I decided to kick off the new season of Special Sauce by checking in with Kenji. It won’t surprise the Serious Eats tribe that he’s been a little busy lately. You probably know about Wursthall, the…

In part three of my pizza nerd-cast with Adam Kuban and Scott Wiener, we go seriously deep into New York pizza, specifically the state of the NYC slice in 2018. Scott observed that some of the best pizza in town is being made by a new generation of…

The self-described pizza nerds Adam Kuban and Scott Wiener are back with me on this week’s Special Sauce to continue our deep dive into our favorite food. Scott took great umbrage at the widely disseminated origin story of the Margherita pizza, in…

For the next three weeks on Special Sauce I will be geeking out about pizza with Adam Kuban and Scott Wiener, two of the smartest, most passionate, and most knowledgeable pizza nerds on the planet. Adam Kuban is the founding editor of the seminal food…

In part two of my interview with former Obama personal chef and Obama White House food activist Sam Kass, I got schooled big-time about the role visuals play in how you eat at home. “The first lesson that I learned, that I think is maybe most helpful…

All right, I admit it: I’ve always fantasized about having one of the Obamas as a guest on Special Sauce. And while I haven’t given up hope entirely, I realize that Sam Kass, my guest on Special Sauce this week, might be as close as I get to that…

On this week’s episode of Special Sauce, the Pulitzer Prize–winning but ridiculously down-to-earth Rick Bragg digs deep into his mom, the subject of his latest book, . For one thing, Bragg’s mother was not in the least interested in…

We don’t often get a chance to have a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist on Special Sauce– was the first–so I jumped at the chance to have Rick Bragg, one of my favorite writers of all time, on the podcast. Of course, Rick isn’t known as a food or…

In part two of my terrific conversation with James Beard Award-winning pitmaster Rodney Scott, we discuss the fact that barbecue, like jazz, was developed by African-Americans, and yet most well-known pitmasters are white.   “I respect any human…

Barbecue pitmasters are amongst our nation’s greatest storytellers—they learn that all-important skill tending to their ‘cue all night. But Rodney Scott, South Carolina pitmaster and James Beard Award…