Live: Kenji López-Alt No Longer Calls His Recipes “The Best” (Reheat)

Sirius XM podcasts. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, everyone. It's Dan here. Now, earlier this week, we brought you our recent live show,

Taped in Brooklyn, with guests Kenji Lopez Alt and Judy Gold. I thought it was a great show. We had such a blast making it. I hope you listened to it by now.

If not, please check it out. We talked about the state of the bagel. We talked about this trend of parents feeding their kids straight up butter. It was like a stick of butter.

We covered a lot of ground. For today's reheat, we thought we'd be fun to revisit the first live show I ever did with Kenji back in 2022. Kenji had been a long time guest in the show.

Going back to probably 2014, 2015. But this was the first time we had him live on stage. We recorded this one in San Francisco. And we covered everything from the Thermo Dynamics of cooking with a walk to why Kenji decided

that owning a restaurant is not for him. We also go deep on how Kenji's feelings about his career have changed in recent years.

“Now, remember, there's an episode of this book.”

We want us to pull out of the deep freezer and share. Let us know. Drop me an email at [email protected]. Don't forget to include your first name, location. What episode do you want us to reheat and why?

Thanks so much. Enjoy my conversation with Kenji Lopez Alt. This is the sporkful. It's not for food. It's for eaters.

I'm Dan Hashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food. We learn more about people. And for the first time in two and a half years, we are coming to you live tonight

from Swedish, American Hall in San Francisco. (audience cheering and applauding) My guest tonight has been on our show many times. In fact, if the sporkful was a sitcom, he'd probably be our wacky neighbor.

Always barging in the front door,

peaking his head over the fence to answer nerdy questions about food science. Like the time he came out to demonstrate what sound scallions are supposed to make if you slice them correctly.

But he's never been the featured guest of a whole episode. We've never had an extended conversation to hear. The story of how he came to be the internet's leading food science guru. He's best known as the writer

behind the popular food lab column, which led to a best-selling cookbook of the same name. He's also the author of the Children's Book Every Night is Pizza Night and a New York Times columnist. Tonight we're celebrating the release of his new cookbook,

The Walk, Recipes and Techniques. Please welcome Kenji Lopez Alt. (audience cheering and applauding) Cheers. (audience cheering and applauding)

It is good to see you Kenji. It's good to see you. How's it going? First of all, how are you feeling? I mean, so this is your first cookbook was a big hit.

We'll talk more later about the new cookbook, but just like big picture, is it like more pressure following up a really successful cookbook with a second one

“or less pressure 'cause like you already nailed one?”

- Let's mainly because when the first book came out, you know, I was a freelance writer and my wife is a grad student. And a lot of our immediate future comforts relied on having a successful cookbook.

And now my wife has a good career. My first book was successful. So this one is like, it's okay if it doesn't do well. You know, as long as I-- - There you go, so you guys don't need to buy it, okay?

(audience laughing) All right, so let's talk more about the book. Later, we're gonna work our way there, but let's begin at the beginning. And I gather from your website

that people are always asking you about your name.

If you want, I can just field this one to save you the trouble. - Sure, go for it, I don't tell you if you're right. (audience laughing) - So your mom's Japanese American, she came to the US

when she was 16, your father's American of German descent. They named you James Kenji Alt. - Yes. - You always went by Kenji. - Correct.

- Then you married your wife, Adriana Lopez. - Yes. - And you guys both hyphenated your last name, Lopez Alt. - Correct.

- And so, you were not Latino. - I'm not Latino. - But anyway, when a lot of time in Columbia, where your wife's family is from. - Yeah.

- Okay. - You've read Wikipedia. (audience laughing) Only the finest research here on this wonderful. (audience laughing)

So, you're a parent split up when you were a pretty young, and I got it. Most of the food you grew up with was made by your mom.

“What was the role of food in your house growing up?”

- Functional, I mean, dinner time is always like,

all the kids have to be there. My mom or my daughter, both of them, often my grandparents were there. And the food wasn't really the important thing. My grandparents, you know, they lived the floor below us,

and so my grandmother would cook a lot of Japanese food.

and growing up, she cooked some degree of Japanese food,

but she was also kind of trying to get us to assimilate a little bit more, you know, so she did a lot of sort of like Betty Crocker and like New York Times recipe, American type stuff. She wasn't the greatest cook,

but we had dinner every night. - Right, right, right. Am I right to remember correctly?

“Did you tell me once you were a picky eater as a kid?”

- Yeah, I was a picky eater. I mean, I've been told, I started cooking, you know, like even in college, I was a picky eater. My girlfriend and sophomore year, her parents took us out to dinner,

and we went to this restaurant in Boston, Radius. And they all ordered tasting menus, and I remember reading, like looking at the tasting menu, being like, that's got seafood, oh no, this one has squash, and so I got a steak.

- Well, they got tasting menus. Yeah, you know, I got into food after I got into cooking,

like I first fell in love with the process

of cooking and sort of working in kitchens, and it was through that that I learned about food. - I do think it's worth noting though, it's like, you know, for parents of picky eaters, who think that like if your kid is eight or 10,

and isn't eating the every world cuisine, that like there's something wrong with you when you're parenting or your child, and like I could not bite into a raw tomato until I was 35.

(audience laughs) - Okay, so, you know, just chill out parents out there, your kids will be fine, okay? Me and Kenji made it, okay? I eat tomatoes, he eats squash.

“- On the other hand, my daughter just turned five”

and for her fifth birthday, she said, what do you want to do for dinner? And she goes, I want to go to one of those restaurants where you just sit down, and they don't tell you

what they're gonna bring, and they just bring in,

she's talking to a tasting menu, and I'm like, I feel like I feel like I feel that parenting, raising up five year old, you want to tasting menu. (audience laughs) - You were telling me backstage

that your sister shared a story recently of her earliest memory of you cooking. - Yeah, what did you make? - I was making pasta with tomato sauce, but we ran out of tomato sauce, so I made pasta,

I found like the most tomato sauce adjacent thing I could find in my mom's fridge, which was a jar of Newman's own salsa. And so it was, yeah, it was like Newman's own salsa, cooked in olive oil with pasta, it was.

- I mean, that works, I'm sure it was fine. - Do you remember how it tasted? - I remember thinking it tasted fine, or arguing to my sister that it tasted fine, and she should stuff complaining.

- So food wasn't a huge deal in your family, cooking was not a big deal in your family, growing up, but science was. - Yeah, my maternal grandfather was a scientist, and my dad is a scientist, and so yeah,

there's a lot of science kind of talk at home all the time. - Well, what kinds of things were you talking about around the dinner table with your-- - It was mainly complaining about having to do grant applications, and then sometimes like the wires,

there are like a block of mice in the freezer. (laughing) - So in 1998, you go to MIT, complaining to study biology. You get there and find that you love biology

and science, but you hate working in biology labs. - Yeah. - Why? - They're boring. (laughing) I enjoyed learning biology. I enjoyed lecture, I enjoyed all that.

It was just the actual physical process of lab work that I found boring. There's like mind numbing elements of it, right? Where you're just like pipetting, you know? Like, is that--

- Maybe they have robots that do that now? - I don't know, but I'm sure there are still people who've brought this file up into that file for hours. - Yeah, and it was one of those moments where I was like, if I keep doing biology,

this is gonna be my life for a while. Yeah, so the summer after my sophomore year, I kind of decided like, I need to figure out what I'm actually gonna do, and in the meantime,

“I need to make money, and so that's how I ended up cooking.”

- You ended up cooking in a Mongolian barbecue place in Harvard Square. - Yeah, I started out with a prep cook, but I was very quickly promoted to Night of the Round Girl. - Good night of the round girl.

So this was fire and ice, right? - Yeah. - I ended up in this place. I mean, I graduated from Tufts in 1999, but stayed in the area for two more years.

I may have eaten your cooking there, it's possible. This is one of the sort of assembly line places you would pick out meats and vegetables, and then you had to pick out one or sauces, can it a chef who would throw it on a, you know?

Was it in a walk or was it on a, - No, it was a good giant grill. - Giant ground, you know, cast iron thing, yeah. - I was flumuxed by the paradox of choice there. I was too many sauces.

- Yeah. - And then I was about like, we're just one sauce for re-boring, I should mix sauces, but like, which sauces to mix, and I don't know, then I was at FOMO, I thought maybe I should have

driven a different sauce. - It doesn't matter, it was something. (laughing) - It all tastes the same. - It all tastes the same.

- It all tastes the same.

- Right, you're probably getting a little bit of every sauce.

“- I mean, people going there are not going there”

for the culinary experience. - Right. (laughing) - But restaurant work is very similar, whether it's at like a super high end place

or an Italian place or a burger place or a pizza place or whatever. Like, it's sort of mind-numbing, but in a different way that biology is mind-numbing. When I became a cook, my mom hated it. And I was like, but look, now I'm working at this,

like fancy restaurant, and she's like, oh, you might as well be flipping burgers at the fast food place because like, you know, a cook is a cook. And at the time I sort of resented it, but it is true, the job of a cook is,

well, difficult and underappreciated, but also largely similar, even from like high end places to fast food places. - In the intro to the food lab, your first cookbook, you write like a head injury patient

who suddenly develops a brand new personality, something snapped, the moment my hand touched a knife in a professional kitchen. It didn't matter in me that I knew nothing about cooking and that my job mostly consisted of flipping asparagus spears.

I knew right then that I discovered what I was going to do with the rest of my life. What was it about that job? - I mean, it was sort of the physical work of a kitchen is 'cause I wouldn't write that now, you know,

that was like, (audience laughs) I wrote that then, I think I was like, channeling Jeffery Steingarten or something, you know, like I was,

anyhow, I've always enjoyed building things with my hands,

you know, like doing music or art. And, you know, food was just like a very satisfying way to do that.

“I think I know now understand a little better”

about some of the complexities of food issues that I didn't think about back then, but at the time, when I was working as a cook, I was like, I'm at this job where I get to work with my hands and all I'm doing is like, making people happy, you know,

it's like they come in here, they want to have an experience, they want to enjoy it. Obviously a little more complicated than that, but I think that's really the sort of transformation process. - You say, you played music all your life.

I saw you said there was part of you that kind of wanted to be a rock star and working in a professional kitchen seemed like the next best thing. - Yeah, I don't know. (audience laughs)

I also wouldn't write that now, but yeah. (audience laughs) - What appealed to you about being a rock star of then and what's changed? - I mean, when I was younger,

I definitely had much more of a, I don't know if you famous, I wanna, you know, do X, Y, Z. Whatever I do, I wanna be the best at it. You know, and these days now, what's changed is I feel like, I've reached a point in my life where it's like,

I can work harder at being better in some specific part of my career or whatever, or like I can be okay with the fact that I've been very lucky and successful I would have done and so I have the luxury of being able to say, like, I wanna spend more time with my family

or I wanna do this project for fun or for charity, for whatever reason that is not just like, trying to become more famous or more popular. - So it feels like I can make that decision now and why wouldn't I make that decision?

- Well, I mean, there's a lot of people for whom it's never enough.

“- Yeah, they're always the bad guys in the movie, right?”

Like they're the ones who die on half-e. Because, you know, you know, you don't hear many people say, like, I wish I spent less time with my kids. - 100%, you're pretty sure I'm the choir, but I don't think that necessarily makes you the bad guy

to be the type of person who is never satisfied,

but I agree that sort of not a great way to live. - Yeah, I mean, for me it's more just that I know that there's just like bit of my personality that can cause trouble, you know? Like that makes me unhappy and so I try not to feed that,

that part of my personality. - The part of your personality that once wanted to be a rock star. - Yeah, that once wanted to be like in front of a room full of people just listening, like hanging onto their every word. (audience laughing)

- You finally made it, Kenji. (audience laughing) - So, you get that summer job at Fire and Ice the Mongolian Barbecue, you kind of get hooked up professional kitchens, you go back to school,

you start reading cookbooks in your spare time, you then you cook part time, another chain restaurant called Rock Bottom, and you're getting more and more in the cooking as you're going through MIT, you have all these questions about cooking

'cause you didn't grow up, you know, sort of like learning at your mother's side, or whatever, you sometimes hear with certain people's stories. You graduate from MIT, you set out with this attitude of like you're gonna spend your life

trying to answer so many of the questions that you have as you're getting more in the cooking, the scientific mind is sort of germinating and you have a lot of questions about why things are done, a certain way, but in restaurants,

you won't find any answers to these questions. It was very much like this is how it's done, just do it. - Yeah, and I mean, you know, that was the attitude like 20 years ago when I started working in restaurants,

I think it's changed a lot, but at a restaurant it's like, yeah, it doesn't exist to answer your question, it exists to like produce consistent food and to do it, you know, to do it the same way every time and do it quickly.

But you want to understand like the science, the underpinnings of it, and you were also seeing things in restaurants that you felt like,

“I'm not sure if that's actually the best way.”

