ramble hey before we get into today’s episode we want to tell you about good mythical evening for one night only we are bringing you good mythical evening streaming exclusively on moment house get your ticket for a most indecent sloshy and random show that takes our classic good mythical morning favorites and torches the rule book the show is live september 1st to jumpstart the labor day weekend tickets are on sale right now at goodmythicalevening.com if you guys notice a little bit of a delay today nicole and i are each home for the holidays but we took our fancy microphones home with us so you wouldn’t be stuck podcastless [Music] ah the holidays they’re filled with magic and wonder and sweet treats and family and togetherness and a whole lot of useless cliches trying to get you to buy more stuff today we discuss does food really bring people together this is a hot dog is a sandwich ketchup is a smoothie yeah i put ice in my cereal so what that makes no sense hot dog is a sandwich a hot dog is a sandwich welcome to our podcast a hot dog is a sandwich the show where we break down the world’s biggest food debates i’m your host josh air and i’m your host nicole handy zade and today we’re joined by my friend kush boucha she’s the restaurant editor of food and wine magazine her writing has been featured in eater bon appetit new york times washington post gq as well as the best american food writing 2018 kosher highlights the intersectionality of food diversifying the who and the what of restaurant coverage in her work coach how did we do on your bio that’s actually pretty good i’m also in 2019 though i’m sorry we’ll go but we’ll re-record the pocket just come on the podcast next year just keep that gravy chain rolling uh also i mean your biggest accolade is you were once my editor and you once just sent me like a text saying what if animal fries but pizza and then i indeed made animal fries with pizza so to me like that’s that’s a huge honor i think you know honestly that might be the highlight of my career i think i peaked then and it’s all been down thank you so much uh anyways the reason you’re here one is uh because you’re awesome really great and you’re also formative in this podcast because before it ever existed like months before this podcast existed you and i were having dinner together uh with farley and your friend zoe at birdie g’s in los angeles and you were like josh hey what you got going on at work that’s my impression of you by the way uh and i was like i was like i think we’re gonna start this podcast and ideas everyone has like a hot take about food and like they don’t really talk about it and there’s a market gap blah blah blah and you were just like yeah i don’t believe in hot fruit and i was like what that’s correct you don’t believe in hot fruit no that concept is abhorrent to me i love fruit let me make this very clear abundantly clear my twitter bio even goes so far as to say that i i think my twitter bio says who knows that i’m an aspiring fruit journalist i would love nothing more than to actually spend the rest of my career just covering the ins and outs of produce but okay hot fruit is terrible like it is just wait we should save it we’ll save it we’ll save it for safer for opinions silly casseroles because we we actually have something that we came here to discuss another hot take that you put out on twitter like a week or so ago was that uh people always say how food brings people together but you said that you thought the more interesting parts about food are where it divides us and we had planned to do this thing centered around you know the holidays because this is when that cliche always always comes about and i think it is something that we’ve sort of accepted because every brand has screamed it at us and we’ve used it as a platitude for so long but yeah i mean i wanted to give you you know the space to kind of uh talk about where you think food divides us so i mean i guess we should all like say our thoughts you know uh i mean do you think as a whole food brings people together i mean sometimes but i i don’t know i actually think there’s more dividing lines around food and not just in like you know this this restaurant’s pasta is better than this restaurants pasta it’s um there’s a lot of people like really break down you know like so food is so tied to religion in so many ways right like religion shapes the way a lot of people eat and therefore a lot of their beliefs are tied and value judgments of the world are tied to food like take for example you know halal versus haram or like you know something is kosher but that language extends beyond like is this hamburger halal it’s like oh that you know that move i did or that decision i made that was like a halal decision or a haram decision or like oh that’s kosher like is that good to go you know and so these value judgments that are placed you know that actually are rooted in like food which i find very interesting and there’s such strong opinions on like you know whether you should be eating meat you shouldn’t be eating me um you know meat in particular it’s like one of the most fascinating ones right like it was like me eating along gender lines me eating along like socio-economic lines um and they’re such strong opinions i mean i’m indian indian uh american and you know within south asian culture i mean when you break down like cast and you know all of this kind of stuff like there is literal violence around the concept of eating meat and it’s something that you know food is like the root of so many wars too so i don’t know i really am auntie this food kumbaya uh movement you know that’s cute but it’s just not true i’m grinning from ear to ear so hard right now because that is i mean like you seem to have a lot more personal experience with that concept but that is those are my like exact beliefs but nicole i feel like you light in the mood come on bring us up get us excited about food again well you know with my experience i mean yeah food does divide people all the time like i was a girl persian girl bringing cab off to school being made fun of for making for bringing fart meat to school and it’s unfortunate but it was true but