What’s The State Of The Bagel?

curse.

“And so if it turns out that people curse, we have a pre-recorded thing we can tack onto”

the start of the show, this episode contains explicit language.

But since Judy Gold is one of our guests, I'm just going to say it now, this episode contains explicit language. This is the sport fall, it's not for foodies, it's for eaters, I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food, to learn more about people and we're coming to be alive from the Bell House in Brooklyn.

Tonight we're doing a live version of the Salad Spinner, our rapid fire roundtable discussion of the biggest strain just in most surprising food stories of the moment. We even have the official sport fall salad spinner here on stage. Joining me tonight are two very special guests in addition to the Salad Spinner. She is a legendary comic whose work I have loved forever, she's also a writer and the

author of "Yes I can say that."

If you follow her on Instagram, you know she has no shortage of opinions about food and pretty much everything else, which makes her a perfect guest for a Salad Spinner. Please welcome the one and only Judy Gold! I'm just giving you a high five, because I can't stand up, and I'm just... Well, I'm not cursing at all this episode.

You fucking asshole. And he is the author of two best-selling James Beard Award-winning cookbooks, The Food Lab, and The Walk. He hosts a very popular YouTube channel, which he cooks with a GoPro strap to his forehead, and he founded a series of live shows called Tasting Notes that pair food with classical

music.

Welcome my friend, Kenji Lopez Altz!

So, it's great to have both of you here. Let's just take a minute before we get into Salad Spinner topics and just chat. Judy, I noticed on Instagram recently you posted a video about your love of borscht. Yes, I love borscht.

“Tell me more about what's your favorite kind of borscht?”

Okay, they have this hot borscht, no. I like the beat borscht, okay, with a boiled potato and sour cream. It is so delicious, I just, I crave it, I love it so much. And at the comedy seller, they have this restaurant called the Olive Tree, right? They used to have the cold borscht.

I would literally, I would hang out there, but I really, I mean, I wanted to do stand up, but I really wanted to eat the borscht. And now, they don't have it anymore, they have the hot borscht with the cabbage and the dinn, the meat and the bone and I'm, no. Can you just buy the hot borscht and weight?

I'll do the jokes, okay? Whatever. You've recently found this thing called tasting notes a couple years ago, right? So you're cooking on stage while people are playing classical music?

“That's how the shows have been, yeah, we, so we do, it's a live stage show that's sort”

of interactive. Yeah, and the idea is that musicians and chefs are both creative crafts people, you know? And so when I had the opportunity to try and figure out a way to put them together, that's where we can with tasting notes. And are you like going out there, is there a plan for what you're going to cook and

what music they're going to play or is it like whatever the spirit moves you? No, no, no. It's, I mean, it's scripted, so we do sort of discuss how, yeah, the themes of each section of the show and how the music and the food relate to each other. The one we're doing in Seattle is going to be a lot more, it's a small show, so it's

just me and a single violinist, my partner Tessa. It's going to be a lot of audience participation. So we have like 20 pounds of unflavored gummy bears. We have everyone's going to get blindfolds, everyone's going to get nose plugs and we're going to do all kinds of kind of fun, fun interactive things.

And you did one of these at a circus? We did a small version with the musicians from Cirque du Soleil. It was kind of just like a friend and family fun thing. You said it was a film of a lifelong dream for you to be in the circus. I did want to be in a circus when I was a kid.

What did you want? What job did you want? Sorry, I learned to juggle. I learned to write a unicycle, like I learned to play violin, maybe in a cycle.

I'm going to go with not that popular.

I was not popular. Yeah. Same tune.

“If you could have had any role in a circus, what would your role be?”

The tall woman. All right, let's get going with the salad spinner here. We have our actual salad spinner. I feel like you talked to him for like, you know, 10 minutes or when you're doing this show and you're doing that show and I get nothing.

What else do you want to talk about, Judy? Whatever. Let's go. Judy, can I ask you to please give the salad spinner a whirl? Are you going to stop now?

You're both native New Yorkers, so I want to start off today with a discussion of the state of the bagel, not just in New York, but across the country.

Judy, you first sum up the state of the bagel in one word.

In one word? All right. Asking Judy to do anything in one word is a bit unfair. It's over the top, over the top. I feel like I'm really upset about this whole pumbernickel bagel thing that's going on.

