MUNCHIES: The Podcast

On today’s episode, we’re eating veggie burgers at BurgerLords, a burger-walk up in LA’s Chinatown with the band YACHT. Besides making music together, Jona Bechtolt and Claire Evans are writers, artists, and the developers behind the popular app “5 Every Day,” a curated list of rad things to do in Los Angeles. Over burgers, I wanted to get YACHT’S impressions on why this town is one of the fastest growing cities for creative types, discuss some of the strange histories behind some of the city’s best restaurant spaces, how they go about curating the app, and why LA rewards curiosity.

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On the first episode from our LA series, we eat fried shrimp tacos with Pulitzer Prize winning food writer, Jonathan Gold, and discuss LA’s changing food scene, how technology has changed food culture, and why he knows Dr. Dre so well.

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On today’s episode, we’re taking you into the legendary Austin bar, Dry Creek Cafe, where the likes of Willie Nelson have been kicked out. The spot’s late owner, Crazy Sarah, used to run things around here with an iron fist. It’s the place where you can learn how to be Texan, even if you ain’t one. So crack a Lonestar and tune in to hear some Texan bar stories—like how a sea turtle drinks a beer—with Dry Creek’s bartender, Angel Olson.

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I head over to East Austin—a.k.a. the city's hipster den— to check out an unusual urban farm with chef Michael Fojtasek of Olamaie, one of the best contemporary Southern restaurants in the country.I sat down with Michael to discuss why he decided to open Olamaie, the difference between Southern and Texan cuisine, and find out who the real Olamaie is.

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On the latest episode, I sit down with culinary historian Michael Twitty to discuss his new book, The Cooking Gene , and his open letter to chef Sean Brock, which addresses current racial inequalities in the Charleston food scene.

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Today, we’re experiencing a Texan pastime: waiting in a long BBQ line at Micklethwait Craft Meats on Austin’s east side with some very special guests: none other than the band, the Deftones.

The band has been touring and making music together for almost twenty years. In that time they’ve gone from living off a couple bucks a day and eating whatever they could to becoming one of the biggest bands to travel around the world, enjoy amazing meals, and discover great food and good beer. We sat down over smoked meats to hear about their road food horror and glory stories, riders, and their latest album, Gore.

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Austin’s restaurant scene has been making waves over the past few years in the national restaurant scene with spots like Franklin BBQ, but on today’s episode we are exploring the longstanding titan of the city’s culinary scene: food trucks.

We’ll talk to old school and new school food truck vendors and an unexpected newcomer: Whole Foods, who recently announced that it would open its very first food truck test kitchen.

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Every Sunday in Austin for over 18 years Texanshave gone to the Little Longhorn Saloon to drink ice cold beers andbet on where a chicken will drop a deuce. I recently went to thebar to experience one of the last strongholds of the old “KeepAustin Weird” culture that’s slowly disappearing from thecity.

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On today’s episode, we’re talking to Louis Black, the Austinite who co-founded the Austin Chronicle and SXSW, and most recently directed a documentary about filmmaker, Richard Linklater, called Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny. Linklater is one of the most important Texan filmmakers of our time, and one of the first people to capture the slacker vibe of old Austin with his film, Dazed and Confused.

Black is a tour du force who has watched SXSW—and this town—experience massive changes since the festival began 29 years ago. Helen spoke with him about pre-SXSW Austin, his friendship with Linklater, the new doc, and how that iconic drive-in scene in Dazed and Confused with Matthew Mcconaughey came to be.

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Today, we are bringing you a special bonus episode: Two back-to-back live interviews we recorded at Southbytes, SXSW’s food programming which features panels, talks, and events with some of the most influential people in the food world.

First, I sat down with Andrew Zimmern, food writer and host of Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel; the guy who’s consumed more innards, creepy crawlies, and odiferous foods than most of us will in our lifetimes. He’s also experienced some of the most profound meals in the most remote communities around the world. But rather than chatting about what it’s like to eat skewered tarantula, I wanted to get his impressions on what it means when a community experiences the death of a dish and the traditions behind it.

Then, I sat down with Austin chef Tyson Cole of Uchi to discuss the past and future of sushi—it’s traditional rules, who’s breaking them, and how American sushi chefs are taking the medium to the next level. A slight warning: this tape will...

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