Episode 433 - Simon Majumdar
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck a delix what the fuck's the bulls what the fuck is sugar nose oh man how are you my friends how are you this is mark maron this is wtf the podcast uh you you've summoned me you've summoned me into your head i am here and
Marc:Though heavy hearted I am, I am okay.
Marc:And, you know, I don't even know what to say.
Marc:I don't know what to say to thank you people for reaching out.
Marc:You know, I choose to do what I do.
Marc:I choose to make my life my...
Marc:my sole form of expression, obviously my thoughts, but my life.
Marc:And there's a vulnerability to that.
Marc:That's a, it's a little disconcerting and, and it's scary.
Marc:It's scary.
Marc:I mean, I could just be funny.
Marc:Maybe, maybe I could just do that.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It's just scary.
Marc:And I put some stuff out there in the last few weeks.
Marc:And the emails that you all have sent me have been just beautiful.
Marc:And I feel supported.
Marc:I feel loved.
Marc:I feel understood.
Marc:And I feel, I don't know.
Marc:I'm humbled by it all.
Marc:I don't know how else to say it.
Marc:I love you guys and gals and all of you.
Marc:Even the ones that judge me harshly.
Marc:I'm trying to become an open-hearted, high-roaded person.
Marc:I'll tell you something about the high road.
Marc:Boy, man.
Marc:It's not, you know, it's a good idea.
Marc:I think it's the way to go as best you can, but it's not as satisfying as the low road.
Marc:The low road is a lot more fun.
Marc:It's a lot dirtier.
Marc:The high road is difficult.
Marc:There's no road rage on the high road.
Marc:It's not allowed.
Marc:The rest stops are clean and actually annoying.
Marc:It almost seems inhuman.
Marc:the high road and i and i think that's you know why it's the high road because it's something that you can only aspire to and god knows when i loop around on the uh on the business loop on the high road and i see that exit to anger i see that exit to self-pity i see that exit to self-righteousness i see that exit it's it's interesting all the seven deadly sins uh have exits right off of the high road which only makes sense
Marc:jealousy guy guys i feel like getting off man yeah just you know just for a little while i just want to get out and take a hate breather want to get out and take a a resentment nap
Marc:Can I get off the high road?
Marc:Absolutely, I will.
Marc:And I do.
Marc:But I'm trying to stay on it.
Marc:It's very difficult.
Marc:It's very difficult to frame my experience from a place of compassion as opposed to a place of contempt.
Marc:It's very difficult.
Marc:Anger is very satisfying.
Marc:to those who are angry very destructive to anybody else around them and ultimately that comes back around man when when anger is satisfying and you're done scorching and you're like all right i feel better how come there's no houses anymore
Marc:How come there's no people hanging around?
Marc:How come I'm all alone on this smoldering terrain?
Marc:Oh, because you're king asshole now.
Marc:That is your kingdom.
Marc:You are the overseer of a land of smoldering terrain and crying people and people running away.
Marc:I hope that felt good.
Marc:Now, how are you going to fix it?
Marc:How are you going to rebuild it?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I guess I should get back on the high road or at least take the high road to a spiritual and emotional Home Depot and see what they got.
Marc:Get some nice lighting, some drywall that I can use as boundaries.
Marc:Today on the show, Simon Majumdar.
Marc:I don't know if you know Simon, but, you know, I knew him on television and quite frankly found him very irritating, but also kind of fascinating.
Marc:He's usually the he's a judge on the next Iron Chef.
Marc:That's that's where I know him from most.
Marc:You know, he's got a shaved head and he's he's British, seems to be British.
Marc:Well, you'll learn everything.
Marc:I learned everything.
Marc:You'll learn everything about him.
Marc:But I always wondered, what the hell is a food critic?
Marc:How do you get that gig?
Marc:I ate this and it's good.
Marc:Well, that's a very limited perception.
Marc:Can you broaden that out a little bit?
Marc:Can you intellectualize that?
Marc:Can you contextualize it historically?
Marc:And can you contextualize it regionally?
Marc:Can you discuss what regions are involved in that?
Marc:Can you discuss why there are levels of flavor?
Marc:I was always wondering about it, but I understood it because through food you can see history and you can see how history has ebbed and flowed around the world through cuisines.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I thought he'd be an interesting guest and he was.
Marc:I'm going to talk to him.
Marc:He is.
Marc:He's the tough critic, though.
Marc:But but I found him to be a very sweet man.
Marc:And that was after judging him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I judged him.
Marc:I judged the judge of food and he's great.
Marc:And we'll talk to him in a minute.
Marc:I'll tell you one thing, honestly, about me.
Marc:like you need more of that, is that I crave... If I don't do interviews, I get a little squirrely.
Marc:I go a little crazy.
Marc:The reason I do this podcast is not for advertising dollars.
Marc:It's because I need to talk to people to get out of my own goddamn head and to enjoy the stories and struggles of somebody else.
Marc:That's how we get by, man.
Marc:And my brain is doing weird shit.
Marc:Weird shit.
Marc:Last night I was half asleep and somehow my brain decided that it was writing a Justin Bieber song.
Marc:What the fuck is that?
Marc:I don't even know his music.
Marc:I just know he's this teen pop sensation.
Marc:And my brain is like, it's working on lyrics, it's working on melody.
Marc:I was not a songwriter, but I was like, I'd written, I think it was called, I can't, what was it called?
Marc:I was sure when I was going to bed that I had a whole business plan in place.
Marc:I was like, I'm just gonna write one or two songs for Justin Bieber.
Marc:And just nail that shit.
Marc:And I'll get the publishing money.
Marc:And I'll be set.
Marc:And it'll be this weird outside of the boxing that I'll have done.
Marc:It's like, you know, Maren was a comedian.
Marc:Did this podcast.
Marc:He did other shit.
Marc:And then, like, you know, out of nowhere, he wrote these two massive songs for Justin Bieber.
Marc:It was weird.
Marc:I didn't think anybody would judge me for it.
Marc:It was just something I would do on the side.
Marc:Write these Justin Bieber hits.
Marc:And it was all going on in my brain.
Marc:I think after watching the Harry Nilsson documentary and reading some stuff on Phil Spector, I'm like, I just got to create a couple of pop tunes, a couple of pop hits.
Marc:And it was happening in my head.
Marc:And I think the song was called, I Can't... What was it?
Marc:Oh, It Won't Work Without You.
Marc:That's what it was called.
Marc:And I'd written a couple of couplets in my brain.
Marc:And I was sure that I would remember the melody and the song when I woke up.
Marc:I'm like, I was asleep.
Marc:But you know when you're asleep and you're like, I'll remember this.
Marc:I'll remember this.
Marc:And it's like important to you in the moment.
Marc:But you don't realize you're really sleeping for most practical purposes.
Marc:And you're like, no, I got it.
Marc:I got this.
Marc:And then you wake up and all I woke up with was like, fuck.
Marc:I lost that Justin Bieber song.
Marc:I lost the hit song I was writing for Justin Bieber.
Marc:What is wrong with me?
Marc:I'm beating myself up this morning about not remembering what was going to be a huge hit for Justin Bieber.
Marc:So all I can say is I'm sorry, Justin.
Marc:I don't know what's going to happen tonight, but it won't work without you.
Marc:I don't even know if there's a song called that.
Marc:There should be a song called that.
Marc:But it's not going to be the Justin Bieber song, the Marc Maron Justin Bieber song.
Marc:I don't know what's going on with me, people.
Marc:I don't fucking know.
Marc:Who knows?
Marc:Tonight, maybe Miley Cyrus.
Marc:Miley Cyrus.
Marc:I should know her name if my brain's going to write her songs.
Marc:Maybe I'll drift away knowing that I got a Miley Cyrus hit right there.
Marc:It's right at the tip of my brain.
Marc:I'll remember it.
Marc:I'll remember it, Miley.
Marc:Because that's my next thing, apparently.
Marc:I'm going to write a big pop song for a teen sensation.
Marc:Let's enjoy a talk about food with Simon Majumdar.
Marc:God, I hope I did that right.
Marc:Wasn't minstrelsy sort of popular in the UK a lot longer than it should be?
Marc:Huge.
Guest:Black and white minstrels went on until the 1980s.
Guest:Isn't that crazy?
Guest:Because it didn't have the same connotations.
Guest:And then suddenly it's like people suddenly woke up and went, what the hell are we watching?
Guest:How is this right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it disappeared.
Guest:And now you can find, it's like we used to have on the jam containers.
Guest:We had a company called Robinson Jam.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And their thing was what's called, and now you can't even say the word, but it was called a gollywog.
Guest:And they used to sell little pendants.
Guest:And this was until the 90s.
Marc:Yeah, we had stuff like that.
Marc:I don't think it went on that long.
Marc:Sambo's restaurant.
Guest:And Darky's toothpaste.
Guest:And it was all fine.
Guest:And then suddenly it's like kind of the scales lifted and said, this kind of isn't right.
Marc:Yeah, this is marginalizing and racist.
Marc:We shouldn't be doing it.
Guest:But yeah, some very, very famous people had their start on the black and white minstrel show.
Marc:In Britain.
Marc:In Britain.
Marc:Like who?
Marc:People I would know?
Guest:Well, comedians, Lenny Henry.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:And that's the odd thing, because there you have a guy from a Caribbean background was the only true black face on the black and white men's shorts.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And is he black?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, he's- I'm not familiar.
Guest:He's a big cutoff for me with British comedy.
Guest:Well, it's a great scene, and there were some terrific people, particularly through the times of the Comedy Store and all of those guys.
Guest:Yep.
Marc:All the people who- I know some of the modern ones.
Marc:I've interviewed Stuart Lee, and certainly I know, but getting it here, that was the interesting thing about comedy from the UK is it didn't come here like music.
Marc:I mean, all of a sudden, we've got to go digging for that stuff outside of Monty Python and some of the Rowan Atkinson stuff, and-
Marc:I mean, we just didn't get it.
Guest:It's happening now, I think, a lot of it with the show.
Guest:So obviously things like Ricky Gervais and what happened with that.
Guest:And then things like Peep Show.
Guest:But the big mistake is that people try and remake it.
