Podcast
This Is TASTE
Hosted by Aliza Abarbanel & Matt Rodbard · EN
If you're a fan of smart and lively conversations about food, home cooking, and culture, this is the place. We interview the most interesting characters in the world of food, media, and cookbooks and release episodes several times a month. The program is hosted by TASTE editors Aliza Abarbanel and Matt Rodbard, and is sometimes recorded live at Rizzoli Bookstore in New York City.
Visit TASTE online: tastecooking.com
86episodes
Episodes
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810: The Boss of Your Kitchen con Omi Hopper
2w ago00:41:43Tap to summarizeOmi Hopper is a Puerto Rican chef, social media influencer, and food entrepreneur. You might know her as a semifinalist on season two of Next Level Chef, or from her popular cooking videos across social media, where she shares her takes on Puerto Rican classics. Today on the show, we talk about making her debut cookbook, Cooking con Omi: A Love Letter to Puerto Rican Home Cooking. Subscribe to This Is TASTE: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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809: Claire Saffitz’s Summer Baking and Next Book Plot Twist
2w ago01:23:13Tap to summarizeClaire Saffitz joins us for a summer-minded conversation about cooking outside the dessert lane. The best-selling author of Dessert Person and What’s for Dessert talks pizza-oven construction, YouTube behind-the-scenes, garden life in the Hudson Valley, and—for the first time—details about her upcoming third cookbook, which is a bit of a departure from her previous work. And it’s the return of Three Things, where Aliza and Matt discuss what’s interesting in the food world, including Matt’s visits to Lola’s, Bar Chimera, AOOA Farm, and Superiority Burger. Aliza checks out Dolores, Un Posto Italiano, and shares how she is having a real potato salad summer. Subscribe to This Is TASTE: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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808: The Man Who Coined Fusion Cuisine and Discovered Charlie Trotter with Norman Van Aken
3w ago01:10:43Tap to summarizeWe're thrilled to have chef Norman Van Aken on the show. Norman is the founding father of “new world cuisine” and the man who introduced the word “fusion” into the culinary lexicon—at a 1989 symposium in Santa Fe, decades before it became widely used and sometimes critiqued. A former carnival worker and tar roofer who never went to culinary school, Van Aken built his vision in Key West and Miami, gave Charlie Trotter his first kitchen job, and has spent 40-plus years arguing that Florida deserves a cuisine of its own. His restaurant Norman’s is now in its third Orlando incarnation. We get into all of it in this memorable episode. And check out Norman’s Substack too. It’s a great read. Also on the show we have a live recording from the recent The Great Nosh Jewish food festival. It’s an entertaining conversation featuring Niki Russ Federman of Russ & Daughters, Mike Solomonov of Kfar Brooklyn, and Itamar Srulovich of Honey & Co in London. Subscribe to This Is TASTE: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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807: Caroline Chambers on Hallmark Bakeries, Ramen Vongole, and Why She Ordered the Entire Taco Bell Menu
3w ago00:53:22Tap to summarizeCaroline Chambers built the number-one food and drink newsletter on Substack, What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking, on one radical premise: most of us don’t want to cook, and that’s fine. Her debut cookbook became an instant New York Times bestseller. Her follow-up, Make It Fast, was written with the help of reader feedback and organized around a new concept: the “walk away” recipe. It’s like millennial “set it and forget it,” if you will. In this episode, Caroline talks about the community-sourced cookbook, Substack as a business, and how she writes about products she likes, not always the ones that pay her. It’s a refreshing conversation, and we love having Caro in the studio. Subscribe to This Is TASTE: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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806: Lydia Pang Argues “Stinky” Is a Great Thing
3w ago00:58:57Tap to summarizeLydia Pang is a creative director and the author of Eat Bitter: A Story About Guts, and Food. It’s a memoir that connects to the Chinese cultural concept of 吃苦 (chi ku), “eating bitterness” or being resilient, to her own life, with each chapter rooted in a recipe. Today on the show, we chat about how the book began as a zine in 2020, being inspired by her Hakka-Welsh heritage, and more. And it’s the return of Three Things, where Aliza and Matt discuss what’s interesting in the food world, including Matt’s trip to Chicago with visits to Maxwell Trading, Loaf Lounge, Best Intentions, and Colectivo. Aliza discusses her interaction with dirty soda in Utah, a recipe in the latest issue of Kismet Magazine, and a very good frozen drink at SAA in Brooklyn. Subscribe to This Is TASTE: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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805: Real Talk About Drinks Writing and Trend-Chasing Bars with Echo Lake’s Chloe Frechette
4w ago00:38:03Tap to summarizeChloe Frechette spent nearly a decade as executive editor at Punch, the James Beard Award–winning drinks media brand, writing seriously about cocktails and the culture around them. Then she did what most drinks writers most certainly do not do: she opened a bar. Echo Lake and Undercurrent, her two-story rum destination in Williamsburg with partner Paul McGee, opened this spring—one a breezy daiquiri bar, the other an intimate den of rare and vintage spirits. In this episode, I speak with Chloe about making the jump from writing about bars to running one, the vintage rum collection that includes pre-embargo Cuban Bacardi, and so much more. Echo Lake is at 357 Grand St, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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804: Toby Maloney Made Half a Million Cocktails. Emma Janzen Was Taking Notes.
4w ago01:04:55Tap to summarizeBartender and author Toby Maloney has made somewhere north of half a million cocktails over thirty-plus years, from Milk & Honey and Pegu Club to the Violet Hour in Chicago and the Elbow Room in Vancouver, Washington. His new book with coauthor and drinks journalist Emma Janzen, The Classic Cocktail Sessions, is a deep-dive master class on 61 classic drinks: not their histories but their inner workings. In this episode, we talk about the daiquiri that changed Toby’s life and the difference between mastering a classic and making it yours. Also on the show Matt shares a few final thoughts on the Summer Fancy Food Show including a first look at rugelach from Manischewitz, how Jangin is a new Korean food brand that you should keep your eye on, and a look at Lapos NA aperitivo. Also: Juggad It from Spicewalla and cool things happening at Raazi Tea. Also see: This Is TASTE 801: We Went to the Summer Fancy Food Show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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803: Netflix's Culinary Monster Finally Gets His Own Kitchen with Hasung Lee
4w ago00:53:05Tap to summarizeHasung Lee spent a decade cooking inside other people’s restaurants—Gramercy Tavern, Geranium, Atomix, the French Laundry—before Netflix viewers met him as Culinary Monster, the mysterious “black spoon” who muscled his way into the final round of Culinary Class Wars season 2. While he lost in the finale, he opened Oyatte anyway and is clearly shooting for Michelin stars. In this episode, we talk with Lee about what it’s like to compete under an alias, and we hear about the chef’s journey through some of the world’s greatest kitchens. Subscribe to This Is TASTE: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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802: 200 Million People Watch Vikas Khanna Talk About Indian Food. Here's What He Couldn't Say on TV.
Jul 601:01:55Tap to summarizeVikas Khanna grew up in Amritsar cooking beside his grandmother, arrived in New York with $3 and a dream, and became one of the first Indian chefs in the city to earn a Michelin star. His restaurant Bungalow—now one of NYC’s most coveted reservations—tells India’s culinary story through its 28 states. We talk about Vikas’s early cooking career in NYC, the rise of Junoon and later Bungalow, and what it means to cook for both presidents and homeless folks. Subscribe to This Is TASTE: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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801: We Went to the Summer Fancy Food Show. We Have Notes.
Jul 300:48:58Tap to summarizeThe Specialty Food Association's Summer Fancy Food Show is where the next year of grocery shelves gets decided, and Dan Frommer, founder of The New Consumer and one of the sharpest minds tracking how people spend their money, was there for all of it. Dan joins Matt to unpack the trends and new products they spotted on the floor of the Javits Center this week in New York. We talk about sparkling water, functional cookies, and some emerging categories that surprised even us. Check out Dan’s 2026 Mid-Year Consumer Trends Report. Brands mentioned on the episode: Mr. Pickles Industries Wandel Mad Mutz The Great Chestnut Experiment Ginja Snap Folkland Foods Buffs Rodeo Snacks Monte's Fine Foods Gamsa Foods Sooki Dirty Virgo Nomina Sparkling Water David Protein Field Goods Yakitori Guy Sauce Manischewitz 50 Hertz Subscribe to This Is TASTE: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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