Foodie Podcasts - From truffles to roadkill
Posted on March 25, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Food, Reviews, Technology.
UPDATE 1: I am re-publishing this post as I did a great dis-service to Adam over at Men In Aprons by confusing his Podcast with another one. MIA is a lighthearted foodie podcast where Adam is the main presenter and he riffs with his wife and friends in the room about food related topics. Adam sent me a great e-mail describing some of the background to MIA and I have to say I really like his attitude and approach. So, not only do I recommend that you check out MIA and see if it is to your liking but I have re-subscribed too.
Whilst I am at it, anyone else out there using Juice for Podcast downloads?
Original Post:
Since about November, I’ve been listening to some (mainly foodie) podcasts. As someone who thinks Steve Jobs’ real name is Damien and is the spawn of a wolf, it is a case of ipod schmipod for me.
My first set-up was my Nokia 6230 with a 512MB MMC Card and the standard Nokia headphones. The biggest drawback of it is that the transfer of music or podcasts via Bluetooth takes forever and USB isn’t great either. So I end up removing the MMC from the phone, popping it into my laptop, copying what I want and then re-assembling the phone. For cycling this setup worked fine.
The music player on the phone is a bit crap with FF and REW being particularly useless. For the car, I got a standard “taxi-driver” phone holder and an adapter to connect the phone to a normal set of head-phones or line-out. This is then connected to a VRFM8 FM transmitter thingy which takes the sound and broadcasts it illegally to my radio and I listen via the radio. Sound quality on those FM transmitters is pretty rubbish and they really don’t work for music, but for podcasts they are fine.
At Christmas, I asked my very kind father if I could borrow the Palm Tungsten T that he had never used and he said sure. I thought it only took SD cards but for the laugh I stuck the MMC card from the Nokia into it and the beauty worked. I then grabbed Real Player for Palm and loaded it up. This is a very nice piece of music playing software which integrates very smoothly with Real Player on the Desktop. I can now just drop MP3’s from my desktop onto Real Player and it transfers them (at quite high speed) to the MMC in the Palm. The Tungsten T has a headphone socket, so I just connect that to the FM transmitter and I’m in business. The main advantages over the Nokia are the speed of music transfer, the far superior music player and the big buttons for controlling it whilst driving. The other advantage is that the card slot is open at the top of the Palm so I can easily swap cards if I have more stuff on another one.
Of course, we can’t forget the other advantages of the Tungsten T: ZX Spectrum Emulator, tons of great games, currency convertor, web-browser which works using bluetooth to the phone, eWallet, Avantgo, Vindigo. Whilst it is a little long in the tooth and under-powered compared to current models, I think it is a far more impressive piece of industrial design. Most current PDAs just look cheap, nasty and flimsy. The only thing it is really missing is wi-fi.
That is the tech sorted. What the hell is podcasting and which ones do I listen to? For non-techies, the explanation is really simple. Podcasts are recordings made by anyone from a guy in a shed talking about potting compost to a journalist with Business Week talking about Google to a normal radio show. Those recording are saved onto computer in a format called MP3 (just a sound compression system so the files don’t take up too much space) and they then upload those files onto web-servers and let people know by various means that they can download them. If you want to listen to a podcast, you can grab the file off the web-site, save it on your computer and listen to it there (Windows comes with a sound player for them) or copy it to an MP3 player like an iPod and listen to it whilst walking or cycling. Nothing to it really.
