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In one of his famed self-portraits, Omar Victor Diop, a Senegalese photographer and artist, wears a three-piece suit and an extravagant paisley bow tie, preparing to blow a yellow, plastic whistle. The elaborately staged photograph evokes the memory of Frederick Douglass, the one-time fugitive slave who in the 19th century rose to become a leading […] More
“I don’t want to tell people what to think,” the performance artist said of his latest show. “I just hope it tickles them and their curiosity.”It was a little before 6:30 on a recent weeknight, and the kitchen in Geoff Sobelle’s West Village home was in chaos. Two toddlers zoomed around on a ride-on truck and begged him to read from an “Alice in Wonderland” pop-up book. “In a minute,” Sobelle told his son as he stirred artichokes that were simmering on the stove. All the while, he talked to a reporter about his solo show, “Food,” which is running as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave festival through Nov. 18.“This is like a three-ring circus,” Sobelle, 47, said. He had invited me over for dinner with his family — his wife, Sophie Bortolussi, a longtime “Sleep No More” performer; and his two children, Louise, 4, and Elliott, 2 — or, as he wrote in an email, “my chaotic household as I try to get two toddlers to eat.”“It’s INSANE,” he’d added.Sobelle’s nightly domestic juggling act is akin to the intertwining, overlapping and colliding threads of audience participation, sleight-of-hand and physical comedy in “Food,” a plotless, absurdist “meditation on how and why we eat,” as he described it.During the 90-minute show, which Sobelle created with the magician Steve Cuiffo (“A Simulacrum”) and co-directed with Lee Sunday Evans, he traces the history of food from the days when buffalo roamed to the present. For the first 40 minutes, he embodies a waiter at a fine-dining establishment who takes orders from audience members seated around a massive white-clothed table, making a cherry pie and an apple appear on a silver platter as if by magic.“Food” is a satire of human greed, with Sobelle consuming, among many, many things, what one critic called “a concerning quantity of ranch.”Iain MastertonBut the show quickly devolves into a satire of human greed, with Sobelle consuming, at one previous performance — brace yourself — six apples, a bowl of cherry tomatoes, a bowl of lettuce, what one critic called “a concerning quantity of ranch,” a half-dozen asparagus stalks, five carrots, a raw onion, three bowls of rice, a 22-ounce rib-eye, a baked potato, a bowl of egg yolks, a bottle of wine, a fish, a cherry pie, another bottle of wine, a lit candle, a pack of cigarettes (gulped, not just smoked), four napkins, part of a phone and a few dollar bills.That’s about 9,000 calories in 15 minutes. And he does it twice on Saturdays.“Matinees are seriously rough,” said Sobelle, who performed the show at Arizona State University last month and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August. “I’m definitely still getting used to it.”How can he eat that much? Does he have to train like Joey Chestnut?“It’s like freestyle Olympic eating,” he said, as his wife burst into laughter. “You just have to do it.”That seems to be the theme of Sobelle’s life, whether it’s helping his son realize his dream of dressing up as both a fire truck and a car for Halloween or creating shows that push the boundary between absurd satire and purposeful meaninglessness.“The power of the shows is provoking something in the audience,” he said, “not tying a bow around the subject of food.”“Food” is the third in Sobelle’s series of participatory theater shows exploring the uncommonness of common themes. The first, “The Object Lesson” (2013), examined our relationship to everyday objects, and in the second, “Home” (2017), he raised a house onstage for a meditation on what makes a home; all three premiered at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.Though “we’ve been vegetarian on and off for years,” Sobelle said, he consumes beef in his show. “The character’s not vegetarian.”Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times“I knew I wanted to play with the ritual of gathering around a table,” he said about “Food.” “And that lent itself to thinking about fine dining and the spaces where it happens. Especially places like BAM and the Edinburgh International Festival, because they’re kind of fancy.”He enlisted Cuiffo, a friend of more than 20 years whom he has collaborated with on a half-dozen shows, to help him create the magic tricks and physical comedy.“Geoff is really great at going deep on an idea, whether it’s an intellectual idea or a physical theater trick,” Cuiffo said in a recent phone conversation. “He’ll keep going at it until he finds these really funny or magical or poignant moments.”Like all his shows, “Food” is heavy on audience participation. Sobelle asks people to share memories evoked by the wine he serves, or to describe the last recipe they made. He lives for the unpredictability of each performance.“Sometimes it works like a charm, and sometimes I just work hard to make it look like it’s working like a charm, or sometimes it just doesn’t work,” he said. “But that’s the adventure.”Dinner was now ready (“Time to eat!” he called to the kids), and he and Bortolussi spooned roasted carrots, cauliflower and butternut squash into wooden serving bowls, which he ferried over to a table in front of giant mirror.“We’ve been vegetarian on and off for years,” he said. “It’s about sustainability.”But what about the steak that I watched him wolf down during a video recording of the show’s premiere last year?Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times“If I’m working, I don’t have to be a vegetarian,” he said. “The character’s not vegetarian.”When he was 16 and living in Los Angeles, he said, he visited a school on a marginal farm in Vershire, Vt., where he harvested food that other students had planted. “That was pretty profound to understand where it was coming from, and that you were part of the process, instead of just going to the supermarket and getting something shrink-wrapped,” he said.But to be clear, he said, his show has no moral message.“I don’t want to tell people what to think,” he said. “I just hope it tickles them and their curiosity, and that it provokes something that they then want to go talk about at the bar or wherever their next destination is.”For the last part of the performance, Sobelle invites the audience to do just that sort of reflection, violently pulling away the tablecloth to reveal a field of dirt, on which he enacts a continuous scene with minimal dialogue that serves as a CliffsNotes of human cultivation and consumption.Absurd physical comedy has become a hallmark of shows created by Sobelle, who abandoned his childhood dream of becoming a doctor and a priest after seeing a production of “Cats” when he was 7 (“I wanted to be Rum Tum Tugger,” he said), to study English at Stanford, where he mounted what he called “experimental, D.I.Y. theater shows.”Sobelle and his wife, Sophie Bortolussi, prepared a meal of vegetables, including artichokes and aioli.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York Times“Even my first experiences in high school with plays, I was more excited by the stuff beyond the script,” he said. “The things that were translated outside of the words, or in addition to the words.”After his freshman year, he spent a year abroad at the famed Jacques Lecoq school in Paris — Geoffrey Rush and Julie Taymor are alums — where he studied physical theater.“That was a real turning point,” said Sobelle, who counts Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton among his influences. “It was all about looking at theater before language.”The aspect of “Food” he enjoys most, he said, is the unpredictability of the performance. Sometimes an audience member eats the cherry pie he has set down. Sometimes a cellphone gets swept away when he removes the tablecloth. Sometimes audience members try to deconstruct the show in their responses to his prompts.“It’s not a play, but a performance,” he said, “one in which the audience plays just as big a role as me.”His son chose that moment to overturn a bowl of aioli, which Bortolussi rushed to mop up. Sobelle handed her a napkin. (“We always do at least one spill,” he said.)“OK,” he called to the kids. “Eating time is swiftly coming to a close.”That was fine with them: Elliott was snapping photos with a toy camera, and Louise was leafing through a French picture book.Sobelle sighed.“You don’t always get a cooperative audience,” he said. More
One day last week, a vase spilling over with white lilies and roses arrived in Kristen Kish’s dressing room in Milwaukee, where “Top Chef” is shooting its 21st season.Padma Lakshmi, the model and author who became a household name during the 17 years she hosted the cooking-competition show, had sent them, along with a note: “Break a leg. I’m so proud of you kiddo!”For Ms. Kish, who was so nervous her first day on the set as Ms. Lakshmi’s replacement that she thought she might throw up, the flowers were a balm.“I know my job is to simply be me,” Ms. Kish said, “but I feel like I am not going to be impressive enough to hold my own space and follow in Padma’s footsteps.”Truth is, the aging “Top Chef” franchise, which has had its share of stumbles in an increasingly crowded constellation of food shows, needs her as much as she needs it. At 39, Ms. Kish represents a third wave of chef celebrity, far removed from pioneers like Emeril Lagasse and Bobby Flay, and the generation of tattooed, mostly white kitchen bros who followed.Ms. Kish is a gay Korean adoptee and a proud product of the Midwest. She hits the notes sung by culinary stars before her: She co-wrote a cookbook, opened a restaurant and makes much of her living on camera, a skill she polished on several other shows before landing the “Top Chef” job in July. On social media, she toggles seamlessly between charming brand promotions, food tips and sincere declarations — about love, self-care and even self-doubt — that can border on oversharing.Under all her casual confidence, she says, is a foundation of crushing insecurity.Ms. Kish has been on “Top Chef” as a contestant and judge, and is comfortable on the set in Milwaukee.Lyndon French for The New York Times“I have severe social anxiety and I’m on television, which is wild,” she said. “I know I’m a walking contradiction.”That’s hard to buy when you see her stride onto the set with the command of a model (which she once was). The show’s stylist selected heeled boots and wide pants for her tall, lean body as a way to project authority. She broke into a goofy dance one moment, then hit her mark perfectly the next. The first time she uttered, “Please pack your knives and go” — the chilling phrase Ms. Lakshmi delivered when a contestant was eliminated — the crew applauded.“Kristen is a megawatt,” said Dana Cowin, the former editor in chief of Food & Wine and a “Top Chef” judge for seven seasons. She recently watched Ms. Kish confess her personal fears as she demonstrated how to make Korean-style corn dogs for a rapt audience at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colo. “She was just so vulnerable and open.”If Ms. Kish had a brand, it might be wrapped in millennial pink and laced with the ideals of a generation that values earnestness, diversity and being nice.