It's no surprise Food Network stars including Michael Symon, Sunny Anderson, and Claire Robinson are torn between guilt...and pleasure.
It's no surprise Food Network stars including Michael Symon, Sunny Anderson, and Claire Robinson are torn between guilt...and pleasure.
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Find episode transcript here: https://the-best-thing-i-ever-ate.simplecast.com/episodes/guilty-pleasures-ft-michael-symon-duff-goldman-and-claire-robinson
[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: People ask me all the time--
SPEAKER 2: Where do you like to eat?
SPEAKER 3: What's your favorite food?
SPEAKER 4: What's the best thing you've ever eaten?
SPEAKER 5: That's why we're here now.
SPEAKER 2: Not only to tell you what we love to eat.
SPEAKER 6: But where you can go get it.
SPEAKER 7: This is like guilty pleasure on steroids.
SPEAKER 8: I've turned the guilty pleasure into an everyday occurrence.
SPEAKER 9: Yes, yes yes! It's so good. Oh, I'm smiling.
SPEAKER 10: Here, you have 20 something layers of chocolate coming at you.
SPEAKER 11: Man, I shouldn't be eating this, but man, it's good.
SPEAKER 8: My most guilty pleasure is the French fry. There's the devil. There's the angel. Eat the fries. Don't eat the fries. Eat the fries. I got to eat the fries.
I have an inner craving for fried foods, especially fries. And the gravy frites at Greenhouse Tavern in Cleveland. Double the guilt. That is the topper. That is where I'm going with the fries.
There is no such thing as a healthy French fry. So I go with the go big or go home theory. These French fries are cooked in duck fat, topped with cheese, and gravy. That is a full-meal deal. That's as guilty as it gets.
SPEAKER 13: That's just because we take our potatoes seriously and our gravy seriously, that the dish comes out as good as it is.
SPEAKER 8: This is not your fast food French fry. This is the frite made to perfection. They take the potato. They cut it. They soak them in water.
SPEAKER 13: That kind of pulls out any of the starch that's inside the potatoes.
SPEAKER 8: They fry them once in duck fat.
SPEAKER 13: At that point, we'll pull our French fries out, seasoning them with a little bit of salt. We'll allow them to drive for at least 24 hours.
SPEAKER 8: Then they drop it back into that hot duck fat. And the fries get super crunchy on the outside. And they're still really creamy in the middle.
SPEAKER 13: We'll toss them through with a bowl that we just aromatized with raw garlic. We'll add our organic mozzarella cheese curd on top, and then we'll pour gravy all over top of it.
SPEAKER 8: It's a little bit of a problem for me because I have turned a guilty pleasure into an everyday occurrence.
SPEAKER 13: Michael Simon has Lola, which is right next door. And sometimes I'll catch him going out of his door to our door to get an order of gravy frites kind of late at night.
SPEAKER 8: it gets a little tricky sometimes. They're just so good.
SPEAKER 13: Here we are.
SPEAKER 8: Oh.
SPEAKER 13: Enjoy.
SPEAKER 8: Thank you. As I'm eating the frites, I taste the saltiness and that deep, crunchy duck flavor. Oh, my God. The smooth mozzarella on top. It's so good, and then that rich black peppery gravy that has a good onion flavor to it. To heaven on a fork.
SPEAKER 9: Bread pudding. Oh, I'm smiling. Bread pudding! Let's talk about it. The best bread pudding I've ever had is that mothers in New Orleans.
SPEAKER 14: Welcome to Mother's.
SPEAKER 9: Nothing about this is supposed to be healthy, which is fine with me. It's really that good. This bread pudding, you don't want to brag about eating to everyone, especially when you've been telling people you're on a diet.
SPEAKER 15: It's not for people who are watching their sugar, but that's what makes it good. It's comfort food.
SPEAKER 9: It's so good. So good. It's so good. People wait in line for hours to eat here and get a taste of this bread pudding. And I wait there forever. And if I get to the end of that line, then there is no bread pudding, I would have to find someone that had ordered it, and buy it off of the-- I'm serious.
This is why my boyfriend is embarrassed to be with me. This bread pudding has the typical day-old bread.
SPEAKER 15: We take the bread and we break it off.
SPEAKER 9: You've got the flavorful sweet custard. You've got a great butter and bourbon sauce that you'll find a lot of places. But they do something I've never seen before. They add fruit cocktail. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 15: The important thing is to get a good quality fruit cocktail.
SPEAKER 9: The same fruit cocktail that you get out of a can at the grocery store. I know it sounds crazy. I think the first time when I ate it, I was saying, really? Am I excited about fruit cocktail?
As a foodie, you think that you have this sophisticated palate. But in the end, it's the fruit cocktail that got me. [GIGGLES]
The fruit cocktail allows you to have a scoop with maybe some peach, a scoop with maybe some cherry. The pear is the best. Yes! Yes! Yes! It's so good! It's just moist on top of flavor on top of decadence. And you really know it's good when you get the little halo of butter around your dish. So wrong.
It is everything that a guilty pleasure should be. When it's supposed to be bad, it's supposed to be bad. And it's bad, but good. Like Run-DMC said.
