A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich - Does Food Really Bring People Together? ft. Khushbu Shah

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

Today, we're joined by Khushbu Shah, the restaurant editor of Food and Wine magazine, to discuss: does food really bring people together? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. If you guys noticed a little bit of a delay today, Nicole and I are each home for the holidays, but we took our fancy microphones home with us so you wouldn't be stuck podcast-less. Ah, the holidays. They're filled with magic and wonder and sweet treats and family and togetherness and a whole lot of useless cliches

trying to get you to buy more stuff. Today we discuss, does food really bring people together? This is A Hot Dog is a Sandwich. Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what? That makes no sense. A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich, the show where we break down the world's biggest food debates. I'm your host, Josh Ayer. And I'm your host, Nicole Hendizadeh. And today we're joined by my friend, Kushboo Shah. She's the restaurant editor of Food & Wine Magazine. Her writing's been featured in Eater, Bon Appetit, New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, as well as the Best American Food Writing 2018. Kushboo highlights the intersectionality

of food, diversifying the who and the what of restaurant coverage in her work. Kush, how'd we do on your bio? That's actually pretty good. I'm also in 2019 though i'm sorry we'll go but we'll re-record the pocket just come on the podcast next year just keep that gravy chain rolling uh also i mean your biggest accolade is you were once my editor and you once just sent me like a text saying what if animal fries but pizza and then i indeed made animal fries with pizza. So to me, like, that's, that's a huge honor. I think, you know, honestly, that might be the highlight of my career. I think I peaked then and it's all been down south since. Thank you so much.

Anyways, the reason you're here one is because you're awesome, really great. And you're also formative in this podcast, because before it ever existed like months before this podcast existed you and i were having dinner together uh with farley and your friend zoe at birdie g's in los angeles and you were like josh hey what you got going on at work that's my impression of you by the way uh and i was like i was like i think we're gonna start this podcast and ideas everyone has like a hot take about food and like they don't really talk about it and there's a market gap blah blah blah and you were just like yeah i don't believe in hot fruit and i was like what that's correct you don't believe in hot fruit no that concept is abhorrent to me i love fruit let me make this very clear

abundantly clear my twitter bio even goes so far as to say that i i think my twitter bio says this who knows that i'm an aspiring fruit journalist I would love nothing more than to actually spend the rest of my career just covering the ins and outs of produce, but hot fruit is terrible. Like it is just... Wait, we'll save it. We'll save it. We'll save it for opinions are like castles because we actually have something that we came here to discuss. Another hot take that you put out on Twitter like a week or so ago was that people always say how food brings people together, but you said that you thought the more interesting parts about food are where it divides us. And we had planned to do this thing centered around, you know, the holidays, because this is when that cliche always, always comes about.

And I think it is something that we've sort of accepted because every brand has screamed it at us and we've used it as a platitude for so long. yeah i mean i wanted to give you you know the space to kind of talk about where you think food divides us i mean i guess we should just all like say our thoughts you know uh i mean do you think as a whole food brings people together i mean sometimes but i i don't know i actually think there's more dividing lines around food and not just in like, you know, this restaurant's pasta is better than this restaurant's pasta. It's, there's a lot of people like really break down, you know, like food is so tied to religion in so many ways, right? Like religion shapes the way a lot of people eat and therefore a lot of their beliefs are tied and value judgments of the world are tied to food like take for example you know halal uh versus haram or like you know something

is kosher but that language extends beyond like is this hamburger halal it's like oh that you know that move i did or that decision i made that was like a halal decision or a haram decision or like oh that's kosher like is that good to go you know and so it's like these value judgments that are placed you know that actually are rooted in like food which I find very interesting and there's such strong opinions on like you know whether you should be eating meat you shouldn't be eating meat um you know meat in particular it's like one of the most fascinating ones right like it's like me eating along gender lines, meat eating along like socioeconomic lines. And there's such strong opinions. I mean, I'm Indian, Indian American, and, you know, within

South Asian culture, I mean, when you break down like caste, and you know, all of this kind of stuff, like, there's literal violence around the concept of eating meat. And it's something that, you know, food is the root of so many wars too. So I don't know. I really am anti this food kumbaya movement, you know, that's cute, but it's just not true. I'm grinning from ear to ear so hard right now, because that is, I mean, like you seem to have a lot more personal experience with that concept, but that is, those are my like exact beliefs. But Nicole, I feel like you lighten the mood. Come on, bring us up. Get us excited about food again. Well, you know, with my experience, I mean, yeah, food does divide people all the time. Like I was a girl, Persian girl,

bringing kebab to school, being made fun of for bringing farmed meat to school. And it's unfortunate, but it was true. But I feel like the older I've gotten, the more diverse my food expeditions get, the more togetherness I feel with my personal, like, group of friends and my family. So, like, of course, like, people like people are like not open to trying new things. And people are, you know, very, very secluded in their in their decision making when it comes to food, people have their comfort zones. But I feel like living in LA and having the opportunity