“She’s been on a huge journey defining how we can be a chef in the post-celebrity-chef era and how we can think about our global community in a bigger way,” said her friend Gregory Gourdet, the Portland, Ore., chef who was both a judge on the show and a finalist.The Heir ApparentIt all started when Ms. Kish won “Top Chef” in 2013.“She is completely a creature of the franchise,” said Francis Lam, a frequent guest host and the vice president and editor in chief of Clarkson Potter, which published “Kristen Kish Cooking: Recipes and Techniques” in 2017. “On some level she can be a little bit of a cipher. People can put a lot on her based on their assumptions.”When Ms. Lakshmi announced that she would not renew her contract as the show’s host and executive producer, Ms. Kish was the clear choice, said Casey Kriley, a chief executive of Magical Elves, the unscripted-production company that created the show. Executives at NBCUniversal, which owns Bravo, the network it airs on, never interviewed anyone else, said Ryan Flynn, a senior vice president.“She checks all the boxes,” he said.Ms. Kish battled Brooke Williamson in Seattle to win Season 10 of “Top Chef” in 2013.David Moir/BravoMs. Kish got word that “Top Chef” wanted her while flying back to the East Coast with her wife, Bianca Dusic, after doing promotional work for a hotel in Thailand.“I was shocked,” she said. “I really wasn’t pushing for this because I never thought it was actually a possibility.”Ms. Lakshmi was the first person she called. “I hope I’ve been a sounding board for her over the last decade,” Ms. Lakshmi wrote in an email. “I’ve made it my mission to mentor young women like her because I didn’t have that coming up.”Ms. Lakshmi, a victim of sexual assault, often spoke out about sexual harassment in the restaurant industry, including accusations against a “Top Chef” winner, and pushed to make the show less Eurocentric.Ms. Kish said that although she will have no problem being blunt if she needs to, she intends to focus on the work, not the politics.“TV is populated by people who love to hear their own voice,” said Hugh Acheson, a chef who made his name with restaurants in Georgia and was a judge on the show for six seasons. “And that isn’t Kristen at all.”Tom Colicchio, the chef who serves as the show’s head judge, said he was excited to have someone new in the mix, especially an experienced chef. “She knows what she’s doing,” he said.Gail Simmons, the show’s other judge and a close friend of Ms. Kish, didn’t think she needed much advice: “The only concern I had was her own self-doubt.”Gail Simmons and Tom Colicchio, Ms. Kish’s new co-workers on “Top Chef,” said they she didn’t need much advice before shooting Season 21.Lyndon French for The New York TimesUnder ControlA precise and focused cook with French and Italian influences, Ms. Kish has long relied on organization to counter her anxiety. Growing up in a suburb of Grand Rapids, Mich., she kept a whiteboard in her room to keep track of her schoolwork, piano lessons and sports. Her older brother, Jonathan, an automotive engineer, gave her a cordless vacuum as a housewarming present when she recently moved to Connecticut with the Australian-born Ms. Dusic. She uses it every day she’s home.Ms. Kish is much looser about what she eats and wears. She prefers hoodies and a ball cap turned backward. Her favorite cosmetic is Carmex. She’d just as soon eat chicken tenders, sour candy and squares of presliced Colby-Jack cheese on a saltine.The Hamburger Helper that brought her joy as a child inspired a pasta dish of curly edged mafaldine tossed with mushrooms and pearl onions that is popular at her Austin restaurant, Arlo Grey.This baffles her mother, Judy Kish. “I truly did not use Hamburger Helper very often,” she said during a recent family interview on Zoom. “I really don’t understand why it’s so vivid in her memory, to tell you the truth.”The elder Ms. Kish was a high school teacher, and her husband, Michael, was an engineer at a company that made corrugated cardboard boxes. In 1984, the couple adopted the four-month-old Kristen, who had been abandoned shortly after birth at a clinic outside Seoul.They strove to keep her connected to her birth country, making sure she tasted kimchi, introducing her to a Korean exchange student and reading her “The Korean Cinderella” by Shirley Climo. (Ms. Kish had the story spray-painted on the restroom walls of her restaurant. Speakers softly play a recording of a woman reading it in Korean.)A young Ms. Kish giving her mother, Judy, a ride on a tractor. Courtesy of Clarkson PotterFor a long time, Ms. Kish tried not to think about her Korean roots. “I put it aside because I was scared that I was going to find out something that I didn’t want to find out about where I actually came from,” she said.Still, in her 20s, she had her Korean name and adoption case number inked on her wrist — the first of many tattoos marking important moments in her life.After she won “Top Chef,” she vowed to use some of the $125,000 prize money to visit South Korea, but couldn’t go through with it. Nine years later, Netflix sent her to Seoul on a five-day promotional trip tied to her work as a host on “Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend.” She didn’t search out orphanages, as some adoptees do. Instead, she focused on learning about the food.Can someone who didn’t grow up in a Korean family legitimately cook the cuisine? It’s a question she grapples with.“I’m trying to own that side of me so it doesn’t feel like I’m appropriating a culture that doesn’t belong to me,” she said. “I clearly can have a point of view about Korean American food. There is a connection. I’m allowed to explore it. But for a long time I felt guilty about it.”An Education in FameDespite her shyness as a child, she had a lot of friends. By high school she was firmly ensconced with the preps.