What is flavor?
We all eat food, every single day. And we’ve all heard of the five basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. But do you really know what flavor is?
That’s what I asked myself before starting on this journey aimed at unlocking the understanding—and the joy—of the human experience of flavor. The journey began with me sitting down across from chefs, bakers, chocolatiers, restaurant owners, flavor experts, and scientists from in and around Philadelphia. And I asked them a million different questions about what flavor means to them.
I’ve wrapped it all up into a single, 10-episode season 1 of fever4flavor—with the goal of helping all of us everyday people appreciate and enjoy what we eat just a little bit more.
About host Evan Young (that’s me!) and about this podcast
It’s tough to explain exactly why I’m here. But let’s start with the basics. My name is Evan Young, and I grew up in a South Jersey household heavily influenced by the Italian side of my family.
I had a Philadelphia-native Calabrese grandmother who didn’t much like garlic but had dinner on the table every day at 5:00 sharp for my Sicilian grandfather. My mother is a phenomenal self-taught chef who eventually drifted above and beyond her Italian culinary roots—growing an incredible interest in a regular slate of complex recipes and occasionally far-flung ingredients.
On Sundays there was almost always something unique on the table, from the unfortunate lima-bean laden Brunswick stew that grossed out me and my brother, to a much more delicious saffron-rich bouillabaisse she perfected decades later. And a million different things in between, torn from the pages of Gourmet magazine, the Joy of Cooking, or gathered from the church of Emeril Lagasse’s afternoon show.
But like most of us, I left home. As a late teen and a college student looking to raise money for cigarettes and beer, and rent, I worked in practically every job one can have in the restaurant business.
One of my first gigs as a 16-year old was washing dishes at a local pizzeria. I worked other jobs mostly at the shitty chain restaurants we all know and love, or maybe hate: Rib-It, Chi-Chis, Pizzeria Uno, Chili’s. I bussed tables, I was a server, a host, a cook, a bartender.
Then came perhaps the most influential era of my life: I lived abroad for two years in Bangkok, and while I was there, I traveled extensively throughout southeast Asia. From gang keow wan, a Thai green curry staple, to the more Northern Thai dish known as khao sawy, the palette of my food experiences had years to wander and grow.
But…. that was all decades ago. Ancient history.
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I think I can boil it down to a few things. First is that the lengthy, self-indulgent biography above is really meant to ground you in how I think, and that’s that I truly enjoy eating and trying new things.
I love strong food and flavors, I love spicy food inasmuch as my intestines can handle it. I love going out to eat. I love a kickass imaginative cocktail or a unique dessert.
But not too long ago, something hit me: and it was the notion that, probably like you… I really have no idea how flavor works.
Think about it. You eat food every day. Multiple times a day. And you’ve been doing it for your entire life. Right? But how often are you really, truly trying to absorb and discern the flavors of what you eat? Are you paying attention to the complex sweet-sour citrus sparkle of that orange you just ate? What about the smoky, rich, dark-roasted bitterness of your morning coffee?
I’ll be honest: I mostly haven’t paid attention either. But lately… I have been.
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I’m convinced that now more than ever—in a world where AI is creeping into every corner of our lives, killing jobs and making us question our reality, with our faces increasingly glued to our screens—holding fast to the uniqueness of the human experience is paramount.
Flavor, the enjoyment of food, these are the great parts about being alive. And if I can satisfy my own curiosity behind how flavor works by talking to chefs, restaurateurs, bakers, confectioners, scientific experts and flavor chemists… then maybe, along the way, I can share those discussions here on this podcast with you.
And we can all learn how to enjoy the simple act of eating just a little bit more.
So that’s what fever4flavor is all about. And I’m glad you’re here with me for the journey. I have a full season of 10 episodes for you to enjoy—so sit back, and let’s dig in.
Or as my grandmom would say…. mangia.
Chefs. Bakers. Chocolatiers. Flavorists. Restaurant owners. These are the flavor experts, so I sat down and spoke with them
Armed with a microphone and some curiosity, I went to the restaurants, storefronts, production facilities, and back patios of some of Philadelphia’s most well-known establishments
And the good news? Everyone wanted to talk. Because for the people making a career in the flavor business, there’s no better topic than flavor to talk about. And they were kind enough to entertain the likes of me, someone who really knows nothing about how flavor works.