to try things and explore different cuisine, then explore different cultures has helped lend to more people that are different coming together with my experience. Yeah, I give you that. I mean, there's also this idea, right? I think, especially when you're an immigrant, like a child of immigrants or, you know, second or third gen, like often your only connection to your culture in many ways is the food. Like a lot of people don't even have language connections or anything like that. So it's like the one thing you kind of cling to. It's the one thing you kind of cling to. It's the one thing that like brings, you know, people like you together. Sometimes it's like

the thing you can connect over that you relate over. So yeah, I think that that is actually like a fair, fair element, you know, people coming together over food. I have a question for you guys. Do you guys like whenever you're with your family do you guys eat together like actually physically together because i never would eat like with my mom and dad and stuff i would always eat alone and it wasn't until i dated started dating my fiance and i realized that like people eat food at a dinner table together and they i'm not kidding because i because my family doesn't do that. Like I sit like in the living room, my mom like sits in the kitchen, my dad is watching a Packers game in the TV room, you know. So the actual togetherness, do you guys eat with people like at your homes

and stuff? Nicole, you've seen me eat. You've seen you've seen how I operate with food. I am I am standing over the sink. I ate lasagna with my hands last night over the sink. Uh, but no, I mean, I, I was a complete Lashkey kid. And so, you know, we, I didn't grow up with family dinners, like occasionally, you know, when one of my parents who they were divorced at the time, so they're separate, you know, saw the family even further dissolving. They were like, I'm going to like shake my computer screen for emphasis that no one can hear, but I want to do it. They're like, we're going to eat together as a family and enjoy it. And I'm like, okay. Uh, so if that's your idea of togetherness, you know, I don't know, I suppose, but that is such a, you know, quote unquote

American ideal, right. Of like every night we sit together and we have dinner at the table. It's very like Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving style thing. And I don't think to me, that's one of those things that's like, um, like um if you're trying to do that to force togetherness then you're not together in the first place you know right in a way for sure and so I never had that experience personally yeah I was also very much a latchkey kid you know my dad was like building he's a doctor but he was like building his medical practice at the time and like would frequently come home at like 9 10 11 p.m so it's like yeah and then you know when you have like so many after-school activities.m. So it's like, and then, you know, when you have like so many afterschool activities too, right?

Growing up, like between like sports and whatever, there was a lot of, you know, me, my mom just like feeding me whenever there was like time to eat. It's a little bit different now, actually. During pandemic, it's been interesting. Like my family has been eating together a lot more, more than we kind of ever have, which is, yeah, it's sort of fascinating that way.

But we don't always eat the same thing. I'm like, I'm sort of a brat. I don't always want, you know, I mean, incredible luxury right now that my mom often cooks dinner. Like, but I'm now at the point where I'm so back in pandemic, like, I've just been home for too long that like, my level of appreciation has gone back to like high school levels where I'm just like, oh, I don't want this. I want Taco Bell. Um, and so instead like I ended up cooking something, you know, separate, uh, like, and often my brother will get in on like whatever I'm cooking. Cause he's such a brat, but it's fine. Um, love him. He's great. Uh, yeah.

So, but we still will sort of eat at the same time. Or my dad does this really annoying thing lately where he just like, refuse to accept that he actually wants what you're making but just like like his own portion but insists on eating it from you and it's just kind of like like yeah your plate dude story of my life every time i get something to go i like see a little like corner of it like innocuously missing and i just look at my mom and i'm like did it taste good shala and she's like it was okay like thanks for eating my pokey mom yeah my dad always just wants like a little bit but like dad bites are just like they're so different than normal people bites for whatever

reason i don't know why that's the case but no i've been taking i've been taking dad bites since Dad bites are just, they're so different than normal people bites for whatever reason. I don't know why that's the case, but. No, I've been taking dad bites since I was like 14. I fully understand that. Because it's like the nacho paradox, right? Where if you say, can I have one nacho? And someone agrees, yes. And you pick it up and say the entire nacho plate is stuck together. That still counts as one nacho.

Therefore, due to nacho sovereignty rule, you are allowed to eat all those nachos. Maybe I'm the reason I don't think food brings people together. Because I take advantage of food and I am the one, you know, who is sort of reaping what I sow in that sense. But no, I mean, Kush, have you like noticed any difference in your family togetherness with like eating dinner at the same time? I mean, it's compounded by the pandemic where we just don't get enough separateness that i think it's almost it's almost gotten worse i'd like i just never noticed growing up like how much my dad again love my dad but like does not contribute to like the domestic situation in the house so it's like without fail after dinner he

just like clears out and like goes and watches like youtube videos and it's like me and my mom and like sometimes my brother when i you know complain enough um like cleaning up the kitchen like you know breaking everything down i'm like what is this this is something like and it's interesting you know my parents have like a very you know my mom's a dentist like she's very like a you know a very strong personality and whatever. But it's like weird where they're like relationship takes this division. Yeah, totally. It makes me I become very rageful at it constantly. That's, that's one of the reasons I really don't like the idea or the sentiment that food brings

