After two years of recording interviews from his basement, Dan is taking The Sporkful back on the road! Chef, YouTuber, and cookbook author J. Kenji López-Alt joins Dan on stage at Swedish American Hall in San Francisco to celebrate the release of Kenji's new book, The Wok: Recipes and Techniques. It wouldn't be a Kenji interview without some science, so we delve into what's happening, thermodynamically, when you cook with a wok. But we also go deep on how Kenji became the internet cooking science guru that he is today – and how his feelings about that role have changed in recent years. If you've ever googled a recipe plus the word "Kenji," you won't want to miss this conversation.
The Sporkful production team includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Johanna Mayer, Tracey Samuelson, and Jared O'Connell. This week's episode was mixed by Ameeta Ganatra.
Interstitial music in this episode by Black Label Music:
- "Summer Of Our Lives" by Stephen Clinton Sullivan
- “Clean” by JT Bates
- "Mellophone" by JT Bates
- "Hot Night" by Calvin Dashielle
- "Party Hop" by Jack Ventimiglia
- "New Old" by JT Bates
Photo courtesy of Ashley Wacker.
View Transcript
Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful, it’s not for foodies it’s for eaters, I’m Dan Pashman. Each week on our show we obsess about food to learn more about people. And for the first time in two and a half years, we are coming to you live tonight from Swedish American Hall in San Francisco!
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: My guest tonight has been on our show many times. In fact, if The Sporkful was a sitcom, he'd probably be our wacky neighbor always barging in the front door, peeking his head over the fence to answer nerdy questions about food science. At the time, he came out to demonstrate what sound scallions are supposed to make if you sliced them correctly.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: But he's never been the featured guest of a whole episode. We've never had an extended conversation to hear the story of how he came to be the internet's leading food science guru. He's best known as the writer behind the popular Food Lab column, which led to a bestselling cookbook of the same name. He's also the author of the children's book Every Night Is Pizza Night and a New York Times columnist. Tonight, we're celebrating the release of his new cookbook, The Wok: Recipes and Techniques. Please welcome Kenji López-Alt!
[AUDIENCE CHEERS]
Dan Pashman: Cheers! Yes. Oh, it is good to see you, Kenji.
Kenji López-Alt: It's good to see you.
Dan Pashman: How's it going? First off, how are you feeling? I mean, so this — your first cookbook was a big hit. We'll talk more later about the new cookbook. But just like big picture, is it like more pressure following up a really successful cookbook with a second one or less pressure, because like you already nailed one?
Kenji López-Alt: That's mainly because my — you know, when the first book came out, you know, I was a freelance writer and my wife was a grad student, and a lot of our immediate future comforts relied on having a successful cookbook.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kenji López-Alt: And now, you know, now my wife has a good career. My first book was successful, so this one is like — it's O.K. if it doesn't do well, you know?
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kenji López-Alt: As long as I …
Dan Pashman: There you go, so you guys don't need to buy it. OK?
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] All right. So we'll talk more about the book later. We’re going to work our way there, but let's begin at the beginning, and I gather from your website that people are always asking you about your name.
Kenji López-Alt: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: If you want. I can just field this one to save you the trouble.
Kenji López-Alt: Sure. Go for it. I'll tell you if you're right.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] So your mom's Japanese-American? She came to the U.S. when she was 16.
Kenji López-Alt: Yes.
Dan Pashman: Your father's American of German descent.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: They named you, James Kenji Alt.
Kenji López-Alt: Yes.
Dan Pashman: But you always went by Kenji.
Kenji López-Alt: Correct.
Dan Pashman: Then you married your wife, Adriana López.
Kenji López-Alt: Yes.
Dan Pashman: And you guys both hyphenated your last name López-Alt.
Kenji López-Alt: Correct.
Dan Pashman: And so you are not Latino.
Kenji López-Alt: I'm not Latino in any way.
Dan Pashman: But you’ve spent a lot of time in Colombia where your wife's family is from.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: O.K.
Kenji López-Alt: You've read Wikipedia.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: Only the finest research here on The Sporkful. So I know your parents split up when you were pretty young, and I gather that most of the food you grew up with was made by your mom. What was the role of food in your house growing up?
Kenji López-Alt: Functional, mainly. I mean, you know, dinnertime was always like, all the kids have to be there. My mom or my dad or both of them, often my grandparents were there and the food wasn't really the important thing. My grandparents, you know, they lived the floor below us. And so my grandmother would cook a lot of Japanese food. And my mom came from Japan when she was a teenager and growing up she cooked some degree of Japanese food. But she was also kind of trying to get us to assimilate a little bit more, you know? So she did a lot of sort of like Betty Crocker and like New York Times recipe American type stuff. She wasn't the greatest cook, but we had dinner every night.
Dan Pashman: Right. Right. Am I right? Do I remember correctly, did you tell me once that you were a picky eater as a kid?
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, I was a picky — I mean, up until I started cooking — you know, like even in college, I was a picky eater. My girlfriend, sophomore year, her parents took us out to dinner and we went to this restaurant in Boston, Radius. And they all ordered tasting menus. And I remember reading, like looking at the tasting menu and being like, that's got seafood ... Oh, no, this one has squash. Eh, I'm not gonna —and so I got a steak while they got tasting menus. You know, I got into food after I got into cooking
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kenji López-Alt: Like I just fell in love with the process of cooking and sort of working in kitchens. And it was through that that I learned about food.
Dan Pashman: I do think it's it's worth noting, though, it's like, you know, for parents of picky eaters ...
Kenji López-Alt: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: Who think that if your kid is eight or ten, and isn't eating every world cuisine that there's something wrong with you and your parenting or your child. And like, I could not bite into a raw tomato until I was 35.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: O.K? so you know —
Kenji López-Alt: I get that.
Dan Pashman: Just just chill out parents out there. Your kids will be fine, O.K.? Me and Kenji made it O.K. I eat tomatoes. He eats squash.
Kenji López-Alt: On the other hand, so my daughter just turned five and for her fifth birthday she — we said, "What do you want to do for dinner?" And she goes, "I want to go to one of those restaurants where you just sit down and they don't tell you what they're going to bring and they just bring it." She's talking about a tasting menu. And I'm like, I feel like I failed at parenting raising a five-year-old who want the tasting menu?
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: You were telling me backstage that your sister shared a story recently of her earliest memory of you cooking?
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: What did you make?
Kenji López-Alt: I was making pasta with tomato sauce, but we ran out of tomato sauce. So I made — I found like the most tomato sauce adjacent thing I could find in my mom's fridge, which was a jar of Newman's Own Salsa. And so it was, um — yeah, it was like Newman's Own Salsa cooked in olive oil with pasta and that was —
Dan Pashman: I mean, that works.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, it works.
Dan Pashman: I'm sure it was fine. Do you remember how it tasted?
Kenji López-Alt: I remember thinking it tasted fine or arguing to my sister that it tasted fine and that she should stop complaining.
Dan Pashman: So food wasn't a huge deal in your family. Cooking was not a big deal in your family growing up, but science was.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah. My maternal grandfather was a scientist and my dad is a scientist. And so, yeah, there's a lot of science kind of talk at home all the time.
Dan Pashman: What kinds of things were you talking about around the dinner table with your ...
Kenji López-Alt: It was mainly complaining about having to do grant applications.
[LAUGHING]
Kenji López-Alt: And then sometimes like the, why is there, why is there like a block of mice in the freezer, that kind …
[LAUGHING]
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: So in 1998, you go to MIT, planning to study biology.
Kenji López-Alt: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: You get there and find that you love biology and science, but you hate working in biology labs.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Why?
Kenji López-Alt: They're boring. I enjoyed learning biology. I enjoyed the lecture. I learned I enjoyed all that, it was just the actual physical process of lab work that I found boring. There's like mind numbing elements of it, right? Where you're just like pipetting, you know, like this. And maybe, maybe they have robots that do that now. I don't know.
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kenji López-Alt: But, uh, no. I'm sure there are still people bored of pipetting right?
Dan Pashman: You’re like a drop into this vial, a drop into that vial for hours?
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah. Right.
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kenji López-Alt: And it was one of those moments where I was like, Oh, like, if I keep doing biology, this is going to be my life for a while. Yeah. So the summer after my sophomore year, I kind of decided like, I need to figure out what I'm actually going to do. And in the meantime, I need to make money. And so that's how I ended up cooking.
Dan Pashman: You ended up cooking at a Mongolian barbecue place in Harvard Square.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, I started out with a prep cook, but I was very quickly promoted to knight of the round grill.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] Knight of the round grill! And this was Fire and Ice, right?
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Dan Pashman: I've been to this place.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, yeah.
Dan Pashman: Yeah. I mean, I graduated from Tufts in 1999, but stayed in the area for two more years. I may have eaten your cooking there, it’s possible.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: This is one of these sort of assembly line places. You would pick out meats and vegetables and then you had to pick out one or two sauces, hand it to a chef who would throw it on a — was it in a wok or on a grill?
Kenji López-Alt: No, it was like a giant ...
Dan Pashman: Giant grill.
Kenji López-Alt: A giant, a giant round — yeah, cast iron thing.
Dan Pashman: Thing, yeah. I was flummoxed by the paradox of choice there. It was too many sauces.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: And then I always felt like we're just one sauce would be boring. I should mix sauces, but like which sauces to mix? And I don't know. Then I always had FOMO. I thought, maybe I should have given a different sauce.
Kenji López-Alt: It doesn't matter. I mean —
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: It all tastes the same?
Kenji López-Alt: It mixes up on the grill anyway.
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kenji López-Alt: So ...
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING] Right. You're probably getting a little bit of every sauce.
