A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich - What’s the Best Pizza Style? ft. Amanda Hesser

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Pizza is enjoyed as a comfort food around the world, but are all the unique combinations of cheesy baked dough created equal? Today, we're joined by Amanda Hesser to discuss: what's the best pizza style? 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. Though its roots are in Italy, pizza is now enjoyed as a comfort food all around the world. But are all the unique combinations of cheesy baked dough created equal? Today we discuss, what's the best regional pizza style? 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. What? Welcome to our podcast, A Hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What? 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 Scherer. And I'm your host, Nicole Hendizadeh. And today we have a very special guest with us. Amanda Hester is the co-founder and CEO of Food52, a community-minded food publication that recently launched its inaugural show of its podcast network, The Genius Recipe Tapes, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts. Amanda, welcome.

Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. I have more in your bio. Can I continue to gush over more things in your bio? Sure. I was supplied with a bio, full disclosure.

Me and Nicole do roughly no work on this actual show. Very little. And I even edited this down to just the important parts. And holy crap, it is still incredible. Okay, hold on. I'm old. That's why. Amanda was also food editor of the New York Times Magazine, the editor of Tea Living, author of the Essential New York Times Cookbook, and she was named one of the 50 most influential women in food by Gourmet Magazine. This is my favorite. Amanda also played herself in the movie Julieie and julia which is awesome that is very exciting one of my favorite movies i cried like a baby so cool man what a cool bio to have i

actually played julia child in that movie i could see that definitely yes yeah people uh they've called me a meryl streep type uh-huh you know like in the sense that i can kind of transform myself into roles i can see it uh-huh yeah, Amanda, today we are talking about what the best regional pizza style is. Obviously a topic that has many different routes it can go. I think we should all just start with our own sort of answers and go from there. Sure. Amanda, you want to take it away? You have the floor. Sure thing. Well, I'm going to start by just talking about the regional pizza that I grew up with, which is called Old Forge White Pizza in Pennsylvania. Old Forge is like a little like kind of sliver of a neighborhood in Scranton, Pennsylvania. And they are known for making pizza. It's actually they're kind of like two players

that and they're really just like kind of bars that made pizza and they make them on sheet pans. kind of bars that made pizza and they make them on sheet pans. So it's a, it's a sheet tray pizza and you get, so you get rectangular pieces and it's the white pizza is actually dough. And then there's a layer of American cheese, which Josh and I would be a big fan of. Is it white American or like the good stuff? Yes,

white. And then it's, and I think some people might put provolone, but I'm pretty sure it's just straight up American. And then and then it's rosemary, dried rosemary. So it's not even fresh rosemary and like oil and salt. So it has kind of like quasi roots of like kind of Roman pizza, Bianca, but done very like American style. It's almost like a Chicago version of that. And then there's also a red version but the white is what people really go to old forge for and you know for as long as i

can remember people had to like wait in line to to get in who decided the dried rosemary on the white american cheese is my favorite touch they're like you know what would set off this american cheese sending me for a loop i've never done dried rosemary on pizza before. I'm into it. And also, I love that, like you said, Old Forge is one neighborhood in Scranton, like a sliver, and that they have developed their own regional pizza style. And that's what I think is so cool about regional pizza styles. They seem to just develop from literally like two restaurants that made it. And then that kind of, you know, becomes known. Yeah, they were across the street from each other.

And yeah, they were like rivals. It was like, you know, rival high schools, rival pizza places. And then no one really, I mean, I didn't know of any other places that made it, but it's like they have, you know, all the business in town. That's incredible. Nicole, we can jump back and forth, but I'm interested in your answer. It's very simple. It is grandma pizza. I love, I love the dough. I love the sauce. I love the crispy little edges. I love the dough. I love the sauce. I love the crispy little edges. I love everything about grandma style pizza.

What is grandma style pizza? Well, I have a sheet in front of me and I can explain exactly what it is. It is square. I'm going to do it verbatim. Square or rectangular pizza that has been cooked in an olive oil coated pan. It is covered in a thin layer of mozzarella cheese and in an uncooked canned or fresh tomatoes. Oh, yeah. Founded in New York, specifically Long Island, thick crust and crispy. Oftentimes, the cheese goes directly onto the dough and the sauce on top. Okay, I know what you're talking about, because I've had it at, do you know Pizzaria

Supreme? I think it's Pizza Suprema, which is right near Madison Square Garden in New York City. And it's sort of known for its like classic New York style pizza, but they do a grandma pizza that's really good. I just love the way the cheese kind of creeps up on the top and gets all crispy and delicious. And then you fold it over on the super soft goopy cheese. And it reminds me a lot of Pizza Hut pizza in that it's like a cakey, super soft, pillowy dough. And then it's this beautiful, like clean sauce and then the cheese. And then I don't typically get toppings on it.

