Abi Balingit's Ground Beef and Corn Tortillas

One of my all-time favorite food writers is Amanda Hesser, the co-founder of Food52 and author of The New York Times Cookbook, and it's a huge thrill to have her on Lunch Therapy this week. In today's session, I ask her all about Cooking for Mr. Latte (one of my all-time favorite food books), how she went from being a writer to starting a business, being super detail oriented, portraying herself as unlikable in her book, and the food writers that she read at the start of her career. We also learn about how she doesn't like lunch, the new Food52 offices, her lunch with Julia Child, and most fascinating of all: the CBS Mr. Latte sitcom that never was!

The James Beard award-winning biographer of James Beard, John Birdsall, swings by the office today for a lunch therapy session. We talk all about who'd be the best actor to play James Beard, how the pandemic interrupted his book tour plans, raw onions, working at Deborah Madison's Greens in a Zen Center in SF, and how his gentle temperament worked in a restaurant kitchen. We also cover being out as a chef in SF in the 90s, how the AIDS crisis played out in restaurants, Jeremiah Tower's lawsuit, and much more.

Dwight Garner is one of the most feared and yet funny voices in the pages of The New York Times Book Review, where he's one of their most beloved critics, as well as the former editor. He's now the author of a brand new book called The Upstairs Delicatessen and in today's session we talk all about being a book critic with a book, facing the authors whose books he pans, reading his wife's work, how he stays focused (and gets through three hundred pages in a day), and how he knows so many literary quotes. We also cover his membership in The Organ Meat Society, the three martini lunch, how he makes his martinis, celebrity cookbooks, our dogs, and much much more.

Welcome back to Lunch Therapy! Today's patient, Abi Balingit, is the creator of the blog ⁠The Dusky Kitchen⁠ and the author of the brand new, Filipino-American dessert cookbook, ⁠Mayumu⁠. In today's session, we talk all about growing up in California, her parents' Filipino background, the food that they cooked and how she took a lot of it for granted. We also cover banana ketchup, Capri Sun, making food for charity, working a non-food job, cooking with her boyfriend, and America's rising interest in Filipino cuisine.

Today's Lunch Therapy patient, Leah Koenig, is the author of seven cookbooks, including The Jewish Cookbook and Modern Jewish Cooking. Her latest, Portico, is all about Roman Jewish cuisine and our conversation today covers everything Roman and Jewish, from frying artichokes to weighing fish. We also delve into Leah's relationship to food and cooking, her kosher husband, anti-semitism, dealing with picky eaters, recipe testing, and why it's totally fine to eat a tuna melt while keeping kosher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's Lunch Therapy patient is Amy Thielen, the multitalented cookbook author and chef whose latest cookbook, Company, is hot off the presses and features 125 amazing new recipes. In today's session, we talk all about Amy's childhood in Park Rapids, Minnesota, her journey to New York's four-star restaurant kitchens, and her journey back to where she grew up with her sculptor husband to raise their son, Hank. We also cover her family's pork store, how she comes up with such original recipes, watching Great Chefs with her mother, recreating the recipes, her new cookbook cover, and, finally, a tour of her garden. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's patient, Alex Jung, is an accomplished journalist for New York Magazine and Vulture, who's profiled countless celebrities and been nominated for a National Magazine Award. He's currently got the best gig in the city, writing the column "The Year I Ate New York" for which he dines across all five boroughs, cataloguing his experiences every two weeks. In today's session, Alex talks all about growing up Korean in Florida, the pastrami sandwiches his mom would make him for lunch, the link between therapy and soup, and the tolls food writing take on the body. We also cover the ethics of dining at Chick-Fil-A, the $98 lobster pasta at Bad Roman, and whether he feels badly when he writes a bad review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Raise your glass to this week's Lunch Therapy patient: Rosie Schaap, the author of two books (Drinking with Men, Becoming a Sommelier) and the former Drink columnist for The New York Times. In today's episode, we talk all about drinking, how to manage it, how to know when it's gone too far, and how everything changes as you get older. We also talk about her move to Northern Ireland, meeting her husband (and dog) there, being the only Jewish woman in her town, her famous sports writer father Dick Schaap, and which cocktail she uses to measure a bartender's skills. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My patient today is the illustrious food stylist and recipe developer Susan Spungen, the author of the brand new book Veg Forward, and the founding editor at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. You very likely have seen her work food styling for such films as Julie & Julia, It's Complicated, and Eat, Pray, Love. In today's session, we talk all about the tricks of the trade, what props to use when taking food pictures, how she photographed her whole book using her iPhone, and why an overhead shot is preferable to one from the side. Then we dig into the good stuff: I finally get to ask her the question I've been wanting to ask for over a decade... How is it possible that Meryl Streep cooks chocolate croissants from scratch for Steve Martin on a date in It's Complicated? How did she nail the Sole Meunière in Julie & Julia? And what's Martha Stewart really like? All of this and more in today's delightful session. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's Lunch Therapy patient, Anya von Bremzen, is the author of a brand new book, National Dish, that's been called "a fast-paced, entertaining travelogue" by The New York Times. In today's episode, we learn all about the ways Russia uses borsch for propaganda, the meat pie with ketchup she ate growing up (her family's version of "pizza"), living in Jackson Heights, and living part time in Istanbul. We also learn about the ways food and nationalism intersect, being a winner at the very first James Beard awards, and how beloved New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast came to do the cover of her book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices