Episode 542
with Gregory Gourdet and No-No Boy
Host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello talk wacky cooking hacks; acclaimed chef and restaurateur Gregory Gourdet (Top Chef) discusses how his newest cookbook Everyone's Table begins with his journey to sobriety; and musician and scholar Julian Saporiti, a.k.a. No-No Boy, describes how he transformed his doctoral research on Asian-American history into a multimedia project, before performing "Tell Hanoi I Love Her" from his latest album 1975.
Gregory Gourdet
Portland Chef & Restauranteur
Gregory Gourdet is a James Beard Award nominated chef, two-time Bravo Top Chef finalist, and bestselling author of Everyone’s Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health. A trendsetter in the culinary boom of Portland, he ran the kitchen at Departure Restaurant + Lounge for 10 years. He is now opening his own restaurant, Kann, a wood-fired concept that promises to bring the cuisine of his Haitian heritage and the Caribbean diaspora to the American spotlight. Instagram · Website
No-No Boy
Singer-Songwriter & Scholar
Julian Saporiti is a Vietnamese American songwriter and scholar born in Nashville, Tennessee. His multi-media project No-No Boy has transformed his doctoral research on Asian American history into concerts, albums, and films which have reached a diverse public audience. His latest album, 1975, released through Smithsonian Folkways, has been hailed by NPR as "one of the most insurgent pieces of music you'll ever hear,” and American Songwriter called it "insanely listenable and gorgeous." Saporiti has been commissioned by such esteemed cultural institutions as Lincoln Center, the LA Philharmonic, the National Parks, and Carnegie Hall. Website • Twitter
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Luke Burbank: Hey, Elena Passarello.
Elena Passarello: Hello, Lucas Burbank. How—are you a Lucas? I don't even know.
Luke Burbank: I'm just a Luke, but I've been getting that question a lot lately. Maybe I was meant to be a Lucas, but, you know, back in the seventies in Humboldt County, they weren't big on that whole formality thing. They just went with Luke.
Elena Passarello: They were monosyllabic.
Luke Burbank: Yes, exactly. At that. All right. Are you ready to play a little "Station Location Identification Examination"?
Elena Passarello: Are you kidding? I've been waiting for this.
Luke Burbank: So this is where I'm going to tell you about a place where Live Wire is on the radio. You got to try to guess the spot that I am talking about. This place has been called the Malibu of the Midwest and hosted the annual Dairyland Surf Classic from 1988 to 2012, which is the largest lake surfing competition in the world.
Elena Passarello: Okay, lake and dairy. Got to be Wisconsin.
Luke Burbank: Yes. Ding ding ding.
Elena Passarello: Uh... Appleton, Wisconsin.
Luke Burbank: It's such a fun place to say. I don't even know—
Elena Passarello: Sheboygan, Wisconsin! [Laughs]
Luke Burbank: It's Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Where we're on the radio in WSHS in Sheboygan. Uh, could have given you the follow up, in 1970 sheboygan defeated Bucyrus, Ohio, for the title of Bratwurst Capital of the World.
Elena Passarello: Whoa.
Luke Burbank: Now I'm going to be hungry the whole show. And I don't even eat meat anymore. All right. Should we get on with the Live Wiring this week?
Elena Passarello: Yeah, let's do it.
Luke Burbank: All right. Take it away.
Elena Passarello: From PRX, it's...
Live Audience: Live Wire! [Applause, music plays]
Elena Passarello: This week, chef and cookbook author Gregory Gourdet.
Gregory Gourdet: I really wanted to create something that if you didn't know who I was, the book would be helpful. And it really had to start with how I got healthy. And that really was because of me getting sober.
Elena Passarello: With music from No-No Boy.
Julian Saporiti: Isn't it time that we start, I don't know, turning this incredible research we spend years doing into more public-facing work? So chapter four is just a vinyl record.
Elena Passarello: And our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello. And now, the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank!
Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. [Music ends.] Thanks to everyone for tuning in from all across the country, including beautiful Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
Elena Passarello: Sheboygan.
Luke Burbank: We asked listeners a question this week in honor of Gregory Gourdet's appearance. He's a phenomenal chef. We asked folks to tell us their most surprising cooking hack. And we're going to read some of those answers coming up in just a bit. First, though, it's time for the best news we heard all week. [Music plays.] This hour, a little reminder at the top of the show that there is, in fact, good news happening out there in the world. Elena, what is the best news you heard all week?
Elena Passarello: Illuminating science news. Ooooh. With an emphasis on illuminating. I learned about a French startup company called Glowee, which wants to use bioluminescence in place of electric light to provide things like street light and ambient light to communities around the planet.
Luke Burbank: Bioluminescence, which are those organisms that live in like the oceans and just kick off that amazing natural, I guess, light?
Elena Passarello: Yeah. It's a quality that fireflies have. The little thing at the end of an anglerfish is bioluminescent, but there's also, like, marine algae. And it turns out that, like, 76% of all deep sea creatures possess some form of bioluminescence. But the specific bioluminescence that they've been experimenting with in this town called Rambouillet, France, which is like 30 minutes south of Paris, is an algae that grows off of the French coast. And they put it in a tube like a long tube that's basically like an aquarium. And they feed it and keep it healthy and then this blue glow illuminates the room. And the room where they first tested it was one of those recovery areas for when you get your COVID vaccine, you know where you have to wait a little bit before you...?
Luke Burbank: Yeah, I waited in a, I mean, no offense, but an extremely soul-crushing, like, high school gymnasium. So, if there had been some bioluminescence in there it would have changed up the whole vibe.
Elena Passarello: Yeah. And the bioluminescent room is just the beginning. This town, Rambouillet, France, is going to put some more bioluminescent tubes in one of its towns squares. And they, the company is working with 40 cities in France and three other European Union countries using $1,000,000 in funding to figure out what else they can do. There's some problems right now that they're still trying to figure out, like, how do you change the brightness?