I just do a dough, sauce, cheese, and a little bit of Parmesan and a little bit of chili flake. And I'm good for like the rest of the week. We have a combined two total trips to New York, you and I. I've never been to New York. Yes, I have been to New York City twice.

So like we are both coming at this from a very disadvantaged angle that we both grew up in California, which I think a lot of people would say does not have a distinct pizza culture, except for the fact that California-style pizza is my answer for the best regional pizza style. What's the story behind

and I've never been to one, but I just know of it. California Pizza Kitchen. CPK is our church. It's where we pray to the barbecue chicken pizza gods. You can take the rest of it. Yeah, so CPK, which now I believe is actually very sad. CPK is bankrupt. It is.

And they actually went to auction and they had no interested buyers. So CPK is likely on its way out. Amanda, I don't know, you know, Food 52's greater aspirations, but if y'all want to buy the California Pizza Kitchen, I think you can get it as a distressed asset for pennies on the dollar. So this is my official pitch to you for that. The people at Mythical, they sure were not into that idea. I wrote a whole pitch deck. But no, California Pizza Kitchen has a very incredible story behind it. The person who created their original menu, his name was Ed Ledoux, and he was actually handpicked by Wolfgang Puck to start the pizza program at Spago.

He was working at a restaurant in the Bay Area called Prego. And a lot of people sort of trace the modern, you know, fancy topping pizzas to Alice Waters at Chez Panisse because they have a wood-burning pizza oven. They put, you know, figs and mostarda and all that on it. And so this dude, Ed Ledoux, was plucked by Wolfgang Puck. He went to Spago. Spago did the famous Peking duck pizza with the hoisin,

which is still on the menu. And they have the smoked salmon pizza. Oh, for sure. And he also created a barbecue chicken pizza there. So two investors looking to start a restaurant stole Ed Ledoux. He was only 27 years old at the time, stole him from Spago, and they launched California Pizza Kitchen

with this idea that you can put like crazy, wacky toppings on pizza. But for me, it's that movement of like breaking down what makes a pizza a pizza to then build it back up again into a product that's greater than the sum of its parts is what makes California style the best. Because I don't think there would be a Nancy Silverton and Mozza without the hard work put in by California Pizza Kitchen. Wow I didn't know

in asking that question that I was going to get such like a thorough history. Yeah that's off the dome Amanda. I thought that Chez Panisse was known more for like the grilled pizza uh kind of grilling it over you know wood fire and that was sort of the whole kind of like romance of California cooking. I think there were, I think California pizza kitchen or like Ed LaDue specifically took this sort of, you know, idea of that like rustic wood fire thing. And they almost like pop culture-ified it to like, oh, people seem to like this different thing being done in California with pizza. We are going to sell it to the masses by shoving barbecue chicken on it.

Cause like, I mean, shape and ease, obviously, I mean, they're the dish that I best know them for is figs on a plate. Um, which I think who,

there was a critic that knocked him for that. And I can't remember who it was, but anyways, I mean, they were all about, you know, very much the simplicity of cooking, despite instituting,

I think the bones of the fusion food movement with California cuisine and like all the great chefs that came from there. I mean, they were all about, you know, very much the simplicity of cooking, despite instituting, I think, the bones of the fusion food movement with California cuisine and like all the great chefs that came from there. I mean, David Leibovitz, Jonathan Waxman, all these people. But yeah, to me, like there would be no CPK without Chez Panisse and there would be no Nancy Silverton and Mozza without CPK. Ergo, CPK is the best style. But it sounds like there is soon to be no cpk so um like if you were to revive it what would you do well how would you fix it and bring it back to life and make it thrive i think sometimes the phoenix needs to stay buried in the ashes i don't think cpk necessarily needs to come back because other people have taken up the mantle and literally right before we started

recording this nicole goes you're gonna you're gonna bring up neo-Neapolitan pizza, aren't you? And I was like, you're dang right I am. So right now there is a really cool movement, especially from LA pizzaiolos, thinking of Daniele Uditi at Pizzana, which has caused a lot of waves, who they're taking very legitimate sort of Neapolitan techniques. I think he's like a fourth generation pizzaiolo and he's taking that and he's, you know, creating pies with, you know, Mexican chorizo and cilantro crema. You have guys like Zach Pollock at Cosa Buona who are doing, you know, smoked pineapple on their pizzas that are made with, you know, a 72 hour dough and whatnot. So I think you have a lot of people who have taken up the spirit of California style pizza that has sort of just broken down all these

rules of simplicity and purity because Neapolitan pizza is something that, you know, there's have taken up the spirit of California style pizza that has sort of just broken down all these rules of simplicity and purity because Neapolitan pizza is something that, you know, there's literally a whole guidebook on what it needs to be, to be considered Neapolitan. The crust can't be more than three and a half centimeters tall and all that. And so California took the best elements of that and then broke all the rules and said, screw you. Here's a smoked pineapple pizza. And I love them for that. Yeah. CPK has a frozen line, Amanda. So you can also just get the frozen one. Okay. I'm going to run right out for that. I'm out in the Hamptons and at some like kind of fancy store, there was, there were t-shirts that said pineapple on pizza person. Um, and I was like, you know, no, that's, that's not me. I'm

