Flavorphiles

Most of what North America calls Mexican food barely scratches the surface. Tanner Agar, Michelin-winning chef and bartender, and broadcaster Jerry Agar go deeper. They start with pulque, the ancient agave drink older than tequila, and the spirits mezcal drinkers should know next: raicilla, bacanora, and charanda.From there, the dishes rarely seen north of the border: escamoles, huitlacoche, chapulines, sesos, nopales, and the moles beyond the black one. Chef Anastacia Quiñones-Pittman, three-time James Beard semifinalist and founder of Oh Hi Hospitality, joins to discuss cooking Mexican food in a Tex-Mex city, and why queso has no p...

Whatever happened to the dinner party? Have we gotten too busy, too intimidated, or just too comfortable ordering takeout to invite friends over for a proper meal?This week on Flavorphiles, Tanner and Jerry are bringing back the lost art of entertaining. First, they're joined by Toronto Star contributor Catherine Bradbury to explore why dinner parties have fallen out of fashion and what we're missing by not gathering around the table.Then, Tanner explains how to throw an incredible dinner party even if you can't cook. From clever shortcuts to the little details that make guests...

Baking looks simple until you actually try it.This week, Tanner and Jerry dig into why good cooks can be surprisingly bad bakers, and why baking rewards a completely different set of instincts. Tanner mixes up his signature Wake and Bake before they’re joined by Jen Hudson, contestant on The Great Canadian Baking Show, to find out what it’s really like inside the tent.Then it’s time to settle an important question: when should you buy it, use a mix, or make it from scratch? Brownies, croissants, pie crust, cake and more are all up...

This week on Flavorphiles, Tanner and Jerry are back with a completely new Thanksgiving episode built for everything that happens after the basic advice runs out.First, we head to the Thanksgiving Emergency Room to tackle the disasters that can derail dinner. Frozen turkey? Broken gravy? Everything needs the oven at the same time? Tanner explains how to save the meal before anyone starts ordering pizza.Then it’s Thanksgiving Mythbusters. Do you really need to baste the turkey? Is the timing of turkey hard to get right? Should stuffing go inside the bird? We take on...

What is it really like to be a chef?This week, Tanner and Jerry get into the reality of chef life, from the long hours and low pay to culinary school, repetition, passion, and why working in restaurants is often more of a lifestyle than a normal job.Then we talk about Tony, the Anthony Bourdain film, and ask how accurately it captures Bourdain’s life, what it gets right about being a chef, and whether the movie actually works.Tanner’s fiancée Grace also joins us to answer a different question: what is it...

For Talk Like a Pirate Day, Tanner and Jerry dig into the surprisingly strange food and drink history of life at sea. We start with what pirates actually ate, why their diet could sometimes give them an advantage over the Navy, and how scurvy became one of the biggest threats aboard ship. That includes James Lind’s famous experiment testing cures ranging from cider and vinegar to seawater, citrus, and a truly questionable garlic-and-mustard concoction.Then we make a Bumbo and look at what pirates and sailors actually drank. Why was fresh water such a problem? Why did ru...

Fall is farmers market season, but what does that actually mean when you live somewhere like Dallas?This week on Flavorphiles, Tanner and Jerry head into fall with a Harvest Highball made with applejack, an old-school American apple spirit, before turning the market into their own personal cooking competition. In Chopped: Flavorphiles Edition, they each surprise the other with mystery baskets of fall farmers market staples and have to figure out what they would actually make with them.Then we talk with the Director of the Dallas Farmers Market about what really happens when the market...

Judging food is fun. Whether you’re ranking the best chefs on TV, challenging your friends to a ridiculous eating competition, or silently keeping score of everything a restaurant gets wrong, we all do it. This week, Tanner and Jerry are putting everything on the judging table.First, we look at food competitions you can actually do with your friends, from blind butter tastings to the kind of steak challenge that involves 72 ounces of beef and some questionable life choices.Then we rank the best food competition chefs on television. Who makes a great judge? Who makes a...

Bitter gets a bad rap. We’re basically born suspicious of it, kids hate it, and yet somehow adults end up obsessed with coffee, dark chocolate, bitter greens, amaro, and aggressively hoppy beer.This week on Flavorphiles, Tanner and Jerry dig into why we learn to love bitter flavors, how bitterness is different from burnt, sour, and astringent, and why some people may actually experience bitter foods more intensely than others.Then Kolby Howard from Fernet-Branca joins us to explain amaro, the exptremely bitter, and very popular, Italian digestif.Tanner also breaks down how ch...

This week on Flavorphiles, we are committing crimes against food. Allegedly. Tanner and Jerry dig into the strange, sticky, and surprisingly sophisticated world of food true crime.First, Tanner introduces the Amuse Booze: powdered alcohol. He knows how to make it, he will not be telling you how, and depending on where you live, that may be for the best.Then Christie Wallace and Heather McKinney from Sinisterhood join the show to break down the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, a real-life caper involving millions of dollars in stolen syrup, a cartel's strategic reserve, and how 1 f...

