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Last November ICE launched Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, terrorizing both restaurant customers and workers in immigrant communities all over the Windy City.We heard firsthand accounts of ICE's violent misdeeds by Chicago Tribune reporter Zareen Syed and restaurateur Marcos Carbajal of the esteemed Carnitas Uruapan. I checked in with Zareen and Marcos this week to get an update on the situation.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Tom Valenti, one of my favorite chefs of all time (who also happened to be a swell, generously spirited human being), died suddenly last week. Tom was a friend of mine, so I gathered writer Andrew Friedman (who co-wrote Tom's cookbooks) and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que founder John Stage to celebrate the life and times of the best chef you might never have heard of.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As someone who has spent the greater part of a half-century searching for and obsessing about where to find the best of any kind of foodstuff, I was immediately drawn to Ella Quittner's book Obsessed with the Best. Quittner and I delved into the pleasures and pitfalls any writer encounters when he or she tackles this most subjective undertaking.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Smitten Kitchen's Deb Perelman explains why she and many other recipe developers and food writers regard AI as an existential threat on this week's episode of Special Sauce.  This is serious business, serious eaters. Listen up! Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

According The New York Times, Noma chef and co-owner René Redzepi physically and verbally abused more than thirty of his kitchen staff between 2010 and 2017. To find out what that means, I sat down with longtime restaurant critic Bill Addison of The Los Angeles Times, and best selling author and youtuber, Kenji Lopez-Alt. Kenji worked in many serious restaurant kitchens in Boston for a number of years after graduating from college, before opening his own restaurant Wursthall in San Mateo, California. Can fine-dining restaurant kitchens become kinder and gentler places? What should happen to Redzepi? We mull over these questions and more on this episode of Special Sauce. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week we're reheating one of our favorite recent episodes on the ongoing struggle between ICE and the immigrant-driven food cultures of major American cities. LA Taco's editor-in-chief  Javier Cabral explains how and why his website became one of the leading voices of ICE resistance in the "City of Angels'.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On part 2 of our revealing and refreshingly honest conversation with three of the best food critics in America, Hannah Goldfield of The New Yorker, Bill Addison of The Los Angeles Times, and Elazar Sontag of The Washington Post, all three are not feeling particularly sanguine about the future of restaurant criticism in general. And it's not just social media to blame.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Are restaurant critics dinosaurs in the age of social media? We discuss that and more in part one of our critic's roundtable with The New Yorker's Hannah Goldfield, The Washington Post's Elazar Sontag, and The Los Angeles Times' Bill Addison.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week Pete Wells and I talk about our mutual worst food enemy, our addiction to sugar. Pete explains how the hidden added sugars in many packaged and processed foods just compound our dietary problems. We also talk about how the mixed messages we get from the government add to our dietary woes.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this first of two episodes featuring The New York Times's Pete Wells, the former Times restaurant critic explains how he learned to eat differently after a trip to his doctor scared the crap out of him. Yes he eats many more whole grains and avoids added sugar any way he can. But as you'll hear his health and diet journey revealed just as many unexpected truths about how to eat right.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For millions of serious eaters the Super Bowl has turned into a food event almost on a par with Thanksgiving. With the Super Bowl coming up we thought it would be fun and edifying to reheat last year's Super Bowl episode featuring Kenji Lopez-Alt giving serious eaters sage advice about making pizza and wings at home. I've had Kenji's wings and his pan pizza, and they are both seriously delicious and pretty simple to make. We should note that Kenji is no sports fan. In all the years I've known him I can't remember one conversation about sports. But maybe as a resident of Seattle he has found a reason to root for the Seahawks.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this episode of Special Sauce the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Sharyn Jackson reports on the devastating effect of the ICE operation on the Twin Cities' restaurant and food community. ICE's terrifying tactics in Minneapolis have been met with many creative forms of resistance. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this episode of Special Sauce we go deep into the story of the not famous enough Jewish roll known as a bialy (which is far superior to its kind of distant cousin, the bagel) with the celebrated chef, Mark Strausman, who is merely one of the great bialy bakers of our time. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this episode of Special Sauce the Washington Post's Tim Carman and the Los Angeles Times's Stephanie Breijo discuss the enormous headwinds facing restaurants all over the country in 2026. High food costs, tariffs, the uncertain economy, and the ICE Raids' chilling effect on restaurant workers, and business in general, have left restaurant owners wondering about their survival. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this episode of Special Sauce, The New York Times's superb wine critic Eric Asimov details the many challenges facing the wine industry. He cites high prices, over-production of factory wine, and the snootiness of too many wine enthusiasts AND the people that serve and sell wine. Eric even offers his prescription for many of the problems that plague the wine biz.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices