Matt Rodbard

Matt Rodbard (MR) is a longtime WITI reader and has a great new book that comes out Tuesday: Food IQ: 100 Questions, Answers, and Recipes to Raise Your Cooking Smarts. Go buy it! He put a lot of time and energy into this and we’re very happy to have him on the page today. -Colin (CJN)Tell us about yourself.Hi, I’m Matt Rodbard. I was born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan and lived in New York City for 19 years—Carroll Gardens for 16. I’m currently living in Orange County, NY (the new, possibly better, O.C.), and I really dig it. I’m the editor-in-chief and founder of TASTE, an online food and culture magazine that just celebrated five years of publishing. I’m also the co-author of Koreatown: A Cookbook (with my buddy chef Deuki Hong) and the brand-new Food IQ: 100 Questions, Answer, and Recipes to Raise Your Cooking Smarts (with my other buddy chef Daniel Holzman). I also co-host the TASTE Podcast with my wonderful colleague Anna Hezel. At the beginning of my career, I worked in television and magazines, and I currently write, though less frequently, for places like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bon Appetit, and music magazines in a former life. I’m also currently working on a follow-up to Koreatown, Koreaworld, with Deuki and the amazing photographer Alex Lau. That will be out in 2024. Describe your media diet.I’ve been an editor consistently since college (shout out to the Badger Herald), so staying in touch with the game isn’t just a pastime but part of the job. I love it so much. My morning starts with newsletters, podcasts, and on the weekends, something involving dead trees. For newsletters, I religiously read anything Craig Mod and Kara Swisher writes, WITI (obvs, and thank you), The Ankler, The Small Bow, The Monocle Weekend Edition (mainly salty Andrew Tuck on Saturdays and spicy Tyler Brûlé on Sundays), and the New York Times The Morning and Theater Update.   I wrote a long story on TASTE about how the future of food media is in your inbox, and am still pretty good with the take. For food, I subscribe and regularly read Vittles, Alison Roman’s A Newsletter, Family Meal, Alicia Kennedy, Ruth Reichl's La Briffe, NYT Cooking (special shoutout to Tejal Rao’s The Veggie), Five Things I Ate, Snack Cart, David Lebovitz, L.A. Taco, Eat Voraciously, and Stained Pages News. For podcasts, I’m religious about Pivot. Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher are chocolate and peanut butter (to quote Galloway). So good. I’ve been properly sucked into the Ringer podcast multiverse, and I thoroughly enjoy The Watch and The Big Picture. I’m not a screenwriter, but I really love the Hollywood (with a conscious) vibe of Scriptnotes. How Long Gone my god, get Chris and Jason a TV show already? (Ed: Shout out friends of WITI Chris and TJ) I’ll drop most things for a new Acquired episode and will drop all things for the unfolding Dead Eyes saga.Hosting a food-adjacent podcast sorta takes me out of the food podcast consuming game, but I’ve always enjoyed Evan Kleiman on Good Food, Francis Lam on Splendid Table, Dan Pashman on Sporkful, David Chang and Chris Ying together on mic on the David Chang Show, and the duo on A Hog Dog Is a Sandwich.Print! I read the print New York Times on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and New York Magazine on all platforms. I let my Racquet sub slide, which was a mistake. BA, Food and Wine, Milk Street. They all come and I enjoy them all. Lastly, music is always at the center of my world and I am a pretty loyal NTS listener and subscriber. Moxie is a Wednesday morning treat and Mishka and I return to this 2020 XTC special often. XTC is the second greatest band in the world (see below for the greatest). While working I stream Long Beach’s KJAZZ and France’s FIP Jazz pretty much nonstop. In the car, it is WFMU (shoutout to the Rockland County tower), WAMC, and Richard Blade on Sirius XM First Wave. What’s the last great book you read?I’m a pretty big Gary Shteyngart stan and enjoyed My Country Friends. He really nails 2020/21 Hudson Valley life, which we talked a bit about when he joined me on the TASTE Podcast recently. I also really have enjoyed picking up, putting down, and picking up Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris. Nichols's early Chicago days are so interesting. My wife is a pretty big Hanya head and picked up To Paradise at our local bookstore. A Little Life has been beckoning for years, so I’m planning on reading both of those. Aren’t we always planning to read?What are you reading now?I should have read Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke in one sitting but I got distracted and regret only going halfway. I plan to restart soon. I’ve really enjoyed two books by Korean author Han Kang (The Vegetarian and Human Acts) and I’ve just started her latest The White Book. To me, Human Acts is one of the greatly overlooked books in a long time, as is the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, the under-reported (at least in the west), and devastating student massacre in which the book is based.What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication? An editor is always going to editor, so I look at the bylines for familiar names. Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?People familiar with food media will know this, but New York Times reporter Eric Kim has such a cool and honest approach to his essay writing. Yes, his recipes are pretty genius, but I respect Eric’s observations and writing style even more than his microwaved steamed egg recipe. His debut cookbook is dropping in March. And I have to call out Craig Mod. His recent walk 10-city, 30-day walk across Japan was part journalism, part ethnography, part performance/endurance art piece and was absolutely captivating. To summarize, Mod has lived in Japan for 20+ years and is a walker, writer, photographer, and kind soul. A few times a year, and supported by his Special Projects members, he goes on a walk and writes a daily journal. I’ve followed a couple and they were pretty cool for sure, but this past one was The Leap (sports reference). Starting in Hokkaido and heading to rusty Sakata, magical Matsumoto, across the Seto Naikai inland sea, and capturing many surprises along the way, the daily writing had urgency at times, and quiet banality at others. Mod's voice is so crystal clear, and his daily deadline writing on this trip was a real masterclass on how to keep your newsletter subscribers engaged and opening.  What’s the best nonfamous app on your phone?Can we just give it up for BestParking. I never really owned a car while living in NYC, but now make trips often and find the weirdest little garages to park for cheap.Plane or train? I grew up in the Midwest and was fortunate to have parents who believed that road trips build character, so I’ve seen a lot of this fine country from four wheels. You haven’t lived as a 12-year-old until you point your Plymouth Voyager towards Wall, South Dakota and start driving. This is to say that planes and airports are my favorite. Even the little pouches of Sabra.What is one place everyone should visit? There’s only one answer to this question, and the answer is Korea. I’ve visited many times over the years while working on Koreatown and other projects, and was really, really lucky to get a quarantine waiver and visit this past fall—just before Omicron shut things down once again. I wrote about a new wave of Korean temple chefs, and visited temples in Jeolla Province and north of Seoul. The country expresses itself in multitudes, blending deep traditions with the most modern concept of good living that one can imagine. This trip I got to spend some quality time in Seongsu and revisit the ever-transforming Itaewon. The coffee culture is out of control good. There are more high-quality roasters and cafes in one neighborhood, say Dohwah, than in entire American cities. With Koreaworld, we hope to capture the energy of Korean urbanism—where food and drink is really placed at the center of life in the coolest way.Tell us a story of a rabbit home you feel deep into.     I love the Canadian band Sloan in a very special way. They really are the greatest band in the world, as the fine dudes who present the Sloancast podcast cite often. The band just dropped a rare 2000 performance from their Between the Bridges era and debuted it via Sidedoor—with a nerdy fan chat with the band during the stream. This took me down a crazy Sloan YouTube rabbit hole in search of any clips from what I would call their best NYC performance in the past 20 years, a loud and wild set at Southpaw in Park Slope (RIP) on May 11, 2007. I could only find one thing that wasn’t great. Any Sloan fans can hit me up and I’d be very grateful. (MR) --WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.Design for sustainability. The "great cleanup" is underway across industries, and the quest for a sustainable future requires actions on many fronts, including a crucial aspect: design. Up to four-fifths of a product’s lifetime emissions are determined by decisions made at the design stage. Here’s what you need to know about green product development, R&D, and design for sustainability.——Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Matt (MR) —Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Monday Media Diet with Matt Rodbard