Guest:They're redoing it in the UK.
Guest:They're remaking Everyone Loves Raymond.
Guest:And it's entirely missing the point of why those shows exist.
Marc:They're lightning in a bottle.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, that guy franchises that.
Marc:I've interviewed him.
Marc:Have you seen that documentary, Exporting Ray?
Marc:It's very compelling, but it's a little annoying that they think they can format it and focus in on certain familial issues that will just translate anywhere.
Marc:I don't know if it's true, really.
Guest:I think they learned that one of the things that British TV is very good at is creating formats.
Guest:And you look at so many formats.
Marc:The Office is pretty genius.
Guest:Well, it's 40 different countries now.
Guest:Is it really?
Guest:40 different countries.
Guest:I've seen it in China.
Guest:I've seen it in India.
Guest:I've seen it in France.
Marc:Is this a good thing, you think, intellectually and also otherwise?
Marc:When something can be a franchise that is something that you think is organic, well, maybe it is.
Marc:Maybe it's just a delivery system.
Guest:Well, it is.
Guest:I think it is.
Guest:I mean, it's almost like not having to do the work.
Guest:It's buying a franchise and going, all the work's been done.
Guest:But sometimes you can take it outside of that.
Guest:Look at The Office in the U.S.
Guest:And I was fully prepared to go, The Office in the U.S.
Guest:is going to suck.
Guest:It's going to be bad.
Guest:And the first few episodes actually did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For once, in a rare time in the US, things were given time to kind of breathe.
Guest:And I think it's because of Steve Carell and people going, we've put a lot into this.
Guest:And eventually, is it my favorite show on TV?
Guest:No.
Guest:But did it build its own life totally outside of the US office, the UK office?
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:And also when you look at the way Gervais built that character, the narcissistic character, and they did it completely differently because that was really, you can't do what he did, what Gervais did with that character.
Marc:There was nothing, nothing can come close to that comedically.
Guest:It was, I thought it was perfect.
Guest:And the little bit of redemption at the end wasn't that kind of saccharine sentimental redemption.
Guest:It was just that little glimmer that in this horrific character, there was a spark of kind of life.
Marc:You felt compassion for him.
Guest:You absolutely did.
Marc:And to make him a sympathetic character, as profoundly selfish as he was, it's not an easy trick.
Guest:No.
Guest:And to make you want to watch him.
Guest:And those certain aspects that will have become part of culture, you know, the dance.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, that thing was crazy.
Guest:Of course it was.
Guest:And it was brilliant.
Guest:And it was improvised.
Guest:But it's become...
Guest:Just part of the culture as much as any of some of the Monty Python, the dead parrot or whatever.
Guest:It's become part of the culture.
Guest:I think one of the other things about British comedy is we kind of know when to quit.
Marc:There's something about the intimacy of your show business landscape that sort of allows that to happen.
Guest:Yeah, you can go, I've done this.
Guest:Yeah, and then that's it.
Guest:Because it's not run by advertising.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No one suddenly comes and does what they did for Seinfeld and waves five million an episode and says, let's do this for one more season.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, I'm sure all his castmates wanted to kill him when he said, you know, I've got a hundred and whatever, and we're syndicated, I've made half a billion, you know, another 25.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In the UK, there's not that much money involved.
Guest:A couple years.
Guest:Creativity is allowed to be.
Guest:Look at, to me, the greatest sitcom of all time, Fawlty Towers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:12 episodes.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:12 episodes.
Guest:They're still brilliant.
Marc:That's a good way to look at it, man.
Marc:Because here, you're always, as somebody who's in the business, you're kind of chasing it.
Marc:There's part of you that thinks, yeah, I just want more.
Marc:And sometimes if it's really brilliant, why not just let it be before it becomes ruined?
Marc:Right.
Marc:And also in the UK and also in Canada, I think it seems like you've done your time.
Marc:We've got a line of people that have been around for a little while.
Marc:Everyone seems to get their turn over there.
Guest:I like that.
Guest:And everyone, except one of the things that I think is really blissful about this country that I'm finding out from living here.
Guest:You live here now?
Guest:Yeah, I live in Culver City.
Guest:I had no idea.
Guest:I've lived here for three years.
Guest:That's why I've got this slightly haunted look for three years in L.A.
Guest:I'm developing just that kind of bubble of self-entitlement.
Marc:It comes from being in your car a lot.
Guest:It does, where you don't take care.
Guest:I've learned indicators or signals are optional.
Guest:I'm beginning to learn all of this stuff.
Guest:But I think one of the things I'm learning here is you do get the chance to do things.
Guest:In England, I would never have got the chances to do what I do now for a living because I did something totally different.
Guest:And there is this thing that goes, you can't do that.
Guest:Get back here.
Marc:Why is that?
Guest:Why do you think that's British specifically?
Guest:It's rooted in the class system.
Guest:It's rooted in being such a small country with such a big population or relatively big, you know, 90 million people all vying to do stuff.
Guest:So everyone is very segmented.
Guest:You're a singer.
Guest:So if you're a singer, you can't act.
Guest:If you're an actor, you can't dance.
Guest:If you're a comedian, you can't write.
Guest:And it's beginning to break through, particularly with people like Stephen Fry, the real polymoths, David Mitchell from Peep Show.
Marc:What did you call them?
Marc:Polymorphs?
Guest:Polymorphs.
Marc:Oh, what does that mean?
Guest:Basically, it means someone who can do a bit.
Guest:I like it.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:Like a Renaissance man?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Basically, it's someone who can do a bit of everything.
Guest:I like that.
Guest:And do it well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Stephen Fry is the perfect example.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because the guy's got a brain the size of a planet, and everything he turns his hand to seems to turn to gold.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And kind of what I do.
Guest:Alton Brown's another one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You kind of find these people, whatever they do, they do it so well.
Marc:Well, this is interesting that I didn't know you until I saw Iron Chef.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:And initially, I was like, who the fuck is that guy?
Marc:Get to the back of the line.
Marc:But not in a bad way, because, you know, the sort of intellectual side of understanding food and its place in history and also where things come from and why.
Marc:Like, I kind of get, you know, how food criticism can work.
Marc:It's like any other type of criticism.
Marc:If it's thoughtful and it's well-referenced and it comes from a place of intelligence and heart, you know, it's necessary.
Marc:But, you know, but some critics are just like, I didn't like it or whatever.
Marc:But you seem to be well founded in how you approach this.
Marc:But where does someone how does someone decide to do that?
Marc:What is the like, what are you the legacy of when you decide to be a food critic or somebody who is a food intellectual?
Marc:What did you do before and how did you come to that?
Guest:Well, I think it doesn't come from food.
Guest:I think it comes from criticism.
Marc:Right, okay.
Guest:And to me, it's like anything, and you've picked up on it, when I'm on the show, I don't want to just go, this is yummy, because that's meaningless.
Marc:Yeah, I agree.
Guest:Who cares?
Marc:Yeah, it's like saying this is interesting.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I want to go... Yeah, exactly.
Guest:I mean, what does it mean?
Guest:What I want to go is...
Guest:I like this dish because, or you've called it this and it isn't, or you've done this dish and they're doing it a lot at the moment with this new challenge on Iron Chef with these eggs that everybody seems to be cooking that's taken from Arpege in Paris and everyone seems to be doing them.
Guest:And I go, well, by the way, this is tasty enough, but I'm not going to give you much points for creativity because I've seen it a dozen times before.
Guest:What the perfect egg idea.
Guest:Well, they do this little egg that comes from this particular restaurant in Paris called Arpege, and they kind of take the top off, take the egg out, they scramble it slightly, put it back in the egg, float it in the water for about 25 minutes on a tepid heat, top it with a little maple whipped cream and truffle and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And that's addition.
Guest:They've all been, I mean, I've seen it a dozen times, and everyone who brings it up thinks they've reinvented the wheel, and you have to stifle the yawns.
Guest:How I came to do this is really weird.
Guest:I mean, food's always been my obsession.
Guest:I talk about it in my first book, Eat My Globe, is that I basically, all our family were obsessed to the point of craziness with food.
Marc:What kind of family do you come from?
Guest:Well, it's a very mixed family.
Guest:My father's still with us.
Guest:He's a Bengali retired orthopedic surgeon.
Guest:My dad's an orthopedic surgeon.
Guest:Oh, well, there you go.
Guest:Retired orthopedic surgeon.
Guest:We have something in common.
Guest:Yeah, my dad retired probably about 20 years ago and then became a legal expert and became five times as wealthy becoming a legal expert.
Guest:A legal expert in medicine?
Guest:Yeah, medical witness basically.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Depositions.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So if someone was suing someone because their arm was hurting.
Marc:So he would stand on the side of the doctor usually?
Guest:On both sides.
Guest:He would be brought in as the kind of independent.
Guest:Right.
Guest:My dad did some of that.
Guest:And it's a big business.
Guest:Well, that's because people just sue everybody.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And there has to be some protection.
Guest:I intend to trip on my way out of here.
Guest:You'll be hearing from my lawyer soon.
Guest:I think I'm covered for that.
Guest:But yeah, you probably need to be in this country.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my mother, he came over from India to the UK in the 1950s.
Guest:And he came to Wales, which was one of the big surgical hospitals was in Wales in those times.
Guest:Yeah, the Royal Newport, Royal Gwent in Newport, Wales.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And my mother was a nurse there.
Guest:And there was this big thing of Welsh nurses marrying these very exotic dark-skinned Indian doctors.
Right.
Guest:That was a thing?
Guest:It was a thing because I guess they kind of interconnected.
Guest:They were all young and it was these fiery Welsh nurses.
Guest:So my mother married and she took the name Gwen Majumder, which is a fantastic name.
Marc:Beautiful.
Guest:A real mix.
Guest:Best of both worlds.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Her best friends were even better.
Guest:She had friends at nursing college who were called Mavanwy Banerjee and Blodwin Patel.
Guest:Blodwin Patel.
Guest:I mean, you couldn't make that.
Guest:You talk about script writing.
Guest:Life is far better than any script writer will ever be.
Marc:But at that level, in terms of how that was received, you know, by the Welsh families, I mean, you know, intermarriage was not an issue as long as it was a doctor or what?
