South Coast Repertory hosts a live taping of American Public Media’s ‘The Splendid Table’ with LAist.
Remember this scene in “When Harry Met Sally”? A date-night couple discussed whether restaurants were the new theater. Written as a joke, today it seems prescient.
Open Instagram and a million new food photos pop up. TikTok recipe videos gone viral threaten to deplete your grocery store of popular ingredients. Chef-testants on national competition shows keep getting younger: A few years back, Delilah Flores of Anaheim Hills was just 14 when she and her uncle Daniel won the first season ever of “Top Chef Family Style.”
So, just how far is America’s obsession with food culture going?
Multiple James Beard award-winning journalist Francis Lam has had his gimlet eye fixed on this topic for years. Since 2018 he’s hosted “The Splendid Table,” a national radio program that airs Sunday nights on LAist (KPCC 89.3 FM), in partnership with American Public Media.
He brought a live, sold-out taping of the show to South Coast Repertory on Sunday with local food celebs Daniel and Brenda Castillo of Heritage Barbecue, Kenneth Nguyen, host of The Vietnamese Podcast, Patricia Huang, general manager of 626 Night Market, and Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times columnist and author of "Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America."
Food was served to attendees of Sunday’s live taping of “The Splendid Table” at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa. PHOTO 1: Small bites prepared by Heritage Barbecue. PHOTO 2: Pho tacos. PHOTO 3: Food by sponsor Sweetgreen. Photos by Anne Valdespino, Culture OC
Lam, a smartacus with a laidback interviewing style, has a resume that stretches out like the credits in a “Star Wars” sequel: judge on Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters”; vice president and editor-in-chief at Clarkson Potter, which specializes in cookbook publishing; bylines in top publications such as Bon Appetít, Food & Wine, Saveur, Salon, Men’s Journal and the Financial Times.
He graduated at the top of his class from the Culinary Institute of America and holds a bachelor’s degree in Asian Studies and Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. So how could Culture OC pass up the chance to listen in on the conversation?
The dish ranged wildly, from iconic oldie La Palma Chicken Pie Shop to how the Vietnamese community forever changed Orange County’s taste buds.
Lam asked Arellano to recap our local food history and he quickly ran through a lively lesson that began with Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant to now-shuttered Michelin-starred restaurant Taco Maria. Along the way Arellano offered his sassy opinions from how In-N-Out Burger is overrated (audience gasps) to how Memphis Cafe started it all (applause).
There was a smoking hot discussion of how the Castillos brought Texas barbecue to Orange County after they got raided by the health department for cooking in offset smokers in their backyard. They’re now a resource for pitmasters across the country for having pioneered the cooking method in California.
Then Nguyen and Huang (who are not from Orange County) stepped onstage to tell the story of starting 626 Night Market. The popular nighttime extravaganza started an OC iteration at the OC Fair & Event Center in 2014, which will return May 31-June 2, June 7-9 and Sept. 6-8.
Nguyen compared the sea of 350 vendors with makeshift kitchens to a war zone. Huang said it’s some of the best Asian food you’ll ever eat.
We were fortunate to get a few minutes alone with Lam for a Q&A. Here are his insights.
ANNE VALDESPINO: We’ve got a million restaurant photos on Instagram, Nick Cage starring in a film as a chef with a kidnapped truffle pig, and now “The Bear,” a TV show so foodie-driven that the chocolate cake gets its own character arc. How far is the obsession with food culture in America going to go?
Well, I'm not a futurist, so I can't tell you how far it's gonna go. But I do think from what I have seen, over the past 20 years or so, is this really interesting dynamic. And as you've just described it, food has really moved closer and closer to the center of American pop culture. It's something that's really fascinating because it just wasn't there before.
When I was growing up, I always loved food, and I felt like a little bit of a weird kid. I wouldn't talk to other kids about what I ate that weekend or what I wanted to go eat, or the Indian restaurant my parents took me to. It wasn't a thing that I would talk about.
AV: But that changed.
Yeah. There are definitely milestones along the way … When food was first on television, the first person I know of who was a cook on American TV was Lena Richard, an African American woman chef in New Orleans. And James Beard and, of course, Julia Child, who kind of broke it open in a new way. All of a sudden food was entertainment on TV.
AV: And what she did was groundbreaking.
Certainly groundbreaking. But then, it's not like a cool food person thing to look to now, but the Food Network really had a massive impact on that. I remember again, from being that kid who would never have said to my friends, “Oh, let's go out to dinner.” Like it's a thing to do in high school. I remember sitting there watching folks like Emeril (Lagasse) and Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger cooking on TV and just feeling like, wow, I don't know why, but I can spend hours doing this.
AV: So that caught your eye.
Yeah. And turns out millions of others felt the same.
AV: Stanley Tucci, Eva Longoria and a host of celebs are starring in food series. Everyone’s looking for the next Tony Bourdain. Was he a one-of-a-kind Mozart, Robert Parker type or is the next one out there?
I'm sure there is somewhere. So it's hard to say what Tony did in one sentence, but certainly what “Kitchen Confidential” did – which is the first thing that really put him on the pop culture map – was solidify the idea of the chef. The figure of the chef as this cool American icon …. All of a sudden, Tony's book really changed the whole perception of that profession.
AV: Last year O.C. had two chefs in the James Beard semifinals, this year none. We dropped off Yelp’s national Top 100 list. There’s no food critic at The Orange County Register, our paper of record right now. Do you think that