Matt Rodbard (MR) is the founding editor in chief of TASTE and the author of Food IQ and Koreatown: A Cookbook. He’s also the host of the TASTE Podcast, a feed of lively conversations about food and culture.Matt here. Like Amber Finlay, I was recently in Seoul for work—I was traveling around Korea for a couple weeks, reporting and shooting a new book, Koreaworld, which I will release with Clarkson Potter in 2024. This was my sixth trip to Korea, and I’m always struck by how quickly food and drink trends tend to latch on—and they turn over just as quickly. Just a decade ago, you couldn’t find a quality sourdough miche or pain au chocolat anywhere (at least as an outsider). Today, the streets around Seongsu or Apgujeong are perfumed by the smells of toasted pastry butter, and you are as likely to stumble upon a decent kouign-amann as you are a tray of kimbap. But it’s coffee—house-roasted, properly extracted, and expertly served—that Korea has gone mad for. WITI Classifieds:We are experimenting with running some weekly classifieds in WITI. If you’re interested in running an ad, you can purchase one through this form. If you buy this week, we’ll throw an extra week in for free on any ad. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop a line.Royal Braun connects cutting edge companies with key creative talent. Meet Royal BraunCoaching for creative professionals who want deeper personal insight, a conviction in their work, and to make waves in the art world. Subscribe to MissionNudge, get customer insights with ease. Try NudgeIn Seoul, a city of nearly ten million, there’s a third-wave-looking shop or roaster café around basically every corner, and the third-wave coffee shop “starter kit” is being followed to a T—the right Mahlkönig grinder, V60 drip station, and La Marzocco espresso machine can be spotted in most of these places. And echoing Amber’s take on Seoul retail, the innovation of space and layout is beyond extra—the playful and adventurous design of these cafés left me standing in the doorway and staring, drawn to buying yet another cortado or iced Einspänner. Is the coffee “good” in Seoul? Jeez, it’s hard to say. It’s all over the board, similar a bit to Tokyo and Paris—two emerging coffee cities. During my recent trip, some house-roasted coffees were done with the greatest care (the lightest touch), and the perfectly pulled espressos were sourced from a single-origin in Guatemala or Guji. Other times, the most stunning Brutalist-inspired “aesthetic” shop served something far less satisfying. But overall, and from my small sample size, the coffee scene in Seoul is one of the most swiftly advancing in the world.Why is this interesting?Here are a few of the places that caught my eye on this trip. Shouts to two coffee professionals who have guided me over the years: Matthew Jung-Quillen (SEY, Mavam Espresso) and Henry Park (Fritz Coffee Company). They are great follows.Fritz Coffee CompanyBy all accounts one of Korea’s most well-regarded brands, Fritz Coffee Company was launched in 2014. You can buy bags with the iconic fur seal imagery and bold Hangul typeface at great coffee retail places like Dayglow and Drip in the United States. I’ve visited the Dohwa location in Seoul many times and sipped amazing African pourovers in the walled courtyard. (They will sell you a ₩25,000 (around $20) geisha coffee as well). The bakery and merch game is extremely strong too. A Fritz cupping spoon, glass, or calendar is a must for all coffee heads. Mesh CoffeeMesh is another establishment coffee company that’s been operating since 2015. I visited the tiny street-level shop in Seoul Forest several times during my recent visit, and the shop is as serious as it gets, selling auction-lot coffees in 100g bags and hand-brewing V60s. There are only a few seats inside, but you can sit on an available Club-Mate crate on the street. Like many cafés in Seoul, the menu is broken down into espresso (blends and single-origins), hand-brew, and “white”—local parlance for the milk-based espresso drinks we all know and love. I picked up several of the cute hand-stamped bags to bring home for friends. Once back in the United States, I brewed it on Chemex (16:1 if you are asking), and the roasting was extremely light—good but light. Bill Withers, on vinyl, was constantly playing during my three visits too. Nice.CO:LUMNI’ve found myself in Seongsu a lot over the past couple years, and it seems coffee has become one of the neighborhood’s draws—most of my remaining spots are all located within a short walk of one another. CO:LUMN, housed in a former rice mill and warehouse, is a conceptual gallery, bakery, and roaster, and it’s massive, with several working wood-burning stoves and rotating large-format art installations, all revealed only after walking through large wooden doors. The coffee is really interesting, sourced primarily from top-tier Ethiopian farm Gesha Village (who I visited in Addis Ababa for a story in TASTE). I love their coffees, and I was happy to find several available—all roasted with a very light touch. Pourovers run ₩15,000 (about $12). Don’t sleep