Guest:Well, it's funny enough.
Guest:I mean, that was not a happy time.
Guest:That was very much the time in the UK where you would see signs outside, you know, saying no blacks, no dogs, no Irish.
Guest:And that was very much part of our culture in the 50s.
Guest:There was still a lot of racism.
Guest:And they did experience that, mixed race couple.
Guest:Very rare in those days.
Guest:But my grandparents didn't seem to care at all.
Guest:In fact, they absolutely adored my father until the day they both died.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, he is a doctor.
Guest:I mean, that's not nothing.
Guest:I think the fact that he was a doctor and I think the fact that he became well off and helped pay their bills.
Marc:That changes a lot of attitude.
Guest:Yeah, it could really help once you start rattling the wallet and paying a few bills.
Guest:But to be fair, even before that, they absolutely loved him and he was part of the family.
Guest:And so they never had that issue.
Guest:In fact, I probably had more issues as I got older, being the son of the rich doctor and I lived in a northern mining town.
Guest:Sheffield.
Marc:So you got a lot of shit from the working class.
Guest:Yeah, I was basically, you know, we lived in basically the equivalent of Pittsburgh in England.
Guest:Because your father's practice was there?
Guest:That's where he ended up?
Guest:Yeah, he ended up there because of the institutional racism of the National Health Service.
Guest:He couldn't find a job in the South and ended up in this tiny sort of town up in the North.
Marc:Well, that's interesting because, like, a doctor is on some level their civil servant.
Marc:And that you are assigned.
Marc:See that.
Guest:No, you're not assigned.
Guest:No, you have choices.
Guest:You have lots of choices.
Guest:I mean, it's a great system and it works because you can you have the public health care.
Guest:He was also allowed to practice privately.
Guest:So he did quite well out of that.
Guest:But it was where he could find a job.
Guest:And it was a very much a boys club.
Guest:So he wasn't allowed to like everything.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:You know, if you're in, you're in.
Guest:If you're out, you're out.
Guest:Getting in is very hard.
Guest:Once you're in, it's very hard to get out.
Guest:So he had to go up to this sort of back end of nowhere, really.
Guest:And that's where I was brought up in this mining steel town that Margaret Thatcher killed.
Guest:I mean, you know, this place went from sort of almost entirely being employed to almost entirely unemployed.
Marc:And were you there when that happened?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Horrible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, she I mean, you know, I I wanted to fly back to England just to make sure she was dead.
Guest:I'm not going to lie about it.
Guest:Well, you know, I don't wish anybody dead.
Guest:But it was very interesting, the response from the UK, because it was divided almost entirely down the middle.
Marc:When she died.
Guest:There was no gray.
Guest:There was no one going, oh, well, she was okay, but she did some bad things.
Guest:There were people who said she was the devil incarnate and people who thought she was the second coming of the good Lord.
Marc:I'm sure that divided right along political lines.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Straight down the middle.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And surprises, it always surprises me.
Guest:It's like I can never really understand the kind of working class conservative, the working class right wing.
Guest:I met a guy whose grandfather once said to me, I used to walk 13 miles in my bare feet to vote conservative.
Right.
Guest:But on that side, I truly would not be doing what I'm doing now or be allowed to do what I'm doing now in the UK.
Guest:I would never have had this opportunity.
Marc:Which is just doing what you want to do in terms of writing the books you want to write and being a celebrity, a food celebrity.
Marc:What do you mean exactly?
Guest:Well, because in the UK, I was a book publisher.
Marc:You worked for a publishing house or you had your own life?
Guest:No, I worked for a publishing house and I helped run a company.
Guest:So I worked for Penguin, Weinfeld and Nicholson, some of the best publishers in the world.
Guest:And I ended up doing that through, I actually trained, believe it or not, in my university.
Guest:I wanted to be an Episcopalian priest.
Guest:I studied theology for three years.
Marc:Are you serious?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, because of deep belief or because- I have deep
Guest:believe yeah you still have it i have some of it it's been a lot of it's been chipped away i think life does that to you um but it still kind of comes out under the surface every now and again and um my my father could care less about it my mother was welsh baptist so i don't know how i ended up in this kind of what did your father come from he's hindu okay but he didn't have it he has no
Guest:sort of religious belief that I've ever noticed anyway.
Marc:Well, what was the kind of food, you know, getting back to that, I mean, you know, was there, what'd you grow up with food-wise?
Marc:Because, I mean, British food, I know you wrote another book about British food, didn't you?
Guest:I did, Eating for Britain.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Very underrated.
Marc:Most people who talk about British food... They condescend and they...
Guest:Either went there, it's the teeth thing as well.
Guest:Everyone went there in the 1980s.
Marc:Ears and teeth and bad food.
Guest:Yeah, and they probably ate at some chain restaurant outside the hotel, came back and said, British food is horrible.
Guest:Now, the truth is, it probably was.
Guest:Up until about what I call the Big Bang, which is the sort of time of Marco Pia White and Gordon Ramsay beginning to come through, and then all these great chefs coming through.
Guest:Now, I would argue that London in particular...
Guest:is as good an eating city as anywhere in the world and is probably challenging New York.
Marc:With indigenous food though, not just chefs, but I mean with food that is English and heritage.
Guest:With indigenous food, with things that are uniquely British and done well.
Guest:Now, is it ever going to be fine haute cuisine in the way?
Guest:No, absolutely not.
Guest:It was never meant to be.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But when it's done well, it can be really, really delicious.
Guest:And we also have, as any chef will tell you who's been there and traveled around, we have the best produce probably I've ever seen.
Guest:We have incredible seafood.
Guest:We have incredible crops.
Guest:We have beautiful seasonal.
Marc:Yes, I find that in Europe in general.
Marc:The few times I've been there, there's an intimacy to like here.
Marc:You've got to really, you know, now the local farm or, you know, shop local or small farms.
Marc:I mean, that's sort of a challenge to find the routing for that stuff.
Marc:But those countries, I mean, Britain is by is smaller.
Guest:It's we're not trying to feed 300 million people.
Marc:And you're not necessarily shipping things in from Costa Rica just because of deals that it's cheaper to get oranges from there or whatever.
Guest:Well, also, yeah, politically.
Guest:You'll buy X from us, so we'll buy your oranges or we'll buy your bananas or whatever it is.
Guest:I've actually just spent the last week working on one of the most famous small farms in the country called Love Apple Farm, which is up in Santa Cruz, working as one of their apprentices sleeping in the bunk houses for my new book that I'm working on.
Marc:So that's an old hippie farm?
Guest:It's not, although it's actually based on the site where the old Smothers Brothers Vineyard, to bring it back to comedy, used to be.
Guest:But now it's this beautiful farm that supplies, mainly operates as a kitchen garden for one of the best restaurants in the country, Manresa, in Los Gatos.
Guest:So I just went to work with them.
Guest:I was up at 6 o'clock every morning clipping little flowers.
Guest:Because the chef makes what a lot of people wrongly dismiss as kind of tweezer food, but very delightful, very pretty place.
Guest:So there's a lot of that going on.
Guest:But it was a great experience.
Guest:But going back just to British food, I think it developed and it developed.
Guest:And a lot of influences.
Guest:People began to travel.
Guest:But British food is almost entirely made up of references to its immigration and to trade.
Guest:We had fish and chips.
Guest:It's a Portuguese, half Portuguese, half Belgian dish, really.
Guest:You know, the Belgians who were thrown out of the Belgian Huguenots and they came to Britain and they knew how to fry potatoes in horse fat.
Guest:And that's where you got it.
Guest:And you had the Portuguese Jews who were thrown out of Portugal and ended up in East London who knew how to fry fish.
Guest:And these intermingled in London.
Guest:Next thing you know, 1844, someone opens a fish and chip shop.
Marc:And that changed the history of the world.
Guest:Absolutely, it's fish and chips.
Guest:It's the quintessential British dish.
Guest:But chicken tikka masala, I actually did a demonstration the other day, and they asked me to do chicken tikka masala as an Indian demonstration.
Guest:I said, well, it's not Indian.
Guest:It was invented in Glasgow.
Marc:How is that?
Marc:But it was partially Indian because of the spices, right?
Guest:Well, no, what happened was there was a Pakistani guy
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Called Asif Aslam, who has a restaurant called the Shush Mahal in Glasgow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was doing Indian food, and he did chicken tikka, which is absolutely Indian.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But the cab drivers who used to come in complained it was always too dry, so he had cans of Campbell's soup in the back and poured them over it.
Guest:Stop it.
Guest:Spiced it up a bit.
Guest:Chicken tikka masala.
Marc:That's the original.
Guest:That's the original.
Marc:Chicken tikka is just cubes of chicken.
Guest:It's marinated cubes of chicken that's cooked on a tandoor.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's chicken tikka.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So cabbies, they're like, I need something to moisten this up a little bit.
Guest:That's chicken tikka masala.
Guest:So to me, everything that happens in Britain is a result of it.
Guest:Or not everything.
Marc:But what about the classic sort of pies and pasties and this and that?
Guest:Pies, sausages, all of those sort of things.
Guest:A lot of it came over with the Romans.
Marc:That's a long time ago.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:They came over and then it was the Italians who came in and taught, you know, because most of the pies, original thing of pies, the pastry on top was thrown away.
Guest:It was just a casement.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then the Italians came over in the 11th century because of the royal courts and all the intermarrying and the Italian chefs came in and they were the first people to make sweet pastry.
Guest:And they brought that to Britain or pastry that was edible.
Guest:And that's how you start making pies.
Guest:I made veal pie last night for my wife.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, she loved it.
Guest:And I was at these little mini pies.
Guest:So you're a good chef.
Guest:I'm not a chef.
Guest:There's a big difference.
Guest:You're a cook.
Guest:I'm a cook.
Guest:Now, I'm actually a very good cook.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I'm not afraid to say it, but I'm not battle-hardened like some of these chefs you've seen.
Marc:Well, now let's draw a differentiation because I'm a big fan.
Marc:I've talked to Scott Conant.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I heard it.
Guest:Fantastic.
Guest:He's a great guy.
Guest:Great guy.
Guest:He's a great chef.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A really terrific chef.
