Insights and Inspired Eating, Behind the Scenes

From the beginning, it’s been the hope that the series would, over the course of this first season, start to generate an ongoing, ever-growing, ultimate food lover’s checklist – one that viewers could repeatedly turn to when searching for and seeking out the best things to eat across the country. Which makes it that much sweeter to hear that after the OBSESSIONS episode aired on 7/14, that the website for Zarela’s restaurant (home to Aaron Sanchez’s mom’s bowl-licking delicious arroz con crema), which normally might get 50 – 100 hits a day, got over 117,000. Or that folks who were headed to Seattle on Jet Blue and who happened – thanks to an in-flight airing of the TOTALLY FRIED episode on Direct TV – to catch Giada waxing passionate about the mini made-to-order donuts at Lola, apparently did not pass “go”, did not check into their hotel, but headed straight from the airport to the restaurant so they could try them for themselves.

I should point out that all of us who work on the show are no different; we’re taking notes and keeping tabs right along with the rest of you. I know I haven’t been anywhere in the last year – be it in town (Los Angeles) or out of town (New York, San Francisco, San Diego, even to Richmond VA to see family) – that what I ate wasn’t influenced by what I had heard in the course of our interviewing contributors for the series.

One thing you haven’t heard while watching the show, however, is that with some of these foods, you need not go any farther than your own front door in order to get them. Those stone crab claws that Bobby Flay said he is obsessed with? Yes, they’re available at Joe’s (in Miami), but they’re also available from Joe’s, through the mail. More “best things” just a phone call or mouse click away: the pulled pork from the Rendezvous, the brisket from Main Street BBQ and the links and ribs from the Salt Lick in Driftwood, TX. “Ordering in” this week just took on an all-new meaning.

And, lastly, if you are someone who is inclined to go the self serve route – and attempt to make a dish you’ve seen on the show yourself – you’ll probably want to know that recipes for foods we feature – such as Zarela’s arroz con crema and Brigten’s pecan pie (or click here for a step-by-step how-to video) – are occasionally found on the restaurant’s own websites. In an article in Gourmet magazine, writer Francis Lam not only echoes Michael Symon’s love for the Toasted Marshmallow Milkshake at the Stand in New York, but he did him (and us!) one better – finagled the recipe, and, in the process, revealed the secret ingredient that they hid from the camera: one large dollop of Woodstock Water Buffalo Milk Yogurt (Lam points out that almost any yogurt will do, since it is mainly there to add a bit more liquid and slightly balance out the sweetness of the ice cream).

Google and who knows what else you might find.

I grew up in the south, where bacon is a religion, but doing an episode devoted entirely to bacon never enter my mind until we got each contributor’s list of the best things they’d ever eaten – and I noticed that there was a bacon-flavored, bacon-infused, bacon-loaded dish on practically every one. Fact is, across the board, bacon was mentioned more often than any other ingredient, including chocolate….and although our contributors didn’t get around to a few of my own favorites (so much bacon, so little time), when you consider the bacon baklava at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, the dark chocolate dipped bacon strips at Roni-Sue’s Chocolates in Manhattan, and the crème brulee flavored with white corn and a mound of brown-sugar candied bacon at Tilth in Seattle, it actually would have been possible to not only do an entire show devoted to bacon, but to DESSERTS made with bacon.

Three of the dishes featured in the show (the maple bacon donuts, the bacon flatbread, and the salumi cone) are from restaurants in San Francisco, a fact which didn’t surprise me (since the Bay Area is home to Bacon Camp – and since every vegetarian I know seems to agree that the one thing they miss most about not eating meat is bacon). Nor was it lost on Rahul Nair. The desire to taste-test the dishes seen on the show (especially those in his own town), motivated Nair, the self-billed “car crazy tech geek” who works in the Yahoo! Research Lab in Berkeley, to develop this very cool mashup map of all of the places featured in the series so far, with (I’m guessing, hoping…) updates coming weekly.

Road Trip!!

BAR-B-QUE. When the title of an episode could also be “BAR-B-Q”, “BBQ”, or “BARBECUE”, one thing is clear: if no one can agree on how to spell it, then they certainly aren’t going to agree on which is the absolute best.

Besides, asking someone who loves to eat to single out their favorite barbecue dish is the culinary equivalent of Sophie’s Choice. Are we talking beef, pork, chicken? Sauced, rubbed, mopped, marinated? Chopped, sliced, pulled, shredded, in a sandwich, on a platter, on the bone? Texas, Memphis, Kansas City, Carolina?