- You know, I remember one job where we were making French fries and you know, we were doing the sort of traditional cut the potatoes, soak them, fry them once at a low temperature, fry them again at a high temperature right before serving, you know, so I asked her chef, like, why do we do it that way?

You know, 'cause this is the first time

I've seen French fries cooking, it's like, why do we fry a twice? It's like, well, the first fries, like, cook it all, you do it at a low temperature so you're just basically cooking it through to the center and then the second fry makes it crispy.

And so it's like, well, if the first fry is just to cook it through to the center, like can we boil them so that we don't have to like tie up the fryers or can we bake them and he's like, no, and I was like, why don't he's like, yes, it's just not how it's done.

And in terms of, you know, there are reasons why you don't do it that way, but why don't do it the way you suggest it? Why you don't do it the way I suggest it. But it's still, like I feel like you want to know

those reasons, right? So you're sort of frustration with not getting the kinds of answers you were curious about in restaurants, leads you in 2006 to leave restaurants

“and go to work with cooks illustrated as a test cook”

and editor. I hope, and maybe that'll give you more of a chance to explore some of these food science questions that curious about and pretty quickly it seems like it does. I mean, you read a piece about how you want to sell

pie crust, you know, the dough is dry and crumbly and it makes it hard to roll it out. But if you add more water to make it more pliable, that also stimulates gluten development which makes the finished product tough and not flaky.

So you come up with what I think of as, you're like first viral recipe concept at vodka instead of water. Yeah. And it cooks off.

And then you get pliable dough to work with and flaky crust at the end. Amazing, right, genius? A couple years later. (audience laughs)

You leave cooks illustrated. You go to serious eats where you start the food lab and that's really the thing that takes your career like to the next level and you start to really be known as this food science guy.

You're doing these kinds of deep investigations. Why do we do it this way? Is there a better way? Is there a better way to fry French fries? Tell me about the process behind those columns.

So we pick a recipe and then it's a lot of research into that. So the historical and cultural elements of a recipe,

“like it's really important to sort of know”

what meatballs means to different people. Because the last thing you wanna do is work really harder to recipe and publish and then someone being like, you know, I come from the land of meatballs

and I can tell you, this is not, you misunderstand what meatballs are. And then generally it's like, so you generally have to pick a problem that you're working on.

Yeah, with pie crust, the problem is

if you had too much water, it becomes tough, but if you don't have enough water, it cracks. So like, that's the problem I'm working on in this recipe. And so the food lab grows steadily in popularity over a period of years and you do up a real reputation

as being this guy known for these sort of deep dived articles, solving different dishes. And I know that for a lot of years you would, your pieces were kind of framed, not always, but often as sort of the ultimate or best way to do it.

And you've been talking recently about how you sort of moved away from using those terms when you write a recipe, why have you moved away from those terms? I mean, it's part of the, so like right now,

you said like solving certain dishes. Like I've solved spaghetti. Like it's probably because of like stuff like that, like this idea that like there's definite right and wrong ways to do things.

And that one style is better than, you know, like a crispy hamburger is better than a soft hamburger by default, you know, like our formula at serious eats was like focus, all around energy, and producing the best possible content

and that, you know, if we do that consistently, people are gonna get to know our name and they're gonna come search for us and whatever. And so it doesn't matter what Google does with their algorithm, like in the long run, it'll work out this way.

But you know, but where that doesn't apply necessarily is the titles, you know?

And so, you know, so there's always this pressure, like,

okay, if we're writing about chocolate chip cookies and we did all this testing, like better call it the best chocolate chip cookies, because people are gonna, if you see saying this, is the best chocolate chip cookies versus pretty good,

yeah, pretty good chocolate chip cookies depending on how you like them. - Chocolate chip cookies, you like, it's quite a lot. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, isn't quite as grabby.

- And so, you know, and so we use that kind of, that kind of wording frequently. But it also meant that like, you know, what I frequently found was cooking being used, like weaponizing it and like, especially like an online communities,

you know, you see people being like, that steak is terrible because it has, you know,

because you didn't let the steak rest.

You know, it's like all these things that people used to put out of people down, and sometimes you would see like, oh, like, you didn't do this the way Kenji said, so it's bad, like, this is like objectively the best because the food lab says it's the best.

- It's like Kenji says. - Yeah, and that's stupid, right? It's true, it's dumb. - I hear you, but I do wonder, like, at the time, like you were saying earlier, you know,

when you were younger and more full of humorists, as we all were when you were younger, back then at that time was there a part of you kind of liked it when people would be like Kenji says, yeah, screw you. - For sure, yeah, there was a part that liked it, yeah.