not, that's never been me um are you a pineapple on pizza person that was our first podcast oh we were so young is if a pineapple belongs on pizza and we both were a resounding yes well we both grew up again growing up it's so it's such a regional thing because we didn't grow up with you know what i'd call like a pizza culture you know for us pizza is you go to costco you get a 700 calorie slice of floppy wet cheese. Yeah. And that's pizza. So we didn't have these like, you know, Brooklyn pizzerias at our disposal.

We had CPK. Yeah. So we didn't, you know, grow up with any of these sort of rules. So for us, it was like pineapple on pizza. You know, why not? I think you have to come at it from an angle first of why not as opposed to why yeah agreed i love pineapple and pizza and there's tons of different regionalities that put you know weird you go to sweden there's actually a there's a persian armenian swedish pizzeria in

glendale god bless the greater los angeles area um and the dude makes a pizza that is very common in sweden that has banana and shrimp on it. And curry. And curry powder. Banana, shrimp and curry powder. Yeah. It's okay. And does it, do I personally enjoy it? No, it's kind of gross if you break it down. But it's one of those things that, you know, based on where you grew up, it's just, if there's no initial rules coming into it saying you shouldn't do this,

then you kind of just do it and people you know enjoy those flavors it gets propagated and passed on and i think that's one of the coolest things about pizza so what would you not ever put on a pizza kiwis kiwis that's a big thing kiwis we both went to kiwi kiwi mango i think any sort of tropical fruit other than pineapple but what makes pineapple special in that? I don't know. I think it's because I was conditioned that way. So just so you know, Amanda, I kept kosher in my household for a long time.

So my pizzas were typically pineapple, onion, jalapeno. So those are my fun toppings. And so I think I'm just conditioned to enjoy pineapple on pizza. But mango on pizza makes my head hurt. The idea of that just seems wrong. Kiwi seems wrong. Kiwi seems wrong. Papaya seems wrong. Straw bit, fruits.

Certain fruits cannot be on pizza. I mean, it's funny having that strong of a reaction to that. I lived with two Italian roommates in college and their strongest revulsion to anything on pizza was chicken. What? Which to me makes a little bit of sense. They were also incredibly anti-chicken on pasta because they were just like,

you have the pasta, that were just like you have the pasta that's separate you have the pizza that's separate then you have your meat course you have your seconde or you know and so for them other kinds of meat on pasta but i think they're like uh you know kind of accent uh accent meats something that's like heavily flavored like a like a guanciale is you know different yeah spec like those things are adding you know different kind of character and flavor to a pizza but chicken you know which should be like a main protein they were i can't i cannot tell you how confused i'm with them like i i don't i don't want chicken on my pizza or my pasta but at the same time i can't really explain why again it's like conditioning maybe it's just

because it never was and so therefore i feel like it never should be and actually my sister one of my sisters was became an exchange student in germ and her host family, to try to make her feel welcome, they decided they were like, let's serve her pizza when she arrives. And they served her pizza with pineapple on it. And she like immediately called home and was like, I want to come home. No. I wonder where they got that idea. I don't know. Maybe CPK.

It could have been. But I mean, the pineapple and pizza thing, it was started in Canada, but then it gradually moved to Australia where it was literally for a long time, the number one pizza topping in all of Australia. Huh. Which to me is wild. So like literally supplanting more than pepperoni,

which also most people from Italy seem to have a strong revulsion against like American style pepperoni. I don't love pepperoni. Now I do. Now I just like the little cups, you know, the little cups that curl. When the cups curl, I know I'm having a good time with my pepperoni. I don't love pepperoni. Now I do. Now I just like the little cups, you know, the little cups that curl. When the cups curl,

I know I'm having a good time with my pepperoni pizza. Yeah. Is it a Prince Street? I don't know. Prince Street? Is that the New York pizza? Prince Street pizza?

Is that the spot in, it's like deep Brooklyn. Oh, no, I don't think so. DeFarra's? DeFarra's is what I'm thinking of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you haven't been there. You have to go out there.

