Food with Mark Bittman

We're bringing this one back. Hawa Hassan was born in Mogadishu, fled the Somali Civil War at four, spent time in a refugee camp in Kenya, and arrived alone in Seattle at age seven. She went on to win a James Beard Award and write two of the most distinctive cookbooks in recent memory. In this conversation, she and Mark and Kate talk about her book Setting a Place for Us, which travels to eight countries affected by conflict and asks what food means when everything else has been taken away. She talks about the visa crisis that nearly stranded her in Paris on the way to Kinshasa, the hug she found in Beirut when she expected hostility, and why she always goes looking for the best of a society, not the worst.

The Bittman Project is featuring three recipes from Hawa Hassan's book, Setting a Place for Us:

Rice Bread: https://bittmanproject.com/recipe/rice-bread/

Fresco de Melon (Cantaloupe Juice, with or without rum): https://bittmanproject.com/recipe/fresco-de-melon/

Madesu (Stewed Red Beans): https://bittmanproject.com/recipe/madesu-stewed-red-beans/

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Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.
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Zzz . . . Drift off to this snoozy reading of "In the South Seas" by Robert Louis Stevenson zzz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kevin Boehm co-founded the Boka Restaurant Group nearly 25 years ago and now runs 35 restaurants across Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. He and his partner Rob Katz won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur in America. He also lived in his car, wrote a fake resume to get his first restaurant job, and spent two decades drinking heavily to manage bipolar disorder before getting sober. His memoir, The Bottomless Cup, covers all of it. Mark and Kate talk with Kevin about what hospitality actually means, how trauma shapes restaurant people, and the note slipped into his menu that changed the way he thought about his career.

Here's what was mentioned in today's podcast:

The Bottomless Cup: A Memoir of Secrets, Restaurants, and Forgiveness, by Kevin Boehm: https://bookshop.org/a/18956/9781419775246
Pizza Spinello, Wellfleet, MA: https://www.pizzaspinello.com/
Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill: https://www.castlehill.org/
Salty Market, Truro, MA: https://thesaltymarket.com/

Subscribe to Food with Mark Bittman on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and please help us grow by leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts.

Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.
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Dan Jacobs is the chef and co-owner of DanDan and EsterEv in Milwaukee, a runner-up on Season 21 of Top Chef, and one of the most quietly remarkable people to come on this show. In 2016, four months before opening his first restaurant, he was diagnosed with Kennedy's Disease, a rare neuromuscular condition often mistaken for ALS. He went on to compete on Top Chef eight years later anyway. Mark and Kate talk with Dan about navigating a progressive illness in a physical profession, why Milwaukee's restaurant scene might be the best kept secret in American food, the advocacy work that came out of the pandemic, and what it means to build a team that actually takes care of each other. Also: sourdough pizza, cranberry bogs, and a brother who should never work a host stand.

Subscribe to Food with Mark Bittman on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and please help us grow by leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts.

Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.
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Shirley Chung is a Top Chef finalist, French Laundry veteran and José Andrés darling. In 2024, she was diagnosed with stage four tongue cancer, and it changed her life. Shirley talks about the diagnosis she almost missed, the treatment that saved her tongue, and what it felt like to slowly, painstakingly relearn how to taste. Along the way: an unlikely connection with Grant Achatz, who went through the same thing 19 years earlier and became her north star through the worst of it. She would go on to helm Night Rooster, her modern Chinese restaurant in Dallas, which she opened during recovery. Join Shirley and Kate for this incredibly inspiring story.

Subscribe to Food with Mark Bittman on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and please help us grow by leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts.

Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.