The appearance of the pumbernickel bagel. Right. We're not going to have pumbernickel bagels. Pumbernickel bagels are the best bagels. They're sweet, right?

They're sweet and they taste so great with the Schmier. I'm telling you, I'm really upset about the pumbernickel bagel thing and I'm also upset about like these are the best bagels. These are the best bagels. No, they're not the best bagels.

Okay. A lot of these bagels are good for like 10 minutes and that's it. It depends on how the water is, that's it. New York, New Jersey bagels are the best, that is the end of the discussion. Okay.

All right. And by the way, if you eat a blueberry bagel, don't ever talk to me. Okay, how do you feel about cinnamon raisin? Cinnamon raisin. I mean, it's very gauy asha, but it's been around for a long time.

So Judy, we've been talking about 10 minutes. We've talked about 10 minutes and you've come out hard in favor of borscht and pumbernickel bagels. Right. You're like a 102 year old Jewish woman trapped in the body of a 63 year old Jewish woman.

Right. With constipation. Then gee, you were shaking your head when Judy was saying that it's the water. Yeah. Okay.

You're not Jewish. Don't tell me. I want to interview Maria Balinska, a bagel historian. She sent samples of the water to a lab and they said that the water in New York is not special. The water in New York is not so well, the water in New York is also in the lab.

They're depending on the time of year, depending on what neighborhood you're in, you're getting water from multiple different sources in New York and they all have different dissolved mineral solids in them. So the water in New York is not even consistent. And it's not special.

I think the real difference because we've looked into this is that it's more just that there's more bagels, stores in New York with a longer history of bagel making. So there's more sort of inherited knowledge and there's a more discernant customer base because we've been eating bagels for so long and that's just, Judy, no, Judy, maybe true because I go to other states and the bagels are vastly different, okay?

And the Montreal bagels suck. I know everyone thinks that they are, yeah, we have the best bagel, no, you don't. You have not, you do not have the best bagels. Kenji, what did you say about this current state of the bagel in America?

“So I think it's exciting in some ways and all, you know, bagels are changing, right?”

So there's just like LA bagel trend now where the bagels are kind of more somewhere between a bagel and a baget. I tried one of the bagels you got from a lot of bagels. That was a lot of bagels. Yeah, I mean, if it didn't have a hole in it, I wouldn't recognize it as a bagel.

But you know, food changes all the time and like the bagels that we had. Not the bagel. No, come on. You moved to New York in 1984 and the bagels that existed in New York in 1984 were not the same as the bagels that were in New York in the 1970s, right?

They started getting bigger, they started losing their role. Everything was smaller in the 1970s. I mean, look at like the big Mac or like, you know, you look at what a soda was and when I was a kid.

Big Mac has always been 1.7 ounces per one.

You know what, you're so annoying. So annoying. Don't join the circus. I would say though, you know, I've lived in Seattle for the last six years. When I first moved there, there were no good bagels, but there is now like a bagel culture

there.

“And I think that's the real important thing is that in cities that don't have a bagel”

culture, the bagels end up sitting there, right? I mean, so you're not getting a fresh bagel and, you know, like Judy said bagels die really quickly. In fact, when I was a series of seats, we had this thing called the Heisen bagel and certainty principle, which is that it's impossible to compare two different bagels because

by the time you get them together, they've already changed, their status changed.

bagel is that, look, if you want to try different flavors of end toppings, whatever.

But to me, like a bagel is not just a role with a hole in the middle. It's a specific type of bread product that traditionally is made with high gluten flour so that it is chewy and dense. And if a bagel is light and airy, like, instead of like a baget or a croissant, it might be delicious, but that is not a bagel, like that is the hell I will die out of it is not

high gluten flour and chewy on the inside, then it's bullshit. That's fair.

“Bagels should not assimilate, that's why I have to say, also, I do not get my bagel”

- No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, (laughing) I have to say that I ate a couple of, of the trendy New York Bagel places today

in preparation for a conversation, Apollo and Utopia, and I liked Utopia much better, and they do do rainbow bagels. In addition to it, right now as we record this, we're just a couple of days past St. Patrick's Day.