on the homemade strawberry milk either. Also, I took Amber’s advice and checked out the Ader Error flagship store down the street. Whoa! Next-level experiential retail. And they were so nice! LowkeyAnother establishment roaster, Lowkey was founded in 2010, and on my visit, I found them using this amazing vintage Japanese coffeeware for pourovers. Like the great Fuglen in Tokyo, the café’s design approach here is mid-century Scandinavian—with the best triangular tables I’ve seen. The house-roasted coffee is very good, and I want to say this: customers working on laptops on those tables had a cool way with the world that weekday afternoon.Tongue Planet I just have to give respect to this café located above the Ader Error store. The coffee is really good. The cakes, though—whoa. Matt CafeI tried to buy a coffee mug from Matt Cafe, the shop located on the ground floor of the La Marzocco Seoul headquarters and training studio in Gangnam. I asked the barista if I could purchase the mug. They asked if I was “friends with Matt,” and, deciding not to fib, I said no, but I confirmed that I, too, was a Matt. No dice. The point is, the cold espresso tonic is bonkers good. Outrageously delicious. The best cold coffee drink I’ve had in a long time. I’m still trying to re-create it for a recipe in Koreaworld. Very cold tonic, two shots of espresso, orange, and rosemary.  Club EspressoUp a steep hill or three in the semi-secluded and incredible Buam-dong neighborhood is the first really serious café I ever visited in Korea. Club Espresso was founded in 1990 and has been roasting high-quality coffee longer than American pioneers Intelligentsia, Stumptown, and Blue Bottle. In the beginning, espresso was the passion, but the operation has expanded a great deal to serve some of the city’s more creative cold coffee drinks—with plays on the affogato and the Iced Chocolano (chocolate, espresso, whipped cream).  —Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Matt (MR)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing.

Seoul Coffee Edition

Matt Rodbard (MR) is the founding editor in chief of TASTE and the author of Food IQ and Koreatown: A Cookbook. He’s also the host of the TASTE Podcast, a feed of lively conversations about food and culture. He’s written a past WITI about Coffee in Seoul.Matt here. A Good Used Book is a Los Angeles-based used and antiquarian book seller that operates a little differently than the dusty, coffee-perfumed shops of your town (every town, really). Founders Chris Capizzi and Jenny Yang engage mostly online, using Instagram to sell a large selection of vintage pocket paperbacks and edgier pulp fiction (The Prince, Animal Farm, a lot of Vonnegut—but also Murakami and the novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood show up). It’s no doubt a cool idea, though selling used books via traditional online platforms like Abe and Biblio, and more recent app shops like Depop, is nothing new. But it’s when A Good Used Book shows its face IRL that things get really good. After taking a winter hiatus (to buy books, perhaps), A Good Used Book’s weekend pop-up returned recently to P.F. Candle Co. in Echo Park.Why is this interesting?  There’s no doubt that literature is cool. Books rule. And the publishing industry? It’s getting more diverse, and cooler—just check out the red carpet from the 2022 National Book Awards. Fits and more fits. Yet the A Good Used Book Instagram Stories is different, and honestly feels a little bit like a 2am after-party. The idea is dead simple: in the style of “what’s in your bag?" at Amoeba or Tower (RIP), customers pose with their purchase—and are tagged for convenient DM drop-ins should you want to…talk Steinbeck with your new friend.What is striking is how the feed feels like a place to earn a little status, with Millennial and Gen Z LA living its best bro, queer, uptight, loose, nerdy, Bode selves—all framed around well-worn editions of Chekov, Freud, and maybe a copy of Rosecrans Baldwin's truly imaginative and quirky Everything Now that seems to have shown up a lot this weekend. There’s not much book talk going on here from what we can tell. And that’s OK! It doesn’t matter anyways. Books living their best lives on the digital high plains is one of the biggest stories of recent memory in publishing.  So called BookTok is really real, and while some may snipe at the inherently shallow nature of talking up literature in 60-second filtered bursts, it’s still getting readers to bookstores and libraries in a really big way. A Good Used Book’s IG feed is no different. The books may be older, and the Alo crop tops may be shorter, but like BookTok, it’s still a fresh way to think about the analog book. (MR)Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Matt (MR) —Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing.