Flavorphiles

Judging food is fun. Whether you&rsquo;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.<br><br>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.<br>Then we rank the best food competition chefs on television. Who makes a great judge? Who makes a great host? And who would we actually want standing over us while we tried to cook under pressure.<br><br>Next, MasterChef Canada judges Craig Wong and Hugh Acheson join us to talk about the new season, what they&rsquo;re looking for from the competitors, and a major guest star making an appearance.<br>Finally, Jerry unloads his biggest restaurant pet peeves, and Tanner has to decide which ones deserve defending and which ones are completely unforgivable.<br><br>Food competitions, celebrity chefs, MasterChef Canada, restaurant complaints, and a lot of judging. Turns out, judging food really is fun.<br><br>New episodes of Flavorphiles every Saturday. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and iHeart, or watch on YouTube.<br><br><br>Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.&nbsp;<br><br>Follow on Instagram:<br>Flavorphiles: https://www.instagram.com/flavorphilespod/<br>Tanner: https://www.instagram.com/tagaragar/<br><br>Follow on Tik Tok:<br>https://www.tiktok.com/@flavorphiles<br><br>All episodes produced and owned by Tanner Agar. All rights reserved.

Bitter gets a bad rap. We&rsquo;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.<br><br>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.<br><br>Then Kolby Howard from Fernet-Branca joins us to explain amaro, the exptremely bitter, and very popular, Italian digestif.<br><br>Tanner also breaks down how chefs use bitterness in the kitchen, from Brussels sprouts and endive to grapefruit, coffee, cacao, char, and chicory. Finally, it&rsquo;s a bitter-themed Short Order: 10 cooking questions in 10 minutes, including why chefs burn food on purpose, whether cocktail bitters ever go bad, why expensive olive oil can taste bitter, and what to do when people won&rsquo;t finish your dessert.<br>It&rsquo;s bitter. But in a good way.<br><br><br>Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.&nbsp;<br><br>Follow on Instagram:<br>Flavorphiles: https://www.instagram.com/flavorphilespod/<br>Tanner: https://www.instagram.com/tagaragar/<br><br>Follow on Tik Tok:<br>https://www.tiktok.com/@flavorphiles<br><br>All episodes produced and owned by Tanner Agar. All rights reserved.

This week on Flavorphiles, we are committing crimes against food. Allegedly.&nbsp;Tanner and Jerry dig into the strange, sticky, and surprisingly sophisticated world of food true crime.<br><br>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.<br><br>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 fork lift brought it all down.<br><br>Next, Maureen Downey, known as the Sherlock Holmes of Wine, takes us inside the world of counterfeit bottles. Maureen helped catch Rudy Kurniawan, one of the most infamous wine fraudsters in history, and she explains how he fooled collectors, how investigators caught him, and why fake wine is a much bigger problem than most people realize. Yes, even Yellow Tail has been counterfeited.<br><br>Finally, we open the Flavorphiles crime lab to investigate the foods you probably did not know were being faked, diluted, mislabeled, or swapped out entirely. Olive oil, honey, tequila, truffles, seafood, and plenty more are on the suspect board.<br><br>Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.&nbsp;<br><br>Follow on Instagram:<br>Flavorphiles: https://www.instagram.com/flavorphilespod/<br>Tanner: https://www.instagram.com/tagaragar/<br><br>Follow on Tik Tok:<br>https://www.tiktok.com/@flavorphiles<br><br>All episodes produced and owned by Tanner Agar. All rights reserved.