i feel like the older i’ve gotten the more diverse my food expeditions get the more togetherness i feel with my personal like group of friends and my family so like of course like people are like not open to trying new things and people are you know very very secluded in their in their decision making when it comes to food people have their comfort zones but i feel like living in la and having the opportunity to try things and explore different cuisines and explore different cultures has helped lend to more people that are different coming together with my experience yeah i give you that i mean there’s also this idea right i think especially when you’re an immigrant like a child of immigrants or yeah you know second or third gen like often your only connection to your culture in many ways is the food like a lot of people don’t even have language connections or anything like that so it’s like the one thing you kind of cling to it’s the one thing that like brings you know people like you together sometimes it’s like the thing you can connect over that you relate over um so yeah i think that that is actually like a fair fair element you know people coming together over food i have a question for you guys do you guys like whenever you’re with your family do you guys eat together like actually like physically together because i never would eat like with my mom and dad and stuff i would always eat alone and it wasn’t until i dated started dating my fiance and i realized that like people eat food at a dinner table together and they i’m not kidding because i because my family doesn’t do that like i sit like in the living room my mom like sits in the kitchen my dad is watching a packers game in the tv room you know so the actual togetherness do you guys eat with people like at your homes and stuff nicole you’ve seen me eat you’ve seen you’ve seen how i operate with food i am i am standing over the sink i ate lasagna with my hands last night over the sink uh but no i mean i i was a complete lash key kid and so you know we i didn’t grow up with family dinners like occasionally you know when one of my parents who they were divorced at the time so they’re separate you know saw the family even further dissolving they’re like i’m gonna like shake my computer screen for emphasis that no one can hear but i want to do it they’re like we’re gonna eat together as a family and enjoy it and i’m like okay uh so if that’s your idea of togetherness you know i don’t know i suppose but that is such a you know quote-unquote american ideal right of like every night we sit together and we have dinner at the table it’s a very like norman rockwell thanksgiving thing and i don’t think to me that’s one of those things that’s like um if you’re trying to do that to force togetherness then you’re not together in the first place you know right in a way for sure and so i never had that experience personally yeah i was also very much a latchkey kid you know my dad was like building he’s a doctor but he was like building his medical practice at the time and like would frequently come home at like 9 10 11 p.m so it’s like and then you know when you have like so many after school activities too right growing up like between like sports and whatever there was a lot of you know me my mom just like feeding me whenever there was like time to eat it’s a little bit different now actually during pandemic it’s been interesting like my family has been eating together a lot more um more than we kind of ever have which is yeah it’s sort of fascinating that way but we don’t always eat the same thing i’m like i’m sort of a bra i don’t always want you know i mean incredible luxury right now that my mom often cooks dinner like but i’m now at the point where i’m so back in pandemic like i’ve just been home for too long that like my level of appreciation has gone back to like high school levels where i’m just like oh i don’t want this i want taco bell um and so instead like i end up cooking something you know separate uh like you know often my brother will get in on like whatever i’m cooking because he’s such a brat but it’s fine um love him he’s great uh yeah so but we still will sort of eat at the same time or my dad does this really annoying thing lately where he just like will refuse to accept that he actually wants what you’re making but just like like his own portion but insists on eating it from you and it’s just kind of like what’s your plate like yeah on your plate dude story of my life every time i get something to go i like see a little like corner of it like innocuously missing and i just look at my mom and i’m like did it taste good sharla and she’s like it was okay like thanks for eating my pokey mom yeah my dad always just wants like a little bit but like dad bites are just like they’re so different than normal people bites for whatever reason i don’t know why that’s the case but no i’ve been taking i’ve been taking dad bites since i was like 14. i fully understand that because if you it’s like it’s like the the nacho paradox right where if you say can i have one nacho when someone agrees yes and you pick it up and say the entire nacho plate is stuck together that still counts as one nacho therefore due to nacho sovereignty rule you are allowed to eat all those nachos maybe i’m the reason i don’t think food brings people together because i take advantage of food and i am the one you know who is sort of reaping what i sow in that sense hey hot doggers we wanted to tell you about our exciting upcoming event mythicon heck yeah we do mythical is our first ever immersive weekend experience with the mythical kitchen rhett and link and a big old bunch of the mythical crew there’s a carnival a dance party live podcast it’s gonna be huge it’s on october 28th to the 30th in austin texas for one weekend only so you don’t want to miss it check out mythicontickets.com for ticket availability event details and any updates tickets are on sale now including packages chalk full of super exclusive merch and a very special sunday brunch with your favorite mythical crew members and we all know your favorite mythical crew member is nicole over to mythicontickets.com right now to check out availability but no i mean coach have you like noticed any difference in your family togetherness with like eating dinner at the same time i mean it’s compounded by the pandemic where we just don’t get enough separateness that i think it’s almost it’s almost gotten worse like i just never noticed growing up like how much my dad again love my dad but like does not contribute to like the domestic situation in the house so it’s like without fail after dinner he just like clears out and like goes and watches like youtube videos and it’s like me and my mom and like sometimes my brother when i you know complain enough um like cleaning up the kitchen like you know breaking everything down i’m like what is this this is something like and it’s interesting you know my parents have like a very you know my mom’s a dentist like she’s very like a you know a very strong personality and whatever but it’s like weird where their like relationship takes this division yeah totally it makes me i become very rageful at it constantly that’s that’s one of the reasons i i really don’t like the idea or the sentiment that food brings people together is because i think you’re like washing out so much like so much labor and so many other things that go into the production of food and literally everything down to like who’s washing the dishes afterwards that for people to say such an empty cliche like food brings people together to me it’s like you’re ignoring everything about it you know that has the power to divide like you said on gender lines along class lines i mean food is literally the first thing that i ever noticed in my life that divided people like literally i just you know you grow up you grow up as a kid you’re so thank you for the question nicole uh you’re you grow up you grow up as a kid you grew up as a kid and you like don’t understand your home situation in context to a lot of other people’s you know what i mean because you’ve normalized it for so long and then i remember you know showing up to school and like you know my lunch was like i’m gonna make it sound like i’m a uh like you know an orphan i wasn’t but it would be like you know like we were poor we had like a single slice of ham in between like crappy white bread and like and nothing it was like drink from the drinking fountain you eat your single slice of ham sandwich and that’s your lunch and i was like this is normal and it’s a perfectly fine lunch and then i saw what all the other kids were bringing and this is in orange county so it’s like height of you know soccer mom yuppie dumb yeah like i resent milano cookies and kudos bars because the rich kids brought them i literally saw a striation in like poor this is orange county so like upper middle class and rich and it was like the rich kids are bringing milanos the poor kid or the poor kids are bringing a single slice of ham sandwich and then the upper middle class kids are bringing like you know the the costco chocolate cream cookies that don’t necessarily have a brand on them right i immediately saw these lines that just divided people so clearly and it was like i want to get to a point in life where i can eat milano cookies you know so i just to me it was always a dividing line yeah food is so tied to status right like think about the lunchable like that was like the height of like lunch coolness for me i mean they’re absolutely trash they’re total trash like what like a what a waste of like everything but yeah i’m like i had to beg my mom for months to like buy me a lunchable i think i’ve maybe gotten lunchables twice in my entire life same oh my gosh so similar my mom would be like this is garbage this is processed garbage and i’m like i want to dip my nachos in the yellow paint that’s all i want to do mom let me dip them small round nachos in the yellow paint but at the cardboard pizza yeah do you feel like the older you’ve gotten though you’ve like the more self-actualized you become and since you guys are both food journalists don’t you think that you guys bring people together with your food writing nicole did you just call me a food journalist you were you were yeah but like we’ve been working together for the last two years i do the same job that we do now josh you know you are okay i’m going to say former yeah i have officially retired food journalist emeritus no but like the work that you’ve done don’t you like to think that it brings more awareness and creates a world in which you bring people together with your writing styles or do you i think what do you think i think i think it creates more awareness for sure at least the stuff i’m really interested in doing i think sometimes it can bring people together as far as like people from one community because it’s suddenly recognition you know in like a national publication or or something you know that they’re traditionally not recognized in or like haven’t been um but again you know like just take indian food for example like indian food is like you know india is not like a monolith as a culture right like indian food is like almo you know it’s kind of a joke to kind of say that like just the food is so disparate you know every region every like i mean cast obviously plays like a huge influence on like what people eat how people eat um you know along beyond like geographical lines you know and economic lines um so yeah i don’t know i i struggle i struggle with it yeah i think on one hand you know people are excited to like see this kind of stuff you know being covered and like that brings me a lot of joy and i just like like to highlight people that are doing really cool work um but i think i’m not sure it’s like necessarily doing a lot to like bring people together necessarily yeah yeah i see what you’re saying i mean nicole this is something we kind of touched on in our instagram ruining food episode where you know we kind of talked about this idea of um food media being so prevalent right now that like literally everybody’s seen food network and food is i think more top of mind for everybody than any other time in history right and i’m like you know through my rose colored classes i want to believe that that’s just like make conditions better