people together is because I think you're like washing out so much, like, so much labor and so many other things that go into the production of food and literally everything down to like who's washing the dishes afterwards that for people to say such an empty cliche like food brings people together to me it's like you're ignoring everything about it you know that has the power to divide like you said on gender lines along class lines i mean food is literally the first thing that i ever noticed in my life that divided people like literally i just you know you grow up you grow up as a kid. You're so, thank you for the question, Nicole. You grow up, you grow up as a kid, you grow up as a kid and

you like don't understand your home situation in context to a lot of other people's, you know what I mean? Because you've normalized it for so long. And then I remember, you know, showing up to school and like, you know, my lunch was like a single, I'm going to make it sound like I'm a, like, you know, an orphan. I wasn't, but it would be like, you know, like up to school and like, you know, my lunch was like a sink. I'm gonna make it sound like I'm like, you know, an orphan. I wasn't but it would be like, you know, like we're poor. We had like a single slice of ham in between like crappy white bread and like and nothing. It was like drink from the drinking fountain. You eat your single slice of ham sandwich and that's your lunch. And I was like, this is normal. And it's a perfectly fine lunch. And then I saw what all the other kids are bringing. And this is in Orange County. So it's like height of, you know, soccer mom yuppie dumb yeah like i resent milano cookies and kudos bars because the rich kids

brought them i literally saw a striation in like poor this is orange county so like upper middle class and rich and it was like all right the rich kids are bringing milanos the poor kid or the poor kids are bringing a single slice of ham sandwich. And then the upper middle class kids are bringing like, you know, the the Costco chocolate cream cookies that don't necessarily have a brand on them. Right. I immediately saw these lines that just divided people so clearly. And I was like, I want to get to a point in life where I can eat Milano cookies. You know, so I just to me, it was always a dividing line. Yeah, food is so tied to status, right? Like think about the Lunchable.

Like that was like the height of like lunch coolness for me. I mean, they're absolutely trash. They're total trash. Like what, like a, what a waste of like everything. But yeah, like I had to beg my mom for months to like buy me a Lunchable. I think I've maybe gotten Lunchables twice in my entire life. Same. Oh my gosh. So similar. my mom would be like this is garbage this is processed garbage and i'm like i want to dip my nachos in the yellow paint that's all i want to do mom let me dip them small round nachos in the yellow paint but uh cardboard pizza yeah do you feel like the older

you've gotten though you've like the more self-actualized you become, and since you guys are both food journalists, don't you think that you guys bring people together with your food writing? Nicole, did you just call me a food journalist? You were. You were. Yeah, but, like, we've been working together for the last two years. I do the same job that we do now.

Josh, no. You are, okay, former. I'm going to say former. Yeah, I have officially retired. Food journalist emeritus. No, but like the work that you've done, don't you like to think that it brings more awareness and creates a world in which you bring people together with your writing styles?

Or do you think, what do you think? I think it creates more awareness for sure. At least the stuff I'm really interested in doing. I think sometimes it can bring people together as far as like people from one community because it's suddenly recognition, you know, in like a national publication or something, you know, that they're traditionally not recognized in or like haven't

been um but again you know just take indian food for example like indian food is like you know india is not like a monolith it's a culture right like indian food is like almost you know it's kind of a joke to kind of say that like it just the food is so disparate across you know every region every like i mean cast obviously plays like a huge influence on like what people eat how people eat um you know along beyond like geographical lines you know and economic lines um so yeah I don't know I I struggle I struggle with it yeah I think on one hand you know people are excited to like, see this kind of stuff, you know, being covered. And like, that brings me a lot of joy. And I just like,

like to highlight people that are doing really cool work. But I think I'm not sure it's like, necessarily doing a lot to like, bring people together necessarily. Yeah. Yeah, I see what you're saying. I mean, Nicole, this is something we kind of touched on in our Is Instagram Ruining Food episode where, you know, we kind of talked about this idea of food media being so prevalent right now that like literally everybody's seen Food Network. And food is, I think, more top of mind for everybody than any other time in history. Right. And I'm like, you know, through my rose colored glasses, I want to believe that that's just like make conditions better. People won't mind, you know you know paying 18 for ramen and you know uh an equivalent amount for spaghetti or whatever like is if we can you know sort of

shine the light on these communities that have not been seen before and blah blah blah and i think there's there's certainly like a hero complex to that and i think also i think i think also with our sort of want for instant gratification, we're like, well, we're not seeing any results right now. So this sucks. But I think it raises the question of like, does does bringing awareness actually like, help anything get better? You know, like, how do you measure that? I don't know, because there's still like, there might be an acceptance around someone's food, but there's not necessarily an acceptance of the person, right? Like, there's not necessarily an acceptance of the person, right? Like, or of the culture.