In these conversations, we covered a ton of ground. From the inner workings of a restaurant kitchen, to your olfactory bulb, to why zucchini turns to mush when you cook it, we turned over as many tasty stones as we could.
Find the fever4flavor podcast and each of these episodes on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find links to the full transcripts below!
And be sure to leave the podcast a review, if you can—it means a lot!
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There’s something to be said for that feeling when you’ve unearthed a kickass tucked-away neighborhood bar. Where you can belly up to the rail with your friends, get a beer, watch a game, and grab a bite to eat. There’s something even more unique about that same neighborhood joint when it doubles as a hidden gem of a restaurant and has a regularly changing dinner menu driven by complex flavors. That’s what I found when I visited Bad Brother, a converted 3-story corner restaurant in the Fairmount section of the city. So I sat down with chef and co-owner Justin Koenig. While the wooden floorboards of the second floor creaked as his staff prepped for dinner, surrounded by an an interesting collection of framed pop culture art that secretly appealed to my inner Popeye-loving nerd, Justin and I chatted. We talked about his approach to the dishes and menu at Bad Brother… and it gave me a staggering look into the mind of a dedicated and detailed craftsman—along with a discussion about the surprising intricacies of a caesar dressing, how to really do zucchini without making it into mush, and one of the most gripping, eloquent, and thoughtful 3 minutes you’ll ever hear about a Philly neighborhood chef’s template for a perfect burger.
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Simply put, chocolate is one of the most important substances in the known universe. To say that I love chocolate is an understatement, and I know I’m not alone. You know you love chocolate. And everyone you know loves chocolate too. Or at a minimum, they don’t hate it. But what do you actually know about chocolate? And what do you actually know about the way that fine chocolates are made by a chocolatier—or actually, it’s chocolatier, if we’re to believe Melissa Crandley. I stopped into Mecha Chocolate, one of Melissa’s stores, and went a bit buck-wild with what I saw and purchased. Raspberry almond praline ganaches, Japanese matcha ganaches, smoked habanero sea salt caramels, lavender vanilla caramels, and a dozen more delights beyond those. But aside from a hefty bag full of chocolates… I also walked away with an exquisite curiosity. How are these little, finely decorated squares of power-packed flavor actually made? And how much fun is it to come up with the ideas for them? So I drove out to Melissa’s sparkling clean south Jersey production facility and we talked: about how’s it’s actually pronounced Mecha and not Mecha, what hand-dipping is, how to balance a raspberry ganache, banana flavoring, the horribleness of Circus Peanuts, and a whole lot more.
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I’m an obsessive food label reader. As a human concerned with my health and my longevity, and as a consumer trying to make sure I’m limiting the amount of hyper-processed garbage I put into my body, I’ve taken to reading the label on just about everything I buy. I do still buy and eat junk food, for sure. I love Oreos and Nutter Butters and don’t plan on not eating them anytime soon. But I also try to avoid unnecessary additives whenever I can.
And without a doubt, there are a lot of additives in food. But here I am and we’re already off to a bad start—thinking that every single thing that goes into our food is by definition either bad for you or not needed. And of course, that’s not the case. There’s just so much more nuance to it than that.
Who better to catch up with about the nuances, then, than an actual professional flavorist working at one of the world’s most well known specialty ingredients producers: Kate Southrey, of International Flavors and Fragrances. Kate and I sat down in the comfort of my own home, just a few feet from the yogurt and the strawberries in my fridge, and we talked about yogurt and strawberries. And a whole lot more through the course of this fascinating conversation and deep-dive into what flavorists do to help us enjoy all kinds of foods, conserve our world’s actual food resources, keep food costs manageable, and more.
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Let’s just go ahead and get this out of the way: I’m a meat-eater. I love a filet mignon and the smoked buffalo wings over at Ice Line. But I’ve often wondered how vegan or vegetarian restaurants approach their food. I’ve always kinds of assumed that they try to approximate the flavors and textures that us meat-eaters experience on a daily basis. Meaning, they’re probably trying to make a portabello “cheesesteak” taste just like an actual Philly cheesesteak made with beef… Or are they doing something very different? Are they unabashedly creating from a flavor playbook and palette that exists uniquely unto themselves? Much of what I thought about vegetarian food changed the day I had one of the best sandwiches of my entire life, a portabello and broccoli rabe sub. It ended up being a creation from a chef named Rich Landau. You may know Rich better as the founder, along with Kate Jacoby, of Vedge. Now Vedge is not just a vegan resturant; it’s an institution in Philadelphia, and one of the most important and ground-breaking vegan restaurants in the city. So Rich and I caught up out here in West Chester Pennsylvania. We broke the ice over a taste test of three kinds of sugars—piloncillo, jaggery, and a Chinese “old brown sugar” called hēitáng—then talked about the lengths that Rich has gone to to infuse flavor into the foods he serves, how some flavor combinations can reflect creative genius, why a pear is the perfect fruit, and more. That’s all coming next on Fever4Flavor.
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Do you have a relationship with social media? Because I do, and like all relationships I’ve ever had throughout my life with people, places, and things, it’s not a simple one. On one hand, I think that humanity is someday going to look back at this age of social media that we’re currently in—assuming we haven’t nuked ourselves into oblivion or heated up the planet to an impossible degree, or both—and very firmly recognize that social media was an absolute evil that drove a whole lot of divisive, mind-warping, polarizing spikes into our brains.
But hey: hilarious dog videos! Amirite? I catch myself scrolling all the time. I crack up at some of the ridiculous shit you’ll see on there. People chasing rolling cheeses down hills, endless highlights of the Eagles thumping the Chiefs.
And food. So much food. Juicy, squeezy, delicious, ASMR-scraping food beauty shots and video clips of people making and eating things that hit the eyes and the ears, although certainly not the nose and the tongue.
But on a podcast dedicated to flavor, why would anyone care about social media? Should we care? I think the answer is that we have to. And when I had the chance to drag Fidel Gastro himself, also known in real life as Marcos Espinoza, into a conversation with me, I couldn’t resist digging into the topic of social media with him. So we sat down together in a busy back room at Forest and Main Brewing Company and took up trying to solve the world’s social media food-born problems.
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In one hand, imagine I’m holding a slice of cake; in the other, a slice of pie. I’ve got a pair of reflective glasses on, and I’m asking you to choose. Which one are you going with?
For me, it’s going to be cake all day. I’m not a discerning person when it comes to cake; I’m going to eat whatever you put in front of me for dessert, and I’m probably going to enjoy it. But if it’s a one and a half pound slice of German chocolate cake from 4th Street Delicatessen, or a delicious cream cheese icing carrot, I’m going to enjoy it a whole lot more.
So when I came across the Sugary, a delightful little cake shop a block from Rittenhouse, and owner Lesly McDevitt agreed to talk to me, I was extremely happy. Before you even listen to this episode, stop now and go look at the photos of some of her cake creations at thesugaryphilly.com. And you’ll see what I mean right away - Lesly is making some of the most fabulous-looking, picturesque cakes I’ve ever seen.
We sat down at her shop, nestled into the cleanly decorated pastel vibes, and went down the rabbit hole - covering how these cakes are sculpted, how they’re layered, and how bullets are sweated out when they’re transported to a wedding.
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I have a wicked sweet tooth. As a kid, I’d take every single quarter or dollar I earned from raking the neighbors’ leaves, and I’d cut through the woods down the street. On the other side was an Acme, the Ritz theater where I saw Tim Burton’s Batman four times in the summer of 1989, and a 7Eleven. At the “sev,” the money would get spent on exactly two things: a Gauntlet arcade game, where the Warrior was my character of choice… and giant chewy Sweet Tarts.
My sweet tooth was insatiable; I once stuffed an entire vanilla Charleston Chew into my mouth and could barely breathe; another time, I was randomly rummaging through my brother’s bureau and came upon the Hubba Bubba he’d been judiciously saving, chewing periodically as a treat… and like a sugar-starved kid in a candy desert, I shoved THAT entire pack of gum right into my mouth. In my 20s, I ate a halloween-sized bag of Reese’s peanut butter cups in a 24-hour span.
And even now, as a much older man with a presumption of self-control, I find it challenging to resist a treat. Our family loves cake, ice cream, and pretty much every other dessert we can get our hands on. When we go to the movies, I’ll get Milk Duds, Junior Mints, Raisinets, AND sometimes a cherry-Pepsi Icee to boot. Every Christmas morning, I make homemade cinnamon buns from scratch. This is simply how we live.
So hunting down Eric Berley, co-owner of the Franklin Fountain and Shane Confectionary, was like a big-game safari for me. Franklin Fountain is unquestionably a hall-of-fame-worthy landmark of ice cream in Philadelphia, if not the country. The meticulously crafted ice cream parlor and soda shop has been dishing out wonder for over 20 years. Eric agreed to talk to me, so we set up in his new space called the Cacao Pod on Market Street, full of church pews and a chocolate roaster—and we talked about nostalgia, old-fashioned lemon ice cream, how to create an authentic and unforgettable experience for your guests, and more.
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As a working professional, my very first day at my very first corporate job, I stuffed envelopes. But the job was at a medical publishing company, and eventually, I worked my way up the ladder to spend a whole bunch of years there as a medical journalist. And if that sounds sexy to you, trust me, it’s a lot less sexy than it sounds. The good news is that eventually, I went on to other even less sexy-sounding jobs that we need not get into.
But while I didn’t love being a journalist, per se, I will give it credit: it forced the most scientifically curious side of me to dig into complex topics and try to unwind them. Flavor, along with about a zillion other biological processes in the body, is a fascinatingly complex scientific topic just as much as it is a fun and unique way to enjoy an ice cream cone. This podcast would be nothing if we couldn’t find and talk to an actual PhD and expert on human perception of chemical stimuli.
Luckily for all of us in and around Philadelphia, the Monell Chemical Senses Center on Market Street is a world-renowned institution dedicated to the science of taste and smell, and I was able to catch up with Paul Wise on the staff there. And I just started asking questions, from what the basic definition of flavor actually is, to what smell has to do with it all, to whether we can actually trust our eyes and noses and taste buds.
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I don’t quite remember when I started drinking coffee, but I suspect it was at some point in college. When I needed to stuff as much caffeine into my underslept and over-hangovered face to make it through midterms. But back then, coffee was simply a vehicle to transmit as much caffeine into my bloodstream as I possibly could. Now, coffee is an entirely different source of joy. I set the machine every single night; it’s among the first things I wake up to every single morning. A nice dark roast that slaps you awake with a daily jolt of complex flavor and aroma. A joke that too many people in my life have heard me say is that at any given point, my body is composed of about 88% caffeine.
But when you go to a great cafe… it’s not just about the coffee, is it? Of course not! You gotta have a little bit of a pastry too, right? Maybe a plain croissant on some days. Maybe there’s caution to the wind, we’ll do a chocolate croissant, or a beignet kinda deal, maybe a sticky bun from Dot’s in Ocean City New Jersey. Best sticky buns in the actual universe.
The hunt for people who understand flavors with serious depth and complexity, like coffee and wine, but who also understand the importance of the onsite customer experience, eventually led me to two people, actually: Kelsey Bush, chef/owner of Green Engine Coffee, Bloomsday, and Loretta’s, and Sara May, the Events & Operations Manager for the Bloomsday restaurant group. Together, these self-proclaimed “gab specialists" and food and flavor veterans bring decades of experience covering the many ways that coffee, pastries, and an excellent dining experience can be delivered. So I sat down with them at Bloomsday with a sampling of orangedew and toad skin melon, and from white chocolate pistachio danishes to pop tarts, we chopped it up.
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You’ll hear me reference my travels quite a bit on this podcast. I always feel a little bit strange talking about the places I’ve been; I don’t want to sound like some kind of elitist, jet-setting, wealthy 1% kind of person who spends his weekends in Bali. I’m not that.
But I did have the luck in my 20’s—which was a couple of decades ago for me—of falling backwards into an opportunity to live in Bangkok for a few years. As the travel hub in southeast Asia, I also had the luck, or the guts maybe, of traveling extensively throughout the region. On a backpacker’s budget, I got to sip coffee in Laos, eat banh mi in Vietnam, try adobo in the Philippines.
As I “grew up” and came back stateside, I also ended up working a job that sent me to Europe a few times a year. Again, lucky me. But I’ll say this: what I took away from these travels was an unabashed love for all kinds of non-American cuisines, and in particular, the stuff you just don’t see all that often here in the US. For example: Burmese food.
When I came across a cafe restaurant off of Rittenhouse Square called PS & Co, and saw they had a menu unlike any I’d really seen before in Philly—vegan and Burmese-inspired—I had to reach out. On a sweltering hot day, sun blazing down, PS & Co owner Andrea Kyan and I sat in a small outdoor garden behind her shop.
With her newly rescued dog Ginger at her feet, we talked about her mother’s influence on her cooking, the challenges of operating a vegan restaurant, the consistency of vegan bread, and more.