Susan Jung is the author of Kung Pao & Beyond - Fried Chicken Recipes from East and Southeast Asia (Quadrille, 2023).

She is the food columnist for Vogue Hong Kong and the Academy Chair for the Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau region of World's 50 Best Restaurants and Asia's 50 Best Restaurants.

Previously, Susan was the food and drinks editor for the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, a position she held for almost 25 years. She also worked as a pastry chef in San Francisco, New York and Hong Kong

On this episode, Susan joins host Mitchell Davis and discusses sophisticated dishes from a Chinese menu, the tasty array of East and Southeast Asian fried chicken, and how the world’s great cuisines originated in poverty.

Follow Susan on Instagram @susanjungfood and Twitter @susanjungfood.

Mark Bittman has been writing about food since 1980, and has been a leading voice in global food culture and policy for more than a generation. He has written thirty books, including the How to Cook Everything series, Food Matters, VB6 (the first popular book about part-time veganism), and, in 2021, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food from Sustainable to Suicidal, which The New York Times called “epic and engrossing.”

Bittman spent three decades at the Times, where he created “The Minimalist” – a weekly column that ran for thirteen years without interruption – and had a five-year stint as the Sunday Magazine’s lead food writer. At that same time – 2010 to 2015 – he became and remained the country's first weekly opinion writer at a major publication to concentrate on food. His influence on mainstream attitudes about food and agriculture during that period is immeasurable, and he is still consulted frequently by politicians, policy-makers, academics, NGO and non-profit leaders, and others concerned about the future of food.
 
He continues to produce books in the How to Cook Everything series, the general cooking bible for a quarter-century, and has hosted or been featured in four television series, including the Emmy-winning Showtime series about climate change “Years of Living Dangerously” and “Spain ... On the Road Again,” with Gwyneth Paltrow. He has won countless awards for journalism, books, and television. .
 
Bittman was a regular on the Today show from 2005 to 2010 (and still appears occasionally, as recently as this past October), and has been a guest on countless television and radio programs. His 2007 Ted Talk, “What’s wrong with what we eat,” has been viewed five million times, and he was among the opening speakers at this year’s Aspen Ideas Institute, where he spoke about Community Kitchen. He is a fellow at Yale and is on the faculty of Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. Bittman is currently the editor-in-chief of The Bittman Project, which produces a newsletter, website, and the podcast “Food, with Mark Bittman.”

Mark lives in the Hudson Valley of New York with his partner, Kathleen Finlay, who runs the Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming and is the founder of Pleiades, a national network of women leaders addressing environmental and social justice. He is the founder and current leader of Community Kitchen, about which more information is forthcoming months. 

On this episode, Mark joins host Mitchell Davis and discusses improving the industrial food system in America, developing a national network of non-profit restaurants, and why nutritious food is a human right.

Follow Mark on Instagram @markbittman, Facebook @markbittman and Twitter @bittman

For more on Mark and his work, visit:  www.markbittman.com

Barb grew up in Baltimore and spent much of her childhood in a Chinese restaurant. It was there that she developed a love for food as well as the frantic energy and deep hospitality that restaurants generate. She has an undergraduate business degree from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and a Masters Degree in Hospitality from the Cornell Hotel School.

Barb has been at Mattson since 1997 and is currently Chief Innovation & Marketing Officer at North America’s most successful independent developer of foods and beverages. Mattson provides insights, strategy, innovation and product development services to retail CPGs, foodservice suppliers, ingredients suppliers, chain restaurants, and supplement companies.  Barb is known as a taste, food trend, innovation, consumer insights, and product development expert. 

As part of Barb’s role in the innovation projects that make up her daily job, she is required to taste food and figure out how to make it better. After more than 2 decades doing this, she’s honed her tasting skills and ability to help others make food taste better. She shared this insight with the world when her book Taste: Surprising Stories & Science About Why Food Tastes Good was published in 2013. The paperback version is simply titled TASTE.

Barb was instrumental in helping The San Francisco Cooking School integrate the science of taste into their curriculum by teaching the fundamentals of taste to each incoming class during the school’s 10 years in San Francisco. 

Barb has served on non-profit boards including La Cocina, San Francisco’s incubator for low-income women of color, The Plant Based Food Association, and the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine & Food Science at the University of California, Davis, and Mattson. Barb is also a contributor to Forbes.com where she writes about the food industry. 

Barb is a performer at heart, and has given dozens of talks across the food and beverage industry, as well as a short TED Talk on umami at the main TED Conference on the mainstage in Long Beach. 

Barb lives with her hyper-taster husband and two artisan cats, and splits her time between San Francisco and Healdsburg, in the heart of Sonoma wine country. She can be bribed with good tomatoes. 

On this episode, Barb joins host Mitchell Davis and explores the concepts of “taste empathy” and “stomach share,” plus discusses the importance of learning how to taste critically in order to cook.

Follow Barb on Instagram @barbstuckey and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/barb-stuckey-3110b51/

For more on Barb and Mattson, visit:  www.MattsonCo.com