Conversations with Tyler - Chef Mark Miller on Food as the Ultimate Intellectual Exploration

Episode Date: January 25, 2017

Mark Miller is often called the founder of modern southwestern cuisine, but his unique anthropological approach to food has led him to explore cuisines in over 100 countries around the world. He joins Tyler for a conversation on all that he's learned along the way, including his pick for the most underrated chili pepper, palate coaching, the best food cities in Asia, Mexico, and Europe, the problems with sous-vide, mezcal versus tequila, the decline of food brands, why Michelin guide is overrated, how to do fast food well, and why the next hipster food trend should be about corn. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.  Other ways to connect Follow us on Twitter and Instagram Follow Tyler on Twitter  Email us: [e-mail] Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox. 

Hello podcast listeners. This is Jeff, producer of Conversations with Tyler. As a subscriber to this podcast, I'm guessing you're already excited about Tyler's upcoming book called The Complacent Class. And as it turns out, we have a pile of signed copies to give away to you, our loyal podcast listeners. There's just two simple steps we're asking you to take to be entered to win. First, rate and review us on iTunes. And second, go to Mercatus.org slash contest and fill out your info. That's it. Just do us the kindness of reviewing us on iTunes. Let us know you did it, and that'll put your name in the hat for the drawing. We'll keep the form up through February 20th, and winners will be mailed their signed copy that week, which means you might even get it before the book goes on sale. And as a bonus, everyone who fills out the form will also be sent a link to Tyler's unpublished book called Stobberant Attachments. He's posted the entire manuscript on Medium. Only people with this link can read the book.

So again, help us get the word out about the podcast by rating and reviewing us in iTunes and then go to Mercatus.org slash contest to be entered to win your signed copy of the complacent class. Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems. Learn more at Mercatus.org. And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts and upcoming dates, visit Conversationswithtyler.com. Welcome to this installment of Conversations with Tyler.

Today, the guest is Mark Miller, who's one of the most extraordinary food minds of our generation. It's hard to even summarize what Mark has done. I think of Mark as the modern founder of Southwestern cuisine. He's well known for having been the driving force behind opening Coyote Cafe, which transformed the Santa Fe dining scene. In Washington, D.C., where we are now in the Panda Gormay

restaurant. Well, Mark is best known for Red Sage, a Southwestern restaurant. That was one of D.C.'s best for a long time. Mark has written numerous books on food, on salces, on chili. He has the very best book on tacos. If you've ever seen a famous poster of all those chilies, the Chili's poster, well, Mark did that. Mark's been connected with a lot of restaurants. He originally studied anthropology at Berkeley, and I think of Mark's contribution as synthesizing anthropology, cooking, studying food through books, studying food through practice. He's lived in 20 countries, traveled in over 100, and he understands taste and sensation and context of food, its anthropological setting, combined with all this fantastic real-world experience,

and on top of all that, Mark has been a food consultant for more companies than I can name. That's just my very brief introduction to Mark, and it doesn't begin to do him justice. We'll start the conversation in a moment as our questioner for today's segment. We also have with us, Megan McCartle of Bloomberg View. Megan is a long-standing friend of mine. In addition to her writing on politics and economics, Megan was arguably the first, very first economics blogger, and she is deeply involved in the food world. Megan, to me, each year writes the single best guide to kitchen equipment, what is new out each year. Anyway, we'll start by chatting with Mark, and then Megan will come in with some questions. So food worlds,

I'm very interested in how you think about food worlds, and this contrast between the food worlds of China, Japan, Tokyo, and South Korea. You told me you thought Saul had the most interesting and creative food world of those three, and tell us why you think that. I've been traveling to all three countries for approximately 40 years or more, so I've really seen them transform themselves, and I've also seen how they adapt and how they acculturate other, international and influences. So I've been going to Japan since I was a student at Berkeley

for, you know, since 1969 was my first trip. I'm going to China since the 70s. Seoul is the one that I know the least, but I've been following it for about 15 years. Recently in May, I went to the big Seoul food show where actually ate 100 food products I'd never had before, which is interesting. But the other thing that happened was, was I realized that Seoul had moved in terms of its transformation of plasticity and creativity. There's a restaurant called Mingles that every single dish was incorporating in Korean ingredients, but in a very creative, modern way. And they were not afraid to move their food outside of the traditional vortex of what was seen as

Korean food, and they were using Korean ingredients in a new way that was authenticating a cuisine. Now, in Japan, for instance, and they were doing pizza. They're doing coffee. They're doing very good pizza that's almost as good as you'd find, for instance, in Italy. In Japan, when you go to eat pizza, whether it's Neapolitan, either in Tokyo or Kyoto, you find that they get to a certain level of the form of it, but the flavor and the gestalt and the aesthetic, they can't quite get at it. They remain Japanese.

The homogeneity of Japanese culture is its strength. It's also its weakness. In China, maybe, I've been going there and I've seen some data of one of the big companies that have 7,000 restaurants. We're seeing that they're using the Western restaurants in order to create a sense of modernity and identity. Whether they'll really use it for their own personal things right now, there is no other alternative.

That social space that's open from children through, you know, going out through celebrations and weddings. And the Western brands or the markers for specials. So Korea, though, I was surprised that, first of all, they've moved so quickly. The last time I was there was four and a half years ago. I would have thought to get to this level would have taken them 20 years. Plus, the level of Italian, coffee, pizza, modern Korean, French, was all exactly where we would be in the United States. We'll get to Japan and China.

But more in Korea, the alley food in Seoul and the rest of Korea seemed so good to me. So if I walk down a back alley, there will be. 20 different places I want to eat. Most of them will be outstanding. It might, for instance, be some of the best fried chicken in the world. I would agree. But what's the structure of the food world in Seoul and other parts of South Korea that have given rise to that?

Well, I think that what has happened, it's sort of like Samsung versus Sony. If you actually look at those technological giants, which one has been able to maintain and innovate. And for some reason, you know, Sony lost its way. We remember when Sony was the innovative center of electronics. And yet, today, it's Samsung. I mean, given not the last one that came out. But basically, I think the Koreans are forced out of their comfort zone because they have North Korea on their border.

They have China to compete with being aggressive. And they have the finesse of Japan. So their context of competition just in their own backyard is such that it makes them that they can't be in their – Japan is staying alone. It's in its own comfort zone and it's going to stay there. China wants to move and be global, but it's a big stretch. So you think Japan, in a way, has painted itself into a corner of perfection? You can have very, very good French food in Tokyo, arguably better than Paris.

It won't ever be getting any better. But it'll be the same French food that I would have eaten in Paris in 1980. Or you can have a quite good Mexican mole in Tokyo, I found. Or Singapore or Laxia you can have in Tokyo. and the person who makes it might have studied in Singapore for five or six years, he'll come back with the perfected recipe, but there's no other connection to that food world. In Mexico, if we look at, for instance, part of Mexican food,

like when Ricay in New York is embracing modern Mexican and yet doesn't want to learn ancient traditional Mexican. And yet, it's moving beyond its roots and it's becoming Mexican, whereas Mexico before was trapped in looking at Spain, looking at the U.S., and looking at it, other identity systems to validate its own food supply. Give a good example. Mescal, my good friend, Ron Cooper,

out of Delmagee. That's a company 20 years ago that Mexicans would not drink Ms.Gal because it was associated with peasant Mexican. And today, when you go to Mexico, say the only thing you can drink is Missal because people want to be Mexican. And it's trendy even in Washington, D.C.

And Chocho and Korea. So the other thing, the problem was Korea was always in Japan's shadow. And they were basically beaten down and defensive. And I think right now, They're not. So we just had a dialogue with Fuchsia Dunlop, who's written on Chinese cooking. The food world in China now. How do you see it?