SPEAKER 16: Why is Beau on this show talking about guilty pleasures? Because I have absolutely none. Butter, fat, heavy cream, I love using those ingredients. So have your guilt about it. I'm just going to eat.
One thing, though, that I can relate to that guilty pleasure or the weakness, so to speak, is clam chowder. Big time.
In one place that you got to have clam chowder at is a Cabby Shack in Plymouth, Massachusetts. This bad boy I'm talking, it's so thick, you can scan a spoon up and that spoon is going to stay straight up in the air.
Do your stomach belly right. I guarantee, it is awesome. I was raised in New England. I was born in Portland, Maine, grew up in Massachusetts. Clams have been a staple. I'll eat them on my cereal.
These things make a difference. You got to eat these. Let them come into your life. I love clams, people. It's that simple.
So you got to drive to the Cabby Shack and say, I want to bowl of chowder. C-H-O-W-D-A-H. Chowdah.
This chowder at the Cabby Shack, it's like mother's milk to me. And I can eat it every day in my life. And in fact, every time I'm back home, I do eat it.
SPEAKER 17: The main reason chowder is good, clams, cream, butter.
SPEAKER 16: Give me 3 pounds of butter, so I can get this chowder started. Really, what I think sets them apart is they make it fresh every day. And when they get the soup going, I mean, it's just phenomenal.
SPEAKER 17: I'm starting off making the Cabby Shack clam chowder, we go with onions, dice em up real fine, take the white pepper, the black pepper, clam base. We add that in.
We use cockle, Arctic surf clams.
SPEAKER 16: Clams are wicked important.
SPEAKER 17: We got lots of butter, flour.
SPEAKER 16: You can get that roux going, then they add the cream. They bring it up. And it thickens like in a cauldron. And then you pack in these potatoes. And then guess what.
At the end, finish it off with a little more butter.
SPEAKER 17: Right on top.
SPEAKER 16: And you've got this really light, whipped, creamy soup with big potatoes, big chunks of clam. They put this Bowl of clam chowder down in front of you. And it's like smelling an angel. That's how good it is.
So you get it in a bread bowl. The bread bowl, that's for the West Coast. Not for us. Uh-uh. In New England, you eat it right out of a bowl or out of a mug. And you put the crackers in and go to town. It's all about the clam chowder.
You're going to eat this dish and make a meal out of this dish, and I'm telling you, you're going to be happy. And life's going to be good.
SPEAKER 10: If you're asking me about the best, most gluttonous, over the top guilty pleasure, come and eat this bad boy and we'll show you what we're talking about.
Here, you have 20 something layers of chocolate coming at you. It's the Strip House chocolate cake. Bring it on.
This cake has what I want, chocolate, chocolate, and chocolate. There's never a time where you're not getting fudgy, chocolatey, yummy, cannot believe how guilty you feel after you finish cake all covered in this really beautiful, shiny chocolate ganache.
SPEAKER 18: We kind of do a layer by layer to get our 24 layers chocolate cake.
SPEAKER 10: So you have a little tiny bit of cake with, like, fudginess on top and the bottom, and then this thin layer of frosting.
SPEAKER 18: We put the first layer here, just layer everywhere, orange juice and simple syrup. So the cake is not going to dry. Then we put chocolate-- chocolate custard.
SPEAKER 10: It's like a crescendo of chocolate. And it happens over and over.
SPEAKER 18: Another one. More of our chocolate custard.
SPEAKER 10: Over and over and over and over.
SPEAKER 18: Layer by layer, more custard.
SPEAKER 10: Cake chocolate mousse.
SPEAKER 18: And this one, we had to put chocolate ganache on top to finish our cake.
SPEAKER 10: I'm not exaggerating. It's like this high off of a plate. And there it is, in this big, huge, wedge. It's just a monstrosity of gluttonous pleasure here. And then you eat it. And you start to experience what I'm talking about.
Oh, my God. The thing that really, I think, excites you is that there's this really moist chocolaty, it's so rich luscious flavor. I wish you were here trying this. That this cake really embodies.
It's just incredible. There's a lot of layer in there. And there's a lot of chocolate in there. And there's a lot of really, guilty, yummy goodness in there. And that's what makes it the best chocolate cake I ever ate. It's just perfect.
SPEAKER 19: I'm not a big dessert person. But if I'm going to consume all those calories, give me something salty, and savory, and fat. Give me a quiche Lorraine. It's much better than a cake.
My best guilty pleasure food that I've ever eaten is the quiche Lorraine at Bouchon Bakery in New York City.
I knew it was going to be good, but I didn't think it was going to be the most unbelievable thing I've ever had in my life.
Growing up, my great uncle's wife, and Angela, made the most unbelievable quiche Lorraine. Ever since then, I've been obsessed with quiche. But the quiche Lorraine at Bouchon Bakery was like bam. It's like shazam!
It's so light and airy. You actually think you had a light lunch. Don't let them fool you. It's a bomb, OK?
SPEAKER 20: Now, we're going to build a pie.
SPEAKER 19: Perfect ratio to bake into cheese, to onion, to cream, to eggs, there's like a gazillion calories in this thing. It's got to be, butter buttercream, butter bacon fat, fat, fat, fat, done.