You have to get all the way out there. You don't know if you're going to get in. It's like a club. A club in L.A. Well, when the pizzaiolo from Lucali in Brooklyn came out to L.A. to do a pop-up, I mean, we stood in line in the rain to get there before my publicist girlfriend who I love very much snuck us through the line uh and got us in but I mean yeah that's like kind of part of the experience sometimes that was really good pizza really good Brooklyn's I mean I have I have

nothing but respect for despite all my pedantic rantings about California style pizza like the you know Brooklyn New York thin crust big floppy slice It's very sturdy on the bottom. To me, it's kind of the like platonic ideal of what a slice of pizza should be. But maybe I'm romanticizing that because I grew up, I've grown up in California my whole life. And I've like, you know, never had that sort of endemic experience in New York. The closest thing I got to that was Mulberry's pizza. Mulberry's pizza. What's that? Oh, it's like Nework style pizza in like the streets of beverly hills oh really oh that's hilarious if you ever come here just try it and then tell me how you feel about it because that's the only experience i've had with new york style

pizza yeah because i've never gone i again because i've never been able to get get a reservation but what do you make what do you make of it of mozza yeah so mozza for me might be pound for pound the best pizza in LA. Really? I've probably said like nine different restaurants when people ask me what the best pizza in LA is. But I think if I really think long, deep, and hard about it, I think mozza is the best pizza in Los Angeles. I think what Nancy Silverton did with that dough recipe is like some form of alchemy. It is so sturdy and so it has this delightful, just glutinous pull and chew to it,

but it's so incredibly thin, but it's not like a good Neapolitan pizza, right? Apparently you're supposed to like eat from the inside out and it's a little wet on the bottom and that's like kind of part of it. But this takes all that beauty of that thin crust, super high heat Neapolitan pizza and just makes it like sturdier.

And apparently if I've read some interviews of her talking about her dough recipe, she was like, I just broke all the rules that Italians said not to do. Like I, you know, put milk in it. I used, you know, an incredibly hard flour in all this stuff. And so she, you know, kind of, I think she, God, maybe even like tried yogurt in the original dough recipe. That sounds, that makes sense to me.

I mean, yogurt, add to the protein structure of it, all that. That makes a lot of sense to put yogurt in pizza dough yeah and then i mean also you know she has this uh great relationships with so many local farms in la and so she gets all the best produce so you know they have their um the squash blossom pizza uh-huh i had that yeah i i didn't like it when i went it was can i tell you why it was too salty and it was too oily. I love oily pizzas. I do not put the napkin on the pizza to take off the extra oil. No.

It was, it was so oily and salty. I was like, was it the dough that was salty? The way I was supposed to. No, it wasn't the dough. It was everything on top of it. It was like super, it was like maybe five years ago, to be honest. It's been a while. I should give it another shot.

Nancy, I'm going to come by and give it another shot. But to be honest, my favorite pizza, it was like maybe five years ago, to be honest. It's been a while. I should give it another shot. Nancy, I'm going to come by and give it another shot. But to be honest, my favorite pizza, it actually closed. It was called Soto. It was my favorite pizza in the whole entire world. It was gorgeous. It had this black leoparding around the crust. The sauce was perfectly tangy and just like the most beautiful dollops of cheese on it. And I thought that was my favorite pizza.

By far, it was Soto. That's neo-Neopolin. So the oven at Soto actually reached over 1,000 degrees. Oh, my gosh. It was a big thing. Wow. Yeah, which, again, most people would say that's too hot. But again, Cali pizza coming in, CPK opening up that rule book.

Dude is cooking pizzas at 1,000 degrees for literally like 45 seconds. It was so good. And pulling them out. And it was so incredible. And now he's doing like Brooklyn- style thin crust pizza with superfina yes which is pretty solid they do the cut pepperoni yes that was very good pizza it was very good pizza who's doing that oh it's the chef from soto his name is steve sampson he kind of took this neapolitan dough recipe uh that he used to just you know make these personal style pies at a thousand degrees. And he basically took that same dough and now he's doing like big old floppy New York takeout pizza.

And it's really incredible. It's a really great hybrid of styles. Wait, what's that place called? Super Fina. I have a whole list of wrecks for when you get out to LA. All right. In 2024. Yeah.

So living in New York, I mean, do you have like a lot of opinions about pizza from your New York experience? Are you still is your heart still in the Scranton white pie? Oh, no, no, I I'm pretty like, I like all pizza. I'm, you know, I'm happy, pretty happy when ever there's pizza in front of me. For a long time. So we live in Brooklyn Heights. And for a long time, when we first moved there, we used to go at least once a week to Grimaldi's. It became so touristy. We just couldn't get in anymore. And then they had some like, they were like sold and had some lawsuit.

