Samin Nosrat (‘Salt Fat Acid Heat’) Cooks These ‘Good Things’ at Home

Nine years ago, cook and writer Samin Nosrat created a kitchen staple with Salt Fat Acid Heat https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/: a New York Times bestseller that later became a hit Netflix series. Last fall, Nosrat returned with Good Things https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622646/good-things-by-samin-nosrat/, a collection of personal recipes straight from her dining table. Today, we revisit that candid conversation, where we discussed the influences that shaped the book (8:30), the ephemerality (and pleasure) of produce (9:30), her complicated San Diego childhood growing up with Iranian parents (17:30), the high expectations placed before her (22:40), and how she eventually found her way to Chez Panisse in Berkeley (32:00). On the back-half, Samin talked about her salad days working in restaurants (46:00), grand openings and closings (42:30), the origins of Salt Fat Acid Heat (47:00), what The Bear gets right about cooking (1:00:25), and how she thinks about time (1:03:00) and ritual (1:07:40). Original air date: September 7, 2025 Subscribe to our ⁠YouTube channel⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@talkeasypod. This episode was recorded at Spotify Studios. As always, our email: [email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What's crazy is I know I'm never gonna make another salt fat. Like, there's never gonna be another one, and I don't even have a lot of grief about that. Like, that was its own wonderful thing.

• 0:09Sam Fragoso?

  It took like nineteen years.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, there's not gonna be another one. You can't manufacture that, and it's fine. I just, um, yeah, I don't know. Like, I just needed to hear somebody else be like, what you are is enough, and what you'll make will be enough.

• 0:28Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Forgo, so welcome to the show.

• 0:44Sam Fragoso?

  Today, cook and writer Samin Nosrat. In 2017, she published Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, a book that became a runaway New York Times bestseller, earned the James Beard Award for Best General Cookbook, and ultimately went on to inspire the Emmy-nominated Netflix series of the same name. If you've seen the show, read the book, or even heard her podcast, Home Cooking, what's immediately striking is Samin's enthusiasm. She relishes in sharing what she loves and who she loves with their audience. The baker who wakes up before dawn to make fresh bread. The farmer who travels hours to bring produce to the market.

• 1:27Sam Fragoso?

  The chef who drives miles and miles and miles to source the highest quality produce for their meals. These are the people and stories that make up much of Samin's work. As for her story, she was raised in San Diego by Iranian immigrants and came of age with an early appreciation for all things food. Her mother, often driving more than eighty miles in search of meals that tasted like home. She then went to study English at UC Berkeley, where admittedly, she spent more time working in kitchens than studying in classrooms. First at Chez Panisse, bussing tables, later at other local restaurants in Berkeley until about 2009.

• 2:10Sam Fragoso?

  We talk about each of those eras in today's conversation, and how they set the stage for both Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and her new book. Good Things is a joyous collection of one hundred and twenty-five recipes, filled with rituals and memories and friends. It's more personal than clinical, though. It reads basically like an invitation to come over, take a seat, and enjoy the food that Samin so clearly takes pleasure in making and also eating. And so today, we begin by tracing the influences, both literary and culinary, that shaped this new book. And we also talk about rediscovering a love of cooking during the pandemic,

• 2:52Sam Fragoso?

  the joy of making a meal for your loved ones, the remarkable rise of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, what the bear gets right about cooking, and how Samin tries in her work and in her life to make every second count. This is Samin Nosrat. Samin.

• 3:11Speaker 00

  Sam.

• 3:11Sam Fragoso?

  Hi.

• 3:11Speaker 00

  My buddy.

• 3:13Sam Fragoso?

  We've never met before.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  No, but we have similar names. Sam is my coffee name.

• 3:17Sam Fragoso?

  Is it really?

• 3:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:18Sam Fragoso?

  Because you don't trust that they'll spell Samin right?

• 3:20Speaker 00

  That, and also now I just want to attract as little information, as little attention to myself.

• 3:24Sam Fragoso?

  As little attention as possible. I want to start with a basic question, but I feel like the only one I can start with, having read your book and gone through everything.

• 3:34Sam Fragoso?

  How are you doing?

• 3:35Speaker 00

  Oh, that's really nice. Thanks. Um, I'm okay. It is an interesting thing to have to talk about yourself and what you've done and why. So I worked really hard for the book tour, especially for the book events, to set it up so that I wouldn't have to do that for the in-person events. And I asked basically my friends and people who I admire to sit in conversation with me in the hope that we will have some sort of larger, meaningful conversation that's not just, "Tell me about your chicken recipe."

• 4:09Sam Fragoso?

  Well, let's, let's, let's give that a go.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 4:12Sam Fragoso?

  I think, I think we can do that. You started working in restaurants back in nineteen ninety-eight at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. But even as a sophomore in college, bussing tables, you had, you had already developed a pretty complicated relationship to recipes. You were skeptical of them from moment one. And throughout the years, in every interview, and I do mean in every interview, you would say some variation of the sentence, "I am never, ever going to write a cookbook with recipes."

• 4:49Speaker 00

  I know, and here I've made a fool of myself.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  Enter a book of recipes.

• 4:57Sam Fragoso?

  For people who aren't watching, we have before us this new cookbook of excellent recipes. It's called, it's called Good Things. So to begin, what changed?

• 5:08Speaker 00

  Part of what has been going on for me since the first book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, came out, is that went on to be such a huge success in every measurable way, beyond what I could have ever imagined. And I am an ambitious person who, like, hoped and manifested for success. And this was still more than I could have ever dreamt of.

• 5:30Sam Fragoso?

  You're someone who, as a teenager, had a manifestation journal.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  Oh, I still have it. Yeah.

• 5:35Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so, um, all of the attention and success knocked me really far off kilter for a variety of reasons. One, I think I've been largely in the background. I've been a largely invisible person in my career world.

• 5:53Speaker 00

  And so all of a sudden, I was very visible and very, for the most part, beloved. And it was like, people were just wanting from me, and my nature is I want to give. So I gave everything and more than everything I had, and that left me with very little, like, energy or anything for myself. And then also, I, you know, we live in a world of capitalism, of more, more, more, of, "Oh, you have a success, so quickly, let's sell the next one." And so I sold a book idea for another Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat style of book. That was going to be a philosophical sort of distillation of how, what it is that cooks in a professional setting, take into consideration to decide what to cook and how to translate that for home.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  But then, once I sat down to do it, I realized it would take another eighteen years, and I just kind of melted under that thought, that it felt so, I was like, this is not what I want to do. And also, the success was really lonely.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  I thought, I mean, looking back on some level, I think I believed that achieving all these things would make me feel less lonely and settled and happy in my life. And it wasn't, and I was grappling with that. There was the pandemic. I was actually lonely.

• 7:12Sam Fragoso?

  You, you said in one interview that, even if I won a Nobel Peace Prize, it would not be enough for my parents.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, it wouldn't have been, and I think I've spent my whole life.

• 7:22Sam Fragoso?

  Would it have been enough for you?

• 7:23Speaker 00

  I don't even know what's enough for me because I think I've only ever,

• 7:29Speaker 00

  or at least until that point, I had only other, ever been navigating the world on some deep, deep level, trying to make them happy.

• 7:39Sam Fragoso?

  Your parents.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, my parents happy. And that, I now see, was a fool's errand.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  And I have, I try to exist outside of that, but it's, it's hard.

• 7:55Sam Fragoso?

  I'm laughing in, in just recognition of my own life.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:59Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  It's hard. Like, I was an achievement machine. I am an achievement machine, but I definitely was.

• 8:04Sam Fragoso?

  Was that your nickname in high school?

• 8:05Speaker 00

  I, you know what's crazy? I went to this crazy high school that was, I was middling at best.

• 8:11Sam Fragoso?

  You were on the cross-country team.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  I was on the cross-country team, but I was, like, fortieth place.

• 8:17Sam Fragoso?

  Were there even that many people on the cross-country team?

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Our team was big. We had, like, sixty people. Yeah.

• 8:20Sam Fragoso?

  So you, you have the success. You make this show for Netflix that's extremely popular. You make a show so popular that Michelle Obama wants you to be part of her cooking TV show for kids.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  With puppets.

• 8:34Sam Fragoso?

  With puppets, yes.

• 8:37Sam Fragoso?

  It was lonely and isolating.

• 8:41Sam Fragoso?

  From there, you start writing how?

• 8:44Speaker 00

  I couldn't. I couldn't. I kept, and the other thing about food that's really, um,

• 8:51Speaker 00

  This is something I've only realized in the last couple of months of doing interviews is I have been measuring myself and what it is that I do against the broader food media landscape. And you see people incredibly popular people with beautiful work that they're putting out, whether it's on social media, in publications, online and I don't know, New York Times dot com, whatever, that everyone wants to cook and it becomes really popular. And so that in my mind, as I was writing this book, I, I thought I was trying to do that. And it was only after the book was done and I began doing these interviews that a really thoughtful food writer in England, Ruby Tando, asked me this question. She said,

• 9:37Speaker 00

  "It really looks like these recipes in this book, it feels like you have a very personal relationship to them." And she was like, "That's so interesting because for me, I will develop a recipe, publish it and never think about it again." And I was like, "Oh, yes, that's exactly right." Like, these things are, these things that I've been making and eating for years or my whole life. And that's the thing I want to share with you. Or if, if it's not that, it's that I come across something so special in the world. Like this morning, yesterday, I was at this extremely fancy and expensive, like butcher shop grocery in East LA. And they had my, every time I come to LA, I buy these strawberries, these Harry's berries, like, have you ever had them?

• 10:19Sam Fragoso?

  I don't think so.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  Okay, they're, they're like fifteen dollars for one cup of berries. They're, they're this, they're tiny.

• 10:24Sam Fragoso?

  Get out.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  And they are them-

• 10:26Sam Fragoso?

  Fifteen dollars?

• 10:26Speaker 00

  Yes, and they are so good. I would go bankrupt on these strawberries if I lived here.

• 10:31Sam Fragoso?

  That would be such an amazing turn for you, like, the New York Times has to write an article, famed cook, Samin goes bankrupt on Harry's strawberries.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  And I bought a seventeen dollar mango.

• 10:44Sam Fragoso?

  They're like, "What happened to her? Was it drinking?" No, it was strawberries.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  Strawberries, totally.

• 10:48Sam Fragoso?

  It was strawberries.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  And the fruit is so special and it's special because of this family that grows this fruit and they're, you know, third or fourth generation, like former interns. And the, they're growing these like incredibly fragrant strawberries that are much closer to the original strawberry.

• 11:05Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Because strawberries are, I don't know if you know this, but strawberries have been, the flavor has been bred out of strawberries because what makes them flavorful is also what makes them go bad. So in order for them to be shelf stable and be picked at Driscoll's Farm and shipped all the way to Maine and sold at a Whole Foods there, you have to breed all of the flavor and the aroma out. So these Harry's berries are incredibly like delicate and they start going bad. But you just, you buy them and you eat them, you eat them as fast as you can, standing over the sink. And so like to me, I just am like, I want everyone to know how special this is. I want everyone to know about this apricot, this mango. Or I went to Sonora Town and I had this thing and, "Oh my God, he makes this tortilla because he drives

• 11:49Speaker 00

  to Mexico every six weeks to buy the special flour."

• 11:54Speaker 00

  And that's not something that I made up. What is interesting and special about it is like my enthusiasm of like, I want, and also this person's story, which is also not really what happens in a lot of cookbooks, right? You normally say, "I came up with this thing, but I feel really uncomfortable. I didn't come up with this thing." So how do I tell someone else's story without taking from them? How do I share? How do I use this platform that I have? Or how do I share something like meaningful to me that might not be the most extravagant or dazzling thing? So that is also part of my discomfort with recipes is it's not, it's, it takes extra work to make it into a valuable story that has meaning for me.

• 12:35Sam Fragoso?

  So it's a book of enthusiasms?

• 12:37Speaker 00

  It is a book of enthusiasms.

• 12:38Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, and you're trying to, you're trying to replicate what one would find in Samin's house.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally.

• 12:46Sam Fragoso?

  Onto the page here.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  As much as possible, which is like a flawed premise to begin with, because you're never gonna, the thing's never gonna be, it's always just gonna be a two dimensional representation of something that varies day to day in my life.

• 12:58Sam Fragoso?

  Your first book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, you said was more a philosophy about cooking than a cookbook. How would you describe the guiding philosophy of good things?

• 13:09Speaker 00

  It's a picture of me in this moment of time. It's me sharing what I can, the most I can possibly give in terms of my love and value of things like the handmade, the handmade textiles in my life, the handmade ceramics, these gifts and treasures that people have shared with me. It's a, it's a treasure chest. Yeah, it's a time capsule in a treasure chest that I'm doing my best to sort of gingerly offer to you in the palm of my hand for you to do with what you would like.

• 13:40Sam Fragoso?

  As someone who's also a writer, the influences for this book also seem to be deeply literary. Tell me about Abraham Joshua Heschel's nineteen fifty-one book, The Sabbath, and how it helped inform, and how it helped inform this book here.

• 13:59Speaker 00

  Abraham Joshua Heschel was like a mid-century rabbi philosopher. He was a contemporary of Martin Luther King. I think they were friends. And he wrote a few books, including this little pocket-sized book called The Sabbath that a friend gave to me, I think because he also, so many people I know at this point in time are deeply look, like searching for a sense of meaning and sort of trying to answer for themselves this question, what is a good life? Abraham Joshua Heschel writes about Judaism being a religion not of things, but basically of time. And a big practice, a huge practice in that is the carving out of this Sabbath. I think he calls it a cathedral in time.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  And that, as I sort of was trying to return back onto planet earth from being uprooted and tumbled through just endless attention, praise, media, everything.

• 15:00Sam Fragoso?

  Followed by a pandemic.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Followed by a pandemic, my own depression.

• 15:04Sam Fragoso?

  Your father passed away.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  My father passing away.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  In the midst of all of that, I was trying to figure out what am I doing and why? Like, what, what, what was all of this for?

• 15:14Sam Fragoso?

  Why food now?

• 15:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, and also, yeah, and like, it feels somehow so empty. It can feel so empty to be like, "Here's some recipes and nice pictures, make this thing."

• 15:24Sam Fragoso?

  I know, I made the one pot ricotta recipe. I wouldn't say it was empty.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  Oh, good, oh, good. I'm glad you made that one. Oh, good, it's a good one. I also feel like as I have tried to figure out, what am I doing with my life?

• 15:37Sam Fragoso?

  Are you asking that every day?

• 15:39Speaker 00

  A little bit, yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I definitely do. Also, because part of it, it's, it's interesting, it's starting again. I don't know what your experience with this is.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  Probably different because you didn't, never disappeared, but like, I made a thing, I became incredibly visible.

• 15:57Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  All of this attention and opportunity came. And whether or not I wanted it all, I try to sort of think about each thing carefully and say yes or no.

• 16:07Sam Fragoso?

  But you did want it, right?

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did want, I wanted the success. I don't know that I wanted to be the face of whatever brands, whatever, anything.

• 16:17Sam Fragoso?

  You wanted to keep your name on the coffee cup order.

• 16:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I wanted to figure out like, why am I, what am I doing? And I think that answer to that and to what I'm capable of doing with the resources that I have

• 16:35Speaker 00

  and the why of it, it took me a while to find it, but it ultimately has been about

• 16:43Speaker 00

  figuring out a way to maximize or just to value my own time the best that I possibly can. And to sort of share this message of how important time is for all of us. And that in this book, one way in which we can express that value or share this most precious currency with other people who we care about is by eating with them or cooking for them or cooking with them. But that doesn't have to be the only way. I know some people don't care about cooking. And I, I think it's just about sort of the act of sharing this thing that I will never be able to get more of. Honestly, valuing myself enough and, and the people around me enough to, to understand that that, there is a gift enough in that.

• 17:26Sam Fragoso?

  In that book, The Sabbath, "One must be overawed by the marvel of time to be ready to perceive the presence of eternity in a single moment. One must live and act as if the fate of all of time would depend on a single moment."

• 17:43Sam Fragoso?

  Cue the hairy strawberries moment.

• 17:45Speaker 00

  Truly like, and honestly, I mean, not to get too precious about it, but I do actually think fruit for me, I've, I really have a love affair with fruit and I think fruit is kind of.

• 17:55Sam Fragoso?

  Of all the things you can have a love affair with, not the worst.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  It's not the worst and I think fruit is such a like perfect, like metonym for time. I mean, fruit, you have, and flowers, the two things I love so much. I love growing them. I love consuming them. I love sharing them and they both are so much about that moment. Yeah. You wait too long to eat your apricots. They are overripe and moldy. You, you know, a flower arrangement, a beautiful flower arrangement is at its best the moment it's created. And then it's, it's, it's dying. Like there's just something so beautiful in sort of, it forces you to be so present to taste those berries as you're jamming them down your mouth over the sink.

• 18:39Sam Fragoso?

  Nothing screams present like jamming strawberries down your mouth over the sink or making your cabbage slaw recipe. I feel like you're, you've like kind of tap danced around and alluded to these things that have been going on in your life and I wanted to just talk about them square on. Like in the midst of writing this book in the pandemic, which was hard enough. But you had, as you mentioned, several people in your life pass away. And you said recently to the New York Times that in the aftermath of your father's death, you've been reexamining your childhood and discovering that it was not exactly as it appeared to you as a child. So for context, um, your parents immigrated from Iran to America in 1976.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  You know, I don't actually know the exact date. I, I usually say 76 if someone wants to know one, but.

• 19:29Sam Fragoso?

  In the mid seventies, for religious reasons, right?

• 19:32Speaker 00

  It's a little tricky. So my dad's family was Baha'i.

• 19:35Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  Baha'is were persecuted or I will, I will say they were persecuted basically, I think, since the founding of the religion in the 1800s. But it, the pressure and the persecution increased as the religious revolution approached. And so many Baha'is fled the country before the 1979 uh, revolution, including the entirety of my dad's side of the family. My mom's side of the family is Muslim and so um, that caused some strife from the beginning between these two sides of the family and ultimately between my two parents.

• 20:09Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  And I would say my brothers and I are no religion, like a practice zero religion. Uh, and we never, we were not really brought up in a religious tradition. We were just brought up sort of witnessing the tension between these two religions. But it was ultimately, yeah, the, my, my father and grandparents were, um, they were religious,

• 20:32Speaker 00

  they sought religious asylum. They came here to their religious asylum and then my mom followed.

• 20:37Sam Fragoso?

  So when you're growing up in San Diego and this town, growing up in this neighborhood called University City, what was the story that you used to tell yourself and others about your childhood? And how are you understanding it differently now in the aftermath of your father's death?

• 20:54Speaker 00

  I just, I think my whole childhood, I was trying to fit in in a very white world. And so I think the story I told myself was if I'm just sort of good enough and try hard enough and I'm nice enough, maybe no one will notice that I'm not white and um,

• 21:16Speaker 00

  and that sort of was my aim in the, my broader life. And then at home, it was a similar, there was a similar version of if I try hard enough and I'm good enough and I'm nice enough, like maybe I'll fit in here. Cause I never fit in, I kind of just didn't fit in anywhere.