Luke Burbank: Turn the light off?
Elena Passarello: No they know how to turn the light off.
Luke Burbank: What?
Elena Passarello: This is amazing. So there's a steady stream of oxygen that can flow through the tubes and nourish it, and then they just turn off the oxygen and then the lights go out. Haha!
Luke Burbank: That is so cool.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, I think we're sort of on the ground floor of this, but I just love how out of the box it is and how non electric power no dinosaurs were used in—
Luke Burbank: Right?
Elena Passarello: The making of this cool ambient light.
Luke Burbank: That is amazing. Can we call, do we describe those organisms as animals? Because I've got animals in the news for my best news. Talking about loons in Michigan, Elena.
Elena Passarello: The loons! That's my...
Luke Burbank: That's right. Nice On Golden Pond reference there.
Elena Passarello: I know, it's like, only a certain part of our listening audience will have any idea what that means.
Luke Burbank: My best news story comes from Seney, Michigan. How do I know it's pronounced "see-knee" Michigan, Elena?
Elena Passarello: Because you called the Tim Hortons.
Luke Burbank: They don't have a Tim Hortons, but they do have the Seney Party Store. [Elena laughs.] Just called. On Church Street. Got the pronunciation from someone. The world's two oldest known common loons have both shown up in Seney, Michigan, again at the Seney National Wildlife Refuge. One of them is named ABJ, which stands for Adult Banded Juvenile, because ABJ was born at the refuge 35 years ago. And then the other one is named Fe. They are male and female loons. This is the 26th year that these two common loons, ABJ and Fe, have come to this particular refuge and gotten together and mated. This year, if they hook up, it will be year 26 that they have mated, making them both two of the oldest common loons that we know about in America or maybe the world, and certainly the two longest kind of continually pairing up pair of common loons.
Elena Passarello: I thought, you're going to say the friskiest. [Laughs.]
Luke Burbank: Well, I mean, clearly, there's still some passion in the relationship.
Elena Passarello: That's right.
Luke Burbank: 26 years later, they're still, they're still finding each other. So they're both at the wildlife reserve right now. They are not currently, like they haven't made their way to each other,.
Elena Passarello: Oh, cool.
Luke Burbank: According to the folks that are, like, watching them, but they think that it's just a matter of time before they figure out where each other, where they're at, because they've been finding each other for all of these years. It turns out common loons do not mate for life, but, researchers have found that if two loons do successfully hatch chicks together, they are more likely to pair up again the following year.
Elena Passarello: Smart.
Luke Burbank: So this has just apparently been working very well for ABJ and Fe. And so, this year, I mean, all, all signs point towards another great summer for these two and a chance, Elena, for me to show my one and only cool party trick, which is my loon call that I do with my hands.
Elena Passarello: Oh no. I saw you start moving your hands. I was like, uh oh, I think I know what's coming.
Luke Burbank: I need to get limber.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, you're doing some stretches.
Luke Burbank: You know how it can be stressful to try to whistle on command?
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Do anything like this, OK, here we go, ready? [Whistles] Right?
Elena Passarello: That that sounded like a spaghetti western.
Luke Burbank: I learned that when I was a kid at Loon Lake over in far, far eastern Washington.
Elena Passarello: Beautiful. Well done.
Luke Burbank: I cannot believe that these loons are so much better at making relationships work than I am. It's incredible. That's like 15 marriages of time for me that these loons have been together.
Elena Passarello: You just got to work on your loon call. Maybe that's the key. If you got a stronger loon call.
Luke Burbank: That's right, I've been barking, I've been barking up the wrong tree. Anyway, loons in love. That's the best news that I saw this week. [Music plays.] Hey, if you want to get more good news in your life, we have an entire Live Wire podcast called The Best News Podcast, which we put out each week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Let's welcome our first guest on over to the show. He's a two-time finalist on Bravo's Top Chef. He's a James Beard Award nominee. And he's also the bestselling author of Everyone's Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health. And he's Oprah's personal go-to chef for all things Haitian cuisine-related. He's Gregory Gourdet. And we just talked to him earlier this month at the Alberta Rose Theater here in Portland, Oregon. Take a listen.
Luke Burbank: [Applause] Gregory Gourdet. Welcome to Live Wire.
Gregory Gourdet: Thank you so much. It's good to be here.
Luke Burbank: It's great to see you. Congratulations on all the stuff that you've been up to. You've been on Top Chef a bunch. You've been doing all kinds of interesting things, including putting out this cookbook, Everyone's Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health. I was really struck by how beautiful the book is and how interesting the recipes are, but also by the beginning of the book, which talks a lot about your journey to sobriety. It's the first thing in the book.
Gregory Gourdet: It is.
Luke Burbank: Why did you start there?
Gregory Gourdet: I really wanted to create something that would be helpful for people because a lot of people know me as a chef and I'm on TV and I do these competition shows and I've been in town for about 15 years, but like health is extremely important to me. So I really wanted to create something that, if you didn't know who I was, if you had never seen me on TV, the book would be helpful. And it really had to start with how I got healthy and my journey to health. And that really was because of me getting sober. And I got sober in Portland 13 years ago.
Luke Burbank: Wow, congratulations. [Applause.]
Gregory Gourdet: And my life completely changed. So, so yeah. So yeah. I rolled up here about 14 years ago. I was a hot mess. [Laughs.] And then I met some folks who were in AA and it was like the end of a seven-year battle with drugs and alcohol. I had left New York. That's where I'm from. And I was in rehab. I had moved to California. I'd gotten in car accidents, arrests, you know, more therapy, and nothing stuck. And then I finally made it to Portland, and I was just meant to move here. [Applause.] And, you know, I met people in AA. Yeah. And my life completely changed and I just felt I had to begin the book with that story. And if you haven't read the book, it starts with the story of me drinking for 12 hours in San Diego and then falling asleep at the wheel and totaling a car after it flipped in the air and continuing to party for a year and a half after that. [Laughs.] But soon after I got healthy and, and here I am. And I just wanted to share that beginning because I think it's so important. I think we find change in our lives in so many different areas. You know, what instigates change in our lives. Sometimes it happens immediately. Sometimes it doesn't even happen. Like that was a huge, it could have been a huge turning point in my life. How many people, you know, are in a near-death car accident and they're like, God saved me, or my higher power saved me, or whoever is out there saved me. And I just like kept partying, you know? So it took being far from that situation and looking back and being like, that was a moment in my life I could have lost it all. So I felt it was really important to start the book with that.