people won’t mind you know paying 18 for ramen and you know an equivalent amount for spaghetti or whatever like is if we can you know sort of shine the light on these communities that have not been seen before and blah blah and i think there’s there’s certainly like a hero complex to that and i think also i think i think also with our sort of want for instant gratification we’re like well we’re not seeing any results right now so this sucks but i think it raises the question of like does does bringing awareness actually like help anything get better you know like how do you measure that i don’t know because there’s still like there might be an acceptance around someone’s food but there’s not necessarily an acceptance of the person right like culture there’s plenty of like idiot racists that like will just down like you know quesaberria they’ll like down burritos down whatever but then they’re like build a wall you know like that’s like the tough place yeah it’s that same idea you know though you know they’ll use terrible you know slurs in the same sentence as being like okay yeah can i have tacos for dinner tonight you know it’s like it’s kind of that that idea i don’t know i don’t know why i’m so cynical today what happened sometimes i’ve seen food bring people together this one time um no i mean if i think about you know one of the things is you know food is morally neutral right it’s a it’s a thing we’ve been putting in our body for millennia of course it has cultural significance but we use it for energy then we turn it into poo right food is not good or bad um food does not inherently did you just wait wait i’m sorry can we backtrack you just said go ahead did you say food is poo or food will be poo food that is a scientific fact that i i believe in i am i am pro science on this podcast i believe that food does eventually become poo i think some i think the liquid is extracted and that becomes p okay anyways the point the point that i was trying to make i don’t even remember anymore i just got into pre-poo um no the fact that food is pre-poop which is hilarious to me but no the fact that you know it’s it’s morally neutral it doesn’t inherently bring people together or divide people um but it’s the way that people have interacted with it for literally forever it could be said about literally anything right does religion bring people together certainly it brings people of that same some people religion of the same church you know it brings them together and then you’re like oh man but the crusades happened and like still to this day people are persecuted because of it it’s the same thing with with food you know i don’t think there’s anything special about food that can uniquely bring people together or divide them it’s all the crap that we put on it video games are you know the same way you could apply it to literally anything like there’s a you know apparently a diverse you know diverse groups of people that play video games and people unite and meet friends that never would have otherwise and then like gamergate happens and steve bannon mobilizes video game people to vote trump in so it’s anything can be used as a tool you know and food is no exception but i think the difference is we buy a lot of food and people want to sell us that food so they sell us a rosy idea of it yeah i mean i think food can physically bring people together but physically bringing people together doesn’t it i like to think so as well everybody we are reaching so hard for positivity right now i tried to go down a positive route and then i was like gamergate happened the video game kids on 4chan were sending bomb threats to politicians yeah i guess it doesn’t necessarily translate into like an emotional togetherness which is i think that’s the thing we’re just over people like peddling because i think it just did people want to glaze over the realities of things i think we would actually just do much better if we just acknowledged them instead and didn’t pretend that like like a beautiful lasagna not the one that josh made last night or whatever um you know will suddenly like heal all the problems like when that’s not the you know that’s just not the case um and especially with food media like just it’s just so people are so full of crap when they when they tout that line yeah it’s just them not wanting to do the work of like you know fixing doing you know fixing the real issues at play how do you guys think food can bring people together is there a way that us can work together like the power rangers of food is there a way in which food can bring people together and how can we do that and how can we tell our listeners to do that i just don’t think in america in particular that we fully understand like the real cost of food or we really value like what goes into things we have this expectation that things are supposed to be really cheap it’s actually like a piece i’m working on right now i mean compared to other countries with like a similar gdp we spend such a small portion of our incomes towards food but like the discount is the discount in quotes that we get is actually like the real cost is like human labor like the people that are you know growing like farmers are totally suffering you know farm workers are just treated unbelievably terribly you know they’re doing such hard labor for such for so like so little stability like no health insurance like nothing you know they’re like treated like actual crap um you know and then that like there’s just continual issues along the food chain you know even in grocery stores like we expect expect prices to be so low but if we just raise them slightly like it would benefit you know the people who grow the food like massively and then you know at restaurants we don’t pay enough you know for for the labor that actually goes into preparing these meals um and like the real food cost so they’re running on such tiny margins so then you know it’s an industry that continues to you know demean the workers that like you know are part of it like there’s no you know we’re still dependent on a tipping system there’s not benefits you know people are not paid enough in these it’s just like this constant