• 21:34Sam Fragoso?

  Uh, your mom would say at school, you're in America, at home, you're in Iran.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  And I, of course, trying to be the best kid I could be really tried to embody that. We spoke Farsi at home, ate Persian food, all of the things, but um, it's kind of unsettling and it's an impossible task to give a child. Cause you know, I believed about myself that, oh, I must not fit in at school because I'm Iranian. And oh, I must not like fully fit in here because I'm, you know, American, but maybe if I go to Iran, like this mythical place where all of my ancestors are from and like I, that's where, that'll be where I fit in.

• 22:12Sam Fragoso?

  You went at, you went at what 14 years old?

• 22:14Speaker 00

  And I did not fit in. I did not. I very much was not like them and that was really unsettling too. So I think sort of as a kid, you don't, you're just doing your best and I, I, I, I think I was just trying to win it at a game of chess that I was never gonna win. And now I realize like, oh, I, I was given an impossible task. And on top of that, there were all these layers of trauma and grief that we never looked at or, or talked about or addressed. I had a sister who was born, um, she was, she was two, she was a year and a half older than me.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  Um, and when I was, basically when my mom was pregnant with me, they uh, found out my sister had a terminal brain tumor. And so I was born into like a state of extreme sort of grief and trauma and trying to save this child who was unsavable. And that is not something we ever talked about. Once she, you know, I have, I have no memories of my sister.

• 23:20Sam Fragoso?

  There's, there's one photograph of the two of you in, in, in the kitchen.

• 23:24Speaker 00

  In the fridge, yeah.

• 23:25Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:27Sam Fragoso?

  Which is an amazing photo. Amazing photo. I've, yeah.

• 23:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. I'm glad you saw that one. I only have, it was in the sub stack. I only have a few photos of her. And in my mind, growing up, she was kind of just like an avatar of something.

• 23:43Sam Fragoso?

  But let me ask you, you said that you didn't talk about these things. These like, these like repressed traumas.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:49Sam Fragoso?

  When was the first time you realized, oh, my sister passed away?

• 23:55Speaker 00

  I remember when I was in high school.

• 23:59Sam Fragoso?

  Like if it wasn't talked about.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  It wasn't talked about. However, we did, like there were pictures of her. I knew she wasn't there anymore. We did on her birthday and Persian New Year, go visit her grave. So I knew there had been a sister. It was just the effect of having had a sister and her being gone was never explored in any way. And if anything, it was very much like not my loss to grieve because I was just like kind of a, you know, barely conscious lump of flesh at one and a half. It wasn't, I, that I think it was my parents' loss to grieve. And that was sort of what it was considered. And because it made my mom so sad, we never talked about it. And I do remember when I was in high school, there's just like this fleeting thought went by at one point

• 24:46Speaker 00

  where I think because I had friends who had siblings who were also in high school, older siblings, that I was like, oh, if my sister were here, I would have had that. Like I wouldn't have been the oldest. I would have been the middle kid and, or the youngest and there would have been this other girl. And would we have liked each other, hated each other, fought? Would she have let me use her clothes? You know, like there was just this sense of, there was this shadow, this ghost that I kind of

• 25:17Speaker 00

  just wondered about, but I don't think I had, I just don't, don't think I had the emotional bandwidth or the psychological bandwidth to think about it in any broader terms. And it wasn't truly until I read um, a draft of my friend Laurel Braitman's memoir about loss and grief. And I was so struck with her, with the grief and it felt so familiar that I was like, huh, maybe there's something in this for me, but what could I possibly have to grieve? And this was in 2021. This was when I was, you know, 41 years old, almost, almost over 40 years after my sister died. It started to occur to me, maybe I had something to grieve too. And my neighbors, I live in this little compound of four homes.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  And my neighbor, Aya, who actually shot the book, at the time she had a son who was one and a half. And in the mornings, he would come over and knock on my door and come say hi to me and my puppy. And I would, I was like, he's so alive and vibrant. He has a personality. He's a whole person. And if his older sister disappeared tomorrow and no one ever talked about it, he would be devastated. Like it would, he would wonder what had happened. It would be this huge confusing loss. And so that was the first way, first moment I could have a little compassion for myself and understand like, oh, this probably has had some sort of effect on me and been resonating my whole life and I haven't even known to open that door.

• 26:40Sam Fragoso?

  You said once in describing your childhood that growing up in your home, you constantly were watching your parents both losing their minds. What did that look like?

• 26:56Speaker 00

  It was like a pressure cooker, you know? It wasn't, it wasn't, it's not that, I mean, I won't speak for our whole culture, but like my family for sure, we have tempers and we yell and stuff. So there was some of that. But it was more that there was just a sense of pressure at all times. And for me, my escape, like my safe place was to go to my room and read. Um, that was where, and only now have I sort of understood, oh, it's because I could close a door and go into my own world because I never knew in what way I would let somebody down or yeah, be found to be lacking. And, and that to me as a kid, like the kid who only wanted to please was this most, that was like the most painful thing.

• 27:39Sam Fragoso?

  Did you often feel like you were lacking?

• 27:41Speaker 00

  All the time. Yeah.

• 27:42Sam Fragoso?

  And what, like, give me an example. Like what would that look like?

• 27:45Speaker 00

  Not beautiful and like even.

• 27:47Sam Fragoso?

  Your mother would say that?

• 27:48Speaker 00

  Um, she didn't tell me I wasn't beautiful, but like, one of the funniest things I, I think is like my whole life, my mom would tell me, don't worry, this is me as like a nine year old, right? Don't worry. I'm saving up so that when you're 18, will, I can get you a nose job and a chin job and fix that. You know, um, sorry, I did it right when you took a huge swallow.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  So I was like, I was unclear because I didn't know I was supposed to worry, right?

• 28:18Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 28:20Speaker 00

  And there were kids at my high school, there were Persian kids at my high school who had nose jobs. Like it was, I was aware of it as a thing, for sure. But I didn't even know that I was supposed to worry. So then of course I started worrying. And then, you know, eighteen came and went and there was no nose job. So now I was like, which of course I don't really want, I don't want, but um, but it was, it gave me a complex I wasn't even aware that I needed to have. There was a lot of that kind of pointing out the ways in which I like was falling short or um,

• 28:53Speaker 00

  which I do believe comes from like her, my own, you know, they were trying to protect, they were trying to make me the best. It was not, but I think it was also just from a lot of, it's not a big part of Persian culture to like psychologically self evaluate. Self-awareness, I would not call it like one of our big skills.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  And there's a distrust of therapy, there's a distrust of talking outside of the family, telling anyone anything private. And that doesn't help when you have all of these major, major traumas and griefs that you really need to process. I mean, the trauma of leaving her country is so gnarly. And I think sometimes about the, just the, all of the forms of racism that my parents were facing in my childhood.

• 29:47Sam Fragoso?

  Did you see it?

• 29:48Speaker 00

  There were times I for sure saw it. I mean,

• 29:50Sam Fragoso?

  I mean, San Diego's, you know,

• 29:52Speaker 00

  It's a pretty white conservative, like military town. And there were things like,

• 29:57Sam Fragoso?

  Do you have a memory that comes to mind?

• 29:59Speaker 00

  The one that is like really fresh in my mind, my brother and I were just talking about it is probably when I was like in sixth or seventh grade. My, my dad ran like um, what would you call it? Like an immigration services business. It was like a notary public. He would take passport photos. He would help you do your immigration forms. And in San Diego, there are a lot of people from Mexico, but also because my dad had worked in like education. He could help foreign students and all sorts of refugees and stuff. And I think just to get my grandpa out of the house, he would take him to work with him. And they worked in a very like unglamorous strip mall next to the um, where the like immigration, what's now, INS it was called at the time, which was like the office downtown.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  And one day like some guy, some white guy came in with and started beating my dad and my grandpa with a cane. And you know, calling them racist names and ultimately, and then my dad took him to court. And I think for whatever reason, he lost. Like there was just this thing where they came and did physical violence in his business and he lost. And I think that was really humiliating for him. And at the time I wasn't really, I didn't understand the whole story, but now I'm just like, oh, that was blatant, like crazy anti-middle eastern racism. When I was in second grade, uh, you know, a kid called me a terrorist and I didn't know what that meant. This was like all over North time, like Iran-Contra affair.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  So I just, it was just my, now looking back, I understand that my whole life, Iran has just only sort of meant one thing in the larger like Western public narrative. And that's uh,

• 31:41Speaker 00

  really, that's a, it's a sadness for me because there's so much more. The reason I find it important to talk about this stuff is because it's so subtle. And it's um, and I spend a lot of time being like, why am I complaining about this stuff? Like no one was beating me up. I always had food to eat more or less. Like there was, it was not.

• 32:01Sam Fragoso?

  So that's my last question I had, because as I said, um, as you know, since you've listened to the show, I do uh, uh, uh, some would say too much research. And part of the research uh, before talking to you today was reading about the Baha'i faith. And you did recently call your dad violent.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, he was very, very, very, very uh, like abusive.

• 32:30Sam Fragoso?

  But the Baha'i faith, I mean, I just read this, this is from the Baha'i Publishing Committee of nineteen seventy-three. Here's what it says in the bylaws, "The Baha'is are forbidden to resort to force, even in self-defense." "They are bidden to be obedient to the laws of their country and not to resist with violence, any aggression." Which to me, I, I don't know if I could exhibit such self-restraint, but I guess I've,

• 32:56Speaker 00

  That's also a religious ideal, like who, who,

• 32:58Sam Fragoso?

