Ted Audio Collective Hi everyone.
You're listening to After Hours.
I'm Yang Mi. I'm Felix.
And I'm Mi here. And I'm so excited about tonight's episode because we're going to talk about food!
Food! Of course. So are you guys ready for the long holiday weekend?
I am ready. Somehow with COVID and the aftermath of COVID, beginning in the summer, things just got very hectic and this is like the first break.
So I feel like Thanksgiving is going to be particularly good this year.
Ah, how about you Felix?
My brother is visiting me from Switzerland and we have friends who are visiting.
And we're doing turkey, we're doing side dishes, we're doing everything.
Awesome. How about you Yang Mi, are you ready?
Yeah, although I have to say, one of my kids informed me the other day that they're pescatarian now.
So they're throwing a little bit of a wrench into their hands.
But you know what? I'm flexible, I'm going with a flow.
It's all good. So tonight we are going to spend the episode talking about food related obsessions, trends, observations.
So it should be fun.
Are you ready guys?
I'm ready. Excellent.
Okay, Felix, you want to get us started.
What'd you bring in?
Actually, I get you started with a question.
If you're on the Senate floor in the United States, senators are only allowed to drink two kinds of drinks.
One is water. What is the other one?
Coffee. Jack Daniels.
Guess what? It's milk.
In the Senate, you're only allowed to drink milk.
And maybe not unlike the Senate, milk is in trouble.
U .S. milk consumption is falling year after year after year.
It's been falling for a long time, but it's sort of this accelerating trend.
And one among many reasons is that non -dairy milk has become a really interesting and powerful category.
In fact, when you go to the supermarket, now you just look at shelf space because there's so many non -dairy plant -based milk varieties.
Often it takes as much space or more space than the regular milk section.
And what's really interesting is that the expansion of the category seems to give us ever new varieties.
So if you look globally, soy is still the leading category.
It has about half the market.
Almond milk is about a third, and then coconut is 10 percent.
And everything else, hemp, oat, and so on and so on, is really small.
But now, just like a couple of months ago, a company in Sweden launched a brand called Doug, which is potato milk.
One challenge, many of them actually don't taste naturally that fabulous.
And so the traditional fix for this has been to add sugar, which, of course, for health reasons, if you're worried about added sugar.
So, for instance, Oat is maybe one of the most terrible ones.
Oaty, this pretty popular brand, has seven grams of added sugar.
So you've got to be really careful.
You give a protein and then you might add sugar to your diet.
But in any case, the Doug brand, the potato, is from a company called Vegland.
It's a public company.
And the benefits, from a sustainability point of view, are really quite striking.
Also, relative to other types of plant -based milk.
It's about a third of a kilo of carbon equivalents.
That's about 10 times less than milk.
With almond milk, we have the controversy around water, how much water it takes to grow almonds.
So even relative to Oat, potatoes seem really fantastic.
They don't use much space, about half the space of Oat.
And if, in fact, this catches on, it might be a really sustainable way to add milk to your diet.
Yeah. Importantly, have you tasted this?
So I had a chance to taste it in the UK.
The taste is... I don't know.
I like milk. It wouldn't be my first choice.
But it's an interesting addition to the portfolio of plant -based milk.
And Felix, what do you think is going on in this two -decade decline of dairy milk?
One of the unique things about dairy businesses around the world is that they're cooperatives, including in the US.
And I wonder if they haven't been as aggressive as all these new entrants have come in, in terms of protecting their turf and in terms of kind of selling milk.
So I don't know, do you think it's a demand phenomenon, a supply phenomenon?
What do you think is going on?
So the conversation around plant -based milk is definitely health concerns.
And then, I think, increasingly in the last decade or so, sustainability concerns around dairy.
It's a significant contributor to carbon and climate change.
And so that's definitely a big part of the conversation.
But then when you look at shopping behavior, what's interesting is for the vast majority of households, it's not a complete switch.
So they continue to buy traditional milk.
I think in the US, something like 70 % of all shopping trips involve the purchase of traditional dairy milk.
But I guess if you look at the average American fridge, it now has choices.
The real question, I think, is how much are people willing to trade off?
In other words, all of these substitutes, there's almost always a price premium involved.
Now, there's also some positive tradeoffs as well, so people who are lactose intolerant.