“We had Abercrombie clothes, and I had purple contacts,” she said. “I was trying to be everything except me. I wanted to hide.”Especially, she said, her budding attraction to women.Her grades weren’t good enough to get into Michigan State University, where her brother and both her parents graduated. She spent a year at Grand Valley State University, but didn’t go back. Her parents, who said she always had a creative streak with food, sent her to Chicago to attend Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts. She loved it and graduated, but also discovered cocaine and the bars.“A lot of it was trying to mask and self-medicate my social anxiety and my sexuality,” she said. Ms. Kish convinced herself that being successful couldn’t include being gay.Ms. Kish brings her longtime hairstylist to the set, and likes to have a candle and candy in her dressing room. Lyndon French for The New York TimesShe kept partying, turning down jobs she thought were beneath her. Finally, her parents stopped paying for her nice apartment. She moved back home, depressed and defeated.They gave her one more chance. They knew of a room for rent in Boston, and offered to help pay for it if she found a job within three weeks.She did, cooking in a series of kitchens that led to a job at Stir, a cookbook store and demonstration kitchen owned by the chef and restaurateur Barbara Lynch. Ms. Lynch became a mentor, passing her name to producers who had called looking for new “Top Chef” contestants.Ms. Lynch wrote a letter that Ms. Kish had in her back pocket when she won. “So very proud of you,” it read. “Breathe and most of all enjoy the experience!!”Ms. Kish doesn’t have much to say about recent reports that Ms. Lynch verbally and physically harassed workers at her restaurants.“I had been removed from her company for 10 years, so I don’t know,” Ms. Kish said. “What I do know is that if she never said, ‘Kristen, you can win Top Chef,’ none of this would be happening. And that’s a fact.”Over a cheeseburger at Gramercy Tavern in Manhattan last month, Ms. Kish pondered how to navigate her fast-rising fame. She guards the name of the town where she lives, and is careful what she says when she’s out somewhere, because people eavesdrop. She is trying to get better at responding to the strangers who approach her in places like the supermarket.Bianca Dusic, Ms. Kish’s wife, often travels with her to jobs, and is close with Ms. Kish’s family.Lyndon French for The New York Times“When I get insecure and uncomfortable and socially anxious, I kind of become, for lack of a better term, a bitch,” Ms. Kish said. Ms. Dusic prompts her to snap out of it with a code phrase: “Nasty Nancy’s here.”The two met when Ms. Dusic was the corporate executive assigned to help Ms. Kish open her Austin restaurant in the LINE Hotel in 2018. After six months of intense work side by side, they shared a high-five that lasted a little longer than they expected.They were married in their backyard in April 2021. As with their engagement, Ms. Kish announced it on Instagram.Ms. Dusic, 44, left the restaurant industry when the stress of working during the Covid shutdowns and grief over her father’s death from cancer made her sick. Now she is a “mind-set and transformation coach” who offers breath work and other therapies, which she uses to help Ms. Kish. She also has persuaded Ms. Kish to stop ordering so much takeout.Ms. Dusic frequently accompanies Ms. Kish when she works. At home, they putter in the garden, drink tea and are in bed by 10 p.m. It’s all about managing a life that just keeps getting bigger.“This was never the plan,” Ms. Kish said. “The plan would have been for me to just work in a little restaurant, making ends meet, doing my life and just keep trucking along.”Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More
The stars of the Food Network help a teenage patient make it through the long days in the hospital with no solid food.When I was 15, I fell in love with the voice of Rachael Ray. That velvety contralto was the soundtrack of my days in the children’s hospital I hated — with its plaid curtains and kind nurses — but called home.For weeks I spent my days hopped up on morphine, in and out of consciousness, nestled in a snake hive of drip tubes and wires. I was intent on fighting off this invader without a name, but even more devoted to the tiny television set that was giving me an education on how to beat a meringue into submission or throw a “simple yet stunning” dinner party (even when one of the guests is a vegetarian).What I remember most was the hunger. I was starving, literally. But I had the Food Network.Under doctors’ orders, I ate hardly anything — not a drop of ginger ale, a bite of a cracker or even an ice chip. This was my first foray into a kind of forced asceticism, something that my body, ravaged by this yet-to-be-diagnosed disease, would frequently require. Ravenousness was embedded in my bones, a constant pang.My gut was too inflamed, spastic and maniacal to handle nutrition by mouth, and the team of doctors proclaimed, with the nonchalance of those who could pop down to the cafeteria for a sandwich, that my digestive tract needed “a break” and should “cool down.” Forgoing food by mouth was the way to get this done.My fate was N.P.O. — nil per os, Latin for “nothing by mouth.” When I had run out of celebrity tabloids to inhale and dutifully completed my homework, I became fluent in medicalese, injecting abbreviations and obscure medical terms into my vocabulary. I learned that this diet — or nondiet, really — was the first step in getting my irate system back to a seemingly elusive homeostasis.I soon received the decidedly unsexy, unglamorous diagnosis of Crohn’s disease. It’s one of those things — chronic, incurable, but can be managed — that can physically and financially debilitate you for long periods of time, in events called flares.Without food, I