There's plenty of, like, idiot racists that, like, will just down, like, you know, queso burrito. They'll, like, down burritos. They'll down whatever. But then they're like, build a wall. You know, like, that's, like, that's, like, it's that same idea. You know, they'll, you know, they'll use terrible, you know, slurs in the same sentence as being like, okay, yeah, can I have tacos for dinner tonight? You know, it's like, it's kind of that, that idea. I don't know. I don't know why I'm so

cynical today. What happened? Sometimes I've seen food bring people together. This one time. No, I mean, if I think about, you know, one of the things is, you know, food is morally neutral, right? It's a, it's a thing we've been putting in our body for millennia, of course, as cultural significance, but we use it for energy, then we turn it into poo, right? Food is not good or bad. Food does not inherently bring people together or divide. Wait, wait, I'm sorry. Can we backtrack?

You just said, did you say food is poo or food will be poo? Food, yeah. That is a scientific fact that I believe in. I am pro-science on this podcast. I believe that food does eventually become poo. I think some, I think the liquid is extracted and that becomes pee. Okay. Anyways, the point that I was trying to make, I don't even remember anymore.

I just got into pre-poo. Pre-poop? Food is pre-poop, which is hilarious to me. But no, the fact that food is pre-poop which is hilarious to me but no the fact that you know it's it's morally neutral it doesn't inherently bring people together or divide people um but it's the way that people have interacted with it for literally forever it could be said about literally anything right does religion bring people together certainly it brings people of that same religion of the same church you know it brings them together and then you're like oh man but the crusades happened and like still to this day people are persecuted because of it it's the

same thing with with food you know i don't think there's anything special about food that can uniquely bring people together or divide them it's all the crap that we put on it video games are you know the same way you could apply it to literally anything like there's a you know apparently a diverse uh you know diverse groups of people that play video games and people unite and meet friends they never would have otherwise and then like gamergate happens and steve bannon mobilizes video game people to vote trump in so it's anything can be used as a tool you know and food is no exception but i think the difference is we buy a lot of food and people want

to sell us that food so they sell us a rosy idea of it yeah i mean i think food can physically bring people together but physically bringing people together doesn't we are reaching i like to think so as well everybody we are reaching so hard for positivity right now i tried to go down a positive route and then i was like gamergate happened and the video game kids on 4chan were sending bomb threats to politicians. But it doesn't necessarily translate into like an emotional togetherness, which is, I think that's the thing where just over people like peddling,

because I think it just, people want to glaze over the realities of things. I think we would actually just do much better if we just acknowledge them instead and didn't pretend that like, like a beautiful lasagna, not the one that Josh made last night or whatever, and, you know, we'll suddenly like heal all the problems like when that's not the, you know, that's just not the case. And especially with food media, like, just, it's just so people are just so full of crap. When they when they tout that line. Yeah, it's just them not wanting to do the work of like, you know, fixing the doing, you know, fixing the real issues at play. How do you guys think food can bring people together?

Is there a way that us three can work together like the Power Rangers of food? Is there a way in which food can bring people together? And how can we do that? And how can we tell our listeners to do that? I pass. You can't pass. This is your podcast. No, I passed.

I passed the kushboo. I just don't think in America in particular that we fully understand the real cost of food or we really value what goes into things. We have this expectation that things are supposed to be really cheap. It's actually a piece I'm working on right now. I mean, compared to other countries with a similar GDP, we spend such a small portion of our incomes towards food. with like a similar GDP, we spend such a small portion of our incomes towards food, like the discount is the discount in quotes that we get is actually like the real cost is like human labor, like the people that are, you know, growing, like farmers are totally suffering, you know,

farm workers are just treated unbelievably terribly, you know, they're doing such hard labor for such for so like, so little stability, like no health insurance, like nothing, you know they're doing such hard labor for such for so like so little stability like no health insurance like nothing you know they're like treated like actual crap um you know and then that like there's just continual issues along the food chain you know even in grocery stores like we expect prices to be so low but if we just raise them slightly like it would benefit you know the people who grow the food like massively and then you know at restaurants we don't pay enough you know for for the labor that actually goes into preparing these meals. And like the real food costs, so they're running on such tiny margins. So then, you know, it's an

industry that continues to, you know, demean the workers that like, you know, are a part of it, like there's no, you know, we're still dependent on a tipping system, there's not benefits, you know, people are not paid enough in these, it's just like this constant perpetuating cycle. So I think it's like, if people understood the value of food more, and like the labor that goes into it, like, I think actually, ultimately, that would bring us more together in the fact that like, more people would just have better lives. That makes sense. That might be really reaching. So you think educating the masses is the first step to bringing people together, like actually having people in the