perpetuating cycle so i think it’s like if people understood the value of food more and like the labor that goes into it like i think actually ultimately that would bring us more together in the fact that like more people would just have better lives that make sense that might be really reaching so you think educating the masses is the first step to bringing people together like actually having people in the united states understand where their food is coming from and who’s giving them their food it’s like the first step yeah a hundred percent and instead of just educating it it’s like getting people to accept this fact i think a lot of people accept it yeah a lot of people like know that people are not paid a lot you know to like pick the potatoes that they’re eating and the french fries they’re paying a literal dollar for you know a bucket of like but they just choose to kind of ignore it or like they just don’t want to think about it because it’s a really crappy thing to have to think about um so it’s not just education it’s like an actual acceptance so it’s like we need to actually shift policies and approaches and and formats of things i think for yeah for that to happen but i don’t know if that’s even possible i got i gotta hold on i got a better idea here’s the thing what we know about americans uh they dislike education right our education rank in the world is failing why because education it’s boring no one likes it but the ways that so i i i was never great in school i i somehow tricked people into eventually getting into a college and almost graduated from that college before not um but a way that i was able to learn as a child was through trickery right they would bring me in with something fun y’all ever play math blaster yeah blaster was yeah it was like it was a video game right yeah it’s a stupid video game where you’d like zap pieces of trash out of the sky because yeah learn to recycle and then you’d have to you would have to it was a carrot and stick sort of thing they would trick your little child idiot brain into doing math by baiting you with video games and i’ve seen some restaurants kind of you know trick people right food is a huge form of entertainment i know for me i’m bored so i’m just like let’s go eat and i think uh you know certain restaurants have like done a good job of sort of tricking people like i was at an armenian restaurant and on their menu on the full front cover was like yo by the way here’s a 300 word history of the armenian genocide uh enjoy your kebab you know and i’m just like i’m gonna read this i i ain’t got nothing to do right now and you know i of course it’s not like a systemic change that i think can happen everywhere it’s just people writing you know stories of you know the cambodian like refugee resettlement program um you know on on their menus and whatnot but i think you know some sort of system or like coach bus said just like in actual acceptance of every time you eat it’s just like hey by the way there was you know a farmer who literally got paid like 22 cents an hour through terrible loopholes and lack of any legal recourse to pick these strawberries um but you know it’s it like coach we said it’s a fact that people just like don’t want to accept and also this rosy idea that food can like end racism because that was so much discourse around the talk of the taco trucks in every corner yeah oh my gosh yeah yeah but i mean i remember being in a room at a magazine where we were doing a whole racism issue it was just like or no sorry sorry it wasn’t it wasn’t racism issue it was it was an immigration issue um and then we talked about it with executives we realized maybe it should be a racism issue cause one was literally like yeah i just don’t understand the hate against immigrants because like i wouldn’t want to pick my own strawberries and it was just like dude that’s a problem you absolute wanker like come on um like you know so i think yeah sorry it’s like the same vibes it’s like i think i tweeted about this but i had two women approaching me about hosting a show that was all about refugee cooks but they wanted to call it refugees and just like those exact same vibes yeah it’s like this isn’t it that’s super that’s like the definition of exploitation that’s crazy yeah but i don’t know have have we seen any i’m trying to think of like real life examples where food has brought people together i mean you know we we we’ve all mentioned um you know like elementary school lunches on podcasts you know i remember this isn’t necessarily food bringing people together it’s almost further uh enacting the divide but i remember uh we had a lebanese friend named christian and he would always bring you know like lebanese food like like i think the first meal that i remember eating from his mom was like mujadara and he would always trade me for my like you know american crappy reduced price school pizza lunch uh and so like i got to experience you know his culture through eating his mom’s home-cooked food that he didn’t want because he just wanted this quote-unquote all-american experience of eating crappy cardboard pizza and i mean that was something that you know kicked off like a lifelong sort of i don’t know love for middle eastern food it always like really cemented a point in my mind to learn more about the different cultures and maybe this is just you know a me thing because i got the adhd and i’m a curious little cat and so you know i start reading about colonization so you know like i don’t know reading about the balfour declaration all because i you know ate some some rice and lentils uh from you know my friend when i was eight years old yeah that’s the thing though it’s like most people aren’t like that though right yeah people don’t like you josh yeah i’m also the same way where i’m like oh this is really cool you know like but i think that’s how we end up in these these places where we literally yeah talk about food all day long because we’re either geniuses or idiots i can’t tell a little bit of both a little bit do you think do you think that more people can eventually get to that place though if you know talked about kind of food media saturation just becoming a