▷S3E11 BONUS EP PREVIEW Italian Slang and American Cheese with Giulia Álvarez-Katz

English

Jan 30

Deep cuts from Modo di Bere's interview with novelist, food writer and videomaker Giulia Álvarez-Katz.

To hear the full episode, go to patreon.com/mododibere and become a supporter at the Podcast Lover level.

Fans of the podcast will remember Giulia's interview from Season 2 Episode 10. During the Italian interview, RT and Giulia took a meal break, pairing an Italian Aglianico with New York bodega classic, the chopped cheese sandwich. This is what they talked about:

Pronouncing English words in the middle of an Italian sentence. The wonders of American cheese (yes, even with fish). Diasporic variations of backhome dishes, including the unexpected combination that approximates Bhutanese yak cheese. The italian phrase "ci sta." Cat divas. The Wisconsin Brandy Old Fashioned. Who looks at their face on zoom. Who gets to write about New York City.

Learn more about Giulia’s work at giulia-ak.com
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There's always going to be people writing about New York always somebody's done it better before somebody will do it better again. Welcome to Motody Berry, the podcast about local drinks and local sayings. On your host, Rose Thomas Bannister. This is a preview of an exclusive bonus episode with Julia Alvarez -Catz, the New York City novelist, food writer, and video maker who I interviewed in season 2, episode 11 of the English podcast. I love being in the presence of Julia's vibrant imagination. Several months after recording this interview, Julia joined the MotoDBerry team as our podcast editor and assistant producer on various video projects. To hear the full episode today, go to patreon .com /motodberry and become a supporter at the podcast lover level. If you're already a supporter, thank you so much for making the show possible. I gotta say, I think what's actually really working with this is the American cheese more than anything else. American cheese in Alianco. Ooh! It's something... Okay, and do you want me to say something crazy? This like changed my entire perspective on American cheese. So last January, we went to Jago, which is a Bhutanese restaurant. At the time, I didn't know anything about Bhutanese food other than I knew that Butan was like a tiny little kingdom in the Himalayas. So mountain people, that's all I knew. Come to find out the whole like backbone of Bhutanese cuisine is like chilies and cheese. Everything they do is chili cheese based. But it's yak cheese 'cause they're in the Himalayas, which fair enough. And the guys with the Spoot Knees restaurant, they obviously can't get, they don't have the margins. Who the hell has the margins for yak cheese if all of your dishes are cheese based? So they could not get yak cheese, but they wanted to find like the closest equivalent. And so they tried out a bunch of cheeses, they like trial and errored their way through it. Worked really hard to like nail down what would be the perfect analog to Yak cheese. Turns out it's a combination of feta and American. That's Yak cheese. Yeah. Oh. And this is, you know, keep in mind, this is not like, you know, a kid whose parents are Bhutanese and he grew up in the U .S. and he's only had Bhutanese. Like this is like he grew up in Bhutan. Like the only reason he's even here is because he was like a mountain biker. And he was like taking tourists out on these like crazy mountain biking trails that they have out there. But it turns out if you grow up in a place where the mountain biking is really hard, you end up just being naturally a very good mountain biker. And these random two people from Colorado watched him bike, and they were like, "Yo, we'll sponsor you for a visa so you can like go to the Olympics." And he was like, "Okay." And then he got an injury, so he couldn't. But he had this visa and got to stay in the US, so he opened this restaurant instead. But But the fact that he said that yak cheese is very close to American and feta really changed my perspective on it. I was like, okay, American cheese is perhaps more complex than I gave it credit for. To hear the full episode, go to patreon .com /motodiberi and become a supporter at the podcast lover level. Support us on Patreon, grab the newsletter at Motodiberri .com and subscribe to the YouTube channel at Motodiberri to watch the travel show Motodiberri TV. Music for the show was composed by Arcilia Prosperi for the band O. Purchase their music at the link in the notes.