But for the most part, many people experience either a price tradeoff and or a taste tradeoff.
And so that to me is the real tipping point in all of this.
Even OAT, I think, is when it first came out.
I think the expectation was that it would be a real winner.
And it's okay. It has a few percentages of market share, but it's not a big thing.
I think coconut is really controversial now because of the labor conditions under which it's often produced.
So that's an interesting tradeoff to make.
And then almond is, how good is it really for the planet?
So it'll be interesting to see.
Just on paper, potato milk is a winner across many of these dimensions because it's just a very efficient plant.
It can be grown on not that much land.
The environmental impact seems great.
And then so much depends on the interaction, right?
How does it interact with your cereal?
How does it interact with your coffee?
That's the hard part.
Yeah, exactly. So it'll be fascinating to watch how this market evolves.
Here, what did you bring in?
So one of the most interesting people in food and hospitality is Danny Meyer.
You may know of him as originally the person who had the Union Square Cafe, but then of course did Shake Shack.
He positioned himself as kind of the proponent of enlightened hospitality, including, for example, tips inside checks and worker conditions.
And that's kind of worked and it's kind of not worked.
So it's interesting to see.
But he is out there doing two new things that I think are fascinating.
So the first thing that he's done is in Manhattan he has a place called Daily Provisions, which is meant to be his next big thing.
And it is pretty neat.
It is an upscale version of fast casual.
They have a trademark thing, which is absolutely spectacular, which is a crawler that you cannot beat.
It's just spectacular.
And now he's got menus for lunch and dinner and breakfast that are interestingly priced.
They're kind of in the 10, 12, 15 dollar price range and he's expanding like crazy.
At the same time, Danny Meyer has got a SPAC and in that SPAC, he is taking a lead position in Panera.
So you might remember Panera is pretty massive, fast, casual place.
Aren't they going public?
They're going public.
And they had been taken private by one of these behemoths you never hear about, which is JAB Holdings, which is a European company who took Panera private and now is taking them public.
And Danny Meyer, through his SPAC, is going to become the lead independent director of Panera.
So that is a canvas for him that is much larger than Shake Shack.
And I for some reason think that the confluence of what he's doing at Daily Provisions, which has got a great menu, good price points, high quality, I think great branding, I think it's going to come together with Panera in some way because it's kind of similar, similar target audience.
But Panera is like a 2000 store outfit.
It's like a massive operation.
And watching Danny Meyer, if he can work his magic, which you know, honestly has been exhibited unevenly in various ventures, if he can work his magic at the scale of Panera and with Daily Provisions, I think that is going to be a fantastic thing to watch because he could both champion worker rights.
In fast food, we have some of the worst worker conditions and some of the lowest wages anywhere.
And if he can get that to work at Panera scale level, that would be amazing.
But then also he could really, I think, take wholesome, nutritious food with good price points and really good taste to a whole different level.
So I'm watching Danny Meyer.
And I think what he's doing with both of those outfits, I think, could be really, really fun to watch.
So can I challenge this notion of pushing the boundaries?
Can you select the crawler, I think, which is a good example.
But everything else in Daily Provision is mostly expensive and mostly second rate.
Really? Oh, is that true?
I think his true genius is commercial.
The way he scales his restaurants, the way he now goes public with Panera.
I think he's just a master at everything to do with the commercial aspects of the restaurant industry.
In good part, it remains like a real estate play, right?
You find places that are ideally situated.
But just sort of from a food and culinary angle, I was so disappointed by Daily Provisions.
Yeah, I guess, I mean, I kind of agree and disagree, Felix.
So I agree, which is he has managed his reputation incredibly well.
And he is viewed as this proponent of enlightened hospitality.
And I don't know if it really is true or not.
But I think the thing about it is his menu, first off, compared to Chipotle, look at the price points on sandwiches.
It's not that much higher.
This food is good. I don't think it's great.
But it's kind of something special to see what he's doing.
Maybe it's commercial, maybe it's actually food.
I'm not sure which it is, Felix.
But that combination I think is going to be interesting to watch.
So I'm going to break the tie my next trip to New York City.
I'm going to try it and I'm going to come back and I'm going to break the tie here.
How does that sound?
You get to offer one menu item that I have to sample here.
And then Felix, you need to suggest a counter menu item that you think I have to sample.
And then I will come back and I will report to our podcast audience.
Excellent. So mine is the $14 rose beef sandwich.
Is it really worth $14?
And then the curler.
OK, this is what people come to after hours for.
I just want to note, Felix, it somehow young me wrangled herself a meal bought by you and me out of this little discussion.
Did you see that? Did we say we pay for it?
Oh, yeah, of course.
And then we go out for drinks after and you pay for the drinks as well.
So young me, what do you got?
OK, so this is somewhat related because one of the food trends I brought in, I wanted to talk about the chicken sandwich wars in quick service.
So most people trace the beginning of the war to August of 2019 when Popeyes announced its now famous fried chicken sandwich, which in the quarter it was introduced, that single menu item was responsible for a 40 percent jump in same store sales.
It became a viral menu item, but more importantly, it completely influenced the strategic approach of all the players in the quick service industry because it opened their eyes to what was possible.
So Chick -fil -A, of course, was the first to take offense because obviously they've been doing chicken sandwiches for years.
This is their house.
So they fought back hard.
But since then, more than 20 fast food chains have entered the battle with their own chicken sandwiches, everyone from McDonald's and Burger King, but also Jack in the Box, KFC, Fat Burgers, Wendy's, Carl's Jr., you name it.
Along the way, there have been some incredible highs.
So, for example, David Chang's spicy chicken sando from Fuku.
Fantastic. But there are also been some real lows.
My personal low was a company that decided to come out with a Korean style fried chicken sandwich that was anyway.
However, if you follow the quick service restaurant industry, the trades have been tracking this war for months and it is, if anything, gotten more and more heated for a number of reasons.
Number one, there's no sign that consumers are getting tired of chicken sandwiches.
It often represents incremental sales for burger centric brands like McDonald's.
And if you can generate a hit, they are super, super buzzy.
So pay attention, guys.
The chicken sandwich wars are in full effect right now.
So I personally can say I've had the Fuku chicken sandwich and it's amazing.
And I also have had the Popeyes and they are both fantastic.
But the thing about it that really strikes me, young me, is first, in this area where there is not that much seeming innovation, you just come up with a new idea and it just blows everything off.
I'm curious if you think it's about chicken or if you think it's about spice and flavor.
And I'm also curious about where you think it's substituting away from.
So you said it's incremental sales to these folks.
But like, is this about, for example, moving away from beef and towards chicken, is this about the spice level?
So do you think flavor or do you think it is the protein choice thing?
And where do you think it's coming out of?
Like are burgers declining or what is happening?
No, no, no, no. Burgers are going really strong.
Consumers, particularly young consumers, are very aware that there are lots of fast food restaurants that are now coming up with their version of the chicken sandwich.
So there is a virality to it, which when I say brings in incremental sales, I'm talking about someone who would never set foot in a Popeyes going because they have to try that sandwich that everybody is talking about.
And in this regard, you guys have heard me say this, you know, every industry eventually becomes the fashion industry and fast food restaurants are no different.
And so if you think about their portfolio of menu options, they have evergreens like the Big Mac, they have seasonal items like a holiday latte or something.
And then they've discovered the power in having menu items that create bursts of excitement, that create virality, that keep your brand in the conversation.
And that has become the chicken sandwich.
And in part, it's just a nice platform for spices and you can fry it and you can bake it and you can do many, many things with it.
And so everybody is playing this game now.
And I think at the same time, I do think it's true that this is a little bit of a chicken moment.
You see it in the explosion of the number of Korean restaurants that serve fried chicken.
And many of them just like amazing.
And I think built exactly around this recipe of chicken and then some really interesting spice.
And part of it is probably because we have a Korean moment in general.
And so that's part of that trend.
But part of it, I think, is around chicken.
Yeah. I think this is one of the subtexts that runs through this entire episode.
Food is culture, food is conversation, food is identity.
And as a result, you see it playing out across the entire chicken sandwich landscape, if you will.
OK, Felix, did you bring in another one?
Yes. So, TikTok. Oh, mine's TikTok too.
Oh, excellent. Yeah.
So let's do it together.
It's such a force in food now.
So there's this thing called TikTok pasta, which involves...
Feta cheese. Feta cheese, yes.
When that went viral, supermarkets actually ran out of feta cheese.
Yes, they did. So many people went out.
And did you see the signs?
There are some grocery stores that had signs saying we are out of feta cheese because of some TikTok trend.
Yeah. There are a few things that strike me as really interesting.
Compared to Instagram, it's sort of that same trend that TikTok is just more authentic.
It's really people cooking out of their kitchen, many of them without any training.
The ambition is not so much to make something that is novel or different.
It's often they see a recipe somewhere online and it's casual.
It feels real. You really have a sense that people are actually going out and cook, which I don't have from, say, YouTube videos or from Instagram.
The personality, I think, of the people who make the food is really front and center.
I too am obsessed with this.
And I think it's a commentary on how we ingest information now, because if you look at any one of these TikTok videos, I mean, they can be 30 seconds long.
And the person can take you through a recipe very, very quickly.
And it has made me think about how overcomplicated we have made written recipes.
And if you think about a written recipe, you know, brown this until you can see it browning at the edges and add a tablespoon of this and a teaspoon of that.
And it's so overcomplicated.
You go on TikTok and you realize that in 30 seconds you can convey all of that information.
And you also have a sense of how approximate things can be.
And it's still just fine.
Yeah, I think a point that you made, Felix, about how unoriginal the recipes are.
I think that's so important.
These recipes are not original.
And yet to complain about that is kind of missing the point.
Yes, that's exactly right.
Because making salmon rice has never been mysterious, and yet people don't do it.
And so these recipes are in some ways a form of entertainment.
But in another way, they're almost an invitation to action because they remove any intimidation.
So you watch someone doing feta pasta in 30 seconds.
And then because TikTok algorithm, the way it works, you'll get another one of somebody else completely different putting their own twist.
And then you'll get someone else.
And in five minutes, you've seen six people make this and it looks so simple and it looks so fun that you're like, I'm going to bake at a Boston.
Before you do it, it's amazing.
And the algorithm plays a huge role at that particular scale.
I was sent down a rabbit hole of burned rice.
I had always associated it with burned rice with Persian rice.
And I loved it because it tastes amazing.
And then I discover, oh my God, every country that has rice dishes has a version of burned rice.
And how burned it has to be and who gets to eat it in some countries.
Like it's this delicacy that's sometimes reserved for the chef, sometimes reserved for the head of the table.
And before you know it, you spend an afternoon with burned rice.
The one other thing I'll say about this is that I think the audio is as important as the video.
In other words, if you watch these TikTok videos, you can hear the chopping, the mushing.
And there's this ASMR thing that happens as you watch these videos as well.
You can almost smell the food.
And I find it to be so captivating.
Meher has been so quiet in this conversation.
Well, no, I've just been flipping through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking while you guys went on your TikTok thing.
Yes, exactly. We're going to have to get you back on the food, TikTok, Meher.
I got it. I will sign up for the burned rice any day.
Oh my goodness gracious.
I will sign up for that for any day.
By the way, this is only one dimension of food TikTok.
There's street food TikTok.
I mean, there is a whole other world.
Yeah, there's everything.
And probably the Creator Fund through which they pay content creators plays a little bit of a role in getting people excited about the commercial opportunities.
To be part of the Creator Fund, you have to have 10 ,000 followers and a hundred thousand views in the last 30 days.
So the threshold is relatively high.
But for some people, that can be quite significant.
And I think that's part of the reason why it's really smart of TikTok to maintain this culture of even if you're maybe not a natural at making the perfect video, we want you to be on TikTok making things as opposed to we want you to be on our social media platform just consuming.
Yeah. OK, so I'll do a different one then.
So I want to talk about kitchen appliances and how at any given moment in time, there seems to be one that's all the rage.
And I have skipped every one of these trends and I have no regrets.
Oh, really? Wait, I thought Felix, she was going to finally buckle about stand mixers.
Because I follow every trend and I have no regrets.
So I'm puzzled. OK, so we're going to duke it out.
So I've never bought a stand mixer.
Still no regrets. The Instant Pot, I completely bypass that trend.
Yeah, that's totally it.
The current appliance phenomenon is the air fryer.
Apparently, fries food by circulating hot air.
But isn't that just what a convection oven does?
And so I'm perplexed about why people are so enamored with it.
But secondly, how much frying are people doing?
How often do you have to use an appliance?
I mean, there's a whole other tangent.
But your kitchen counter space is some of the most valuable real estate in your home.
And determining what deserves a spot on that countertop, I think has to be correlated with how often you use it.
Explain. So first off, the person who is confused about how much frying is going on is talking about fried chicken sandwiches.
There's a little bit of a conflict there.
But I think your point is exactly right, Yungmi, which is the rise of these kind of what I would call single use food appliances is just so odd to me.
And by the way, is totally not true for stand mixers.
Yeah, that's actually a mainstay, I think.
That's right. But I guess what I mean to say is we seem now to have demand for single use appliances, which I think is also related to the growing size of homes, the growing size of kitchens.
And then somehow you end up acquiring all these single use appliances.
Now, some of them I think are interesting, like ice cream machines, because they are actually quite unique and you can do something with them that you can't do elsewhere.
But a whole bunch of them like George Foreman grills.
I think that was like the first one that I can think of as being like a huge blockbuster.
Right. And you just wonder like who's got the space and who's got the need and who's got the demand.
But they're impulse buys and they are so relatively inexpensive because of the way they're produced.
It becomes an impulse purchase and you can dream about making healthy fried shrimp at home.
You know what I mean?
That's like this whole cycle of consumption that drives people there.
And then I don't think it gets used and it gets thrown out.
And then we're on to the next one.
Yeah. I think part of the logic of introducing these single use appliances is as with everything else in the kitchen.
Like we know from cookbooks, how many of the cookbooks that are being bought do people actually use?
And I think the same is true for appliances.
And then the question is like, how do you get people to buy it?
And I see two propositions.
One is health. You've seen these spiral, like you can basically any sort of vegetable can be turned into a spiral.
Ronco for nine ninety nine.
The idea is, oh my God, if only my vegetables were spirals, I would eat so many more vegetables.
I think that's one logic.
And then making things easier because in truth, like frying is just complicated, messy.
So the idea of coming up with something that is easier, I do think those two things, health and ease of use, I think are the two dominant logics.
And sometimes we overlook appliances that really add functionality that are truly valuable.
So now we have rice cookers with a burn function.
That is amazing because that's something you couldn't do easily.
And how can you live without a rice cooker?
The stand mixers, the rice cookers.
Those I would think really contribute to the quality of the food and the appliances that you're thinking about young me in the end have, I'm guessing, surprisingly little to do with actual activity in the kitchen.
Yeah. I also wonder if these things operate in the gift market a lot.
Yeah. You know, they operate as gifts and then they never get used.
Right. So true. Yes.
But, OK, Felix. So you brought in another one, though.
Yes. I thought we could talk about Resi and Open Table and this really quite dramatic change in the market for restaurant reservations.
You remember, of course, that Open Table was sort of the first platform.
I think it's now my favorite example of why you have to be so careful if platforms emerge anywhere in your value chain.
Because, of course, in the beginning, you know, the value proposition is very simple.
How would you like extra guests?
And every restaurant signs up.
And then before you know it, they're really powerful.
And if your restaurant is not an open table, your restaurant basically does not exist.
And this isn't, of course, against the backdrop of an industry where profit margins for the typical restaurant hover around five percent or so.
So they're really slim to begin with.
Open Table takes roughly 40 percent of that.
And there's nothing you can do.
And then you get what you would think you would get.
You get lots of entry.
And the entry mostly shows just how incredibly difficult it is to build competition against the dominant platform.
You have Reserve. Yes.
Resi. You have talk.
You have all of these startups that try to gain traction.
And it just does not work.
And then I think a real turning point was in 2019 American Express.
So Resi and Reserve merged first and then the combined entity got bought by American Express.
And now you see that Resi is beginning to get traction in the market.
Open Table has roughly 30 ,000 restaurants in the United States.
Resi is now maybe half as big.
And their entry strategy I found actually really interesting.
So what's the restaurant that is least dependent on Open Table?
It's a restaurant that has a brand name that is famous.
And they start at the very high end, which in platform disruption, you don't often see.
You typically see companies come from the bottom, but they start the other way around.
They have all the famous restaurants.
And then now they're sort of working their way down to more mid segment restaurants.
This is more like my own personal experience when I make Resi Run reservations.
I see Resi now so much more often than I used to.
It got traction in an interesting way.
But the bigger lesson for me is just it is so difficult to start competing against a platform once it's dominant.
And the big mistake in the restaurant industry was really like all of these years having to live with just one platform that took so much off your margin.
Felix, I haven't followed this as closely as you have, but I'm assuming that the Resi take rate is much lower than it is for Open Table.
That's correct. Yes.
And this is where I think the best hope for the restaurant industry, if you're cheering for one or the other, is for someone backed by say an American Express or a larger company to be supporting these platforms.
Exactly. Because this can be an add on.
They have a huge services business geared to small and medium sized businesses, American Express does.
And so this is a compliment to that.
And they don't need to eke out every possible penny of profit from this particular platform.
It is better for restaurants.
And so if you're rooting for restaurants in this regard, you would hope that a platform like Resi is able to keep a lower take rate, create a little bit more of a win -win for restaurants.
Yes, but I think we should mostly root for competition.
If say Resi is the dominant platform tomorrow, we're back to square one where we have the problem that we have a really powerful platform.
Although too much competition makes it difficult for consumers.
Right. Sometimes you don't know exactly what restaurant you want to go to and having something on a single platform.
I mean, I think if you are a brand name restaurant that people actively search for, then competition is good.
But if you're not, you have to figure out what platform to be on.
Right. I think the thing I love about this story, Felix, is American Express.
Yeah. It is so smart because American Express is complicated business right now.
And to then solidify your connection with restaurants in this way per your comment, young me, because you're able to cut them a better deal and then be a little bit more on the cutting edge that just strikes me as so smart.
So it's kind of a brilliant move by American Express.
And so cheap. They reportedly paid about $200 million for Resi.
And it's brilliant.
And then, of course, the first thing that they do is to integrate it with their app.
Yeah. And now if you have status with American Express, you get access to a special tier of Resi restaurants.
And so they place both on the B2B side, the merchants, but it also plays on the customer side.
Exactly. Super smart.
I don't know about you guys, but I also find the Resi booking experience.
It's just more pleasant.
It's very nice. It's very nice.
But here, you had one more.
Well, just one small one.
I just wanted to give a little shout out to Fenugreek.
Who? To Fenugreek. So Fenugreek is just this remarkable thing that I think deserves its moment in the sun.
Fenugreek. So folks from India will know it as methi.
It is this wonderful vegetable and seed that is used in Indian cooking all the time, but actually deserves a much broader play.
And historically had a massive play in the Mediterranean cuisine.
First off, the actual leaf can be used as a vegetable and is often used in Indian cooking.
And it's fantastically a little bit bitter and a little bit sweet.
So, in fact, if you might remember when there was that maple smell that came across Manhattan, that was a Fenugreek factory in New Jersey.
It was. And the seeds themselves can be roasted and then used in cooking and in fact, are the foundations of many important curries.
And in fact, the condiment that I was thinking about starting is based on Fenugreek seeds.
So I just think Fenugreek is something that needs to move out of Indian cooking and go worldwide.
Can I just say Felix, I think he's sneaking in a recommendation.
He brought in more than one recommendation and he realized he couldn't sneak them into all the recommendations.
So he's sneaking one into one of these segments.
I have two other recommendations.
Oh, yes, exactly. A third one would have been hard to take.
I know it mostly from Mediterranean cooking.
The massive amount of it that's grown today is in India and in Rajasthan.
It historically was in Mediterranean cooking.
It shows up a little bit still, but not nearly as much as it once did.
But it is really fantastic and it deserves its moment in the sun.
I think people don't realize how good it is.
It's hard to get. You can get it in the US at Indian stores largely, but it is really, really tasty.
OK, so we are going to come back with actual recommendations next.
About 15 of those. So, Pics, can I go first?
I'm so excited about my recommendation.
You guys, I'm obsessed with popcorn.
I don't know. There's something about it that feels holiday -ish and festive and the sound of popping.
And I have discovered a brand called Opop Pop and the flavors are just phenomenal.
So, Cheddar Pino is my personal favorite.
It's like cheddar jalapeno.
There's like an extra spicy Maui Heat one, but they also have sweet ones as well.
Salty Caramel. Ginger snap.
Oh my God. This looks great.
I actually don't know how they do this, but I'm assuming they infuse the kernels before you pop.
When you pop them, they're just perfect.
