Packed Lunch

February 19, 2025·1 hr 10 min·6 clips

Andrew Miller secretly remade the 'easy' sesame noodle recipe from scratch, defying its store-bought instructions.

A security ad barges into the cold open first. Then Chris Ying seats the club, names David Chang, Andrew Miller, and Mark Johnson, and the packed-lunch fight gets rolling. The sesame dressing talk does not warm up. The panel treats bottled shabu-shabu sesame dressing like the sort of shortcut people pretend not to use, with Benihana and Kewpie dragged into evidence. Whole Foods gets praise and side eye in the same breath. A guest says the dressing came out thin, then explains how mayonnaise helped it cling to the noodles. The tofu gets a sterner look. Store-bought marinated tofu falls flat, so firm tofu spends the night with garlic, ginger, soy sauce, agave, rice vinegar, and oil. That fix works. What makes the episode fun is the quick turn from mock outrage to useful recipe repair. Nobody gets holy about scratch cooking. Bought dressing, mayo for texture, and pantry tofu tricks all remain fair game. The packed lunch idea keeps pulling the room back to the same plain question: what can travel and still taste good later? By the end, Meyer cookware goes to the guests, recipes live at majortomo.com, and Dave still owes a hand-pie video demo. The win sounds more sheepish than grand. Trying hard worked, unfortunately for everyone. It lands like a lunchbox argument among pros, with convenience, ego, texture, and taste all talking over each other.

As heard by us

Recipe Club makes packed lunch feel worth debating, with dad energy, sesame dressing politics, and practical noodle talk.

Packed Lunch turns the humble packed lunch into the kind of loose, opinionated kitchen argument Recipe Club is built for. Chris Ying gathers David Chang, Andrew Miller, and Mark Johnson around dad food, practical compromise, and the small choices that decide whether something…

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Why you'd press play

You want a food debate with actual opinions, not a tidy recipe demo.

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