Luke Burbank: It's interesting because kitchen culture, you know, professional cooking is so high pressure when it's happening that I know that there has been historically a real culture around a lot of drug and alcohol use and abuse. I know this because I once moderated an event with Tony Bourdain.
Gregory Gourdet: OK, yeah.
Luke Burbank: On a Saturday night in Seattle, and I thought, Oh, these will be a bunch of fancy types there. And it was, like, people were swinging from the rafters. [Laughter.] It was the one night everyone who cooked in Seattle managed to get off, and it was wild. That being said, I also know a lot of people who are sober now who cook, because I also feel like for a lot people it's not sustainable. Do you feel like that's also a movement that's happening.
Gregory Gourdet: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: ...is sober people in kitchens and helping other folks with sobriety?
Gregory Gourdet: Indeed. I mean, I think it's it's odd because I think the restaurant is the one place where you're rewarded for doing your job with alcohol, like as in a shift drink. You know, what other profession, I mean, you leave, you go to the bar, you don't start drinking at work at a lot of places, you know. So like that's one thing. But for me, I was a victim of New York City and cooking in a very fancy kitchen. It's like, Jean-Georges, he had three Michelin stars at some point. He lost a star, but... [laughter]
Luke Burbank: Wait, he blurbed this book. Are you really going to put him out on the front street?
Gregory Gourdet: He's a great mentor, you know, but it was a very high pressure situation. And New York, nothing closes in New York. And, you know, here I am, a young cook. I work at this great restaurant and like all my friends work the clubs and, you know, you just get caught up. So it's like a vicious cycle, you know? And I have a very addictive personality. Like, I'm an overachiever, like I overwork, like, so like all these things about my personality, like, completely make me an addict, you know, so. But I think it is very prevailing, because, you know, we work 12 hours a day just to keep the restaurant open. It's hard to work less. You know, obviously, we're trying to shift with how culture is today. We're realizing that these systems are not effective. They don't promote life balance. You know, we actually have a group called Ben's Friends and it's a national chapter and it's just all sober folks, people trying to get sober. It's strictly in the food and beverage industry because we need to create a space for ourselves because we're bartenders, we're sommeliers, we're winemakers, we're chefs. We are surrounded by alcohol all the time. Maybe if you're in AA or another group, you might get questioned about why are you still in this profession? But for us, it's all we do.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. Well, I want to, on the subject of your being a high achiever, I want to talk about this cookbook when we come back from the break. And also this new restaurant you're opening. So let's do that in a moment. We're talking to Chef Gregory Gourdet. This is Live Wire Radio coming back in just a moment. [Applause.].
Luke Burbank: Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. We're talking to Chef Gregory Gourdet. His cookbook is Everyone's Table Global Recipes for Modern Health. I know that the food writer Michael Pollan has, like, this mantra, right? It's like eat food, mostly plants, not too much of it or whatever. Do you Gregory Gourdet have a sort of a food mantra that you say in your mind or like an organizing principle for like the kind of food you want to make, the kind of stuff you want to champion?
Gregory Gourdet: Yeah, for me, I definitely see food as two things. I see it as nourishment and I see it as culture. So for me, everything I put in my body—well not everything, let's be realistic—but I like, I like to focus on whole foods 100%. And I love, love, love learning about the culture behind ingredients. I've studied so many different types of cuisines. I've worked in so many different types of restaurants. Currently, I'm tapping into my own heritage to open up my restaurant, Kann, but I just love learning about, you know, why there's, you know, ginger and jerk because of Chinese immigrants in Jamaica. You know, why there's curry in Africa. You know, all these kind of ingredients and spices that we think belong to one place, but how they got to another place, I think it's so fascinating and it's truly endless. So for me, those are the two things I focus on when I think about food.
Luke Burbank: The last time we had you on the show, I think you were maybe right off of being on Top Chef the first time.
Gregory Gourdet: Yes. Yes.
Luke Burbank: And since then, you've been on it more. You, they just did the season in Portland and you were on it, like, a ton, kind of as the ambassador for Portland. [Applause.]
Gregory Gourdet: [Laughs.] It took a lot of work to get Top Chef to come to Portland.
Elena Passarello: Really?
Luke Burbank: Really?
Gregory Gourdet: You don't know how many meetings we had behind the scenes.
Luke Burbank: Were you lobbying for that?
Gregory Gourdet: Yes, absolutely!
Luke Burbank: I didn't realize that, wow.
Gregory Gourdet: Me, Travel Portland, we were just like come on, come on. [Applause.].
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Good job.
Gregory Gourdet: We got it. We got it. Travel Oregon. Yeah. We finally got them to come here. And then it was a pandemic. [Laughter.]
Luke Burbank: That's Portland's luck, I think.
Gregory Gourdet: I mean, like, literally, like it was the fires, it was the pandemic. We were all downtown, so there was a protest. And then we finally got to an episode where we could shoot at Mount Hood and go to the orchards. And I was like, this is Oregon. Like, it was like a beautiful, perfect day. And like, we're harvesting apples and pears. I'm like, come on, it's great here. [Laughter.] This is what we do.
Luke Burbank: I'm wondering about the times when you've actually been competing on that show, because I have heard that it is an unbelievable grind for the chefs, because what we don't realize as the viewers, as we're watching like every week.
Gregory Gourdet: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Hey, what's the new challenge?
Gregory Gourdet: You're watching 45 minutes of 12 hours a day.
Luke Burbank: You're doing that back to back to back to back, right?
Gregory Gourdet: Yeah. Yeah. My first season, we would film for six days straight and then have one day off. And then, of course, times change. You can't do that anymore. So now we film one episode, which takes two days and always have a day off. But it's a 12 to 15 hour day, for sure, to get condensed into 45 minutes of TV.
Luke Burbank: For the, I don't know, for folks that maybe don't watch Top Chef, first of all, what are you doing with your life? But, but, there's this thing called the quickfire challenge, which is timed and kind of like, the, you know, Padma Lakshmi sort of throws out an idea like combine this with this or make something that reminds us of this and then you, if this is one of the years you're competing, Gregory, just have to run in a direction and start just like grabbing ingredients. How does everyone have an idea in their head so fast on the show?
Gregory Gourdet: You have to. I mean, I think, I think some people don't like competition cooking because they don't think it's, like, realistic or like cooking shouldn't be competition, it should be collaborative, and like all these things. But for me, I think it's a very personal thing because you can't find yourself in that situation. You're never going to be like, I'm going to just run to my pantry and make a dish in 15 minutes, you know, unless you're like really late for something and like I'm really late for stuff all the time, so, like, but you know, it's just like, not this realistic thing that you can put yourself through and like this like gauntlet, kind of like challenge-y way of like how quickly can you think on your toes? You know, how delicious can you make something with very limited resources? How many courses can you execute out of just shopping at like a place like Whole Foods, like with like limited ingredients, nothing specialty. It's just a cool way to challenge yourself, you know? And it's like the adrenaline rush is very addictive, and...
Luke Burbank: We've heard you do well with that.
Gregory Gourdet: [Laughs.] Yeah. I love it. Like, my heart's beating so fast, I think I'm going to puke, but like, you know, and then, like, getting Padma to say, like, all the great feedback and you know, you get to live another day. It's like, really fun. It's really fun.
Luke Burbank: I, I was watching, like, Oprah on Instagram and she's, like, got Gayle there, and it's like these students from her school, and everyone's, like, about to eat this amazing meal. And you were the person who made the meal.
Gregory Gourdet: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: How did that happen? And what was that like for you?
Gregory Gourdet: First of all, Oprah ain't never coming to Portland, I tell you that. She, she thinks it's so weird here.
Luke Burbank: What?
Elena Passarello: She does?
Gregory Gourdet: Yeah. It's really funny. Sometimes this is a hard pitch, I gotta tell you guys. [Laughter.] But no, so, Oprah has a, of course, Oprah has a chef, like all the time. And the chef couple, they go on vacation for the holidays and during the summer and she brings other chefs in to, to cook for her family. So my friend Mei Lin has been cooking for her for about six, seven years. So she has asked me to come cook with Oprah for so long, like, the whole time, like, seven years we've been friends. And I've never been able to go because I've always been working at the restaurant, because it's the holidays are the summer, our two busy seasons. So I was finally able to go and yeah, we had Haitian Night. We all got to do different theme nights and I got to make Haitian food for Oprah for the first time. And she really loved it. You know, it was, it was very, very special, because, you know, Haiti gets such a bad rap in media. That's why I think it's so important. That's, that's why I'm so excited to bring Kann to Portland as like probably the premiere Haitian restaurant in country. The Haitian community was so, like, lit over that whole thing, like it literally made—that Oprah post, like Oprah, like, videotaping me, like, explaining the menu and talking about all these traditional Haitian dishes, like, that made it to Haiti even before I told my parents about it.
Elena Passarello: Whoa!
Gregory Gourdet: You know, like I needed to Haiti, it made it to Canada, like, it was like...
Luke Burbank: They must have been so proud.
Gregory Gourdet: No, I mean, but like, we get, the Haitian community gets so much negative press, you know? And for me, like, I'm Haitian-American, I was born in this country, but like I went to school in Haiti for a year when I was younger. We'd vacation all the time. All the memories I have of Haiti are, like, the beach and amazing food and family and all these amazing things. And like that is what I know Haiti to be to me. So I want to share that with the world. So when we have a positive spin on Haiti in any type of media, it's really important for our culture. So I think everyone's like super happy about that.
Elena Passarello: That's awesome. [Applause.]
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: I was just like. I was texting people that I know someone who knows Oprah.
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Gregory Gourdet: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: We're talking to Gregory Gourdet about his new cookbook, Everyone's Table. I was just noticing what a really, like, beautiful kind of piece of art this is, with the photography.
Gregory Gourdet: Thank you so much.
Luke Burbank: And the layout. And I was wondering if that was something that you were really going for with it. And then I also started to realize that, like, cookbooks within families are like heirlooms, like they're very durable, like, across generations, if, you know, someone's mom has a cookbook and then they give it to them, like, these are real kind of like artifacts within a family.
Elena Passarello: Mm hmm.
Gregory Gourdet: I do have a Haitian cookbook that's about 40 years old that my mom gave my sister, but she should have just given it to me. [Laughter.]
Luke Burbank: Has your sister cooked for Oprah?
Gregory Gourdet: But no, I mean.
Luke Burbank: You should get that book back.
Gregory Gourdet: The book was photographed by Eva Kosmas Flores. She's a local photographer. She's amazing. And I just wanted the book to represent, so the top 100 superfoods are in the book. And if you don't have the book, it's it's paleo friendly. So it's gluten free, dairy free, soy free, refined sugar free. But it's not a book that talks about what's missing. I explain why all these natural ingredients are better for you, and you can choose if you want to use them or not. But all the recipes in there look like normal, delicious, savory, well-seasoned food. And for me, that's how I like to eat. And I think it's just important that we eat whole and eat healthy and it's accessible. And I think the book is technical, just enough for the home cook who likes to be adventurous and likes to try a few things. There's definitely things you can make ahead: pickles, marinades, sauces, and a few, just like, low-level chef tricks that I use to incorporate more flavor into food. It's a combination of being inspired by different cultures all around the world. So there's, there's 14 different categories of food. So I really want it to be something that stood the test of time.