Kenji López-Alt: I mean, people going there are not going there for the culinary experience, right? But restaurant work is very similar, whether it's at like a super high end place or an Italian place or a burger place or a pizza place or whatever, like, it's sort of mind numbing, but in a different way that biology is mind numbing. When I became a cook, my mom hated it. And I was like, "But look, now I'm working at this fancy restaurant," and she's like, "Oh, like, you might as well be flipping burgers at the fast food place because like, you know, a cook is a cook." And at the time, I sort of resented it. But it is true the job of a cook is — well, difficult and under appreciated, but also sort of largely similar, [Dan Pashman: Right.] even from high-end places to fast food places.
Dan Pashman: In the intro to the Food Lab, your first cookbook, you write like, "A head injury patient who suddenly develops a brand new personality, something snapped the moment my hand touched a knife in a professional kitchen. It didn't matter to me that I knew nothing about cooking and that my job mostly consisted of flipping asparagus spears."
Kenji López-Alt: Mm-Hmm.
Dan Pashman: "I knew right then that I discovered what I was going to do with the rest of my life." What was it about that job?
Kenji López-Alt: I mean, it was sort of a physical work of a kitchen knows because I've — I mean, I wouldn't write that now. You know, that was like —
[DAN AND AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
Kenji López-Alt: I wrote that then, I think I was like channeling Jeffrey Steingarten or something. You know, like I was —
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kenji López-Alt: Anyhow, I've always enjoyed building things with my hands, you know, like doing music or art. And, you know, food was just like a very satisfying way to do that. I think I know now understand a little better about some of the complexities of food issues that I didn't think about back then. But at the time when I was working as a cook, I was like, I'm at this job where I get to work with my hands and all I'm doing is like making people happy. You know, it's like they come in here, they want to have an experience, they want to enjoy it. It's obviously a little more complicated than that. But I think that's really it, like the sort of transformation process.
Dan Pashman: You say that you played music all your life. I saw you said there was part of you that kind of wanted to be a rock star and working in a professional kitchen seemed like the next best thing.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah. [LAUGHS] I also wouldn't write that now, but yeah.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: What appealed to you about being a rock star then and what's changed?
Kenji López-Alt: I mean, when I was younger, I definitely had much more of a — I want to be famous, I want to do X, Y, Z, whatever I do, I want to be the best at it. You know, and these days now what's changed is I feel like I've reached a point in my life where it's like, I can work harder at being better in some specific part of my career or whatever, or I can be O.K. with the fact that I've been very lucky and successful at what I've done and so I can … I have the luxury of being able to say, “I want to spend more time with my family or I want to do this project for fun or for charity” or for whatever, you know, whatever reason that is not just like trying to become more famous or more popular. So like, it feels like I can make that decision now. And why wouldn't I make that decision? Or why do I need more?
Dan Pashman: Well, I mean, there's a lot of people for whom it's never enough.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, they're always the bad guys in the movie, right? Like, they're the ones who die unhappy because, you know —
Dan Pashman: Well ...
Kenji López-Alt: You know, you don't hear many people say, like, I wish I spent less time with my kids, right?
Dan Pashman: No. One hundred percent. You're preaching to the choir. But I don't think that it necessarily makes you the bad guy to be the type of person who is never satisfied, but I agree that it’s sort of not a great way to live.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, I mean, for me, it's more just that I know that there's this like bit of my personality that can cause trouble, you know, like that makes me unhappy. And so I try not to feed that part of my personality.
Dan Pashman: The part of your personality that once wanted to be a rock star.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, that once wanted to be like in front of a roomful of people just listening, like hanging on to their every word and …
[LAUGHING AND CHEERING]
Dan Pashman: You finally made it, Kenji! um —
Crowd: We love you Kenji!
Dan Pashman: So you get that summer job at Fire and Ice, the Mongolian barbecue.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: You kind of get hooked on professional kitchens. You go back to school. You start reading cookbooks in your spare time. Then you cook part time at another chain restaurant called Rock Bottom.
Kenji López-Alt: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: And you're getting more and more into cooking as you're going through at MIT.
Kenji López-Alt: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: You have all these questions about cooking ...
Kenji López-Alt: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: Because you didn't grow up, you know, sort of like learning at your mother's side or whatever.
Kenji López-Alt: Right.
Dan Pashman: Like you sometimes hear with certain people’s stories. You graduate from MIT. you set out with this attitude of you're going to spend your life trying to answer so many of the questions that you have as you're getting more into cooking. The scientific mind is sort of germinating and you have a lot of questions about why things are done a certain way but in restaurants you aren't finding the answers to these questions. It was very much like, "This is how it's done. Just do it."
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah. And I mean, you know, that was the attitude like twenty years ago when I started working in restaurants. And to some degree, I think it still is now. I think it's changed a lot, but at a restaurant, it's like — yeah, it doesn't exist to answer your question. It exists to produce consistent food and to do it, you know, to do it the same way every time and do it quickly.
Dan Pashman: Right. But you wanted to understand like the science, the underpinnings of it, and you were also seeing things in restaurants that you felt like, "I'm not sure if that's actually the best way?"