Yeah, you know, it's one of these weird things where it's like, you, you know, you use social media and you feel like, and it's really easy to forget that, like, the person on the other side is a person, you know, and then once, like, my voice started getting louder

on social media, it's also very easy to forget that like, what I say is like, 100 times louder than what the person's saying, back to me is saying. And so, you know, reconciling the fact that, like, you're, you just feel like a normal person,

but then also that you have this kind of megaphone. - Yeah, that's tough, right? - Totally, and I mean, I feel like I've had a similar arc to be honest, 'cause like, you know, this, this forkful when I first launched was mostly just me ranting

“about my opinions about the best way to eat things.”

Not to cook, but to eat. And we had some fun debates back in those early days when I was doing your eating a wrong cooking channel and stuff, we were arguing about hot dog buns and I don't even know where else we talked about.

Your wife Audrey always said I was right,

which is why I was right to her a lot. She's obviously brains in the family, but, but yeah, you get a little older and you're like, "Oh, I don't really care." - Yeah.

- So what changed for you? What triggered this shift? - I mean, it's been kind of an ongoing process. You know, a lot of it is just my wife's influence. Like, conversations with my wife who's very honest

with me about the stuff, conversation with my family. I'm certainly, you know, certainly having kids made a big difference, you know, 'cause when you ever kid, it's like, you wanna be the best example of yourself, right? And you want to do better.

And so, you know, realizing that like,

“Twitter makes me the worst version of myself, right?”

It's like, so then why am I doing it? It helps my career, like it helps sell books or whatever, right? But it's like, is it worth it? You know, it's like, is it worth it to put yourself in this position where you're constantly like,

trying to battle with a worse version of yourself, you know? - You said that your audience is overwhelmingly male, based on the demographics you can see on YouTube and elsewhere. I mean, it's not an exact science, but broadly speaking. Why do you think these columns you were writing

for the food lab, especially in this time, these best ultimate, et cetera? Why do you think your work appeals to this demographic? - Like, you wanna talk about like systemic issues with society, right?

(audience laughing) - I mean, well, I mean, we can, if you want, we can. I guess, it's interesting that you were saying earlier that the fact that you didn't grow up in a food obsessed family

learning to cook as a kid informed your approach to food and that you feel like your work appeal to that demographic when you started doing food to other people who maybe didn't have that sort of institutional, cultural, family knowledge, but wanted to know.

And I think that makes sense, first of all,

men may be, I mean, I mean, maybe I'm, maybe this is an unofficialization, men, men, maybe more likely to be in that category if they didn't think of themselves as wanting to care about cooking when they were a kid and then got into it later.

I don't, maybe, maybe. - Yeah. - But the other thing is that if you didn't grow up doing something and you think you're not good at it, you may feel insecure.

And then when some guy comes along and says,

“"Here's the best way," then that makes you feel tough.”

- Part of it, I mean, no, I mean, I think a lot of it has to do with sort of the way, so okay, so part of it is sort of like the gadget and science angle and men are just generally more encouraged to care about those things for whatever reasons.

And so that, that kind of leans into that demographic. And then I think there's also a very real, like, a macho element, like the best, the ultimate, like we're testing the variables. It's like you're writing about food, like it's a car.

- Right. - And so that there's this kind of like bro culture around the guy. - It's because of the pissing contest, you know, like I learned how to cook the best steak, you know? And as penis grew three sizes that day.

So, you know, I think that's part of why the audience is what it is. But it's a thin line to walk, because also like you do have real expertise that average readers don't have, and they want from you.

And so they do want to know what's the best. Like the world of cooking, the internet can be overwhelming. If I Google how to cook a steak, I would have a panic attack. So I just want someone who I trust to just give me the answer. So I will often, when I have a question about how I just,

I will just add the word Kenji to my Google search. 'Cause I'm just like, well, I trust Kenji. And this way, I don't need a way through a bunch of other stuff.

I just will click on the first link.

- And that doesn't exist for non-food articles. - Yeah, right. - Yeah. You know, but I'm just saying to be good at communicating, good information and knowledge to people who know less than you do,

you do need to make some choices for them.

“- Yeah, well, okay, so there's different types of recipe users, right?”

