Super Delicious: The Top Ramen of Podcasts

It started with a query: In the spirit of the politicization of everything, Abe-uhbee Goggles Levine and I have a burning, Super Delicious, important question: Are you cake, or are you pie? State your case. You must choose.  And it's become a debate for the ages.    Our two beloved hosts make their best stump speeches, with no crumbs of bashfulness or humility.  It's a fight to the crust.  Where will your fork land?

If you’ve ever wanted to know what it sounds like inside a real kitchen, not that “Chef’s Table,” prim and edited, version, here you go.  We take you inside Mecca’s dojo, where we traverse cultural terrain, navigate shared space, and take listener phone calls while preparing a (post-July 4th) take-home barbecue with Black and Chinese culinary leanings-cuz that's who we are!   #ChefsofColor #CulinaryCanvas #Surviving Costco #SpareRibs #MacN'Cheese

At this point in American history, the Aunt Jemima logo might be so pervasive as to be almost innocuous. And that's precisely the point.  Now that Quaker, now owned by PepsiCo, has finally self-reflected enough to decide to "retire" it's 131-year long legacy of an evolving yet uncannily ever-similar stereotype of a Black mammy logo/ mascot, we at Super Delicious are demanding something better.    We have a list of demands! Please listen, then engage on our Patreon page by signing our petition that implores PepsiCo to do better than burying shame.    Now is the time to act.    The Petition: https://www.patreon.com/posts/38821313    

Mecca doesn’t ordinarily go around telling people to S.T.F.U, but these aren’t ordinary times.  Last week, Mecca took a rare opportunity to tell a Karen (in this case, a Gail) what to do with her unsolicited missives, and that moment wends its way into the movement— oddly predicted by Abē weeks earlier.  We tie in this moment of truth telling to food: Mecca’s experience with Bon Appetit, the overall white gaze in food, which sucks, and we feel pretty good, because Dave Chapelle said it, too: “White women I support you, but boy, if y’all don’t…” Credits “Bread & Butter” by Kredence “We Nice” by @MNtality Audio from 8:46 by Dave Chapelle  And Jeremiah Ellison, Ward 5 Councilman from MPLS

The evolution of food embodies the interconnectedness of people and cultures.  You can’t have Bolognese without the tomato cultivated in the Americas or pepper from India.  Yet, as biracial children, Mecca and I know that when two lovers from different racial-ethnic grounding come together to water a seed, the result is not some exotic fusion par-excellence, that heals the world’s racism but often the wellspring of questions and doubt.   This doubt need not be stifling, as has historically been depicted via the “tragic mulatto” trope in cinema and literature.  In fact, in the case of Mecca’s tamale pie,  these yearnings for a place to claim as her own lead to culinary innovation and a reclamation of Black American history.  #Facts  #BlackHistoryisAmericanHistory We move on from these heavier questions to ask each other how we come to the table with the baggage of these bloodlines, and how we use food to define, or not define, ourselves in a world bent on doing it for us. Tamale pie, woks, sunfish, and tacos. It’s all here.

Abē and I interrupt our regularly scheduled programing to acknowledge what the world is now watching: a mass response to the police murder of our African American neighbor George Floyd last Memorial Day in front of Cup Foods, a neighborhood snacking, smoking, and cell phone repair shop in the heart of South Minneapolis’ Central Neighborhood. While here at Super Delicious we trend towards topics of real food for real people with a generous helping of irreverence, we know who we are: two journalists of color in a major metropolitan city with precious few of us to tell our own stories. The horror of George Floyd’s death has by now been felt throughout the world, and we would not let this story be told without our own specific perspectives as people who live here—a native and a transplant who both love/hate this city enough to keep calling it home. Our home and ourselves are forever changed, and this is our personal perspective on the past week or so—what we saw and heard, what we are feeling and saying, and what we need to go forward. For Abē, it’s a moment of plant therapy in his garden with Ron Finley, and for Mecca, it’s in her bed in the form of The Nap Ministry and Rest as Resistance. But once we recharge, rested and more abundant, we will continue to tell stories from our hometown. Thank you for supporting journalists of color.  Thank you to all  gracious interviewees and artists who helped.  This is real journalism by real people. Shoutouts to Andres Guzman and to Matt Jarvis for their murals and music, respectively: On IG @ andresitoguzman and @MNtality   