Kenji López-Alt: You know, I remember one job where we were making french fries and you know, we were doing the sort of traditional; cut the potatoes, soak them, fry them once at a low temperature, fry them again at a high temperature right before serving. You know, so I asked our chef, like, "Why do we — why do we do it that way?", you know, because this is the first time I'd seen french fries cooked. And I was like, "Why do we fry it twice?" He's like, "Well, the first fries to like, cook it out. You do it at a low temperature, so you're just basically cooking it through to the center. And then the second fry makes it crispy." And so I was like, "Well, if the first fry is just to cook it through to the center, like can we boil them so that we don't have to like tie up the fryers or can we bake them?" And he's like, no, and I was like, why. And he's like, "It's just not how it's done." And it turns out, you know, there are reasons why you don't do it that way, but, um, you know —
Dan Pashman: Why you don't do it the way you suggested?
Kenji López-Alt: Why you don't do it the way I suggested, yeah. But it's but it's still like, I feel like you want to know those reasons, right?
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: So your sort of frustration with not getting the kinds of answers you were curious about in restaurants leads you in 2006 to leave restaurants and go to work for Cooks Illustrated ...
Kenji López-Alt: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: As a test cook and editor, hoping maybe that'll give you more of a chance to explore some of these food science questions you're curious about. And pretty quickly, it seems like it does.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: I mean, you you write a piece about how you want to solve pie crusts. You know, the dough’s dry and crumbly. It makes it hard to roll it out, but if you add more water to make it more pliable, that also stimulates gluten development, which makes the finished product tough and not flaky.
Kenji López-Alt: Right.
Dan Pashman: So you come up with what I think of as your first viral recipe concept.
Kenji López-Alt: Right. [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: Add vodka instead of water.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: And it cooks off and then you — so you get pliable dough to work with and flaky crust at the end.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Amazing, right? Genius. A couple of years later —
[AUDIENCE CHEERS]
Dan Pashman: Yeah, you leave Cook's illustrated. You go to Serious Eats where you start the Food Lab, and that's really the thing that takes your career to the next level when you start to really be known as this food science guy. You're doing these kinds of deep investigations; Why do we do it this way? Is there a better way? Is there a better way to fry french fries? Tell me about the process behind those columns.
Kenji López-Alt: So we pick a recipe and then it's a lot of research into that. So the historical and cultural elements of a recipe, like it's really important to sort of know what meatballs means to different people because, you know, the last thing you want to do is work really hard at a recipe and publish it. And then someone being like, "Uh, you know, I come from the land of meatballs and I can tell you, this is not — you misunderstand what meatballs are." And then generally, it's like — so you generally have to pick a problem that you're working on. Yeah, with pie crust, the problem is if you add too much water, it becomes tough. But if you don't add enough water, it cracks. So like, that's the problem I'm working on in this recipe.
Dan Pashman: And so the Food Lab grows steadily in popularity over a period of years, and you do have a real reputation as being this guy known for these sort of deep-dive articles solving different dishes. And I know for a lot of years, you would — your pieces were kind of framed, not always, but often as sort of the "ultimate" or "best way" to do it. And you've been talking recently about how you sort of moved away from using those terms when you write a recipe.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Why have you moved away from those terms?
Kenji López-Alt: [LAUGHS] I mean, it's partly — so like right now, you said, like solving, solving certain dishes. It's like, [LAUGHS] I've solved, I've solved spaghetti! Like, you know, it's partly because of stuff like that. Like this idea that like, there's definite right and wrong ways to do things and that one style is better. That, you know, like a crispy hamburger is better than a soft hamburger by default. You know? Our formula at Serious Eats was focus all our energy on producing the best possible content. And that, you know, if we do that consistently, people are going to get to know our name and they're going to come search for us and whatever. And so it doesn't matter what Google does with their algorithm, like in the long run, it'll work out this way. But, you know, but where that doesn't apply necessarily is the titles, you know? And so, you know, so there's always this pressure. You're like, O.K., if we're writing about chocolate chip cookies and we did all this testing, like we better call it "The best chocolate chip cookies", because people are going to … If you see something that’s the best chocolate chip cookies versus pretty good ... pretty good chocolate chip cookies depending on how you like them ...
Dan Pashman: Chocolate chip cookies that Kenji likes quite a lot.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, yeah.
Dan Pashman: Isn't quite as grabby.
Kenji López-Alt: And so, you know, and so we use that kind of wording frequently.
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kenji López-Alt: But it also meant that like, you know what I — what I frequently found was cooking being used as — like weaponizing it. And like, especially like in online communities, you know, you'd see people being like, "That steak is terrible because it has — you know, you have to let it rest. Like, I wouldn't feed that to my dog because he didn't let the steak rest." or, you know, it's like all these things that other people use to put other people down. Or and sometimes you would see like, "Oh, you didn't do this the way Kenji said, so it's bad." This is like objectively the best because the Food Lab says it's the best.
