There's no place like home, there's no place like home ... at least according to Giada, Alton, Ina, and Emeril. They're among the Food Network favorites who reveal the best thing they've ever eaten in their hometowns.
There's no place like home, there's no place like home ... at least according to Giada, Alton, Ina, and Emeril. They're among the Food Network favorites who reveal the best thing they've ever eaten in their hometowns.
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Find episode transcript here: https://the-best-thing-i-ever-ate.simplecast.com/episodes/hometown-favorites-ft-giada-de-laurentiis-ina-garten-and-alton-brown
[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 1: That's why we're here now.
SPEAKER 2: Not only to tell you what we love to eat.
SPEAKER 3: But where you can go get it.
SPEAKER 1: I love food for my hometown.
SPEAKER 5: It's filled with flavor. It's real comfort food.
SPEAKER 1: I get everything when I go to Jack's. I get my entire childhood back.
SPEAKER 2: The food from my hometown is where it's at. It's all that yummy, gooey, chewy stuff inside.
SPEAKER 4: It's a hometown kind of thing.
SPEAKER 1: It's delicious. Bam.
SPEAKER 2: I've lived in LA a long time now, over 20 years. So LA is my hometown. And somehow, I fell in love with something so American, with an Asian name, and a little Italian flair. It's the ultimate hometown comfort food. When I think about a dish that encompasses what my hometown is all about, I think of the umami burger, which is found at the restaurant. The Umami Burger in Los Angeles, California.
SPEAKER 6: Hi, welcome to your Umami Burger.
SPEAKER 2: Unbelievably delicious. This is the kind of burger you can only get in LA. The Umami Burger is the perfect balance. It's all that yummy, gooey, chewy, salty, sweet stuff inside that makes it irresistible. Umami is a Japanese word that means sort of savory, but the perfect layering of savory foods.
SPEAKER 7: Umami is the fifth taste, the savory taste, the others being sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. We've assembled six of the most savory ingredients, and created a burger out of it.
SPEAKER 2: There's a little bit of all of these flavors that create this unbelievable, juicy, delicious burger.
SPEAKER 7: A little bit of umami ketchup. We make the ketchup from scratch to on the burger, so that it has an umami-filled ketchup flavor. Adding anchovy, mushroom, fish sauce, we put star anise in it, which is an umami booster. We get four or five different kinds of steak. We cut them up around in here and formed into six ounce patties. Caramelized onions, Parmesan Frigo.
SPEAKER 2: Parmesan is my favorite cheese in the whole world. So the minute I saw Parmesan Frigo on there, I'm like, oh my gosh. I'm going to freak over this thing.
SPEAKER 7: Shiitake mushrooms, oven-dried tomato, and here we have one, perfect umami burger.
SPEAKER 2: This burger is definitely the embodiment of what LA Food is. A Japanese name, an umami burger, but it's not in a Japanese restaurant. And it mixes all these flavors together. Only in LA do you turn a burger into something that is just that gourmet, and do it so well.
SPEAKER 7: If you say that the world Americana food breaks down into the hamburger people and the hot dog people, I'm hot dog people. If you ask me what the flavor of childhood is, I'd say slaw dogs. That was the food that really kind of defined summer for me. Every day in summer, we have a slaw dog at this place on the side of the road. And the quintessential slaw dog is now to be found in Jack's Cosmic Dog in Mt Pleasant, South Carolina.
A few years ago, my family and I started spending a lot of our free time on an island called Isle of Palms, and we found this little hot dog stand on the side of the road like the kind of place that one would have thought you'd find outside Cape Canaveral in 1963, cashing in on the dreams of a tomorrow in space. So it's definitely a throwback. And that's what brought us in.
SPEAKER 8: Hey, what can we get you today?
SPEAKER 7: I get everything when I go to Jack's. I get my entire childhood back. I get my grandfather's coke machine. I get the slog at the hot dog. We've actually eaten there so early in the morning. There's, like, 10:30 in the morning, we're waiting for them to open the door. It's just, fine, go in and have a hot dog.
SPEAKER 9: We're known for our cosmic dog which has our own sweet potato mustard and the blue cheese slaw.
SPEAKER 7: Imagine a hot dog in a perfect hot dog bun. I don't know where they get their wieners from, but they boil them and then they fry them in butter on a griddle, which I'm pretty sure is probably against the law in at least five or six states. They put this mustard that they make out of sweet potatoes on there and then the blue cheese slaw. It's hard to talk about without slobbering up.
SPEAKER 9: Which almost looks like it's a hot dog sub. So it's a lot of food, but we make everything from scratch. It's just great.
SPEAKER 7: I think the slaw dog is the definitive hot dog experience because you've got cool and crisp sitting right on top of that hot and juicy bursting wiener, and then it's all being caught by this piece of bread. And those things together, the sweetness of the sweet potato, the hot dog, it's-- I mean, I'm sure they didn't think that it was a thereal. They thought it all that's just a good idea, but it is. I would eat two a day, actually, now that I think about it, a minimum of two a day.
