Your Last Meal With Rachel Belle

Bridget Everett’s last meal takes us to New Orleans’ second oldest restaurant, where Creole and Italian cooking collide into a cuisine called (you guessed it) Italian Creole! The owner of Pascal’s Manale, Dickie Brennan, joins the show to talk about the special menu and the restaurant’s long history.   Bridget performed her delightfully raunchy cabaret act for years before landing the lead role on HBO Max’s Somebody Somewhere (and she still performs it!), but she made a living working in restaurants. We talk about the highs and lows of her 30-year restaurant career, and when she was able to quit. And she tells host Rachel Belle how she learned to cook on national television.   Both Bridget and her character on Somebody Somewhere love ordering “French toast for the table” at The Chef, a diner in Manhattan, Kansas. Is French toast actually French? We learn its origin story from Max Miller, host of Tasting History.  Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV sho

This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from actor Jeff Hiller (Somebody Somewhere), author of the new memoir Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success.   Jeff talks about visiting the real-life cafes featured in Somebody Somewhere, what he thinks of the Swedish food he grew up eating and why he never ever throws a dinner party.  Listen to Jeff Hiller on Your Last Meal! Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle - Season 2 out now! Sign up for Rachel’s (free!) biweekly Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings! Follow along on Instagram! Order Rachel’s cookbook Open Sesame.  Support Cascade PBS: https://secure.cascadepublicmedia.org/page/133995/donate/1/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you fell in love with Jeff Hiller’s character Joel on Somebody, Somewhere (he was just nominated for his first Emmy for his performance!), you’ll want to pick up his new memoir, Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success.  Jeff tells host Rachel Belle how he got his big break, his first role on a TV show at age 45 after 20 years of auditions, and why his childhood ambitions of becoming a pastor were dashed.   Jeff loves eating in restaurants; he’d eat out every night if his husband would let him. So Tan Vinh, one of The Seattle Times’ food writers and critics, joins the show to talk about what it’s really like to eat at restaurants for a living. What does three dinners a night do to the body? What does Tan eat and drink on his days off? What does he do with the endless leftovers? Listen in to find out!   Then Jeff Hiller shares two options for his last meal: one for the little angel perched on his shoulder and one for the littl

This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter and pianist Regina Spektor!  Regina grew up in the Soviet Union, moving to the United States when she was 10, and many of her eating experiences are colored by her young life in Russia — including the desserts she likes! Regina tells host Rachel Belle which foods she’d choose over a birthday cake, why she woke up at 3 a.m. to house a container of chopped liver (when she was a vegetarian!) and her thoughts on karaoke.  Listen to Regina Spektor's full Your Last Meal episode from last week! Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle -- Season 2 is out now! Sign up for Rachel’s (free!) bi-weekly Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings! Follow along on Instagram! Order Rachel’s cookbook Open Sesame.  Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter and pianist Regina Spektor grew up in Soviet Russia, so when she moved to the Bronx with her family in 1990, American food was a bit of a culture shock. Cereal! Oranges! Chocolate pudding cups! It was all brand-new! Regina shares a handful of her family’s immigration eating stories.   When in doubt, order the soup! That’s what Regina does. She tells host Rachel Belle about her (nearly) lifelong love of soup, what caused her to rebel against it in high school and why the simplest of broths would be her last meal.   Cookbook author Caroline Wright never set out to have a career in soup, but a terminal cancer diagnosis resulted in a soup club, two vegan soup cookbooks and the title of Seattle Soup Lady. She tells Rachel her story.   Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season 2 out now! Sign up for Rachel’s new (free!) Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings! Follow along on Instagram! Order

This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from Dave Barry, award-winning humorist, columnist and author.   Dave tells host Rachel Belle about the all-author band he’s been in for 30 years (that includes Stephen King!), what food he finds the funniest and why he hates lightning rounds (the entire episode is a lightning round!)   Listen to Dave’s Your Last Meal episode from last week!  Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season 2 out now! Sign up for Rachel’s new (free!) Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings! Follow along on Instagram! Order Rachel’s cookbook Open Sesame.  Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dave Barry wrote a nationally syndicated, Pulitzer Prize-winning column that appeared in 500 newspapers from 1983 to 2005 and has published dozens of books. His newest is his very first memoir: Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass. How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up.  Case in point: Dave really loves ketchup! He’s also very opinionated about it: where he stores it and what vessel it is delivered in. Spoiler alert: He keeps his ketchup on the counter. Food safety expert Angela Anandappa, executive director of Alliance for Advanced Sanitation, joins the show to tell us which condiments belong in the fridge and which are fine hanging out in the pantry. Plus, host Rachel Belle admits which condiment she’s had in the pantry for 10 years ... and still uses!  Dave, a seafood despiser, tells us what he did with the live Maine lobster mailed to him as a gift; what his family, a group of fruitcake despisers, did with gifted fruitcake; and Dave and Rachel conclude that the be

This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from Molly Yeh, star of Girl Meets Farm on Food Network & bestselling cookbook author. Her latest is a book of desserts called Sweet Farm.  Molly bakes beautiful cakes for everybody’s birthdays, but what treat does she request when celebrating her own? I'll bet you a thousand brownies that you’ll never guess! Molly says there is one kitchen tool that will vastly improve your bakes, something all professionals use, but which many home bakers still haven’t come around to. And she tells host Rachel Belle what inspired her to open a cafe and bakery in East Grand Forks, Minnesota, while already managing a successful TV and book writing career.   Listen to last week's Your Last Meal episode with Molly Yeh! Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season 2 out now!Sign up for Rachel’s new (free!) Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings! Follow along on Instagram! Order Rachel’s cook

Molly Yeh is the Emmy- and James Beard Award-nominated star of Girl Meets Farm on the Food Network; owner of Bernie’s, a bakery and cafe in East Grand Forks, Minnesota; and a bestselling cookbook author. Her new cookbook is Sweet Farm, 100 dessert recipes that feature oh-so-Molly flavors like tahini, marzipan, hawaij and halva, plus a whole chapter devoted to Midwestern cookie salads! Molly tells host Rachel Belle how her relationship to sprinkles has changed as she’s gotten older; how she, a Juilliard graduate with a degree in percussion, ended up living on a sugar-beet farm on the Minnesota/North Dakota border; what a cookie salad is; and her secret to being an excellent baker. Molly bakes beautiful, buttery, super-moist cakes, sometimes testing a recipe more than 30 times to get it right. All that cake talk got Rachel thinking about Cake Picnic, an event in March that went super-viral, where home bakers brought and devoured nearly 1,400 cakes in a San Francisco park! Rachel welcomes Cake Picnic

This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from Prabal Gurung, celebrated fashion designer and author of the new memoir Walk Like a Girl.  Prabal has made a habit of ordering a cheeseburger and fries in every city he visits – he tells host Rachel Belle who makes the best burger in the world. He recalls the magical celebrity sighting he had the first time he went to a restaurant in New York City after moving there from Nepal, and he talks about what he would pack to eat on weeks-long treks in the Nepalese mountains.  Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season 2 out now!  Sign up for Rachel’s new (free!) Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings!  Follow along on Instagram!  Order Rachel’s cookbook Open Sesame. Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Prabal Gurung’s new memoir, Walk Like a Girl, tells his life story: how he went from being a bullied queer boy in Nepal who was always an outsider to starting his own label in New York City, designing gowns for First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Kamala Harris and Oprah Winfrey.  Prabal says he loves all kinds of food, but he is OBSESSED with momos, the steamed dumplings from his home country. He tells host Rachel Belle why they're so special to him and which A-list celebrity asked him to take her out for her first momo, when none of his friends or dates seemed interested.   From a $2,300 Chopova Lowena Hellmann’s mayo purse to T-shirts featuring images of tinned anchovies to major fashion houses that open restaurants, food and fashion are currently intersecting in a major way. A few experts join the show to talk about the psychology of why brands are featuring edible images; how a tomato purse reflects our country’s current culture and economy; and why we’re so eager t

This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from W. Kamau Bell, Emmy- and Peabody-nominated TV host, comedian, filmmaker and best-selling author.   Kamau tells host Rachel Belle about the delightfully different flavor of attention that came with winning Celebrity Jeopardy; how rare it is to find his favorite kind of burrito in California’s Bay Area, a region famous for burritos; and how losing a family member means he’ll never taste his favorite birthday cake again.  Listen to last week's episode of Your Last Meal with W. Kamau Bell! Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season 2 out now! Sign up for Rachel’s new (free!) Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings! Follow along on Instagram! Order Rachel’s cookbook Open Sesame.Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kamau Bell has a long and impressive resume, including hosting seven seasons of the CNN docuseries United Shades of America, winning a Peabody Award for We Need to Talk About Cosby, and winning the third season of Celebrity Jeopardy, and he’s about to take off on his “Who’s With Me” standup tour. Kamau wore a T-shirt on TV that read, “Not All Macaroni and Cheeses are Created Equal,” a political message and “insider Black conversation” that he explains to host Rachel Belle. We’ll also learn the true history of mac & cheese in America, a narrative that took 200 years to uncover, with James Beard Award-winning food historian Michael W. Twitty and Gayle Jessup White, a descendant of both Thomas Jefferson and James Hemmings, the enslaved head chef of Jefferson’s Monticello kitchen.  Kamau tells host Rachel Belle about his experience traveling to Kenya with Anthony Bourdain, where his unadventurous eating tendencies were seriously challenged,

