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I just want to start off right here, Sebastian, like with the hard -hitting questions.
You say your wife makes this popcorn.
Tell me about this Boulders popcorn small kernels.
Yeah, we got wind of this popcorn from her brother who lives in Colorado now.
Got it. And to be honest, prior to having this popcorn, I didn't really pay attention to the size of the actual popcorn.
But this is, it pops small and simple in a little canola oil in this thing called the Whirly Pop.
And then my wife pretty much makes the best popcorn I've ever tasted.
And why are small kernels better?
Something about it, the way it hits your mouth.
It's not so chewy. So most popcorn that people are eating, there's two types of kernels.
There's butterfly kernels.
That's like movie theater popcorn.
They're kind of like misshapen.
There's little jagged edges sticking out.
Those will hold seasoning well.
And then there's the mushroom kernels.
Those are like the balls.
They look almost like a little mini Death Star.
Jeez, you're really into the popcorn.
I didn't know there was just different shapes to the kernels.
No, this is a whole thing.
They also said these boulder popcorn kernels are hull -less, so when the popcorn breaks, it goes into smaller pieces and it doesn't get stuck in your teeth.
Listen, I don't know how deep you went into this.
I'm just going solely by the taste of it.
But I did take my wife and go, babe, there's no husks on the corn.
It's amazing. This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies.
It's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman.
Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
And before we get into it, I have a very exciting announcement.
Get ready, Sporkful fans.
fans, we have your chance right now to attend an exclusive taping of the Sporkful with me and chef and cookbook author Casey Elsass at the Samsung Home Test Kitchen in New York City.
We're going to have food and drinks.
Casey and I will chat.
You'll get to see a live taping.
Then he'll cook up some samples of a couple of dishes from his cookbook.
What can I bring? You'll even get to If you'll be in the New York area on June 3rd, visit SiriusXM .com slash SporkfulNYC.
That's SiriusXM .com slash SporkfulNYC before 8 p .m. Eastern on May 28th for your chance to attend.
No purchase necessary to enter or win.
Must be a U .S. resident and at least 21 to enter.
All right, let's get to the show.
Sebastian Maniscalco is one of the world's most successful comics, and 2024 was a big year for him.
He had one of the highest grossing comedy tours in the country, and he was the first comedian ever to sell out five consecutive nights at Madison Square Garden.
Jerry Seinfeld has called Sebastian his favorite comedian.
In fact, on stage, Sebastian is kind of like an Italian Jerry Seinfeld.
He zeroes in on a micro detail of human behavior, picks it apart and points out the utter ridiculousness of it, often getting very agitated in the process and with elaborate movements acting out a scene as he describes it.
and a lot of the human behavior he dissects has to do with food and eating.
Here's a bit from his stand -up special, What's Wrong With People?
You go out with a group and you go out to anything like a dinner or whatnot, and when the bill comes, it gets weird. Because what normally happens is the bill will travel around the table.
People will then begin to pitch in what they think they owe.
The problem with this is there's always somebody last to get the bill A look of confusion and concern comes over their face Now people see this and they're like A couple extra dollars or something like that And you're like Well, I'm $687 short So the two bucks you're gonna pitch in Ain't even gonna put a debt in this So how about this How about the bill take another lap Do another lap Sebastian's been practicing This style of comedy Since he was a kid He grew up in a food -obsessed family In Chicago His dad's an Italian immigrant Who works as a beautician His mom was a school secretary And for Sebastian The kitchen
table Was his first stage I would come home from school and I would talk to my family about kind of what I saw at school, what happened.
And I had a funny twist on it, very observational.
I was never the class clown at all.
I actually despised the class clown.
When he got up and tried to make kids laugh, I was like, sit down.
It's not funny. You're like, let me punch this up for you.
Yeah. So, yeah, the food at dinnertime definitely brought our family together.
And it still does. I mean, every time my dad comes to visit from Chicago to Los Angeles, you know, I make sure I get a nice charcuterie board with cheese and meat, have some wine, and, you know, we could sit there and talk for four or five hours.
So food has always been really important in our family, and it's kind of what's brought us together.
And who were the primary cooks in your household growing up?
Primarily my mother.
My mother cooked. She was a stay -at -home mom for a little bit, and she was in charge of kind of making breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
And then later on in life, my father got into cooking.
It was very theatrical.
He would come out with a chef coat, a chef hat.
And not to be funny, it was to, I'm working.
Right, right, right.
It's like Superman coming out without his cape.
My dad had to have the coat on and what have you.
Whether or not he was cooking, Sebastian's father knew how to eat.
In 2018, Sebastian wrote a memoir called Stay Hungry.
Here's an excerpt from the audiobook.
book my father and i sit around talk eat and justify the indulgence by reconfirming to each other how good the food is in one sitting we have italian bread meat fruit olives olive oil gelato it doesn't stop tiger woods father earl pushed him to become better at golf my father pushed me to eat tripe there's one major aspect of my life where i don't overindulge fill up or even let myself feel satisfied my career my recipe for success is to stay hungry i never let myself bask in any glory my father's voice is like a broken record constantly playing in my head saying don't get comfortable nothing comes
easy for the maniscalcos get back to work now speaking of working you were working from a young age work was always big in my family you know there's no summer or break.
It's like you come home and you're working.
I gather one of your very first jobs was at Olive Garden.
Yes, worked at the Olive Garden.
You also, during holidays, you worked making honey baked hams. Yeah, torching hams. How does that work?
Tell me about that.
That works where you basically get in a refrigerator, a large refrigerator, and you put on a, like a white suit with like a helmet.
They give you a torch and you start torching ham and turkeys for the whole day.
To like brown the outside?
Yeah, they put like, I don't know if it's like a sugar crust on it or something they put.
I forget what it was.
Right. And then you would scorch that.
It was almost like a creme brulee type of got it torching you would do and you do that for 10 hours a day.
I come home smelling like a whole ham and they would tell me take your clothes off in the garage and then come in because you're stinking up the whole house.
But yeah, anything from money back then as far as work is concerned, nothing was below me or anything like that.
I was just hustling.
Right. And now being Italian and being from the Chicago area, you obviously have spent some time eating Italian beef.
Yeah. What's your favorite Italian beef place?
Johnny's Beef in Chicago is my favorite, with some hot peppers.
Sometimes I would put, like, this whizzed cheese on it.
They have, like, this cheddar cheese.
But as I grow older, I just like a nice plain beef with some peppers and French fries.
I mean, you go into a full coma after you eat it.
But for me, it's been one of my go -tos.
And for folks who don't know, I mean, this is basically like a roast beef sandwich, but it comes with – you've got the juice, and you're going to dunk that sandwich into the juice.
My brother and sister -in -law had their rehearsal dinner at Portillo's, another esteemed Chicago beef place, and we were dunking the hot dogs into the juice.
When you do a function there, they give you – it's not just like a little dipping cup of juice.
They give you like a bucket.
It's like a communal bucket of juice.
More sandwiches should be dunked into juices.
Yeah, I think a juice dunk is a nice touch when it's a beef sandwich like that.
I mean, a lot of people don't know what the sandwich is outside of Chicago.
You know, I don't really see it anywhere else.
But I should say Portillo's actually had an IPO a few years ago.
So I think it wouldn't surprise me if they go nationwide now.
Yeah, I mean, I live in L .A.
and they do have one.
It's somewhere not close to me.
So you got to travel like 45, 50 minutes.
I got to say I have mixed feelings about a place like a classic Chicago Italian beef place going nationwide.
wide. Once everything is everywhere, then nothing is special.
Yeah, it comes watered down, I guess.
If you could only get a Portillo's hot dog in Chicago, it just has a different meaning.
I know the guy is actually a guy, Mr. Portillo, that opened up Portillo's, really did a great job, not only with the food, but if you ever go to Portillo's, it should be a template.
The way they take your order is so quick and the way they prepare the food is they got it.
It's It's like an assembly line.
I know you've gotten frustrated with other restaurants that attempt to have assembly lines and don't move quite as quickly.
Yeah, Chipotle being one of them where, you know, it's, I mean, sometimes I just think they get bogged down with the way they're preparing the bowls or the burrito.
And I don't blame it all on the employees.
It's the people on the other side, too.
I mean, I'm sitting behind a guy, and he's putting literally every ingredient into the burrito.
and the poor person can't even shut the burrito, right?
I don't know if you've ever been to Chipotle where the burrito actually splits, the tortilla splits because it's so big.
Yeah, and then they got to go get another one.
That's it. We got to redo.
It's like, there's another 13 minutes out of my day.
Sebastian worked in food through much of high school and college, but he always knew he wanted to be a comic.
There was never any other option.
Once he had $10 ,000 saved, he picked up and moved to L .A.
to pursue his dream.
But he wasn't getting out of restaurant work just yet.
He needed to pay the bills while he tried to get his stand -up career off the ground.
So he continued waiting tables in L .A., and he had a very specific system for deciding which places he'd work at.
What I would do is I would go in, I would sit down at the restaurant and have a meal and kind of look at how things were working, how the server was, how the restaurant kind of operated, to see if I wanted to work there.
I treated this like, you know, I had a choice.
It's like you're making them interview for you.
Yeah, yeah. Like I'm interviewing them.
And I didn't know how hard it was to get a – it's basically harder to get into the serving industry in L .A.
than it is in the entertainment business because everybody's waiting tables.
Of course, this is back then.
I'm sure it's changed now where people are doing Uber and what have you.
But back in 1998, you know, that was the thing you did to supplement your income.
So I'm going to all these restaurants and then I would apply and the thing.
What were you looking for?
First and foremost, I had to enjoy the food because if I was going to be selling the food as a waiter, I'd have to enjoy what I was selling.
And then number two, just seeing how the attitude of the staff was, if they were happy or miserable.
Sometimes you go into these restaurants and there's a collective misery amongst the people that are working there.
Because you're in the service business and it's not easy.
It's toxic if someone is on the waitstaff constantly complaining and bitching.
That kind of permeates throughout.
And it's not a good environment to work in.
So you weren't one of those people?
Oh, I bitched a lot.
in terms of just dealing with the customers on a day -to -day basis it's awful it's terrible the general public is just not good the restaurants were what sebastian knew he landed a job serving drinks at the four seasons in beverly hills very fancy meanwhile he was taking comedy workshops doing as many sets as he could at open mics or wherever he could get a gig Eventually, he started performing short sets at the Comedy Store, the famous LA club.
He'd leave in the middle of a shift at the Four Seasons.
He'd time it perfectly, so he'd clock out for a break, drive the eight minutes to the club, arrive just as it was his time to go on stage, do a set, and race back.
Sometimes he didn't have time to change, so he'd perform in his uniform.
The job at the Four Seasons gave Sebastian the flexibility he needed to pursue comedy.
And since it tended to attract some very particular customers, it also gave him plenty of material.
real woman came in ordered a glass of wine and then called me over to the table and even just the way people call you over to the table would set me off you know you'd get you know like excuse me you know like oh here we go with two fingers you know right away i knew it was going to be a problem and she thought the wine glass the the rim of the wine glass was too thick to rest on her her lips.
She wanted to know if we had a thinner wine glass because it was too heavy on her lips.
And of course, you know, working at the Four Seasons, you have to internalize everything.
It's not like, you know, you could say, you could tell them off or be sarcastic.
Yeah, sure. Absolutely.
You're totally right.
A lot of customers have this issue.
Yeah. You know, you're just very subservient.
Yes, right away, ma 'am.
And then you go in the back and, you know, you put your fist through the wall.
So it was a lot of those Those moments where these little things would kind of set me off and bother me, just the behavior of people.
It used to be a huge celebrity hangout, so you would have these looky -loos come in, sit at a table, take in a major real estate, and order a chamomile tea and sit there for four hours.
You'd be like, all right, there goes my rent.
You know, I mean, we have appetizers, you know?
You'd have people order, like, seven nut caddies because they were too cheap to get an appetizer.
so it's just it's funny to me to picture you waiting tables knowing now that so much of your comedy is based on your frustration with people being annoying yeah but like were you aware at the time that you're waiting tables like oh i have this i i am especially annoyed by these types of people and oh that's that's that's annoyance is basically the root of my stand -up comedy coming up sebastian gets his big break so big in fact that he can order a bottle of jack daniels for breakfast but it's not what you might think plus he shares his rules for being a good dinner party guest stick around it's
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I've told you a lot about the behind the scenes of the making of my cookbook, Anything's Possible, but I think there's one detail I left out, and that is that I tested every single recipe in that book on my Samsung range.
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Welcome back to the sporkful.
I'm Dan Pashman. On last week's show, we team up with our friends at the podcast decoder ring to investigate a food mystery.
Are jalapenos getting less spicy?
And then I said, you know what we can do?
And I pulled out my phone.
I texted, I think, like four or five different chefs all at once.
The first one was, yes, definitely.
They're less hot than they used to be.
