Your Last Meal With Rachel Belle

Comedian and actor David Cross is best known for his roles as Tobias Fünke on Arrested Development and Mr Show, and he has a new podcast and comedy special out now! David says he grew up poor, hating a lot of the penny-pinching meals his family ate. But he still loves some of the foods he ate as a poor adult, when he was trying to make it as a stand-up comedian. We’ll learn the history of poutine with the owner of the Quebec restaurant that claims to have invented it. And a lifelong Québécois shares his very opinionated poutine hot takes with host Rachel Belle. Get tickets to see David at SFSketchfest January 19 & 20th 2024! Follow along on Instagram!Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Across the pond, in a country far, far away (um, England), Your Last Meal has a podcast cousin! On each episode of Desert Island Dishes, chef and host Margie Nomura asks her guests about the dishes that have shaped their lives, including the last dish they’d eat before being cast off to the desert island.   Host Rachel Belle was a guest on the show and this week we are bringing you that episode! After interviewing thousands of people in her career as a broadcast journalist, food and culture writer and podcast host, Rachel takes a break from asking questions and gets to answer some!  Rachel tells Margie about the food her family invented and sold in the 1980s, the most memorable dish from her childhood, how she got her start as a journalist and why “anticipation” will always be the most delicious ingredient.   Follow along on Instagram! Sign up for my free (or paid!) newsletter!Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Reggie Watts is the best kind of weirdo: a comedian, musician and beat-boxer who spent eight years as the house bandleader for The Late Late Show with James Corden. His new book, Great Falls, Montana, is a coming-of-age memoir that proves Reggie’s been cultivating his own brand of oddball humor since he was a teenager.    Reggie grew up with a French mom, eating escargot on special occasions, so we go deep into the fascinating world of heliciculture: snail farming! Only two people in the entire United States raise snails for food, and host Rachel Belle chats with them both. The farmers at Peconic Escargot on Long Island and Little Gray Farms escargots in Washington insist their fresh, thoughtfully raised snails are miles better than the canned stuff served in most restaurants.    Plus, Reggie explains what a “lefthanded latte” is and waxes poetic about monkfruit sweetener.    Follow along on Instagram! Sign up for my free (or paid!) newsletter!Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.comSee omnystudio.co

Welcome to the very first Your Last Meal Thanksgiving! We’re having a big Friendsgiving audio potluck, inviting past guests to contribute a dish to the holiday meal. Country music star Martina McBride is bringing the salad, actor Zosia Mamet defends marshmallow sweet potato casserole and opines on cranberry sauce, director Greta Gerwig shares her dad’s unusual stuffing recipe and Christopher Kimball is on pie duty.   There are also some new friends at the table. Food historian Ken Albala stops by to explain why we eat turkey on Thanksgiving, and comedian and musician Reggie Watts shares what his childhood Thanksgiving table looked like with a French mother.   Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lessons in Chemistry, an Apple TV+ show based on the bestselling book of the same name, is set in the early 1950s and centers around a young woman named Elizabeth Zott, played by Brie Larson. Elizabeth is a chemist and her entire life is consumed by her scientific curiosities. The only thing Elizabeth loves as much as chemistry is cooking because, well, cooking is chemistry!  The show features quite a bit of food, conceptualized, cooked and styled by the show’s food consultant, Courtney McBroom — chef, cookbook author and former culinary director at Milk Bar in New York City.  Host Rachel Belle sat down with Courtney to talk about a day–in–the life of her super-cool job on set; how many lasagnas she had to make for the show; and, of course, her last meal.  Get the recipes for dishes featured in the show! Follow along on Instagram! Subscribe to my newsletter! Get tickets to my Nov 14, 2023 Seattle LIVE show featuring special guest Amanda Knox! Paid newsletter subscribers & KCTS 9 members get a discount and

Andrew Rea is best known for his super-popular YouTube channel, Babish Culinary Universe, where 10 million subscribers tune in to watch him host cooking shows like Binging with Babish, where he recreates dishes from TV shows and movies.  The focus of his new (third!) cookbook, Basics with Babish, is cooking mistakes. He cheekily reveals every single mistake he’s made while attempting to cook each recipe, and gives readers advice on how to avoid them.  Lots of iconic food and drink, from potato chips to champagne, were allegedly created by mistake. In this episode we focus on the chimichanga, accidentally created in the 1950s at El Charro in Tucson, Arizona.  Is there a food you love so much you’d get it tattooed on your body? Andrew has a tattoo of one of the only foods he hates! He’ll tell his story, and then YLM listeners call in to share their tasty tattoo tales with host Rachel Belle.  Follow host Rachel Belle on Instagram!  Subscribe to my newsletter! Get tickets to my Nov 14, 2023 Seattle LIVE show feat

Comedian and writer Sarah Cooper rose to fame in the most modern of ways: through TikTok! Her viral videos, lip-syncing Donald Trump’s speeches during the pandemic, eventually landed her a Netflix show (Sarah Cooper: Everything Is Fine), and she just released a memoir called Foolish.  Before Sarah could pay the bills with comedy, she worked at Google, where employees are fed three incredibly delicious (free!) meals a day. Host Rachel Belle scored a rare, coveted interview with the director of Google’s food program, and we’ll take you behind the scenes of their 400 worldwide cafes.  Sarah is a Jamaican ... who doesn’t like Jamaican food! But what she does love is Girl Dinner, a viral TikTok trend that assigned a name to something we’ve all done: creating a casual meal-for-one out of the tastiest bits and bobs you can find in your fridge. Meet the creator of Girl Dinner and the writer who wrote about it in The New York Times. Get tickets to the YLM November 14, 2023 Seattle LIVE show, with special guest Amanda

Zarna Garg immigrated to the United States from India alone, at 16, without a penny to her name. Fast-forward to 2018: She’s a stay-at-home mom with three kids and bored out of her mind. At her children’s insistence, Zarna got on stage at an open-mic night. Five years later? She has her own comedy special on Amazon, “Zarna Garg: One in a Billion!” Zarna loves to top many of her meals with a big ol' pile of raw onions, but laments that Americans are sensitive to onion breath. I chat with a cognitive scientist who researched whether smell preference is cultural, personal taste or universally disliked among humans because of its chemical compounds. And we’ll learn the fairly modern history of masala chai with Indian-American food writer Leena Trivedi-Granier (click for her recipe)– just don’t call it chai tea! We’ll tell you why. Follow along on Instagram! Subscribe to my newsletter!Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ron Upshaw and Don O’Neill are longtime radio partners who spent decades moving around the country together, hosting all kinds of big-market radio shows. And YLM host Rachel Belle was a part of The Ron & Don Show on KIRO Radio for a decade! Ron and Don have worked together since they were teenagers, in all sorts of professions. What keeps two people working together for 40 years? We will discuss! Don adores cherry pie, so I chat with a 25-year-old entrepreneur from Traverse City, Michigan, who is trying to reclaim his hometown’s lost Guinness World Record by making the world’s largest cherry pie. And could you make it through a 50-course dinner? We’ll talk about the pros and cons of fancy tasting menus with food writer Charmaine Mok Listen to my other cherry pie episode featuring actor/comedian Jenny Slate & Warrant guitarist Joey Allen (who played on Cherry Pie!) Follow along on Instagram! Subscribe to my newsletter!Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for priv

If you've ever had a tomato sandwich, then you know this is the best time of the year! In honor of *tomato season* (and host Rachel Belle being on vacation) we are re-airing this episode from 2019. Iron & Wine sounds like a band but in fact there is just one man behind the music: a soft spoken, North Carolina singer-songwriter named Sam Beam, who unintentionally stumbled into a music career later in life. A true Southern boy, Sam wants a stack of tomato sandwiches for his last meal. Just ripe summer heirlooms, squishy white bread and mayonnaise. A simple summer snack so sacred in North Carolina, locals get riled up at the mere mention of adding bacon or lettuce. We called upon a couple North Carolina culinary queens to talk about the do's and dont's of the tomato sandwich: veteran food journalist Kathleen Purvis and chef, restaurateur and cookbook author, Vivian Howard. And sticking with the Southern theme, food historian Robert Moss joins the show to tell the true history of the boiled peanut.Lucky for u