Is it getting better, getting worse? Is it headed to become large corporations as in America making a lot of soulless food? Or is it still on the way up? That's a difficult question because restaurants that I know and Fuchsia knows, like Jesse, which is an old restaurant in Shanghai, I was there recently and I've been going to that same restaurant for 20 years from when it had four tables by one family. Now they have a multiple, but still. What Fuchsia talked about, though, is going to stop them is the level of status of someone joining a cooking profession. Didn't Tai Fong? The dumplings have gone down.

So what's happening now is even though they have this great tradition of cooking, the workforce is either coming straight from the countryside without being trained. The restaurants are making a lot of money because the people who are going there don't have trained pallets. And so they just open up and be better. So a traditional restaurant that takes a lot of training and to go into that, they're not going to find the workforce. So I think that they're going to go through a period right now of probably, I would call, mediocrity.

But doesn't the low status of cooking in China in some ways protect them? So it keeps pretensions out of the food world. It means people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds can become cooks. You can have a grandmother or a grandfather being a cook. You can walk along in Shanghai and find a place where they make dumplings and they simply roll them. And no one there thinks of what they're doing as an art. But that ultimately enables free entry and gives people a bit of the freedom that they don't

have in Tokyo. And thus, I would say you should be more optimistic about food in China. The dumplings that I used to see on the streets, don't forget. I've been going to Shanghai since the 70s, late 70s. They were all over the place. Now they're very hard to find. And the Chinese government, by, you know, is afraid of basically health reasons, is now controlling where food is basically exhibited and where food can be bought and sold. And so a lot of the shops have moved into some of the department stores, for instance, and are there.

But there used to be one amazing bow made out of smoked tofu and bitter greens and mustard. And I would just wait for my next trip to Shanghai. And, you know, for 15 years, I would go to the same place. It was in the French corner, same corner. and they had the best bow. And, you know, it's gone. And I, you know, looked all over and I can't even find that bow. Or I can't find a noodle.

It was where I used to put up my hand with coins, and people would say, they didn't have money then. And they used to go to the wet markets and just look at what other people were eating. And the last time I could do that was like maybe 15 years ago. I haven't seen a noodle, like a hundred noodle stance. In Mexico, you can still see. Of course.

Yeah. But even there, street food is being pushed out of Mexico City somewhat. But you go to a bus station in Monterey, and you can see 100 of the most best taco. in the world. And we will get to that. Anyway, for Asia for now still, let's say someone comes to you. Mark Miller, you've been to over 100

countries, eaten in them for decades. They say, I have two weeks to do a food tour in Asia. You should pick for me three cities. What are your selections? I would pick... I know I would pick Chong. Well, no, I would be

Seoul for sure. Okay, Seoul for sure. I would probably... I would probably... I would pick Bangkok. Yeah. And a toss-up between... And I would pick...

I would pick Tokyo. And you would pick Tokyo. Yeah. So Bangkok. Say someone's in Bangkok. They don't speak Thai. They're puzzled. They don't know what they're doing. They don't have a Thai friend.

Conceptually, how should they think about finding the best food in Bangkok? Go to the night markets. I mean, they're... But just, the food on the street is just amazing. It's probably the best in the world on the street. And it has the most varieties. It's the freshest.

The time people also are very clean. They're very, I've never been sick once. I've been eating food, you know, on the street forever. Chach to Chuk. The largest market in the world has 15,000 boots. And probably you can just spend four hours and eat 100 dishes. My record in Bangkok one day is 14 restaurants and 75 dishes. And I actually ate them all, not tasted them.

So just get a hotel. And probably spend less than we'd spend in Washington one night. Get a hotel in that part of Bangkok and just go eat there. I would go, there are some good books. There's a street hawker guide. There's some good bloggers who are out there. It's, you know, but I would not be afraid. And the thing is, is always with street food, is always go,

so the night food is the night food. The day food is a day food. But even some of that has moved into malls where the Thai people go. And they'll do, you know, a som-tum for 50 cents or a dollar and a half. And you might see a thousand people. If a thousand Thai people are eating there, it's safe to eat there. But I have a bias. against malls when it comes to Southeast Asian food.

I tend to think malls are worse than street food. No, but in Kayla Lumpur, you know, they went through the entire country and they picked the best street food and put it into the mall so that people could experience the best of the entire country in one place. That's the reason that people go to the hotel. And also when you go in Singapore, you know, the Hyatt and has streets, they're actually, they have 27 chefs, each from different parts of Singapore, running each station within that within that one dining room.

Malaysia or Singapore, which has better food? Well, they're very close. I would say Penang is really interesting. And I would say right now, though, Singapore like Korea is finally getting out of its straightjack. And I think there's some really modern young Korean chefs that are incorporating Southeast Asian. Singaporean chefs, you mean?

Singaporean chefs that are, they know Chinese food, they have access to the best ingredients, they know Western food, and they have their own tradition from, you know, Malaysian to the original, help me there, the Straits cuisine, the Paranacan cuisine, which is, I think, I always think that those cuisines that are older and that, you know, if they have great weaving, they have great cuisine, because I always say, you know, you're looking at one mentality. If they had a rich aesthetic tradition, I know that they had really interesting food.

So take Indonesia. They have great weaving. Yes. I lived in Nubo in 1970. But I'm often disappointed by street food in Indonesia. It seems just the quality standards. It's a bit like the Philippines, though. Yeah, but the great dishes like Balinese duck that has 28 ingredients in it, it's amazing.

It's amazing dishes. It's hard to, those temple foods, those festival foods, I remember three days at the Feast of the Temple. The Feast of the Coconut Goddess, there were 127 dishes made in those three days. Let me ask you some questions about. But the variety and richness, and we come back here to the United States and you have a hamburger and a hot dog? Let me ask you some questions about chilies, the area where you've probably had the greatest impact of all food areas. So here I have some mulatto chilies. If you look at a lot of food recipes, if you make a Mexican moly, you will use more mulattoes than any other kind of chili.

Not always, but quite typically, say in the Rick Bayless recipe. Yeah. Why is that? What is it about this chili? Well, first of all, you have to open... Do what you want with it. You've got to open... First of all, you have to open them up

because 90% of old chilies are mislabeled. Yes. That's one of the problems. So that you may... Whatever it says on the package, may not be true. The point is, is that mulattoes, when you hold them up to the light,

like this, see, it's more... Do you see it's more purple and more reddish? Yes, I do. Court of it. That is not a mulatto. So they defrauded me.

Yeah, that's an ancho. Okay. Because a mulatto will be more coffeeish and more dark tones. And what a mulatto will do is actually have those flavonoids that are coffee and chocolate. And those in amole are the undertones of the wide sort of structure, the wide foundation of those flavors that we really like. Now, the fruit

tones and the capsicayas are the spicy tones or you're basically accessories. The ancho is always the workhorse because it carries the most fruit. The mulatto carries the coffee and chocolate, which is those more or less fermented umami, more complex sort of flavonoids. And then we throw in some guajios or herboles to brighten it all up and get and get it go. So if I make a Mexican moly with these fraudulent mulatto chilies, what exactly will go wrong? You're a supertaster. You can tell the difference. What will be missing?

Well, the thing is, is that can I, I'm going to taste this for a second. We can all taste it together. First of all, whenever you taste the chili, you notice is a vein here. You want to stay away from the veins always. They contain 60% of the caps a cacin. So you always stay away from the veins, and even if you can't see them. The other thing is, this is old, you know, and this is what's called a grade C chili. Yes.

It's small and it's dried and it's last juice crop. So they lose their perfume. They're like flowers. You know, they lose. So what you end up is you end up with the caps ails. So this is a little bit bitter. Do you notice? Correct.

Like bitter tea, a little bit like Lapsung Shuchong. There's a little bit of that smoky, woody, mushroomy flavor. Where is my coffee and chocolate? Where is it? It's not here. So if you use this in your recipe, you'll say it didn't come out well. You know what you didn't do? You didn't taste your ingredients.

So you're not going to get the, that wonderful warm flavors that mulatto's supposed to have. And if I want a real mulatto chili, how do I actually get one, given that 90% of it according to you is fraud? Well, or at least misleading or someone made a mistake. You need to recognize when just the plus, okay, the other thing, when you buy chilies, the thickness of the flesh is the most important thing. So all fruits, where do the tannins come from?

Skins, seeds, and stems. So the thicker the flesh, the least percentage of tannin. And that's what Mexicans do. they look for the most pliable. They look how thick it is. And when you hold up to the light, they can tell how ripe it was before it was dried, how much fruit flavor is going to be there. Those are the big premieros.

So when you're using a moly, you're really reincorporating fresh fruit complex tones into it. This, the people, the chili is the last thing they're looking for is heat. That's the last thing they're looking for. Now, two other chilies. And also, they notice it's still bitter on the palate. Yes. It's like, yeah, and it tastes a little bit like the fruit leather that's kind of stale. This one claims to be an Ancho, but we're happy to hear your revisionist take on it.

This is bigger, for one. It's bigger. Yeah, and it's a little bit darker. It's got that really dark, dark, dark, almost black-ish-brown look. You need to hold them up to the light because that tells you. So that's red like an an encho. Okay. It's pretty even inside.

There's no mold. If you get one moldy chili, out of 40, it'll ruin the mollay. Okay. A lot of people don't look for them. And when you rehydrate them, you taste the water. So this one, the leather again, it should taste like a fruit leather. Don't think chilies. See, what we're talking about with fuchsia, the paradigm and what you have in your head when you go after the taste is what you will taste.

If you think chilies and go for heat, you shouldn't. You need to think fruit leather. Which fruit? Which fruit do you get? Tell me the fruits you get. Let's spice you not. Which fruits? Oh, it's interesting.

It's a cherry, apple, blackberry. Blueberry? It's like a, maybe, maybe apple, maybe cherry. Not blueberry, not blackberry. No, but it's definitely like cherry. It's actually black cherry or sour cherry. Yep. And it has a little bits of, what's it and this,

and there is this blackberry current cassis, almost, like the French cassis flavor at the bottom. The point is that when you work with ingredients, I don't care if it's chili, coriander. I have four different coriander. from Indians to this or Cumans. When you cook an ethnic food, a poor chef, and I work in Guamah,

what they're doing is they're controlling their palate. It may look like those ingredients are not important. They're not expensive. Right. But they're very, very important. Of course. And that's why, this is not a bad anchro. I would say B plus.

Okay. And here's supposedly a pacia. Tell us the difference. Well, this is... It should be longer, for one thing. Okay, for one. And it should be really get those black,

black fruits, blackberry. When you, again, think black fruits. Is this just an ancho? Have I brought you three packages of anchos actually? Maybe. Seems that's what it is. Yeah, that's what it is. That's what it is. Ancho everywhere. A little thicker. They are really wide then. Yeah. A little bit. This was, the second one was the best one. Second one was the best one. Most fruit, most fructones, freshness, and less tanic. What you don't want, like a bitter wine or a bitter, you don't want tannins.

And what's your economic theory of why these different chilies get mixed up and they're all anchos? Notice the amount of liquid, though, the amount of black liquid in this one. The reason is, is that the wholesalers basically, part of it is they're run a lot of times by non-Mexicans. Even if they're run by Mexicans, they only know the chiliers that they grow up in their region. Like I'm teaching in a seminar in Mexico City at the end of the month. Yes. And I can literally take out chilies and hand them to Mexicans that don't know what they are, even though they're from another area of Mexico.

How many different kinds of Chilees do you know? I once had a collection of about 250 in my garage, but they're not, some of them are the same, like Arbal's. Interesting story. So I was traveling around Bhutan. Yes. And I was going from town to town. I have the chili book, this book with me. Yes.

And there's this myth in Bhutan that Chili's come from Bhutan. And so I would show them that they're not from Bhutan and what they are, and they started tasting them. Then the next village I would go in, everybody was waiting for me. All the kids and the chefs. they would say, can I see the chili book? Are there really chilies outside of Bhutan? Are there chilies in the rest of the world? Can you tell us about chilies?

And every town I went to is the same thing. But here a whole culture grows up with this history that they actually have had chilies. Of course, the Portuguese brought them into Thailand, and then they migrated through the trade routes into Bhutan, and that's how they got there. And they're only the cayenne varieties. They're only the arbales and so forth.

They don't have any of these chilies. Even if you grow these chilies, For instance, let's say you grow the Australia in Washington, D.C. It won't have the right flavor because it won't have the right ultraviolet, which has to be grown in the mountains, above 4,000 or 5,000 feet. And it doesn't have an alkaline volcanic soil. The central valley of Mexico makes the best anchos and pecias in the world. And when you go to the market, San Luis, that one village in that one place makes the best particular...

In what state is that? In the state of Mexico. The state of Mexico. Yeah. It's amazing, though, that they know their chilies. Now, there's a debate in Mexico right now. You probably know about this. That China is exporting cheaper chilies to Mexico, but some of the Mexicans don't like this. How will that play itself out? What's going to happen? They don't have the flavor profile. Part of it is they basically are undercutting the market. So you see them in Wauaca. They're anchos there. I can tell they're very, very bitter. They're very alkalinish. They don't have a good flavor. But people are buying them because of economic necessity or that they don't really know the difference. So, but when I work in Sweden with the spice companies, I'm not allowed to buy Mexican chilies, which really offends me because of the micro levels of bacteria that are on them, and they're not radiated.

So we can only use, in Europe, for instance, radiated things, they have to come from Peru. We don't buy them from Chile, but we buy them from Peru. But all my sauces, I then have to adapt because I don't get great anchos or great mulatos, but you can adapt. Now, here's a jalapeno pepper. Very popular in the United States. I can even go into a giant or Safeway supermarket, and they will have these. They seem to my untutored palate to at least be serviceable. Why is the jalapeno so popular in the United States?

It's probably because basically it's the Chile of northern Mexico where most of the migrant workers come from. And it was part of the Tex-Mex tradition. It's very simple. You can use it fresh mostly just right away. It doesn't require you can cut it up, use it in the solacea fresco. You can put in the blender. You can cook it in eggs.

It's a very chili. It has, for me, a lot of flavor that is more akin to the green bell pepper with heat. I prefer Poblano's, which I think are richer. And the Pablanos, you know, is the predecessor. We have one right here. Yes. The Poblano, and this is actually where the bell peppers comes. Well, it's a chili than what you get in.

But this has much more depth. It doesn't taste like green pepper. It's not gaseous. And it has what I call real green chili flavor. There's only two in the world that have New Mexico, the true green chili, grown at high altitudes. If you grow at low altitudes, it's the Anaheim. This one, again, grows in Mexico. Roasted, I think it's supreme.

Now, interesting. This is one of my favorites. No, in China, they don't use it. They don't grow it. And even when I see it in the markets in China, I went through China with a chef once. And we bought the chilies and we would roast them and actually put them into China. We took over the restaurant because I got tired of eating the food that they were. So we were actually near Kashgar or something.

And they couldn't believe of the flavor of a roasted chili that was cleaned without washing and then strips of it put in a stir-fried lamb dish and how actually good it was. Here's a habanero, splendid orange color. What's this good for? Nothing? Isn't it too hot? Well, it's big, which bemoans me that it might not be the right one.

