Bite

In Stephanie Danler’s novel Sweetbitter, it takes Tess, a 22-year-old waitress new to Manhattan, about three months to master the art of balancing three plates on one arm. In the same amount of time, Tess adapts to a life of champagne and cocaine-addled adventures. In this episode, Stephanie dishes about how her own experiences—working as a back-waiter, bartender, and restaurant manager in New York City—informed the novel. Plus: What’s your favorite comfort food in the age of Trump?

Writer and chef Samin Nosrat distills cooking into four basic elements: salt, fat, acid, heat. In this episode, she reveals secrets about using one of them to transform what you cook—and her advice changed how Maddie was tasting food for the days following. Maddie and Samin conduct a taste test, and Samin reveals how she clinched her first cooking job at Chez Panisse, and dishes on what it took to win over Alice Water. Plus, Tom reveals some of his own home cooking tricks.

That cuppa joe you just sipped? Its long journey to your cup was made possible by shipping containers—those rectangular metal boxes that carry everything from TVs to clothes to frozen shrimp. And there’s a whole host of characters whose lives revolve around this precious cargo: gruff captains, hearty cooks, perceptive coffee tasters, and competitive tugboat pilots. This is the world journalist Alexis Madrigal illuminates in his new podcast Containers. Alexis tells us how the fancy coffee revolution is shaking up the shipping industry, and reveals his favorite sailor snack. Bite celebrates its first birthday, and Kiera gets up-close-and-personal with a kitchen contraption that’s sweeping the nation: the InstantPot.

If you’ve ever eaten cod from New England, chances are you’ve helped build the empire of Carlos Rafael, the crime boss whose fishy business has earned him the nickname “The Codfather.” In this episode, Kiera interviews journalist Ben Goldfarb about his recent Mother Jones feature on the rise and fall of this larger-than-life character. Featured: FBI agents posing as the Russian mob, Rafael’s Machiavellian backstory, and the moody atmosphere of the Massachusetts fishing town of New Bedford. Plus, Tom talks to Ronni Lundy, the author of a groundbreaking cookbook on the cuisine of Appalachia.

When Atlantic journalist and physician James Hamblin investigated the world of gluten-free products, he found a $23 billion industry of "detox courses," custom blood tests, and specially formulated foods—but no medical evidence that avoiding gluten is good for people who don't have celiac disease. Kiera interviews Hamblin, author of the new book If Our Bodies Could Talk: A Guide to Operating and Maintaining a Human Body, about the gluten-free boondoggle, how multivitamins can make people less healthy, and more reasons why people are so susceptible to health quackery. Then we reveal a recipe for a delicious snack created by a pro-athlete-turned-pastry-chef—the “She Persisted Bar”—to give you fuel when you’re protesting.

Tom and Maddie pay visits to owners of “sanctuary restaurants”—eateries that are standing up for their workers’ rights as the Trump administrations vows to crack down on illegal immigrants. Penny Baldado—who owns a café in Oakland, California, famous for its adobo sandwiches—is an immigrant herself; she’s originally from the Philippines. When she was undocumented, “I moved in the world with a lot of fear,” she tells Maddie. She now relishes the opportunity to offer both employees and customers a space where they don’t have to be afraid. Meanwhile, Tom catches up with the owner of another sanctuary restaurant, the Black Star Co-op in Austin, Texas. Plus: We talk to a friend of the podcast who, on a quest for the best grilled goat in Kenya, found out that climate change is bad news for this local delicacy.

Maddie pays a visit to a mother-daughter team of Somali chefs in Oakland, California. Before arriving in the United States, Halimo and Fatuma lived in the largest refugee camp in the world, in Kenya. There, they used UN rations to concoct Somali delicacies, including the paper-thin pancakes that they teach Maddie to make. Then, Tom talks with science writer Ed Yong about the trillions of bugs living inside our bodies, and why there’s no such thing as “good” and “bad” bacteria.

