Food with Mark Bittman

Patrick O’Connell opened The Inn at Little Washington in an abandoned garage in a town of 150 people in 1978, with no formal training, no staff who had ever been to a restaurant, and no idea it would become one of the most celebrated dining destinations in the world. This week, he talks with Kate and Mark about his memoir, Main, Middle, and Gay – growing up gay in the rural South, discovering Julia Child, befriending Craig Claiborne, cooking for Queen Elizabeth, and what it means to build something extraordinary in a place where everything told you not to. Read an excerpt from Main, Middle & Gay on The Bittman Project: https://bittmanproject.com/main-middle-and-gay-the-doorway-to-the-kitchen/Subscribe to Food with Mark Bittman on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and please help us grow by leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts.Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.

Tony Shalhoub (Monk, The Marvelous Ms. Maisel) and his daughter, writer Josie Adams, join Mark and Kate to talk about their new book 'We Thought They’d Never Leave.' It's a memoir centered on the Shalhoub family’s legendary annual Wisconsin reunion, where ten siblings and fifty-some relatives gather every summer to cook, eat, and keep a very complicated spreadsheet. We get into the multiple pounds of fish Tony flew with on his lap, the night the power went out, food on set, and a prop beer bottle story that has to be heard to be believed.Read an excerpt from 'We Thought They'd Never Leave' on The Bittman Project: bittmanproject.com/tony-shalhoub-we-thought-theyd-never-leave/Subscribe to Food with Mark Bittman on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and please help us grow by leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts.Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.

The one and only David Byrne came to talk with us after wrapping the world tour for his new album Who Is The Sky? He's been making work that's like nothing else for 50 years — Talking Heads, solo records, film, theater, and dance. And his new book is called Sleeping Beauties, about great ideas the world forgot and then rediscovered. Kate and Mark talk with David about food, what it was like eating on tour across 150 shows, the South Indian coconut fish curry he got good at during the pandemic, and lots more. Some things that were mentioned on today's episode:Sleeping Beauties: Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up, by David Byrne: https://bookshop.org/a/18956/9780593655276Marco Canora, of Brodo and Hearth, and Mark making broth and chatting: https://youtu.be/QnW2qQXVArs?si=fxHaRNjCtpDvVM4UBittman's rye sourdough: https://bittmans.com/products/rye-sourdoughSubscribe to Food with Mark Bittman on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and please help us grow by leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts.Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.

Ming-Na Wen is the voice of Mulan, Fennec Shand in The Mandalorian, and, now, a cookbook author. She grew up in her family’s Chinese restaurant in Pittsburgh, the Chinatown Inn, which has been open since 1943 and which her brother still runs today. Her debut cookbook, Have You Eaten Yet?, started as a recipe collection and turned into a memoir she didn’t know she was writing. She talks with Mark and Kate about the two lives her father lived at that restaurant, the chop suey he made for Pittsburgh, the five course dinners he cooked at home, and what the phrase “have you eaten yet?” actually means when someone says it to you.Get Ming-Na's recipe for 12345 Spareribs at The Bittman Project: https://bittmanproject.com/recipe/ming-na-wens-12345-spareribs/Subscribe to Food with Mark Bittman on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and please help us grow by leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts.Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.

Florence Fabricant has been writing about food for the New York Times since 1972. She has watched farm-to-table go from fringe idea to cliche, lived through the rise of the celebrity chef, and outlasted most of the restaurants she ever wrote about. This week, she joins Mark and Kate to talk about her new memoir, Salty, Not Sweet: A Life in the Food World – a book she resisted writing for years and then couldn't stop once she started. They cover how André Soltner at Lutèce changed the way Americans thought about chefs, why food journalism has never been more democratized and never less rigorous, and the writeup she considers among her most consequential: a pitch about pigs in blankets that may have permanently changed the hors d'oeuvres table at every bar mitzvah and gala in America.Subscribe to Food with Mark Bittman on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and please help us grow by leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts.Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, First Partner of California, joins Mark and Kate to talk about what actually happened when the state decided every public school kid deserves two free meals a day, and that more than half of those meals should come from California farms. It sounds like a policy conversation, but it's really a story about scratch kitchens, nacho bowls, salad bars, fountain milk, and what it looks like when someone decides to treat school lunch like it matters. They cover the Farm to School roadmap Jennifer built from the ground up, how California became the first state to pass universal school meals legislation, why LA Unified now only buys local, and what it would take for other states to do the same.Subscribe to Food with Mark Bittman on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and please help us grow by leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts.Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.A few links relevant to today's episode:More information about California's Farm to School Program: https://cafarmtofork.cdfa.ca.gov/farm_to_fork/focus_areas/farm_to_school.htmlMore information about the 2026 California Farm to School Summit, October 14-15 in Sacramento: https://cafarmtoschoolsummit.com/and, of course, Hot Lava Fudge Cakes from How to Cook Everything Kids: https://bittmanproject.com/recipe/hot-lava-fudge-cakes/