I'm Frances Lamb, and this is The Splendid Table from APM,

the show for curious cooks and eaters.

All right, so once when I was a teenager, I got up out of bed in the middle of the night

and drove 45 minutes to the campus of Rutgers University just to eat a Euro sandwich

for a grease truck I was obsessed with. Many years later, I graduated, frankly, to the

boogie version of that, and flew to Chicago just to eat at a restaurant., I graduated, frankly, to the bougie version of that, and flew to Chicago

just to eat in a restaurant.

So I thought I was scoring pretty high in the how far would you go for food scorecard until

we talked to some of the folks on this week's show.

Some of them went literally far, to the other side of the world, and some showed us the extremes they go to in their obsessive style of cooking.

But they all showed us that food stood for much more to them and just something to eat.

We'll start with Melanie Diney.

She is one of the food world's favorite photographers.

She's the person behind the My Last Supper series of books,

but she started as a portrait photographer,

where she learned that the key skill really isn't framing the shot or looking at the light.

It's learning how to talk to people.

They get them comfortable so they can be vulnerable because that's how you get a really great shot.

But a few years ago, she went on a trip for a shoot where everyone felt vulnerable to find Afghani Saffron.

Hey, Melanie.

Hey.

It's great to see you.

...