Dan Pashman: Because Kenji says.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, and that's stupid, right? It’s dumb.
Dan Pashman: I hear you. But I do wonder, like at the time, like you were saying earlier, you know, there were — or when you were younger and more full of hubris, as we all were when we were younger ...
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah. [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: Back then at that time, was there part of you that kind of liked it when people would —
Kenji López-Alt: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Dan Pashman: Be like, Kenji says ...
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Screw you.
Kenji López-Alt: For sure, um — yeah. I mean, there was. There was a part there like that. Yeah. Yeah, You know, it's one of these weird things where it's like, you know, you use social media and you feel like — and it’s very easy to forget that the person on the other side is a person. And then once my voice started getting louder on social media, it's also very easy to forget that like what I say is like 100 times louder than what the person saying back to me is saying. And so, you know, reconciling the fact that you just feel like a normal person, but then also that you have this kind of megaphone. Yeah, that's tough, right?
Dan Pashman: Totally. And I mean, I feel like I've had a similar arc, to be honest, because like, you know, The Sporkful when I first launch was mostly just me ranting about my opinions about the best way to eat things.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Not to cook but to eat. And we had some fun debates back in those early days.
Kenji López-Alt: Right.
Dan Pashman: When I was doing your Eating Ramen Cooking Channel and stuff. We would argue about hot dog buns, and I don’t even remember what else we talked about.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Your wife, Adr,i always said I was right, which is why I always liked her a lot. She's obviously the brains in the family.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: But yeah, you get a little older and you're like, Oh, I don't really care.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: So what changed for you? What triggered this shift?
Kenji López-Alt: I mean, it's been kind of an ongoing process. You know, a lot of it is just my wife's influence on, you know, like conversations with my wife, who's very honest with me about this stuff. Conversations with my family. Certainly, having kids made a big difference. You know, because when you have a kid, it's like, you want to be the best example of yourself and you want to do better. And so, yeah, you know, realizing that Twitter makes me the worst version of myself, right? It's like, so then why am I doing it? It helps my career, like it helps sell books or whatever, right? Then it’s like, is it worth it? You know, it's like, is it worth it to put yourself in this position where you're constantly like trying to battle with a worse version of yourself, you know?
Dan Pashman: You said that your audience is overwhelmingly male, based on the demographics you can see on YouTube and elsewhere.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: I mean, it's not an exact science, but broadly speaking. Why do you think these columns you were writing for The Food Lab, especially in this time, these best ultimate, et cetera ... why do you think your work appeals to this demographic?
Kenji López-Alt: You want to talk about like systemic issues with society or like ...
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: I mean ... Well, I mean ... [LAUGHS] We can, if you want, we can. I guess, I guess, it's interesting that you were saying earlier that the fact that you didn't grow up in a food obsessed family, learning [Kenji López-Alt: Right.] to cook as a kid informed your approach to food and that you feel like your work appealed to that demographic when you started doing food — to other people who maybe didn't have that sort of institutional cultural family knowledge but wanted to know. And I think that makes sense. First of all, men, maybe — I mean, maybe this an unfair generalization. Men may be more likely to be in that category if they didn't think of themselves as wanting to care about cooking when they were a kid and then got into it later. I don't know. Maybe? Maybe?
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: But the other thing is that if you didn't grow up doing something and you think you're not good at it, you may feel insecure. And then when some guy comes along and says, "Here's the best way.", then that makes you feel tough.
Kenji López-Alt: Part of it. I mean, no. I mean, I think a lot of it has to do with sort of the way … So, O.K. So part of it is sort of like the gadget and science angle and men are just generally more encouraged to care about those things, you know, for whatever reasons. And so that, you know, that kind of leans into that demographic. And then I think there's also a very real, like the macho element, like the best, the ultimate, like we're testing the variables. And, you know, it's like you're writing about food, like it's a car.
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kenji López-Alt: You know? And so that there's this kind of like bro culture around this type of …
Dan Pashman: It becomes like a pissing contest.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: You know, like I learned how to cook the best steak, you know? And his penis grew three sizes that day.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, exactly. Exactly that kind of thing. So, you know, I think that's part of why the audience is what it is.
Dan Pashman: But it's a thin line to walk, because also, like you do have real expertise that average readers don't have and they want from you. So they do want to know what's the best. Like in the world of cooking, the internet can be overwhelming. If I google how to cook a steak?
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: I mean, I would have a panic attack. So I just want someone, who I trust, to just give me the answer.
Kenji López-Alt: [LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: So I will — often, when I have a question about how to do something, I will just add the word Kenji to my Google search because I'm just like, well, I trust Kenji. And this way I don't need to wade through a bunch of other stuff. I just will click on the first link. And that doesn’t necessarily …
Kenji López-Alt: Do you do this for non-food articles, too?