Luke Burbank: Okay. A big focus of this book is, is healthy eating that doesn't necessarily feel like you're missing out on anything. I know that you as a person who's sober and exercises very regularly, like, you're you're a clean burning machine, Gregory Gourdet.
Gregory Gourdet: I try, I try, sometimes I completely go off the rails.
Luke Burbank: But, even, but even in the book, when you, okay, I want to talk about that because in the book, when you talk about, like, when you slip up, it's like you're eating, like, a handmade tortilla in "De-Efe" with your friends.
Gregory Gourdet: No.
Luke Burbank: Or like some buttered rice, like, come on, you're from New York, like, White Castle. Do you have anything that's, like, just bad?
Gregory Gourdet: No, no, no, I don't.
Luke Burbank: That you, that you, like, give, like, you give into.
Gregory Gourdet: I really don't.
Elena Passarello: Wow. No Pop Tarts.
Gregory Gourdet: No.
Luke Burbank: I'm following you after the show.
Gregory Gourdet: I know, it sounds snotty, but, like, I'm just like, I, I just, no.
Gregory Gourdet: Okay, what then? What is the kind of stuff that you will occasionally like...
Gregory Gourdet: I mean, I have a huge sweet tooth.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Gregory Gourdet: Like, it's, like, bad. Like, I'll get, like, I ordered a, a whole carrot cake from Goldbelly because we might do Goldbelly for the restaurant. And it was, it came from down south, and like, I literally ate, like, almost half of it in one sitting by myself.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Gregory Gourdet: Like, like I'm not kidding.
Luke Burbank: Thank you for giving us that Gregory Gourdet.
Gregory Gourdet: I'm not kidding. [Laughter.]
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire, by the way. We're talking to Chef Gregory Gourdet. This is the part of the show now where we, we like to try to give our listeners some practical advice that they can use in their real lives. And since a lot of us are kind of returning to the world of eating in restaurants, and maybe even nicer restaurants, and putting behind the sitting on the couch and eating frozen pizza in our pajamas—I have no plans to stop that, by the way, I don't know who wrote this. [Laughter.] We thought, though, for some of the people that are going to go back out to restaurants, maybe we could help them brush up on restaurant etiquette. And because you are a restaurateur or soon to be one of your own place, we thought maybe you could answer some questions along those lines. So here, on this desk, we have an actual physical jar.
Gregory Gourdet: Okay.
Luke Burbank: It's got five questions in it. We call it the Jar of Truth. [Music plays.].
Gregory Gourdet: Okay.
Luke Burbank: Here's how this is going to work. Gregory, we'll have you pick a question at random and then Elena Passarello will read it to you. And then we'd like to get your honest, informed answer as somebody who has spent many, many, many hours in restaurants.
Elena Passarello: Okay. Gregory if your credit card is declined at a restaurant...
Gregory Gourdet: Oh boy.
Elena Passarello: Can you actually pay for your meal by washing the dishes? Or is that an urban legend?
Gregory Gourdet: No, there's far too much paperwork to get you signed up.
Luke Burbank: So that's never happened in all of your years working in restaurants. No one's ever been, like, paraded into the kitchen with their head hung low, like, we gotta do this.
Gregory Gourdet: No, no, sorry. [Laughs.]
Luke Burbank: That was my backup plan.
Gregory Gourdet: I mean, people offer, people offer all the time, I'll help you, I'll wash dishes. It's like, well, I'm a steward. You know, like, they had, they need a job. They got to work for their money.
Elena Passarello: What about that thing? Isn't there a restaurant in, like, one of the islands off of Venice, where the wall is covered with, like, Picasso drawings and Matisse drawings because they wanted risotto, but they couldn't pay for it?
Gregory Gourdet: Oh wow.
Elena Passarello: Could I get a free dinner if I, like, was really good at doodles?
Gregory Gourdet: Yeah, I mean, I mean, I don't think you have to wash dishes, but we can definitely work something out.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Elena Passarello: Sweet.
Gregory Gourdet: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: All right. Care to draw another question from the Jar of Truth?
Gregory Gourdet: These are good. Alright.
Elena Passarello: Okay. What is the best thing to use to prop up a wobbly table leg.
Gregory Gourdet: Oh my God.
Elena Passarello: Like a matchbook or a sugar packet or a fork?
Gregory Gourdet: Oh my God, oh my God, okay so, my best friend is my project manager, and, we dine all the time, and like, a wobbly table drives her insane. So we will not have any wobbly tables at the restaurant. But yes, yes. Just like a little folded, folded napkin is great.
Elena Passarello: A folded napkin!
Gregory Gourdet: Yeah, a folded napkin.
Luke Burbank: So that's your professional opinion. Is it bad form for the customers to do it? Should they ask the server or, because I'll be down there with a fork like wedging it upside down.
Gregory Gourdet: Definitely, definitely tell the server.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Elena Passarello: Okay.
Luke Burbank: That's not being extra as a customer?
Gregory Gourdet: No, I mean, there are things like a wobbly table that are... The details matter.
Elena Passarello: Hmm.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Gregory Gourdet: The details matter. I mean. No, no, no. I mean, like, come on, we need to give everyone, like, a break. It's, we're coming out of a pandemic, but, if you come to Kann, there's a wobbly table, you tell me.
Luke Burbank: Okay. [Laughter.]
Elena Passarello: Okay. And then you get a free meal.
Luke Burbank: Right? [Applause.] Gregory Gourdet, everyone. [Music plays.]
Luke Burbank: That was Gregory Gourdet right here on Live Wire. His cookbook, Everyone's Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health is available now. [Music plays.].
Luke Burbank: Live Wire is brought to you by Alaska Airlines, a member of the OneWorld alliance, connecting you to more than 1000 destinations worldwide with their global partners. Learn more at AlaskaAir.com.