So, well, it's got good smell. So, okay, the habanero's in the Shenezi family, the tropical family. Yes. You want to use it for its tropical tone. So what you do is you open it carefully. And caps a acid hits your nose here. You don't actually have to touch it. You can feel it right there. You should know the heat of everyone. Go easily across the nose. Now here, though, you get a wonderful orange mango papaya scent. Now, this roasted, and with the seeds and the veins taken out, reducing the heat by 60%. It's still going to be hot because I have 20% left in the flesh is going to be. to actually round out and pull up all that beautiful tropical aromatic, and that will make that

pineapple or salsa or jerk. That'll make it wonderful. You smell the tropicalness. Don't touch where it is, but just smell and think orange, mango, fruit, pineapple. It's amazing. What's the most underrated chili in the world? Most underrated chili in the world. I would probably say the Poblano. Pablano. Yeah, I can do 100 dishes. I can do 100 salsas with this one chili. How about from Peru, the Yahi Amoreo. That might be one of my-ACs. Rikotos and Ahia Moro. There you go.

And what makes them special? Well, they don't have the depth and complexity. They're more jungly, which chilies don't like high nighttime temperatures. They like cool nighttime temperatures. The ricotta, when you have a Terodito, though, I mean, you've got to be in Zaviche heaven. When you were just down in Lima and I go there all the time. Those chilies, though, when you make dried sauces out of them, they don't have a marriage

of complexity, like the Mexicans, kind of like when you're in Bali and you're looking at a weaving from 1900, that's a triple E-COT, the complexity of per not per this is just what Mexicans attain with their sauces. You know, the pre-Colombin Peruvians have every single method of weaving, and yet the Mexicans, the reason I'm attracted so much to Mexican food is that they literally have probably the most complex uses of spices and chilies in the world. No question. Nobody. In Mexico, where's the best region to eat?

I would still say the three regions, I like Puebla. Yes, I'll be there in two weeks, by the way. I think Puebla's underrated. I like the Moli Verdes in the morning, the Moli Amarillos, of the seven Moles. The Moli Amoreos there is better than Oaxaca. People talk about Wohaka. Oaxaca is good, but not in the city. It's a little overrated now. You have to get outside. The place that has the Pesia de

Oaxaca, the great smoke chili, the best smoke chili in the world, smoke for three days with seven different hardwoods, requires nine hours in a land rover to get to that village. So you have, that chili is being still made by one village in the entire world. Nobody makes it. They won't show it to anybody. Even Diana Kennedy has not seen it. We've all been to the village. So you still have products today in Mexico that are actually, not only, they're world class, they don't exist anywhere else in the world. Then the Chinese could never duplicate it. Never.

So let's say you can pick, not a city, but one village in Mexico. And I'm going to send you there for a week. And all you can do is eat. Which village do you pick? In the old days, I would have said marita, but not anymore. I would still say, I like Puebla today. Puebla. Yeah, that era.

And your take on pre-Hispanic Mexican cuisine, so it has a lot of insects, it has fried worms, it has mosquito larvae. And those were, as you know, they cleaned the canals, they actually got rid of the diseases that way. The most interesting thing, though, you know what it's about it? Is we actually went to the museum. Yes. And looked at the pre-Columbian matates that were done for the Nixdemol. Yes. And guess what?

What? They were never washed. They were never washed. Why is that? So they all, they, when you, Nixdemol, corn, right? It becomes more nutritional because you free up all the amino acids. Yes. So the Italians have polenta.

They got palaigra. Yes. So, but what happens is people talk about how fat Mexicans are or how pre-diabetic. The reason is, is that they are using a post-industrial diet that wasn't, the probiotics weren't put back in. So traditionally, the matates were never washed. They had levels of probiotics in there that were put back in. And the women, for the texture inside the tortillas, would use wild grasses that actually contain the largest amount of wild yeast.

So the reason you look previous to 1925 in Mexico, there's no diabetes, is the probiotic and digestibility. One of the reasons is of the masa itself. So let's say we send you back to the stadium. But also the flavor changes. I was up in the mountains with the woman. And I had the best tortilla I've ever in my life. And I couldn't figure out why she was getting this flavor. She had a 500-year-old farm.

The reason was what happens when you use probiotics in yogurt and ice cream and you change the flavonoids. So essentially, not only was it about health, she was making a more complex flavor and interesting dish. Now, the reason that I study, what I go to villages for is to study those perceptional patterns of how and why are they getting more complex flavors. They don't buy things on Amazon or go to the store or go to Whole Foods. they are actually using their body as this window of opportunity to create complexity. So I send you back to central Mexico in the middle of the 18th century. A, how good is the food? And B, how recognizably is it like 1750, let's say.

How recognizably is it like, in your opinion, what we would get in the outskirts of Oaxaca today or near Puebla or in Guerrero? Well, it depends what class you are. We'll say that you're, you know, whether you're in a ranch in northern Mexico. Do you have enough money to buy what you want? I would say it's probably very similar to what, except for the, instead for Mesa, you know, Maseca intervention in 1925 after the revolution because the government wanted to control the food supply and that's why tortillas are so cheap. That was the same thing in France. When you go to France today, why baguettes are the price they are. So, but the food in terms of the, you know,

what the Spanish brought was pigs. They brought, obviously, pigs, sheep, you know, beef. Unfortunately, it ruined the, the ecosystem of the pre-Columbians, which was not dependent on rooting animals, the same thing they did in the Caribbean, as you know, for trade. Europe could not grow its own food. Europe, and if you take Columbus leaving, 30% of the people were starving to death without warfare. If you throw in warfare in the end of the 19th, 15th century, 50% of the people would have been dead.

In New York today, why can I not get good New Mexican green jelly at a restaurant? Can't they just put it on a plane and fly it over? They do put on a plane. I would pay twice the price, but it's not good. Why is this the case? Well, maybe it's not roasted then correctly. Maybe they're using it. You need a fire roaster.

It needs to be done within the same time that it's picked, and it comes at the end of the season in terms of the... The best time is at the end of August. Now, there is a chili that's even better, which is called the chili Pasado, which is the red chili. This is from New Mexico? Yeah, when the green turns around, the reisters, right? Okay.

That chili before it gets dried, it's actually fire roasted and then peeled and then dry. That chili is sublime. It's called chili Pasada. Now, we're losing, even in New Mexico or Mexico, that tradition came up from Mexico, was north of Monterey. What I'm afraid of is we're beginning to lose the palate and those ingredients. When you talk about it to historical dish, what I always think is, so when we look at Masa,

which chef ever told you that you must put the probiotics back into a lot of the chefs. No one ever told me that. A lot of chefs in New York are talking about organic corn. But they're not talking about really resurrecting the complexity of the fact. flavor of the native people. You know why? Because they don't go to the villages. They don't eat there, and they don't use their brain to think about how are these people achieving that level of complexity? They're not shopping for it. Chefs are shoppers today. Here's a piece of purple corn. I bought it in the United States, but as you know in Mexico, there are many colors of corn.

It's vastly superior to even good corn we get in this country. What's the future of corn? Is the future of corn that the varieties from Mexico somehow will be replicated, spread, evolved, and innovated upon, or is the future of corn, a kind of monoculture where most of it is boring. A few strains of it taste good, but are not really that interesting. And the different colors of corn in Mexico eventually disappear. I did the corn posters after the Chile posters. And there are 8,862 varieties of corn. And you know all of them. I don't know. But they're in the University of Seattle, in the gene, whatever, the, you know. The point is, is that as, I think that corn has a lot of, the North American Indians grew 400.

So corn, even in the United States, before the winter wheat, we always ate corn bread. Corn was a big part of our culture, not just for ethanol. Yes. But I think as soon as we, I think because of what's happening in the United States about natural, I think that once people put their pallets and really cue them up and they can tell the difference in varieties is when we're going to get much more varietal sort of differentiating. in the market. If I give you six varieties of corn and I tell you to eat them and you can't tell the difference, then you probably are unwilling to pay for them. If I gave you six varieties of

red wine, one is a Bordeaux from the first growth and one is basically from Trader Joe's, and you can't tell the difference. Well, you probably don't... But this happens that a lot of people can tell the difference with wine, but we still market the different strands. Maybe people are fooled or it's a placebo effect. But people are interested in change today and what's happening in that place and time. So let's say that the 400 varieties of Native American corn come back to the North America. Yes. And let's say that you're in Portland.