After years of living in New York City and Los Angeles, the pandemic brought comedian Heather McMahan back to her hometown of Atlanta, where she’s livingin her childhood home with her husband and ... her mother! If it sounds like a sitcom, well, she’s working on that script right now. Atlanta is home to Buford Highway, an off-the-beaten-path culinary wonderland featuring 100 immigrant-owned restaurants, representing more than 20 countries. Atlanta-based Food & Wine senior writer Jennifer Zyman joins the show to share the history and highlights of Buford Highway, like Plaza Fiesta, a huge Mexican marketplace where you can taste the latest Mexican TikTok trends. And Heather and I chat about her huge, elaborate, Italian wedding cake  and the tradition of assembling it in front of guests at the reception. Follow along on Instagram Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mexico City native Pati Jinich made an unusual career change: from a political analyst at a Washington, D.C. think tank to a cooking teacher and, eventually, award-winning PBS host. For over a decade, she’s been sharing her love of Mexico and Mexican cooking with the masses through her shows Pati's Mexican Table and La Frontera. Pati is Mexican-Jewish, and grew up eating Mexican takes on classic Ashkenazi Jewish dishes. So after speaking with Jinich, host Rachel Belle also interviews the authors of the new book Kugels and Collards about another lesser-known mashup: Jewish South Carolina cooking! And in taco news: After 35 years, the phrase Taco Tuesday is finally free from a federal trademark! Rachel digs into the whole story. Follow host Rachel Belle on Instagram! Subscribe to Rachel's free newsletter so you can be the first to know about events, giveaways & content only available to subscribers! Support the show by becoming a paid subscribe www.yourlastmealpodcast.comSupport the show: http://rachelbelle

I interviewed Greta Gerwig back in 2017, when her film Lady Bird came out, and in honor of Barbie-mania, I am re-airing an edited version of my interview with the writer and director of the new 'Barbie' movie! Greta is a huge fan of Funfetti cake and insists the box of Pillsbury cake mix is best. So I invite Food Network host Molly Yeh (Girl Meets Farm) to talk about her homemade Funfetti, a cake that took a lot of trial and error, including testing with nine different types of sprinkles! Follow along on Instagram!Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Peppermint was the first out, trans contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race, the first trans woman to originate a principal role on Broadway and she stars in the new Netflix series “Survival of the Thickest!” And Peppermint … loves peppermint! Tea! Candy! All of it! So host Rachel Belle digs into the history of the ancient, zesty herb that has been mentioned everywhere from the bible, in Greek mythology and, far more recently, on your toothpaste tube. Follow host Rachel Belle on Instagram! Subscribe to Rachel's free newsletter so you can be the first to know about events, giveaways & content only available to subscribers! Support the show by becoming a paid subscriber. Thanks to our sponsor: Caraway Get 10% off your order with the code MEAL at checkout!Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bear Grylls is a survivalist, adventurist & host of soooo mannny TV shows, including the wildly popular Man VS Wild, Born Survivor and the new season of Running Wild With Bear Grylls: The Challenge, where celebs like Russell Brand and Bradley Cooper tag along on his extremely wild adventures. Bear tells host Rachel Belle about the nastiest foods he's eaten in the wild, why he no longer eats vegetables & what happened when he offered the president of Ukraine a bite of his chocolate bar. And we venture into territory we never imagined venturing into: drinking your own pee! Plus, if if you watch all the survivalist shows and dream of being dropped in the middle of no where with nothing but the clothes on your back – you can pay to have that experience! I chat with Cat Bigney, hunter gatherer instructor and ancestral skills specialist at the Boulder Outdoor Survival School.  Follow host Rachel Belle on Instagram! Subscribe to Rachel's free newsletter so you can be the first to know about events, giveaways

