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

Meherwan Irani (0:08)

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 (0:28)

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

Meherwan Irani has been sharing wisdom about Indian street food since first appearing on the 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 holdbacks 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 (1:27)

I'm doing well, Matt. How are you?

Matt Rodbard (1:29)

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

Aliza Abarbanel (1:37)

Our producer, Clayton Gumbert, our fearless producer.

Matt Rodbard (1:40)

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 could probably have three other episodes of Three of My Three Things, if that's what we did here.

Aliza Abarbanel (1:48)

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

Matt Rodbard (1:50)

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 (2:00)

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

Matt Rodbard (2:03)

Start there.

Aliza Abarbanel (2:05)

My first thing is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which is a 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 are 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.

I was singing the gospel of this to my friends before the movie started, and then in the movie, Hannah Iambiner takes raisinettes, 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 channeled real life imitating art, imitating real life again sort of thing. So that's my summer slasher first thing.

Matt Rodbard (3:31)

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

Aliza Abarbanel (3:34)

Also good. I find them a little drying.

Matt Rodbard (3:37)

I agree. You need to have that diet coat.

Aliza Abarbanel (3:40)

The coke slushy.

Matt Rodbard (3:42)

Or slushy to chase it. But yeah, I'm with you to mix. You have to mix in your popcorn.

Aliza Abarbanel (3:49)

Yeah, but molten milk balls in a milkshake.

Matt Rodbard (3:51)

That's good stuff. It's elite.

Aliza Abarbanel (3:53)

What's your first thing?

Matt Rodbard (3:54)

First thing is I was in Traverse City, Michigan for the Traverse City Food and Wine Festival. Had a great time up there. We're going to run some episode, one episode from that conversation I had with Ruth Roichel, which I loved. It was like an hour big crowd. It was lots of fun.

One restaurant I really loved up there that I've been hearing about forever, I think we wrote about them on TASTE, like 2021 is Farm Club. This very, very unique restaurant. It's about seven miles from the downtown and it is a true local vor operation. Everything is grown and raised nearby from the restaurant. It is from Nick and Sarah Thiessen from Loma Farm and Gary and Alison Jonas from The Little Fleet, which is a food truck collection downtown Traverse City. I got to go there for lunch, which I think is a great move. Dinner can be, I know, like kind of the long wait in the summertime.