This Is TASTE

Mohamed Attia spent nearly a decade running a food cart in Times Square before he became the person fighting to change the law that made carts like his semilegal in the first place. As managing director of the Street Vendor Project, Attia helped lead the campaign that, this past January, finally broke a New York City vending permit cap that had been frozen since 1979. He talks with Matt about his own path from vendor to advocate, and we go over so many great carts to visit in New York City.

The fifth annual Street Heroes gala takes place on Tuesday, October 6 at MoMA PS1. Get your tickets here.

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Olivia Tiedemann is a chef who began creating videos while working as a private chef in the Hamptons. Her signature deadpan delivery and no-nonsense techniques have won her millions of fans. Now she’s sharing her highly craveable recipes in a debut cookbook: Eat (Like) the Rich. Today on the show, Olivia talks about why everyone is fascinated by private chefs, making crab cakes for Martha Stewart, and more.

And it’s the return of Three Things, where Aliza and Matt discuss what’s interesting to them in the world of food including Matt visits Philadelphia with stops at Middle Child Clubhouse, the Southeast Asian Market in FDR Park, Supérette, and the newly opened Manna Bakery. Aliza stops by Cafe Kestrel and Sake Bar Asoko in NYC, and has high praise for the new Apollo Bagels bagel chips.

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Joey Scalabrino is the cofounder of Apollo Bagels, a new-school bagel shop rooted in old-world techniques with nine locations across New York City and Jersey. He started making bagels in the kitchen at Leo, the Williamsburg sourdough pizza restaurant, and built Apollo through thoughtful pop-ups, design, and collabs. Today on the show, we chat about building up Apollo Bagels, its recent mega-popular pop-up with Dean & DeLuca in Tokyo, and its brand-new bagel chips.

Also on the show Aliza and Matt preview some exciting cookbooks from the busy fall season, including:

The Kitchen I Came Home To

Nixta Taqueria Presents: From Tacos to Tahdig

Radicchio: A Celebration of the Beloved Italian Vegetable

Fundamentals of Flavor

Korean Soups

East to East: Recipes and Stories from Mumbai to New York

The Little Green Book of Chartreuse

The Little Book of Olives

Today We Are Cooking . . .

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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. Dana Brown was a fixture of Vanity Fair’s Oscar-party machine and Graydon Carter’s inner circle for more than two decades before writing it all down in his memoir, Dilettante. He returns to the studio with a new job: editor in chief of Caper, the scoop-driven media start-up applying a Puck-style power-and-money lens to restaurants, chefs, and the food business. In this episode, we talk about economics at The Grill, the Keith McNally legacy, and what’s good in the world of Caper.

Featured on this episode:

McNally Family Values [Caper]

Where Did the Italians of Carroll Gardens Go? [Curbed]

How Eater Lost Its Bite [Caper]

⁠There Is a Misconception that The Grill Is Absurdly Expensive⁠ [Feed Me]

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Ruth Reichl reviewed restaurants for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, ran the country’s most legendary food magazine, and wrote five memoirs about all the meals enjoyed and life lived. Today she’s doing it again on her wonderful Substack, La Briffe, unfiltered and endlessly curious. Recorded live at the Traverse City Food & Wine festival, Matt talks with Ruth about her University of Michigan years, her passion for memoir, and her take on where food criticism stands today.

Also on the show, I have a great conversation with Martin Sorge, author of the terrific new book Great Bakes.

Read Ruth’s savage New York Times review of the Box Tree restaurant from 1998.

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