My last meal request might actually be three cosmic dogs. I've never been able to eat three, but if it was your last meal, you'd try a little harder, now wouldn't you? And I certainly would. I think I could get three down.
SPEAKER 10: I grew up in Sandwich, Massachusetts, a little tiny town on the Cape. Imagine that. From a town called Sandwich. I love food from my hometown. But the best thing from sandwich is this stuffed quahog. I'm talking about stuffed quahogs at Marshland Restaurant in Sandwich, Massachusetts. It's one of the best, I'd say, pieces of seafood out there. Nobody makes the stuffed quahog like Marshland. I mean, it's got spicy, salty, briny-- I mean, there's all kinds of good stuff in there. OK, so what they do is they steam open the clam.
SPEAKER 11: Once they're done, they will all open up. And we'll shuck these, chop them up, and they'll be just great in the stuffing.
SPEAKER 10: And then they make a crushed cracker and breadcrumbs stuffing.
SPEAKER 11: I'm first going to cook my vegetables, then I'm going to add the diced linguica, which has already been smoked. That's actually done in-house, my spices, my secret, red, hot ingredients, and then we'll chop up the quahogs. Next, I have some crackers.
SPEAKER 10: You pack it all in there, and you pour on a bunch of melted butter. And then as it bakes, all that butter just gets soaked up all through the stuffed quahog. It will blow your mind. So you got this baked edge of the quahog. They dig in there. And you get all the clammy goodness, and all the spices, and all the Ritz crackers, and everything. And it's just it's salty and awesome. The best thing from Sandwich is the stuffed quahog from Marshland. It's clammy, spicy, salty goodness. Incredible.
SPEAKER 12: Once I find something I really like, I have to take everybody I know there. The best hometown favorite I've ever had is the pasta Bolognese at Vine Street Cafe in Shelter Island on Long Island. And I can't even tell you how many times we've come back. It's been a marathon. And I've never been disappointed. East Hampton is a fairly small town, and there's some really great restaurants here.
But once in a while, you feel like going away. And the thing about Shelter Island is because you go on a ferry, you feel like you've gone somewhere. It's like taking a little vacation in the middle of the day that takes two minutes on the ferry, which is the perfect ferry ride. And it's really like going back to the 50s. It's wonderful. Something about the pasta Bolognese, it's got a really rich, full-bodied sauce. I don't actually know what's in it. But it's really extraordinary.
SPEAKER 13: I'll make sauce from homemade tomatoes, and I'll blend that with the meat sauce that's been cooking for hours.
SPEAKER 14: That is sort of the twist that we put on the dish.
SPEAKER 13: Parsley, some fresh-grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, tomatoes.
SPEAKER 14: The sauce needs to be velvety, silky smooth.
SPEAKER 13: I don't want to stir the cheese into it totally until I bring the pasta out of the water.
SPEAKER 12: The pasta really holds the sauce really well.
SPEAKER 13: That's looking good.
SPEAKER 12: I actually love the whole experience of the pasta because it comes in a huge bowl and it's just like a pile in the middle with lots of cheese on it. And the minute it hits your table, you're just like, oh my God, that smells so good. I usually find pasta dishes just don't have that much flavor. And this was just incredibly satisfying, incredibly warm. It's real comfort food. It's just earthy and it's filled with flavor. A good glass of red wine always helps. And it was just absolutely delicious. And it's actually a problem because there are so many things on the menu I want to order. And every time I go, I think I'm going to do something different this time, and then I order the pasta Bolognese.
SPEAKER 15: I'm from Long Island. There are pizza shops everywhere. So for a pizza place to stand out, it's got to be really good. Chefs in New York do a white spinach pizza that is unbelievable. It's delicious. Sometimes you do these interviews and you have the thing there. Where's my slice of spinach pizza? Tyler Florence had a cupcake waiting for him or something. Where is my slice?
I can remember going to this pizza place since I was a kid. It's like one of those pizzas that you put down in your scrapbook, dear diary, today, I had a bite of my spinach pizza. And it made me feel so good inside. Oh, yeah, this brings back memories. The amount of lunch times I had here when I was probably supposed to still be in class.
You can get white spinach pizzas almost everywhere. But the reason chefs is far and away the best white pizza, is that they make this great Parmesan cream sauce. That's the white.
SPEAKER 16: You start off with butter in a pan.
SPEAKER 15: And copious amounts of heavy cream, and put a garlic in there, good Italian Parmesan cheese.
SPEAKER 16: This is what's going to give it a lot of flavor. Spinach here and now is the last step before it goes up front to be made into the pizza.
SPEAKER 15: And then they go completely outside the pizza box. And they bring in sesame seeds for the crust. And bring it home with the mozzarella cheese.
SPEAKER 16: Loosen up nice.