As the theme of one episode of a TV series, we only had 30 minutes and 8 contributors. Sheesh. You do the math.

Which is why (and this applies to the series in general) even though you’ve just seen an episode devoted entirely to barbecue, you’ll still see other barbecue dishes from other contributors in other shows (and certainly future seasons). But in the meantime, if eight (dishes) isn’t enough, Michael Symon and Chris Cosentino, who never met a pig they didn’t like, also tipped us off to their favorite pulled pork: Symon loves what they do at Nick’s Smokehouse in Tampa FL and Chris raves about the “jumbo” at Pierce’s Pitt in Lightfoot, VA. So add those to the to-eat list.

Finally, one anecdote that Delilah Winder shared that didn’t make it into the final cut. Delilah (whose macaroni and cheese, I should point out, was cited as the best in the country on an Oprah show touting the best of the best) discovered Ronnie’s Ribs in Richmond, VA by fluke; she was in town, visiting her sister, and walking out of a favorite diner when she happened to see a guy manning a giant red half-drum smoker in a deserted gas station parking lot across the street. Although she had just finished brunch, the smell was too much to resist, so she wandered over, checked it out and in the interest of professional research, ordered a slab to go.

On the drive home to Philadelphia, the aroma from the ribs soon engulfed the car. Unable to control themselves any longer, Delilah and her husband broke open the Styrofoam container and had a taste. One bite, and – as she put it – “Done.”

This was, she realized, the best barbecue she’d ever eaten.

But the moment of joy that came with the realization that she had discovered something so spectacular was immediately replaced by panic. By this time, the couple was hours north of Richmond, and while they had the guy’s food, what Delilah realized she didn’t have was his name. Nor the name of his business, a business card, a flyer, or a menu. In other words, she’d just had the best barbecue she’d ever eaten – and she didn’t have a clue who made it. To make matters worse, given that it was cooked by a guy in a parking lot, she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to find him and have it again.

Her husband sympathized, but quickly pointed out that there was no way he was going to turn the car around and go back. So Delilah called her sister, pleaded for HER to drive over to the parking lot and prayed that she would get there before the guy was gone. She did. And according to Delilah, she now not only eats at Ronnie’s whenever she’s in Richmond, she also has Ronnie FedEx ribs to her home in Philadelphia.

This is one of the wonderful things about barbecue: Few foods seem to inspire more passion, preference or debate. Barbecue could possibly be the one type of cuisine that is as much fun to talk (and argue) about as it is to eat. Well, besides pizza. And, yes folks, we’ve got an episode coming up in August that’s devoted entirely to pizza.

I’m already ducking for cover…..

Over the next few days, a few random thoughts on our first few shows:

TOTALLY FRIED. A show about fried foods and no mention of “the best fried chicken I ever ate”? I have to confess, as a producer, I actually liked that; the idea that the interpretation of a show’s theme may not be the obvious. Don’t get me wrong – you’re going to see fried chicken as the series goes on (Guy Fieri is slated to reveal his favorite in an episode called “With My Hands,” and Aaron McCargo, in “Obsessions,” will confess he once ate seven orders of Buffalo chicken wings at seven different places in one day, in his quest to find the best.). Truth is, it’s not that no one talked to us about a favorite fried chicken, it’s, well, almost EVERYBODY did.

So (because Mom always taught me to share my toys) here’s what you didn’t see, but if you’re a fan of fried chicken as much as me, what you may want to know:

Bobby Flay has nothing but love for the fried chicken at Virginia’s in Charleston, South Carolina. Alex Guarnaschelli thinks he’s got the right area of the country, but for her, nobody does it better than Walt’s Grill in Chapel Hill, NC. John T. Edge – you’ve seen him as a judge on Iron Chef America – actually wrote the book on fried chicken (really! Check out his Fried Chicken: An American Story) and while somewhere down the line you’ll probably see him at Gus’ in Memphis, he’s also partial to Prince’s in Nashville and Willie Mae’s Scotch House in New Orleans. In the meantime, Cat Cora – who grew up in Mississippi – quiets her cravings with the fried chicken (and waffles) at Roscoe’s in L.A, Ted Allen sings the praises of Art Smith’s fried chicken at Table Fifty-Two in Chicago, and Michael Psilakis (chef/owner of Anthos in New York City) is all about the buttermilk fried chicken, where every serving is cooked to order, at Salamander’s General Store in Greenport, Long Island.

