for a successful and exciting dish.
• Food tastes better when it looks good. I’m not saying you should pull out tweezers to compose fussy plates of food, but you shouldn’t dump the food on a plate. There’s a difference between rustic and sloppy.
• Finish dishes with soft herbs. They’re really healthy, add a bright pop, and change the character of a dish to make it tastier and more exciting. I add them at the end so they stay bright. Feel free to use whatever you like or have on hand. To chop them, I run a knife through them just enough to discipline them, or I simply tear them up by hand.

by Tiffany Do

Cozied up in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, Ellen King is baking breads that she traveled through time to conceptualize.

Unlike conventional loaves found in grocery stores across America, the breads at King’s bakery, Hewn, are baked with heritage wheat varieties like Orleans, Rouge de Bordeaux, White Sonora and Turkey Red, all of which she was able to track down with the help of old farmers’ journals. Akin to a mad scientist crossed with a historian, King made her latest loaf with a grain that nearly went extinct. Working with specialty grain farmer Andrea Hazzard, she found two pounds of Marquis wheat in the possession of a college professor. Hazzard planted the lot, which yielded 30 pounds of wheat berries. The next year, the yield grew to 300 pounds.

Before King became a full-time baker, she earned her bachelors and masters degrees in history. While in college, she spent time in Norway, where she was introduced to hearty, rustic breads. She treated this exposure as very early research for what would become her future career.

“Being a poor student, all I could afford to eat was bread,” King laughs. “It was a great experience because I learned a ton about ryes and using lots of seeds in your bread.”

From grad school, King went to culinary school in Seattle, where she was first exposed to the ultra-local produce and more excellent breads. She then moved to Chicago, where she says she went through “food withdrawal” because there wasn’t a good loaf to be found, despite the Midwest’s “breadbasket of America” reputation.

We sat down with King to talk about hunting down heritage grains, why some people with gluten sensitivities can enjoy her baked goods and her book that is set to publish fall 2018. Note: This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.

How did you get into heritage grains?
It’s honestly from my history background, because when I was in grad school, I read books about ecological history and environmental history. [I read a lot about] when the colonials came, and the Native Americans, how they shaped the landscape and changed the way that it looked. So, [historians] like to think that during colonial times, the U.S. was way more pristine. It was — there were less people, but they still transformed the cities where they lived and created a different ecosystem. When I thought about doing the bakery, I sometimes read old farm journals and was interested in what was happening throughout the country from the historical perspective. When I opened the bakery, I knew I had to use organic wheat because I had no interest in using conventional wheat. It’s normally stripped of everything. I didn’t feel good working with it. It didn’t seem real. It’s like, you’re going to open this great bakery or great restaurant and you’re just using crappy produce. It doesn’t have a soul to it.

So, I started thinking if I’m Chicago, I should clearly be able to get some interesting wheat. And it was not there! [laughs] I met this woman named Andrea (Andy) Hazzard and she’s a grain farmer, fourth or fifth generation. Her family farms corn and soybeans, but she’s this anomaly. She has 40 acres of theirs that she farms. I was at a convention several years ago and I saw her with these different varieties, like purple barley, emmer, durham and she had some einkorn. I talked to her and asked, “Would you ever be interested in growing different varieties of wheat?” She was like, “Yeah! That would be really fun.” I had no clue what I was asking her. I went through the old farm journals — we had been in contact with Stephen Jones, he runs the Bread Lab in Washington State — and asked him how we find varieties to grow. He was like, “Go look at the old farm journals.” So I went and looked. At University of Wisconsin, Madison they have farm bulletins that list the varieties that were grown at the turn of the century and how they preformed. I had a list of 20 varieties and Andy couldn’t find any of them because there’s just not a lot of access to the seeds.

What’s that process like? Where would you find the seeds?
The farmers have these networks where they reach out to each other. That didn’t work for her. She reached out to some seed-savers, they didn’t have it. Finally, she started reaching out to some university professors. One professor had a kilo, 2.2 pounds, of Marquis wheat. She got enough to plant three rows of 115 yards. From these two pounds, we were able to get 30 pounds by the end of the year.

Is that a normal amount?
We honestly don’t know what a normal amount is for this variety. After World War II, when they started to create all the commodity varieties that are available now, the yields were off the charts. So for this one, we didn’t know what to expect. But based off of that, it yielded 30 pounds after year one, she planted all of that the next year and she yielded 300 pounds of berries. With that, she literally just planted the 300 pounds and she’s estimating 3,000 pounds from it, which is great. So it takes about three years to build up. Now she would have essentially 3,000 pounds of seed. I’m going to get a couple hundred pounds to make bread with and we’ll save the rest for seed and hopefully share with some farmers.

The goal is not to only focus on the Marquis, we want to see what the process was like to start building up these heritage varieties. The goal is to get more genetic diversity, more farmers planting more varieties. Maybe some of them won’t work in their region, but we don’t want these seeds to die off either. Seed banks need to be regenerated every few years. If farmers jump on board and grow something that was in their region, not only is it fun for bakers to have flavors of different wheat, but it’s really good for the environment for us to keep these going.

It’s cool because that’s how bread used to be made. We haven’t invented anything new, we’re just going back in time as much as possible.