Advertisement: This episode of Live Wire is supported by Saatva. Saatva, offering mattresses made with eco friendly materials and handcrafted construction, delivered with set-up and old mattress removal included. More at saatva.com.
Luke Burbank: You're tuned in Live Wire. Of course, each week we like to ask our listeners a question. Because we are talking food this week on the show with Gregory Gourdet, we wanted to ask the listeners: tell us your most surprising cooking hack. Folks sent those responses in. Elena has been collecting them up. What do you seeing?
Elena Passarello: There's a lot of banana tips in this bunch.
Luke Burbank: Like, as in, they strike you as bananas or they're about dealing with a banana.
Elena Passarello: The latter.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Elena Passarello: First one from Tracy. Tracy says, when you are making banana bread, squeeze the bananas before you peel them to soften them up for mashing. Which I didn't know that it was that hard to mash up a un-squoze banana. Like, they seem pretty easy. That's why you give them to babies.
Luke Burbank: My mom used to make lots of banana bread when I was a kid, so when the bananas would turn brown or black, then she would freeze them, and then at some point she'd pull them out of the freezer when it was time to make banana bread, but they would just be encrusted in ice because we had this very old, one of those weird freezers that was always trying to like.
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Over-frost itself. So, she loved doing this because it would help her get out some of her sort of aggression, but in a safe way, she would throw the bananas against the floor like they'd be in a bag just to break up the ice. And she used to have this bit. She would just go, "I can't take it anymore," and just, like, throw this block of frozen bananas into the floor of our little rental house. And we had fun back in those days. Anyway, though, that's my memory of banana bread.
Elena Passarello: Did your mom ever put bananas in coleslaw?
Luke Burbank: No. Is that a thing?
Elena Passarello: Scott, according to Scott, who wrote in, adding bananas to coleslaw is a cooking hack.
Luke Burbank: Wow.
Elena Passarello: I don't know man.
Luke Burbank: The thing about coleslaw is, it sort of feels like a catch-all to me, because depending on where you're at in the country, the coleslaw could have a lot of mayo going on, that's one kind of flavor. It could also have no mayo, kind of more,.
Elena Passarello: Mm-hmm.
Luke Burbank: You know, and with a little bit of, like, oil being used. I wonder what kind of coleslaw can sustain a banana the best? Sounds like none of them to me, but I don't know.
Elena Passarello: I'm not convinced.
Luke Burbank: All right. Another cooking hack that one of our listeners has.
Elena Passarello: This one is up my alley. It's from Eric, who says, "if your meat didn't turn out right, add salsa cheese, sour cream, and wrap it in a tortilla and it'll be good." It just like, it doesn't matter what— and probably meatless products, too, could work, but you just, you just add all the other things that make a burrito to them, and just go with God.
Luke Burbank: If you're cooking some meat and it doesn't turn out, you take the meat out and then you wrap it all up and then you eat your burrito, right? Is that basically the advice there?
Elena Passarello: I mean, I think the meat is still in there, but I think it's got so many friends at the party that you can't really recognize it anymore.
Luke Burbank: One more cooking hack from one of our listeners.
Elena Passarello: This one's my favorite one. From Kelly, whose cooking hack is, "marry someone who's a great cook." [Laughs.] Which is what I did! Score! My pants never fit, but I don't ever have to cook. [Music plays.]
Luke Burbank: It as a hunt—and also mixologist in your case. So it's like...
Elena Passarello: Yeah, yeah.
Luke Burbank: Almost all of the bases covered when it comes to indulgence. All right. Thank you to everyone who sent in those semi-helpful cooking hacks. You're listening to Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank. That's Elena Passarello right over there. Our musical guest this week is a songwriter and scholar born in Nashville, Tennessee. His multi-media project, No-No Boy, has transformed his doctoral research in Asian-American history into concerts and albums and films. His latest part of that project is titled 1975. It's an album, and it was released through Smithsonian Folkways. NPR called it "one of the most insurgent pieces of music you'll ever hear." And if you stick around for the rest of this interview and performance, you'll understand why they said that. Let's take a listen to our conversation with Julian Saporiti, also known as No-No Boy, recorded at the Alberta Rose Theater earlier this month. [Audience applause.]
Julian Saporiti: Hello.
Luke Burbank: Hi, Julian, and welcome to the show.
Julian Saporiti: It's so much better to see you not through a computer screen.
Luke Burbank: I know, it is really exciting to all be kind of in the same place. Did I read correctly that this, the 1975 album, is literally part of your dissertation at Brown?
Julian Saporiti: You say Brown with such emphasis.
Luke Burbank: I say it with such envy.
Julian Saporiti: Where did you go to college?
Luke Burbank: North Seattle Community College.
Julian Saporiti: That's. You got a microphone.
Luke Burbank: The Brown of Community Colleges.
Julian Saporiti: You got a microphone and a nice haircut. I think you did pretty good.
Luke Burbank: Thank you.
Julian Saporiti: Yeah. Yeah, I so I literally just turned in a draft of my completed dissertation and I wanted to make a point to say: Isn't it time that we start, I don't know, turning this incredible research we spend years doing into more public-facing work. So chapter four is just a vinyl record.
Elena Passarello: So cool.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. What was the response from your advisors?
Julian Saporiti: Yeah, they're pretty down. I do a lot of residencies at colleges across the country at the invitation of mostly younger scholars, junior scholars, who are like "some of my advisees can maybe do some more creative work, documentary, film making, podcasts, maybe not singing." I mean, that's like I have training in that I don't advise most PhDs just start singing their dissertation.
Luke Burbank: That wouldn't be their truth.
Julian Saporiti: I don't think it'd be their truth. But you know what isn't anyone's truth is the dissertation form as currently composed. Like, it's just not a natural way to write. It's very laborious and bogged down in citation and all the coursework I have appreciated. Like I came, kind of fell ass backwards into academia from being an indie rock musician for like ten years of my life. And it was that knowledge from like touring and the road that was a whole kind of methodology, which I then brought and meshed with my coursework, and I read all the books, got through all the articles, did all the research, but when it came time to share it, I just thought, "Man, some of these stories to me are so important, especially in the times we're living in, we're living through echoes of a lot of the, I don't know, like shattered empires and detention and camps that I study. And how people got through those times, dealt with hardship and racism, and things that they had to overcome. So I really just wanted to share this with more folks than just the three people on my dissertation committee, who are all super supportive, but I don't know. Yeah, like I said, like, let's, let's sing. We can probably get some more people if we sing a song about it, then.
Elena Passarello: That's going to change your defense too, right? Like is there's going to be a listening party in the middle of it or...
Julian Saporiti: No, they've all, they, I mean, early on... so what happened was I think second year I was at one of those big national conferences. Like I submitted an actual paper about this really important story to me, this jazz band, the George Igawa Orchestra, that formed in a concentration camp, Japanese-American internment camp in Wyoming, where I had been living.
Luke Burbank: Hmm.
Julian Saporiti: And I went up there, and I saw this picture of this jazz band, and I had gone to a jazz college. I went to Berklee College of Music, took four jazz history courses. I never learned about any folks who look like me, Asian-American folks, and here was a 16-piece big band behind barbed wire who had, instead of taking a suitcase full of clothes when the government said "take only what you can carry" during World War Two and 120,000 Japanese-Americans were incarcerated, these idiots took trombones and trumpets! And I never saw myself before till I saw that picture. It's just like, you know, these black-haired musicians all playing pop music. And I wanted to tell that history. And I remember being at this conference, this academic conference, in some Hilton Ballroom, you know, some chandeliered ballroom where we're all arguing about the oppression of marginalized people or eating finger foods and stuff like that. And I was looking out at the audience and there was maybe 20 folks there, which is a pretty good crowd for an academic panel.
Luke Burbank: Elena knows.
Elena Passarello: Yeah. Yeah. That's like, like Madison Square Garden of academic...
Luke Burbank: People might start doing the wave.
Julian Saporiti: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: 20 people.
Julian Saporiti: It was rowdy. I tell you what, at 10 a.m. at the Hilton in D.C.. But, you know, this was right, 2016, right like I think the week Trump got elected. And yeah, so I was real ratcheted up. Everyone was. I think I was in my first or second year of grad school and I was presenting this story about a band that formed in the Japanese-American incarceration. And one of Trump's advisers had sort of, in reference to the Muslim ban, used Japanese internment as precedent.
Luke Burbank: Uh-Huh.
Julian Saporiti: Not like a totally bad thing.
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Julian Saporiti: And I was and I didn't learn about this growing up in Tennessee. But also in Wyoming when I was teaching college and high school kids, a lot of folks that would come in their freshman year to U Dub had never even heard about Heart Mountain or didn't really know the history. And to me, it's only it's not an Asian-American history, it's not Japanese-American history, It's a Wyoming history. This happened on this ground, you know, the same ground where native folks were removed and put into reservations up in Wind Rivers and the same ground where in 1885 the Chinese were massacred in Rock Springs, one of the worst, worst kind of incidents of that kind in American history. And I just wanted to share these stories. And the dissertation form, the academic prose form, as currently constituted, was not going to cut it because when I was looking out at those 20 academics, who were wonderful people who I stand on the shoulders of, I was thinking, man, when I was a singer, I used to play for a room of a hundred people, 200 people a night, and now I actually got something to say.
Elena Passarello: Mmm. mmhmm.
Luke Burbank: Wow. You're listening to a conversation that we recorded with Julian Saporiti, also known as No-No Boy, right here on Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank with Elena Passarello. We've got to take a very quick break, but don't go anywhere because we'll be right back with much more, including a live musical performance from No-No Boy. That is really quite something. So stay with us.
Luke Burbank: Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We're listening to a conversation we recorded with artist and scholar Julian Saporiti about his multimedia project, No-No Boy, which started out as his doctoral research on Asian American history. Take a listen to this. It's so interesting to me the way that you actually generated a lot of the sound, a lot of the kind of audio that we hear and along with the singing and, you know, field recordings and things like that. How did you, like, make this sound? Because that's also important to the story.
Julian Saporiti: Yeah. So not only am I writing about on the album that jazz band that formed at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, or, you know, just sort of daily small stories of early Chinese miners or my own kind of family history of Vietnamese refugees coming to France through the U.S. Place is so important to me. I wanted to go to these places and not only kind of put music back into some of these spaces, the actual repertoire that the George Igawa Orchestra played on the ground where they actually played it. But I also wanted to capture the sounds of those spaces themselves and see if I could incorporate that into the recordings somehow. So for instance, the song we're going to do tonight, me and my partner Amelia is going to join me on stage in a second, is called "Tell Hanoi I Love Her." Kind of deals with the really interesting Vietnamese-American community. We got how about a third of us, 40% of us are Trump voters. You know, there's a big South Vietnamese flag on the January sixth siege on the Capitol. You know, and that's something that I think in the discourses of Asian-American studies right now, we don't talk about so much. But I come from the middle of the country. I come from Tennessee. I come from Wyoming. This project was in large part to be able to sit down with those folks and have those conversations. So part of this is wanting to take those sounds, not only sing about the history, but incorporate those sounds. So, for instance, in this tune, what you're going to hear in the backing track for like this [percussive beats playing] You're hearing a kick drum that was made out of luggage from the Japanese internment camp sourced from the Japanese-American Museum here in Portland.
Luke Burbank: Wow.
Julian Saporiti: Some of that scraping and the sort of like snare drum click in the high hat. That's barbed wire from a detention center down in Dilley, Texas, where they're holding women and children today. And you're also hearing sounds of internment camp barracks. We add on to that [musical notes added] the sound of my favorite instrument, the monochord dan bao, which I recorded in Vietnam. Just one note, but just sort of like using this sampler, that no one on the radio could see that I'm holding. You're able to, you know, pitch it and play different chords and create music out of it. And there's that little ding on the two and the four...