There's some people who really just want no nonsense, they just want the steps, they want to be able to go to the supermarket, pick up the exact ingredients, come home and make the exact recipe. You know, it's like when you when you start learning more technique and the science behind the food and it allows you to realize

what parts of the recipes you can change. It really is much more like, it's like here's a map, here's where you are like, this is where the recipe takes you, but like you can go any of these places as you want. (upbeat music)

Coming up, Kenji opens a restaurant and it does not go as planned. Plus we hear about his new book and breakdown the science of cooking with a walk. Stick around.

(upbeat music) Hope you're hungry 'cause it's time for some ads. (upbeat music) Welcome back to the Sporkful, I'm Dan Pashman and we're getting ready for a big live show in Boston

coming up. We did a show in Boston two years ago at the same spot, WBU, our city space and we blew the roof off the place.

“Not only the sellout, I think that was the routeiest crowd”

on my book tour. Our guest lineup for this one coming up is phenomenal, reporter Matt. Matt Sheer will be there. Irene Lee from Mayma, Dumplings will be there.

Reporter Ian Coss from WGBH will be there and I'll be there and it's gonna be a blast.

May first at WBU, our city space in Boston,

get info in tickets at sporkful.com/live. Okay, we now take you back to Swedish American Hall in San Francisco for our live show with Kenji Lopez Hall. (audience applauding) So off the success of your food lab column

on serious eats you release the food lab cookbook, your first cookbook in 2015, which takes a similar approach as the column. It includes recipes and techniques for everything from chili con carne to French onion soup to me loaf.

It gets reviews when's numerous awards, including the James Beard Award for Best General Cookbook. It's a huge hit to date.

“It sold more than half a million copies, congratulations.”

(audience applauding) And then you decide to open a restaurant. Yeah. (laughs) Worst tall in San Mateo, just a little south of San Francisco where we are tonight.

(audience applauding) It's ostensibly a German-style beer hall with all kinds of sausages, but you incorporate a wider range of flavors you have merit-guess, occasion sausages,

Korean fried chicken sandwich. Now, you said originally you weren't supposed to be super involved in the restaurant. You were gonna like, "Could you be to few recipes?" And then you share something that's so shamedy,

like, "Hey, I'm gonna be working on this restaurant "and food media kind of picked it up and went berserk." And it said, "Can Jesus opening a restaurant? "Subbly it became Kenji's restaurant." And that kind of changed your role.

Well, yeah, initially I was going to be a consultant. Yeah, and then it just became this like, "Oh, Kenji's opening a restaurant." And I, wrongly I felt, oh shit, like, people are gonna judge me on this thing now.

I better do it well. Why is that wrong? (audience laughing)

Because ultimately I shouldn't have let it control my life.

Like, I had a young daughter at the time and I started out as a full-time state on dad and like I picked up this restaurant thing and sort of like a, okay, like she sleeps during the days and times, like, I'll all work on this thing for a little bit.

That was sort of my plan initially, but then once we came to serious thing, it became like, okay, now like, I'm going to the restaurant every night after her bedtime. You know, it's like, I'll work at the restaurant part time

during the day while she's at daycare and then I'll come home to bed time and then I go to the restaurant from like, you know, 8 PM till 1 AM. Ultimately, it wasn't worth it to me.

I was following the process of the development of the restaurant on your Instagram and your pictures. All of the beer taps were installed today or here's this chicken sandwich we're testing. It's gonna be great and I was, you know, excited

to see what you were sharing. And then one day you wrote in all caps opening a restaurant is insane and I don't know why anyone in their right mind would choose to do it. - Yeah.

(laughing) - What was happening that day? (laughing)

“- I think most likely what happened that day”

was our first night of soft opening.

I think we had 80 people in there that night, fixed menu and, you know, we had tested at the kitchen and like everything was going fine in the line, like all the beer is pouring fine. What we didn't test was whether the bathrooms

can handle 80 guests and so the bathroom like, there's like an old cast iron pipe that was sagging that broke in the wall and flooded into the foundation. And so these brand new bathrooms that we had just had installed like we had to get them completely torn out and excavated

and it delayed opening by six weeks and just anyhow. (laughing) - That's the kind of stuff that happens. - Right. - And why you shouldn't open it?

(laughing) - But I mean it sounds like that was like, that was a rough time. I mean like how bad does it get? - That really does.

(laughing) - Was it like a rock bottom? - Yeah, I mean it affected my family life,

it affected my marriage, it was just...

