Long food conversations, with a reporter's follow-up question
Special Sauce is Ed Levine's food-conversation show, built on unhurried interviews with cooks, writers, and reporters. It moves easily between a friend's black-truffle-over-pasta memory and hard reporting on ICE raids, abuse in famous kitchens, and what AI is doing to recipe writers.
PRESS PLAY
Special Sauce is a food interview show hosted by Ed Levine, the founder of Serious Eats. He started the site in 2006, sold it in 2015, and brings that publishing history into the room with him. The show sounds like an edited dinner-table conversation with a reporting spine behind it. Episodes open with a direct question and let the answer stretch. Guests are given long, illustrative stretches before Levine steers back to the point. He is friendly and clearly enjoys the company, but the follow-ups are reporterly. The subject matter swings hard and the tone absorbs it without breaking. On the pleasurable end, Ella Quittner talks about 'Obsessed with the Best', the book that grew out of her Food52 column 'Absolute Best Tests', started in 2019, and the travel and bench testing that made it more than an expanded column. Levine, who describes half a century of searching for the best version of everything, treats her obsession as familiar territory. A memorial episode for chef Tom Valenti gathers Dinosaur Bar-B-Que founder John Stage and writer and podcaster Andrew Friedman, who co-authored with him. What emerges is a portrait built from small scenes: a fellow chef arriving with a black truffle in his pocket, pasta made on the spot, stoop conversations that ran until the early hours, an aversion to industry parties. Other episodes are far heavier. One works carefully through New York Times reporter Julia Moskin's story on Noma, which credibly alleges that Rene Redzepi physically and verbally abused kitchen staff between 2010 and 2017, drawing on 35 former employees and interns. Another covers what the show calls an extinction event for recipe writers, with Deb Perlman of Smitten Kitchen describing the moment ChatGPT returned something in her own voice and chilled her. A significant thread follows immigration enforcement and its effect on restaurants and neighborhoods. Chicago Tribune reporter Zarin Saeed and Las Carnitas Europan owner Manuel Carbajal describe Little Village under armed and masked officers, and Carbajal explains why his menu is built almost entirely around carnitas and why he opens in Mexican neighborhoods. In Los Angeles, LA Taco editor-in-chief Javier Cabral covers the taco scene from both ends alongside colleague Memo Torres. Levine is explicit that he intends to devote as many episodes as he can to this, and he does not perform neutrality about it. The show is produced by Jocelyn Gonzalez and Pedro Rafael Rosado of PRX Productions, with Perry Gregory credited on at least one episode. Sign-offs address the audience as serious eaters. With roughly 450 episodes, the archive is deep enough to wander in.
Made for: Listeners who read food writing as closely as they eat, and who want restaurant and recipe culture treated as a subject with labor, politics, and history attached. It suits people who prefer a long conversation over a segment-driven show.
What sets it apart: Most food interview shows stop at the origin story; this one keeps going into immigration raids, kitchen abuse allegations, and the economics of recipe publishing without abandoning its warmth. Levine's own history building and selling Serious Eats gives him an insider's read on the industry pressures his guests are living through.
Serious Eats' podcast Special Sauce enables food lovers everywhere to eavesdrop on an intimate conversation about food and life between host and Serious Eats founder Ed Levine and his well-known/famous friends and acquaintances both in and out of the food culture.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Food conversation becomes a clear-eyed account of craft, media, labor, and the communities built around eating.
Ed Levine treats food as a route into working lives and communities, then lets guests stay with the specifics. A conversation about pasta moves through fresh production, regional Italian habits, and vegetables shaped by scarcity.
Ed Levine's table has room for pasta sauce and the people keeping restaurants alive; bring your whole appetite.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded food-world update on how immigration enforcement pressures Chicago restaurants, neighborhoods, and the choice to stay open.
