Hi everyone. Welcome to Food. I'm Kate Bitman. Thanks for being here. Any

feedback questions and comments are more than welcome. Email us at Food at mark bitman.com. And please remember to join us online at bitman project.com.

Last week, Mark wrote about Tokyo, which he and Kathleen found endlessly fascinating,

from its extreme livability to the feel of true community,

to the terrific food, which they tried a lot of.

Plus an interview with Austin Frerick who wrote the intriguing book

Barons Money, Power, and the corruption of America's food industry which

provides a portrait of our food system through stories of its oligarchs.

And Erica Hool wrote about my new favorite thing, breakfast potatoes, but not the way you're used to them.

bitman project.com. We'll get back to that conversation in a minute, but first I want to talk about

something that lots of people ask me about when it comes to global cuisines.

There is something magical about eating a cuisine in the place where it originated.

One of the reasons for that is that the dishes that define a cuisine are built around the

produce that's native to a place.

It's why the feta and tomato and a Greek salad tastes so perfect in Athens, or the artichokes

and olive oil in Rome are to die for.

They have a certain sweetness and tang that you can get close to but not easily replicate.

And not surprisingly, one of the best ways

to get a sense for how something should taste

is to visit a region of the world

and sample a dish in several forms from lots of different

neighboring areas.

...