SPEAKER 20: There you go.
SPEAKER 19: I was so pleasantly shocked when I saw this massive wedge of quiche and a little dainty salad on the side.
SPEAKER 21: Quiche Lorraine.
SPEAKER 19: Oh, great. I take a little salad. So I can feel like I'm being good. Then I eat another one. Oh, my God. And I take a little salad. Guilt, no guilt, guilt, no guilt.
And I eat another one. And you just get these intense bacon cheese flavors with the pie crust that's so buttery and light and flaky. Oh, my God. That's the magic of this quiche. So good!
They make it so light and creamy that boom, it's gone. It is the best quiche I ever had in my life, period.
SPEAKER 7: When I want guilty pleasures, I want like over-the-top outrageous food. And Iris did that for me. It's guilty because of all the ingredients, but it's pleasurable because it taste so freaking good.
I think all of Memphis is talking about the surf and turf at Iris. This is like guilty pleasure on steroids. I mean, when you have fried oysters, and steak, and creamy sauce, what else do you need? Nothing.
You see surf and turf on the menu. And you think surf and turf. And then you read what's in it, and you're thinking, no, can't get better. Oh, it does. And then you say blue cheese. You see bacon. You see fried oysters. And you think you got to be kidding me.
SPEAKER 22: We're from New Orleans originally. When I was growing up, we always had oyster po' boys. And this is kind of an oyster po' boy with steak instead of bread.
SPEAKER 7: It's like New Orleans and New York fell in love and married in Memphis. The way he's brought it together is so decadently good. It's the biggest steak you've ever seen. It's huge. Size does matter.
SPEAKER 22: We're going to fill our steak with just a little bit of blue cheese.
SPEAKER 7: And it's stuffed with fried oysters.
SPEAKER 22: Straight out of New Orleans. Now, we're going to put a little bit of our Allan Benton's bacon and potato hash on our plate.
SPEAKER 7: You think that he would stop with that, but he didn't.
SPEAKER 22: We got some bordelaise sauce, here comes our hollandaise. Last little touch, we got a little bit of fresh fried sage.
SPEAKER 7: That is surf and turf jacked up to who knows what.
SPEAKER 22: One medium rare for Claire. Thank you, sir.
SPEAKER 7: And there it is. Thank you. This is definitely a guilty pleasure because you can't eat this every day. It will kill you. It is over the top, rich, sinful, wrong, awesome. Yes, you want it. You want some more of it.
I've never had anything like this anywhere. Mm. It's really, really, really, really good. Eating sinful decadent food. It is the last legal form of fun. [CHUCKLES]
JEFF: There's a food and you can only have it once in a while because it will make it feel guilty. This stuff is, to somebody who's on a diet, what knocks him off the leg.
When you're eating this thing and be like, man, I shouldn't beat this. But man, it's good. As soon as you get one, you're going to have another one. I'm talking about the Baltimore Bomb Pie from Dangerously Delicious Pies in Baltimore, Maryland.
If something is dangerously delicious, what does that tell you? Be afraid. Be afraid of the pie.
Dangerously Delicious makes the best pies. The Baltimore Bomb is the best of the best. It's so rich and so chocolaty and fudgy. It's amazing.
SPEAKER 23: I've known Duff for a long time. You see Duff walking and be like, hey, man, you got any of that Bomb? He's always hitting me up for the Bomb.
JEFF: This pie is so good. It will knock you out. First, he makes a chess. Chess is the filling. It's like a creamy, vinegary thing. He'll tell you better.
SPEAKER 23: Basically, a chess is a transparent custard. You just take big sugar.
JEFF: Lots of sugar.
SPEAKER 23: Vanilla, cornmeal, salt, butter.
JEFF: Lots of butter.
SPEAKER 23: And vinegar.
JEFF: [INAUDIBLE]
SPEAKER 23: The vinegar cuts the sweetness out a little bit. And it really makes an excellent pie.
JEFF: It works. I got to talk about a very special ingredient in the pie, burgers cookies. They call it a cookie, but the cookie underneath it. But it really is just a big pile of frosting. Bloop. That much frosting to like that much cookie.
My stone frame, it's about that much frosting. He mashes them up real good. And he puts them in the chess, and he bakes this thing. It'll totally blow you away.
See. What happens is the fudge from the burgers cookies. It all sort of floats to the top so you get this crust of chocolatey goodness. It's a mess. Look who made it. [LAUGHS]
When you get a pie, that's ugly, that pies can be awesome. Mm. You got crispy, and then like super gooey. You actually lose consciousness for a good 7 to 8 minutes after you eat this pie. It's that good.
The Baltimore Bomb Pie. A, its burgers cookies, and B, it's called Dangerously Delicious. So you might get mugged on the way to the pie shop-- [MUMBLES] they're in a nice part of town. Just Kidding.
The only reason to feel guilty about a guilty pleasure is if you indulge a little too much. This I might feel guilty about. Moderation, moderation. [LAUGHS] The Baltimore Bomb pie is pie, and it's awesome.
[MUSIC PLAYING]