I have other varieties that I’ve been working with. We have been playing with Pfeiffer, which is a wild spelt grown in Wisconsin. What we find is all of these react a little differently. The cookbook I’m working on, the major mission of it is to have people kind of seek out in their region, what grains are being grown and to be able to experiment with those in a comfortable way because they really do react different from your bleached all-purpose flour. I think so many people feel intimidated by baking because if they don’t follow a recipe exactly, it’s not going to work out. I want to dispel that myth, because if you think about it, a lot of our grandparents and great grandparents, they would just bake. A cup was actually just a drinking cup and they would just estimate. I think we put too much pressure on ourselves to be so exact. When using these kinds of wheat, it’s like, just relax, it’s going to taste good! Don’t stress if it’s 1 ¼ teaspoons of baking powder or 1 teaspoon you put in. Be a little less critical.

Are your grains grown in the Midwest?
Mhm. [Our] Pfeiffer is grown in Wisconsin. We have the Orleans that’s grown in Wisconsin. The Rouge de Bordeaux is actually from a farm in Montana that reached out because they read what we were doing. This is a variety that was grown in France for several hundred years. This grew incredibly well all over France, so really, this is what a lot of traditionally old French bread was made of. We just started experimenting with [it].

We also have a White Sonora. It’s actually grown in Arizona. I wanted to work with it because I had read about it. This is what they think all the flour tortillas were made with in the 17–1800s. It’s from the Sonora region in Mexico. So it’s a really old variety.

You feature the White Sonora in your chocolate chip cookie mixes. Why did you pick that wheat to make cookies with?
I think it’s a much subtler whole wheat flour to use as opposed to the Turkey Red or Orleans. First off, they’re a red wheat so you can just see the color. The berry is more of a red fleck where as [the White Sonora] is white and it almost looks like there are corn specks in there. I just think a white wheat is more delicate for baked goods. I think the flavor — you almost might not know the difference from regular whole wheat with the way it bakes.

Which variety are you using most in your bread?
We basically do different varieties each week, and just call it the Orleans bread or the Turkey Red bread or the Pfeiffer bread or the Rouge de Boudreaux. We want consumers to start identifying the varieties. We’ve been adding the White Sonora into our breads. We don’t advertise that. We just add like 20% to some of the breads to see how it performs. For others, we add straight 100% Orleans or 100% Rouge de Boudreaux.

What I want to start doing, once we start getting more farmers to grow and more access to seeds is have one field that would be planted, in one row, literally, Orleans, Pfeiffer and Rouge de Boudreaux so you’re creating a blend with all three varieties at the same time. That way, from a farming perspective, if one variety doesn’t perform as well that year, the others kind of help offset it. But naturally in the bakery we’re blending things together too. It’s really fun for bakers, too, to learn [the farming] process. And they really do react differently. Some of them absorb water, like slurp it up, others it doesn’t so we have to hold back on water otherwise it’ll be completely over-hydrated.

What variety has performed the best, sales-wise?
Honestly, they all perform equally, but they all have a different fan-base. I have costumers that are like, “I only really like the Turkey Red.” They come in — we do them on a certain days — and they come in on days where we didn’t do it and they’re like, “I’ll just wait until tomorrow.” It’s great. It’s almost like someone has a favorite wine. They like the Pinot Noir as opposed to the Cabernet, but I don’t want people to get so hung up because for the benefit of farming. They need to be able to try other varieties until this movement is a little more established. I think the one that has taken a little longer to introduce but now is getting a good following is the Pfeiffer. It’s derived from a wild spelt so people are like, “That’s just too healthy for me.” Like, had we not said it’s derived from spelt, people may be more open to it. Spelt, I think, has that connotation of being that weird cousin. [laughs]

Do you have a favorite variety?
I love working with the Pfeiffer, with the standpoint of using my hands, because I’ve never had a flour that becomes almost spongy. When you’re doing naturally leaven breads with a starter, you don’t get this spongy feel. It sort of feels like Ethiopian bread, injera. It looks like that. It rises, obviously, it doesn’t stay flat. It’s really weird. The flavor of that is what I’d consider a very Eastern European bread.

The Orleans I really like because it’s silky. It’s got a silkier interior and it doesn’t feel as harsh as a whole wheat. The Turkey Red is a great all-American whole wheat bread that has an earthy taste to it but it’s not overbearing. We don’t add any oils, sugars or instant yeast to any of our bread, so it really allows the wheat to shine through in the bread.

Some of your varieties can be eaten by people with gluten sensitivities. What’s the science behind that?
I do these “Food as Medicine” classes with an innovative medical doctor. The question always comes up about gluten and avoiding it. The doctor, Dr. Geeta Maker-Clark, says that naturally leavened breads lend a different result to breads that use instant yeast. Gluten develops through the mixer. So our process, coupled with flours that are organic, not sprayed with Roundup and having synthetic fertilizers put into it, people with gluten sensitivities are able to come in and find out that they tolerate our bread. They’re not getting bloated. So is it the process? Is it the varieties of wheat? Or is it because there are no pesticides in it? Or is it all three together? I don’t know.

Using heritage varieties, you really know it’s a whole grain. Some of the variety of wheat have been bred to have a high level of gluten. These aren’t bred for gluten, they were bred because they tasted good. People liked the flavor of those.

It’s cool. Sometimes it’s a little awkward because the people who are truly gluten-free, they come in and they’re nervous to try the bread. They’re like “I’m going to try the Turkey Red and see how it is.” Then they come back two days later — we had one woman crying. [laughs] It definitely has gluten in it, it’s a wheat, but it behaves differently. People buying bread at the grocery store, that bread’s even had extra gluten added to it because they’re mixing it and they want it to develop very quickly. We try to explain, without being preachy, that naturally leaven breads are very different because what that wild yeast is doing is breaking down that gluten over time. That long fermentation is helping to digest it before it hits your body. It’s cool because that’s how bread used to be made. We haven’t invented anything new, we’re just going back in time as much as possible.