Guest:If you have never had his pasta pomodoro at Scarpetta, just go.
Marc:He made it for me.
Marc:He made the spaghetti for me, just the basic spaghetti.
Marc:He taught me how to make it, and I make it at home now.
Marc:And I interviewed Alex in here.
Marc:We had a nice chat.
Marc:She's great.
Marc:Great.
Marc:But I've always been fascinated with it because I have a knack for it, but I'm not a student of it.
Marc:I think I could cook, and I think some part of me wanted to be a chef.
Marc:But I'm not.
Marc:But I've become sort of fascinated like everybody in the world with foodie culture.
Marc:But the differentiation between a chef and a cook is a chef is somebody who earned that title.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, a cook is somebody who can who can cook.
Guest:Well, no, chef is really a managerial position.
Guest:Pefe.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So it's the manager of the kitchen.
Guest:Now, they did cook, and some kitchens are just the chef.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But really, the chef was the manager of that brigade.
Guest:And the reason, you know, the original celebrity chef was a guy called Antonin Karim going back to Napoleon.
Guest:Did he have a show?
No.
Guest:Got cancelled after two episodes.
Guest:No one could understand him.
Guest:But when the Russians invaded Paris in the early part of the 18th century, this guy was the chef to Napoleon, to Talleyrand.
Guest:And that's one of the reasons why chefs wear those tall hats that everyone wears, because he was a little guy.
Guest:So they all wore these floppy hats, and he starched his so that people could see him in these huge palace kitchens.
Guest:And that's why these toques, as they called us, so high.
Guest:So one of the things I love is the history of food and these kind of origins.
Marc:Well, that's what you're bringing to.
Marc:I think that's what makes you unique in how you approach food crit is that that's part.
Marc:That's the part of you that really uses what cultural criticism, what criticism in general is supposed to be about.
Marc:And I don't know if there are sources that you have for other food critics that inspired you, but I mean, how did you put this together?
Marc:Because you were in publishing and you had to read criticism at some point in college or what?
Guest:Well, I've always been fascinated with criticism, as I've always been fascinated with food.
Guest:Who are your guys in criticism?
Guest:Well, people in the UK, Clive James, if you've ever read Clive James, who's an Australian guy, in fact, but whose career he's he's rather ill now.
Guest:I think he's still with us, but he must be in his 80s.
Guest:But he wrote about TV.
Guest:And this guy, I remember being 11 or 12 and reading this in the Sunday paper and almost wetting myself with laughter because he would.
Guest:Yeah, he's a man who wrote about Arnold Schwarzenegger, that he looked like a bag full of walnuts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that has stayed with me ever since.
Guest:It's just that beauteous way of getting something.
Guest:The poetic.
Guest:Well, it's poetic and exact.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because the moment he said that, you got it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And from now on, I can't look at Schwarzenegger in any other way than it being a bag full of walnuts.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I think there are people like that.
Guest:There are people from, I can't remember his full name now.
Guest:who was the theater critic.
Guest:And these people who Pauline Cale over here, who wrote in real depth, but they were clever and they were smart and they brought depth.
Guest:And what they didn't just do is go, I like this, I don't.
Guest:That's not criticism.
Guest:That's garbage.
Guest:What they said is putting things in context.
Guest:Now, I guarantee it, when you look at a comedy bit, when you watch a comedian now and you go, oh, yeah, that's a good bit.
Guest:Now, you can put that in context.
Guest:You know, if I look at Chris Rock or if I look at, I see Richard Pryor.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know.
Guest:So did he.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:I mean, you know, thank God he's not around and litigious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you can see how people built their careers.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And also you can see it historically, not just with individuals, that there are people that become archetypes almost.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:The source.
Guest:They are the source.
Guest:And particularly there's a generation now for whom Pryor is absolutely that starting point.
Guest:And there are other, you know, the craziest kinds for whom Robin Williams might be.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Marc:Andy Kaufman.
Marc:It's almost like, I say it a lot on here, commedia dell'arte, is that you have archetypes in anything.
Marc:And I think intellectually that works with cooking in terms of regions.
Guest:It's funny you say that about the dell'arte and the commedia.
Guest:Actually, Alton Brown and I were chatting about this.
Guest:And we're also chatting about the way the minstrel shows used to work.
Guest:And the fact that a lot of the shows now follow very ancient kind of types.
Guest:So, for example, Iron Chef or next Iron Chef, particularly Roman drama.
Guest:You know, we're the gods sitting on the panel.
Guest:Alton is almost like, if you look at the old staging of the minstrel shows, they had a character called Mr. Interlocutor, who was very much from Plautus.
Guest:It was the same as the ribald slave who would come on and comment.
Marc:The clown is almost a jester character or a clown or an emcee.
Guest:An emcee, but also someone who'd come in and just stir things up a bit and disappear again.
Guest:Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Guest:And kind of that's Alton's role as the host of Next Iron Chef.
Guest:He comes in, prods a few people, says, do you really believe this?
Guest:Gets us to say something outrageous and then disappears a bit.
Marc:And tries to guess what they're going to do with, you know, so you're going to bring that.
Guest:So these types flow through and just as they do through in all sitcoms, there's always in every sitcom, you'll see them going back to these absolute sources, even back to Roman times.
Marc:But the weird thing about that is, though, is that it's wired in.
Marc:It's unconscious.
Marc:No one's sitting there in the Iron Chef development room or in a writer's room going, we really need to draw from the Romans on this or the Greeks or even further back.
Guest:No, I think it's because it... Exactly.
Guest:It just works.
Guest:It...
Guest:taps into sort of basic desires.
Guest:When you watch a show, you want someone to like, you want someone to hate.
Guest:And sometimes I'm the one who they hate because I'm honest.
Guest:The tricky thing is to be the guy that they like and hate.
Guest:Well, that's what I get.
Guest:I get people going, I love watching you, but you drive me nuts.
Guest:And I go, perfect.
Marc:Good.
Marc:Yeah, that's your role.
Marc:But I think that what makes you in my, you know, is that you're a formidable intellect, right?
Marc:I hope.
Marc:And so like, you know, like some of the things that you've said that you bring your experience, you know, intellectually and also from putting things into your mouth, you know, around the world, that that's something there's an education there.
Marc:Like when I watch you, I'm like, oh, here we go.
Marc:And then you say, you know, I've had this before and I just think that something wasn't right.
Marc:And you believe you because you've done your homework.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, I've invested in myself.
Guest:You know, I've spent every penny I ever had saved.
Guest:I spent to do my first book.
Marc:It was all on you.
Marc:But what was the break from the... Like, what exactly were you doing in publishing?
Guest:Were you an editor?
Guest:Were you... I was... By the end, I've done everything.
Guest:Sales.
Guest:I did a bit of editing.
Guest:I did all sorts.
Guest:But by the end, I was helping run a small company that produced a lot of cookbooks.
Guest:We did a lot of the Weber cookery books, for example, in Europe, which is huge.
Guest:Believe it or not, outside of...
Guest:the u.s the biggest market for weber grills is denmark so we've sold millions and millions really why is that it's almost everybody in the country owns a weber grill in fact i think it's almost illegal for them not to have one i have obsessed with it they're great they're the little smoky joe yeah yeah i wish i had room for one i've got a tiny little apartment why can't we get you a bigger apartment uh i wish but who knows whether i stay here long enough okay um but
Guest:So I did that, and then I had a breakdown.
Guest:I had a full-on jump-off-a-cliff kind of breakdown.
Guest:I almost wasn't here.
Guest:Do you remember the moment?
Guest:Yeah, I remember the night where I kind of saved myself, and I was cooking a dish that I actually put a recipe for in the book called LSD, Life-Saving Dal, not the LSD that a lot of comedians might be familiar with.
Guest:Life-Saving Dal, which is like a lentil soup.
Guest:Yeah, it's Bengali chicken soup.
Guest:It saved me.
Marc:So it was something comforting that you knew.
Guest:I started cooking it, but I had a breakdown.
Guest:My mother had died.
Guest:She died of leukemia.
Guest:The job was getting as many jobs due where you spend half your life just staring at spreadsheets and shouting at people.
Guest:Just servicing something.
Guest:Yeah, and I just became so disconnected from anything that I was enjoying.
Guest:And I started getting a little unwell and panic attacks.
Guest:And I honestly thought I wasn't going to be here.
Marc:You were having sort of like suicidal ruminations and, you know, what is life?
Marc:What's the point of it?
Guest:It was actually that kind of serious.
Guest:Yeah, I've been there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I came home one day and I realized I'd sat in the dark for about two hours.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just staring.
Guest:It's always a healthy thing.
Guest:Yeah, nice.
Guest:And actually, thank God, the smells from the apartment below kind of wafted up.
Guest:And it was the Middle Eastern family, and they were cooking something amazing.
Guest:And I kind of went, oh, I'm hungry now.
Guest:So I was more hungry than suicidal, thank God, at that point.
Guest:And I started cooking.
Guest:I think that's how America actually built its business model.
Guest:I mean, that is what...
Guest:More hungry than suicidal.
Guest:That's how America works.
Guest:Well, thank God it worked for me because I started cooking and I actually found a notebook.
Guest:And when I turned 40, someone had sent me on one of these Tony Robbins courses for my 40th birthday.
Guest:So they were really concerned.
Guest:I think it was more punishment.
Guest:It was genuinely a little bit scary.
Marc:You went to a Tony Robbins.
Guest:I actually went for about half an hour.
Guest:But no, I went for a bit longer.
Guest:But...
Guest:So the only thing I got out of it, apart from learning how to punch the air and go whoop a lot, which is a terribly American thing.
Guest:And if you can look at me, I'm not the sort of person who whoops.
Guest:I don't see you whooping.
Guest:I'm not a great whooper.
Guest:I'm a whoop-free zone.
Guest:And anyway, but it had to list goals.
Guest:So I'd actually written down.
Guest:I found this notebook while I was cooking.
Guest:I noticed it, and I started reading it.
Guest:And it had all my goals on.
Guest:One was have a suit made in Savile Row.
Guest:Did that.
Guest:Where's that?
Guest:Savile Rose.
Guest:Oh, a suit.
