Published by Ed Levine
Serious Eats' podcast Special Sauce enables food lovers everywhere to eavesdrop on an intimate conversation about food and life between host and Serious Eats founder Ed Levine and his well-known/famous friends and acquaintances both in and out of the food culture.
Listen on Apple Podcasts44 min
Are Yemeni coffee shops the next big thing? On this reheated episode from 2025 serious eaters will meet Mokhtar Alkhanshali who has braved gunfire and jail and AK-47s as he tries to bring single origin Port of Mokha Yemeni coffee to the world. His story is the stuff of movies! Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
42 min
This week on Special Sauce Dr. Dana Small , a professor at McGill University and one of the leading experts on the neuroscience of food decisions, and longtime friend of the podcast Pete Wells of The New York Times join us to explain how the pleasure and enjoyment of food can be the most important element in helping us stick to a healthier diet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
43 min
How does a family business survive more than a century of selling smoked fish, bagels, and candy? Russ and Daughters ' Niki Russ Federman explains all. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
45 min
If there is a smarter or better TV critic than T he New York Times 's James Poniewozik I have yet to come across him or her. So when I was dying to talk to someone about The Bear 's moving final season I rang up James and he graciously agreed to come on Special Sauce to talk about it. We had a blast talking about Carmy and Sydney and all the other finely etched characters on the show. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
27 min
Here at Special Sauce we love pie in all its forms: we love shepherd's pie, apple pie, key lime pie, lemon meringue pie, and our absolute favorite, peach pie. And given that we're coming up on America's 250th birthday and Americans love pie we thought we'd reheat one of our favorite pie episodes to get in the spirit of things. Stacey Mei Yan Fong catalogued her love of pie when she published 50 Pies, 50 States: An Immigrant's Love Letter . Even if you don't love pie her story is well worth listening to. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
37 min
This week on Special Sauce serious eaters get to eavesdrop on part 2 of my hilarious and informative conversation with burger mavens Kenji and Hamburger America 's George Motz . Nobody knows more about cooking and eating burgers than these two burger mavens. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
35 min
As one of the millions of long-suffering Knicks fans I am still basking in the afterglow of the team's historical and magical run. I decided I had to devote another episode of Special Sauce to the team's amazing playoff run to the NBA championship. And who better to join me on mic than the The New York Times' terrific writer Matt Flegenheimer , who to my way of thinking has become the poet laureate of Knicks fandom. He explains that he too can't believe what we have all just witnessed. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
29 min
With grilling season underway I felt the time was right to talk burgers with Kenji and Hamburger America 's George Motz . We talk burger history, burger cooking methods, and all things burger. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
45 min
As one of the millions of long-suffering New York Knicks fans, I decided I had to devote an episode of Special Sauce to the the team's amazing playoff run. Joining me on the pod is the The New York Times 's Matt Flegenheimer , who wrote a great piece about NYC coming together to celebrate this magical run the team is on so far, and food writer Chris Crowley , a former Serious Eater who is now one of the founding editors of the new food newsletter Caper . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
40 min
This week on Special Sauce we talk to Mateo Kehler , the cheese visionary behind Jasper Hill Farm . Mateo and his brother Andy, carpenters by trade, pooled together their life savings and bought a 200 acre dilapidated dairy farm in Greensboro, Vermont, in 1998. They were cheesemakers on a mission to save a disappearing way of life in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, where dairy farming had been in precipitous decline. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
46 min
I have written thousands of words about the joys of eating hot dogs, so when Memorial Day rolls around, this serious eater's thoughts immediately turn to the humble frankfurter. A couple of years ago we had my friend and fellow food writer J.J. Goode on Special Sauce to talk about our love for the hot dog in all its forms, including the many regional styles we both have encountered along the way. We talked about hot dog styles both ubiquitous and obscure, from the famous Chicago hot dogs with french fries on top at Gene and Jude 's near O'Hare Airport to the deep-fried hot dogs poetically known as rippers at Rutt's Hut in Clifton, N.J. So to honor this most humble of foods from around the country and the world as we head into Memorial Day weekend we decided to reheat one of J.J.'s terrifically entertaining and informative episodes about our mutual love of hot dogs. And just for the record I still have two Gray's Papaya hot dogs for lunch a couple of times a week. Please don't tell my cardiologist...or my wife. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
32 min
This week on the pod we are back with Part 2 of our deep dive into bageldom with bagel baker and celebrated chef Mark Strausman of Mark’s Off Madison in NYC. He and I taste-tested bagels from Wall Street darling PopUp Bagels, which was just valued at 300 million dollars, a classic traditional NY bagel concern Utopia Bagels, next-gen sourdough bagel bakery Apollo, and of course, Mark’s own bagels. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
26 min
Like slice pizza and smash burgers bagels are having a moment. One concept Pop Up Bagels was just valued at $300 million in its most recent round of financing. Pop Up's rip and dip bagels are a viral sensation but have left some traditional bagel purists unimpressed. One of those purists is the great chef turned master bagel baker Mark Strausman, so we traveled to Mark's restaurant Mark's Off Madison to talk and taste bagels. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
28 min
Like many serious eaters I am a serious NBA fan. And although the playoffs this year have just gotten underway, they are already proving to be thrillingly entertaining for people like me who have no skin in the game -- other than an unabated lifelong passion for the New York Knicks and just about any and all underdogs. Ever since we had NBA champ and former Knick Channing Frye on the pod a couple of years ago to talk about his company Chosen Family , whenever the playoffs shift into high gear I think back to the entertaining, surprisingly revealing, but mostly just plain fun time we had with him on Special Sauce. So without further adieu here's multitalented Channing Frye talking basketball and wine, LeBron James, and Josh Hart. Speaking of which, go Knicks! On to the Finals! Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
42 min
The idea that food is medicine has been around for centuries. On this week's Special Sauce The New York Times 's Kim Severson and the Aspen Institute 's Corby Kummer talk about how doctors, the government, and even insurance companies have been engaged in a half-century long process to treat various medical conditions with food cooked healthily that the government and health insurers pay for. Chicken soup is indeed good for the soul. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
43 min
Last November ICE launched Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, terrorizing both restaurant customers and workers in immigrant communities all over the Windy City.We heard firsthand accounts of ICE's violent misdeeds by Chicago Tribune reporter Zareen Syed and restaurateur Marcos Carbajal of the esteemed Carnitas Uruapan. I checked in with Zareen and Marcos this week to get an update on the situation. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
48 min
Tom Valenti, one of my favorite chefs of all time (who also happened to be a swell, generously spirited human being), died suddenly last week. Tom was a friend of mine, so I gathered writer Andrew Friedman (who co-wrote Tom's cookbooks) and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que founder John Stage to celebrate the life and times of the best chef you might never have heard of. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
40 min
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
36 min
Smitten Kitchen 's Deb Perelman explains why she and many other recipe developers and food writers regard AI as an existential threat on this week's episode of Special Sauce. This is serious business, serious eaters. Listen up! Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
46 min
According The New York Times , Noma chef and co-owner René Redzepi physically and verbally abused more than thirty of his kitchen staff between 2010 and 2017. To find out what that means, I sat down with longtime restaurant critic Bill Addison of The Los Angeles Times , and best selling author and youtuber, Kenji Lopez-Alt . Kenji worked in many serious restaurant kitchens in Boston for a number of years after graduating from college, before opening his own restaurant Wursthall in San Mateo, California. Can fine-dining restaurant kitchens become kinder and gentler places? What should happen to Redzepi? We mull over these questions and more on this episode of Special Sauce . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Observed August 1, 2026.
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