They also do a brief, I know, I know, I know. Judy, you're gonna be apoplectic when you're here to this. A green bagel with cream cheese, top with lucky charms, and top. Oh, and hot honey. (laughing)

It's sad. (laughing) I just threw up a little in my mouth when I said that. (laughing) I can't argue the opposite side. We all agree. (laughing)

All right, next hot take. If you go into a bagel shop and ask them if any of the bagels are still warm,

and the answer is no, you should leave.

My take is in New York, I'm presuming that they're all baked relatively fresh, that they're turning them around. If they're warm, I'll get them with butter, if they've already cooled down,

I'll get them with cream cheese. But to me, some of the bagels in the shop should be warm. Like at least one of them should be warm. There should be some of the warm. That's fair.

If none of the bagels are warm, then they probably weren't made there, they're probably old. That's fair. Sorry, I wasn't supposed to get my take before you Judy. That's your take.

I got too excited. I asked when they were made. And if they're not warm anymore, I bring them home, and I put the convection bake on, and I heat them up.

I don't cut them first. I heat them up. And if they were made a few hours ago, they taste like they just came out of the air.

“You didn't run them under the tap or dip in the water first?”

No, not if they were made that day. Right, if you tried that, like if they're a day old, though, you're like, can't you? And I both run them under hot water for three seconds. Right, we can do that with bread, like, yeah.

All right. So don't act like, oh, oh, I already really want to. All right, one more hot take. If a bagel shop is good, they will not offer toasted bagels, Judy.

I agree, a disagree. They all offer toasted bagels. No, there's a handful of the refuse to toast bagels. Would you hold those in higher esteem? Yeah, I would.

Yes, I would. Yeah, I agree. A bagel should not be toasted.

You said Kenji wants, and I always think of this,

that toasting a bagel is like, it's an equalizer. Flattens the quality. So if you have a bad bagel, toasting a bagel does make it better. But if you have a really good bagel, then you shouldn't be toasting it.

Yeah, all the, all the, all the characteristics that make a good bagel good, that contrast between, like, that really crisp thin outer crust and, like, the treeness inside all that disappears when you toast it. Right, quick post script to this conversation,

regarding pumbernical bagels, which are, in fact, disappearing, as you said, Judy. Hot new bagel spots like Apollo, pop up, and dirty are not bothering making pumbernical bagels. The owner of dirty told grub street quote,

not a single person has asked about pumbernical. So I hate him, what does he say? What's his name? He's the owner of dirty. I think I know him, he's very nice.

He should be nice to him. No, he's not that nice, okay. Um, last thing about pumbernical,

“it's a German word, do you either where you know what it means?”

It loosely translates as goblin's fart. [LAUGHTER] Is that true? [LAUGHTER] I can't imagine why no one wants them.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Coming up, the salad's bitter keeps whirling. We'll cover recent revelations about abusive conditions of the Copenhagen restaurant in Noma. Then later we'll get to a new trend, babies

eating straight up butter, and we'll debate the limits of the term sloppy joke. Stick around. [MUSIC PLAYING] It's time to open up a can at retirement.

Welcome back to The Sportful, I'm Dan Pashman.

Last week on the show, we dive into China's recent move to ban imports of Japanese seafood. And what that looks like on the ground, both countries. I actually taped this episode on a trip to Beijing and Tokyo earlier this year.

A lot of person I talked to in Beijing said that the ban on imported Japanese seafood set off a panic among sushi chefs in China. If we don't have Japanese fish, we can run a Japanese restaurant. Repi people are almost saying, if we don't have Japanese fish,

how can we make Japanese food? During that time, I interviewed some Iraq articles and I interviewed a lot of the Japanese chefs. They are filled crazy. They think, oh, it's just like a tragedy.

Because they don't have fish. As it turns out, though, the ban might have actually improved sushi in China. Lucky for me, I get to try some.

I don't own a Kasei in Beijing.

That episode's up now. Check it out. All right, we're back with Cookbook author, Kenji Lopez Alt and Kama Judy Gold, and we're here live at the Bell House in Brooklyn.

[CHEERING] All right, let's keep it moving. Kenji's been the spinner.

“We're getting that on the mic, is that loud enough?”

All right. All right, we're going to get a little more serious here. In March, Julia Moskin and the New York Times wrote an expose and Renee Redzepi in his past behavior at his Copenhagen restaurant, Nomah.

Nomah's long, we consider one of the very best restaurants in the world. The times talked with more than 30 former Nomah employees who were led to pattern of physical abuse. Among other things, they say that when Redzepi was upset

with one of his workers, he would punch them or crouch down in the kitchen to avoid being seen by diners than poke his employees in the legs with forks. Now, there are long and critiques of labor practices that nomah many young chefs have moved

to Copenhagen into intern there for literally no pay, and they work such long hours. They can't have another job. The restaurant was already slated to close by the end of this year, but since this news broke Redzepi

has stepped away from the restaurant, and it's other ventures, including a limited run pop-up in LA. Kenji, you've been posting a lot about this on Instagram, you're a chef, you've worked in restaurants, you've owned a restaurant.

First off, just like obviously the restaurant industry

is not the only industry where this is an issue, but it does seem like certain industries have more of a problem with this than others, and the restaurant industry is one of them. Do you have a theory on why?

“- Yeah, I mean, I think this kind of stuff happens”

in any sort of hierarchical system where there's a lot of pressure. Most restaurants operate on really thin margins, and they're also very volatile, you can't move, when the weather's bad, your money goes down,

when beef prices go up, your money goes down, when the way restaurants are set up, like the people at the bottom, and the servers who rely on tips and stuff, they're sort of the first people to suffer from those volatile swings.

- Even in a well-run restaurant, that doesn't have abusive conditions, there's a lot of pressure. Everything has, you know, when you got a bunch of orders coming in, there's fire, there's knives, there's deadlines, you know,

so it's even a well-run kitchen is an intense place to work. - Yes, and when you're running your restaurant in a way that you don't have a contingency plan for when the pressure starts to come on, or when, like, a little mistake happens,

then there's some amount of chaos that ensues, and because of the way restaurants sort of have historically been run in this, like, really strictly hierarchical system, that ends up boiling over and turning into confrontations, which, with the wrong people, kind of,

- I wonder if part of it also, this is it, like, restaurants, and I say this is someone who's also worked in restaurants, and Judy, you've worked in restaurants, all three of us have worked in restaurants, but like, I feel like restaurants kind of attract misfits.

You're working nights and weekends, kind of, like, your whole life when you're working a restaurant, it's kind of, like, you're working when everyone else is not working in vice versa. So you're kind of, like, on outskirts of society.

- It is, it is. - Well, for being a comic, you know, it's the same style. - And I feel like, in the world of comedy entertainment, that's another field where you have disproportionate issues with this kind of behavior.

Do you have a theory on that, Judy? - I think, don't get mad at me.

“I think it's overwhelmingly men who behave like this.”

I think it's entitled people who behave like this, and it doesn't, and any, I'm saying, in any profession, there are so many high-pressure jobs, but just be nice. It's not hard to be nice.

It's not hard to apologize. It's not hard to say, hey, we need to talk. There's no reason for behavior like that. Zero in any job, and it's really, it's awful, it's not, and I, I've read this article,

and I'm looking at, they were showing video of like the workers standing there for hours, like putting a, you know, a tulip in the, whatever. They, no, it doesn't have to be, you can do the work and learn the craft without being abused.

- I haven't worked on the line in the restaurant

to sort of think about this, you know,

and thinking back, you know, there's people who are like, well, you know, if they don't like that, they can just leave. There's nobody, nobody's locking the door. They're not forcing them to stay there. The reasons I stayed in restaurants is,

you go into restaurants, and you end up isolated. You lose all of your friends, you lose all your family. You don't go to, you're working when most people are playing. And so your whole life just ends up being the restaurant life. - The restaurant life, yeah.

- And in that structure, you know, there's only one person there, the chef, who is a judge of whether you are qualified or not, you know, and so you end up in this cycle where you almost feel grateful that the chef is humiliating you because it means

that they see something worthwhile in you, okay? - Well, it's negative attention.

“- Well, yeah, that's the best thing you get in your head.”

And the most abusive chefs that I've known are also the most charismatic. And they're the ones that have these abilities to tell when they're just about to push someone over the edge and then give them that little bit of praise and say,

oh, like, that's a nice plate or like, you're ready to work on saute or whatever it is. And then the moment you feel that,

it's like this incredible high.

And it's not just, it's not like a fake feeling. You're like, you really feel great. You're knowing myself now as someone who has a history of addictions. It really is similar to, yeah, various addictions,

where it's like, you know something's not right. You know it's harming you, you can make the choice. There are many times when I said, okay, like, I'm gonna quit, I'm gonna quit working at this place. And I go into the chef's office, determine to quit,

and then I walk out the door 15 minutes later, thanking them and truly feeling grateful, you know? And so I think in many ways it reflects what people experience with, you know, domestic abuse and vestible, I was going to say,

you know, I was looking at these workers and hearing, you know, reading their stories about being abused. And you think, why didn't they speak up? And this happens to women all the time, where, you know, they're afraid to tell their story

because a, you know, one's gonna believe them. They have to prove it. And the person is more powerful than them. - If you're at Noma, even if you're getting abused, you have 500 friends from culinary school

who always think could be you.

It's interesting to me, Kenji, they used to talk about those people are often the most charismatic. - Well, psychopaths are charismatic. - Right, right.

But like, Renee Red's epi always struck me, sort of like a charlatan. You're like a very charismatic person who had put a lot of things over on a lot of people. I mean, this is a guy who is serving

reindeer-brain-custard and candied pine cones. Anyone who can convince people to pay thousands of dollars for candied pine cones? - Has to have some sort of-- - Just gloss over the reindeer-brainer.

(laughing) Well, that at least feels like something that could be expensive. - Oh my god, you're so cute. - Root-off-sprayem, as a dessert.

- No. - And not only that, they're paying thousands of dollars for the privilege. - This reminds me my son plays professional basketball. He's had different coaches through, you know,

since he's a kid. And a lot of the coaches are extremely abusive. But I noticed through coaching which coaches get the most out of the players. And they're not the abusive ones.

“- So in restaurants, I think, I mean, part of the problem”

is that legacy media and organizations, like the Michelin Guide, which I think should just be abolished. But the Michelin Guide, world's 50 best, even the James Beard Awards, they don't look at what's going on in the kitchen.

And when places like Noma that, you know, for a long time, their kitchen stuff is almost half unpaid interns. And interns were locked into three month periods. And you know, at that point, it's not,

it's not a staunch, it's not an internship. It's like, it's a business model, right? Where if you rely on unpaid labor to make your restaurant work, like that's a business choice you're making. So the people who are able to attract that kind of free labor,

be able to put all those man hours into a single plate of food, are the ones that win these sort of 50 best things. And so it encourages the next restaurant, the next chef to push even harder, because they don't get punished for doing the bad things,

that get them there. - Right. - Well, I'm not happy to know. - Hey now. - Judy, it's just-- - I'm hungry.

(laughing) I want some rain to your ass on a pump or nickel bagel. - With honey and-- - With a side of borscht? - Yeah, with side of work, yeah. - I've had beollies that look kind of like rain to your ass, man.

(laughing) - I don't know what a rain to your ass looks like. So-- - Kind of like a beollie. - All right, thank you for that visual. (laughing)

- Judy, it's your turn to spin the spinner. - Oh my god. (water splashing) - I really give it a spin. - All right, good.

You can suck. (laughing) - I asked each of you to bring in a hot take or story to share.

“Judy, your first one, what'd you like to talk about?”

- I don't know if you know this. I was on chopped all stars. I've competed on a bunch of food shows.

I knew they thought that I was gonna make it

“to the next round because the next round,”

one of the ingredients was mothsa. (laughing) I swear to God. And no one knew what to do with that and I would have been like, oh, I'm gonna make mothsa fry

and I would have won. But anyway, I lost, but you know, I used to make the kids sloppy, Joe's all the time and I used the manwitch and now that- - I lost the answer.

- I lost the answer. - I lost the answer. (laughing) - All right, I'll give you that one, but that's it. (laughing)

It's now called daywitch. Okay. (laughing) Anyway, so now I cook all the time. I love cooking and I was like,

I'm gonna make homemade sloppy Joe's.

So this past Sunday made sloppy Joe's

and they were so delicious and my friend is gluten-free annoying. So I made smashed potatoes and put it on top of the smashed potatoes and it was delicious. - But then I'm talking to these guys backstage

telling them and they're like, "Wow, it's not really sloppy, Joe, 'cause it's not on bread." But I don't agree. Don't you think you can have sloppy Joe's on potatoes? - Well, that's a tepid of flaws.

- Oh my God. (laughing) - It might be delicious. - It might just not be sloppy Joe's. - Yeah.

- Kenji's got a great recipe for crispy smashed potatoes if you need one of you. - You too? - Yeah, we could combine my potatoes with your... - Oh my God.

- And you can open a restaurant together. (laughing)

“- What's the secret to good crispy smashed potatoes, Kenji?”

- Well, you're cooking twice. You cook them once. - You let them cool. - Yeah, you can boil them and smash them and then you let them cool and then you cook them again.

- Oh, oil them and put them in the end. - Lots of oil, lots of oil and hot oven, yeah. - All right, Kenji, what's your hot take or thing you want to share? - My hot take, I don't think it's a hot take

anywhere except on a stage with you, okay. Which is that spaghetti is great. - Yeah. - Oh, man. (laughing)

- So just to fill you in, Judy. I mean, I invented a pasta shape which I gifted to you backstage in the process of inventing it. I studied many other shapes and I decided

that I think spaghetti sucks because it doesn't hold any sauce. It's impossible to keep it on your forehead. - Oh, my god, no, that's all I have to say. - Can we go through, you have three defined criteria

for what makes good pasta? We can go through each one of those in terms of spaghetti and I'm going to explain myself to you. - Why don't you lay them out for Judy? - Okay, so there is forcability.

- Which is how well does it stand your forehead? There is tooth syncability and there's sauceability.

All right, so forcability, so first of all,

I would say, so you're really into sort of this total food experience, right? And I would say, that's called eating well. - Yeah, yeah, so the experience, like the sensual experience of twirling spaghetti

on your spoon and like the memories that brings up, like the lady in the tramp stuff, like all of that, I really enjoy twirling spaghetti on a fork and watching the strands roll up, pulling it up when you get that perfect

fork of spaghetti where it's twirling up and there's just a little bit hanging down, so mostly, if it's ringer mouth, but you get a little bit of a slurp at the end. - Yeah, and it happens like one out of every 10 bites.

- Well, okay, I would argue that maybe you don't know how to use a fork very well. (laughing) - Now, tooth syncability, let's talk about tooth syncability. So that's like the bite, right?

And I agree, if you're eating a single strand of spaghetti, not my ghetto. - That's the ghetto, yeah. - Not much tooth syncability in that, but nobody eats a single bite of a strand of spaghetti.

The individual strands combine together when it's sauce properly, they combine together, and you get this mass, and it's almost the same way that like, if you were to take a single layer of a croissant, you know, it doesn't have much texture,

but you take all those layers together, and you bite into it, and you feel that you feel those little sinks, and you feel that's the taste between them. - It's really good spaghetti, cooked just right, tooth syncability

is the one of the three that it can have. - Possessability, again, like if, you know, I feel like, you know, when you, you pair your pasta shape to the sauce. So I imagine it's like, if I spilled this sauce

in the floor, like, what kind of tool would I use to clean it up, right? You know, so if it's like, bull and yays, I would use like a washcloth, right? And so like, a papper deli makes sense.

“If it's something more liquidy, I would use a mop, right?”

And that's where spaghetti makes sense. And if you cook your spaghetti properly, if you finish it in the sauce, and you have that good, starchy pasta water, then just the right amount of sauce

does actually cling to this spaghetti. So if you have a problem with the sensibility of spaghetti, either you like your spaghetti too saucy, or it's, once again, just kind of user, user error. (laughing)

- Wait, so let me get this straight, Kenji, you're telling me that if you've got even if I grant you that you got the perfect sized bite of spaghetti on a fork with no danglers. - I want danglers, but yeah, go ahead.

- Okay, and there's all this sauce left on the plate,

You're telling me that if you take that fork with spaghetti and rub it around the plate like a mop, it's gonna pick up sauce. If you're gonna put the sauce around the plate,

“but then what are you supposed to do with the leftover bread?”

Like the sauce they're on. - Yeah, that's exactly right, that's great. - I'm on, that's the size, that's like your compensating for a flaw in the pasta. - No, it's all part of the experience.

It's like any leftover spaghetti sauce, a bit of garlic bread, rub it around in there, that's like the best bite of the meal, and you would not have that. It's better than any of the bites of spaghetti.

(laughing) Judy, what's your take on spaghetti? - I love spaghetti. It's childlike and it's delicious and it's fun. I think you're being a little too serious

about this pasta stuff, seriously. - I like pasta, I like the taste of pasta. I love spaghetti. - Obviously it scratches in a styleage 'cause many of us-- - Right, we were a kid.

But it's also like, it's the oldest industrialized pasta shape, and it's the most popular mass-produced pasta shape, which to me makes it very primitive. It's like, we're just eating the same shape, we were a kid, like we're not gonna try to do any better.

I mean, like as far as the only thing that I took from the lady in the tramp canji is that it's spaghetti's a pasta shape that's only fit for dogs. (laughing)

- Listen, so Cascatelli, and I know you put a lot of personal work in the Cascatelli, and I love Cascatelli.

“I think it's a great shape for many things,”

but if all you're doing is trying to kind of optimize these three things that you arbitrarily picked. - If all you're doing arbitrarily-- - It's all you're doing is trying to optimize. It's like if you ask, like if you ask AI to write a song

for you, and it gets like every point exactly right, but it's missing the human element. It's missing like the little bit of a-- - Oh, no, look, it's the room, just in the phone. (laughing) I think that any pasta shape, because of the nature of dough,

anything doughy, is always gonna scratch a deep itch,

and there's always gonna be an nostalgia factor when you eat any pasta regardless of the shape. So I think that that-- - I would argue that. - I think spaghetti's also really good with cherry tomatoes. - Cook cherry tomatoes.

- Yeah, if you can get the times of the fork out of the end of the ball of spaghetti's, you can stab those tomatoes. How do you get them in the bite, Judy? - What is wrong with you? (laughing)

- A lot of things, we don't have time for that. - You tensile psychosis, or something. (upbeat music) - All right, let's spend this better one more time who's churn is it?

“- I think it's George. - I think it's Kenji.”

- That's very delicate. - He's very gentle. - Yeah, all right. Time now for the lightning round. Let's keep our answers short.

According to the cut, people are now feeding their babies straight up butter. One mom fluencer said that grass bed butter is, quote, "the best snack for babies no one talks about." There is some scientific support for this,

because it is true that babies need a lot of fat in their diets. Judy and Kenji, you both have kids, although I think they're all old enough to have been weamed off of straight butter by now. Is there one thing you fed your kids

when they were little that maybe sounds absurd or feels absurd and retrospect?

- Both of my kids first solid foods were pizza.

- Okay. (laughing) - Would you have considered feeding them straight butter if it wasn't trend when your kids were little? - No! - I mean, I like my kids taste butter,

'cause I like to taste butter, but... - But you weren't like to know my butter. - No, my daughter for her fourth birthday, my letter pick what she wanted for dinner. We went to the Japanese supermarket

and she asked for a bag of salmon heads and so we had roasted salmon heads for her fourth birthday. - Oh, God, just lost my appetite. (laughing) - Which is like some reindeer brains.

- Yes, there's two of that. - With salmon, some reindeer. Very, a lot of people don't realize how good they taste together, yeah. - Next up, the great British baking show recently

announced a long time judge, Prue Leath, will be leaving the show in the passport. We'll guess Nigella Lawson will be taking over my question for you, who would you choose to replace Prue wrong answers only?

(laughing)

- I've never seen the show.

(laughing) Well, who's someone who you think should be a judge on a cooking competition show? - Judy? - Yes, I agree, Judy Gold.

- Okay, yeah, okay, I mean, is that... (laughing) - Yeah, I think I'm in. And I can fake the accent. (laughing) - You can't curse though, Judy.

- Do you know how I curse that much? - No, no. (laughing) - Yeah, I would love that job. - You would be very good.

- I would just love that job, you know. But don't they have to be mean? - Is that gonna be hard for you, Judy?

I'm a caustic and vulnerable.

(laughing) - All right, next up, a recent article "The New York Times" is about the new meal replacement trend, a bunch of products that are similar to toilet,

“if you remember that, but updated for the age of Instagram,”

the article says, "Asperationally branded meal replacements "are hitting algorithms and shelves in droves, "targeting Americans who feel busier, more strapped, "and more health conscious than ever." One person, quote in the piece,

"That after drinking so many of his meals, "you recall the period of time "when eating solid food would make his jaw hurt." - No, no, no, no. (laughing) - Judy, what's the saddest thing you ever ate?