became half girl, half robot, with angst coursing through me and machines pumping nutrition into my body intravenously in a process called T.P.N., or total parenteral nutrition. T.P.N. is a common treatment for a severe Crohn’s flare. It bypasses the digestive system, giving your colon the ultimate vacation. How luxurious.I lost the contours of a fully sane and satiated human, morphing and flattening into pure desire — skin and bones, ribs visible, thighs that no longer touched — and I became obsessed with the idea of preparing food and thoughts of my favorite meals. Roast beef. Buttery potatoes. Burgers so big and dripping with juices that you’d need six napkins. Most bewildering to those around me, I became obsessed with the Food Network.Instead of food, I devoured clips of Paula Deen inserting pounds of butter into a cake recipe and Sandra Lee concocting something deliciously semi-homemade. Emeril Lagasse’s shrieks of “Bam!” sounded even more authoritative through the fog of opioids. And watching Rachael Ray whip up something “delish” became a lustful experience through those hours of rotting in a hospital bed.I grew accustomed to the emptiness of days unbroken by the familiar markers of mealtimes and instead became dependent on the intervals of carefully dispensed pain medications, always wanting more. I felt swathed and safe in that chemical cocoon and didn’t realize, until years later, that what I had thought was feeling happy really meant being high.All the while I was flipping through channels to see the beloved friends who were always there for me: Rachael, Emeril, Sandra, Paula.The rays of the setting sun would blaze through the hospital windows. Then came the darkness that would allow me to see the TV screen with more clarity as I curled into the warm abyss of a sleeping aid — “the good stuff” that sent me drifting off to a zone of semiconsciousness, free of pain, with dreams of lunches and Coca-Cola and a warm, full belly. The Food Network shows, with their bright colors and erotic displays of shiny spatchcocked chickens, were my proxy for a primal unmet need.I endured the daily drone of doctors and medical residents who poked and prodded, promising “just a few more days of no food.” This went on for weeks, with starts and stops along the way. The few days when I was allowed the most delectable of gastronomic wonders — chicken broth and lemon water ice — were followed by pains so searing and gruesome, and complications so life-threatening, that I would be forced back to square one.I became an animal closing in on its prey, except the prey was a vanilla pudding cup and the messenger was some poor nurse named Liz. If I smelled food, I would devolve into a rageful miscreant, screaming at the visitors who had food with them and ordering them out of my room. I resented those who could tend to their most basic needs with such ease.Psychologists and therapists tried to teach me breathing techniques and other coping mechanisms, which I scoffed at with laughs and eye rolls that only teenage girls know how to give. Even as some of my muscles atrophied, it seemed my middle finger functioned just fine. More than ever, I came to rely on the trusted TV hosts who grilled and baked with such ease. Imagine Ina Garten denying me a meal!I try to think of when Food Became Good Again, when eating became a vehicle of pleasure and not pure pain. There’s no perfect data point. That’s the thing with having an illness that goes on and on: “Before” and “after” are irrelevant. Living in a body on fire requires you to tend to it like a garden — carefully and meticulously and, most importantly, every day.I say I have two jobs, my day job at a newspaper and a second as a secretary of myself and of my body. Skills include a deftness at wading through the health care system, an ability to scream on phones at middle-managing insurance agents and a knack for properly budgeting for “emergencies.” One wrong move could mean a Crohn’s flare or a hefty medical bill.There came a time, after that initial stay in the hospital, when food became not the enemy, but a sort of benign suitor. After months of feeding tubes and stomach pumping, along with one helicopter “life flight” and surgery, I began to get over being sick. The drugs seemed to be working. The doctor’s visits, though tiresome and often marred by procedural nonsense, were helping.I was once again able to eat in a “regular” way — small bites of pizza and greasy chicken tenders, crisp apples cloaked in drippy peanut butter, my favorite. The saccharine taste of Diet Coke and the zing of cheap black coffee are daily pleasures. Rachael, Ina and Emeril are still in the picture, but now when I watch them, at home, I can run to the fridge.Annie Tressler is a corporate communications manager at The New York Times. More
4:30 p.m.
Go from a royal garden to the mosque
Cross to the city’s left bank via Sully Bridge, taking in views from the small triangular garden at the tip of the Île Saint-Louis, the quieter of the two islands on the Seine. From Oberkampf, this half-hour walk will take you to the Jardin des Plantes, a vast botanical park that started as a royal medicinal garden in the 17th century. Stroll through, with the National Museum of Natural History in the background, and visit the gardens’ four oversize greenhouses (€7). Exit via the west gates to find the Grand Mosque of Paris. Inaugurated in the wake of World War I, in part to commemorate the sacrifices of colonized Muslims who fought for France, it features a patio with a hand-sculpted cedar wood door adorned with Quran verses in calligraphy, built by highly skilled North African craftsmen (visit, €3). Pause for a glass of mint tea (€2) in the courtyard or get a good scrubbing or massage at the ornate, sizeable hammam (from €30, women only). More
12:30 p.m.