more popular kind of entertainment i think so i you know yeah there’s more and more places you can get exposure to this right and like i think the more you see other people excited about something like that tends we you know we have a lot of herd mentality just as humans like you know if a lot of people are amped about something you know i think that does definitely help so yeah i don’t know yeah i mean like what if the free britney hashtag was like pay immokalee farmworkers you know like what if i don’t know if we got to a point where that was the case then i think in 60 to 85 years we’re all gonna come back here and record this podcast and be like yes food does bring people together but until then i’m fine just being super bitter about it i’m not i think i think there’s hope i think you know what just i’m i’m believing in a silver lining that one day eventually food will you guys really uh opened my eyes and made me feel like a dark person right now i’ve never felt more cynical in my life so thank you for that but i do believe that there’s a silver lining and i think the more people are curious about food and the more we educate people about the realities of food i think it’ll eventually put us in a proper step to bring people together with the use of food i think it’s fair to say that food can bring some people together we never talk about that like i have a lot of friendships sort of actually based or centered on food experiences i think josh is actually one of those people you know like we met through kind of like food twitter like that is like essentially it like we became friends over meals you know like that is how that worked and so um you know now i deeply regret it no i’m just kidding but um but i think food can bring some people together you know i think there is something to like spending a saturday with your friends doing like a dumpling crawl you know through like you know flushing in queens or like the sgv in la like you know there’s something to that um and like you know deciding that you want to spend eight hours with people you know centered on these like meal experiences like there’s value to that and like that i can get behind especially when your journalist friend cushboos is paying with her company card then it especially corrects [Music] hi nicole and kushboo we’ve heard what you and i have to say now it’s time to find out what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the twitterverse it’s time for a segment we call [Music] we can’t do it from home we should just stop we should just stop trying no i think we should keep going all right because this is a segment where we react to people’s terrible food opinions but first we need to react to your terrible food opinion which is that hot fruit is bad that’s a great food opinion i don’t know what you’re talking about how you don’t like hot fruit how you doing it makes it taste like warm fruity water like okay here’s the thing there’s a clarification with this i don’t mind when something has once been hot fruit but then it chilled down to two times so like okay i don’t want hot apple pie or like hot blueberry pie that to me just takes away like the fruit flavor because it just tastes like warm goop juice like it just grows but when you chill it it’s like done at least back to room temp ideally cold like then you can like really get like the flavors like concentrated there’s no like weird distraction from the heat yeah so you think it’s distracting yeah i think it’s disgusting honestly you ever had a claw future before have i had have i ever heard what claw futy i just made an apple pie for thanksgiving and i i like took a bite of it cold straight out the fridge and i was like nah i microwaved it for like two minutes and then i put it in a 500 degree oven for like eight minutes i i torched it in each each piece of pie because again you know we were it was just me and julia were social distancing so i end up with like seven eighths of a pie that i ate through the course of the week and every every slice that i heated gotten more and more done from the last time so i was just like more more heat in the apples i was just insatiable because i put cold ice cream on it and i want that immediate temperature drop and then i want the ice cream to melt into a beautiful creme on the glaze on top ugh is that a bad oh that’s a good uh that’s my the worst i hate that like hot unless it’s a brownie i hate that hot thing cold ice cream like combo because i don’t want my ice cream to melt like that if you want cream and glitter just eat creme and glaze like why bother i like ice cream schrodinger’s ice cream i want at one moment for it to simultaneously be frozen ice cream and creme glaze and the only way i can get there is by torching the crap out of my pie and i will not apologize for it but like poached pears are you like into poached pears that’s what i’m like 78 living in maine maybe but none right now that’s one of the most disgusting hot fruit formats that’s a little gnarly yo i love poached pears like a red wine poached pear you get that you get the [ ] of course you do i like milkshakes i like mushy yeah like warm apple sauce yeah i can’t i hate apple sauce so you wouldn’t you wouldn’t eat me you would need marinara sauce okay but like tomatoes way more cookies you need to leave her alone yes okay tomatoes are technically a fruit i get it no dude we did a we did a whole hour on that and we just destroyed every and especially when everyone’s like do you know bananas or do you know watermelons are a berry but a strawberry isn’t and like why it’s called a berry then why it’s called strawberry it’s red it goes in my jamba juice it’s a berry you [ ] you don’t know what a barry is you freaking idiot okay we also said we’re going to mention hummus we’re going to get to like three opinions but we were talking about hummus and bringing people together and one of the most formative moments of my life was when i was in israel and we’re at a restaurant and uh the dude made us hummus and then um a girl was like oh my god this is so beautiful because like palestinians eat hummus and israelis eat hummus and food just brings people together and this restaurateur stares her straight in the face and just goes like go tell that to my family in gaza and see if it makes the bombs stop flying over their heads and i was just like yeah yeah yeah that’s pretty that’s pretty accurate yeah yeah okay should we now on to on to a lighter note uh we got at paul along the watchtower maple syrup is just weird tasting tree blood butter pecan butter pecan is where it’s at yes butter pecan syrup is not a thing i don’t believe outside of the ihop cannon of syrups yeah yeah they got the maple old-fashioned butter pecan and then the the blueberry and the strawberry and those are just there to like weed out the uncultured people because butter pecan syrup it is so artificial it is so delicious it tastes like you distilled a thing of butter pecan ice cream into a clear liquid through a centrifuge i agree i like maple syrup and i enjoy it in multiple facets i love it in my oatmeal i even sometimes put a little bit in my coffee sometimes fun little fact about me i think it’s delicious and i think it’s it’s beautiful and this person just has a weird chip on their shoulder yeah i love maple but i love the idea of calling it tree blood i’m kind of into that yeah metal that only makes it more appealing to me though so i don’t know what that says about me but it’s fine i like your general violence against plants like you talked about like meat eating being you know having an inherent sort of dividing factor but i love that you’re just all about like brutal violence against trees but i love a plant i want to be an aspiring fruit journalist josh never forget i love that you’re like a very incredibly accomplished like actual food journalist but an aspiring fruit specific journalist you’re like look i’ve done everything i can in the food world but now the fruit world i gotta conquer it there’s a lot of stories that need to be told in that space okay next up we have jade underscore imerg the crisp grapes are superior to mushy soft grapes mushy grapes are awful you guys are in luck because i literally have two grapes in my hands one foot one is one is hard is gonna happen i had no idea it’s fate i don’t one let it happen okay i’m gonna eat the mushy one first i’m gonna give you my true honest opinion i hope the microphone catches this that’s good okay now for the crisp one wait what the heck is happening what’s going on it’s happening accept it honestly the crisp is better mushy grapes are nasty i agree i’m your team crisp grape crisp you just what we’re just glossing over the fact that nicole happened to be holding were you holding them the entire time no my mom gave me a cup of fruit before i started my phone yeah i hate it that you both have fruit moms at your disposal and i’m over here alone cutting out my own fruits i just got text from my mom that she just peeled a couple pomegranates so there you go yeah i’m so mad i didn’t know anyone liked anyone likes mushy grapes is that a hot take does anyone like like mushy fruit in general is there any fruit that’s good as mush besides like a mushroom like applesauce durian is better when it’s mushy nice rice banana i i will not eat a banana that i have to chew with teeth i will not i i exclusively eat the ones that immediately fall into a paste as soon as they hit your tongue so you you like like a banana bread banana like that’s yeah you want yeah if it’s not completely brown speckled mm-hmm all right all right at ten to no charisma original oreos are inferior to the flavored ones like mint and birthday cake yeah yeah life’s too short for like original flavored anything people who bring plain chips to a party to me are like anathema like i i want the barbecue i want the szechuan hot chicken flavored lays i want to take risks i want to experience everything the world has to offer insofar as it’s in a bag of chips if it ain’t broke don’t fix it i love a good og oreo flavor combination with the really really sweet hydrogenated cream and the really really weird bitter cookie i’m sorry i gotta say i think the oreo thin is the superior oreo original flavor combo but the texture is like there’s something to that like it’s i think it’s just more i prefer the cream to cookie ratio on that one um this is my my favorite fact about food but oreo thins are more calorically dense than glorious i didn’t know that yeah yeah so they were marketed as oreos like diet oreo thing like when nabisco came out with 100 calorie packs and their oreos were just like weirdly chocolate scented crackers like what the hell oreo oreo thins were their answer to that but i i went through and i divided the total weight of cookie um by you know the calories and they are more calorically dense wait i actually have a bone to pick with that their marketing was not that because they made me sign a freaking nda when i was working at eater and like this came out where they were like exclude they were like pounded this into my head where they were like no we’re not marketing this is like a diet oreo it’s an adult oreo experience that is literally the marketing terms that they were using adult oreo experience like oreos after dark like that’s what was going on i’ll just say an adult oreo something you got to pay like 150 bucks for and it’s not illegal yet i feel i feel like they used the term thin understanding you know what people were going to think about it was just like the virginia slims like like the thin like elegant cigarettes but for oreos yeah yeah i guess i accept that i accept that yeah were they do really or elegant they should have gone with oreo crisps what’s an oreo crisp it should be just be that’s what they should call oreo things oh this one yeah yeah yeah i agree let’s see what’s next not period francesca says why is it weird that i drink my soup broth first and eat the solids last you know people do this and it pisses me off like no mother like get them like i eat all like when i’m thinking of a bowl of pho okay and i’m eating my bowl of fun i eat all my noodles and i eat all my beef and i eat on my onions and stuff and then i slurp the liquid okay i hate when people like have a bowl full of stuff and their soup is all gone it’s like why are you doing this why spongebob why really pisses me off so uh i hate this opinion and nat period francesca you made me mad i i think any time we get a bowl of noodle soup we enter into a certain social contract right that like the the intent behind it was for you to enjoy everything is an intricate dance inside your mouth hole and i think like by drinking all the broth first leaving all the solids you were breaking that social contract it’s like doing something crazy like put like like putting ranch on lasagna you know it’s like lasagna is not meant to be a house ranch and so i think it’s you know uh almost immoral yes i am also pro eating your noodles and drinking your soup at the same time in similar ratios yeah this this also makes me really annoyed isn’t it fun getting annoyed at people’s opinions yeah this is really great i love that i know so cathartic wait what what a segway what a segway at geeky for life 12 my dad eats spaghetti and puts ranch on it i’m going to go ahead i’m going to nip this one but i’m going to this is the butt um i was joking about the lasagna pudding ranch thing earlier because that is something that i do it is something that i will not apologize for i didn’t come here to make friends i’m fine leaving with enemies i i will go to little tony’s uh friend of the show in north hollywood i will get their eight dollar spaghetti that has a quarter cup of water sitting bottom of a bowl and i will drizzle their ice cold ranch coming straight out the salad fridge on top of that spaghetti and slap it down but i will say it is better on lasagna because that bridges the gap between spaghetti and pizza amen yeah no we’re just we’re just shaking our heads at you bro like no sorry okay okay okay but hold on hold on you ever been like eating caesar salad on the same plate as schedule and you get like the bite with a little bit of caesar salad and sketch at the same time no i keep them very separate for that very reason again food does not i don’t even bring my foods together not only does food not bring people together i don’t bring foods together like they must be separate not interested open up your heart i literally today god this is sad so i i made this lasagna and i have like 10 portions of it to eat over the course of who knows how many days so i’ve been eating it for every meal and i’m getting a little bored with it so today i chopped it up and kind of pan fried it till the noodles were crisp and then i took just a wet baby greens and ranch salad and i just put that directly on top of the lasagna like it’s a freaking burrito bowl i thought it was more like croutons the way you were describing it no yeah i also can’t do wilty greens that are like me either that are like you know spring mix like a wilty kale that’s like sauteed or whatever sure i can get behind that but like uh wilty arugula pass you’ve never had the the braised lettuces uh bruschetta at elemento that’s different though that’s like that’s not wilt that’s that’s intentional wilt i intentionally put the salad on top of the lasagna with the ranch oh my god i i am a chef i am a real chef who deserves to be taken seriously the man screamed in his bedroom [Laughter] i’ll do one more okay claude f88 says homemade mac sauce as the base sauce on pizza yum what is mac sauce they’re talking about special sauce from mcdonald’s they’re talking about they’re talking like a thousand island yeah that’s definitely what they’re talking about i can get behind that yeah i think that’s cool i mean it probably wouldn’t be my preferred pizza but like i’d still eat it i’m pro non-marinara pizza sauce pizza basis i think there’s like a lot of fun to be had there i do too i think we’re we’re all children of cpk yes worship at the altar of barbecue chicken pizza all right yeah my only problem with that is um if you put thousand island in a frying pan you can scramble it because the the mayonnaise content and so you do it which isn’t a deal breaker for me because as i mentioned uh you know i’m eating ranched up lasagna over my sink every night uh quarantined so hard big mac sauce has enough stabilizers in it that you wouldn’t actually have to worry about that god bless the joys of processed food i love that we’re all like we have to teach people about farming and then immediately god bless the joys of processed food all right listen anyways i’m a person who contains multitudes [Laughter] coach pusha thank you so much for joining us thank you so much for containing multitudes you can check out her work at food and wine magazine um uh buy their foods and wines i think is that a good plug for food and wine magazine yeah that’s pretty great you can also find me in my bad opinions on twitter at cushion oj k-u-s-h-a-n-d-o-j also similar on instagram more bad opinions there too so full of them and if you want to hear more of us here in the mythical kitchen we got new episodes for you every wednesday if you want to be featured on opinions you like casseroles you can hit us up on twitter at mythicalchef or and handyzade with the hashtag opinioncasserole and for more mythical kitchen check us out on youtube where we launch new videos every week and of course if you want to share pictures of your dishes hit us up on instagram at mythical kitchen bye um i uh food brings people together happy holidays this is the last podcast of the year we should leave them oh it is huh we’ll see you next year where it’s gonna be way more positive we’re committing to 100 positivity on mythical kids yeah yeah super duper [Laughter] [Music] thanks for listening to this episode of a hot dog is a sandwich and hey before you go we wanted to remind you that season 2 of stevie’s podcast best friend’s back alright is underway this season expands on stevie and negan’s friendship from last season but explores all new themes and ideas yeah episodes will feature an open conversation with a gynecologist who just happens to be nakeen’s sister the ins and outs of eel sex and a deep dive into the most embarrassing items to be found by security at the airport things get crazy this season so be sure to follow best friends back all right on apple podcast spotify or wherever you get your podcast all right i like that me too all right all right all right