Guest:I thought you were saying soup.
Guest:No, I have a suit, mate.
Guest:And I loved it because, you know, although I did get kind of put down a bit, I was having my trousers, all of that, measurements going down.
Guest:And I'd read somewhere that you should tell them which side you dress, you know, which side you dangle.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:So they put a bit of extra material on that side.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who knew?
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So I read about this.
Guest:So I said to this elderly guy who was down on his knees, kind of measuring me up.
Guest:I said, oh, just in case you need to know, I dressed to the left.
Guest:And he looked up to me and I still remember he goes, I don't think it's going to matter much.
Guest:So do you?
Guest:Which is the nicest way of anyone ever telling you you've got a small cock you'll ever, ever get.
Marc:Do you think that was really it?
Marc:Or maybe it was just a mythology about whether... I mean, how could they really... Unless you're huge.
Guest:I suspect, you know, it might...
Guest:rub yeah sure it might wear out so you know to make the trousers last longer they might but apparently it didn't matter did he laugh or was he very practical no no these guys are absolutely deadly serious they take anyway it was a beautiful suit i love it you still got it oh yeah absolutely okay so that was on that was one of those that ran a marathon new york
Guest:Did the New York Marathon.
Guest:Hardest thing I've ever done.
Guest:Never, ever do that again.
Marc:This was on your goal list before you went to the Tony Robinson?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What else had I done?
Guest:You trained for a marathon?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You weren't an athletic guy before.
Marc:It was just a goal?
Guest:I know this is on radio, but look at me.
Guest:You're good.
Guest:Jabba the judge.
Guest:Yeah, so I did the marathon.
Guest:I had the suit made.
Guest:Oh, I had my teeth straightened.
Guest:I did have, I mean, very strong British teeth, but I laugh about it.
Guest:I say they look like an abandoned cemetery.
Guest:They were kind of all over.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I had the strain, 40 years old.
Guest:Where'd they come from?
Guest:Your mother's side?
Guest:Well, no, the thing in Britain with the teeth was, you guys are at the other end.
Guest:That's why all your food's so soft.
Guest:Everyone's had so much work done on their teeth.
Guest:And we're at Britain at the other end, where, quite frankly, after the war, there were far more important medical things, like keeping people alive and having people having their teeth fixed.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And it's a less...
Guest:I think people, it's changing, but I don't think people are as impressed by certain visual things like, you know, things like teeth in Britain.
Guest:Yeah, my teeth are not great.
Guest:But here it seems to be a fixation.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Anyway, it became like that for me.
Marc:It's a racket is what it is here.
Guest:It is a racket, but also it was affecting my health, I was told, because they were crooky and infections.
Guest:You weren't chewing well.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So I had them fixed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But at the bottom, I'd just written four words, and it just said, go everywhere, eat everything.
Guest:And I went, and it literally was me going, I went, OK.
Guest:And the next morning, I went in and spoke to the woman who actually owned the company that I was running, and I just said,
Guest:i'm off i have to go everywhere and eat everything and she was very supportive and that's it i i left i went off and you know a few weeks later i found myself standing on bondi beach so and that was the beginning of this journey took in 31 countries in australia yeah oh that's beautiful yeah it was stunning
Marc:Okay, but to eat everything, was your goal in mind to make food and thinking about food and putting food into context the goal, or you were just sort of like, I'm just hungry and I need to get the fuck out of here?
Guest:I wanted to use it as a way to meet people.
Guest:And I'm looking back with hindsight at what I wanted to do.
Guest:But it kind of refreshed and restored my faith in humanity.
Guest:And it absolutely did.
Guest:You'd gotten isolated.
Guest:More than isolated.
Guest:I just, yeah, I felt no connection to the world or anyone in it at that point.
Guest:I mean, it was kind of, talk about being dead inside.
Guest:I absolutely felt like that.
Marc:It's a heartbreaking feeling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's a miserable feeling.
Guest:I'm sure there's lots of people who encounter it.
Guest:And I was lucky that I found this kind of ladder out of there.
Guest:And for me, it was food.
Guest:And it was the people who- And also the courage to change.
Guest:Yeah, well, I had no choice.
Guest:People say, oh, it was a very brave thing to do.
Guest:And yeah, it was risky and I spent a lot of money.
Guest:I had no choice.
Guest:If I wanted to stay on the planet, I had to do something.
Guest:So I don't feel particularly brave about it, although I'm glad, looking back, yeah, I guess it was, certainly from other people's points of view.
Guest:But I got in touch with people, so I really wanted to...
Guest:to just go and find out about food.
Guest:And that wasn't just gluttony.
Guest:So it was cooking with people.
Guest:It was making things.
Guest:I went up to Scotland to make whiskey for a week.
Guest:I went on the Trans-Siberian Express and just kind of hung out with people.
Guest:With the intention of writing?
Guest:I started thinking about it.
Guest:Pretty early.
Guest:And then I was very lucky that I had very vague contact with Anthony Bourdain.
Marc:Yeah, I've talked to him.
Marc:He's a great guy.
Guest:Yeah, great guy.
Guest:And I said to him, I'm thinking about, I'm doing this.
Guest:Have you got any ideas?
Guest:And he goes, oh, go here.
Guest:Make sure you go to Vietnam.
Guest:Make sure you do this.
Marc:He actually knows people's houses.
Marc:Go by Joe's place and tell him I sent you and he'll make you a hot dog.
Guest:Well, when you talk about people like that, he's the real deal.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He's absolutely 100% the real deal.
Marc:When I talk to him, he's one of those guys that he's got real rock and roll sensibility and he's out there and politically he's correct.
Guest:and you know his understanding of of social issues is great and he brings all of that to the the embracing humanity in the food he's a polymath in that sense he genuinely does bring so much and funny if you talk to him like he would never consider himself a great chef no yeah he's he he always said and he said very early to me when we i think we had a one night we got very drunk in a pub in london which i suspect
Guest:A lot of people can say about spending time with Tony Bourdain.
Guest:But he said, I have noble qualms, sorry, in admitting I'm a sous chef who got lucky.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, he, you know, the book was, it changed everything.
Guest:But he deserves every ounce of what he gets.
Guest:So, I mean, people go, oh, are you envious of Bourdain and Andrew Zimmer?
Guest:And I go, no, why?
Guest:They're great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Brilliant.
Marc:Right.
Marc:They lived the life and sort of carved a path.
Marc:But, I mean, you took your own approach to it.
Guest:What did he tell you to do?
Guest:He sent me a quote, and in fact it's on the front of my book.
Guest:He said, put this on the front of your proposal.
Marc:The dangerously obsessive, staggeringly knowledgeable, provocative, and opinionated Simon Mujumdar knows his shit.
Marc:Many would kill to have eaten the meals in their lifetime that Mujumdar has consumed in a single year.
Marc:Plus, the bastard can write.
Guest:That quote, I genuinely believe created my career.
Guest:And I haven't seen him since, and if I see him, I'll give him a big hug.
Guest:And he may regret it.
Guest:Because when I put that on the front of my book proposal, the one thing I knew is that everybody would at least open the proposal.
Guest:Now, it had to be any good, and thankfully it was good enough that a publisher here bought it for a decent amount of money and a publisher in the UK.
Guest:And that refunded everything that I'd spent.
Guest:So I only ended up back at 0.0, but it allowed me to get back to 0.0.
Marc:But you took the risk.
Marc:So you took all your savings and you started traveling.
Marc:So let's go through some of the places and how you moved towards realizing that you had some sort of critical approach to food that you thought had legs and that was your own.
Marc:I mean, there must have been a moment where you're like, well, this is this and it comes from that.
Marc:And I can taste all of the history of this and this.
Marc:This is my goal.
Marc:This is my life work here.
Guest:I don't know that it was quite as kind of finger snapping as that, if you mean, where there wasn't a light bulb appearing above my head at any point.
Guest:But I think there was definitely a cumulative effect.
Guest:And I think as I met the people...
Guest:And also certain events.
Guest:I remember being in Mongolia, out in the wilderness of Mongolia, and eating actually one of the things that's probably the nastiest on earth is the fermented horse's milk.
Guest:They ferment to about 5% proof, and they drink about two liters of it a day.
Guest:It's not fun.
Guest:For me, anyway, I never got a taste for it.
Guest:I'm not sure I ever would.
Guest:But they also serve a version of clotted cream.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:And so I thought, well, this is weird because this is almost identical to what I'm eating in Cornwall in England or Devonshire clotted cream.
Guest:And so I went and did some research.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it actually passed down from the Mongols coming in to the Phoenicians.
Guest:The Phoenicians brought it to Cornwall where they traded skills in making that for the tin that was in Cornwall.
Guest:Wow.
Wow.
Marc:So Britain's got no food.
Guest:Almost nothing that's indigenous because it's a tiny island that was... Rocks.
Guest:It was taken over most of the time by lots of other people and then built its empire.
Guest:So it was bringing things in from all over the world.
Guest:I still remember being at school when I was a kid and the prep school I was in still owned a map that had a quarter of it being pink from when Britain ruled the world.
Guest:So...
Guest:The rest of the world's impact on British food is absolutely vast.
Guest:You know, curry, spices, they all came in from around the world from trade.
Guest:Tea, you know, the British obsession with tea.
Guest:And there's a great story, I can't remember the name of the man there, who went into China dressed, you know, in kind of native gear or coloured his skin and stole tea plants and brought them to India so the British could grow them in India because the Chinese wouldn't sell them any of their special plants.
Guest:And that started, they started in Assam and then Darjeeling.
Guest:And now, of course, we have this huge Indian tea industry.
Guest:And in fact, I went up to Darjeeling where they were picking the first flush teas to watch these tiny little Nepalese women who are the only ones with hands small enough to pick the butts.
Guest:But what you see is the love and care that people have with the food and the generosity.
Guest:I mean, I know that sounds slightly saccharine and it might be sort of the finishing point of an episode of a sitcom.
Guest:But I genuinely did find people who, just as I'm doing now with my new project, they're just opening up their homes to you.
Guest:People let me sleep, never met me before, didn't know me from, you know, Adam.
Guest:And they put me in their homes.
Guest:They let me come into their work.