  Right, exactly. But I just, I want to understand, since they came here and they fled this place for religious reasons, in your house, you said there was two warring religions between Muslim faith and Baha'i. What did the principles look like? And, and did it match up with the behavior you experienced?

• 33:22Speaker 00

  You know, both of my parents, I would say, practiced their religion apart from us. So I was not, my mom, and also my mom has gotten more religious, I think as she gets older. So there was, both of them, we were not like, we never went to any religious gatherings. We um, and so much of my mom, because my mom had been harmed really intensely and demeaned by my father's family, she has held a lifelong grudge against not only the family, but their faith. And so a lot of like what was happening in our, my mom was like, nothing Baha'i will enter this house. So we experienced and were sort of

• 34:07Speaker 00

  saw anything Baha'i when we went to our grandfather's house, when we went to our grandparents' house. Um, or sort of witnessed my dad's broader community, his big, like his broader family. But there was not, I, I didn't actually know very much about the Baha'i faith until I went to college. And I took a religions class and I like got books to read because I, in so many ways, had been taught by my mom to distrust. And like, I, I, I try in my life to not have like prejudice against anyone for any reason, you know, uh, or a part of their identity. But I definitely like, it took a lot of work for me to outgrow the prejudice against the Baha'i faith that like was sort of drilled into me as a kid.

• 34:52Speaker 00

  And um, and when I started reading about it, I was like, wow, this, this sounds like a perfectly nice religion.

• 34:58Sam Fragoso?

  It sounds very nice.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  Very peaceful, really nice. Like, I don't, you know, I don't know what there is to dislike about, about it. Like, um,

• 35:07Sam Fragoso?

  You didn't understand your mother's grudge.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  No, and it's, and because like, as you said, when, at the beginning, you said my parents came in nineteen seventy-six. My, there's so much I don't know about my family. There are so many specifics I don't know and I'll probably never know.

• 35:20Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  And my, when my dad was in the hospital, so my dad, I've been estranged from my dad since I was about nineteen years old, pretty much. Like uh, I just had to separate myself from him and, and stay away from him.

• 35:33Sam Fragoso?

  So that's, that's right when you, you leave home and you go to Berkeley. And you two are estranged from that point on?

• 35:41Speaker 00

  More or less. Like, it felt like these people who had sort of just told me what to do, but not really helped me or guided me or led me in any meaningful way throughout my childhood and adolescence, my dad and my grandpa. They were sort of just like these characters around. Um, I did what they told me to do. And then they show up and they've changed the rules of the game. And that was,

• 36:00Sam Fragoso?

  At the line of scrimmage, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:02Speaker 00

  And that was really, really just heartbreaking for like, all I'd wanted was this one thing and they took that away. And also there was a little voice inside of me that said, if I stay home, I will die. Like I, there's something inside of me will die. And then also like, hmm, I put myself, like I financially sort of separated myself. And you know, he still tried to tell me what to do.

• 36:27Sam Fragoso?

  How do you mean?

• 36:29Speaker 00

  Like, he would just pop up and I wanted to go to Spain for my year abroad. And he's like, absolutely not. You have to go to England. And I was like, okay. Like there were just these ways I didn't know how to disobey. So I did all the things that um, you know, I, I want this job. No, you have to apply for that summer job. Like there would just be this, I'm gonna buy this computer. No, you have to buy this computer with your own money that you made.

• 36:49Sam Fragoso?

  What do you think would have happened if you disobeyed?

• 36:52Speaker 00

  I probably would have

• 36:55Speaker 00

  like regretted it immediately and begged for, like begged for forgiveness. I don't think I, I think I couldn't draw the line until I had enough like stability and security in my own life and a sense of self, even sense of self to just be like, I'm not actually doing anything wrong here. There's not, I'm not doing some terrible thing. And um,

• 37:24Speaker 00

  And so that didn't happen for another ten years or so. It really, so there was a little, there was still some contact, but it, it really wasn't, it actually, when I, when I finally drew the boundary, was after I sold the book contract for Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, because that was the first time in my life I had any sense of financial stability.

• 37:43Sam Fragoso?

  That's twenty thirteen.

• 37:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so I realized, I was like, okay, I don't, and I, I officially, I really stopped talking to him at that point because everything with him had always been a sort of power game and a manipulation. And it was ultimately always about money because that was a way he could always control, even though what's crazy is like, I never got anything from him. So somehow I let him control me with the promise of money that never actually came. I don't understand.

• 38:11Sam Fragoso?

  I don't, I don't love this deal.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was not fun. And so I think realizing I could do it for myself.

• 38:19Speaker 00

  There's so much fear in the world. Like, you know, I also, I'm not, I did not grow up poor by any means, but I always worked. I worked to put myself through college. When I started working at Chez Panis, I made ten dollars an hour.

• 38:33Sam Fragoso?

  So that's, that's you as a bussler in nineteen ninety-eight.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  And then as a cook, I also made ten dollars an hour. For a lot of years, I made twelve to fifteen dollars an hour as a cook.

• 38:41Sam Fragoso?

  You worked so much that when you graduated from Berkeley, you didn't go to your graduation.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  I had three jobs when I was a grad, I had that year, that, like, that last year of school, I worked at Chez Panis. I worked as like the arts editor of the school paper. And I had a jo, like, I, I was a reader for one of my professors, reading papers and grading papers.

• 39:05Sam Fragoso?

  You know, when I read that, I was like, this is silly maybe, but were your parents upset that they couldn't go to the graduation?

• 39:11Speaker 00

  No, nobody mentioned it. Like, it was not, nobody cared. Yeah.

• 39:15Sam Fragoso?

  And you didn't care?

• 39:16Speaker 00

  I didn't, I don't think I would have wanted them to come. It would have made me feel uncomfortable to sort of perform family happiness.

• 39:23Sam Fragoso?

  Right, because that was so far from.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was not the truth. And so later that year, I, later that summer, there was the fortieth, thirtieth birthday of Chez Panis. And it was on campus, so I sort of told myself that was my graduation.

• 39:38Sam Fragoso?

  I want to talk about the early, uh, like, the early experiences of you cooking.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:44Sam Fragoso?

  As much as we've talked about family drama.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  Sorry.

• 39:48Sam Fragoso?

  I know, and, and, and we'll, we'll double back to that, don't worry.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  My fa, my favorite.

• 39:54Sam Fragoso?

  It's, it's obviously a thing that, um, I relate to and understand.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  Sorry.

• 40:00Sam Fragoso?

  No, no, that's all right. Um, okay.

• 40:05Sam Fragoso?

  Working at, um, Chez Panis, did I say it right?

• 40:09Speaker 00

  Chez Panis.

• 40:09Sam Fragoso?

  God damn it.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  It's okay.

• 40:10Sam Fragoso?

  Working at Chez Panis, um,

• 40:14Sam Fragoso?

  what was the first dish that you didn't know how to cook that you've perfected?

• 40:22Speaker 00

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 40:24Sam Fragoso?

  Or the one where you're like, okay, I, I think I have something here.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  I do, I don't remember what the first was. I do know that I have a journal that I would, because for a long time, I was still bussing tables and volunteering in the kitchen for like a half a day or day. So I would go home and write in this journal, the tasks that I'd been allowed to do that day, which now I just look back on with

• 40:47Speaker 00

  the, like, uh, the hugest heart full of love for that kid, because it would be like, today, Lori let me clean salted anchovies under, and remove the skeletons under the running water of the faucet. Today, I got to peel garlic. Like, it was so, today I learned how to make mayonnaise, you know?

• 41:06Sam Fragoso?

  That's amazing.

• 41:07Speaker 00

  And it was so cute.

• 41:08Sam Fragoso?

  Is this part of the manifestation journal?

• 41:10Speaker 00

  No, this was just like a, it was sort of like a recipe journal.

• 41:12Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, so you have one manifestation journal, one recipe journal, and then one like day-to-day journal?

• 41:19Speaker 00

  I'm not that organized, Sam. The, like, day-to-day was the messy recipe one, where I would also like cut and paste things.

• 41:24Sam Fragoso?

  I'm just trying to understand the scene.

• 41:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, but.

• 41:27Sam Fragoso?

  We want to know Sam's process.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  And so the, um, but I do remember probably a year after that, it was a me, it was a long time after that, that they would have let me make something start to finish. And I wasn't just sort of helping people and trying to stay out of the way. And, um, there was a day when I had been working, there's a job called pasta lettuce, and it's because you make the pasta and you wash the lettuce. That's your whole eight-hour shift is making fresh pasta.

• 41:59Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, okay.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  And washing all the lettuces for people to then make salads on.

• 42:02Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  And so I'd been doing that for a few months, and there was somebody called in sick. In the, like, in the fancy downstairs formal dining room, one of the cooks called in sick. So they, they came to me and they're like, and I was eating lunch upstairs. It was a Saturday, I was eating lunch with my roommate's family. And they came to the table and they're like, someone called in sick, like, we're desperate. Can you go home and get your knives or whatever, change out of these clothes and come back? And come help, come work tonight.

• 42:32Sam Fragoso?

  You've been waiting for this call.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  Yes, totally. And it was so exciting. And I was like, I'll be right back. And so I like ran, you know, I like left the meal, it was fully like cartoon, like, you know, like smoke marks in the middle, whatever. And I like went home, got my stuff, came back, and I was.

• 42:49Sam Fragoso?

  You were running with your knives?