This week, we’re taking a bite out of New Zealand. Tanner used to live in NZ, so he’s guiding Jerry through the foods, flavors, and extremely specific Kiwi words that make the country’s cuisine so much more than lamb and Sauvignon Blanc.First up, it’s Guess That Kiwi Food, where Jerry has to figure out what ingredients like kūmara, capsicum, pāua, and hokey pokey actually are based only on the name. Then, Chef Toby Archibald of Michelin-recognized Quarter Acre in Dallas joins us to talk about cooking New Zealand food in Texas and what it...

Whiskey can feel like it comes with homework. Scotch, bourbon, rye, Irish whiskey, Japanese whisky, Canadian whisky, age statements, ice rules, spelling arguments; it is a lot of brown liquid with a lot of opinions.This week on Flavorphiles, Tanner and Jerry take a not-too-nerdy trip through the whiskeys of the world to figure out what actually makes each style different. Then they sit down with Robert Likarish of Ironroot Republic Distillery to talk about why great bourbon is not limited to Kentucky, how Texas heat changes the aging process, and what gives Texas whiskey its own identity.<...

In celebration of National Mustard Day, Flavorphiles is bringing the heat, just not the hot sauce.This week, Tanner and Jerry dive into the world of spicy condiments, from chili crisp and horseradish to hot mustard, yuzu kosho, and the jars hiding in the back of your fridge that may or may not still be alive. Then they answer one of sushi’s great green mysteries: what is wasabi, really, and why is the stuff most people eat basically wearing a disguise?Barry Levenson, founder and curator of the National Mustard Museum, joins the show to ta...

This week on Flavorphiles, we turn up the volume for an episode all about the strange, funny, and surprisingly important relationship between food and music.Jerry returns to his roots as a longtime radio DJ with a countdown of his top 10 songs about food, from the Beatles, to Frank Sinatra, to Jack Johnson. Then Rob Felicetti of Bowling for Soup joins us to talk about eating on tour: the best meals on the road, the foods that make certain cities worth looking forward to, backstage catering, late-night survival meals, and why he has such a deep l...

Restaurants used to be places you went to eat. Now they’re also places you go to post, flex, film, and prove you were there.This week on Flavorphiles, Tanner and Jerry look at the rise of dining out for clout. We start with a viral flaming cocktail stunt that looks incredible on camera and asks the obvious question: when food and drinks are built for the video, what happens to the actual experience? Then we dig into how restaurants have changed in the camera era, from better lighting and tableside service to dramatic plating, cocktail reveals, and ro...

Great food does not have to come with a luxury price tag. In this episode of Flavorphiles, Tanner and Jerry dig into the places, dishes, and techniques that prove affordable food can still be serious, memorable, and packed with flavor.First, they look at why “cheap eats” is the wrong phrase. Restaurants spend money on far more than food: real estate, design, service style, branding, huge menus, and all the little details that make a place feel expensive. But sometimes the best meals come from restaurants that skip the polish and put the money where it matters: into the...

This week on Flavorphiles, Tanner and Jerry head to the farmers’ market to figure out what is actually worth buying—and how to keep your ambitious haul from becoming expensive compost.Tanner starts with the best things to buy at the market, why high-water foods often deliver the biggest improvement over their grocery-store counterparts, and the etiquette that keeps you from becoming every vendor’s least-favorite customer.Then, Melanie Anderson, Executive Director of Farmers’ Markets Ontario, joins the show to explain what separates a great market from a disappointing one and how her organization supports more than 180...

Canada Day and the Fourth of July are approaching, which means it’s time to fire up the grill, load the cooler, and make a few decisions that could determine whether your backyard party becomes legendary or a small insurance claim.We start with a layered red-and-white Jell-O shot—add blue for the American version—before tackling how not to ruin burgers, chicken, and every other meat somebody confidently volunteered to grill.Then Overrated/Underrated returns with the cookout edition. From coleslaw and baked beans to corn on the cob and watermelon, what's a must and what's...

This week on Flavorphiles, we’re going Into the Wild— but not in a “survive on bark and make friends with a squirrel” kind of way.Tanner and Jerry start with how to seriously upgrade your picnic, car camping, or outdoor hang without turning it into a fully catered wedding in a field. After that, Alana McGee of Truffle Dog Co. joins the show to explain how truffle dogs are trained, what it’s like to forage for truffles and mushrooms, and how to keep them safe from getting eaten. Then the episode heads deeper into the backcou...

Do cookbooks still matter, or have they become expensive decorations for people who mostly cook from TikTok?This week on Flavorphiles, Tanner and Jerry crack open the cookbook shelf to ask why we buy cookbooks and what they still give us that the internet can’t. We start with the strange joy of owning cookbooks we may never use, then talk with Matt Rodbard about how cookbooks actually get made and how they shape food culture. Then we look back at cookbooks as the original food internet — part instruction manual, part status symbol, part cultural record. Final...