815: Anthony Bourdain’s Life Was a Movie. Matt Johnson Directed It.

**Matt Rodbard** (0:00)
Cash rules everything around me. When that line dropped, it changed the whole hustle. Scan the QR code on a Sprite or Sprite Zero Sugar to see the full breakdown.

**Clayton Gumbert** (0:13)
Obey your thirst, Sprite.

**Matt Johnson** (0:23)
You know what strikes me? Bourdain, half of his style, is from this random guy in Provincetown who writes about food with such a folksy, immediate foodist. That's so fascinating. And so I'm reading the book and I'm like, oh my god, I found the Rosetta Stone. Like what the hell is this?

**Matt Rodbard** (0:40)
This is TASTE. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard.
Matt Johnson directed the films BlackBerry and the DIY comedy Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie. Now he's taking on Anthony Bourdain. His new film Tony, out in August from A24, skips the traditional biopic format entirely, compressing three formative Provincetown summers from Kitchen Confidential into one transformative season for a 19-year-old pre-fame Bourdain. Johnson joins us to talk about adapting a book everyone already loves, directing Dominic Sessa away from doing an impression and his love for the Canadian band Sloan. And before that, I share some recent restaurant visits, including stops at Thai Diner, Keens and Goosefeather. I hope you enjoy this episode.
Clayton, what is up, man, how are you doing?

**Clayton Gumbert** (1:41)
Good, Matt, how are you?

**Matt Rodbard** (1:42)
Good. You are both producing and recording this right now.
I love it. Thank you.

**Clayton Gumbert** (1:46)
I'm a man of two talents.

**Matt Rodbard** (1:50)
Well, you're in Aliza's chair, and I felt like with this great conversation with Matt Johnson, I wanted to talk about restaurants. I've been out to a number of them, and really Tony is a chef, and this film has a lot of food scenes and is based in a restaurant. So how about we talk about some restaurants?

**Clayton Gumbert** (2:06)
Sounds great.

**Matt Rodbard** (2:07)
I have three of them I want to talk about. The first is a visit I made recently to Thai Diner, which is one of my long time favorite restaurants in New York, and I try to pop in a few times a year, if not more. I had dinner there in a while. I'm usually there for breakfast actually, and it's great breakfast. But I wanted to go over it. As a reminder, Thai Diner is from Anne Redding and Matt Danzer. They were behind Uncle Boone's, which earned a Michelin star in 2016
This restaurant has a Bib Gourmand, and it's again really, really one of my favorites. I'm going to start with the Bon Salad, which is like kind of their signature salad. I posted on Instagram, and I had two friends reach out and said, You had the salad? And I was like, I didn't realize the salad had so much play on the online.

**Clayton Gumbert** (2:55)
Oh, it's a viral salad, which I shouldn't say viral salad right now because what's going on.

**Matt Rodbard** (3:01)
No, no talk about viral salads in this in this studio. Well, this salad is very good. I mean, it's with I think the big the big kicker, the why it's so different is that it has a crown of of of crispy red curry rice. So it's got a bunch of pops in there. Romaine, watercress, avocado and this great, you know, Thai dressing. Fish sauce is in there. There's some sweetness. I love it. We had some grilled oysters, which I had never had there. And really, Thai grilled oysters is really it has, you know, a nam jim finishing. So it's like chili, lime and fish sauce finishing over the grilled oysters. A terrific couple of other highlights. I mean, I'm always ordering the vegetables there. I love morning glory. I try to get that as much as I can when I see it at Chinese restaurants or Thai restaurants. And this one was so great. It had, you know, I think morning glory is also like a water, kind of like a water spinach.
Someone asked me, one of my dining companions, what it was, and I was like stumped for a second. I was like, what is morning glory? Water spinach.
And really, it's in the wok. It's really fast. It's got the wok hay going on. And I really enjoyed it. It's got a little bit of this turmeric broth going on in there, in the sauce, and I love that. And then we had some green curry fried rice, which really, really good new dish. I really enjoyed that.
I think this restaurant is such a great restaurant because of service. They always have really nice people work in the floor who know the menu top to bottom, and it needs some explaining and really needs some suggestions because there's so many inviting little areas in it. And I just loved our server, this restaurant. Lots of lines. You can book it on Rezzy.