Follow the grill smoke to the river
Puerto Madero, a redeveloped dockside neighborhood about a 10-minute walk from San Telmo, has become one of the busiest tourist destinations in the city, thanks to landmarks like Puente de la Mujer, a sleek pedestrian bridge designed by the renowned architect Santiago Calatrava, and the ARA Presidente Sarmiento, a museum ship that bobs on the Rio Darsena Sur river next to a long line of loud, packed restaurants. Less than half a mile farther along the river, away from the crowd, is Estilo Campo, a fantastic parrilla (an Argentine steakhouse, which literally means open grill) with river views and waiters wearing kerchiefs and belts in the style of gauchos, to the delight of tourists. But the expertly prepared chorizo, crispy sweetbreads and juicy skirt steak leave no doubt that you are in an authentic Argentine parrilla, and the wine list is expansive. Lunch for two, about 18,000 pesos. More
When it comes to the high-powered Roy dynasty, food is for the weak and striving.Autumn light filters through the treetops of Central Park West, streaming into Jean-Georges, giving the gray banquettes a matte, silver gleam. The space is plain, severe in its neutrality, undeniably grand and hushed. Each table, though in clear view of the others, is luxuriously cocooned by space, almost private.It’s the ideal place, really, for the Roy children — the scions of the Waystar Royco media empire on HBO’s “Succession” — to discuss their father’s funeral arrangements.The conversation is brisk, and though they chose Jean-Georges as their meeting spot, they don’t eat the food. They leave the pastries — the dark, oversize canelés and fruit-studded buns — along with the platter of fanned, cut fruit, completely untouched. They get up from their seats without so much as unraveling a napkin or dirtying a plate. The slight, feathered mark of Shiv’s nude lipstick on a coffee cup is the only trace of their presence.It’s not unusual for the Roys to avoid eating. From Logan’s humiliating game of “Boar on the Floor” to the menacing box of doughnuts he sends his children when they try to meet in secret, the food on “Succession” has always been deliciously toxic, dissonant and loaded — a clear line into the family’s trauma and power dynamics.But in the final season, things are especially warped and grim. It’s as if the show has stepped into its Ozempic era and real power can only be found in the total absence of appetite. For those with meaningful status in “Succession,” food doesn’t exist for pleasure or nourishment — it barely exists at all. If a character does have a nibble, no matter how small, it tends to be a red flag.At a business retreat in Norway, Tom Wambsgans, right, passes on the buffet.Graeme Hunter/HBOTom Wambsgans, Siobhan Roy’s husband, didn’t come from money, but married into this super-rich family, and has carefully studied their patterns and prerogatives. He is hyper-aware of the contradictions and intricacies of America’s unspoken upper-class etiquette — and often the first to criticize a faux pas.“She’s wolfing all the canapés like a famished warthog,” Tom tells cousin Greg, clocking the inappropriate date Greg brought along to Logan’s birthday lunch. Because what could be more plebeian, what could signify her being any more out of place, than actually eating the food?Not long after, at Logan’s wake, Tom misjudges his position and nominates himself to take over as interim chief executive for the company. If it wasn’t already clear he’d made a terrible mistake, it is when Tom pops a fish taco into his mouth. As he’s powerless, chewing, Karl imagines how the board might see him: “You’re a clumsy interloper and no one trusts you. The only guy pulling for you is dead, and now you’re just married to the ex-boss’s daughter, who doesn’t even like you.”By the time the Waystar team flies to Norway to finalize the sale of the company to Lukas Mattson, the billionaire chief executive of GoJo, Tom sees hospitality as pure gastro-hostility. As Waystar’s senior executives pile their plates with food at a buffet, he’s careful not to be seen eating breakfast at all. “Ambush!” he calls out cheerfully to his colleagues. “You took the bait, fattened for the kill.”And Tom’s not wrong. A GoJo executive comments on the portion size, too: “Hey, easy buddy, leave some for us.” The Waystar team’s desire for breakfast pastries isn’t the only thing that now feels embarrassing — the Americans are overdressed for the countryside, anxious for the deal to go through, fearful of losing their jobs. Their hunger, their appetite, their keenness, it’s a squishy surplus of vulnerability.As Season 4 opens, Logan is competing with his children to buy Pierce Global Media, and escapes his own birthday party in a huff to visit Nectar, a Greek-owned coffee shop on Madison Avenue. (For Town & Country, Charlotte Druckman wrote about this excursion as its own kind of power move.)In a rare moment of vulnerability, we see Logan eating. But first, he insists to his bodyguard, Colin, who is on the clock, that Colin is his best friend, that human beings are merely economic units in the market, that he isn’t sure what happens when we die. Emotionally, he’s a mess.