Dan Pashman: Right? Yeah. You know, but I'm just saying like, like to be good at communicating [Kenji López-Alt: Right.] food information and knowledge to people who know less than you do, you do need to make some choices for them.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah. Well, O.K. So there's different types of recipe users, right? There's some people who really just want no nonsense. They just want the steps. They want to be able to, like, go to the supermarket, pick up the exact ingredients, come home and make the exact recipe. You know, it's like when you start learning more technique and the science behind the food, and it allows you to realize what parts of the recipes you can change. It really is much more like, it's like, here's a map, here's where you are. This is where the recipe takes you, but like you can go any of these places you want.
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Dan Pashman: Coming up, Kenji opens a restaurant … and it doesn’t go as planned. Plus, we hear about his new book and break down the science of cooking with a wok. Stick around.
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+++ BREAK +++
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Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I’m Dan Pashman. Before we get back to our show in San Francisco, I want to make sure you heard last week’s episode. It’s a great conversation with writer Aymann Ismail. He’s Muslim-American, and like many Muslims, he doesn’t eat pork — the Koran forbids it. But as Aymann says, even many Muslims who aren’t very observant still consider pork a major taboo. It's like the one line they won't cross. And he wonders why that rule is such a big part of Muslim identity:
CLIP (AYMANN ISMAIL): A lot of my relationship to Islam, early on at least, was very much: O.K., you're Muslim, so you don’t drink alcohol, and you’re not gonna have a girlfriend, and you’re not gonna have sex before you’re married. And you’re gonna just do all these Muslim things, but really how you express and practice your religion is all the things that you don’t do.
Dan Pashman: So when a new loophole vegan pork product hits the market … What will Aymann do? And how will it change how he thinks about being Muslim? Check out that episode, it’s called "Is Halal Pork Impossible", and it’s in your feed right now, where you got this one.
Dan Pashman: O.K. We now take you back to Swedish American Hall in San Francisco for our live show with Kenji López-Alt.
[AUDIENCE CHEERS]
Dan Pashman: So off the success of your Food Lab column at Serious Eats, you release the Food Lab Cookbook, your first cookbook in 2015, which takes a similar approach as the column. It includes recipes and techniques for everything from chili con carne to French onion soup to meatloaf. It gets rave reviews, wins numerous awards, including the James Beard Award for Best General Cookbook. It's a huge hit. To date, it's sold more than half a million copies. Congratulations.
[AUDIENCE CHEERS]
Dan Pashman: And then you decide to open a restaurant.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Wursthall in San Mateo, just a little south of San Francisco, where we are tonight. And it's ostensibly a German-style beer hall with all kinds of sausages, but you incorporate a wider range of flavors.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, right.
Dan Pashman: You have merguez, Cajun sausages, Korean fried chicken sandwich. Now you said originally you weren't supposed to be super involved in the restaurant. You were going to contribute a few recipes.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: And then you shared something on social media like, hey, I'm going to be working on this restaurant and food media kind of picked it up and went berserk and said, Kenji's opening a restaurant. Suddenly, it became Kenji’s restaurant.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: And that kind of changed your role.
Kenji López-Alt: Well, yeah. Initially, I was going to be a consultant. Yeah, and then it just became this like, oh, Kenji’s opening a restaurant. And I, wrongly, I felt, oh shit, like people are going to judge me on this thing now. I better do it well.
Dan Pashman: Why is that wrong?
Kenji López-Alt: Because ultimately, I don't … I shouldn't have let it control my life, like I had a young daughter at the time, and I started out as a full time stay at home dad. And like I picked up this restaurant thing as sort of like a, O.K., like she sleeps during the day sometimes, like, I'll work on this thing for a little bit. That was sort of my plan initially, but then once it became a serious thing, it became like, O.K., now I'm going to the restaurant every night after her bedtime. It's like I’ll work at the restaurant part time to the day when she's a daycare, and then I'll come home to bedtime and then I go to the restaurant from, like, you know, 8 p.m. till 1 a.m. Ultimately, it wasn't worth it to me.
Dan Pashman: Like a lot of your fans and followers, I was following the process of the development of the restaurant on your Instagram and your pictures. Oh, the beer taps were installed today or here's this chicken sandwich we're testing. It's going to be great. And I was excited to see what you were sharing. And then one day you wrote in all caps, “OPENING A RESTAURANT IS INSANE AND I DON’T KNOW WHY ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD CHOOSE TO DO IT.”
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: What was happening that day?
Kenji López-Alt: I think most likely what happened that day was our first night of soft opening, I think we had 80 people in there that night. We had a fixed menu and you know, we had tested out the kitchen and like everything was going fine in the line. Like, all the beer is pouring fine. What we didn't test was whether the bathrooms can handle 80 guests. And so the bathroom, like there's an old cast iron pipe that was sagging that broke in the wall and flooded into the foundation. And so these brand new bathrooms that we had just had installed, we had to get them completely torn out and excavated, and it delayed opening by six weeks and just …
Dan Pashman: Ugh.
Kenji López-Alt: Anyhow, yeah. That's the kind of stuff that happens.
Dan Pashman: Right, right.
Kenji López-Alt: And why you shouldn’t open a restaurant.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: But I mean, it sounds like that was like that was a rough time. I mean, like, how how bad does it get?
Kenji López-Alt: It got really bad.
Dan Pashman: Was there like a rock bottom? What was ...
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, I mean, it affected my family life. It affected my marriage. It was just, um — it really was one of those things like thinking like when I'm 80-years-old, am I going to think to myself, "I wish ... I wonder if I could have opened a restaurant? I wonder if I could have started a successful restaurant? And I'm going to — and am I going to regret this? Like saying no to this right now because it's like opportunities just are kind of falling on me. So I was like, Yeah, I should probably do this for the experience of it. And so I am glad I did it for the experience of it. And I would recommend that other people don't go through the experience of it.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: So you left the restaurant in 2020, you no longer have any stake in it. Did you end up making any money off it?
Kenji López-Alt: No, I… eight cents. And you know, that was the only paycheck I ever got.
Dan Pashman: So all the work you did, like all the menu developing and all those hours ... eight cents.
Kenji López-Alt: So I had like my management shares, I returned them to the pool and they had to pay me, I think at least a penny per share for some kind of legal reason.
Dan Pashman: O.K.
Kenji López-Alt: So yes, I get eight cents out of that.
Dan Pashman: So you can confirm it's not a great business to be in, is what you're telling me.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah. If you want to make money, no. Yeah, if you want to make money —
Dan Pashman: The rumors are true, is what you're saying.
Kenji López-Alt: If you want a good work life balance ...
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kenji López-Alt: If you want and any of the joys of life. And no, it's not a ...
Dan Pashman: Being a bestselling cookbook author is better.
Kenji López-Alt: Yes, sure.
Dan Pashman: Speaking of which, these days you’re no longer writing the Food Lab column. You're writing occasional columns in the New York Times, which are similar in some ways, The Food Lab. They tend to involve a lot of research and testing to come up with a recipe, but a lot of your time is also spent on your YouTube channel, where you recently hit a million subscribers. Congrats. And in your — [AUDIENCE CHEERS] — Yep. And in your videos, you mostly just strap a GoPro camera on your forehead and cook something.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: It's not really edited. We watch your hands at work. We only see you and you narrate as you go. It's sort of very improvisational. It's kind of based on whatever you happen to have in the kitchen or in the pantry and whatever you feel like cooking. So in that sense, it feels very different from The Food Lab and the cookbooks. It's almost the polar opposite. Is that by design?
Kenji López-Alt: The whole show is not by design, like it's just I started doing it because there was a GoPro in front of me one day while I was about to cook. And I only do it now because it like it doesn't interrupt my life. Like my criteria for when I'm shooting a video for that is it has to be something that was going to cook anyway, and it has to be something I'm cooking when there's nobody else in my family in the kitchen. If those two criteria are met and the camera battery is charged, then I'll probably shoot it.
Dan Pashman: Right. So you’ve got your YouTube channel, it’s going very well, and now we have the new book, The Wok: Recipes and Techniques.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Now, Kenji, I know you to be a lover of puns.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: You acknowledge in a footnote in the book, that wok is a very punable word, But you didn't really go through all the potential puns you could have gotten to the title
Kenji López-Alt: Oh, what’d I miss?
Dan Pashman: I don't know that I have them all, but The Sporkful team and I, we were just brainstorming a little bit. You could have gone with Everybody's Wokking.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, yeah.
Dan Pashman: Wok Tall.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: We Will Wok You.
Kenji López-Alt: I think I did. Do we will wok you in the end. Yeah, yeah.
Dan Pashman: Maybe, yeah. Something to wok about.
Kenji López-Alt: O.K. Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Wok around the block. Wok around the clock. Chip off the old Wok.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Wokanda Forever.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: Wokking for the weekend.
Kenji López-Alt: Uh-huh?
Dan Pashman: And my personal favorite, which I think was on your list, which I legit think would be a great cookbook title. Wok this way.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Right? And yet you went with The Wok.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: So you started writing a sequel to The Food Lab and you were writing a wok chapter that ended up ballooning and you said, This is just me, my next book.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: And you make a case that the wok is the most versatile pan in the kitchen. Good for stir frying, deep frying, smoking, braising and more.
Kenji López-Alt: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: You break down the science of wok cooking. I love this part of the book. I also love that you cited a study from David Hu, professor of fluid dynamics at Georgia Institute of Technology, who we've had on The Sporkful for a ...
Kenji López-Alt: Oh, you had him on?
Dan Pashman: Yes, he broke down noodle slurping.
Kenji López-Alt: Oh, right.
Dan Pashman: I think about him every time I have noodles because he explained how as you slurp a noodle, as it comes towards your mouth and more of it goes into your mouth, the noodle outside of your mouth is getting shorter and shorter and therefore lighter and lighter.
Kenji López-Alt: So it goes faster and faster?
Dan Pashman: So it fishtails back and forth more and more and increases the splatter ability factor.