United States understand where their food is coming from, and who's giving them their food is like the first step? Yeah, 100%. And instead of just educating it, it's like getting people to accept this fact. I think a lot of people, yeah, a lot of people like know that people are not paid a lot, you know, to like pick the potatoes that they're eating and the french fries that they're paying a literal dollar for, you know, a bucket of like, but they just choose to kind of ignore it or like, they just don't want to think about it because it's a really crappy thing to have to think about. So it's not just education, it's like an actual acceptance. So it's like, we need to actually shift policies and approaches and formats of things, I think for,

yeah, for that to happen. But I don't know if that's even possible. I got, I got it. Hold on. I got a better idea. Here's the thing. What we know about Americans, they dislike education, right? Our education rank in the world is failing. Why? Because education, it's boring. No one likes it, but the ways that,

so I, I was never great in school. I somehow tricked people into eventually getting into a college and almost graduated from that college before not. But a way that I was able to learn as a child was through trickery, right? They would bring me into something fun. Y'all ever play math blaster? Yeah. was yeah it was like it was a video game right yeah it's a stupid video game where you'd like zap pieces of trash out of the sky because oh yeah

learn to recycle and then you'd have to you would have to it was a carrot and stick sort of thing they would trick your little child idiot brain into doing math by baiting you with video games and i've seen some restaurants kind of you you know, trick people, right? Food is a huge form of entertainment. I know for me, I'm bored. So I'm just like, let's go eat. And I think, uh, you know, certain restaurants have like done a good job of sort of tricking people. Like I was at an Armenian restaurant and on their menu on the full front cover was like, yo, by the way, here's a 300 word history of the Armenian genocide. Uh, enjoy your kebab, you know? And I was just You know, I'm just like, I'm gonna read this. I ain't got nothing to do right now.

And, you know, I, of course, it's not like a systemic change that I think can happen everywhere. It's just people writing, you know, stories of, you know, the Cambodian like refugee resettlement program, you know, on their menus and whatnot. But I think, you know, some sort of system or like Kushboo said, just like an actual acceptance of every time you eat, it's just like, hey, by the way, there was,

you know, a farmer who literally got paid like 22 cents an hour through terrible loopholes and lack of any legal recourse to pick these strawberries. But you know, it's it, like Kushboo said, it's a fact that people just like, don't want to accept and also this rosy idea that food can like end racism because that was so much discourse around the taco the taco trucks on every corner yeah yeah that yeah um but i mean i remember being in a room at a magazine where we were doing a whole racism issue it was just like or no sorry sorry it wasn't it wasn't a racism issue it was it was an immigration issue um and then as we talked about it with executives we realized maybe it should be a racism issue because one was literally like yeah i just

don't understand the hate against immigrants because like i wouldn't want to pick my own strawberries and it was just like dude that's a problem you absolute wanker like come on um like you know so i think yeah sorry it's like the same vibes it's like i i think i tweeted about this but i had two women approached me about hosting a show that was all about refugee cooks but they wanted to call it chef you g's and just like it's like those exact same vibes yeah it's like oh this isn't it that's super that's like the definition of exploitation that's crazy yeah but i don't know have have we seen any i'm trying to think of like real life examples where food has That's super, that's like the definition of exploitation. That's crazy. Yeah. But I don't know, have we seen any, I'm trying to think of like real life examples where food has brought people together.

I mean, you know, we've all mentioned, you know, like elementary school lunches on this podcast. You know, I remember this isn't necessarily food bringing people together. It's almost further enacting the divide. But I remember we had a Lebanese friend named Christian and he would always bring, you knowese food, like, like, I think the first meal that I remember eating from his mom was like mujadara. And he would always trade me for my like, you know, American crappy reduced price school pizza lunch. And so like, I got to experience, you know, his culture through eating his mom's home cooked food that he didn't want, because he just wanted

this quote, unquote, all American experience of eating crappy cardboard pizza. And I mean, that was something that, you know, kicked off like a lifelong sort of, I don't know, love for Middle Eastern food. And it always like really cemented a point in my mind to learn more about the different cultures. And maybe this is just, you know, a me thing, because I got the ADHD, and I'm a curious little cat. And you know i start reading about colonization start you know like i don't know you're reading about the the balfour declaration all because i you know ate some some rice and lentils uh from you know my friend when i was eight years old yeah that's the thing though it's like most people aren't like that though right yeah people don't like you josh yeah i'm also the same way where

i'm like oh this is really cool you know like but I think that's how we end up in these these places where we literally talk about food all day long because we're either geniuses or idiots. I can't tell. A little bit of both. A little bit. I think it's funny. Do you think that more people can eventually get to that place, though, if, you know, talked about kind of food media saturation just becoming a more popular entertainment?

I think so. I, you know, yeah, there's more and more places you can get exposure to this, right? And like, I think the more you see other people excited about something like that tends, we, you know, we have a lot of herd mentality, just as humans, like, you know, if a lot of people are amped about something, you know, I think that does definitely help. So yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, like, what if the free britney hashtag was like pay a mocoly farm workers you know like what if i don't know if we got to a point where that was the case then i think in 60 to 85 years we're all going to come back here and record this podcast

and be like yes food does bring people together but until, I'm fine just being super bitter about it. I'm not. I think there's hope. I think, you know what? I'm believing in a silver lining that one day, eventually, food will... You guys really opened my eyes and made me feel like a dark person right now. I've never felt more cynical in my life. So thank you for that. But I do believe that there's a silver lining. And I think the more people are curious about food, and the more we educate people about the realities of food, I think it'll eventually

put us in a proper step to bring people together with the use of food. I think it's fair to say that food can bring some people together. We never talk about that. Like, I have a lot of friendships, sort of actually based or centered on food experiences. I think Josh is actually one of those people, you know, like, we met through kind of like, food Twitter, like, that is essentially it. Like, we became friends over meals, you know, like, that is how that worked. And so, you know, now I deeply regret it. No, I'm just kidding. But, uh, but I think food can bring some people together. You know, I think there is something to like spending a Saturday with your friends doing like a dumpling crawl, you know, through like, you know, flushing in Queens or like the SGV in LA, like, you know, there's something to that. Um, and like, you know, deciding that you want to spend eight hours with people, you know, centered on these like meal experiences, like there's value to that. And like you know deciding that you want to spend eight hours with people you know

centered on these like meal experiences like there's value to that and like that i can get behind especially when your journalist friend kushboo is paying with her company card then it especially correct all right nicole and kushboo we've heard what you and i have to say now it's time to find out what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the twitterverse it's time for a segment we call we can't do it from home we should just stop we should just stop trying no i think we should keep going all right kushboo this is a segment where we react to people's terrible food opinions but first we need to react to your terrible food opinion which is that hot fruit is bad that's a great food opinion

i don't know what you're talking about how you don't like hot fruit how you don't like it makes it taste like warm fruity water like okay here's the thing there's a clarification with this i don't mind when something has once been hot fruit but then it chilled down so like okay i don't want hot apple pie or like hot blueberry pie that to me just takes away like the fruit flavor because it just tastes like warm goop juice like it just grows but when you chill it it's like down at least back to room temp if ideally cold like then you can like really get like the flavors like concentrated there's no like weird distraction from the heat yeah so you know that's distracting yeah i think it's disgusting honestly you ever

had a clafoutis before have i heard have i ever heard what cloutis. Is that how you say it? I've had it, but I prefer it at room temp. I can't with you. I can't with you. I just made an apple pie for Thanksgiving, and I took a bite of it cold straight out the fridge, and I was like, nah. I microwaved it for two minutes, and then I put it in a 500-degree oven for eight minutes.

I torched it in each piece of pie. Because again, it was just me and Julia. We were social distancing, degree oven for like eight minutes i i torched it in each each piece of pie because again you know we were it was just me and julia were social distancing so i end up with like seven eighths of a pie that i ate through the course of a week and every every slice that i heated gotten more and more done from the last time so i was just like more more heat in the apples i was just insatiable because i put cold ice cream on it and i want that immediate temperature drop and then i want the ice cream to melt into a beautiful creme anglaise on top is that a bad that's a good oh that's my no the worst i hate that like hot unless it's a brownie i hate that hot thing cold

ice cream like combo because i don't want my ice cream to melt like that if you want creme anglaise just eat creme anglaise like why bother i like ice cream frozen schrodinger my ice cream to melt like that. If you want creme anglaise, just eat creme anglaise. Like, why bother? I like ice cream. Schrodinger's ice cream. I want at one moment for it to simultaneously be frozen ice cream and creme anglaise. And the only way I can get there is by torching the crap out of my pie. And I will not apologize for it. But like poached pears, are you like into poached pears?

If I'm like 78 living in Maine, maybe, but not right now. That's one of the most disgusting hot fruit formats I can think of. That's a little gnarly. Yo, I love poached pears. Like a red wine poached pear, you get the jus? Of course you do. I like mushy food. I also like mushy food.

I just don't like warm, hot fruit mush. Yeah. Like warm applesauce. Ew. Ew. I hate applesauce. So you wouldn't eat marinara sauce? Okay, but like tomatoes.

Leave her alone. Way more safety. You need to leave her alone. You need to leave her alone. I hate it. Guys, okay. Tomatoes are technically a fruit. I get it. Yes, okay. Tomatoes are technically a fruit. I get it.

No, dude, we did a whole hour on that and we just destroyed everything. And especially when everyone's like, do you know bananas or do you know watermelons are a berry but a strawberry isn't? You're like, why it's called a berry then? Why it's called a strawberry? It's red.

It goes in my Jamba juice. It's a berry, you moron. You don't know what a berry is, you freaking idiot. Okay, wait, wait. We also said we were going to mention hummus. We're going to get to like three opinions, It goes to my Jamba juice. It's a berry. You moron. You don't know what a berry is. You freaking idiot. Okay. We also said we're going to mention hummus. We're going to get to like three opinions, but we were talking about hummus and bring people together. And one of the most formative moments of my life was when I was in Israel and

we're at a restaurant and the dude made us hummus. And then a girl was like, Oh my God, this is so beautiful because like Palestinians eatinians eat hummus and israelis eat hummus and food just brings people together and this restaurateur stares her straight in the face and just goes like go tell that to my family in gaza and see if it makes the bombs stop flying over their heads and i was just like yeah yeah yeah that's pretty that's pretty accurate that was yeah yeah okay should we now on to on to a lighter note uh we got at paul along the watchtower maple syrup is just weird

tasting tree blood butter pecan butter pecan is where it's at yes butter pecan syrup is not a thing i don't believe outside of the ihop canon of syrups yeah they got the maple old fashion butter pecan and then the blueberry and the strawberry and those are just there to like weed out the uncultured people because butter pecan syrup it is so artificial it is so delicious it tastes like you distilled a thing of butter pecan ice cream into a clear liquid through a centrifuge i agree i like maple syrup and i enjoy it in multiple facets i love it in my oatmeal i even sometimes put a little bit in my coffee sometimes fun little fact about me and i think it's delicious and i think it's it's beautiful and this person just has a weird chip on their

shoulder yeah i love maple but i love the idea of calling it tree blood i'm kind of into that yeah metal that only makes it more appealing to me though so i don't know what that says about me but it's fine i like your general violence against plants like you talked about like meat eating being you know having an inherent sort of dividing factor in it but i love that you're just all about like brutal violence against trees but i love a plant i want to be an aspiring fruit journalist josh never forget i love that you're like a very incredibly accomplished like actual food journalist but an aspiring fruit specific journalist you're like look i've done everything i can in the food world but now the fruit world i gotta conquer it there's a lot of stories that need to be told in that space okay next up we have jade underscore i merg the crisp

grapes are superior to mushy soft grapes mushy grapes are awful you guys are in luck because i literally have two grapes in my hands one is one is one is hard one is mushy i don't know what's gonna happen i had no idea it's fate let it happen okay i'm gonna eat the mushy one first i'm gonna give you my true honest opinion i hope the microphone catches this that's good okay now for the crisp one wait what the heck is happening what's going on it's happening accept it honestly the crisp is better mushy grapes are nasty i agree i'm team crisp grape crisp you grape. You just, what? We're just glossing over the fact that Nicole happened to be holding.

Were you holding them the entire time? No, my mom gave me a cup of fruit before I started my podcast. Yay. I hate that you both have fruit moms at your disposal and I'm over here alone cutting up my own fruit. I just got a text from my mom that she just peeled a couple pomegranates. So there you go. Yeah. I just got a text from my mom that she just peeled a couple pomegranates. There you go. I'm so mad. I didn't know anyone liked

mushy grapes. Is that a hot take? Does anyone like mushy fruit in general? Is there any fruit that's good as mush besides a mush format like applesauce? Durian is better when it's mushy. Nice red banana. I will not eat a banana that I have to chew with teeth.

I will not. I exclusively eat the ones that immediately fall into a paste as soon as they hit your tongue. So you like like a banana bread banana. Like that's the banana you want. Yeah. It's not completely brown speckled. Huh. All right.

All right. At 10 to no charisma. original oreos are inferior to the flavored ones like mint and birthday cake yeah yeah life's too short for like original flavored anything people who bring plain chips to a party to me are like anathema like i i want the barbecue i want the szechuan hot chicken flavored lays i want to take risks i want to experience everything the world has to offer in so far as it's in a bag of chips or i don't know man if it ain't broke don't fix it i love a good og oreo flavor combination with the really really sweet hydrogenated cream and the really really weird bitter cookie i'm sorry i gotta say i think the oreo thin is the superior Oreo. Original flavor combo, but the texture is like, there's something to that.

Like it's, I think it's just more, I prefer the cream into cookie ratio on that one. This is my favorite fact about food, but Oreo thins are more calorically dense than Oreos. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. So they were marketed as Oreos like diet oreo thing like when nabisco came out with the 100 calorie packs and their oreos were just like weirdly chocolate scented crackers like what the hell oreo oreo thins were their answer to that but i

i went through and i divided the total weight of cookie um by you know the calories and they are more calorically dense wait i actually have a bone to pick with that their marketing was not that because they made me sign a freaking nda when i was working at eater and like this came out where they were like exclude they were like pounded this into my head where they were like no we're not marketing this as like a diet oreo it's an adult oreo experience that's literally the marketing terms that they were using adult oreo experience like oreos after dark like that's what was going on i'll just say an adult oreo something you got to pay like 150 bucks for and it's not technically legal yet uh it's i feel i feel like they use the term thin understanding you know what people were

going to think about it at least just like the virginia slims like like the thin like elegant cigarettes but for oreos yeah yeah i guess i i accept that i accept that yeah when they do really or elegant they should go with oreo crisps what's an oreo crisp it should be just be that's what they should call oreo things oh that's not yeah yeah yeah i agree let's see what's next nat period francesca says why is it weird that i drink my soup broth first and eat the solids last you know people do this and it pisses me off like no other like get them like i eat all like when i'm thinking of a bowl of pho okay and i'm eating my bowl of pho and i eat all my noodles and i eat all my beef and i eat all my onions and stuff and then i slurp the liquid okay i hate when people like

have a bowl full of stuff and their soup is all gone it's like why are you doing this why spongebob why it really pisses me off so uh i hate this opinion and nat period francesca you made me mad i i think anytime we get a bowl of noodle soup, we enter into a certain social contract, right? That like the intent behind it was for you to enjoy everything as an intricate dance inside your mouth hole. And I think like by drinking all the broth first, leaving all the solids, you're breaking that social contract. It's like doing something crazy, like putting ranch on lasagna, you know? It's like lasagna is not meant to house ranch. And so I think it's, you know it's like lasagna is not meant to house ranch and so i think it's you

know uh almost immoral yes i am also pro eating your noodles and drinking your soup at the same time in similar ratios yeah this this also makes me really annoyed isn't it fun getting annoyed at people's opinion yeah this is really great i love this i know so cathartic wait what a what a segue what a segue at geeky for life 12 my dad eats spaghetti and puts ranch on it i'm gonna go ahead i'm gonna end up this one but i'm gonna end up this one but um i i was joking about the lasagna pudding ranch thing earlier because that is something that i do it is something that i will not apologize for i didn't come here to make friends i'm fine leaving with enemies i i will go to little tony's uh friend of the show uh in north hollywood i will get their eight dollar

spaghetti that has a quarter cup of water sitting bottom of the bowl and i will drizzle their ice cold ranch coming straight out the salad fridge on top of that spaghetti and serve it down but i will say it is better on lasagna because that bridges the gap between spaghetti and pizza amen yeah no we're just we're just shaking our heads at you bro like no sorry okay okay okay but hold on hold on you ever been like eating caesar salad on the same plate as skeddy and you get like the bite with a little bit of caesar salad and the skate at the same time you know i keep them very separate for that very reason again food does not i don't even bring my foods together not only does

food not bring people together i don't bring foods together like they must be separate not interested yeah open up your heart i literally today god this is sad so i i made this lasagna and i have like 10 portions of it to eat over the course of who knows how many days so i've been eating it for every meal and i'm getting a little bored with it so today i chopped it up and kind of pan fried it till the noodles were crisp and then i took just a wet baby greens and ranch salad and i just put that directly on top of the lasagna like it's a freaking burrito bowl i thought it was more like the way you were describing it no yeah i also can't do wilty greens that are like me either that are like you know spring mix like a wilty kale that's like sauteed or whatever

sure I can get behind that but like wilty arugula pass you've never had the braised lettuces bruschetta

at Alimento no that's different though that's like that's not wilt that's braised that's intentional wilt I intentionally

put the salad on top of the lasagna with the ranch oh my god I am a chef I am a real chef who deserves to be taken seriously I intentionally put the salad on top of the lasagna with the ranch. Oh my gosh. I am a chef. I am a real chef who deserves to be taken seriously. The man screamed in his bedroom. I'll do one more.

Okay. ClaudeF88 says homemade mac sauce as the base sauce on pizza. Yum. What is mac sauce? They're talking about special sauce from McDonald's. They're talking about. Yum. What is Mac sauce? They're talking about special sauce from McDonald's. They're talking about, they're talking about a thousand island. Yeah.

That's definitely what they're talking about. I can get behind that. Yeah. I think that's cool. I mean, it probably wouldn't be my preferred pizza, but like I'd still eat it. I'm pro,

I'm pro non marinara pizza sauce, pizza bases. I think there's like a lot of fun to be had there. I do too. I think we're all children of CPK. Yes. Worship at the altar of barbecue chicken pizza. RIP.

Back home and pick up. My only problem with that is if you put Thousand Island in a frying pan, you can scramble it because of the mayonnaise content. And so you do, which isn't a deal breaker for me because as I mentioned, you know, I'm eating ranched up lasagna over my sink every night. Quarantine is so hard. I feel like Big Mac sauce has enough stabilizers in it

that you wouldn't actually have to worry about that. God bless the joys of processed food. I love that we're all like, we have to teach people about farming and then immediately, God bless the joys of processed food. Listen, I'm a person who contains multitudes. Kush Bouchard, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for containing multitudes.

You can check out her work at Food and Wine Magazine. Buy their foods and wines, I think. Is that a good plug for food and wine magazine yeah that's pretty great you can also find me in my bad opinions on twitter at kush and oj k-h-u-s-h-a-n-d-o-j also similar on instagram more bad opinions there too so full of them all right and if you want to hear more of us here in the mythical kitchen we got new episodes for you every wednesday if you want to be featured on Opinion Delight Casseroles, you can hit us up on Twitter at MythicalChef or

with the hashtag OpinionCasserole. And for more Mythical Kitchen, check us out on YouTube where we launch new videos every week. And of course, if you want to share pictures of your dishes, hit us up on Instagram at MythicalKitchen. Bye! Food brings people together. Happy holidays. This is the last podcast

of the year we should leave oh it is? well see you next year where it's gonna be way more positive we're committing to 100% positivity on Mythical Kitchen super duper you