Apparently the chicken didn’t just cross the road, it crossed the Mason-Dixon line in the process.

[An added note: Following a sneak peek of the Fried show on 6/21, Food Network re-ran the pilot episode of THE BEST THING I EVER ATE (hereafter referred to as TBTIEA). So, Maeda, to answer your question, yep, I can tell you: the cannoli that Alex talked about in that show, the one she said "fixes things in the universe," can be found at Caffe Dante at 79 Macdougal Street in New York City.]

The great part about waiting until a few episodes of the show had aired before starting this blog is that it gives me the chance to jump in and address some of the comments and posts that have immediately popped up on boards on the internet. So for anyone who’s been wondering:

We started out by simply asking each contributor for a list of their favorite things to eat – those dishes they love, obsess over, can’t live without, just have to order, would order even when they’re paying and would go out of their way (even out of town) to get… We threw in some specific categories (such as “best breakfast” or “barbecue”) to make it easier to format episodes, but every food featured on the show was picked by the contributor who you see talking (and raving) about it, with no help or prodding from us (c’mon, I may have good taste, but “The Best Thing My Producer Ever Ate and Told Me To Talk About” just doesn’t have the same ring to it). So I assure you: It was (for example) Bobby Flay who decided to sing the praises of the French Fries at Balthazar, not any producer and certainly not anyone at the Food Network (although he got no argument from Tyler Florence, who, without knowing what Bobby had said, also fingered them as his favorite fried thing ever. Yes, they’re that good).

Over the course of the first season, approximately two dozen contributors confess their love for close to 100 dishes. The only restriction we put on them was that the dish had to be from somewhere in the U.S. (we’re a cable show, thank you), and it had to be from a place where anyone could go and get it. Which means you won’t be hearing someone say that the best thing they ever ate was “my Mom’s roast chicken”, but you could very well hear them say “the roast chicken for two with warm bread salad at Zuni Café in San Francisco.”

Feel free to agree or disagree. I know I do. (Ask Adam Gertler. When he told me, while we were shooting the pilot, that the best banana cream pie he had ever eaten was at Bandera in West Los Angeles, the first words out of my mouth weren’t, “Why?” but “For crying out loud, have you never been to the Apple Pan??”). Just know that what you see is what we got. That’s the point (and hopefully, the appeal) of the show.

First things first, since this is the first BEST THING I EVER ATE blog, I probably should explain how we got here….

Once upon a time, I chronicled food, food obsession and eating my way across the country in a humorous handbook called The Joy of Pigging Out. Since then, as a writer (be it books or TV) and as a on-camera correspondent, I’ve done a slew of different projects and stories, but I still find myself – almost daily – in a conversation where the subject is where I ate, or what I ordered, or the newest thing I’d had that I could no longer live without (last Saturday it was the creama with passito – a gelato made with an Italian white wine – at Bulgarini Gelato in Altadena, CA. But I digress).

Apparently, when it comes to keeping tabs on good food, I am not alone. Just this month, the cover of Gourmet magazine teased the “20 Burgers You Must Eat Right Now”, while the front of GQ screamed “American Pie: The 25 Best Pizzas You’ll Ever Eat.” At the same time, new on the book store shelves, next to the best-selling 1000 Places to See Before You Die (many of which are restaurants) was Jane and Michael Stern’s 500 Things You Must Eat Before It’s Too Late.

It’s lists like these that got me to thinking that somewhere in Americans’ fascination with counting down and keeping up with the best meals, dishes, eats, and sweets available throughout the U.S. there might be a TV show. There was. One which takes a handful of preeminent chefs, mixes in a slew of Food Network favorites, adds a couple of best-selling food writers/restaurant critics….then asks all of them about the food they love most, where they get it, what they’d go through to get it, and why they say (drumroll, please), it’s THE BEST THING I EVER ATE.

I’ll be here weekly, with stories you didn’t hear and the names of some other dishes (and the people who picked them) that we didn’t have time to include. I’m glad you’re watching. But I also want you to comment on any food that was featured. Let me know if you’ve had it, would like to have it, never had it, wouldn’t think of having it, think you had something better, or have already booked a ticket on the next plane out so you can try it.

And, of course, about the best thing YOU ever ate….