Kenji López-Alt: Ohh, yeah.
Dan Pashman: That's my term, not his. Anyway, you said other studies as well, at least you explain how when you cook with a wok, so you're using its slopes sides to toss the food up in the air [Kenji López-Alt: Right.] in sort of parabolic circles.
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: And you say that it's the tossing of the food through the air that makes it cook so quickly.
Kenji López-Alt: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: Which is the opposite of what I would have guessed. I would have guessed that food flying through the air, it's like blowing on the food. Like, doesn't that cool it down?
Kenji López-Alt: So, yeah, to some degree. But what you're really doing is you're encouraging evaporation. And so in the same sense that like, you know, when you're sweaty, right, blowing a fan at you is going to cool you off faster and it's going to get rid of moisture faster. So like a lot of the energy that goes into cooking food goes into the evaporation of moisture. You know, in certain cases, so if you're working with, like, you know, with a gas burner, the motion of tossing it, you kind of create this column of hot air that rises up the back of the wok from the fuel source and jumps up the back of the wok. And so you're also kind of tossing your food through that column of hot air. So you're essentially, you, yeah, you end up cooking it faster by virtue of the fact that you're helping moisture evaporate faster.
Dan Pashman: You realize this book is going to start a wok craze, right? You may be starting a whole new trend.
Kenji López-Alt: I hope so. I don't know. [LAUGHS]
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Dan Pashman: So it seems from the photos that I see on Instagram that unlike you, your kids are growing up in a food obsessed house. Is that fair to say?
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah, yeah.
Dan Pashman: How would you say that food in your home now is different from food when you were growing up? Like the role food plays in your home today versus the role of food in your home when you were a kid?
Kenji López-Alt: For us, meal times when we were kids were — so on rare occasions they were like joy. Right? It is like I get to eat like mapo tofu and dumplings, right? And those meals are great. But my mom was one of those types of moms at that whatever was on our plate, we finished it. And so sometimes, you know, mealtimes were a chore, right? It's like you're forced to sit here and — like my sister, my younger sister is the worst like where she would sometimes takes like three hours to eat a meal. Like there is — I remember there was a Saturday morning where my mom made oatmeal and my sister hates oatmeal, and she was sitting at the breakfast table for like two hours. Like, we were already done watching cartoons and she took a bite and then regurgitated it back out into her bowl and then my mom made her eat it.
Dan Pashman: Oh man.
[AUDIENCE GROANING]
Kenji López-Alt: So that was our relationship to food. No, I mean, our approach to food, you know, with our kids is is much more … you know, like I like to let them feel empowered at the table. My daughter comes shopping with me and says, "I want this duck. I want that chard or whatever." And you know, and then we'll come home and figure out what we're going to do with it.
Dan Pashman: And then she cooks with you.
Kenji López-Alt: She cooks with me — yeah, most times.
Dan Pashman: Sometimes.
Kenji López-Alt: Most nights like she — if she doesn't finish her music time like her violin practice before I start cooking dinner, then she has to practice violin through. So that's like, so not getting to cook is like punishment for her, like she feels it when she can't cook. She likes to cook. But then sometimes she doesn't eat, you know, like sometimes she won't eat what she cooks, which is fine.
Dan Pashman: You said that when you decided to become a chef, your mom was like, "I don't care if it's a high end restaurant, you might as well be flipping burgers."
Kenji López-Alt: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: What does she think now?
Kenji López-Alt: So, O.K., so I have a New York Times column and like that makes her happy, you know? But other than that, you know, it's like, she would rather have a doctor, of course. You know?
Dan Pashman: And what will you do if one of your kids comes to you in 20 years and says they want to be a chef?
Kenji López-Alt: Oh, you know, I support my kids with whatever they want. It's like, I want them to — I feel like my role is to give them the moral backbone. And then, you know, they can do whatever they want with that.
Dan Pashman: Right. Just don't open a restaurant.
Kenji López-Alt: I might give them advice about opening a restaurant, yeah. But I mean, yeah, there are people who love that, you know? I just found out I'm not one of them. But there are people who love it and if you love it, do it.
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Dan Pashman: Well, the new cookbook is out now, it's called The Wok: Recipes and Techniques. It's available wherever books are sold. Big hand for my friend Kenji López-Alt. Thank you to Swedish American Hall, thank you to all of you for coming out to see our first live show in two and a half years. Thank you so much. Good night!
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
Dan Pashman: Thank you again to everyone who came out to our live show. It was great to see all of you. Thanks to Swedish American Hall and thanks to Keji. His new book, The Wok, is really fantastic. I already learned so much reading it and can't wait to start cooking some of those recipes.
Dan Pashman: Next week on the show, one family’s complicated relationship with Jell-O. In recent years, one of the heirs to the Jell-O fortune has become obsessed with the product, and how all that money shaped America and her own family. To the point that they started to wonder: Are we cursed? That's next week. While you’re waiting for that one, check out last week’s episode called "Is Halal Pork Impossible?" Thanks.