And so now we just don't go anymore at all. But that was like a great classic like New York style pizza. Yeah, we go to Roberta's now now and then i mean i we started like you know we're sort of pizza nomads but i don't do the places where i have to go and like wait outside in line um it just feels like i don't know it kind of takes away from the the joy of of like pizza to me she feels like it should be easy like yeah not something you have to like work super hard for but so i i did um when i worked i worked in italy um at a at a bakery called uh forno campo di fiori in rome and they actually were known for

their their meter pizza do you know the meter meter pizza is that the pizza al taglia with the scissors yeah so it's like yeah you cut the scissors it's like literally like it's about probably like eight to ten about eight i'd say yeah like eight inches wide and then a meter long and you we we bake that i mean it's baked in the bread oven so the idea is that you get these like kind of like long slabs that can go deep into the oven and then be pulled out easily and then snipped um and people would wait in line for that but it was like it was the line moved quickly because we're just like getting it to go and it was it was like a pizza. It was, they had two kinds,

they had pizza Rosso and then pizza Bianca, but it was not the white, the old forge white pizza. It was like pizza Bianca was literally just like kind of oil and salt. And then the, um, the Rosso, which is really good,

um, was just, um, crushed tomatoes with a little salt, um, and oil. And that would just basically kind of be brushed on the top. But I was thinking about it when you were talking about Nancy saying that she breaks all the rules of dough making because I noticed that sometimes when they were making the dough,

if they had extra egg whites left over from making pastries and other things, they would just toss them into the dough. And I don't know what effect it had, but I was always sort of intrigued that, you know, because that seemed like an unconventional detail. That's really interesting. I do think there is some degree that as Americans, I mean, who grew up with repping American cheese on pizza, repping pineapple on pizza, barbecue chicken pizza, I think we do tend to kind of fetishize this idea of simplicity in other cultures.

You know, like we read an article on, you know, some website that goes like, in Naples, they never do X to their dough. And we kind of take that as truth. And then when you're actually there, they're just like, no, yeah, we got extra egg whites. You throw them in the dough, whatever, you know? Well, I think that's true, but I also feel like, but they have the discipline to like,

like not throw dried rosemary on top of their white pizza. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like they just like, they know how to keep it simple. Um, I also think like the flour there and the water there is different. And so you get this,

like the doughs there just are so much more supple than American doughs. And maybe Nancy like uses, you know, imported flour or something or like a lower gluten flour. But, um, yeah, I do think that like the, the crusts in Italy are just, like uses you know imported flour or something or like a lower gluten flour but um yeah i do think that like the the crusts in italy are just it's hard to hard to compete with what they you know i guess what they're able to kind of produce in the in the local environment yeah

and then even when you're importing those ingredients you know to the states or whatever you know the flour is literally like kind of dying like they're not cooking with live flour is a term i've used a lot i've've heard a lot of pizza olas use. And ditto with the cheese and everything. We actually went to a local mozzarella producer in California out in the kind of inland empire in farm country. And he was talking about these Italian pizzerias in L.A. and how they want to import everything from Italy, even though he's like, I have he's like, I'm Italian. I have been making cheese for 35 years. My sons, my beautiful Italian volleyball playing sons, they all make cheese too. My cows

are less than a mile from where the milk gets siphoned off into the tank and gets put in the cheese and into the, you know, to the factory to make the mozzarella. And he's like, you know, what they're doing in Italy, it's, it's nothing different. And you're worsening the product by importing it. You know, he's like this, and you're worsening the product by importing it. He's like, the whole key to why all the Italian ingredients are so good is because everything is locally farmed and processed right there. And so it was this kind of cool moment where he was like, I am Italy. It's the knowledge that you're seeking.

What was his name? I didn't go with him. Really great mozzarella. I'm sorry I didn't go with him. Really great mozzarella. I'm sorry I didn't go with you. I can't. Yeah, and he was talking about a pizza restaurant in LA that tried his mozzarella on their pizza and said, like, this is much better than the stuff that's imported, but we're going to import it because then we can say all ingredients imported from Italy.

And it was this kind of like really, like, I don't know, kind of a shameful metaphor in a way. It was whack. It was whack. It was whack. That's whack. Yeah, that's unfair. This kind of adherence to old standards.

It's like, are you making the best product possible or are you doing this because you think people will pay a premium? People will pay a premium. People like foreign. They like foreign. They like foreign things around here. We got to go to Italy though. I've been to Italy.

Amanda, you've been to Italy? Yeah. You've never been to New York, but you've been to Italy. Yeah. What? When? Like four years ago before I met you. It was really fun. it was really fun amanda we're banking on you taking us on a field trip to scranton and italy

the two cultural capitals start with scranton and have italy be the the uh the kicker that's probably a good idea i i do love the like kind of influences of americanized products especially process we were on an instagram live recently You know how much I love processed food and I'm fascinated by it. But the Old Forge pizza reminds me of like St. Louis style pizza. Oh my gosh. Which I think we've talked about the best regional pizzas.

I think St. Louis style is the worst regional pizza. And again, I've picked fights with too many cities. St. Louis is fine. They got their spare ribs. They're chilling. They have toasted ravioli. I chilling they have toasted ravioli i love me a toasted ravioli but st louis style pizza is actually on uh unleavened crust oh it's like a cracker which which which to to the chosen people like us we call that matzah and we grew up eating

matzah pizzas on passover yeah and so in st louis they do not leaven their crust and they just put processed cheese called Provel which is kind of like a white American on it and so to me I don't know what the best is we got a couple answers in the chat right now but the worst for my money is St. Louis it almost seems like they're trying to make it bad

yeah I think that's just the St. Louis aesthetic you're a bully St. Louis is fine alright official closing remarks after we just ruined st louis everyone from st louis please go give us one stars on uh itunes actually don't the five stars really help don't do that it hurts me and nicole's feelings uh but final answers i'm sticking by california as the best has anyone changed their mind i'm not changing my mind sorry not happening amanda your heart well I feel like I haven't really experienced the California pizza enough.

I'm happy with my New York pizza. You know, I think we're all clinging to our regions. Come out to LA. We're going to give you a Burbank style pizza. No, no, no. Just buy the frozen stuff. Just buy the frozen stuff. It's going to have hot Cheetos and pineapple on it.

You're going to love it. Oh, okay. Great. Awesome. All right, Nicole and Amanda, we've heard what you and I have to say. Now it's time to find out what other wacky ideas are rattling around there in the Twitterverse. It's time for a segment we call... Opinions are like casseroles.

How do we get worse at saying that in unison? I'm better. Week over week. Well, no, if you're better and I'm worse, then we are politically worse. I have a very melodic voice. All right, Nicole, you kick it off. Okay. YVEL underscore one says soup is not a meal.

I do not agree with that. Soup is definitely a meal. Have you ever had a French onion soup or clam chowder? That's a meal. Big old bowl of pho. That's going to leave you feeling like it was a meal. Big ever had a french onion soup or clam chowder that's a meal big old bowl of pho that's that's gonna leave you feeling like it was a meal big old bowl of pho how do you feel about soup as a meal amanda oh sorry i didn't know okay so i need to weigh in too i was sort of like yeah i agree yeah i'm always like hungry after i have soup but when

i thought about like pho or something like that, yeah, soup can definitely be a meal. You just have to, you have to be eating the right soups. Correct. Soup means many things. I think, I don't believe soup exists. I don't believe soup exists. I think the definition of soup is too broad.

What? That soup, have you ever heard like a biological taxonomist talk about how fish don't exist? No. What do you mean? I, what are you talking about right now is too broad to actually be descriptive of any actual category of animal therefore it means nothing same as soup because

the difference between a little shooter of gazpacho at a wedding that's a soup and a giant honking bowl of ramen that's too broad soup doesn't exist that's's my answer. All right. At Jade underscore IEMRG, bubbly is superior to LaCroix in that the flavor is stronger. No, all seltzers taste the same. Spindrift. It's all a scam, except for Spindrift, which has actual fruit juice in it that I enjoy. I'm with you. But I can't really speak with authority since I've only had LaCroix and not the other one. But I've had lots of Spindrift.

It definitely stands out. All the other ones taste sort of fake. It's weird. They do, but apparently, yeah, the La Croix Key Lime. I'm drinking the Key Lime. It literally tastes like vanilla pie. It's like you fell into a pie factory. It's very odd.

I'm still going to drink it, though. But they use the term naturally essenced on La Croix's, right? What does that mean? Whenever you see the word natural on an ingredients list put it's like a signal that like it's definitely far from natural yes yeah there's a big uh movement to try and ban the word natural from food packaging yeah because 70 of respondents said they associated the word natural with healthier and there's just no legal requirement to use the term natural. Although, Skippy natural peanut butter, you my boy, I love it. Foster the Peyton says, Popeyes is greater than Raisin Cane's, no question.

Have you had Raisin Cane's before? It's like, is it regional in LA? Yeah, so it's, well, I think it's a Midwest regional. Their whole thing is fried chicken tenders. So literally all they have are like chicken tenders fries and like cane sauce and bread yeah texas toast yeah it's a very uh beige they only sell brown food yeah literally they'll give you like a cup of like uh the the most wilted wet coleslaw that's heating from the fries that's sitting on otherwise it's all brown i prefer popeyes to canes all day every day

raising canes to me is the most overrated regional fast food restaurant. I like it pains me to say that. I like Zach's Bees is great. What a burger is perfectly fine. I love me some Taco John's, all this stuff. But Raising Canes to me, their cane sauce has celery, a ton of celery seed in it. And I cannot stand the taste of celery, celery seed, celery root celery root any of that and so that's on me i've stopped putting celery in mirepoix yes you have you and josh are the same i love celery in my mirepoix yeah it's just like it's kind of like bitter and i don't know it just doesn't it's like metallic i don't it doesn't i feel like it doesn't add anything positive what do you think

it does i i don't know it just feels wrong it feels wrong to not put celery in my mirepoix break the rules be the cpk of the stew world like sometimes you know i'll do a little sofrito and put the green pepper in but like no i need i need celery i need that like weird metallic bitterness throughout my food i was i was making i need the gross give me the bad taste a little bit of bad taste makes the good taste taste gooder. Why have we talked about the idea of putting poo smell in perfume so much lately? Dude, exactly. Ambergris.

Ambergris is whale vomit. Whale vomit. Yeah, whale vomit makes the other things smell more delightful. So celery makes the other foods taste better. I guess that is like the argument of like drinking a Negroni before a meal it's like this tastes so bad you need to get the taste out of your mouth i love negronis we both love negronis it's my favorite favorite drink yeah yeah it's our favorite too we once had a uh like a cocktail happy hour out in the parking lot with the whole company and they hired bartenders to come in and nicole and i for some reason had all the ingredients

for you guys they're like we're gonna throw you a party in the parking lot oh you know they got a bounce house they got a bounce house amanda you this is a nice parking lot in burbank got the best parking lots in all of the northeast san fernando valley trust me but we we made negronis in 16 ounce deli cups yeah and just nursed a giant Negroni the whole day. And it was a lovely day. I took a nap in the bounce house. You took a nap? I did. I was in there for like 20 minutes.

No one noticed. Okay. You took a nap in the bounce house? I did. It was really good. I didn't know that. Where are we at? All right.

We got at Jade. I-E-M-R-G. Grilled cheese dipped in homemade applesauce is so good. Yeah. It's like a dirtbag cheese plate. You know, you get the, what's the quince jam? A membrillo. You get the membrillo, you get the manchego,

that little rustic farm bread. This is just that. This is the old Ford-style pizza of an Italian cheese plate or a Spanish cheese plate, and I'm into it. Me and Amanda are shaking our heads like, no, bro. You spend all the time crisping the grilled cheese to get like the perfect crispiness and then you just make it soggy with apples with applesauce homemade applesauce homemade though i'm not opposed to eating those two things at the like at the same meal but like you know you

gotta have like the separator on the plate well do you do you dip because i've never understood tomato soup and grilled cheese i don't enjoy it very much i dip ketchup i have my grilled cheese and then have my tomato soup but yeah like otherwise you ruin like much of the pleasure of the grilled cheese it's not that the flavors don't go nicely together but it's like you want that crispy crunch we we've talked a lot about my favorite texture in all of food is something crispy that has been ruined with something soggy. Like the crust on a chicken Parmesan, for example. Like one when I make chicken parm, I do like to leave like 30 percent of the edges uncovered in sauce. So you do get some of that crispy.

But I love like a fried thing soaked in a wet thing. That's my favorite. Like actually regional pizza styles. Pizza Montanara from naples it's a fried pizza dough then slather and sauce and cheese so they cook it like wet you know like neapolitan wet yeah yeah fresh mots so it's like fried but wet fried but wet that's my favorite texture that sounds so appealing you watched me dip a uh cheeto fried jalapeno popper into a caramelized cream egg yolk, so it should not be surprising. Amanna Navid says, eggs are amazing and versatile.

This is a good opinion. Not controversial, Greg. No, not controversial. Eggs are the best food. Not a bad opinion. Eggs are my favorite thing to eat all the time. I eat eggs all the time. Yeah.

All right. At Photo Mojojo measuring cups and measuring spoons can both measure wet and dry things i defer to amanda oh i was just gonna put this one on you because i use them for both i use them for both but i maybe they're i don't know i don't know i don't know we're all exposed as frauds right now yeah sure i yeah i i don't know. We're all exposed as frauds right now. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I don't actually. I think it's eight ounces of volume. I think that. Yeah, where would this not work?

A pint and a pound is the same world around. Actually, no. A pint in Australia is literally 20 ounces. Well, there you go. Did you know that? I do now. If you get a pint of beer in Australia, it is not 60 ounces. It's a 20 ounce beer. Whoa know that? I do know. If you get a pint of beer in Australia, it is not 16 ounces. It's a 20 ounce beer.

Whoa. What? I said, whoa. I thought you said a boat because I thought a boat was a unit of beer in Australia. Because if you look up Australian beer units, there's like 15 of them and they all mean something different. It's like, oh, you want a mini schooner? And it's like, I just like a cup of beer, please. Oh, my gosh. So so i yeah i'd use any

measuring cup to measure anything i suppose the biggest issue in measuring anything is we have gone through this recently with trevor who you met yesterday a budding stand-up comedian um he will measure flour for a recipe and test it and then i'll do it on camera measuring the flour and it always ends up different and i'm like like, Trevor, how do you measure your flour? Are you like packing and scraping? Are you, you know, like sifting and then scooping? And he's goes like, I don't know. I measure it how I measure it.

And I'm like, well, I need to watch how you do it then. Cause our things have been turning out differently. Well, everyone says you're supposed to dip and sweep, but I actually don't think that that does work well. You should, I always whisk my flour and then i take a spoon and drop it into a measuring cup and then and then scrape it off which yes one could argue is highly tedious um and it is but i i think that you you have better baked goods yeah i mean obviously you should weigh you should weigh your dry ingredients but i don't really do that and

so my recipes don't give away if i want to you do. All your recipes come in with grams on them. I'm like, who's Nicole trying to watch this? Okay. Gristle McThornbody says, yeah, that's a name. Pickled carrots are better than pickled cucumbers. That's not true at all. No way. No way.

Pickled green beans are the king. I feel like they're like two different, it's like two different species, right? It's like carrots are – pickled carrot has like you value for it's like the sweet tangy. And then with the cucumber, it's like more about the like refreshing tangy. So like I don't think you can compare them. What is the functionality of your pickles, sir or madam? I don't – gristle McThorne body?

Oh, they're Irish McThorne body. Yeah, it all depends what like the function of your pickles, sir or madam? I don't gristle McThorne. Oh, they're Irish McThorne body. Yes. Yeah. It all depends what like the function of your pickles. It's like my like favorite pickle maybe is, I mean, the Vietnamese pickle that we're familiar with on banh mi, like do chua, which is, you know, the daikon and the carrot, but the carrots, you got to rub them with the salt to get like really break them down. That's my favorite pickle.

But yeah, again, pickles are different, different utilities. All right. At Alina.Lynn, sandwiches are just deconstructed salads in between bread. I will say I am fascinated by the idea that you could have a salad and a sandwich that contain the same macronutrients, carbs, fats, proteins, the same amount of bread and meat and vegetables, yet one is a salad and one is a sandwich. As in if you took a tuna salad sandwich and you chopped it up and you toasted the bread into croutons and then you put it on a plate, that is suddenly a salad and not a sandwich. I am fascinated by the salad sandwich paradox. Fascinated by it.

This is some big brain stuff. This person definitely went to college. This is crazy. Blowing my mind. I mean, I think it might work for some sandwiches, but I'm thinking like, what about the ham and butter sandwich? That's a salad.

Who makes a ham and butter salad? No, the butter is the dressing. The ham is your protein. And bread, technically, I'd argue, comes from wheat, which is a vegetable. Oh, the butter is the dressing. The ham is your protein and bread. Technically I'd argue comes from wheat, which is a vegetable. Oh, get out of here. No, I'm kidding. But yeah, I do think, and especially when people are, I mean, you know, I growing up in Orange County so many times you heard the phrase I'm being healthy. I'm ordering a salad. And then I love looking at like the TGI Fridays salad calorie counts and like, you know, the fried chicken buttermilk salads, like 1900 calories.

Fried chicken buttermilk. Those are all words. I call them naughty salads. Okay, this is our last opinion. Marshmallow Dan says chocolate cake is better when you shake pepper on it. Cuts through the richness. richness now do you think they're saying black pepper or chili pepper because i used to work at a chocolate store and we had this amazing chocolate bar that had guajillo and pasilla chilies ground into it and i would make a cake with that chocolate bar shaved over the top and boy oh boy was that a

delicious experience so i do agree that like putting like a dash of pepper or like a dash of like cinnamon in a chocolate cake can definitely cut through the richness. But only if it's those two. Black pepper. No, I dig peppercorn. I had some really great like pink peppercorn, especially pink peppercorn and white chocolate. Yeah, of course. I've done that too.

Really gorgeous. But even any peppercorn or chili pepper go really well with it. I even like a little bit of like horseradish. I had a really great dessert at Providence. Don't know if you've heard of it. Two Michelin stars. No, but the pastry chef did a really cool dish that was mustard flour and honey panna cotta. It had that slight horseradishiness to cut through.

I'm into it. Yeah, I think I'm going to pass on the pepper. No one's forcing you. No one's forcing your hand at the pepper. And on that note thank you for listening to a hot dog's a sandwich amanda thank you so much for joining us uh where can we hear more of your food opinions and please plug plug away on the new podcast network or anything you want oh great yeah uh please subscribe and uh download uh the genius recipe tapes which

is our newest podcast and um and and please come check out food52.com. We're also at food52 on, um, on Instagram, TikTok, um, all the socials and, um, yeah, come hang with us. We'll do that. I am a huge unabashed fan of food52. I have been reading for years. And so honestly, this is a huge pleasure having you on. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's been great hanging out with you with you likewise and if you want to hear more from us here in the mythical kitchen we've got new episodes for you every wednesday if you want to be featured on opinions or like casseroles you can hit us up on twitter at mythical chef or and henry zada with the hashtag opinion casserole for more mythical kitchen check us out on youtube we

launch new videos every week and of course if you want to share pictures of your dishes hit us up on instagram at mythical kitchen we'll see you next timeitchen. We'll see you next time. Amanda, I'll see you next time. You're coming back, right? Yeah, come next week. Yeah, come back. All right, anytime. Come hang out. you