It really was one of the same things like thinking like, when I'm like 80 years old and I'm gonna think to myself, I wish, I wonder if I could have opened a restaurant, I wonder if I could have started a successful restaurant and I'm gonna regret this.

Like saying no to this right now because it's like opportunities just like kind of falling on me. So I was like, yeah, I should probably do this for the experience of it and so I am glad I did it for the experience of it and I would recommend

that other people don't go through the experiences. (laughing) - So you left the restaurant in 2020, you no longer have any stake in it. Did you end up making any money off it?

- No. - I, I, I, it's sense. And you know, that was, that was the only paycheck I ever got about. - So all the work you did like all the venue developing

and all those hours, eight cents. - So I had like my management shares, I returned them to the pool and they had to pay me,

“I think at least a penny per share for some kind of legal”

reason. - Okay. - So yeah, so I get eight cents out of that. - So you can confirm it's not a great business to be in. - It's where you're selling.

- Yeah, if you wanna make money, no. (laughing) - If you wanna make money, - If you wanna make a good work life balance. - Right.

- If you wanna, any of the joys of life and no, it's not right. - Right, it's not right. - Being a best selling cookbook author is better. - Yes. (laughing) - Sure.

Speaking of which, these days, you're no longer right in the food lab column. You're writing occasional columns for the New York Times, which are similar in some ways, the food lab, they tend to involve a lot of research,

and testing to come up with a recipe. But a lot of your time has also spent on your YouTube channel

where you recently hit a million subscribers, congrats.

And in your, (audience applauding) Yep. And in your videos, you mostly just strap a GoPro camera on your forehead and cook something. - Yeah.

- It's not really edited.

“You watch your hands at work, we only see you,”

and you narrate as you go. It's sort of very improvisational. It's kind of based on whatever you happen to have in the kitchen or in the pantry, whatever you feel like cooking.

So in that sense, it feels very different from the food lab and the cookbooks. And it's almost the polar opposite. Is that by design? - The whole show is not by design.

Like it's just, I started doing it because there was a GoPro in front of me one day. While I was about to cook, and I only do it now because it doesn't interrupt my life. Like my criteria for when I'm shooting a video for that

is it has to be saying that it was gonna cook anyway, and it has to be something I'm cooking when there's nobody else in my family in the kitchen. If those two criteria are met and the camera battery is charged,

then I'll probably shoot it. - Right. So you've got your YouTube channel, it's going very well. And now we have the new book, The Walk,

Recipes and Techniques. - Yeah. - And now Kenji, I know you to be a lover of puns. - Yeah. - You acknowledge in a footnote in the book

that Walk is a very punnable word. But you didn't really go through all the potential. P puns you could have gotten the title of this. I don't know that I have them all, but this pork full team and I,

we were just brainstorming a little bit. You could have gone with everybody's walking. - Yeah. - Walk tall. - Yeah.

- We will walk you. - I think I did do we will walk you. - Maybe something to walk about. - Okay. - Walk around the block.

Walk around the clock. Chib off the old walk. - Yeah. - Walk on to forever. (laughing)

Walking for the weekend. - Uh-huh. - And my personal favorite,

which I legit think would be a great cookbook title.

Walk this way. - Yeah. - Right? - And yet you went with the walk. - Yeah.

(laughing)

“- So you started writing a sequel to the food lab”

and you were writing a walk chapter that ended up ballooning and you said, "This is just gonna be my next book." - Yeah.

- And you make it case that the walk

is the most versatile hand in the kitchen. Good for stir frying, deep frying, smoking, brazing, and more. You break down the science of walk cooking. I love this part of the book.

I also love that you cited a study from David Hoop Professor of Fluid Dynamics Georgia Institute of Technology who you had on this pork full for. Oh, you had him on. Yes, he broke down noodle slurping. I think about it every time I have noodles, but because he explained how as you slurped a noodle as it comes towards your mouth and more of it goes into your mouth the noodle outside of your mouth is getting shorter and shorter and therefore lighter and lighter. So it goes back and forth more and more increases the splatter ability factor. Yeah. That's my turn not his anyway.