“Nothing tastes like it used to, does it?” Logan says wistfully. “Nothing’s the same as it was.”Connor Roy and Willa Ferreyra hosted their rehearsal dinner at the Grill, a classic Midtown power-lunching spot. It ends up predictably miserable.Macall B. Polay/HBOIn the episode that aired on Sunday, the family reaches the heights of both their incompetence and their power. Election Day in the newsroom was already tense for Tom without the Roy siblings stomping around, sliding notes directly to TV anchors, pushing their agendas on his top voting analyst, scrolling through Twitter, reframing the headlines because, well, the right-wing candidate asked them to. Tom loses his temper when Greg approves cheap sushi as his lunch.It’s not much of a power move — it is not, for example, Logan telling the staff to scrape an entire over-the-top steak and lobster dinner for the family into the trash, then order pizza instead — but it’s the only move that Tom, who has lost control of the newsroom, who never had any control over in the first place, has left. He will allow the election results to be nudged and massaged, the newsroom to be compromised and swayed. He will allow the world to burn, but look, he is above the sushi. He will not touch the sushi.Greg, on the other hand, is happy to dig into his “bodega sushi” as the siblings pressure Darwin, ATN’s election analyst, to call the election before he’s ready. It’s a devastating and hilarious sequence. “This isn’t actually a numbers thing,” says Roman. “I’m just going to say we’re good and that’s on me.” “You can’t make the call ’til I make the call,” says Darwin, angrily.But a moment later, Darwin has given up all sense of editorial integrity and is punished for it, as he accidentally smears wasabi from Greg’s sushi into his own eyes. Greg, in a bumbling, misguided effort to help, pours stinging, lemon-flavored LaCroix right into the wound.It’s as if he didn’t know there’s no making things better with food — there is only making things worse.Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More
This YouTube talk show’s premise is simple: Disarm celebrities with deep-cut questions and scorchingly spicy wings. Nearly 300 episodes later, the recipe still works.Bob Odenkirk was dubious when he walked onto the set of the long-running YouTube interview show “Hot Ones” last month. He was, after all, about to take on the “wings of death,” as the lineup of treacherously spicy chicken is called.“I’ve heard such good things about the show,” Odenkirk told Sean Evans, its even-keeled host, once cameras were rolling, but “I think I’m perfectly capable of talking without having a part of my body injured.”Despite peppering the interview with a couple of F-bombs, Odenkirk, the Emmy-nominated actor from “Better Call Saul” and “Breaking Bad,” underwent a familiar shift: He’d warmed up — emotionally. Particularly after wing three, when Evans, quoting a 1989 Chicago Tribune article, asked him about his one-man show “Half My Face Is a Clown.”“That was far more entertaining and fun than I thought it would be,” Odenkirk said in the closing credits through spice-induced coughs.“Hot Ones” — a breakthrough pop-culture phenomenon in which stars eat 10 progressively fiery wings (or, increasingly, a vegan substitute) while being asked 10 deeply researched questions — has built itself into an online pillar, holding steady amid the shifting tides of digital media.Since 2015, First We Feast, the food culture site that produces “Hot Ones,” has aired nearly 300 episodes, almost all of which have amassed millions of views. Guests this season, its 20th, include Pedro Pascal, Bryan Cranston, Jenna Ortega and Florence Pugh. In the early days of the show, guests were mostly rappers, comedians and athletes. Now Oscar winners like Viola Davis and Cate Blanchett often occupy the hot seat, as do headliners like Dave Grohl and Lizzo. The two most watched episodes, with Gordon Ramsay and Billie Eilish, both in 2019, have a combined 165 million views. The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson popped in to discuss our place in the universe, and its place in us.Bob Odenkirk, the star of “Better Call Saul,” conquered the “wings of death” in March, during Season 20 of the show. Peter Fisher for The New York TimesEvans uses his affable, unassuming approach to his advantage, with his deep-cut questions disarming guests, as the wings set them ablaze. Often visibly suffering, the guests are swiftly won over by Evans’s knowledge of their careers and his uncanny ability to keep conversations on track, even when they come dangerously close to going sideways.When he asked Josh Brolin why the Geva Theater Center in Rochester, N.Y., was special to him, Brolin responded, “Literally the greatest questions I’ve ever been asked. Seriously. I’m blown away. I don’t know who’s working for you, but don’t fire them.” (Turns out, it’s the small theater where he earned his stripes as a character actor.)In recent years, “Hot Ones” has edged itself into the big leagues: with spoofs on “The Simpsons” and “Saturday Night Live,” and Daytime Emmy nominations for Evans and the show. Its influence seems to have rippled down into the bevy of late-night or online segments that test celebrities one way or another: “Seth Meyers Goes Day Drinking” or Vanity Fair’s lie-detector series.Since its start, Evans said, “We’ve lived through like four different new media generations over that time, and we’ve been able to ride those rocky waters just in like the smoothest way.”The show could have easily been pigeonholed as a novelty or gimmick, but Evans and Chris Schonberger, the co-creator and executive producer of “Hot Ones,” say its steady ascent is a product of their dedication to the craft of interviewing and, perhaps unexpectedly, to linear TV: New 20-30 minute episodes drop on Thursdays. “‘Hot Ones’ is a little bit of like a sitcom from the ’80s or ’90s,” Evans said, comparing its cozy watchability with “The Office” or “Friends.”Schonberger calls “Hot Ones” a “true Venn diagram,” where today’s emphasis on viral formats overlaps with time-tested journalism. “It’s rooted in doing the research, trying to be factually accurate, trying to be broader than the gossip of the day,” he said. Its North Star has always been to answer the classic question, “What would it be like to have a beer with that person?”Peter Fisher for The New York TimesDomonique Burroughs, now a senior producer for “Hot Ones,” has been with the show since the start.