We spend so much time making chef-inspired foods for our dads, when we know they’re incapable of showing us their gratitude—by eating when it’s time to with everybody else!  Why?   Mecca and Abē get to the bottom of this question and other queries about dad-offspring bonding through food. Given that Abe’s dad is a bit of an outlier and Mecca’s dad is not in the kitchen (or in the picture), they invited a well-parented guest. Super Düper Fooder, Katie Myrhe—she doesn’t love that term—talks to us about researching 10 General Tso’s recipes, spending $200 on Snacks and other gut checking moments of intrigue. When not making fancy spaghetti with beef short rib (she takes her meat seriously) Katie works @REDMarketMN to ensure fair compensation for farmers’ toil. She’s currently working in earnest on a digital marketplace in collaboration between Frank & Earnest Markets and RED Market: farnkandernestmarkets.com.  Check it out! Katie and Abē dialogue about their deeply researched, nail-biting (tasty nails), fooder relationships with their fathers and dream about feeding a future child who actually is a food group called breakfast. Check us out and follow along @khmyhre, @meccabos, @abelevine.  And subscribe if you can relate!

We all know it’s there- because food is more than just a means of delivering energy; it is the love product of nature’s beckoning grandeur and the vigor of human hands.  And we all know that the countless objects said to contain it--the can of whipped cream, the 2”x 5” device (with a screen), the trendy take-out bowl-- are short-lived synthetic reproductions sold as your heart’s desire.  So, now, more than ever in this period of non-contact self containment, can we talk about it?  Yes, yes, yes!  We must!  Mecca and I bring to you a sultry and let’s face it, bawdy, conversation on food and sex appeal.  We opine on its form, decry where it’s overlooked, and declare why it’s so critical for you, yes you, to tap into!  Grab a strong cup of malty, bourbon aged, lavender graced vanilla Assam and saddle up close, ya heard?  Shoutouts to Mankwe Ndosi and Medium Zach for the single "Smile" featured in this episode.  You can find their music on Spotify, iTunes, and Spotify, or follow them on the gram: @bymankwendosi  and @mediumzach

The late great curmudgeon Kenny Shopsin, Jewish zen master and chef in one, maintained an inviolable code of rules at his bodega turned restaurant, Shopsins. His rules, including no parties greater than four, were set up to maintain order and decorum, while keeping himself from murdering the clientele. In this episode Mecca and I bring a Shopsin sensibility to critiquing the issues with restaurants today, while culling up our most sacred family moments of dining out. Though entirely singular in its impact, the 2019 Coronavirus has exposed underlying fissures in foundations of the industry that need to be discussed. Will we solve these issues in this episode? No, but we can at least weigh in on the conversation. For more thoughts on the crisis of restaurants and the safety of workers, stay tuned for a forthcoming chat with former restaurant owner Angelo Pinnacchio of Bar Luchador, coming soon on our Patreon page: https://patreon.com/meccabos. Don’t worry, though!! This one won’t leave you heavy like basket of carbs that sat too long in the fryer.  We also talk yams, Abe’s Chinese redneck family, and taboo hobbies.  

Pleasure is difficult to come by these days. We are separated from our friends, our family, our normal routines, our jobs, and in many cases our very identities.  And even when we can get some small bit of normalcy from a bike ride or a six-foot-away beer with a friend, a scepter of doom hangs in the air like a gauzy window curtain without the lacy edges. 

 So we say bollocks to feeling guilty about any of your pleasures— as long as you ain’t hurtin’ anybody— as the old Black grandmamas say. No feeling guilty about Twinkies, about nachos for breakfast, about early (or late) happy hours, about nothin’! While you probably already know that I try not to feel guilty about my pleasures, even in the Before Times, and that I’m especially prone to potato chip binges and wine hangovers on a Tuesday anyway, we are here today to salute those things, not to beat ourselves up further. The world has enough to beat us down with just now. Let’s not hand over any more ammo. See you in the snack aisle.                                       

Mecca and Abē discuss plans to take on a podcast and the world while living underground.  Our heroes discuss their serendipitous encounter and open up about their lives up until their meeting.  And we find out why everyone wants to be at Mecca's sultry dinner parties in the works.