I mean, they are so flavorful.
And the beautiful thing is, because every microwave is different, if you order from them, they actually send you a test bag of just salted popcorn.
For you to do first, to make sure you don't burn it and everything, and then you can try all your wonderful flavors.
So, that's my recommendation.
Opop Pop. It is fun for the whole family.
I like it. And kind of old -fashioned, but with a new fashion to whisk.
Can I make it in my single -use popcorn maker?
No, it doesn't work in your air.
In my air fryer. Air popper, whatever.
Okay, Felix, you're next.
I brought a cookbook by a chef, Cal Peternell.
He's of Chez Panisse fame.
He was there, the chef, for a very long time.
It's just an amazing cookbook.
The title pretty much gives it away, Burned Toast and Other Disasters.
Oh, I love it. And it's basically recipes after things have gone terribly wrong.
So, say you burned your toast.
Now what? Like, what do you make with burned toast?
Or you cook meat and it's hopelessly overdone.
It just does not look like you could do anything with it.
Wait, in other words, this is targeted to me.
This is for me. I think it's off the moment for the reasons that we just talked about when we talked about TikTok.
Sort of this idea that cooking is not like the perfect cooking demonstration that you see on television, or not the perfect pictures that you see on Instagram.
Cooking is just really fun, relaxed, and, you know, sometimes things work out, and mostly things don't quite work out.
And then the question is like, what do you do?
The recipes themselves and how you recover, I love that idea.
And then there's lots of sauces also, so using sauces to camouflage whatever disaster you need to have to camouflage.
I love it. Counts, Peter Nell, burned toast, and other disasters.
Really fun. Really great.
Oh, fantastic. I love that idea.
Okay, so we can go into the holiday knowing that if we mess something up, we can turn to this cookbook.
Meir, what did you bring in?
More than one, I know.
Well, just super quick.
One thing to read and one thing to eat.
So, a thing to read is, you know, Daniel Hum of Eleven Madison Park fame has gone vegan.
And it's a really incredibly interesting experiment he's running.
It's a super high -end to go vegan.
So the thing to read is...
Oh, I know what you're going to say.
The Pete Wells Review.
Which was pretty tough, but a great piece of writing.
Unbelievable. But also something to watch, which I think Hum has pulled out of his London place at Claridge's now.
And just to think about whether you can do super high -end vegan.
And if anyone can, he can.
But it's kind of up for debate.
Before the restaurant went vegan, I was at Eleven Madison and one of the courses was just a mushroom.
Yeah. And I have no idea what they did or how they did it.
It is probably the best thing I have eaten in my life.
It was just like absolutely all my good.
And it wasn't all vegan, so maybe that puts a lot of pressure.
Well, that's in fact part of the review.
They used to do these wonderful vegetable things before, but somehow now it's less good somehow.
So it's interesting to think about how that happened.
But also, sometimes it takes a while to figure it out.
He's trying to do something really new and really artistic.
I don't know. I would give it a year and then come back.
You know, it wouldn't surprise me if he figures it out.
The real recommendation is sometimes you may find yourself with egg whites and the question is what to do.
No. It happens. Right.
Like you use egg yolks for ice cream.
But here's what I've been doing is I've been making meringue cookies.
Both incredibly easy, but also incredibly challenging.
So they are so simple.
They are egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar, maybe a little bit of salt.
And you think it's so simple.
But the beauty of the meringue is if you make a small mistake, you're dead.
Like if you have a tiny bit of yolk in your meringue, you go nowhere.
And so it both is very, very simple and yet really rewards precision because if you want a beautiful meringue cookie, you have to do everything right.
It's not hard to do everything right, but you have to do everything exactly right.
And I just find it to be, first off, huge hit with like kids.
And when you got extra egg whites, what are you going to do?
And the answer is make meringue cookies.
And they're so light.
Right. They're so light.
They're beautiful. I agree.
Very elegant. And then for real bliss, if you have a meringue and you whip some cream and you add half a drop of rose water that comes in, all kinds of colors, flavors, lemon curd, you can do trifles, you can do all kinds of things.
We're off to cook, everyone.
That's it for tonight.
Thanks everyone for listening.
We wish you all a wonderful holiday.
You've been listening to After Hours from The TED Audio Collective.
Thank you.
