🎙️ EP168 - Two cooks catching up on recent food travel, forgotten cookbooks, kitchen myths, and the uneasy feeling that somewhere along the way, we started cooking for the wrong reasons.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🥂 When Is It Too Late to Say Happy New Year?

🥩 What's a Good Roast Beef?

📚 Falling Back in Love With Old Cookbooks

🗺️ Building a San Sebastián Food Guide

🥟 Knödel Explained

🇩🇪 Why Old German Cooking Is Underrated

🇯🇵 Japan Food Notes

🔥 Comment Section Madness

⭐ Michelin ≠ Better Chef

🏫 Cooking for Kids vs Cooking for Critics

🧠 Teaching Food in Schools

☢️ Go Fact Yourself: Are Microwaves Radioactive?

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🎙️ EP167 – If you cook meat, age fish, ferment, or make sauce, you’re already using enzymes. Kevin Jeung has spent years at Noma working directly with fermentation, aging, and enzymatic processes in the lab and the kitchen.

🎧 Topics Covered:

🧬 What enzymes are (in cook language)

🍍 Pineapple & papaya tenderizing… then eating your meat

🧼 Cold-water detergent = enzyme tech you already trust

🧫 Koji, shoyu, miso, garum: umami on autopilot

🍣 Aged sushi & why “freshest fish” is often a lie

🧪 Pectinase fruit juice wizardry (mandarin cheat codes)

🧷 Meat glue shame & why it’s just a tool

🎯 Go Fact Yourself: corks & copper coins for octopus (spoiler: bullshit)

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🎙️ EP166 – Cooking With Trash. This episode is a love letter to the parts we ignore… and the flavor we’re too lazy to earn. If you’ve ever thrown something away and then paid for it again in a different form, this one’s for you.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🗑️ Cooking with Trash – Why upcycling is a real chef flex

🥕 The Veg Stock Revelation – Balance, seasons, depth

🧈 Stock Veg Tapenade – Bread-course alchemy

🐟 The Cod Water Crime – Pouring flavor down the drain

💸 Waste Is Expensive – Laziness costs money

🐑 Underrated Cuts – Lamb belly, heads, bone flavor

📛 Menu Mind Games – How naming shapes taste

🥦 Broccoli Stems – Cooking on cultural autopilot

🧪 Scrap Condiments – Vinegars, powders, patience

🧫 Garum Power – Quiet umami domination

🎯 Go Fact Yourself – The avocado pit myth

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🎙️ EP165 — Christmas service is the cruelest shift of the year: everyone’s celebrating, you’re bleeding tickets, and the smell of cinnamon just mocks you. Eric and Phil talk why working Christmas Eve always sucks—and the fantasy menu you’d cook for your tribe if you weren’t trapped on the line.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🎄 Why Christmas Service Breaks Chefs

🔥 Cinnamon Fantasy vs Kitchen Reality

💭 Should Restaurants Even Open on Christmas?

🍽️ The Christmas Menu Chefs Dream About

🥔 Chips, Caviar & Low-Effort Luxury

🍞 Are We Tired of Sour Dough?

🦆 When Game Becomes the Main Event

🥣 Chicken Blanquette as Peak Comfort

🥬 Bitter Greens That Save Heavy Meals

🥔 Potatoes Done the Serious Way

🧀 Cheese Without Rules or Apologies

🍐 Quince & the Fruits We Forgot

🍸 How Naming Changes Taste & Expectation

🍮 Rice Pudding, Memory & Why Nostalgia Wins

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🎙️ EP164 – These books were impressive, innovative and expensive. But does Modernist Cuisine still hold up? We talk cooking with science, gizmos and gadgets vs. cooking with just a knife, a pan, and years of repetition.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

📚 What Modernist Cuisine Actually Is

💸 The 500€ book and who it was really for

🧠 Cooking by intuition vs. cooking by process

🧪 When technology helps—and when it gets in the way

🌍 How restaurant scenes evolve

🌶️ Tradition, adaptation & the gentrification debate

🔥 Go Fact Yourself – Why searing doesn’t lock in juices

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🎙️EP163 – Kitchens Run on Fear. One way or another, every cook learns that the heat isn’t just on the stove—it lives in your gut, your ego, your nightmares. This episode is about a cook’s fear and the tiny mistakes that steal your sleep and shake your sanity.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🍳 Fear Runs the Kitchen

💸 Expensive Plates, Expensive Mistakes

🌙 Cook's Nightmares Are Real

🧠 Ego, Failure & First Drafts

✈️ Fear That Moves You

🪦 When Pressure Turns Deadly

🥢 Paranoia Makes You Better

⚠️ Allergies & Going to Jail

😡 Becoming “That” Chef

🔥 Riding the Chaos of Service

👨‍🔬 New Segment: Go Fact Yourself!

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🎙️ EP162 – El Bulli is gone. But if you cook today, you’re still cooking in its shadow. This episode is about how one weird beach restaurant rewired modern kitchens, pastry, foams, ferments – and the way chefs think about creativity itself.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

🏰 El Bulli: The Most Influential Restaurant?

🔧 The Prep Table Revolution – One Long Bench, One Brain

🔥 How Mugaritz, Noma & French Laundry Carried the DNA

🥚 Deconstruction: Tortilla in a Martini Glass & Other Crimes

🧪 Xantana, Agar, Lecithin – Powders That Became Kitchen Gospel

🍺 Beer Courses & Foams – When Texture Became an Idea

🍮 Sweet Cuisine – Albert Adrià Breaks Pastry Open

🧠 Creativity Is Not Copying – Ferran’s Real Legacy

📸 The Final Waltz – A Whole Generation in One Photo

🕯️ Who Holds the Torch Now? Roca, René, Andoni…

🧩 Why Enigma Is Today’s Last Bulli Temple

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🎙️ EP161 - Chefs live and die by the prep list. This episode is kitchen discipline: owning your section, juggling a thousand timers, costing without bullshit, and letting go of those ego dishes nobody orders.

🎧 Topics Covered in This Episode:

📋 Night Prep Lists – Building a bulletproof station

🐂 Grab the Bull by the Horns – Taking real control of your section (and surviving clopening)

🗣️ Commies, Demi, CDP – Communication and chain of command that actually works

⏱️ Chefs as Project Managers – Living inside a storm of timers

💻 Apps & Excel – Why most kitchen software still sucks

📊 Costing 101 – Steak, fries, rosemary salt & the hidden percentages

💸 Margin of Error – Airport pricing and not lying to yourself

📈 Dynamic Pricing – When burgers behave like plane tickets

🤝 Front of House Magic – The golden goose and the perfect check

⭐ Dogs, Plow Horses & Stars – Menu engineering for real kitchens

🥔 Buying Better Product – Quality vs. racing to the bottom

🧠 Ego Dishes – Specials, sweetbreads & gently educating guests

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