There might be varieties that can only grow in Portland, only grow in Maine, only grow in New Mexico. The point is that corn, you will probably like, like, for instance, the microbrewero industry. We talked about that in Portland. If a community wants to engage its food culture on the community local level, it can be amazing. Portland is 400 beers. Why can't they have 30, 40 varieties of corn? just in Portland. It'll come. There'll be a corn restaurant in Portland that'll say, you know what, we are not growing the corn that everybody else has. We do this, and we have

recipes from all these cultures that use corn from the Andes to Mexico, and we're going to open a corn restaurant based on corn, you know, that grows, that did grow. And one of my growers in New Mexico, everybody, when I first opened the restaurant in Santa Fe, can't grow this, can't do this, can't do that, regular, you know, can't do anything, right? Well, Elizabeth Berry, my grower, grew 482 varieties of beans without electricity on land that was bent centrally the Anasazi used to use in the 4th century. So these bean pots, do we actually know how many beans or the variety of what a diet was? Native cultures, Franz Boez, we get into that, but he collected 254 salmon recipes. A Kwokutal book would have been 3,000 recipes.

The average American housewife does 79 in her lifetime. So who's richer? We now move to the underrated versus overrated segment of the talk. Okay. You're free to pass on any of these, but I'll just shoot out a few things. You tell me if you think they're underrated or overrated. The Michelin Dining Guide. Overrated now.

Why? It's too status-oriented. It's dated. I probably, I bet you the average age of the inspectors over 30. I don't trust anybody in a company if the mean age is over 30 and five anymore. I think that they're out of touch. I think they're replaying old records, old themes. And I think the Michelin Guide is about status,

a reification of a belief system in a particular food and culture system that was based on the aristocracy. The fast food restaurant Chipotle. Well, they just got knocked today. Their stock just went down on this. You know, they're closing their chop houses, which I knew they would.

They can't do that. Chipoli had a good space that did a lot of education. Elton-Neman Ranch, for instance. The problem with every big food company, not just Chipotle, you have 2,000 restaurants. You say you're cooking the food, but the food comes from two plants of a factory like Miniat that does 200,000 pounds a day. So the public transparency, are you actually cooking the food, or are you manufacturing it? So I think every big food chain is probably going to face that this, I don't know, this gestalt of where if you're cooking, you can't be a chain. So I think that, I think that, I think that, I think,

The era of big food companies is actually over. And a company like Starbucks used to develop, you would go into a town and you'd see Starbucks and it was familiar and known. Sure. Now all you have to do is like, oh, I'm in Columbus, Ohio, coffee, oh, this guy is doing fair trade, interesting Guatemalan blend. Oh, I'm going to go there. Are you, that information?

You don't need brands, right? You don't need brands anymore. The consumer used to have brands as guide and trust. Today, there are other ways of developing that. We're in consumer level three. Consumers are defining brands and how brands gets used. I think that the idea of brand is probably, you're an economist.

What do you think? It's dated. I agree. The idea of brands is in some ways on the way out. You're a big lover of the culture of the American West. There's a lot of movies about the Old West. The movie High No, overrated or underrated. No, underrated still.

Gary Cooper is amazing. Gary Cooper is amazing. I mean, I get some of my, you know, I think that those are epics. I think that that's our mythology. Of America. Right. And those are our heroes.

Those are our gods from Zeus, you know, our gods from Olympus. And we need those. We always need something like that to grow up with. Otherwise, we're left with whatever's on TV. Maybe this is a loaded question. But southwestern cuisine. Now, is it overrated or underrated? It's not appreciated.

So it's underrated. Because it's hard to get the right ingredient? It takes a lot of time. Yeah, it was just too difficult, and the chefs today are not interested. You have to translate three great traditions. For me to do modern Southwest, you have to know Mexican, you have to know Native American, and you have to know the history of the European influence on the Western traditions, things like the Cattle Drive and those things, which is you have to know all three traditions

and all three ingredients, and you, I mean, I had to read 400 books just to write this book. Yes. And it took a lifetime. That's your red sage book. Red sage book. But I think that the, even chefs in my own kitchens, for instance, could, even after 11 years, could still not make some of the sauces after 11 years in the kitchen. Some of the sauces have 30 to 40 ingredients.

And each ingredient, each time has to be tasted because an eggplant, like a good, when you're in Japan, why is, why does it take 15 years to be a good tempura chef? Because that eggplant in June is tighter, has less water, is less bitter, than the one in August, towards a different batter or different temperature. So that 20 courses will require that chef

to make exactly over 75, 85 decisions for each meal he does through each week of the year. My sushi barago? He knows 1,900 Verizon. So if you're a good Southwest chef, I don't think, I don't know, you have to know at least 40 or 50 chilies.

You have to know all your spices, your beans, your vegetables. You have to know game. You have to know drying and roasting. Probably, you have to know. You need to have three or four or five hundred recipes under your belt. What's the most underrated European cuisine? I think hunger.

I've been going to Budapest. I think it's, I would say right now, those Budapest is on fire. I'm having great food, great wine. I think it's amazing. I love the peppers there too. And they love the Chile. I say, have you been to Kalashka to the Chile Museum? No, I have not.

It's amazing. I think that, and they're doing amazing things. And I would say right now, London is always exciting because it's the most international, most open. but I have had some great food. I've had meals in Budapest for 40 euros that equal anything in Paris for 400. And the most overrated cuisine in Europe right now?

Oat French cuisine. Hot French cuisine. Especially in the center part of Paris that's the more of the historically dated, sort of tried and true. I think that even a good, finding good French bistro, I was in Paris a few, you know, is difficult.

I think that they're in an identity crisis. think that the French themselves are, again, like the Japanese, they're trying to reinvent themselves, but they don't want to let go. And the younger chefs, the best we went to Bernou, which is the hottest restaurant, it's a Japanese chef who's lived in Paris, he's got this gastro modern thing that's going on three months, and he's only serving cocktails, no wine. And I took some older French people, and they just couldn't get it. They thought that it was an abomination.

He had taken, he wasn't interested in French cuisine. He was reinterpreting where French dining and authenticity is in 2016. So the younger chefs are concerned with authenticity. And the authenticity of their experience for their guests is more important than an authentic technique and recipe. Where in the world do diners have the most advanced exploratory best palate at the macro level, not for one particular thing. U.S. U.S.

Why do you say that? Because they're just the most, they have the least hang-ups about identity systems with food. We used to be food morons, right? No, we were food ignorant. Food ignorant, okay. Moron means you can't learn.

Okay. I think we were, and we were intimidated by, we were kind of colonized by the idea of European culture and French food, Chinese food, and we were,

I came from French, Canadian, and I was told, also as immigrant groups buy for status and power within a society, they generally refer to a third. So the Italians didn't like the French. You know, I lived in Boston. My grandmother, if she saw a piece of garlic, she would have disowned me. You know, and I think if you're, but the point was, I think right now as a multicultural society and the chefs are traveling, they're opening and what's happening in the media is,

that they're, and because of the immigrant populations, people experience those level, and the younger immigrants were into our third generation. So, Cassia, for instance, third generation of Vietnamese in L.A., we've got the big right-up in New York Times. I've been there a couple times. You get other chefs who are extending their own traditions. You know, you talk about slanted door. You talk about Cosame in New York City.

What we're beginning to understand is what I have fought for my whole life, is ethnic food is as complex as any expensive French restaurant. Or often more so. Now, you teach classes in tasting appreciation, is that correct? Pallet coaching. Pallet coaching. With companies, generally. And you try to teach the executives or the workers or who is taught?

Well, we try to teach everybody. Depends, most importantly, if a brand is to have a brand, we won't get into branding, but let's say that I'm working with the culinary department, just the culinary department. Some culinary, what we want to do is bring the marketing people in. We want to bring the consumer research people in. we want to bring in the culinary people because we want a lexicon of what is, what are we describing? What is the experience?

We're not creating a product. We're creating an experience. And what is the consensus for what we like and don't like and what's good? So women, women have a different palate than men. So if I'm, if I know that the objective consumer jerky, for instance, more women are eating jerky. Women don't like to chew. We know that. Okay?

The point is women also like more natural flavors, not. as much dramatic flavors as men. So once we know this fact and we bring everybody in, we create jerkeys, we would though go through, if we have, for instance, a hamburger, that's something, something simple. Six layers in a hamburger is 36 possibilities of eating it. So one of the things, like next time you eat a hamburger, just put it upside down. Take your favorite hamburger from your favorite brand and put it upside down. You'll see that it eats completely different. All the fat receptors are now in a different mode. It's almost like turning something to a mirror. And so the experience and expression of it is completely, people don't think that food,

do everybody, I watch people in a restaurant, you know what they do? They eat and they take a glass of beer or wine. They're drowning it out. I say, what you do is you light up and set the stage, take the beer or wine first, and then use the flavors. Really? Yeah, because, but people have bad, they have bad taste habits. They're not trained to taste.

And what's another of a bad taste habit that a lot of Americans have that you could train someone out? attention span. So we make them put it in their mouth. First of all, texture, temperature, movement, and flavor. Which one is first and second, always by the semi-automatic nervous system? You have no control over. Tell us, which. Okay, first one is texture. Anything you put in the mouth. Second one is temperature. So obviously, if it's crunchy and hard and hot, you're actually not going to understand the flavor. Your brain is just going to activate. It's defense system. Is it too hot? What is it? It's a foreign object in my body. Okay? So, yeah, I'm going to be really

upset. So the point is that if you get it, that's why sushi is kind of interesting, because sushi comes out of this acceptance in Japan of the body and sensual. Yes. And so it's a movement into projecting sensual. I know we're getting up, but the sensual space of how we use our body. So she talked about crunch. What's interesting to me would be about the psychology of why do we have that because they choose to do something and they choose to not do something else. But Anyway, if you put something 10 seconds in the middle, then chew because you get the retronasal. There's two parts.

Smell first. First of all, smell, like in a wine thing. Get the right software in your head. So is it a fruit or is it a hot dog? Get the right. Chew for a few seconds. Then stop. And then the enzymatic response is 10 to 15.

Some flavors take 30 minutes to develop on the palate completely. But I always take 10 seconds and then chart. What I'm going to ask you is, it a fast flavor or a slow flavor? Okay. Okay. So lemon is fast. Okay. Pork fat is slow. Is it long or short? Okay. So What do you mean long or short? Okay. A glass of wine can be very long or can be very short. But raisins, we always start with raisins. We take something that people know. Right. Okay. So is a raisin long or short? Actually, it's long. How many, then we go for, so it's fairly slow. It's fairly long and taste occurs over time and space. Do not use cognitive systems for sensual perception.

What you're doing is vocabulary is symbolically compressed in order to be expedited in terms of the way we communicate. However, it does not communicate sensual. Otherwise, we would have no paintings, poetry, and music. Well, once you tell people not to use words, that really throw, that, You have to activate other cognitive perceptual systems. So, so no words. No words. Body temperature. Body temperature.

Don't chew. Don't chew. Don't chew. Minimum of 15 seconds. And then memory is important. What I want you to do then is taste it the second time because what you will have missed is that basically it's gone by. You're going to fill in. You know when you scan and you read?

Yes. You can actually see, understand by scanning. The brain scans noun flavors. It fills in complexity. you taste at 200th of a second. You have 2,500 taste buds. Each one has 10,000 nerve endings. Those 2 million perceptions per second,

your brain is going to have to figure out where to put them and how to categorize them. Unless you have preset categories and scan really quickly, so memory, you've had it, and I let you do it the second time. You will see that you can fill it in and you'll be able to get the richness, the complexity, and the length of the flavor.

But by telling people, taste occurs over time and space. Just that sentence is the first one I always start with. you have to move into that perceptional way of thinking about taste. It is not immediate. It's not cognitive. It's not electronic. It's not oral. And the enzymatic response of the body for breaking down the flavonoids, it takes time.

And what people don't give me is time. They don't give you time. They don't give me perceptual time. So how much does the culinary cutting edge depend on context? Let's say we took a Mark Miller equivalent of 50 years ago and fed that person, not a very young you, but someone your age now, 50 years ago, who knew the foods of that time,

fed that Mark Miller, the culinary cutting edge of today, how much would he be able to appreciate it? A lot. A lot. Yeah. I think because the context of using the body and perceptual space remains the same.

Okay. I may have changed from Olenia, from Chepenna's to Elenia, you know, the word to moving about generations of restaurants. I think that chefs, or I think that what culinary art does is it moves our ability to move our perceptional sense of exploring the world, just as a weaving or a painting does. And it creates other realities that we may not have actually

realized that we're there, but we're there. When I talked about Chili's, I was the first person. Now, why was I the first person to write a book that Chili's had flavors? They've been eating chilies for 5,000 years. Yes. I went to Robert Mundavi. We did a seminar, and I proved to him that they were like grapes. And that when you blend chilies in a moly, it took as much art and complexity as a winemaker. And he was actually shocked, but he said, I was correct. Yes.

But he had never thought, but he had never tasted, right? So don't go in with the wrong perceptional, don't think that chilies are hot, for instance. Sometimes I wonder about this. You're what, in my opinion, what is sometimes called a supertaster. You can taste fine gradations and different flavors and items a level beyond how much other people can.

Even people who might call themselves foodies. Right? You have some special sensory ability. Well, actually, the term, and you can read how a supertaster is about the number of actual taste buds per centimeter on your palate. And actually, I am not biologically a supertaster in terms of the number of receptors that I have. I don't think that Baron Burnson, you know, who's one of the greatest art critics or, you know, or Turner actually had extraordinary eyesight. But you're maybe better than a supertaster. at the cognitive level rather than on your tongue. What I try to do is what, remember the book,

The Shallows came out. I try to do deep tasting, like deep reading. Are we looking for patterns that exist within the perceptional space that I am not, that I wasn't looking for before? So all of taste is about part of its memory, part of its perception, part of its connecting those complexities.

I am, I would be, Also, interesting enough, I'm slightly handicapped because I have a little bit of auditory processing disorder. So what happens is when I was a child, all of the world around me was categorized into taste. I can hear fine, but it creates cognitive dissonance. I can't drive the car. The point was because I learned that my brain can actually look at taste and actually make the world around me sensible, that when I looked at a raisin, people said, what do you mean that there's more flavors at a raisin?

It says, no, pay attention, listen. Listen carefully. Have you ever listened to like a harpsichord? People, their retention span has to be so precise that it's a difference of a 40th of a second. Now, when you play another electronic music, you don't develop that skill set. How many different flavors or kinds of soy sauce

can you distinguish by taste? Oh, I've done a panel of 40 at a time. I think I've had a kitchen, home of up to 70 at a time. And you can tell one from the other. By saltiness, by sweet. They all have a characteristic profile of complexities, of umamis, as we might call it in flavor, dark, rich tones.