• 42:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. And I'm like, put me in, coach. And so they, they put me in and I made, um, and the, and the menus are written, you know, in advance, and so you kind of have to stick to what was written, so you didn't change it to make it easier for me. So I had to make these ravioli that, um, are very traditional, like pasta from Emilio Romagna, that when I tell you what it is, it's gonna sound kind of gross, but it tastes delicious.

• 43:13Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  Which is, they make it like a shredded, they make like a braised beef. And this is, this is like a peasant cuisine, so they would might make like braised chuck or some sort of tough, tough cut. And that becomes the main dish. And then the broth from the braised beef gets combined with a little bit of breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese. And this breadcrumb cheese filling soaked with broth becomes the ravioli filling. So you get two, two dishes out of one pot of meat.

• 43:42Sam Fragoso?

  Nothing sounds disgusting so far.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  It's just that, yeah, and so, and so, it's just that they're not stuffed with, you know, some perfect fresh filling. It's kind of like making, it's stretching, it's stretching things. And so we, you know, we, I, I think someone else must have cooked the meat, but I like shredded it. And I combined, I did all the things, I made the filling with the thing, and I like showed up and I tw, you know, folded two hundred and fifty raviolis. No, it was probably like five hundred actually, because there's a hundred people downstairs, everyone gets five, five hundred raviolis. And I, I tr, and like, there was just this feeling of everybody being like, go Sami and go, because they knew, like, all the cooks knew how badly I wanted it for so long. And it always was so out of reach. And this was this amazing night where I got to be the one who helped, you know?

• 44:24Sam Fragoso?

  They knew that you were the young woman going home, writing in the journal, they let me wash lettuce today.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Totally. So pathetic.

• 44:34Sam Fragoso?

  I don't think so.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  It's just so like, it's so, I've just always been that, like, I just want, I want to do that, like.

• 44:42Sam Fragoso?

  It's called giving a shit.

• 44:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I've al, maybe I, like, have always cared a little too much, but I don't know how to not, you know?

• 44:50Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, yeah, I couldn't possibly relate to that.

• 44:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally.

• 44:53Sam Fragoso?

  So you were trying too hard in the restaurant, and then, and then, did you continue trying too hard as a sous chef?

• 44:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I always tried too hard. There I was, like, you know, the restaurant where I worked when I came home from Italy, Equilo, was run by the chef who had been my mentor at Chez Panis. And this was an Italian restaurant. And, uh,

• 45:11Sam Fragoso?

  It was in Berkeley?

• 45:12Speaker 00

  In Berkeley also. And it was a short-lived, it was from two thousand four, two thousand to two thousand nine, it sort of died after the economic crash. And we were always sort of in financial precarity. It takes often five years for a restaurant to break even. And we were just hitting that, that when the crash happened in two thousand eight. And so there was always this pressure from the owner, from the restaurant investor who lived in New York and had many successful restaurants there. And he's like, I know how to run a restaurant, like, I don't know what you fools in California are doing. And so I was constantly trying to, like, be more,

• 45:47Speaker 00

  economical while still adhering to all of our, our philosophies and values that we had brought from Chez Panis, that we had learned about supporting the farms and cooking with the good ingredients and all this kind of stuff.

• 46:00Sam Fragoso?

  What kind of eggs did you guys use?

• 46:02Speaker 00

  Oh, no, you know about the eggs.

• 46:05Speaker 00

  So why we, like, we had found this, this tiny farm, this incredible farmer Alexis who raised chickens and, and at the time, this was the early two thousands, it was the like eating locally and Michael Pollan and the locavore movement and, and locally produced meats was really sort of becoming part of the like broader food culture. And Alexis started a farm where she was raising chickens and they were pastured, which meant that they were, they spent the day on, out on open pasture. And so I, we were one of her first customers and we, I loved those eggs, they were the most beautiful eggs. And we would buy them, and then they, they would check our invoices, the New York, like, accountants, which, and they were like,

• 46:47Speaker 00

  why are you spending so much money on pasteurized eggs? And I was like, not pasteurized, pastured. Like, it's two totally different things. And there was just a sort of fundamental, like, value misalignment, which honestly was a great lesson for me of like, do not get into a collaboration or get into bed with people if you have that much misalignment fundamentally, because it's, everything's gonna be a struggle. So I would do things like, in order to not sacrifice the things that I cared about, I would drive an hour each way to the farm myself to do the pickup, so that we didn't have to pay for delivery. Or I would, um, get the number two tomatoes instead of the perfect number one tomatoes,

• 47:29Speaker 00

  and then sort through them, each one, like hundreds of pounds of potato, tomatoes a week, and then turn all of the crusts and crumbs and tips and tops into tomato sauce that I would then can so that we could use it. Like, I truly embodied the Italian farm wife of this restaurant. And I don't know if in the end it was financially helpful in any way, but I learned a lot.

• 47:53Sam Fragoso?

  But wouldn't your mom? Do the exact same thing growing up?

• 47:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:58Sam Fragoso?

  Didn't, wasn't there a bakery in Irvine that she would take you guys to?

• 48:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think that-

• 48:02Sam Fragoso?

  Irvine's not that close to San Diego.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  Eighty-eight miles.

• 48:06Sam Fragoso?

  Wow.

• 48:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:07Sam Fragoso?

  That's how you know.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  I've done that drive a lot of times.

• 48:09Sam Fragoso?

  You were like, it's eighty-eight miles both ways. Oh, no.

• 48:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:13Sam Fragoso?

  But she would, she would take, she would, she would take you guys to Orange County, Los Angeles, all to get Iranian cuisine, right?

• 48:21Speaker 00

  The taste of home, for sure.

• 48:22Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, like that, which I, at the time, thought it was unique to my family or to my culture. And now, having spent so much time with people from all over the world, I understand, I do think that that's a big part of being an immigrant. It's like, you're always looking for the taste of home. And I will say, I've never met anyone as, um, crazy as Iranians are for, like, going, the dis- the distances, literal and figurative, to which we will go for the taste. I mean, even me coming in here and saying, "I'm gonna buy Harries berries every time I get there," or like, "Every year I drive two and a half hours to pick all the apricots to make my own jam." This is very much a part of, like, my culture and also, luckily, something beautiful in my career,

• 49:06Speaker 00

  you know, that many of my colleagues also share.

• 49:08Sam Fragoso?

  So you did everything you could to make this restaurant solvent?

• 49:12Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:14Sam Fragoso?

  But it had to close in two thousand nine. And, um, in the summer of two thousand nine, you wrote a piece for the-

• 49:20Speaker 00

  Oh, wow, you found that.

• 49:21Sam Fragoso?

  San Francisco Chronicle. And, um, there's a section here, I thought, you could maybe read for us.

• 49:27Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 49:28Sam Fragoso?

  Because-

• 49:29Speaker 00

  Wow, very early writing. I'm gonna be so embarrassed.

• 49:31Sam Fragoso?

  Um, because, you know, in The Bear, which everyone has been watching and loving, there's, there's kind of an amazing montage where, um, Sydney, I O's character, she's flipping through images in her head of all these chefs that she's met. And all of these chefs around Chicago that are so talented-

• 49:54Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:55Sam Fragoso?

  That have driven to god knows where to get X ingredient to cut costs, to cut any kind of financial corner to make their dream possible. All of these people have had restaurants that opened and closed.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:11Sam Fragoso?

  And that talent alone just doesn't, it's just not enough.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:17Sam Fragoso?

  You wrote this piece in two thousand nine-

• 50:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:20Sam Fragoso?

  As your, as your shop closed up or had to close up.

• 50:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:23Sam Fragoso?

  And I thought maybe you could read it.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  Sure. Just this little bit right here. "Before shutting the doors, we decided to have a week of special dinners. We'd cook the food we loved to eat, be surrounded by our friends, and pay tribute to the purveyors whose work we'd so greatly appreciated. We spent each day in the kitchen preparing a different menu of Chris's favorite dishes. Echolow overflowed with people, regulars fretted about where they would now eat. Chris and I just looked at each other and wondered, 'Where were all these people before this? How could it be that only now, on the eve of closing, Echolow had become the restaurant we'd always wanted? We kept hearing from people, 'I wish I had come more.' We wished it too. Regardless of what the money people said, I think these customers knew that we were doing the right thing,

• 51:07Speaker 00

  supporting family farmers, putting money back into the local economy, hiring people from the neighborhood. I just don't think most people realize how hard or expensive those choices are." Wow, it's really wild how this is still so true, fourteen years later, fifteen years later, sixteen years later. I can't do math.

• 51:25Sam Fragoso?

  Sixteen years later.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  Sixteen years later. Like, um, I mean, the, yeah, like, The Bear nails it. I think restaurant culture right now, this is what we were talking about with Dave yesterday. Like, it's just, I think certainly after the pandemic, it's really, really hard to have a restaurant. And people don't know.

• 51:45Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, but, but, you know, there's, there's another part that I, that you, that, right, that really stuck out to me, which is you write, "Where were all these people before this?" And I, I just, I've been thinking about this a lot, um,

• 52:01Sam Fragoso?

  i- in our culture right now, because I, I do think, I think we need to realign,

• 52:08Sam Fragoso?

  and reprioritize the things that matter to us and how we go about-

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Me too.

• 52:13Sam Fragoso?

  -expressing that enthusiasm. And I, I'm not just saying that as someone who makes a show every week.

• 52:17Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:18Sam Fragoso?

  Um, but I am saying that as someone who makes a show every week. Like, you know, you know what's like, you know what I don't wanna see anymore? Our, our restaurants closing and shows ending and the onslaught of people posting about it online.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:36Sam Fragoso?