The second one was, I tell my cooks, my hands must be too sweet because I can't make the salsa hot enough anymore.
That's food critic Brian Reinhart speaking with Dakota Ring host Willa Paskin about what he learned when he talked to an expert on chili pepper genetics.
So what's going on with the jalapeno?
Check out last week's episode to find out.
Now, back to Sebastian Maniscalco.
One thing to know about him, he was not an overnight comedy success.
He was in L .A. for four years before he got his first break.
The legendary comedian Andrew Dice Clay asked Sebastian to open for him.
Sebastian kept his job waiting tables at the Four Seasons, but instead of slipping out to the comedy store, he was squeezing in tour dates around the country with Dice.
Now, to be clear, this big break wasn't a huge jump in salary.
Sebastian was still hustling to pay his bills.
But while he was on the road, he did get a per diem.
They give you $100 a day to eat food in the hotel.
Well, I wasn't eating $100 worth of food.
So what I did was I was looking at the room service menu, and I saw a bottle of Jack Daniels, $40.
So I would order bottles of alcohol with my meal and take the alcohol home to stock my bar at home.
This is, again, growing up the way I grew up, you didn't waste anything.
It's not like you're going to get $100 and you're going to spend 50 of it and you're going to spend that 50 on something.
So I decided to spend it on alcohol.
So I would order two eggs, toast, hash browns, and a bottle of Jack for breakfast. And the guy would come up going, going, Jesus, this guy's down in Jack Daniels at 9 o 'clock in the morning?
And little did he know, I was just taking it home to stock my bar.
Did you talk with your dad about any of these strategies?
Oh, yeah, he was totally for it.
I mean, my dad is very frugal and, you know, just...
I was even privy at a young age that my father really worked hard for his money.
We come from a working middle -class family.
And when we went to, say, a place like McDonald's, I was conscious of not spending his money there.
You know, like, I didn't get a Big Mac.
I got a cheeseburger, small fry, and I didn't get a Coke because I didn't feel like I want to put that financial burden on my father.
I was even annoyed if we brought out another friend of mine to McDonald's and that friend got a Big Mac, large fry, and a supersized drink.
And I would go, really, you're going to soak my father for the $7 instead of $4?
You know, I don't know where that came from.
But I was always conscious of even going out to dinner and I know somebody else is paying.
I won't maybe get what I would normally get because I don't want to, like— I think it's rude to do that when somebody else is paying, you know what I'm saying?
And if someone else knows you're paying and they order something really expensive, how do you feel about that?
It's a turnoff. I got a bad taste in my mouth.
I pay attention to all those things and maybe too much. You know, I invite you over for Thanksgiving dinner, right?
And you go, what could I bring?
And I tell you, don't bring anything, just come.
And if you just come with nothing, I get upset.
what? So, I mean, I don't know.
I've been always that type of guy who kind of has a rule, like a rule book of how you behave, what's polite, what's unpolite.
And I hold that against people, which maybe I don't think I should do so much. Well, the issue of what to bring, both as a host and a guest, what can I bring?
What can I bring? What can I bring?
That is so fraught.
Everyone feels And it feels like they have to bring something and they want to bring something.
They feel bad showing up empty -handed.
So everyone can bring something, but then it's like, well, you can't ask one person to bring like $100 worth of stuff and someone else to bring $8 worth of stuff.
You can't assign one person to cook three things and one person to cook only one thing because then it's like, oh, you like that person's cooking better than the other person's cooking.
speaking, and as the guest, I'm kind of like, well, maybe I have certain things that I'm excited to make and other things that I don't want to make, but you're going to assign me something, which isn't really what I'm excited to bring, but I guess I just have to do it because you told me to.
See, I don't even like where this is going.
And I'll tell you why.
If it's not a collective, okay guys, I'm going to host and you're going to bring this, you're going to bring that.
If it's If it's not like set from the get -go that this is a collective thing, I got a problem with you saying you're going to host Thanksgiving and you start barking out assignments, right?
Like, yeah, I'm going to host Thanksgiving, I want you to make mashed potatoes.
I'm like, what the hell am I doing?
I'm assigning people things that I know that they know how to make.
But they're all saying to me, what can I bring?
What can I bring? What can I bring?
So the what could I bring is a polite courtesy ask.
If you're hosting, host the damn thing, have everything.
If somebody asks what could I bring, you say nothing.
I don't even ask people.