You you said other studies as well that at least you explain how when you cook with a walk so you're using its slopes sides to toss the food up in the air and It's a parabolic circles. Yeah, and you say that it's the tossing of the food through the air that makes it cook so quickly

Which is the opposite of what I would have guessed. I would have guessed at food flying through the air. It's like blowing on the food. Like

Doesn't that cool it down? So yeah to some degree, but what you're really doing is you're encouraging evaporation and so in the in the same sense that like you know when you're Sweaty right blowing a fan at you is going to cool you off faster and it's going to get rid of moisture faster So like a lot of the energy that goes into cooking food goes into the evaporation of moisture. You know in certain cases, so if you're working with like a

You know with a gas burner the motion of tossing it you kind of create this column of hot air Their rises up the back of the walk from the fuel source and jumps up the back of the walk and so you're also kind of tossing your food Through that column of hot air. So you know you're essentially you're you end up cooking it faster By virtue of the fact that you're helping moisture evaporate faster

“You realize this book is going to start a walk craze, right?”

You you may be starting a whole new trend. I hope so It seems from the photos that I see an Instagram that unlike you your kids are growing up in a food obsessed house Is that fair to say yeah? Yeah, how would you say that food in your home now is different from food when you were growing up Like the role of food plays in your home today versus the role of food in your home when you were a kid for us Meal times when we were kids were so on rare occasions

They were like joy right it was like I get to like Mopotofu and and dumplings, right and those meals are great But but my mom was one of those types of moms that that whatever was on our plate. We finished it and so sometimes you know meal times were a chore right it's like your force to sit here and like my my sister My younger sister was the worst like where she would sometimes takes like three hours to eat a meal like there was Remember a there was a Saturday morning where my mom made oatmeal and my sister hates oatmeal

And she was sitting at the breakfast table for like two hours like we were already done watching cartoons And she took a bite and then like Like regurgitated it back out into her bowl, and then my mom made her eat it So that was our relationship to food No, I mean our our push to food at you know with our kids is is much more

Can you know like I like to let them let them feel empowered at the tables my daughter I'm shopping with me and says like I would like I want this duck. I want that charred Whatever and you know, and then we'll come home and figure out what we're gonna do with it and then she cooks with you She cooks with me. Yeah, most night, but most night like she If she doesn't finish her music time like her violent practice before I start cooking dinner

Then she has to practice violent through so that's like so not not getting to cook is like is like Punishment for her like she feels she feels it when she can't cook. She likes to cook But then sometimes she doesn't eat you know like sometimes she won't eat what she cooks Which is fine You said that when you decided to come a chef your mom was like I don't care if it's a high-end restaurant

“You might as well be flipping burgers. Yeah, what does she think now?”

So okay, so I have a New York Times call them and like that makes her happy, you know But other than that, you know, it's like She would rather have a doctor of course And what will you do if a if one hundred kids comes to you in 20 years and says they want to be a chef? Oh, and

I you know, I I

The moral backbone and then you know, they can they can do whatever they want with that right just don't

I've been a restaurant

“I might give them advice of that over in your restaurant. Yeah, but um, you know, but if there I mean that yeah”

There are people who love that, you know, I just found out I'm not one of them right but there are people who love it And if you love it do it

Well the new cookbook is out now. It's called the walk recipes and techniques

It's available wherever books are sold big hand for my friend Kenji low-bezzles Thank you to Swedish American Hall

“Thank you to all of you coming out to see our first live show in two and a half years. Thank you so much good night”

Thank you again to everyone who came out to our live show is great to see all of you

Thanks to Swedish American Hall and thanks to Kenji his new book the walk is really fantastic I already learned so much reading it can't wait to start cooking some of those recipes This show is produced by me along with senior producer Emma Morgan Stern and producers on Drace O'Haro and Johanna Mayer

“Our editor is Tracy Samielson the show is mixed by Amida Ganatra music help from black label music”

The sportful is a production of stitcher or executive producers are Peter Clownie and Daisy Resario Until next time I'm Dan Pashman and I'm Ben Perkins from Petaluma, California Reminding you to eat more eat better and eat more better This reheat was produced by Giana Palmer it seems that producers the sportful today includes me Loads of management producer Emma Morgan Stern and senior producer on Drace O'Haro our engineer is Jared O'Connell

Music help from black label music the sportful is a production of serious xm podcasts are executive producers Camille Stanley and hey Juni you can listen to the sportful on the serious xm app Yes, the serious xm app it has all your favorite podcasts plus over 200 ad free music channels curated by genre and era Plus live sports coverage your podcasting app have that and there's interviews with a list stars and so much more It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one right now

Sportful listeners can get three months free of the serious xm app by going to serious xm.com/sportful Until next time I'm Dan Pashman (upbeat music)