Special Sauce with Ed Levine

As someone who has spent the greater part of a half-century searching for and obsessing about where to find the best of any kind of foodstuff, I was immediately drawn to Ella Quittner's book Obsessed with the Best. Quittner and I delved into the pleasures and pitfalls any writer encounters when he or she tackles this most subjective undertaking.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Deb Perelman, creator of Smitten Kitchen and author of multiple cookbooks, speaks about how AI threatens recipe developers' livelihoods and voices. She recounts scraped recipes, AI mimicking her notes, and collapsing traffic. Conversation touches on testing, trust, community resilience, using AI as a tool, and why real human-tested recipes still matter.

Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times restaurant critic with decades covering restaurants, and Kenji Lopez-Alt, cookbook author and chef behind Wursthall. They react to reporting on alleged abuse at a top restaurant. They probe why abusive kitchen cultures persist, media complicity, unpaid internships, and what real culture change might look like.

This week we're reheating one of our favorite recent episodes on the ongoing struggle between ICE and the immigrant-driven food cultures of major American cities. LA Taco's editor-in-chief  Javier Cabral explains how and why his website became one of the leading voices of ICE resistance in the "City of Angels'.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Elazar Sontag, food critic at The Washington Post, adapts rigorous reviews for social platforms. Hannah Goldfield, writer at The New Yorker, examines ethics and cultural context in restaurant coverage. Bill Addison, veteran critic, ranges from fine dining to street food. They debate TikTok and Yelp’s impact, the shrinking gatekeeper role, and whether longform criticism can survive in a fast social-media world.

Are restaurant critics dinosaurs in the age of social media? We discuss that and more in part one of our critic's roundtable with The New Yorker's Hannah Goldfield, The Washington Post's Elazar Sontag, and The Los Angeles Times' Bill Addison.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Pete Wells, New York Times restaurant critic who wrote about changing his diet, discusses sugar addiction and hidden added sugars in processed foods. He talks about recognizing different hungers, snack traps, and how cooking and walking help reshape habits. He encourages experimenting with cutting added sugars and treating processed foods with caution.

Pete Wells, longtime New York Times restaurant critic turned health-focused eater. He shares a medical wake-up call that led him to cut added sugar, favor whole grains, and rethink travel and kitchen habits. Conversation covers mindful eating, food environment hacks, why refined carbs trigger hunger, and choosing diet changes over medication.

For millions of serious eaters the Super Bowl has turned into a food event almost on a par with Thanksgiving. With the Super Bowl coming up we thought it would be fun and edifying to reheat last year's Super Bowl episode featuring Kenji Lopez-Alt giving serious eaters sage advice about making pizza and wings at home. I've had Kenji's wings and his pan pizza, and they are both seriously delicious and pretty simple to make. We should note that Kenji is no sports fan. In all the years I've known him I can't remember one conversation about sports. But maybe as a resident of Seattle he has found a reason to root for the Seahawks.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this episode of Special Sauce the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Sharyn Jackson reports on the devastating effect of the ICE operation on the Twin Cities' restaurant and food community. ICE's terrifying tactics in Minneapolis have been met with many creative forms of resistance. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices