Interested in restaurant criticism, the decline of alternative weeklies, and the rise of influencers? Is food a real part of the cultural landscape or is it just fun? What and who can we rely on for ideas, not just information like hours of operation and the name of a place? James Beard Foundation Award winner Besha Rodell has written a memoir about her food life, Hunger Like a Thirst. Listen. It’s on Tip of the Tongue.

Read her New York Times work. The Brisbane Times.

We talk to a founder of the Museum of the American Cocktail, Tim McNally, about the wine and spirits industry. A wine writer who spent much of his career judging wine, he is the perfect person to ask about the state of the industry today.

He is a writer, and his book about the Sazerac is wonderful.

Want to know more? Listen. It’s on Tip of the Tongue.

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Tim McNally

Let’s not overlook the role of women and home entertaining in the story of the cocktail. Nicola Nice tells the story of how women brought the cocktail home, as a part of regular entertaining - how they entertained during Prohibition and into the cocktail party era. She explains it in fascinating detail in The Cocktail Parlor: How Women Brought the Cocktail Home.

Nicola writes about these themes regularly in her blog, The Hostess Diaries. She describes it as “a blog dedicated to the culture of cocktails and hospitality, as told through the lens of women’s history.” It is a perspective about drinking and drinking culture, especially as it is related to drinking cocktails, that shouldn’t be overlooked, if you are interested in the cocktail and its history.

Remember those sour mixes in your parents’ home bar? And bartenders used them too. Those mixes gave sours a bad name. We talk to Philip Greene, the author of the new book, Sours: A History of the World’s Most Storied Cocktail Style, about this and other things Sour. Phil is one of the founder’s of the Museum of the American Cocktail, and has written a number of books about the cocktail. Listen. It’s on Tip of the Tongue.

Philip Greene

You can read the story of the Lion of Baltimore cocktail on page 130 of Sours. Here is the recipe for the cocktail created by Phil Greene. Make the drink, and sip it while you read the story.

2 ounces Jamaican dark rum (such as Smith & Cross or Appleton)

1 ounce sweet vermouth (Dolin or Martini work well)

3/4 ounce fresh lime juice

1/4 ounce orgeat

2 or 3 dashes Dale DeGroff’s pimento bitters

Combine all of the ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake well and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Carrie Helms Tippen sees the stories in cookbooks. Her interest in the cookbooks of the American south is very broad and very deep. Her latest book is Unpalatable: Stories of Pain and Pleasure in Southern Cookbooks. We talk about

finding the meaning in recipes and headnotes. This follows on the heels of her book, Inventing Authenticity: How Cookbook Writers Redefine Southern Identity, which is also about cookbooks.

Listen it’s on Tip of the Tongue.

Instagram: @carriehelmsphd

This is an encore presentation of this podcast. In yesterday’s ComplEAT Kitchen I wrote about my meal at Pasta Night, Renato’s restaurant in Brooklyn. I thought that listening to this podcast again, where he speaks about his new restaurant, would be fun.

If you eat breakfast in Brooklyn you have probably eaten at Ciao, Gloria. Italian baking and lots more. Renato Poliafito’s 5th book, Dolci! American Baking with an Italian Accent is out and it makes you want to bake and eat everything. We talk to Renato about baking, Italian food, and so much more. Listen, it’s on Tip of the Tongue.

Discussion about this episode

There are fusion restaurants everywhere. Sometimes they are contrived, and frankly the fusion doesn’t happen. Usually they work best when the people involved have a foot in the food culture of the place where the restaurant is and in the culture of the source of fusion. There are no rules. But you know when it is successful, just as you might recognize something that isn’t.

Koi Asian Fusion works. We speak with General Manager, Eric Li, about the work and thought that went into the restaurant - work regarding the look and feel of the place, the food and its connection to real people who know the food, and the work at restaurant principles, like fresh seafood and wonderful ingredients and methods. And yes, even the cocktails are thoughtfully crafted.

Listen. It’s on Tip of the Tongue.

Next time you are in Shreveport, Louisiana, this is a must stop. When you are up to your eyeballs in Cajun, Creole, and north Louisiana food that people claim is authentic, and you want something else that is really delicious, pop into Koi Asian Fusion for a palate cleansing. It will make your taste buds zing.

Food and food culture does not observe political boundaries. Thus some important state foodways may be overshadowed by more well-known or more highly marketed foodways. In Louisiana, most people identify the food of south Louisiana when they think about the state’s foodways. Chef Hardette Harris wants to encourage us to remember the wonderful foodways of the northern part of the state, a place abundant with game and fresh water fish.

She has established an organization called Us Up North to keep these foodways front and center. We talk to Chef Hardette Harris. Listen. It’s on Tip of the Tongue.

Chef Hardette Harris