  It's fine that you wanna write elegies in your obituary, you know, your postmortems. And I'm not just, again, not just saying it for Talk Easy. I mean, for you, for anyone who's given so much to the thing, I do think we all need to be better at, in the moment, while we are here and alive and this thing is here and alive,

• 52:56Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:57Sam Fragoso?

  you should say something.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, agreed.

• 52:59Sam Fragoso?

  You should post something, you should go as often as you can, as however, you know, financially, however, as, ever, as, as often as you can, you know, and afford financially. If you like something, you should share it.

• 53:11Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. Or if you like that, having that store in your neighborhood, and it costs a little more than going online and buying it, like, maybe buying something.

• 53:19Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  You know, buying the book at the store or buying whatever.

• 53:22Sam Fragoso?

  Don't, don't, don't wait till it's gone-

• 53:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:25Sam Fragoso?

  -to say that you give a shit.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:27Sam Fragoso?

  And I think, um, in restaurants, I've seen that a lot.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:31Sam Fragoso?

  Where people are like, "Oh, god, I wish I, oh, I love that place."

• 53:35Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:35Sam Fragoso?

  It's like, well, then you should've gone.

• 53:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, to me, this is directly tied to this other thing I've been thinking so much about, which is like the value of making.

• 53:47Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  And things that are made for us. And especially when you come, like, in this, sort of, we're sitting under the shadow of an approaching AI world, where like, things are not, are, it will be more and more precious and more and more expensive for us to acquire and consume and enjoy things that are made for us by humans with our each passing day.

• 54:09Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  And one of the pleasures of life is eating in a restaurant, I think. And I don't even mean a fancy restaurant. I just mean, one of the few remaining things available and accessible to most people is to go to a restaurant and eat something, even if it's a two-dollar taco from a taco truck. That is one of the few ways that we have right now to experience that somebody made you something-

• 54:32Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  -from start to finish. Because it's, I love a beautiful handmade textile, you know, from Gregory Parkinson in India, but like, I can have that once every three years, you know? Like, it's very expensive. And I love the beautiful ceramics and I love those things. And I, I want to fill my life with things that are made by, by hands.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  But food is, is luckily still here for us, but we have to know it. There are many ways in which that can be taken away from us, too.

• 55:02Sam Fragoso?

  Whenever I'm getting ready to leave town, like, when I'm heading to New York or Aspen for live shows, there's a small ritual before I walk out the door. I water my plants, unplug a few things, make sure I didn't leave behind my notebook and chargers. It's interesting, though, how much time and attention we pay to the trip itself, but not much time and attention to the time in which we're away. That's changed for me recently, over the past year, especially as I've been thinking about listing my space on Airbnb whenever I'm out of town. It gives someone else the chance to experience Los Angeles from a neighborhood that actually feels lived in. It can also help offset the cost of my own plans while I'm away. I like ideas that don't require you to reinvent the wheel or your entire routine. You're already traveling.

• 55:47Sam Fragoso?

  Listing your space is simply another way to make the most out of that time and help someone else connect with the city along the way. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com/host.

• 56:02Sam Fragoso?

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• 56:46Sam Fragoso?

  It's a world-expanding, genre-bending movie from one of the most distinctive filmmakers working today. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now streaming exclusively on MUBI. You can try MUBI free for thirty days at MUBI.com/talkeasy. That's MUBI, M-U-B-I dot com slash talkeasy for a whole month of great cinema for free.

• 57:09Sam Fragoso?

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• 57:53Sam Fragoso?

  really become my go to in my wardrobe. The quality was the thing that surprised me when I first tried them out. They're comfortable, easy to layer, and after a year of wearing them regularly, they've held up remarkably well. I use them all the time and would absolutely recommend them. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, which allows them to price everything 50 to 80% less than similar brands. So you're paying for the quality of the materials rather than a big brand markup. It's not just clothing. Quince brings that same approach to hotel quality bedding and bath, kitchen essentials, and thoughtfully designed furniture, well-made pieces for everyday living. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com.

• 58:38Sam Fragoso?

  You can get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Talk Easy. It's really the best way to support the show. Enjoy.

• 58:54Sam Fragoso?

  After the restaurant closes in 2009, you have a winding journey of cooking and working with Michael Pollan. You sell the book in 2013, as you mentioned earlier, and you then pitched the show on October 30th of 2016.

• 59:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, wild.

• 59:14Sam Fragoso?

  You go to Netflix and you pitch it, I think probably in Los Angeles here. When you pitched Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, what did the pitch sound like?

• 59:25Speaker 00

  Oh, it was so cool. It was really cool. And also you have to know, like, I don't know anything about Hollywood. I don't know anything about pitching. I don't, I only know how to show up and be my crazy self.

• 59:36Sam Fragoso?

  Okay. So give me the crazy self.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  And so they, luckily, like the production company that was making this with me, they...

• 59:43Sam Fragoso?

  Jigsaw?

• 59:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, they had the idea to, because I didn't know what a normal, quote unquote, "normal" pitch looked like. So I didn't know that ours wasn't normal.

• 59:51Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, how was yours not normal?

• 59:52Speaker 00

  So what, what they did was they, we rented a house that was kind of conveniently located to where the executives from Netflix lived. And then I, we, and I like went to the Santa Monica Farmer's Market. I bought all this stuff and we set it up so that I would basically do a cooking class and like a cooking demonstration for the executives when they came. And we had, you know, I don't, I don't know if there was a screen or like whatever, but we sort of had the stuff to show them the typical pitch stuff. But also, the pitch was me. It was me being me.

• 1:00:24Sam Fragoso?

  You doing you.

• 1:00:25Speaker 00

  Showing like I can cook and talk at the same time and I can do that, you know? And they were like, well, this is fun, but like, is all you're interested in is the farmer's market? And I had, I was staying at my friend's mom's house and I like brought all of her linen. You know, I tried to make it really nice and cute and they're like, this is cool, but like, is that all you? And I said, no, no, actually like, the farmer's market is my pleasure and joy, but I think there's so much more. And so let me tell you about these things. And it was just, I could tell one of the, there were three of them and I could tell that one of them, like, I just knew I had him. Like, and he has these like icy blue eyes and there was just this way, like, he was looking at me and I was like, that's my guy. I got him.

• 1:01:08Speaker 00

  We're talking about cooking, like, he gets me. And that ended up being like, who bought my show?

• 1:01:13Sam Fragoso?

  When they greenlit it, uh, it was maybe a couple of days after Donald Trump won his first, uh...

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  Election, yeah.

• 1:01:22Sam Fragoso?

  Where were you and, and...

• 1:01:24Speaker 00

  I was home. I was in, I was like, I remember I was in bed, like, I was pretty comatized from the election, so like, I didn't really want to ever get out of bed. And there was just this feeling that was so confusing of this very intense happiness and like this feeling of, oh my God, an opportunity is coming.

• 1:01:42Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  And, um, and also what does it mean for me to do that in this time, in this, when this is the people that I'm speaking to? Do they even want to hear what I have to say? Can I even, does it make sense for me to put myself, make myself visible in front of them?

• 1:02:03Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  Would I be safe? There were just, it felt really sort of, I don't know, whatever, the extreme version of bittersweet is.

• 1:02:13Sam Fragoso?

  Um, when you got the call that they greenlit it, you said, what does it mean for me to, what does it mean for me to decide to be a public person when the public has sent a very clear message in 2016 with the election that I'm not the kind of person they want to see on camera?

• 1:02:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Sam Fragoso?

  I've been thinking about this quote since I read it. And I wonder like, do you think those two realities are connected? Because the show became massively popular.

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of like, I don't want to hear your politics, just give me your recipes.

• 1:02:46Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah. Maybe I'm misreading, you tell me.

• 1:02:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 1:02:50Sam Fragoso?

  I've just been thinking about that.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  I mean, and I don't know, like, listening to you read those words back, maybe the thing that I, I felt was less about, like, that they didn't want a person like me on camera and just that they didn't want a person like me around. And certainly like within months of that, right? Like January 2017, there's like a Muslim ban, you know, and immigration ban against people from where I'm from. And I, and even just a week ago, I was at a beautiful wedding of a Bengali couple and it was a Muslim wedding that presided over by a Palestinian Imam. And the whole time, you know, there are all these amazing Bengali rituals or Bangladeshi

• 1:03:30Speaker 00

  rituals and, um, it was just so, such a beautiful thing to witness and be a part of, so fun. And I remember multiple times wondering like, I wonder if these people who all live, you know, very local to me, feel sa, like, feel safe or have times regularly where they don't feel safe. And I asked some of the young people there and they were like, oh yeah, it really reminds me of 2001, which 2001 was a really, um, hard, it was, that was very much, there's a before and after in my own life, even though I'm not personally religious. Like, it doesn't matter if you're religious or not, if you look a certain way or if your name sounds like something.

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  So, um, there, there, I just have had fear for myself and for my brothers and for people who look like me that's been heightened since 2001. And it sort, I sort of got dull to it and then it reignited in 2016 and, and right now it's really, um, strong.

• 1:04:31Sam Fragoso?

  When you made the show in, in 2017, 2018, um, on the set, um, did your mother ever come to set?

• 1:04:39Speaker 00

  She did. She was in one of the episodes.

• 1:04:40Sam Fragoso?

  Right, episode four. And what did she make of you making a show for Netflix?

• 1:04:48Speaker 00

  I don't think she understood, she didn't understand what it was. She didn't understand, um, yeah, she didn't understand the scope of what we were making. And she definitely didn't understand that it was my show from my idea.

• 1:05:04Sam Fragoso?

  Who did she think made the show?