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesThis is all so much more than Evans, 36, and Schonberger, 39, could have fathomed when the idea was born almost a decade ago.First We Feast, started by Complex Networks in 2012 and led by Schonberger, was struggling to catch up to legacy food brands like Gourmet Magazine or Bon Appétit, with their thousands of recipes or restaurant listings. Then, in 2014, digital brands pivoted hard to video. “It was this amazing flattening of the landscape,” Schonberger said. “Suddenly we were not way behind the starting line, and we also had this brand that could credibly speak to pop culture and not just food.”And with platforms like YouTube evolving, Schonberger said, “People were looking for something to puncture the veneer of celebrity — how interviews were becoming more experiential and gamified.”“‘Hot Ones’ was just the dumbest idea of all time,” Schonberger said, only half-joking. “How is it, philosophically, that the dumbest idea is the best?”“It’s like, well, we can’t just have people get drunk or high,” he went on, “but I think we can get people to eat spicy food, which might just be hilarious.”“Hot Ones” started selling its own hot sauces in 2016, and in 2022, it sold more than two million bottles.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesPeter Fisher for The New York TimesThe N.B.A. star Shaquille O’Neal was a guest on the show in 2019.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesCasting someone formally was not in the budget, Schonberger said, so he went hunting for onscreen talent “down at the end of the hallway.” And there was Evans, who had been hosting segments for Complex News, playing golf with Stephen Curry, for example, or eating Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson’s diet.In the beginning, the show had a more contentious, unhinged quality (like a “Wild West U.F.C. barroom,” as Schonberger put it). Publicists, Evans said, would bring in their client, “half apologizing for it in front of us.” Conversations that Evans had during Season 1 (which didn’t feature any women) — like when he used numerous expletives during a question to Machine Gun Kelly about his relationship with Amber Rose — would not fly today.In 2018, Charlize Theron’s episode kicked open the door for top-tier female guests, like Scarlett Johansson and Halle Berry, previously difficult to book in part because of the show’s unconventional, unproven concept, which hadn’t quite broken out of its bro-centric box.Evans, left, with the creator of “Hot Ones,” Chris Schonberger. “How is it, philosophically, that the dumbest idea is the best?” Schonberger has asked himself over the years.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesIf you’ve pictured Evans going into hiding for a week before each interview to consume every part of his upcoming guest’s career, you wouldn’t be wrong. But he also gets a lot of help from his brother, Gavin Evans, the show’s researcher, who compiles a dossier on each celebrity that might be 50 pages long — no magazine profile, podcast interview, IMDb entry, Wikipedia page or archived local news story is left unplumbed.Sean Evans, a Chicago native who grew up admiring Howard Stern, David Letterman and Adam Carolla, turns out to have a knack for demystifying celebrity. Near the end of his interview, the Oscar nominee Austin Butler, who told a touching story about riding roller coasters with his late mother, hugged Evans, saying, “I’ve made a new friend that I hope stays in my life for a long time.” The night after Grohl’s episode, in which the two drank an entire bottle of Crown Royal whisky, Evans attended a friends-and-family Foo Fighters show.Despite consistently trending on YouTube, the show has managed to maintain some level of underdog appeal. Maybe it’s that a team of around 10 people has worked on it since its inception. This includes a hot sauce curator: Noah Chaimberg, the founder of the Brooklyn-based small-batch hot-sauce shop Heatonist. The lineup of sauces changes every season, but a mainstay is the brutal Da’ Bomb Beyond Insanity, a turning point in nearly every interview. The final wing tops two million on the Scoville scale.Or maybe it’s the unchanging bare-bones set: an all-black liminal space akin to the Looney Tunes void.The set was “a byproduct of us being broke,” Evans said, but it’s been a boon to the show. Though it often films in New York or Los Angeles, “we can pop that set up wherever,” Evans said, as when they traveled to Hawaii to interview Kevin Hart or London for Idris Elba. “The restrictions of the show became a superpower,” Schonberger said.The bare-bones “Hot Ones” set was originally “a byproduct of us being broke,” Evan said.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesSchonberger and Evans said that cable networks and other platforms have expressed interest in buying the “Hot Ones” brand, but they have prioritized their control over it, staying with YouTube and expanding their reach by creating and selling hot sauces (first conceived as a keepsake for superfans, then broadened exponentially to meet demand). They have had collaborations with Shake Shack, Reebok and Champion sportswear. And in 2021, Hot Ones started selling chicken bites in the freezer aisles of Walmart.And while “Hot Ones” wasn’t created with social media in mind, it is “made for it,” Schonberger said, with each wing being its own two- to three-minute segment designed to have a beginning, middle and end. Then come the reaction GIFs and compilations, which rack up millions of views on TikTok, along with videos of fans trying the sauces themselves.“We’ve just continued to focus on making the whole as good as possible and having faith that once it’s out in the world,” Schonberger said, “it belongs to the internet, and they’re going to find their ways to have fun with it and amplify it.” For the duo, who are admittedly bullheaded about their vision, the future will look a lot like the present.“I don’t really have these world takeover plans or aspirations. I think I’m just happier being a duke or being a baron on my little corner of the internet,” said Evans, who has eaten thousands of wings onscreen. “Hopefully I can just sustain this as long as my stomach will allow.”Peter Fisher for The New York Times More
