835: Naan Pisses Him Off. Vada Pav Gets the Medal of Honor. Meherwan Irani Returns!

Meherwan Irani (0:00)

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SPEAKER_2 (0:15)

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Meherwan Irani (0:51)

The fact that I have to have naan in my restaurants pisses me off.

The fact that I couldn't open, back in 2009, an Indian street food restaurant. And think I would have a chance of survival, unless I put saag paneer, butter chicken and naan on the menu, pissed me off back then and still pisses me off today.

Matt Rodbard (1:12)

This is TASTE. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard.

Meherwan Irani has been sharing wisdom about Indian street food since first appearing on this show in 2019 That would be Vada Pav's genius, Naan's overratedness, and his mom's three lentil dhansak. Now it's all in his debut cookbook, No. 1 Best Indian Cookbook in the World, alongside the two decades journey of building Chai Pani, Botiwalla and Spicewalla. On this episode, I catch up with my old friend and recent India travel companion about Auntie Holdback's striking a balance between tradition and invention and what he means about his strong stance on Naan. And at the top of the show, it's the return of Three Things, where Aliza and I talk about what is exciting us in the world of restaurants, cookbooks and the food world as a whole.

Aliza, we are back with Three Things, how are you doing?

Aliza Abarbanel (2:11)

I'm doing well, Matt, how are you?

Matt Rodbard (2:13)

I'm really great. We were talking about the BO. Boys offline, which is Clayton Gumbert's and Pat Stengel's podcast about The Box Office.

Aliza Abarbanel (2:21)

Our producer Clayton Gumbert, our fearless producer.

Matt Rodbard (2:24)

Absolutely, it's a great show, I just want to plug it at the top. It's not one of my Three Things, though I would probably have three other episodes as three of my Three Things if that's what we did here.

Aliza Abarbanel (2:32)

That's what we'll do for Clayton's birthday.

Matt Rodbard (2:34)

Clayton's birthday, I'm linking to it in the show notes, BO. Boys, The Box Office is kind of crazy right now. There's a lot of hits, there's some flops, they talk about it all. I just had to show that at the start.

Aliza Abarbanel (2:44)

Yeah, for a good segue, one of my three things is a movie.

Meherwan Irani (2:47)

So should we leave it at that?

Matt Rodbard (2:48)

Start there.

Aliza Abarbanel (2:48)

My first thing is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which is a kind of horror slash spoof, but also not spoof movie that came out recently.

Clearly based on the title, this is not the most obvious food pick, but I think that food plays a really fun role in this movie. There's some very iconic scenes involving the sensual dipping of chicken nuggets into mustard or ranch. I can't remember which condiment. Certainly gummy candy and gas station fare play a big role in this movie. I also just think it's a really fun, freaky, complimentary watch. This is written and directed by Jane Schoenenbrunn, who also did the horror movie recently, I Saw the TV Glow, and it's starring Hannah Iambinder and Gillian Anderson. Such an iconic duo. I really loved going to see this in theaters recently, and I'll tell you about my movie Snack just to top it off, which is the classic combination of getting a bunch of crunch chocolate candy, and then pouring it into your salty popcorn, and then shaking it up, and I was singing the gospel of this to my friends before the movie started, and then in the movie, Hannah Iambinder takes raisin nuts, so not a bunch of crunch, but close enough, and pours them into her popcorn, and is watching this movie in the movie doing that, and all of my friends whipped their heads to look at me because it was such a similar.

Matt Rodbard (4:06)

Channeled.

Aliza Abarbanel (4:07)

Yeah, real life imitating art, imitating real life again sort of thing. So that's my summer slasher first thing.

Matt Rodbard (4:15)

That's great. I've heard good things. I put malt balls in my popcorn.