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  I think she, you know, she sort of read the room. She saw the way that people, um, were deferring to the director. And she was like, oh, this is the person that is the most respected and in charge, which of course a director is important, but there's a way also where like, she just couldn't, I don't think she could process that the thing was built around me and my idea. And, um, to the point where like, at some point, she turned to the director and she said, she was trying to figure it out. That's right. She said, Caroline, like, whose show is this? And everyone on set, at this point, this was our last, no, it was the third episode that we filmed.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  And by this time, we were all very tight and everyone was so sort of like, Samin, what do you think about this? Samin, what do you think about this? We'd been to Japan, we'd been to Italy together, you know, like, um, we were very, they saw me speak different languages. They, and then, so I remember Luke, my director of photography, his jaw just fell because he was like, wow, your own mom doesn't understand this is your thing, right? Like, um, and I, and I kind of threw like a, I totally like a teenager threw a tantrum. I was like, no, this is my show. You don't understand, this is based on my book, it's my show. And, um, that's the difference between like then, even then and now, is like now I just know I can't expect anything.

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

  The, like, the, the pain comes from the expecting or the hoping. And so it's better to just not hope and understand like what is, is.

• 1:06:42Sam Fragoso?

  You're not asking for a lot.

• 1:06:44Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:06:45Sam Fragoso?

  Do you think that's too much to ask for?

• 1:06:47Speaker 00

  Not too much, but it's just not going to happen.

• 1:06:49Sam Fragoso?

  It's not going to happen.

• 1:06:49Speaker 00

  And that's different, right?

• 1:06:51Sam Fragoso?

  Why can't that happen?

• 1:06:52Speaker 00

  I don't know, people have limitations. Like, I asked my, one of my therapists, what makes somebody have capacity for change and growth?

• 1:07:04Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Speaker 00

  Like, where does capacity come from? And she was like, a lot of times it comes from, because there are people who have been mistreated or harmed and grow up to be totally generous, open, self-aware people. And then there are people who don't. And, um, and I think for my mom and for my dad, there was a lot of pain and loss, I think, in their lives, I think early in their lives. I sort of have to guess what some of that is. And I have to like, in my, like I said, in my, my most skillful moments, extend a lot

• 1:07:42Speaker 00

  of compassion to them for that and just understand like, so the capacity comes from some, somebody seeing you clearly in your early childhood, I think. Like, and I don't think either of my parents had that.

• 1:07:55Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Speaker 00

  And I think it's really sad, like what they became, especially my dad, really became something really harmful to many people around him and...

• 1:08:08Sam Fragoso?

  Harmful to you?

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  For sure harmful to me. I mean, my dad, uh, I, I'm not a, I cannot, I'm not a, he, I, he had some pathology. I don't know what it was, but he just really like enjoyed making people miserable. And it was like, yeah, so that was not...

• 1:08:25Sam Fragoso?

  Really?

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  It was, it was power games. So when I say violent, it was not physically violent. It was real, like intense emotional violence.

• 1:08:32Sam Fragoso?

  Beyond the, you should get a... Different laptop, not that laptop.

• 1:08:35Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, yes. Yeah, like, um, just crazy manipulation.

• 1:08:42Speaker 00

  Even and in even in my estrangement with him, there was a lot of like. I always suspected that he was stalking me. Or that he would try to, like, I bought a house. I figured out how to, I like, made money after the show and I bought a house. And I immediately knew, I was like, he's gonna figure out a way to try and take this house from me. And I kept tell, but then I would like go to therapy and my therapist would be like, well, do you have any reason to believe these things? Or is this just what your child self is feeling? And I'm like, well, I guess I don't have any proof. You know, and then, um, I just was like, I could imagine him coming here and tripping outside and suing. You know, just to mess with me. He loved suing people just to mess with them.

• 1:09:22Speaker 00

  And so, um, when he died, when he was in the hospital, he had a traumatic brain injury that left him. On life support and in the hospital for close to six months. And that is how and why I got sort of brought back in. To his life at the end was to try to advocate to get him off of those machines, because neither of my parents wanted, want, want that or wanted that. And, um, that became like a very complicated. And melodramatic thing when we found out he had a secret. Wife in Israel who was calling and telling the hospital that my brothers and I were murderers who were trying to steal all of his money. So it just became this like medical and legal nightmare that extended for way longer than it needed to.

• 1:10:06Speaker 00

  And as we were looking for desperately for a legal document that showed his medical wishes. We were going through his files and stuff and we found, I actually found proof that he was stalking me. That he was sending people to spy on me, that he was trying to figure out how to harm me. That he was like, um, yeah, saying horrible things about me and that. And which in a way was so validating. God, I knew it. Um, and that he, yeah, there were, we found a cache of secret videos. He made a secret YouTube channel with like forty-five hour-long videos of himself just ranting at the camera. With the quote-unquote real truth.

• 1:10:48Speaker 00

  That's also where he revealed we had Jewish ancestry, which had always been kept from us. And that actually sort of tracked when, when I like traced some of the stuff, I was like, oh, this makes total sense. Also, a lot of Baha'is were Jews who became Baha'i. And so, um, I was like, this is so cool. I was like, this is amazing. Like, you know what I mean? I just was like, amazing. I like.

• 1:11:10Sam Fragoso?

  Some of this information, don't love it. But some other.

• 1:11:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, other parts of it are so cool. Like, there's just things where I'm like, wow, I wish I had known this about myself.

• 1:11:18Sam Fragoso?

  At your father's funeral, to wrap our way, to wrap around back to the book. Um, it's my understanding that there was a conversation you have at the relative.

• 1:11:30Sam Fragoso?

  That, um, about this book and that book.

• 1:11:36Sam Fragoso?

  That was a way for you to sort of think about what you've been doing and where you're going.

• 1:11:42Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah. It was right when my dad died. It was my, um, my uncle's wife, who I'm not super close with. But she, this is her second marriage and she had lost a child.

• 1:11:56Speaker 00

  In her, like, past. And also she's Iranian and she in many ways is much more sort of, um, psychologically sound than either of my parents. And emo- let's say emotionally sound than either of my parents. And I wondered, I asked her, I said, how did you?

• 1:12:17Speaker 00

  Like, you lost a child in such a crazy way and my mom lost a child. And you have a different relationship to your surviving child. And to reality than my mom does. Like, what did you do different? And she was like, oh, I went to therapy and also I realized I had to. Really get clear because I still had another kid to take care of. And so I couldn't let that kid's life be only about this loss. And I was like, oh, interesting, interesting. And so we talked and I said, oh, you know, my, um. A thing I've understand about myself now is that. I've spent my whole life trying to be two kids worth of good.

• 1:12:58Speaker 00

  And trying to make up for this like impossible loss. Essentially, like, that was what I internalized. And there's no way a person can ever do that. Like, I, it was, I was never gonna be two kids. I just, I, I couldn't.

• 1:13:11Sam Fragoso?

  You and, for you and your sister.

• 1:13:13Speaker 00

  Me and my sister, yeah. So I was always trying to somehow fill this impossible hole for all of us. And, um. And she said, salt, fat, acid, heat was such a huge thing. You put everything you had into it. You, you did the thing. That was the thing where you were trying to be two siblings. Like, you were, it was the, it was the you and your sister's worth of good. And what if your next book is just you and that's enough? And, um, that sort of was just a really kind of beautiful sort of moment of being seen by someone in my extended family. And also like a really kind of emotionally insightful way.

• 1:13:57Speaker 00

  For me to con- consider that what it is that I'm trying to do. And also like, yeah, just the incredible amount of pain and suffering I put myself through to make anything. The impossibly high standards. And what's crazy is I know I'm never gonna make another salt fat. Like, I, there's never gonna be another one. And I don't even have a lot of grief about that. Like, that was its own wonderful thing.

• 1:14:19Sam Fragoso?

  It took like nineteen years.

• 1:14:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, there's not gonna be another one. You can't manufacture that and it's fine. I just, um, yeah, I don't know. Like, I just needed to hear somebody else be like, what you are is enough. And what you'll make will be enough.

• 1:14:35Sam Fragoso?

  So as we close, why don't we talk about this book again and kind of what it means to you and what it means, what you hope it means to people who. Who buy it. Because when you released, uh, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and then the show on Netflix. You said, your hope is that the program and the book convey the idea that good food around the world. Is more similar than it is different. And that we as humans are more similar than we are different. The idea was that maybe by learning about somebody's food culture, maybe you'll have some more compassion for them.

• 1:15:11Speaker 00

  That was so idealistic.

• 1:15:13Sam Fragoso?

  Do you still believe that?

• 1:15:14Speaker 00

  No, I don't. I think that was really naive.

• 1:15:20Speaker 00

  And it takes a lot more.

• 1:15:23Speaker 00

  Than eating somebody's tacos to believe that they don't, shouldn't get shut out of this country or, you know, chased out by ICE. Um, so I don't, I don't know that I believe that. But maybe it's something so much more simple that I, I do believe and I, well, I, let's say I'll have the like. Audacity to hope is one small way that we can like take care of ourselves and of each other. Is to spend some time together. In a world that like is just trying to take all of our attention and time away from us. And trying to convince us that we need something more than what we have and what we are to be okay.

• 1:16:08Speaker 00

  And so, like, this is a book of recipes for boiling broccoli, for pasta with a tub of ricotta dumped in it. For, you know, yellow cake with chocolate frosting. It's simple, delicious stuff. That makes my days a little more special and meaningful. And whether or not you read this book or cook from it, like, my message that I hope is that. You can find some small way in your day to spend some time with people who you care about.

• 1:16:40Sam Fragoso?

  My personal favorite episode from The Bear, um, is in a book, is an episode called Fork.

• 1:16:45Speaker 00

  Me too, that's my favorite.

• 1:16:46Sam Fragoso?

  It's amazing.

• 1:16:47Speaker 00

  It's so good.

• 1:16:48Sam Fragoso?

  And, um, in it, like Cousin Richie is, is, is stodging for like a very fancy restaurant.

• 1:16:56Sam Fragoso?

  Like the kind that you probably worked at.

• 1:16:57Speaker 00

  That's way fancier than anywhere.

• 1:16:59Sam Fragoso?

  Is that like a French laundry kind of thing?

• 1:17:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's called Ever- it's a real restaurant. In Chicago, it's called Ever, yeah.

• 1:17:04Sam Fragoso?

  And basically, in, in the episode, he receives a crash course in working in fine dining, extremely fine dining. And there's a scene.

• 1:17:14Sam Fragoso?

  Toward the end of the episode, between Richie and the chef at the restaurant, Chef Terry. Played by the great Olivia Colman.

• 1:17:23Sam Fragoso?

  And I thought maybe we could watch that for a moment.

• 1:17:25Speaker 00

  I would love Nothing More. It's so beautiful.

• 1:17:28Speaker 02

  What are you making?

• 1:17:29Speaker 03

  I'm just peeling mushrooms for the land de tournage.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  Peeling mushrooms?

• 1:17:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just a nice little fun detail. So when the diners see it, they know that someone spent a lot of time on their dish. Do you want to have a go?

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Great.

• 1:17:45Speaker 03

  Okay, so hold it like this.

• 1:17:47Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:48Speaker 03

  Knife thirteen hundred. Grab the end and just peel like that. So slowly.

• 1:18:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  Thirteen hundred, huh?

• 1:18:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Speaker 02

  Do you serve?

• 1:18:08Speaker 03

  Dad did.

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, same. Staff sergeant.

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  Corporal.

• 1:18:14Speaker 02

  Lot of standards.

• 1:18:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Turns out I like standards.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  Do you move around a lot?

• 1:18:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. You?

• 1:18:29Speaker 03

  I know Carmen.

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  I'm sorry that he pulled a favor.

• 1:18:36Speaker 03

  Not at all. I don't do favors.

• 1:18:44Speaker 02

  How's that?

• 1:18:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's great.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  Can I do another one?

• 1:18:49Speaker 03

  Yes, please do.

• 1:18:57Speaker 02

  So why do you do this?

• 1:18:58Speaker 03

  I do it for a living.

• 1:19:00Speaker 02

  No, but like, don't you have staggers that do this shit?

• 1:19:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I like starting the day with this.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Why?

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  Respect. Feels attached. I think time spent doing this is time well spent.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  Time well spent? That's what it's all about?

• 1:19:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:19:20Sam Fragoso?

  When you watch that,

• 1:19:23Sam Fragoso?

  where does it land with you?

• 1:19:24Speaker 00

  It just that from the first time I saw that, I've watched that scene so many times. I went back and transcribed it because I thought I would quote it in the book. And the way she talks about time and the meaning of time.

• 1:19:39Sam Fragoso?

  Time well spent.

• 1:19:40Speaker 00

  Time well spent. And it's so beautiful. Like to me, there's, that's all I want to sort of at the end of every day in my life, be able to be like, did I have any time well spent today? But also I think for her, it's probably having quiet, being able to connect with this original task that she at some point loved so much that she decided to devote her whole life to a career of doing that task. And with that comes business headaches and staff headaches and the toilet leaking and all this kind of stuff. But still every day, like you have a little moment of something that means something to you and reconnects you to the physical sense of having a body, of having a body in a world with other humans.

• 1:20:20Speaker 00

  And like, that's all, that's honestly why I stand over the sink stuffing my face with strawberries. Like, I'm just like trying to remember I have a body, you know, like, and trying to remember like this is this day. I get to have this smell and this taste. It's so special. I really wish I had brought the strawberries in from the car for you. I feel so bad that I left them in my car.

• 1:20:43Sam Fragoso?

  I feel bad too.

• 1:20:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. Do you want to come out with me?

• 1:20:45Sam Fragoso?

  Right after this, that's where we're headed.

• 1:20:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:49Sam Fragoso?

  Are you at your best when you're cooking?

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  Sometimes. Often my best moments, I'm at, often I am, not always.

• 1:20:57Sam Fragoso?

  I think it's true for me. I'll tell you, I really started cooking three, four years ago. And I do, it's the thing I look forward to outside of playing basketball on Sunday and Tuesday nights. It's the thing I look forward to the most. And it's because I am tired of being in my head.

• 1:21:19Speaker 00

  Totally. That's why I think when I'm able to get out of my head and just cook is absolutely when I'm my best.

• 1:21:26Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Sam Fragoso?

  My last question for you. We started this episode talking about, and have continued talking about time and how we evaluate it and how we want to live, how we want to spend our days. You said recently on your show, Home Cooking, which was recently on the Time Hundred list. For as long as I can remember, I've always been saving up for something.

• 1:21:51Sam Fragoso?

  How old are you? What, forty five, forty six?

• 1:21:53Speaker 00

  Forty five.

• 1:21:56Sam Fragoso?

  What are we saving up for?

• 1:21:57Speaker 00

  I don't know. I'm trying to save up less now. Um, but I definitely think my whole life I've been, I feel like I have had the sense that there's some bank account balance of goodness or achievement or something that I'm trying to reach before then I can be happy or comfortable or feel safe. And I do think like watching my dad die

• 1:22:25Speaker 00

  really clarified something for me about that because I think he died in such a sad and pathetic and lonely way. And it really helped me. I, I, I was like, wow, when I die, that's not what I want. I want to be able to look back on my life and see that I filled it with so much goodness and friendship and nature and good food and puppy dogs and all the good things. And what, so, you know, and so much of my dad's life was about sort of machinations and money. For what? So I think it really kind of clarified something for me about there's no

• 1:23:10Speaker 00

  finish line, or if there is, it's when you die. And so then like, why am I, what am I saving up for?

• 1:23:17Sam Fragoso?

  Well, that's my, that's my question is if you're done saving, how do you want to spend?

• 1:23:23Speaker 00

  Uh, I now, I'm much better at saying yes to like trips and opportunities and invitations that I would have always just been like, I can't do that. I'm working. I can't do that. I shouldn't spend that money right now. I can't do that for whatever reason. I feel bad or I feel guilty. Now I do that. I get on the plane and I cross the country to go to my friend's child's bris. Or

• 1:23:48Sam Fragoso?

  Say yes to experience.

• 1:23:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I like, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna go jump in the ocean in Sicily because I have 10 days and I'm so excited. And I told myself when I finished this book, I would go to Italy again. And so I'm just trying to say yes instead of saying maybe one day.

• 1:24:08Sam Fragoso?

  If we're thinking about a prescription from this book, a thing that we should hold on to and maybe put into our lives, can you tell us about, uh, what you do every Monday night?

• 1:24:18Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Uh, Monday night is like probably my, what I have closest to in my life to religion. It's a dinner that I have with three, now four other families.

• 1:24:33Speaker 00

  And there are probably about 12 of us at any given time. There's like three-ish kids. And we just get together and cook food and eat it. And we don't even always cook it. Sometimes we order out. This week it wasn't Monday, it was Sunday. It was a six-year-old's birthday party. We had an ice cream sundae party because everyone was leaving town. But there's something really magical about the act of, we've all committed to this ritual that we do. It's in all of our calendars. We have a group text thread. And you know, no, I'm the only one who's a professional food related person, but everyone sort of likes eating or cooking or just be hanging out.

• 1:25:14Speaker 00

  And so there's kind of different ways in which everyone contributes and it sort of manages to always come together in some way or another. And it has given us all something to look forward to. It's given us a scaffolding to our week. It's, um, it's been a really beautiful and unexpected gift in all of our lives. And at first I thought it was something my friends were doing for me because I was so lonely. But when I said that to them, they were like, no, no, this is for us too. And so just watching how we've really sanctified it has been really moving. And that's the group of people to whom I dedicate the book.

• 1:25:57Speaker 00

  And it's, um, and I, I have a lot of anxiety about my tour because it's going to take me away from a lot of Monday dinners. But, uh, but it'll still be there when I get back.

• 1:26:06Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:08Sam Fragoso?

  It's great to cook. It's even better to cook for others.

• 1:26:11Speaker 00

  It really, it really for me, that's like when I feel I'm doing something sacred.

• 1:26:17Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:17Sam Fragoso?

  Not me too. Thank you for sitting for as long as you have and for this new book. I've so enjoyed it.

• 1:26:22Speaker 00

  Thank you for your thoughtful questions and yeah, thank you for such a thoughtful conversation.

• 1:26:28Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, next time bring the strawberries.

• 1:26:30Speaker 00

  I will. I'm so sorry. I'm going to send you some.

• 1:26:34Sam Fragoso?

  Um, Samin Nosrat. I'll see you soon.

• 1:26:37Speaker 00

  I'll see you soon. Thank you.

• 1:26:53Sam Fragoso?

  Thank you for watching Talk Easy. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also leave us a review on Apple, drop us a comment on Spotify, or follow us across social media at Talk Easy Pod. I'll see you back here next Sunday.

• 1:27:10Speaker 04

  I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together.

• 1:27:18Speaker 05

  We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.

• 1:27:22Speaker 04

  I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?

• 1:27:24Speaker 05

  There were thirty two thousand pounds of them.

• 1:27:27Speaker 04

  Thirty two thousand pounds of frozen dead rats.

• 1:27:33Speaker 04

  Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast, What It's Like to Be.

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