If I'm going to come to your house, I know what I'm bringing.
I'm going to bring something that you love.
If I know you that well, I know you like to drink tequila, you like to drink wine, or you like a specific cigar, I am going to get a profile on you of what your likes are.
So when I go over to your house, boom, and you're like, oh, my, that's my favorite tequila.
Right. That's why my wife loves me so much because I listen.
All right? I don't like when people come to my house with food they made at their house, you know, and they need to explain it to me.
And, oh, it's a family recipe, da -da -da -da -da.
And I'm like, oh, where should I put it?
It's like, just bite of garbage.
No one's going to eat that.
It don't go with what I got.
All right, anyway, back to Sebastian's story.
He continued to go between stints at the Four Seasons and more promising comedy opportunities.
After a couple years opening for Andrew Dice Clay, Sebastian joined a comedy tour headlined by Vince Vaughn.
Then back to the Four Seasons again.
Finally, after eight years working there, Sebastian quit the job that had made his comedy career possible.
He was making enough money in stand -up that he could stop refilling nut caddies.
A few years after going full -time with comedy, Sebastian filmed his first special.
Now he was headlining shows, touring more widely, growing his audience.
In 2017, he cracked Forbes' top 10 highest -earning stand -up comedians list. He started selling out arenas.
And all along, food and family remained a huge part of his comedy.
You have to understand something about the way I grew up.
I grew up in a house that was food everywhere.
Every two feet, you just bumped in.
I had a grandmother who lived in the basement just cranking out lasagna.
Sebastian mimes his grandmother frantically pulling lasagnas from the oven and throwing them up the stairs.
It's like a lasagna factory.
In the basement, food just kept coming up the stairs for no reason.
There was meat hanging from the ceiling.
Around the time Sebastian's career was really taking off, his relationship to food was changing too.
It was partly because of his success, but also because of his wife.
In 2013, he married the artist Lana Gomez, and as he writes in his memoir, she came from a different background.
Her family had money.
Her stepfather was known as the grape ape because of his obsession with fine wine.
Sebastian always loved food, of course, but between Lana's family and his own increased earnings, he began experiencing the world of fancy food.
In 2021, Sebastian combined the story of where he came from and where his life had taken him in a new show for Food Network called Well Done.
Each episode tackles a topic like grilling or food photography, and Sebastian goes out and learns about it.
With his salt -of -the -earth persona, he tells stories from his childhood and pokes fun at any hint of ridiculousness around him.
But he also finds himself in some of L .A.'s white tablecloth restaurants, drinking expensive wine and eating high -end cuisine, as he sometimes does in his own life today.
The show kind of feels like a comedic version of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations.
I asked Sebastian, what are some of the annoying tropes of food TV shows that you wanted to avoid in your show?
I wanted to educate people on food and also have a good time with it and have them laugh.
I didn't want to do a lot of the bite and smile stuff you see on a lot of this stuff, where they go, oh, oh my God.
I'm not saying that's not there.
It's just, it's just minimal.
The first episode of Well Done is about fish.
Sebastian plans to go out on the Pacific with a fishing crew and a fancy chef.
They'll catch fish and the chef will show him how to prepare it.
Right before they get on the boat, Sebastian says, so I'm ready to catch my dinner.
Everything is riding on this moment.
Well, not everything.
Just my manhood. I'm surrounded by manly men men who could break me in half with their pinky fingers.
Almost immediately after they leave port, Sebastian gets really seasick.
Like, staggering to the bathroom with help from the camera crew seasick.
But he's a comedian, so he jokes through the misery.
As soon as we get a couple fish on the line, bring them on the boat, let's get the **** out of here.
Once they return to shore, Sebastian texts his dad a photo of himself laid out on the deck.
His dad writes back, it's embarrassing to the family.
family. Ask Sebastian about that moment.
That whole dynamic of kind of like you positioning yourself of like proving your manhood on the boat and then like reporting to your dad and him being embarrassed.
Like I thought I mean first of all this is all very funny but it's also curious like what what ideas about sort of masculinity and food that you got from your dad?
See my dad was in the army and my dad always looked at me as like you don't know how to do anything.