If you put 10, if you put 15 cabernets in front, I mean, I can still tell, you can do that. Anybody can do that. So we generally don't think of shoy you or soy sauces as being that complex. So when we taste it. We don't, when we have, if I tell you this is an $800 bottle of wine, you turn on your complexity sort of perceptional scan. But I tell you that this is a Mexican taco, you don't turn it on. You've already prejudiced. I do, but yes. You do, Tyler. So, soy sauces to me, or when you're in Japan, the pickle on the table will tell me within 20 miles of where you grew

up and where you live and the shoyu at the sushi, each great. sushi house, not sushi bars, actually blends their own shoyu. And I can tell not only whether you're from Edo, but what generation, are you from the 30s, the 40s, or the 50s, of what generation did you actually grow up to actually believe that that was the style of the shoyu? And if you're in Kyoto, these people, you know, they, they, Japan is really good that way because it is literally those 40 regions are so maintaining that isolation that you learn the differences from going from one to another. I can go from, I can take a train of two hours in Japan

and cover more culinary differences than you can in the United States. Thank you for those wonderful remarks, Mark. With that, I turn the questioning over to Megan McArdle of Bloomberg. Well, this is, it's a little weird being the only questioner. Talk about why, you talked about how women and men's palettes are different.

How is their cooking different? I mean, there's an editor I know now at Eater, was at Savoor then, who said that male cookery was all sort of knives, guts, and fire. Knives spice and fire, I think, was how she put it. And that often seems like a fair characterization to me. My guy friends really want to load up the heat. I remember having a guy tell me that, like, the secret to really good cooking was just dump Cajun seasoning all over everything.

You know, how do women cook different? Well, I mean, we're not going to get into developmental theory here. No, no. What are the characteristics? I can tell you that, you know, the general broad strokes, women are essentially more concerned with internal experiences. They are more motivated to talk to someone at a dining room table and a guy will look at the television. You get four guys and the four women will talk to each other. The point is, is that early on, there's a better internalization of the phenomenological world inside the body.

So they actually begin to recognize those characteristics of things that are what I would call body perceptionally. So that tends to be a little bit more subtle. It tends to be a little bit more in time. And they don't like the transformative process as much as understanding the – I'm going out of life. But they would prefer to accept the flavor of personality as is and understand it, rather than change it into something that I do. So like Fuchsia said, if you took that carrot, that pork, that kidney, and just made it spicy,

that's what guys, they want to change it and transform it. They want to create something new. They want to actually not allow, if you allow nature to take its course, then you wouldn't be cooking. You don't have the heat. You're not transforming the spice. And so we're women, except for Lydia Shire in Boston, she's the only one that I could never tell. Women tend to actually believe that the ingredients should be left alone, Alice Waters, or that school of cooking, and that you can literally coax natural ingredients into something that's complex and satisfying and sophisticated and healthy.

And it's sustainable. It's even better. But man, you know, I believe that if we go that too far, that we're not going to learn how to make molays, that we're not concerned with other black bean soups. I would rather learn how to make, when I lived in Guatemala, every woman in the village made black bean soup. Not one of those women ever told me, you know, I go to the market by organic black beans, so mine's better. Not every woman knew how good her black bean soup was. The best woman in the village, she was 37 steps, and she really got me going. I traded to her a wee peel.

Now, women tend to be more focused and more creative and more subtle. It doesn't mean that they're not as rich a tradition. it just means that it's a different level of recognition. Does that make sense? Yes, absolutely. Mescal or tequila? Chichapha by Delmage is my favorite mescal in the world. And when it's tequila, I still go for silvers,

not the, unless you represent in a margarita, you should always use silvers because they don't have any wood. And if you're using fruit, whether it's a mango, strobe, or anything else, that idea of the gold coin or the upscale, That's just a marketing ploy to make more money, but it makes them more money, but it makes worse margaritas. Mescal, I mean, Mescal, though, was and is, a native tradition built on extreme attention to nature, and it's only wild agaves. Each one of the palanques that Ron uses only can produce 400 cases a year. And it's totally out of that village and that tradition.

And even though those 20 villages are within 100 miles, they might as well be like two continents. apart because they express the whole world of, you put five painters in Paris in 1900 and you get different paintings in the same building in Mont, right? Your favorite guilty pleasure, bad food. Oh, it's not a bad food, it's ice cream. Ice cream is God's gift to depression. What flavor, any particular? Oh, I like them all.

I happen to like cold. I have a very sensitive palate, so I won't eat any hot soups or teas or things. I always eat cold when I can get it, and that's preferential. That would be my preference. And if you had to say, hot french Sunday, how's that? So I am someone who we talked about this little earlier. I have never been able to stand the taste of cooked fish,

and I have been trying because it's good for me and my husband loves fish, but that fishy flavor makes me gag. How would you advise someone like me? And obviously this is a broader question than just fish. than just fish is someone who has something, I'm generally pretty willing to eat almost anything, but you have that one thing or you have a couple things where you're desperate to like be able to tolerate it.

How do you, how do you go about learning? Well, we talked earlier then I don't eat cookfish at night because the enzymes in your body change and I eat raw fish and chobish, but you actually may be the supertaster because super, no supertasters tend to have, and that's the problem with parents who don't realize a child, they become very fixated and they like things that don't like things because there's so

powerful sensations for them. Children in particular, don't really know what to do with that category. So if they had something that was green that was very bitter, that's why they won't eat green beans and they associate, then the entire category is something that they're going to be defensive of. Your question about cookfish would be, have you ever tried like flame broiled, you know, sashimi and a sushi Yeah, I get like a seared tuna, right, that's basically raw inside. Yeah. I can totally eat that. It's when it's like a cooked salmon or something.

No, but how far is it cooked? Do you know how many degrees? No. I'm not daring enough to cook my own fish because I hate it. Flavinoyance develop and change over every two or three degrees. That's why it's a misnoma. The more you cook meat it's going to get. No, the more livery it's going to get.

Fish is exactly the same. So what you want to do is get a piece of fish. and find out, 130, I bet you, the higher, the more objectionable flavonoids have not developed. It's cooked. 135 is cooked. It'll go up five. But I would just go home and do salmon and halibut. I would start with halibut because it could be the oils.

It could be a combination of oils and flavonoids. Or we could just, you know, make a really spicy fish when we go to Contramar in Mexico City and just put red and green chili and throw it in the grill, and I bet you would eat it. It would be wonderful. The sousvied revolution. How do you feel about this? Well, I've been working with a long time. I worked with American Airlines in the 80s. I worked with cuisine solutions.

It is an amazing technique, and it tends to be overused by chefs who believe that a perfect texture is preferable to a more complex uneven. Now, the brain, actually, it's wrong, though, because the brain doesn't know. what it is, it knows what it's not. So teaching flavor is not teaching what that ingredient is, it's teaching what it's not. So if I have a suvi piece of lamb and it's not crusted and it's not browned and there's no myard and then it's not, when you look at lamb and it has rosé 50 percent, it will start darker, it'll be more myard it'll be cooked. What the brain then has four or five different perceptional zones to actually understand and appreciate and differentiate.

A suavid piece of lamb that's pink all the way through with one texture with no myarding and no flavor of the lamb developed because it never went high enough. Well, actually won't be lamby enough and it'll taste like a lamb piece of bubble gum or a sponge. Now, I use interruptive suvide, so I do a Chinese squab that I put an intensity. I used to brine it for 48 hours with 14 spices, mainly cumin, and chilis to get it all the way through the scrub, then roast it, and then deep fry it, like the Chinese. I found it by suvading it. They went in by 24 hours, so the fresh was squab was fairer. Then I cook at a different higher temperature, even after it's in brine. And then I fry it, deep fry it.

So I find that, you know, that, what I call interruptive suvite as a technique, which doesn't, which takes the, you get intensity without, preserving some freshness. So let's say that I did scallops and I do them suvite. My scallops are cooked for exactly 18 minutes and with a wine dinner I want to match the camomile in a saveno blanc. Well, how do I do that? Actually, I actually put in some fresh camomile with the scallops, cook it suvied and the aromatic profile goes through. I made a little to start. I do this and that and that savenoenium blanc with that is amazing. What is the biggest mistake that people make when they go into a southwestern restaurant and sit down and order? Well, they want chips and salsa. That's a big mistake.

Why? So explain this. Well, I mean, it's a phenomenon that they, first of all, they get it free. Second of all, chips are usually done poorly, and then the salsa is usually done poorly. It's a good excuse to sit there and drink beers and margaritas, which is, you know, I don't need that excuse. But what you're looking for is something that comes into, let's say, Buffalo. We eat more buffalo. I was cooking buffalo. It was difficult to sell back in the 70s and age. We know it's healthier. We know it is less cholesterol. So, and the other thing is you want

intense, small portions of food. You don't want to, you know, so when you're looking at a southwest menu, you want to look for the sauces, the complexity. You want to look for things that would probably take you that some things have been cured. Like even Red Sage, what was the first thing that we did? We actually did a carpacho of venison. We had a tartar mixed of venison and Buffalo with sage. We made, you know, that was on the first man at Red Sage in 1990. Now, if you go around the United States 25 years later, you don't find that anymore. So, if you were, if someone came to...

No, that's a... If someone came to you, this is a game my family used to play in the car, someone comes to you and says, I'm a fairy, you are only going to be allowed to eat three foods for the rest of your life, three dishes, three specific dishes, so not like tacos, but a kind of taco. You don't have to worry about nutrition. You don't have to worry about calories, but you have to pick three foods, and those are the only three foods you can ever have again. Which three foods? Certainly lobster, as I grew up in that part of the world, Nova Scotia, cooked in seaweed, you know, with butter, drawn butter, you know. I would say,

you know, my short dinner, which is lobster clams, and, you know, they're all the one meal. They're not three foods. Everyone always tries to learn. Oysters, fried, you know, but lobster for sure. I would say my second one would be, Yes, I would, oh boy, I would, something spicy, and I buy between Thai and Mexican, you know, is my two favorite spicy cuisines in the world. And I would, I would probably say a Mexican sort of, you know, amazing sort of taco with great salas and the right kind of, you know, tortilla. And the third thing I might say would be surprisingly, probably just a Choletta Dubue,

you know, a five-year-old cow, northern Spain, roasted completely. correctly and the umami of each piece of meat is is better than any other meat that exists in the world with there are better richer things in japan but that part of northern spain is just amazing what part of northern spain is that it's outside of burghurs okay yeah and uh it's extension of the basque area those are working cattle and you saw the film on you know the world world of steak i'm sure and um and there's one that i like in in barcelona which actually has does the espra drills out of out of the C cucumber still. But I think that the honesty of French, of Spanish food, even though I went to

I believe many times, about seven or eight times, still remains a cuisine that those, those, we talked about the ham that Fuchsia found. We talked about ham in the dolomites. I think that we, we look culturally for our, I think that we're always searching for those foods in our environment that we give us pleasure. that extend the body into that space and that elongate our perceptional way of interacting with the world.

So when someone talks about three-year-old Tabugo, it's not that it's that expensive. And it's that complex and that's interesting that it requires so much of you to actually perceive it, that you are more alive, you are more there, the ham is more there, that sense of presence is there.

And I think that's what a great chef can do. You can stimulate that sense. of being there. And we're losing that. The virtual reality that's happening, we're losing our sense of being in presence. Korean tacos. Korean tacos. I know Roy, so that's not fair. I know Roy personally. I think it's a good example of what Roy calls authentic food. He grew up in L.A. Roy Choy is Korean. He is L.A., which has a lot of Mexican food and the sense of combining his own interior reality into a projection on that plate to me is perfect food. What a chef should always me doing. I'm not Mexican. And the reason that I created modern Southwestern, I think it would be

a lie for me to do a Mexican restaurant. Roberto Santa Benez at Fondom is a good friend and a partner mine, a salsa company, is Mexican from Mexico City and does cook great Mexican food. And I think that you can learn, but you should not co-op an entire culture or identity. You, you know, I was at that, I was at Chez Panisse and I didn't want to cook like Alice Waters anymore. So I was You know, it wasn't my, it's nothing wrong with Chez Panisse, but it wasn't my food. And I was always arguing about it sometimes. But the point is when a chef really understands the world and ingredients and can bring that reality to his dining public, that's an amazing, you know, explosion of creativity and

emotion and theater. And it's wonderful, right? If you had to sum up your food, if you had to say, if you had to, in a couple of sentences say, yeah, this is what, this is what my, you know. my food was and why I needed to go do my thing. Or is, hopefully. Or is. No, no, no.

I meant when you left Cheapenese. No, we all created the menus at Shepenese. It wasn't else, even then, no. I was there for a couple of, it's only because one of my advisors didn't sign my thesis. Anyway, I was supposed to be there for two weeks. So I think that my food is a personal exploration of my own exploration of the world. And I look at the world through my senses, mostly taste, sometimes smell, I'm not a bad nose. And what I'm trying to do is understand not only

the world we live in, but sometimes past cultures. I try to look at pre-Columbian weavings. I try to get a list of all the pre-Columbian foods. And we see, for instance, at Central, which is a very famous restaurant in Lima today, that that complexity of these chunias and this and things that grow were probably used and stimulate. The problem is, do we actually have the palate to actually go back, wouldn't you like to live in, I don't want to just see a Rembrandt painting, or I love the, I love, you know, this. I want to actually go back and eat the food that he was eating in the markets and the cheeses and the things that were done, because I want to try to understand where that painting came from, not only the psychology of the artist. So

when I read a, when I read a cookbook or I go to a restaurant, I'm trying to understand the person or the place or the culture. Fast food. So are you? I don't know. The dark side. Well, but can it be done well? It is done well. I mean, fast food is done well. In Japan, the places I go, I eat udon, I walk in, it's being made by hand.

It costs $2. I decide what I'm going to put on top, and I have a bowl. And I've timed it. It's 18 seconds. McDonald's, it's a lifetime, you know? Starbucks is 8.4 minutes. It takes too long. It takes too long.

Robot chefs. I'm currently on a fast food, but, you know, you've seen these machines now that going to have that's going to like dice everything and it won't need any human interaction at all. What do you think of that? Probably would anybody notice? I really, you know, I think fast food, I think that our model in the United States because of the real estate and economics of it is completely wrong. I think that a chef should open a restaurant at 10 seats.

I think you should charge $100 and I think you should make $150 and he should not pay rent or have labor. or have overhead or costs, and what you should do is honor the tradition of respecting the individual. So in Japan, they have this policy of not first customer. There's a policy of not taking you because they don't know how you're going to act. They don't know who you were. You're also eating with, you're eating with, you're eating with seven or eight other people

as an ensemble. You're not completely separate. So the idea of reinstituting cultural and social. space and bonds and honoring. The chef is here and put something down. There's no waitress. There's no menu. The point is that that's the reality of you.

That's a personal connection. It's like your mother. That point to me is that we have to go back to understanding that food is very part of our psychological sense of space, our body sense of space, our pleasurable sense of space, our own cultural identity. And if we let other people take over that by. organic or this or labels or price, then what we've done is given that part of our lives up. And I don't know that we're, I'm just saying this, there's 300 noodle places in Kyoto.

Nobody charges more than $10 or $12. They're all really good. They're all a little bit different. And guess who doesn't do well? Chains that charge $10 for noodles that they have to pay high-end real estate like Ishinaoya. There's two of them in Kyoto. I've been going to care of 50 years. I've never been.

I'm never going to go. There's no reason to go. Chains only exist when the local community doesn't provide the same service. So in a street food market, it's accessible. So I can eat in Thailand a quail for 75 cents. That same quail in Washington, D.C. or New York City will cost me like 1895. Megan, Mark, thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast. app. And if you like this podcast, please consider rating it on iTunes and leaving a review. This helps other people find the show.