The variation in quality of content and sound in podcasts is very interesting. The pro ones are often less impressive in what they are saying than the guy with the cheap handheld recorder. Here is a selection of ones I have checked out -
Gastrocast: Neal the Podchef is based on an island off Washington state. He is very informed and has a wide range of food interests which are similar to my own. He spent time in Ireland and has been to Ballymaloe so Darina gets a mention. He often does bits on Irish food products like cheese. He has a very distinctive voice which is highly enunciated and this is exactly what is needed in a podcast. I can actually hear him whilst cycling unlike a lot of people (like Om Malik for example) who mumble into their chests and are often indecipherable. There are only two small negatives to my mind. The first is that an hour per episode is heading towards too long. My attention span isn’t that long 
Also, I have found that podcasts work best when there is more than one person involved. The interaction makes it more interesting. But considering where Neal lives, I don’t think that is solvable. The other approach (as taken by Men In Aprons) is far far worse where the main talker shouts to his wife in the background and she shouts back.
The Restaurant Guys: Informed, professional, funny. It is just a recording of their daily food show on a New Jersey Radio station. Francis and Mark together own two big restaurants in New Brunswick and each day they usually cover one main topic in great depth and with tons of humour and have an interview with someone. Check out the episode where they discuss the bison cull in Montana and what sort of loser you’d have to be to mount the head of one of those animals. The bison are so used to human contact they think their photo is about to be taken! I listen to every episode these guys make.
The Remarkable Palate: Mark Tafoya is a personal chef in New York. He covers lots of local NY things but also does recipes and lots of interviews. I just like his attitude to food in general. He should lose the recent music interludes tho.
Eat Feed: Anne Bramley seems extremely knowledgeable and interviews a wide range of people in the food business. But it just doesn’t work for me. Her focus is on things I just do not find interesting (like baking) and I find a lot of the interviewees just plain annoying. I’m sure that it would be interesting to lots of people, just not to me. Actually, I did find her recent podcast on food interests and personality types to be worth a listen.
On Food with Hsiao-Ching Chou: Food Editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper. Very professionaly produced. Good meaty interviews mainly with chefs. Well worth a listen.
Men in Aprons: Seems to be recorded in a toilet by a husband and wife. The first episode I tried to listen to had recipes for your cat. I’ve tried several episodes since and I never last past their incessant giggling which usually starts after less than a minute.
Girl on Girl Cooking: Or as they should be known “Cooking by the hard of thinking”. Car crash podcasting. Their episode on genetically modified foods was one of the funniest things I have ever heard and they were being deadly serious. “They kinda like, ye know, f**k with the molecules of the food”.
All You Can Eat: Don Genova is based in Vancouver and mainly does walkabout interviews with local people. Very down to earth and relaxed. Worth a listen.
BBQ Forum: If you are interested in BBQ or you’re trying to learn about it (as I am), this is a must-listen. Ray Basso runs the biggest BBQ forum site on the web and is deeply knowledgeable. The guys he interviews (and in the world of BBQ it seems to be mainly guys) range from the very funny to the very strange, but all of them know what they are talking about. Very enjoyable.
And for a few non-foodie ones, you should try:
Tom Raftery’s Podleaders: Great interviews with tech visionaries by a Cork-based IT person
Ricky Gervais: Awesome. Snot out the nose funny. Karl Pilkington for King! Nearly finished so hurry and grab em.
Diggnation: Should be annoying; Two young guys talking tech in valley speak. Actually hilarious and very interesting.
[tags]food podcasts, diggnation, ricky gervais[/tags]
15 Replies to "Foodie Podcasts - From truffles to roadkill"
conor on February 20, 2006
Ach the comment about duration is more a reflection of my inability to concentrate for more than 20 minutes on anything. I just need to start doing longer cycles! Listening to you doing the Valentines episode whilst cycling at 6am in sub-zero celsius weather was an interesting contrast!
6 people for Eat Feed? Wow! All that effort for something so lacking in energy. I knew the Business Week podcast was done professionally in a studio but I thought that was the exception.
Mark Tafoya sounds like he just has a handheld recorder as do Ray Basso and Don Genova. Tom Raftery does a cunning thing by interviewing people on a Skype connection and recording that.
One thing I should have said was that the podcasts I listen to most are the ones where the enthusiasm jumps out of the speakers. Production values are irrelevant as long as I can hear what the person is saying.
Chef Mark on February 23, 2006
Hey Conor, interesting run down of some of the food podcast mainstays. For the soundseeing tours I use the iPod itself with a small belkin mic attachment, and for the phone interviews I record off skype using Hot Recorder. This should be a ringing endorsement for Skype, as the podast I put out tonight (#26, Interview with Frank Marchetti of Columbus Park Tarttoria in Stamford CT), was recorded using skype, but I called to his regular phone, and you can (unfortunately) hear a big difference in the sound quality recording normal phones vs some of the other skype interviews I do. It reminds me of a radio phone interview. Alas. i produce the show all by my self with a simple PC setup and Castblaster.
LOL on the music comments. It’s not a regular part of the show, I just really liked the songs Katy wrote, and since I was in a show with her, I featured her stuff. That’s the power of podcasting, baby!
Chef Mark on February 23, 2006
PS - You should check out the St. Patrick’s Day menu I put together at The Gilded Fork, for which I am Executive Chef. (www.gildedfork.com). It’s not purely Irish, but the theme is green. The Main Dish is a Pistachio Crusted Salmon over Cabbage Slaw and Bailey’s Irish Cream Reduction.
I love Cork, and am glad to have stumbled upon your blog. I’ve been meaning to feature an interview with someone who knows a wee bit about Irish Food…
conor on February 23, 2006
I really enjoy listening to your podcast. Like all the best ones, it somehow manages to be local and global at the same time.
I’m toying (but only toying mind you!) with the idea of doing podcasts during the summer at some of the farmers markets in Cork.
I don’t know how much local interest there would be and my voice is truly horrible when recorded but there are a lot of people doing really innovative stuff in Cork (Ballymaloe, Ummera, Gubbeen etc) and most of them attend the big markets. It’ll probably just stay a thought but it’s good to know how people are doing podcasting technically.
We’re having our first family holiday in France this summer near Carnac in Brittany and I have high hopes for foodie discoveries. I need to start brushing up on my french tho. I may do the first franglais podcast from there!
That Paddy’s Day menu sounds fantastic. 9am and you’ve made me hungry for dinner already.
Tom Raftery on February 23, 2006
Conor,
if you really believe you have a horrible recorded voice - do what I do in my podcasts, say as little as possible, and let your interviewees do all the talking!
conor on February 23, 2006
I like your thinking! I’ll do some playing over the next while and see how it all works.
Podchef on February 23, 2006
Come on Dude, your Irish–even if your voice sounds shite when recorded the rest of the world with think you speak pure honey.
As for the farmer’s markets, beGod man do it! The rest of the world needs to hear the blather and blag of the English Market–the Midleton market is a good one too. I live in an area very much like East Cork–but with out the pubs–like the one overlooking the bay near Gyleen–but here the Farmer’s Markets pack up from October until late June ’cause the pussy’s don’t like the rain. At Midleton you might even run into Darina or Cully & Sully. . . .And there must be something brilliant going on in Kinsale. Take us there and we will listen.
conor on February 23, 2006
The English Market is without compare.
I’ve seen Darina at the Midleton one. It is a bit far for us to go but it is so impressive.
Kinsale just started but is on a Tuesday so I’ve had no success getting there yet.
Skibbereen looks excellent but I was only there on a short visit before Christmas. I’m overdue a return. Pussy’s is right - One woman I talked to in Skibb was going to be selling on both Christmas eve and New Year’s eve - now that is dedication. The Gubbeen meat and cheese stall there is awe inspiring.
Clonakilty is well regarded but the Saturday one just has mainly hippies selling incense. My kids were not impressed. Some day I’ll make it to the Thursday food one.
There is also an interesting new one - it is in Mahon Point which is a big new Mall. They run it in the car park. I think it is a great idea mixing such a local small scale thing with global vendors like Tesco next door. I think it could be a template for many similar places. I haven’t been to that one yet but my wife likes it.
And Schull is definitely going to get a visit soon as it is run on a Sunday. And Gubbeen are there too!
So many markets, so little time……..
Chef Mark on February 24, 2006
Thanks Conor, it’s nice to hear that, since my whole focus is on global cuisine and celebrating microregional cuisines. My most current podcast is about Puglia in Italy, and on an upcoming show, I do a soundseeing tour of Kalustyan’s, one of the most special markets in NYC, which stocks good from all over the world. I did this tour with Janet Amateau, the Sephardic cooking expert.
I wish that I had more time to spend on the markets around the southwest of Ireland. I passed through County Cork so quickly last time I was there, and just focused on the main sites, as unfortunately, I was with a group of friends who were less interested in food than I.
I did spend some time in Kenmare (which I know is not in Cork), and loved it there.
Let’s have a skype convo about the Cork culinary scene, and you can get a feel for how your coice sounds on a podcast. 
conor on February 24, 2006
I have your current one on the Palm MMC Card. It’s the next one to listen to after I finish the Hungry Magazine interview with Ben Roche in Moto. A very very strange place. After 30 mins they have mentioned the word “cool” about 30 times, “different” 10 times and the word “tasty” ? Once!
Some day I’ll get over to Heston Blumenthal’s place but I have to say that Moto just sounds a little bit silly. Trying too hard maybe?
No problem having a chat about Cork food but I’m still just an enthusiastic, under-informed, “blow-in” eater rather than a creator.
adam on March 24, 2006
Hi Conor! Thanks very much for the mention and the link. However, I would really suggest your check your information, as I have never had any recipes for cats. And yes, we do giggle. I think food should be fun … not NPR.
Thanks again for the link. You humble us.
conor on March 25, 2006
Adam,
Big apologies, it is really unacceptable that I screwed up like that. In my cut n paste haste, I ended up merging my comments on your podcast with another similar one (The Invincibles), who really did do catfood recipes!
I love the fact that your podcast is aiming to be lighthearted and entertaining rather than po-faced and dry like a lot of other ones but I have to admit that the giggling just drives me nuts. For some reason, I still listen to Diggnation and those guys do the same thing. Go figure.
And, dammit, I’m re-subscribing to your podcast. Maybe I’ve started becoming one of those po-faced “twelve different types of salt in the kitchen” people. Eh, just checked, I’ve got five.
I’ll also re-publish the original post with the review fixed later today.
If you don’t mind me asking, I have a question for you and any other food podcasters out there reading this. How many listeners (ballpark) do you guys have? I’d just love to know how widely spread interest in podcasting is and at what rate you have seen it growing. It is one of those things I never hear mentioned (apart from the Ricky Gervais podcast).
Keep on cookin and talkin!
rin invincible on April 5, 2006
incessant giggling, huh? i’m not sure how that rates next to long-winded blogging. btw, our show is meant to be visual, we just put out an audio version upon request from our viewers…did you even visit our site?
you should know that many people appreciated learning how to make cat food. our show focuses on our two loves-cooking and cats. toss your narrow-minded snobbish foodie attitudes and learn how to have fun, man! and next time you go reviewing-make sure you know what you’re talking about before you go throwing insults…”recorded in a toilet”?! (insert incessant giggling here)
Podchef on February 20, 2006
Damn, he’s on to me blather. . . .I think you call it straight on all the foodie’casts– I pretty much agree, even about me own. The length I’ve tried to control, but can’t ever seem to get it below 50 min. This coming week’s show, #47, will actually have guests though–in a bling tasting of three corned beefs, including my own.
I’m not sure about Mark, Girl on Girl, or BBQ but all the rest of the podcasts are professionaly produced–even Eat Feed with like 6 people to make the thing work. I don’t get what everyone else does?
As for more people on the Gastrocast–I’m working on it. Just got to get off the blinking rock and out and about. Keep the faith tho. More interesting things–I hope–coming up real soon.