"Chocolate—ah, glorious chocolate,” says today’s guest Simran Sethi at the start of our interview. In her new book Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love, Simran regards this beloved treat with a mix of reverence and concern. Chocolate is threatened, but there are ways to ensure its survival, Simran explains. Maddie examines another part of your dinner that’s under threat in the Bay Area, and Tom divulges how beer made advanced civilizations possible.

Avoid potato chips. Watch less TV. Run more. Get surgery. You’ve heard dozens of reasons about why people get fat, and what they should do about it. But today’s guests have some theories about obesity that might not sound so familiar. Biochemist and author Sylvia Tara always had trouble staving off pounds—and then she learned about some truly surprising causes of weight gain. Journalist Gary Taubes thinks obesity can mostly be blamed on one single ingredient. And he thinks that another very popular theory about what leads to obesity is screwing over research into the condition.

Why do so many chefs get tattoos? That’s just one question we asked this week’s guests, journalist Isaac Fitzgerald and illustrator Wendy MacNaughton, the duo behind the new book Knives and Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos. Also on this week’s episode, we talk with food writer Kat Kinsman about the epidemic rates of anxiety and depression among chefs—and why mental health is still a taboo subject in kitchens.

By all accounts, 2016 was a bleak year—except when it came to cookbooks. This year bore such a bumper crop of cookbooks that Bite host Tom Philpott had trouble choosing his favorites. After careful consideration, he’s come up with five that make perfect gifts for the home chefs in your life—including one that features a cuisine that you’re unlikely to find even in restaurants. Then, keeping on the book theme, Tom talks about the best books about food politics with author and food activist Anna Lappé.

A question that some people might be asking right now: How can you think about food at a time like this? But actually, food has everything to do with the election of Donald Trump: On this episode, Tom Philpott talks to Tom Colicchio of TV’s Top Chef, about how the mighty food industry is poised to stage a major resistance against some of Trump’s policies. One giant group of people who are wondering what’s in store for them over these next few years is restaurant workers, many of whom are undocumented. We hear from one of them, a waiter in New York City with a complicated immigration status. Also: Jenny talks to the formerly homeless manager of a kitchen at a single room occupancy building about why he voted for Trump.

In this episode, we talk to Sam Kass, who served as the Obamas’ personal chef until early 2015. In addition to whipping up sweet potato fries and other family favorites, Kass directed the First Lady children's health effort Let’s Move!, and served as the senior White House adviser on nutrition policy. Kass tells us about how the Obama administration changed the way Americans eat, as well as his current project: making your fridge smarter. Also: A local bartender whipped up election-night cocktails especially for Bite: the Bad Hombre and the Nasty Woman. Cheers to that.

Nearly every topic you can think of, and many you hoped wouldn’t, have surfaced during the 2016 presidential election. But there’s been almost zero talk by either candidate of the thing that fuels the country: our food system. On today’s episode, Mark Bittman dishes on how the next president might tackle food and agriculture. Bittman is most famous for the Minimalist recipe column he wrote for the New York Times and award-winning cookbooks like How to Cook Everything. He was also the only national newspaper columnist tapped with covering food politics and policy. Also: Tom gives you the low-down on how agribusinesses are spending their campaign money, and Maddie has the scoop on some cooking tips from WikiLeaks.

Manhattan's Chinatown recently made headlines for being the target of an offensive segment on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show. Fox missed the real story: the truly special place it occupies in the US food scene. Navigate the narrow, bustling sidewalks Mott Street between Canal and Hester and you'll see food everywhere, from live frogs to whole dragon fruit. What makes culinary Chinatown tick? For answers, we turn on this week's Bite podcast to Valerie Imbruce, author of the new book From Farm to Canal Street. Imbruce argues that Manahttan's Chinatown is a remnant of pre-supermarket New York—and also a viable model for a more tantalizing food future. We also went to San Francisco’s Chinatown to track down the surprising origins of fortune cookies. (Hint: They’re not from China!) And: If you want to spice up a conference panel, invite some angry, chanting vegans. Just ask Tom.