Special Sauce returns to Chicago's restaurant world to track how Operation Midway Blitz is being felt beyond the headlines. Manuel Carbajal of Las Carnitas Europan describes Little Village under raid conditions, then grounds the story in the logic of his carnitas-focused…
A tender portrait of Tom Valenti, remembered through simple food, old friendships, fishing, and an Irish goodbye.
Tom Valenti comes through as a chef whose version of the good life was refreshingly plainspoken: simple food done well, a bowl of pasta with black truffle, late nights with friends, and time away fishing.
Ella Quitner connects the chase for "the best" to recipe testing, food media pressure, and the need for certainty.
Ella Quitner's Obsessed with the Best turns a familiar food-world impulse into a sharper question: what are people really chasing when they argue over the best ramen, biscuits, bacon, or pasta?
Three critics weigh the reach, trust, and pressure around restaurant criticism in a media world shaped by paywalls and TikTok.
Restaurant criticism comes through as a craft adjusting to a different kind of reach. Bill Addison of the Los Angeles Times no longer assumes a review can make or break a restaurant, even when restaurants say his work has sent diners their way.
A thoughtful panel weighs what restaurant criticism can still do when everyone has a platform.
Special Sauce looks at restaurant criticism as a public conversation that has grown crowded while the old professional chorus has thinned. Ed Levine, Bill Addison, Hannah Goldfield, and Elazar Sontag consider what still sets newspaper and magazine reviewing apart: the…
A thoughtful pasta episode that moves from Puglia's vegetables to the labor behind fresh shapes.
Pasta is framed as a matter of proportion, labor, and place. The episode sets the American giant plate, where pasta often carries the meal and sauce sits on top, against the Italian habit of treating pasta as one familiar part of a larger meal.
A grounded look at Asheville's food community rebuilding after Helene while carrying real loss.
Asheville's food community comes through as a recovery story with real ground under it. After Hurricane Helene, restaurants, markets, farms, entrepreneurs, and visitors are all shown as part of a fragile local web, one that can fray quickly when water disappears.
Kerry Diamond interviews chefs, cookbook authors, and restaurant founders about building food businesses.
Dave Chang cooks a dish live with a guest while the conversation drifts from technique to identity.
Solo-narrated recipe builds and viral food-and-wellness trend briefings in under five minutes.
Food talk with grill marks and local flavor.
Louisiana food, history, and local flavor.
Ed Levine interviews journalist Adam Chandler about his new book on the history and nature of work in America.
Host Ed Levine interviews New York Times reporter Pete Wells and chef Marwan Irani about Asheville's food community six months after Hurricane Helene caused $60 billion in damage.
Ed Levine hosts pasta experts Katie Laird and Sasha Marks to explore everything about pasta.
This episode discusses the food insecurity problem on Martha's Vineyard and the efforts of Island Grown Initiative to address it.
Special Sauce revisits Chicago and ICE with an update on Operation Midway Blitz, Little Village, and the city's restaurant economy.
Special Sauce with Ed Levine remembers Tom Valenti, who died unexpectedly at 67, with John Stage and Andrew Friedman.
Ella Quittner tells Ed Levine, founder of Serious Eats, why Obsessed with the Best turns a Food52 column into a larger argument about food rankings and taste.
Ed Levine discusses with Deb Perlman how AI-generated recipes threaten the livelihoods of recipe developers and food bloggers.
A shocking report details physical and verbal abuse by chef Rene Redzepi at his restaurant Noma.
The host discusses the impact of ICE raids on food communities, highlighting LATaco.com's coverage and a recent episode with editor Javier Cabral.
Bill Addison warns that "traditional newspaper or magazine restaurant criticism" may not exist in 10 years.
Eleazar Sontag says a restaurant review is still "ultimately... a restaurant review," not a solution to immigration or food policy.
Ed Levine introduces an episode of Special Sauce where he and guests Kenji Lopez-Alt and Tessa Lark discuss their shared obsession with Reese's candies.
Ed Levine interviews Ken Concepcion about Now Serving, a culinary bookstore in Los Angeles that serves as a gathering spot for serious eaters.