(laughing) - What are those things, those, those green gummies? - Yes, and it's this packet of just green gummies, and there's a lot of them, and it's like, all your vegetables, it's so, I have 17 bags of them at home.

'Cause they make you sign up, and then I couldn't find out

how I signed up, and I couldn't get up to stop, and I have all these bags of greens at home. (laughing) - You haven't subscribed a groomed subscription? - He's a joy out of eating, you know?

- So, Kenji was the saddest thing you ever ate. - I don't know about the saddest, but I do get sad when I, you know, I don't get back to New York too often, but I love a New York hot dog from a street vendor and subrets, like best brand, what I really hate is when you go

to one of the vendors that has a subrets umbrella, but they give you saying that's clearly not a subrets hot dog. - I have had a couple of protein balls in my day, that's what I said. You know, it's like, we mashed up these different nutrients

and put it into ball form, you know, it's just like, but like you're just hungry and you're on the go and you need something. Last item in the lightning round. Gotham is reported that a German tourist

is suing the New York taco chain Los tacos number one, because their salsa is too spicy. He complained that after eating a taco with their green salsa, his tongue burned, his mouth hurt, his face turned red and his heart rate soared.

“One important fact, a bit of context that I need to add here,”

it was the first time he ever ate tacos. (audience laughing) A judge ruled in the restaurant's favor, but have you ever been tempted to sue a restaurant and if so, why Kenji?

- So this reminds me, I've never been tempted to sue a restaurant,

but this reminds me of a story. So when I lived in San Mateo, I lived near this bar called The Swing in Door, which is like an English pub. They have like a burger with like their own homemade hot sauce

on it, and if you eat it, you get your name on the wall, that kind of place. A few years back, somebody ate one of those burgers, he was really hot, and then they suit the restaurant, and everyone thought like, oh, that's like ridiculous,

but then I went and looked up the court filings. This person ended up like, yeah, soaring heart rates really like burning things and then the capsace and like burned a hole in his esophagus, and he aspirated like some of the chili

into his lungs, and he was in a coma for eight days. - Oh my God. - He's working on it now. Anyway, I've never thought of suing a restaurant. (laughing)

“- My thanks to my guests tonight, Kenji Lopez Al,”

as a cookbook author and YouTuber, go check him out on Instagram at Kenji Lopez Al, and on YouTube at J. Kenji Lopez Al, big hand for Kenji. (cheering and applause)

- And Judy Gold is a comic writer and author. She performs all over the country. She is upcoming shows in Boca, Appleton, Wisconsin, Toronto, and Charlotte, follow her Instagram at Judy Gold,

that's spelled J.E.W.D.Y. Thank you, Judy. (cheering and applause) - Next week on the show, I talk with someone who had a sudden anthropological reaction to red meat, and more and more people in the U.S.

are falling victim to the same fate. What's happening? Listen next week to find out. Why wait for that one? Check out our two most recent episodes

about my trip to Beijing and Tokyo. I visit two restaurants in Beijing that tell the story of how China's restaurants seen as grown from essentially nothing in just the last 40 years.

And we talk about how tension between Japan and China are playing out over seafood. Both those shows are up now. Thank you all so much for coming out. Good night.

(cheering and applause) - And hey, Judy, you can listen to the sportful on a serious XM app. Yes, the serious XM app and has all your favorite podcasts. Plus over 200 ad-free music channels

curated by genre and era. Plus live sports covers. You're podcasting up have that. And there's interviews with A list stars and so much more.

It's everything you want. And a podcast app and music app all logged into one. And right now, sportful listeners can get three months free of the serious XM app by going to SiriusXM.com/sportful.

This episode was produced by me, along with Managing Producer. - I'm a Morgan Stern. - And Senior Producer, Fundraise O'Hara. - It was edited by Camille Stamley.

- Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. - Our interns are Morgan Johnson and India Rice. - Music help from Black Label Music. The sportful is a production of SiriusXM podcast,

Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

- And I'm Shalini in Hamilton, Bermuda.

“We might need you to eat more, eat better,”

and eat more better. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]