This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from musician and actor Sharon Van Etten, who is on the road touring her new album now!  An educated wine lover, Sharon tells host Rachel Belle which bottle best represents her personality and which countries are often left out of the conversation when we talk about fantastic wines. Nicknamed “Snacks” by her bandmates, she reveals what she loves to nibble on when she’s on a road trip, on an airplane, hanging with her son or late at night, starving after performing a show.   Listen to Sharon on last week’s episode of Your Last Meal.  Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season 2 out now! Sign up for Rachel's new (free!) Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings! Follow along on Instagram! Order Rachel’s cookbook Open Sesame.Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sharon Van Etten is on the road now touring her seventh album, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory. But as much as she loves writing and performing music, she has considered a couple different career paths: therapist and sommelier! Sharon’s love of wine started in high school, when she was an exchange student living with a family in Spain. So host Rachel Belle interviews the founders of Open That Bottle Night, a couple of former Wall Street Journal wine writers who created an annual holiday to encourage people to open the special bottles of wine that no occasion seemed to be special enough for.   Sharon says she doesn’t like to cook when she’s in a bad mood because the food always ends up tasting bad. Rachel calls up cognitive neurologist Dr Rachel Herz, author of Why You Eat What You Eat, who says food actually does taste different when you’re sad, angry, depressed or happy.   Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season 2 out no

This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from Tony-, Emmy- and Grammy-nominated singer and actor Josh Groban.   Josh is getting ready for a string of shows in Las Vegas, so host Rachel Belle presents him with the most ridiculous, over-the-top, calorie-packed dishes she could find on Vegas menus (obviously Guy Fieri is involved) and asks him to pick which ones he'd eat.   Josh and Rachel bond over a childhood love of New Kids on the Block, and he admits to loving a very trendy Los Angeles treat from a very trendy Los Angeles market (that he is still a little embarrassed to order).  Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season 2 out now! Sign up for Rachel's new (free!) Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings! Follow along on Instagram! Order Rachel’s cookbook Open Sesame.Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is Josh Groban’s best song about baked beans?  Two foods Josh Groban’s dad turned him onto as a child: pickled and smoked fish and baked beans. So when Bush’s asked Josh to write them a commercial jingle, he took it a step further and composed a semi-autographical baked-bean power ballad! He tells host Rachel Belle the whole story.   Josh learned to cook during the pandemic and developed a soft spot for ugly, misshapen farm produce. So Seattle chef Becky Selengut joins the show to talk about her cookbook Misunderstood Vegetables. Becky wrote it after countless encounters with folks at farmers markets and the grocery store who didn’t know what to do with produce like rutabaga, celery root and burdock.  And Josh shares his last meal, a combination of a favorite childhood treat and a hearty British dinner he fell in love with when he started dating his English girlfriend.   Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season 2 out now! Sig

This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from Danielle Chang, host of Lucky Chow on PBS. And Rachel Belle takes a very special field trip to Seattle’s Mixed Pantry, a beautifully curated specialty foods shop that exclusively sells Asian and Asian American-made products.   On last week’s episode of Your Last Meal, Danielle told Rachel she never goes anywhere without a little vial of high-quality soy sauce in her purse.  So Rachel popped into Mixed Pantry for a soy sauce tasting, a fun activity open to anyone who visits. The shop sells soy sauces from several countries, but the tasting centers around the five standard types of Japanese shoyu, owner Tak Kunimune’s specialty. You’ll learn the difference between mainstream commercial soy sauces and traditional barrel-aged ones; how Kikkoman came to be America’s go-to soy sauce; and Tak’s tips on what to cook with each one.   Then, a lightning round with Danielle Chang! She shares her favorite Chinatown

PBS's "Lucky Chow" host, Danielle Chang, has been using food as a tool to promote diversity since her family immigrated from Taiwan to Texas when she was 5, and she eventually turned it into a career! Danielle tells host Rachel Belle which condiment she always keeps in her bag and Your Last Meal listeners call in to confess what flavor enhancers they have sneaked into restaurants, movie theaters and doughnut shops over the years. First Beyoncé sang about having hot sauce in her bag, then Hillary Clinton talked about her spicy stash on the campaign trail. But Emmy-nominated journalist Myra Flynn says the habit of toting hot sauce started out of necessity with enslaved Americans. Season Seven of Lucky Chow premieres May 1 on PBS! Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle (Season 2 starts April 3!)! Sign up for Rachel's new (free!) Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings! Follow along on Instagram! Order Rachel’s cookbook Open Sesame.Support the show: http://rach

This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from China Forbes and Timothy Nishimoto from Pink Martini! The Portland, Oregon-based band is taking off on tour this week to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Get tickets here! China and Timothy reveal their perfect birthday cakes, the countries they most enjoy eating in when they’re traveling the world, and what foods they can’t wait to eat when they get back home. Listen to last week’s Your Last Meal episode with Pink Martini! Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season Two premieres today!  Sign up for Rachel's new (free!) Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings, coming April 2025! Follow along on Instagram! Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Order Rachel’s new cookbook Open Sesame.Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.