Canadian twin sisters and band mates, Tegan and Sara, have been touring the world, playing music together, since they graduated from high school in 1998. In honor of their new book, a semi-autobiographical graphic novel called Junior High, host Rachel Belle asks them, and the listeners, about their most memorable middle school foods and HOLY GUACAMOLE we were human garbage cans when we were 12! Plus, the history of the chicken nugget and why raccoons wash their food! Follow Rachel Belle on Instagram! Subscribe to Rachel's free newsletter so you can be the first to know about events, giveaways & content only available to subscribers! Support the show by becoming a paid subscriber. Thanks to our wonderful sponsors: Ooni Pizza Ovens!!! Caraway Get 10% off your order with the code MEAL at checkout!Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You may know Marc Summers as the host of Nickelodeon's Double Dare and Food Network's Unwrapped, but you may not know that he got his start as a magician and helped launch Guy Fieri's career! Marc joined host Rachel Belle on stage at Seattle's Crosscut Ideas Festival to talk about what the iconic Double Dare slime was made of, how he almost gave up show business to sell salmon, and why he decided to go public about his OCD in the late 90s. Follow Rachel Belle on Instagram! Subscribe to Rachel's free newsletter so you can be the first to know about events, giveaways & content only available to subscribers! Support the show by becoming a paid subscriber. Thanks to our wonderful sponsors: Ooni Pizza Ovens!!! Caraway Get 10% off your order with the code MEAL at checkout!Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's Bill Nye the Science Guy! Nye has spent decades using his special brand of high energy humor to educate folks about science, so obviously he can get real nerdy when it comes to the science of baking bread. Nye shares his precise recipe for the perfect baguette and then gets into a mini debate about cannibalism with host Rachel Belle (any guesses who is for and who is against??). Then Janine Marsh, editor of The Good Life France, and Steven Kaplan, world renowned expert on French bread, join the show to talk about how important the baguette is to the French, but also why French folks are eating and baking far less bread than ever before. Follow Rachel Belle on Instagram! Subscribe to Rachel's free newsletter so you can be the first to know about events, giveaways & content only available to subscribers! Support the show by becoming a paid subscriber. Thanks to our wonderful sponsors: Ooni Pizza Ovens!!! Safe Catch & Pure Cravings Get 15% off at checkout with code YOURLASTMEAL Boll & Branch Get

It's a pod swap! This week I'm bringing you an episode of Food with Mark Bittman and Mark is sharing an episode of Your Last Meal with his listeners. Mark Bittman is the prolific author of 30 cookbooks, he wrote about food for the New York Times for 30 years and he was once a guest on Your Last Meal! This week you'll hear his conversation with another prolific writer, one of America's favorite humor essayists, David Sedaris. Davis tells Mark about his Jello habit, what his dad used to wear (or, rather, didn't wear) to the family dinner table, and much more. Mark's podcast is delightful and I'm excited for you to have a listen! Follow Rachel Belle on Instagram! Subscribe to Rachel's free newsletter so you can be the first to know about events, giveaways & content only available to subscribers! Support the show by becoming a paid subscriber! Thanks to our sponsors: Ooni Pizza Ovens Safe Catch & Pure Cravings Get 15% off at checkout with code YOURLASTMEAL Copper River Salmon & Sena Sea Get 10% off at

Taylor Dayne blasted onto the pop/dance scene in 1987 with her first big single, “Tell It To My Heart,” and over the last 35 years she's released seventeen Top 20 singles, earned three grammy nominations and an American Music Award.  This Long Island girl loves her brunch, a meal that makes her nostalgic for the bagel and lox she shared with her family, as a kid, on Sunday mornings.  Did you know brunch has feminist roots? We explore that history + host Rachel Belle interviews the co-owner of one of her favorite places on Earth: Russ & Daughters, a 110 year old appetizing shop in NYC’s lower east side, famous for selling classic Jewish brunch items like bagels, lox and whitefish salad.  Get tickets to a LIVE taping of YLM podcast at Crosscut Festival May 5, 2023! Listeners get 50% off VIP Tickets (the taping is a VIP event) with the code FOOD at checkout! Follow Rachel Belle on Instagram! Subscribe to Rachel's free newsletter so you can be the first to know about events, giveaways & content only avail