Good Food

KCRW

Everything you wanted to know about good cooking and good eating from LA chef, author, radio host and restaurateur Evan Kleiman.

  • 49 minutes 7 seconds
    The best pancakes in LA

    A breakfast odyssey begins. 

    • Food & Wine contributing editor Khushbu Shah shares where to grab the best stack of pancakes in Los Angeles.
    •  Hetty Lui McKinnon puts salad at the center of the table for intimate gatherings. 
    • Molecular biologist Nik Sharma tests taste buds with Sichuan peppercorns.
    • Golden Delicious apples come to the Mar Vista Farmers Market.

    Connect with Good Food host Evan Kleiman on Substack.

     

    12 December 2025, 3:00 pm
  • 59 minutes 44 seconds
    Go global with your holiday baking

    Fire up the oven and get creative with your holiday baking. 

    • Kat Lieu offers 108 Asian cookie recipes that you can bring to your next cookie exchange.

    • Maureen Abood unlocks memories as she finds inspiration in the Lebanese bakeries of Dearborn, Michigan.

    • An American baker living in Berlin, Laurel Kratochvila dips into the Polish canon with black breads, bagels, sour rye breads studded with caraway, and challah. 

    • Jūrgen Krauss, everyone's favorite trombone-playing Great British Bake Off contestant, prepares for the holidays with traditional German Christmas treats.

    • LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison visits Sora Craft Kitchen, a Turkish restaurant in DTLA.

    Connect with Good Food host Evan Kleiman on Substack.

    5 December 2025, 3:00 pm
  • 59 minutes 45 seconds
    The Best Cookbooks of 2025

    It's a cookbook bonanza!

    • Celia Sack of Omnivore Books on Food shares a roundup of the year's best cookbooks, including graphic novel memoirs and one of the only Cambodian cookbooks written in English.

    • Bee Wilson explores how quotidian kitchen items become powerful symbols, representing friendship, grief, love, superstition, safety, and even political resistance.

    • Design curator and writer Corinne Mynatt became fascinated with culinary objects she found at flea markets and began researching their history and function.

    • New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi follows a Haviland china set that has graced the table of five generations of women.

    Connect with Good Food host Evan Kleiman on Substack.

     

    28 November 2025, 3:00 pm
  • 59 minutes 50 seconds
    A fabulous Thanksgiving potluck with Good Food's chosen family

    All the best food with people you actually like? We're in!

    • We kickstart Thanksgiving with Nashville chef Arnold Myint, author of Family Thai, who joins Evan Kleiman to co-host a special Thanksgiving episode about chosen family.
    • Although Minneapolis chef Yia Vang cooks Hmong food that's rooted in his family's refugee story, he treats tradition as something living and adaptable.
    • Atlanta chef Deborah VanTrece, who has been transforming narratives about soul food, brings us a bunch of killer sides.
    • Bar expert and cocktail consultant John deBary has just the thing for keeping your holiday libations fun, festive, and nonalcoholic.
    • What better way to complete the Thanksgiving meal than a few unapologetically sweet desserts from pastry chef Justin Burke?

    Connect with Good Food host Evan Kleiman on Substack

    21 November 2025, 3:00 pm
  • 59 minutes 40 seconds
    Surveying "sushi row" and its spectacular seafood

    Raw fish reaches its apex on a stretch of Ventura Blvd. that's home to the highest concentration of sushi restaurants in the US. 

    Brant Cox of The Infatuation surveys the sushi restaurants of Ventura Boulevard.

    • Chef and TV host Andrew Zimmern imparts lessons from his time on the water to set up home cooks for seafood success.
    • Ixta Belfrage creates recipes that embrace her multicultural lens and Brazil's layered cuisine.
    • For nearly two decades Aldo Sohm has poured wine at Le Bernardin in New York City, creating harmony between what's in the glass and on the plate.
    • Chef Michael Fiorelli of Fiorelli Pizza pairs Brussels sprouts with persimmons and pomegranates in a salad that screams autumn.

    Connect with Good Food host Evan Kleiman on Substack.

     

    14 November 2025, 3:00 pm
  • 59 minutes 43 seconds
    Instant ramen gets a gourmet upgrade

    Pull out that package of ramen and get ready to dress it up!

    • Instant ramen is most frequently associated with tired clichés about quick dorm room eats but Peter J. Kim wants us to rethink the dried noodles.
    • Beloved baker Dorie Greenspan takes the cake in a new collection of recipes.
    • LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison pays a visit to Cafe 2001.
    • Fighting our food confusion with science, journalist Julia Belluz and scientist Dr. Kevin Hall attempt to answer, "Why do we eat the way we eat?"
    • Chef Harry Posner of Tomat explores farmers market pomegranates.

    Connect with Good Food host Evan Kleiman on Substack.

    7 November 2025, 3:00 pm
  • 59 minutes 44 seconds
    Taking stock of food culture with Ruby Tandoh

    Exploring African flavors, Japanese fermentation, and a Paris farmers market.

    • Ruby Tandoh traces how our culinary tastes have transformed in our 24/7 food obsession.
    • Yasmin Khan manages stew recipes without meat.
    • Kenji Morimoto was tasked with making pickles in his family's kitchen and that assignment blossomed into a love of fermentation and putting his DIY projects to use.
    • Born in a refugee camp in Somalia, Meymuna Hussein-Cattan ended up launching a celebrated refugee aid organization as well Flavors from Afar, which earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand.
    • For the Market Report, Gillian Ferguson heads to Paris where she catches up with chef David Lebovitz at the Marche d'Aligre.

    Connect with Good Food host Evan Kleiman on Substack.

    31 October 2025, 2:00 pm
  • 59 minutes 36 seconds
    Spooky Halloween recipes from Elvira and your local cemetery

    Hosting a Halloween party, veganizing Korean cuisine at home, and the horrors of labor throughout the food system:

    • Elvira, Mistress of the Dark AKA Cassandra Peterson IRL dons her towering black beehive and blood-red lipstick for a collection of hair-raising recipes just in time for Halloween.
    • When we last talked to her, three years ago, Rosie Grant had already gone TikTok viral for prowling cemeteries to find the tastiest gravestone recipes. Now, she has an entire book devoted to these dishes as well as interviews with the families of the dearly departed.
    • Joanne Lee Molinaro AKA the Korean Vegan shares her love of tofu and a recipe for a Kimchi Queso Mac and Cheese in her newest cookbook.
    •  Underpaid, undervalued, and unsafe — that’s the trifecta of problems plaguing food system workers, according to Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa M. Mares, who chronicle labor across our food chain.
    • Memo Torres delivers an update on the fallout of ICE raids in the hospitality industry.

    Connect with Good Food host Evan Kleiman on Substack.

     

    24 October 2025, 2:00 pm
  • 59 minutes 43 seconds
    A Diwali recipe to celebrate the Hindu festival of lights

    Celebrating Diwali, Thai roots meet Nashville soul, a soju party, yaupon as a potential coffee alternative, and green satsumas:

    • Khushbu Shah shares how she celebrated Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, growing up in the Midwest, and this year's plans.
    • Chef Arnold Myint, who grew up at his family’s beloved International Market & Restaurant, which introduced Thai food to Nashville, has a new book, Family Thai, that's both a primer on Thai cooking and a tribute to the flavors he inherited from his mother.
    • At Orion Bar in Brooklyn, Irene Yoo and her husband, Nick, get playful with soju and upend Korean alcohol traditions.
    • How expensive does coffee need to get before we start looking for alternatives?
    • Writer KC Hysmith considers yaupon, the only caffeinated plant grown in North America, for its potential as a coffee alternative.
    • Chef Miles Thompson shops for green satsumas at the farmers market.

    Connect with Good Food host Evan Kleiman on Substack.

    17 October 2025, 2:00 pm
  • 59 minutes 36 seconds
    Samin Nosrat Makes Good Things Better

    Samin Nosrat discovers "Good Things"; a bar devoted to women's sports; winter squash at the farmers market.

    Connect with Good Food host Evan Kleiman on Substack.

    10 October 2025, 2:00 pm
  • 59 minutes 42 seconds
    Fixing our broken food system and the glory of tacos

    How do you fix a food system that isn't simply broken but has been captured, top to bottom, in the name of profit?

    Connect with Good Food host Evan Kleiman on Substack.

     

    3 October 2025, 2:00 pm
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