You don't know how to build anything you know like it wasn't good with my hands in my house my father took care of dishwashers broke I'll fix it he never was even patient with me enough to even teach me stuff it's interesting to me that your dad has gotten more into cooking and that your dad is this sort of like guy who went to the army who fixes things and again it's like you know changing of the generations um but it feels like from the way you portray him is that there's a certain an attitude that like um that he thinks that he's uh more rough and tumble than you are and that there's like this sort
of father -son dynamic there well my father's a beautician this guy's doing dye jobs and highlights and blowouts during the day and he'll come home and he'll he'll make a patio you know so it's like you got literally him him holding a can of hairspray and then at night care You know, WD -40.
So it's like hairstylist and the glam game is, you know, quote -unquote, not manly like going fishing or building a patio.
You see, at the best of both worlds, you know.
I always like hire people.
I'm like, oh, if I don't know how to do it, I would hire people.
And my dad's sense was why hire somebody when you could do it yourself As Sebastian's gotten more successful, he says he's gotten more comfortable spending money, especially on things he loves.
Yeah, I don't mind going out.
I mean, listen, I know the hard work and all the stuff that I've done up to this point.
You know, if I want to go out and enjoy myself, I got no problem doing that.
Have you taken your dad out for some expensive meals?
Yeah. What does he think of that experience?
He enjoys it. Maybe a little uncomfortable at first, you know.
Uh, but I think now, you know, he really enjoys the experience.
Of course, you know, he's a critic too, you know.
Shocking, Sebastian.
I wouldn't have expected that.
Go out to a nice restaurant and, uh, he's always doubting whether or not the, um, artichoke.
He likes artichoke and it's like, are they fresh artichokes?
And I'm like, yeah, it's fresh.
And we're not eating at the corner, uh, the corner restaurant back home.
Uh, but yeah, he's, he, he likes it.
My mom specifically likes it.
She likes to be wined and dined, and she likes kind of fancy and going out and enjoying herself and has no qualms about ordering.
Talk about no – she'll order the lobster.
Right. She don't hold back.
Sebastian and his wife Lana have two kids, and while Sebastian and his parents are warming up to their new lifestyle, he worries his kids will get too used to it.
My struggle for me is I have a specific way I was brought up.
Like I said, working class, a family, we went on one vacation a year, nothing really fancy.
And now my kids are growing up in a totally different way, growing up with more than what I had growing up.
And you just got to work double hard to instill in the kids, you know, manners and not everybody lives like this.
And, you know, you might go to a house that's smaller than ours.
That's okay. You know, just trying to make them grounded people.
That's what I struggle with.
How do you think that their relationship with food growing up the way they're growing up will be different from yours?
They're always looking for snack.
I mean, I can't believe the amount of snacks these kids eat.
Snack, it wasn't really an option growing up.
We had like our three square meals and, you know, maybe got like an ice cream cone at the end of the day, if you were good.
Do you cook for them?
Yeah, during the pandemic, it was, you know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
And I would be making like a beautiful, you know, four -season -esque type brunch for these kids.
I mean, it was multiple foods just because they're so young, and I didn't know what they were going to eat.
I would make pancakes, French toast, eggs, and a bagel just to kind of see what they would gravitate towards.
And I would get up at 5 o 'clock in the morning.
I felt like I was running a hotel.
Get up at 5 a .m. to make, because I knew they were getting up at 7.
So I'd make this beautiful breakfast. Yeah, I was doing prep.
Like a sous chef. Now, Sebastian is back on the road for work.
So he misses a lot of family meals.
But sometimes he brings the family with him.
I did the Red Rock in Colorado, which was a beautiful outdoor venue.
And they came to that.
and my daughter's four and a half and kind of gets what I do a little bit.
My son, obviously, two years old, he don't know what's going on.
He just knows daddy's up on stage talking into a microphone.
Sebastian says his kids haven't started doing comedy bits at the dinner table yet, but mealtime for him is still sacred.
I'm trying to keep those traditions that we had as a family growing up and eating around the table alive.
When I'm home, I like to clear my schedule and kind of just spend time with the family.
that's sebastian maniscalco he's on tour now you can find the dates at sebastianlive .com next week on the show we look at the story behind the kolache it's a pastry that's become a beloved specialty in texas but traces its roots to a wave of czech immigrants who came to the state more more than a century ago.
That's next week. While you wait for that one, check out last week's episode, Has the Jalapeno Lost Its Heat?
We investigate. That one's up now.
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This episode was produced by me, along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andres O 'Hara.
Our editor is Tracy Samuelson.
Our engineer is Jared O 'Connell.
Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios.
Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
And I'm Fig in Chicago, Illinois, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
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