Luke Burbank: What's that?
Julian Saporiti: Sounds like an organ, but it's actually a woman named Chickie White. Her voice. It's just like a small little granulation of a song that she sang for me. And she lived in Vancouver, Washington, for a long time. She's from Seattle originally. She was put into the camp that a lot of Oregonians and folks from Washington were put into, Minidoka, Idaho, during World War Two. She was actually one of the jazz singers in that camp.
Elena Passarello: Wow.
Julian Saporiti: So I got to interview her, sit down and ask, "Would you sing me a little bit of a song?" So I try to take that with me. So you would never know it. It would just sound like kind of an out-of-tune band.
Elena Passarello: [laugh]
Julian Saporiti: But for me, it means a lot when I'm in the recording studio or when I'm singing live to you folk, singing a song about, you know, my very mixed up Asian American heritage that we're about to get into. But having the backing tracks of all of this historical place behind me. I don't know. I have kind of two missions, like bringing those sounds into the music, but also putting sound back into history because it's so often muted. You know what I mean? It's, uh, you can quote the Gettysburg Address, but no one talks about who was coughing in the crowd. No one talks about the timbre and tone of Lincoln's voice or the wind, right? And that's so important. The noise in this theater, the guy who just coughed right now.
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Live Audience: [Laughter].
Julian Saporiti: Our breaths, the laughter. This is what makes something human and real and gets at the quotidian, the day-to-day. And that's the part of history I'm really interested in. So. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Wow.
Julian Saporiti: That's what I'm up to, man.
Elena Passarello: That makes sense.
Luke Burbank: I want to hear it in full practice.
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Live Audience: [Applause].
Luke Burbank: We also want to... we want to welcome Emelia Halverson, who is going to be performing along with Julian. Emelia Halverson everyone! [Cheers] So can you remind us what song we're going to hear?
Julian Saporiti: We're going to do a number called "Tell Hanoi I Love Her." So, a lot of us who had to leave Vietnam in '75 or after when the communists took over, there's a lot of grudges left. And I understand that from those people, I never had to live through a war and, God help me, I hope I never do. Hope none of y'all ever do. But for those who did, it's hard to criticize some of those asinine politics from my perspective. And it's just about making peace with a past that might be impossible to do that with, but it's better off for the trying.
Luke Burbank: All right. This is No-No Boy here on Live Wire.
No-No Boy: [Music begins, and Julian sings]. Twice southern with two civil wars, a fool to think that this place could ever be yours. The in-between that's where we must explore. Tell Hanoi I Love Her.
No-No Boy: [Julian & Amelia singing] Jenny's mother in the nail salon. Bedazzled star-spangled t-shirt tiger mom. Saw the flag on my hat, told me to take it off, Tell Hanoi I Love Her.
No-No Boy: I keep no grudge against some old-world kin. Not letting go, now, that's the bodhisattva's sin. I named my Chrysler after Ho Chi Minh. Tell Hanoi I Love Her. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. La la la la.
No-No Boy: I got an auntie, oh but, man alive, last election cast a ballot for 45. If I'd seen what she's seen, I might see her side. Tell Hanoi I Love Her.
No-No Boy: I dream of junk so to sail away. Wash your feet on a beach in Ha Long Bay. My mother said once "that's where dragons lay." Tell Hanoi I love her.
No-No Boy: Doo doo doo doo. Doo doo doo doo. Doo doo doo doo.
No-No Boy: [Julian sings] We bleed as cheap as our enemy. And we die just as needlessly. Once I thought there was just one of me. Tell Hanoi I love her. Fumble with numbers [Julian and Emilia sing] I just want to sing there's nothing sadder than some gook with an American dream. Sometimes I think the most [whispered] communist things. [Sung] Tell Hanoi I love her. Tell Hanoi I love her.
Luke Burbank: That was No-No Boy right here on Live Wire. The album, 1975, is available now via Smithsonian Folkways.
Luke Burbank: All right, before we get out of here, a little preview of next week's episode. We are going to be talking to Aubrey Gordon from the Incredible Maintenance Phase podcast, which the New York Times calls essential listening for anyone who's ever been in the grips of the diet industrial complex and wants to be deprogrammed. Plus comedy from Chris Mejia and music from the incredible Danielle Ponder. And of course, as always, we're going to be looking to get your answers to our listener question. Elena What are we asking the listeners for next week's show?
Elena Passarello: We want to know -- niegh, we need to know what is...
Luke Burbank: Neigh, we must know.
Elena Passarello: It's imperative that we know what is a fad that you fell for.
Luke Burbank: Jelly Bracelets
Elena Passarello: ThighMaster.
Luke Burbank: I had like at one point probably 30 jelly bracelets on my wrist. Then it was like the more jelly bracelets you had, the cooler you were. At some point, I was like, I was almost immobile from jelly bracelets, circa, like, seventh grade.
Elena Passarello: It was like Wonder Woman's cuffs. Only with jelly bracelets.
Luke Burbank: Exactly. I couldn't use them to block lasers like she does. All right, If you have a fad that you fell for that you want to tell us about, go ahead and submit by way of Twitter or Facebook. We are at Live Wire Radio. That's going to do it for this week's episode of Live Wire. A huge thanks to our guests, Gregory Gourdet and No-No Boy, along with Amelia Halvorson. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele is our executive director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Trey Hester. Our marketing manager is Paige Thomas, and our production fellow is Tanvi Kumar. Our house band is Ethan Fox, Tucker, Sam Tucker, Al Alves and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer, and our House Sound is by Neil Blake.
Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the James F and Marion L Miller Foundation Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we would like to thank members Lyn Butkus, Portland, Oregon, and Samir Telsey of Seattle, Washington for more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to Live Wire Radio dot org. I'm Luke Burbank. For Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire crew, thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