SPEAKER 15: This is just a great combination of flavors. You guys know you have the best white spinach pizza anywhere that I've ever had?
SPEAKER 16: Yeah.
SPEAKER 15: This is New York pizza. This is how it's supposed to be. When you take that first bite, you're immediately transported back to a time when you're young. It makes me feel like I'm 12 years old again. As a child, I didn't know what made their white pizza so awesome. I only knew that I loved it. That crunch juxtaposed with the creaminess, and the cheese, and the oozy, and the gooey, and the delicious. White pizza with the spinach, that is a marriage made in heaven. Yeah, I think I need another slice. It's all I have to say about that.
SPEAKER 17: Hometown food for me, it's the beginning of everything. It's like recipe one. The best hometown meal is having a big plate of hash from Dukes in Orangeburg, South Carolina. We would take road trips to see my grandparents and visit home. And the entire time, all I could think about was, are we going to Dukes before, during, or after? When is it happening? I need to know.
That hash, it's so flavorful. It's soptastic. It's so good you have to make up a word for it. Are you kidding me? soptastic, S-O-P tastic. Good for sopping. Just by definition, hash is anything that's chopped up to bits and cooked. You can have all kinds of hash. But the hash I'm talking about is pretty indicative of the food and the eating in South Carolina. It's all about the pig.
SPEAKER 18: The only thing that goes in the hash, meat-wise is Boston butt.
SPEAKER 19: My son Jake, he's the best hash meal I've had in a long time. He loves the hash, so he knows when it doesn't taste right.
SPEAKER 18: The meat cooks for about four hours.
SPEAKER 17: And all the flavors to start to marry together, but I couldn't tell you what the flavors are because they're all secret.
SPEAKER 18: I can't share with anybody, nobody at all.
SPEAKER 17: With that being said, I don't care what's in it. But it's spicy, it's salty, it's savory. It's all harmonious in flavor. It all works together. And you serve it-- well, you can just eat it out of a bowl, or you can serve it over white rice. And next thing you know, you're just sopping up the leftovers with a piece of white bread wondering if it's too tacky to go get seconds.
It is so good. It's consistently good. But it always feels the same. It always tastes the same. I miss it, you know? I haven't been home. So it's like I have these memories of going to eat there, and it looks like nothing. This is why I always say to people some of the best food comes from the most humble places. I'm like the only person who would cry over food. And that's what happens every single time I eat there. It just reminds me that this is where I'm from. We'll never have it like this anywhere else. Home cooking at its best. It's amazing.
SPEAKER 20: My mom is Portuguese. My dad's French-Canadian. She basically ruled the house. And so, we grew up Portuguese. There's a lot of food memories that I have growing up in Fall River. My mom's buccola, her favas. She made a great kale soup, but there was something about the kale soup at the St John's Club that was just really-- I don't know. I crave it. Yes, that's why I'm talking about it.
Growing up in Fall River meant growing up across the street from the St John's Club. And I was always there to see Ines, my second mom, for a little pick me up of Portuguese soup. Sometimes I call her mom, I call her Miss Ines, Aye Aye Kapitan. She's absolutely a general. She's a drill Sergeant. And she's still in that kitchen every day.
SPEAKER 21: He comes through the back door, and he says, I am here mother. Where's my Portuguese soup?
SPEAKER 20: From the day that I had it as a kid to if I go and have it today. If Ines is doing it, you know it's going to be smacked full of love.
SPEAKER 21: With the lot of love you have. The best soup in the world.
SPEAKER 20: Just rustic, and brothy, and hotty, and good. It's very, very simple ingredients, but it's just very fresh.
SPEAKER 21: This is the kale we use that's the best. The seeds come from Portugal. Delicious flavor.
SPEAKER 20: Beans are optional.
SPEAKER 21: [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]. Oh, that's right. Now, I'm so nervous. The red beans.
SPEAKER 20: Potatoes, chorizo.
SPEAKER 21: This is the Portuguese sausage.
SPEAKER 20: It's basically a smoked sausage. The color really comes from not only the spice but paprika. It's delicious. It's what I grew up on. And it's a key ingredient in kale soup. It's very simple. I have to say that it's better than mine or she'd kill me.
SPEAKER 21: We would argue like a mother and the son does.
SPEAKER 20: The same thing with my mom. They would gang up on me, and send the kale soup police after me.
SPEAKER 21: You put different ingredients. And, of course, I don't like his ingredients. I like my own. Mine will always will be their best.
SPEAKER 20: Just a bowl of love. It has memories. It's warm. It's fulfilling. It's dynamite. So I have to say, yes, mom's. Your kale soup is better than mine.
SPEAKER 15: I love this pizza so much that I could eat it with my right hand. I could eat with my left. I'm not even a lefty. I can't do anything with my left hand. If I had to, I wouldn't want to. I would eat it with no hands.
[MUSIC PLAYING]