Guest:They let me be part of their lives for a short period.
Marc:Did you find this to be because I think there's a sense when you you work in your working class or you have a different class status or you're engaged in the machine of commerce that, you know, you assume that everybody's sort of detached and that they're socializing is very specific with that with the like minded people.
Marc:But I think that once you enter real communities.
Marc:of people that are intimate and maybe of a lower social class than you, that the warmth there is far beyond anything you would experience in the competitive world of a middle or upper class.
Guest:I think to an extent that's certainly true.
Guest:And when I met good blue-collar people all over the world, they would just come and be part.
Guest:Hang out.
Guest:Come and hang out.
Guest:To be fair, I've experienced that across the scale, though.
Guest:I'm not sure that it's totally driven by class or by success.
Guest:I've met people who are incredibly wealthy, incredibly competitive, incredibly successful, who've just opened up hearts and lives to me.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Around food.
Guest:Around food.
Guest:See, that's the thing.
Guest:Food is the thing.
Guest:I always say, if I had been a musician, I'd have gone around the world and sang songs with people, and I think I would have had the same effect.
Guest:It goes on to some basic needs.
Marc:But music's a little trickier because, you know, it's, you know, it's not, you know, offering something.
Marc:No.
Marc:And you've got to have a good voice and you've got like food.
Marc:It's like, you know, even if it's just sort of like I have cookies, you want cookie?
Guest:I mean, that's a beautiful thing.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And I'll give you a perfect example.
Guest:I was on a train going from Marrakesh to Fez.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Eight hour journey.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm sitting in one of these old carriages, you know, six seats.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or eight of us were crammed in there.
Guest:And I was on my own and I hadn't quite planned properly.
Guest:So I had half a pack of, you know, Pringles and a bottle of Diet Coke.
Guest:And as we started off on this journey, first of all, everyone's speaking to each other in Arabic.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And they look at me and they realize that I can't speak.
Guest:So one of them says to me, parlez-vous français?
Guest:I say, yeah, obviously North Africa.
Guest:So the next thing I know, they change immediately into speaking French so I could be part of the conversation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The next thing, they see me with my... They all start getting their food out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They've all got these trays and bags.
Marc:That they brought with them.
Guest:And fried fish and roast chicken and breads and grapes and olives and preserved lemons.
Guest:I mean, cheeses.
Guest:I mean, just incredible.
Guest:I mean, it was like a dream.
Guest:And I'm sitting there with my half pack of Pringles and my Diet Coke.
Guest:And I kind of wait.
Guest:And they will start sharing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because that's the way.
Guest:It's about hospitality.
Guest:That entire culture is about hospitality.
Guest:And I sort of go, I only have this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they laugh.
Guest:And they keep on feeding me.
Yeah.
Guest:They keep on saying, well, eat, eat.
Guest:And in fact, they're all cutting off, making sure that I get all the prime parts.
Guest:You know, there's a beautiful piece of chicken.
Guest:They make sure I get the juiciest leg.
Guest:I get the belly of the fish, which is that fatty, beautiful, gorgeous piece of whatever fish it was.
Guest:I still don't know.
Guest:And they keep pushing it towards me.
Guest:Pure hospitality.
Guest:And that kind of, once you experience something like that, it kind of changes the way you think about everyone.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And this isn't even the fact that they were probably a Christian Muslim.
Guest:It's not about nothing.
Guest:It transcends that.
Guest:It transcends that.
Guest:It's just to do with the fact that I was a guest and they wanted not to make themselves look good.
Guest:It's in their culture to be hospitable.
Guest:And I found that all over the world.
Guest:I found it in China.
Guest:I found it in India.
Guest:i found it all over europe i found it all over you know when i was in spain at the sherry fair where i was you know i went to so many places i said 31 countries and now i've continued to do that and that was the other thing that i say at the end of the book and i still it was the beginning yeah it wasn't the end right it was the beginning and i was lucky enough that i met my wife one of the reasons i'm in la now i met a woman
Guest:On my journey in Brazil.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Is she Brazilian?
Guest:She's Filipino-American, but she's as much a Cali girl.
Guest:She's lived in California all her life, and hence the fact that I'm here.
Guest:How old are you?
Guest:I'm 49.
Guest:Just turned 49.
Guest:We like the exact same age.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I'll be 50 next year.
Guest:I'm actually training for a bodybuilding competition to do in my 50th year.
Guest:That's my next challenge outside of the book I'm writing.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just decided I've got to do something.
Guest:I love challenges.
Guest:I love challenging myself.
Guest:Life isn't challenging enough?
Guest:Well, I think you can always add extra levels to it.
Guest:It's like flavor in a dish.
Guest:You could always add a little bit of something.
Guest:And if you can't have something where you get up in the morning and go...
Guest:How the hell am I going to do this?
Guest:But you do it.
Guest:Life kind of dies on you.
Guest:But I met my wife in Brazil, started coming over here to see her.
Guest:And now between us, we keep traveling.
Guest:I think this year it'll be over 70 countries by the time we finish.
Guest:And by the time I finish Fed White and Blue, which I'm doing now, which is my new book and TV show, we'll do... I'll have been to every state in the country.
Guest:Fed White and Blue?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:Basically, I'm becoming one of you guys, and I need to figure out what that means.
Guest:Yeah, you do.
Marc:I don't know if you know what you're in for.
Guest:Well, I'm actually writing the first chapter now, What is an American?
Guest:And it can be anything.
Guest:It could be...
Guest:the guy who makes my sushi, the guy who picks up my trash, the guy who does my dry cleaning, the guy who cooks at the best French restaurant in the country, they could believe in God or not.
Guest:They could believe in war or not.
Guest:I mean, the beauty of this country is that it will allow you to have those beliefs.
Guest:And I got to do what I'm doing now on TV.
Guest:And yes, people come up to me and they go, you're not a chef.
Guest:You shouldn't be doing this.
Guest:That's a different question.
Guest:Do they really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I, you know,
Guest:As I always said, there's a great thing.
Guest:I think it was Dr. Johnson who said, you don't need to be a carpenter to tell when a table is crooked.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But also the thing that you're trying to do, and I think it's noble, is that even in talking about the food in Britain and even talking about hospitality is that food almost more than anything binds us.
Marc:And the experience of sharing food and the experience of also, like I imagine that you have information for somebody who's been cooking something a certain way for their whole life because their grandmother taught them that way.
Marc:And they may think it's indigenously American or whatever.
Marc:And you're like, no.
Marc:And you can provide a key to somebody to actually see where they come from, where their family lineage is, how that could have gotten there.
Marc:If you trace food or traditions in food within families, there might be some surprises there.
Guest:Well, I think one of the nice things is that, you know, when I do the show, I get a lot of hate tweets and I get all of that.
Guest:No, no, I could care less about that.
Guest:That's just like, but it's fun.
Guest:The key to me is that all the chefs I judge respect me.
Marc:Oh, you mean hate tweets for Iron Chef?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That's just life.
Guest:But it's fun.
Guest:And I love responding back because it kind of freaks people out.
Marc:All you guys have sort of a... Yeah, I even found that with Scott.
Marc:Because one of the things with Conan was sort of like, you know, don't make me look like an asshole.
Marc:You know, like he knows...
Marc:How people take him.
Marc:And I think it was important for when we talked, you know, for him to show who he was.
Marc:But, you know, you're on television.
Marc:So and there's a dynamic.
Marc:And I don't know that they push you to do that.
Guest:But, you know, you can pick your angle.
Guest:Absolutely don't push me to do it.
Guest:But but, you know, I'm a well-spoken guy with an accent that sounds like a villain in a Star Wars movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you've got to live with it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, so of course people go, and the moment you string two words together in this country, there will be someone who thinks you're being elitist and hoity-toity and all of that.
Guest:You know, I get asked about it, about the Iron Chefs.
Guest:People go, oh, Bobby.
Guest:Because Bobby comes over as tough and, you know, he's the Irish kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He's a New York kid.
Guest:He's a New York Irish kid.
Guest:And of course he's tough.
Guest:You had to be.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he's also one of the nicest guys I've met.
Guest:And also one of the best chefs.
Guest:Right.
Marc:That's the thing with him, is that you're like, who is this guy with this attitude?
Marc:And then he cooks these beauties.
Marc:There's a sensitivity to it.
Marc:When I was talking to Conan, I had realized, because I watch Chopped a lot, compulsively.
Marc:And I watch Iron Chef, and I watch Irvine's show, mostly, though.
Guest:Those are the three that I watch the most.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And the one thing I realized before I talked to Conan was like, holy shit, he's the only one I haven't seen cook.
Marc:And it bothered me because when you watch any of them cook, no matter what their attitude is, and all of them have a certain amount of attitude.
Marc:There's an ego to the chef.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you get the personality of Jeffrey or of Aron and Mark to a certain degree on Chop.
Marc:But like I saw those guys cook, and the second you see someone cook, the vulnerability is there.
Marc:And their connection with the food is there.
Marc:And there's a whole other element of their personality that you really can judge the sensitivity and who they really are by how they approach that food.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And I remember, I've eaten Bobby's food at his restaurant long before I ever did this.
Guest:The first time I had his food on Iron Chef, I actually had to sit back for a few seconds.
Guest:I was speechless.
Guest:Luckily, they didn't come to me first.
Guest:And I said to him afterwards, I said, I know this sounds silly.
Guest:I said, but you're really good.
Guest:I said, I don't mean that to be condescending.
Guest:I said, I've eaten your food at Mesa and American Grill lots of times.
Guest:I said...
Guest:The first time just having you cook for me, it blew me away.
Guest:And he clearly won that competition.
Guest:I just said, you're really good.
Guest:And he kind of just smiled because I think he's used to people forgetting because he's so famous.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And also he's got an attitude.
Guest:That he's got an attitude that they forget that he's really good.
Guest:The other one similar to that is Michael Simon.
Guest:In fact, I've just got to phone him when we finish here to talk about something.
Guest:And...
Guest:I love because he's got big banana hands for fingers.
Guest:He's got that big Cleveland love.
Guest:He's that blue collar guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he cooks food with such finesse and such beauty and such thought that when you taste it, you're just knocked out.
Guest:And it always surprises me.
Guest:And every time I judge him, I go, I keep forgetting how good you are.
Guest:Whereas there are others like Geoffrey, who, by the way, you should have on the show, has the filthiest sense of humor of any individual who ever walked God's planet.
Guest:Geoffrey Zakarian?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:He is so funny.
Guest:His stories will kill you.
Guest:I loved judging with him this year on Next Dine Sheff, or last year, now almost a year ago.
Guest:He is so funny to judge with, and he will cut, and then he'll say, oh, let me tell you this story about...
Guest:someone famous and you just oh yeah the whole studio just stops to listen to these stories so he's and he's become a good pal and he's a but you know he's a great chef just everything about him well he's he's like meticulous and and also seems to you know be very aware about honoring a certain tradition of cooking
Guest:Well, he's very much, as is Alex, out of this classical French tradition.
Guest:And I'm a great believer in that because it's very technique driven.
Guest:And I think technique is one of the things that's disappearing now.
Guest:In fact, I had this long chat with Scott when I went to his restaurant and he was there.
Guest:And technique has almost become a sloppy, technique has almost become a dirty word.
Guest:And everyone's going, well, I'm rustic and I'm ingredient driven.
Guest:And rustic seems to become a kind of euphemism for sloppy now.
Marc:Or copping out.
Guest:Or copping.
Guest:And everything's a mess on the plate.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:There's so much technique in what the really great chefs do.
Guest:And it's like to play jazz, you have to learn to play the piano first.
Guest:Absolutely, yeah.
Guest:And that's what a lot of young chefs, I think, are beginning to lose.
Guest:You can't riff unless you've got your technique in place.
Guest:And I think there's, I go to a lot of restaurants now and the basic techniques are missing.
Guest:What are those?
Guest:Well, just little things of how flavors are married together.
Guest:Just little things.
Guest:I mean, not knife skills so much, but little things like so much food now is pre-prepped.
Guest:We live in a world of big egg.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's almost impossible for a lot of restaurants to get a whole side of, you know, beef or pork to break it down.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So they're buying it in all pre-portioned.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So they're losing that one more stage of connection.
Guest:It's almost like the Karl Marx thing that we keep getting more and more removed from the means of production.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And that's what's happening with food.
Guest:So now you're getting these young chefs in.
Guest:And I spoke to someone at a culinary school recently and I said, well, how long did you learn?
Guest:Because I can break down an animal.
Guest:I said, how long did you spend doing that?
Guest:And they said a day.
Guest:I said, what, you did a three-year course, you spent one day doing that?
Marc:Breaking down a cow or a pig.
Guest:I mean, it's an expensive thing, which is one of the reasons, but also it's very hard because of the big ag systems that people have put in place.
Guest:You can't get a whole.
Guest:You can't get a whole animal because it's all broken down into boxes.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Yeah, I was in Nebraska recently where some terrific beef came down.
Guest:I followed a whole production from literally seeing a car fall out of the back of its mum all the way to cooking steaks at the Nebraska Club and all the points in between.
Guest:Now, actually, what came home is there's a lot of really good people and a lot of families and a lot of big farms that are run by just good people.
Guest:But it's all done very...
Guest:with a lot of technology because it's a production, 35,000 head a day.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:And I think that even though it's a matter of connection to the heart and connection to the animal, because I noticed that when you have a restaurant, once the chef loses interest or leaves or sets up a menu and you're just left with underlings, that it naturally gets sloppy and the food sort of suffers from it because nobody's putting that focus and love into it.
Marc:Well, it's a vision.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Running a great restaurant is a vision.
Marc:And then I think what you're saying, just by nature of the fact that if you butcher your own animal, and I don't know, it almost seems like a magical thing that if everything's used or you've got the whole animal, you break it down, you make stocks, you make whatever you're going to make with the rest of it, which I think is a French idea, that you still feel that connection to that original animal if it was all taken apart in the kitchen that you're sitting in the restaurant of.
Guest:Well, it's a European...
Guest:perspective, I think, primarily.
Guest:I mean, obviously, lots of countries do this, but primarily Europe.
Guest:You know, you had a lot of people who had one pig.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They kill that pig once a year.
Guest:And we did this in the UK.
Guest:You used everything but the squeak.
Guest:That's what they say.
Guest:And that's where, you know, Fergus Henderson nose to tail and this whole awful tradition that's coming up.
Guest:But people were used to eating it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And nowadays we live in a world where people are allowed to be selective and food became cheap.
Guest:So they promote these ridiculous.
Guest:My battle at the moment is trying stopping anyone in the US ever eating like chicken breast or pork tenderloin or filet mignon.
Guest:They're all pieces of meat that have no flavor, but they charge.
Guest:high prices for right whereas if you use chicken thigh or use pork shoulder or use shoulder clod from a cow yeah get some fat in there get some fat in the flavor you ask any chef yeah they'll tell you what they want to eat and it's those bits but we again it's marketing getting people into those and we've lost contact you know so many kids in this country couldn't even tell you which animal different meats come from right yeah the fact that we give them a different name pork and beef not cow and pig you know so or pig and cow rather
Marc:But it's like the pork belly revolution.
Marc:It's like, you know, for years, you know, like that was used for soup and beans or to sort of stretch out something for poor people.
Marc:And now it's like, you know, it's the shit.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:You spend more on that and same in the UK.
Guest:Lamb breast is the next one.
Guest:You wait for it.
Guest:Lamb breast, veal breast, these cheap beef belly, all these cheap cuts.
Guest:The chefs love using them.
Guest:They also realize they can make a lot of money on them.
Guest:You used to be able to buy a piece of pork belly for a few bucks, and then you cut it up, you could sell it for a lot more.
Guest:Now, of course, it's become one of the most expensive parts of the animal.
Guest:It's crazy, right?
Guest:I went to buy some.
Guest:I make my own bacon, which is a very easy thing to do.
Guest:And I went to buy a slab of pork belly.
Guest:It was just ludicrous.
Marc:Really?
Guest:But once you have that connection, even do it with a fish.
Guest:Too few places now, restaurants are filleting their own fish.
Guest:They're buying it pre-filleting.
Marc:Fish is tricky because so much of it is frozen, so little of it is fresh, and you don't know what you're getting.
Marc:I rarely order fish out.
Marc:I don't even know where to buy fish.
Marc:Good fish.
Marc:You must get it by you.
Guest:Where do you go in Culver City?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:Every Sunday, my wife and I go to the Santa Monica Seafood Company on Wilshire, walking distance to the beach.
Guest:We sit at the bar.
Guest:She has a lobster tail.
Guest:I have something.
Guest:The fish is good quality.
Guest:And yeah, they have fishmongers there because that's what they're doing.
Guest:But I'll always buy a couple of whole fish from them to take home.
Guest:And they go, do you want them filleted?
Guest:And I say, no, just scale them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:a pain yeah but i'll do i'll fill it them up am i the best absolutely not but i love the fact that i can take a whole trout i can fillet it i put it in my little smoker on my stovetop and then i'm my wife loves when i make like a smoke trout pate and also you have this dynamic going on with your wife and and with whoever like i used to cook a lot more and there's a certain pride in sharing food that you've cooked not just on a hospitality level but you're sort of like huh good well i did that
Guest:and then we're enjoying it absolutely you know or breaking down a chicken yeah you know i think it's far if you buy pre-cut chicken pieces yeah it's five times more expensive than buying a chicken and breaking it up which is not hard you just gotta know where the joints are you just do it a few times yeah now the first time i broke down a chicken you know which wasn't that long ago i hacked away at it like a medieval surgeon yeah now yeah you know i kind of don't even look at it when i'm doing it
Guest:And it's not because I'm extremely talented, it's just I've done it a lot of times.
Guest:And that's one of the things when you see chefs on Iron Chef or anything, yes, they're extremely talented, but they're chopping away at a piece of garlic and everyone goes, wow, they've done that a thousand times.
Guest:You and I haven't.
Guest:We can do it, but I'm a lot slower and you can see.
Guest:I just did a demonstration the other day, I've got a big hack on my thumb because...
Guest:You know, I turned away.
Guest:Well, you know, I was quite proud of that, you know, battle scar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was actually doing a demonstration for about 50 people of some Indian food and making all sorts of things that I took a lump out of my thumb.
Guest:But these guys have been doing it forever.
Marc:So when you like all the how did you choose the country?
Marc:So now you're going around the states.
Marc:Is that your deal?
Marc:So you've gone state to state with stuff.
Guest:I didn't want to do every state because, A, I thought that would be just a bit kind of cheesy, but also because, best one in the world, some states aren't probably that exciting from beautiful states.
Marc:Yeah, hard to find real food that somehow has some connection to the state.
Guest:Yeah, so rather than go and look for dishes that are specific, the book's called Fed White and Blue, Breaking Bread with America, and it's really me looking for...
Guest:to break bread with the people who are Americans.
Guest:Now, that could be everything.
Guest:I went and spent two days cooking in a Filipino kitchen in West Covina.
Guest:Tomorrow, I'm going to cook with the Soul Sausage Boys, who are the guys who won the great food truck race.
Guest:And I'm actually going to, they want to put a sausage on their menu, a pork vindaloo.
Guest:So they've invited me to come in and make it for them.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Because, obviously, Vindaloo, a great Indian dish.
Guest:Where is this place?
Guest:It's on Sautel and Mississippi.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:They're the guys who won the great food truck race this year, and they're terrific, and they're such good guys, but Korean-Americans.
Guest:So I'm going to go in, and I spent a night with them hanging out in K-Town, and now I'm going to cook with them, and that...
Guest:Finding out about the kind of young Korean American community.
Guest:I was in Nebraska.
Guest:I was in Texarkana.
Guest:This was actually one of the most kind of tragic but also inspiring.
Guest:I went to spend a week working with one of the food pantries in Texarkana where they have one of the biggest problems of hunger in the country.
Guest:And part of it is the politics because it's half Texas, half Arkansas, and they hate each other and can't get on and nobody seems to care.
Guest:But they just have a real poverty issue there.
Guest:But they also have these incredibly inspiring people in the middle, whether it's people who are running a church, people running this pantry, or even the people at Walmart who are giving them a lot of the food that would otherwise go to waste.
Guest:And bear in mind, 35% of the food in this country goes in the trash.
Marc:It's a tragedy.
Guest:People should be in jail.
Guest:People should be in jail because of this.
Guest:because i hate it when i go to restaurants i'm like where's all this going i mean tomorrow the the portions are so crazy and you go and see so much of it they're not you go to a chain restaurant and so much of it is being thrown out because they're being told by head office or by the law that they can't give it away now some some are giving it but so much gets wasted and that's what drives me crazy you could go to a restaurant where the dumpster is full
Marc:of food that is perfectly fine and 100 yards away there's someone starving on the street yeah it's it's in i've i actually did a segment on a show with uh freegans oh yeah yeah who who actually have relationships with some stores or know where to go to get i've done that in london yeah people who just don't pay for anything they go to the dumpster because it's like just because the date says bad it doesn't mean it's bad no it could be one day yeah
Guest:So I spent some time up there.
Marc:You know, I'm going down to... What did you get into over there?
Guest:Everything I did, from collecting food to bring to the pantry, from the people who come into the pantry to take it to the food bank, rather, than the people who come in and take it to their little food pantries that are in churches.
Guest:And I went to help in some churches, loading the bags.
Guest:And this is when I get really annoyed when you read about people going, oh, well, entitlement, and they're all...
Marc:Oh, the welfare state people.
Guest:Yeah, they're all welfare state.
Guest:They're all just got their hands out.
Guest:And I was saying, you know, when I was carrying these bags, often I was helping carrying bags because a lot of them were seniors who were making that choice of, do I buy food or pay for my medication?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I was helping them carry it out to their car.
Guest:I didn't take them out to too many Lexus cars or too many BMWs or Audis, you know, a battered old Datsun maybe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So these are people who are really suffering.
Guest:And a lot of them are just people helping, not for any praise or glory.
Guest:They're just helping because they're in a community and they want it.
Guest:And that's what people were supposed to do.
Guest:Help each other.
Guest:I mean, I never understand that.
Guest:But the outrage that I felt when I saw all of this going on, but just how humble it made me feel that there were these people who were just helping out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I did that.
Guest:I went up to Seattle to make a fed white and blue beer.
Guest:I said I'm going to go and make some whiskey in Utah.
Guest:Part of this big craft distilling.
Guest:I'm off to the cheese.
Marc:There's some whiskey being made in Utah.
Guest:There's a company called High West Distillery makes some of the best craft spirits in the country.
Guest:And that's a growing industry now.
Guest:What's the word craft mean?
Guest:Well, craft is kind of boutique, small scale.
Marc:Well, that seems to be happening a lot.
Marc:And I still wonder about like, you know, I know that it's very interesting because of the foodie revolution that in almost any even minor or smaller city in America, there might be a chef that's doing something very exciting and compelling.
Marc:But it's still fairly it's insulated and it's expensive.
Guest:It's also they're battling against the chains.
Guest:And the chains, I think I read somewhere, it's Mississippi, for example, something like 60 or 70% of the meals are eaten in a chain restaurant.
Guest:And those chains are very attractive for employees because they have benefits.
Marc:Yeah, they're operating- But it's also cheap and easy for people.
Marc:Like I have a weird sort of aggravation with the fact that in this country anyways, to get good food, I mean, just produce, you have to have money.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that there's this talk, it's like, why don't people eat healthier?
Marc:Well, you can eat healthier, but you're still going to be eating agribusiness crap because you don't have the financial access or the economics to go out and buy good, healthy food.
Guest:Well, we use food in this country, I have to say, it's often used as a way of beating each other up.
Guest:This is almost a class thing.
Guest:Oh, well, if you don't go to the farmer's market, you're not a good person.
Guest:Well, try telling someone with two jobs,
Guest:Trying to look at two kids, two kids, single mom.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It is class.
Guest:We don't talk about class here.
Guest:Yeah, but if she doesn't buy her parsnips from the farmer's market, she's a bad person.
Guest:How dare you?
Guest:How dare you tell her?
Guest:Just because you drive in an SUV and you haven't...
Guest:And you've got money and you don't work.
Guest:And you've got money and you don't work or, you know, and you've got lots of spare time.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So how dare you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the criticism of supermarkets.
Guest:I love supermarkets.
Marc:I have three or four supermarkets I go to for certain things.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:I can spend the day doing that.
Guest:But my view is let's work with the supermarkets so that what they have is as good as possible.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And all I ever say with food is do as well as you can with the budget you have and the time that you have.
Guest:And then no one should be able to criticize you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That sounds too posh, but intellectually curious.
Guest:As long as you're constantly going, well, what could I do better?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm always doing that.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And that part of it's my job.
Guest:You know, I get paid to go, well, let me order half a cow online and see what I can play around with at home.
Guest:Or, you know, I had to go out and buy a blender the other day.
Guest:And that's the equipment for me.
Guest:It's the tools of my trade.
Guest:It's like your radio equipment here.
Guest:You know, that's tax deductible.
Guest:I'm very lucky from that point of view.
Guest:And I do have, I'll say, I have the best job in the world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I get to travel around the world.
Guest:I get to eat amazing food.
Guest:I get people inviting me to come and eat amazing food.
Guest:And every now and again, when I'm lucky, I get to do it on TV and tell people what I think about it.
Guest:And write about it.
Guest:And write about it.
Guest:So, you know, from that point of view, I know I hate to use the word blessed, but I do use it.
Guest:I'm very blessed.
Marc:And when outside, okay, so we have the Texarkana experience, you have the experience on the train, and then you were able to trace a clotted cream.
Marc:In your travels, what was the most profound moment that you had in terms of sitting and eating?
Guest:Well, I mean, not just sitting and eating.
Guest:There was a moment when I was on that really kind of brought it home to me where I sort of literally burst into tears and cried.
Guest:And I was standing on the Great Wall of China and I was on a particularly kind of rough part of the Great Wall of China.
Guest:You have the very tourist part that they redeveloped and restored and it's beautiful.
Guest:But if you drive a few hours in, you know, it's just falling apart and you've basically got to be almost a rock climber to go around it.
Guest:And I stood on there, and I was on my own.
Guest:I was with a couple of people, but we kind of walked off in other directions, and thousands of miles of Great Wall of China.
Guest:It's amazing, yeah.
Guest:And this is one of the things my mother had always wanted to do, and she didn't.
Guest:And I stood there, and it kind of hit me what I'd achieved.
Guest:I was halfway through the journey.
Guest:What I was risking, because I had no idea what was ahead, and what I was doing to kind of honor my mother.
Guest:And I had like 45 minutes of solid tears.
Guest:So that was a very profound moment.
Guest:The other one was in Finland, of all places.
Guest:And I was invited up to the north of Finland.
Guest:And I ended up in this little cottage with this woman called the Princesa and her husband, Perti.
Guest:And they were in their 70s.
Guest:They made me a meal.
Guest:And every single thing they served was either grown on their land or hunted on their land or fished in a little pond there.
Guest:And it was the most exquisite meal I can ever remember.
Guest:And they brought out a little dish of tiny little potatoes, about as big as a kind of nickel.
Guest:And no butter, no salt, nothing on them.
Guest:And they were so sweet.
Guest:They were so...
Guest:just perfect expressions of the potato everything you want a potato taste and I ate about a hundred of these things while they watched me kind of cooing in pleasure at the joy I was getting from the food they'd grown and that to me was what food is about now I'm experiencing that you know my wife and I are off to New Zealand later in the year then we're off to Nepal then we're off to Chile then I'm going back to Spain to finish writing the new book and
Guest:And to me, as long as I can keep doing it, as long as my body allows me and my bank balance allows me, then my wife and I are going to do this till the day we drop dead.
Guest:It sounds like what you're supposed to do.
Guest:Well, I can't even remember who said it.
Guest:And it is one of those slightly woo-woo things about following your bliss.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I found mine and I found a blissful woman to do it with.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'll carry on doing it.
Guest:And Iron Chef has been great because it facilitates a lot of things.
Guest:People see me on the show.
Guest:I think they're surprised when I can cook.
Guest:Like I said, I get people going, if I ever see you in the street, I want to punch you in the face.
Guest:And I always go, well, come and find me.
Guest:But let's eat first.
Guest:I said, I'm from a northern town in England.
Guest:We'll have a good fight, then I'll buy you a pint.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah yeah you know and then they kind of cheer up a bit yeah and as long as they they but as long as people respect that i know what i'm talking about i love the history of food i love people who prepare food grow it you know and do it well and care about it um then i think i'm always going to have a good time well good man well thanks for talking to me simon well i'm so uh pleased to be invited given who you've had on this show i feel a bit
Guest:I feel a bit kind of worthless, but it's been phenomenal.
Marc:I'm glad you're a fan.
Marc:It was a real honor, and I'm excited to read the book, and I'm happy for you.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's our show, folks.
Marc:I hope you found that enjoyable.
Marc:I've never spoken to a food critic, and now I have.
Marc:And maybe that's it.
Marc:Maybe I'm going to do a little of that now.
Marc:A little food criticism.
Marc:It's interesting, you know, with all this foodie culture and that everywhere there's foodies, everywhere there's great restaurants, there's great chefs, and we're all very heightened in our understanding of food and our appreciation of it, that you have to realize that most really high-end food is not particularly good for you.
Marc:uh and just because there's there's a whole new foodie culture and there's all these great restaurants around doesn't mean you can eat pork belly three times a week doesn't mean that you need all that butter doesn't mean that you know those desserts are you get a free pass just because it's high-end merch you dig i think you know i'm saying i'm 50 years old you know i can't be you know pork belly's a treat not a habit
Marc:You get what I'm saying?
Marc:All I'm saying is you hear a lot about the great chefs, but you don't hear much about their victims.
Marc:You dig?
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Marc:It's the only way, really, if you want to do it fairly.
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Marc:Get the WTF blend and get a little on the back end for that.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I'm okay.
Marc:Appreciate the love.
Marc:And thank you for being there for me, folks.
Marc:You and the cats.
Marc:That's where we're at right now.
Marc:Boomer lives!