Fixing Our Foodways With Sam Kass

The Dave Chang Show

The Ringer

Society & Culture, Arts, Food

4.8 • 8.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2025

⏱️ 99 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dave talks to a true multi-hyphenate, the political adviser, author, and, of course, chef Sam Kass. They talk about how he found his way into cooking for the Obama family at the White House (7:05), the dangers of our current food consumption (21:45), and what changes consumers and our government can, and have to, make to keep our favorite foods and food systems alive. After the interview, Dave answers an Ask Dave on homemade condiments (1:02:30) before finishing Part 2 of his ramen cooking, creating the broths and tares, and bringing it all together with the noodles from the cooking segment in Ruby Tandoh's episode (1:08:12). He serves his completed, and delicious, ramen to some special guests. Get your copy of Sam's book 'The Last Supper': https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-last-supper-how-to-overcome-the-future-food-crisis-sam-kass/7c6d969635265644. Learn more about Acre Venture Partners: https://acre.vc/. Learn more about Avec: https://www.avecrestaurant.com/. Learn more about Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign: https://letsmove.obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/. Learn more about SHIA: https://shiarestaurant.org/?. Learn more about Blue Hill at Stone Barns: https://www.bluehillfarm.com/. Learn more about Inari: https://inari.com/. Learn more about Asahikawa Ramen Aoba: https://www5b.biglobe.ne.jp/~aoba1948/. Learn more about Benton's: https://www.bentonscountryham.com/. Learn more about Mugaritz: https://www.mugaritz.com/en/. Learn more about Café Boulud: https://cafeboulud.com/nyc/. Learn more about Pizzeria Bianco: https://www.pizzeriabianco.com/. Send in your Ask Dave questions to bit.ly/AskDaveForm or [email protected]. Subscribe to the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thedavechangshow. Subscribe to Recipe Club on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@recipeclubofficial. Submit your favorite food moments in your favorite movies to majorfoodporn.com. Join our community Discord on majordomo.com. Try Claude for free today at Claude.ai/DaveChang. Host: Dave Chang Guest: Sam Kass Majordomo Media Producer: David Meyer Majordomo Media Coordinator: Molly O’Keeffe Spotify Producer: Felipe Guilhermino Editor: Stefano Sanchez Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by Oral B. Working hard for cleaner teeth. With Oralb
0:05.3	I.O2, you don't have to. With just one touch, our dentist-inspired round brushhead does the rest,
0:10.9	cleaning where manual brushes don't for 100% cleaner teeth. Right now, get the Oralbio2 for as low as
0:17.2	£40.com at shop.orgh.orgh. Use offer code Oralb20 and get an extra 20% off site wide from now through to Black Friday.
0:25.6	Offer valid first to the 28th of November, first time shoppers only T's and C's apply.
0:29.6	Sean has had some good ideas over the years, but using Canva was a really good one. Sean designed some social
0:39.8	posts to promote his friend's car boot sale. They looked good. Really, really good. Next
0:48.6	thing he knows, someone came and bought the lot, including the car.
0:56.9	Now Sean doesn't know I was going to get home.
0:59.3	Thanks, Canva.
1:05.3	So I remember, and I've talked about this before, but when I first started out cooking,
1:07.7	I had never had sea bass as a fish.
1:12.4	I've never had skate, even though it's a popular fish in cream cuisine. So when I first started cooking professionally and seeing black sea bass and skate all from
1:19.5	the Atlantic and near New York City waters, I was blowing away because I'd never seen anything
1:25.1	like this. And I thought black sea bass was delicious.
1:32.8	And it was until much later that I was able to go to restaurants where they would serve black seabass. But growing up in Virginia, that's just not something that I ever saw. It was the provenance
1:38.5	of sort of higher-end restaurants. And skate was not on any menu item. And i just sort of marveled at being a bit
1:46.2	of fillet something that had completely different sort of biology it seems than a traditional
1:53.5	fish because it has more cartilage it's more closely related to think to a shark the than a
1:59.4	traditional fish and the reason i talk about that is these are things
2:04.1	that you would find in abundance in 1999, 2000. You cannot really find them on any menus today.
2:11.9	And that's happened in my lifetime. I talk about going to Sukeji. It's in Sukeuki is no longer there. It was the fish market in Japan
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Ringer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Ringer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.