Nilou Motamed Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe. And I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Each week, we talk to the coolest culinary personalities around, the folks shaping and shaking up the food scene. Joining me in the studio today is Nilou Motamed.
Nilou is one of the top food and travel experts around, and she is also one of the recurring judges on the new Netflix Iron Chef series, Iron Chef: Quest For An Iron Legend. Nilou shares what it was like eating all that amazing food and having to critique some of the best culinary talent around. Nilou also shares the story of leaving Iran as a young child and how her family recreated their beautiful culture and traditions far away from their native country. Nilou has also been a good friend to me and to Cherry Bombe over the years, and I can't wait for all of you to meet her.
This episode of Radio Cherry Bombe is supported by Whole Foods Market, where you can find lots of Cherry Bombe's favorite female-forward food and drink brands, like Anjali's Cup. Anjali's Cup was founded by Anjali Bhargava, who wanted to put something into the world that would "nourish the body, nurture the soul, and taste divine." How lovely is that? Anjali uses organic Hawaiian turmeric and ginger for her Resilience Turmeric Elixir and for her Anjali's Chai Masala. You can mix the Resilience Turmeric blend in hot or cold water or milk for a comforting nutritious drink. And Anjali's Chai Masala can be brewed with black tea. Both blends can be used in lattes, smoothies, coffee, baked goods or more. You can find on Anjali's Cup at select Whole Foods Market locations in the New York area or by visiting wholefoodsmarket.com. Part of Whole Foods' mission is to feature local brands, so be sure to seek out what's local and special at the Whole Foods Market nearest you.
All right. One more thing before Nilou. Sign up for Cherry Bombe's newsletter. Head on over to cherrybombe.com and you'll get our Fun Friday Newsletter each week. This way, you won't miss out on any upcoming events, great podcast episodes, or other news from Cherry Bombe HQ. Now, let's check in with today's guest.
Nilou Motamed, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Nilou Motamed:
Hi, Kerry. I'm so happy to be here.
Kerry Diamond:
There are so many chapters of your life we could talk about. I would love to talk about the early years. Why don't we start with that? Where were you born?
Nilou Motamed:
I was born in Tehran, Iran. And then after Iran, lived in Paris. And then from Paris, moved to New York. That's the very brief version. I feel like we could spend this entire conversation talking about my unexpected peregrinations in my childhood. Iran and my childhood there feels like a dream to me in some ways, because it is something that I've spent a lot of time longing for.
As a kid in the '70s in Tehran, it was a very cosmopolitan place. My mom and dad were big travelers, so they spent a lot of time away from Iran, traveling to Europe, traveling to Japan, traveling to Southeast Asia. I think that's probably where I got a lot of my wanderlust early on. It was never anticipated that we would leave Iran. We were very blessed there and with a very big family, lots of family gatherings.
I always tell people this who may not know. In Iran, in lots of parts of the Middle East, you only have Friday as the weekend. Friday is the day that you get together with family. You sometimes go to a kebab house. There's often a long day of multi-meals. I think it's funny that we all think of this progressive meal as a latter-day experiment probably brought on by people's desire to put all their food on Instagram.
But actually in Iran, we would start out early and go to the kebab house, and then go to a relative's house and continue on for basically all day long.
Kerry Diamond:
It was Fridays. Is that because other days were dedicated to religious things, or was the work week six days?
Nilou Motamed:
Work week is six days, which it still is. I always get confused. My parents live part of the year in Iran. When I talk to my mom, I say something like, "Well, what will you do today?" She's like, "It's a Friday. I'll be at home." I get super confused. Iran and Iranians, there's a concept called posht pardeh which means “behind the curtain.” Your life is very much divided into your outer life and your inner life. Family life is very much inside. Even the outside of buildings in Tehran are very minimal, and almost a little Brutalist.
Also, it's the era that Tehran grew the most, but there's beautiful inner courtyards, beautiful gardens, lovely flower strewn spaces that are inside where families gather. There's all these tea rituals and fruit rituals. I think that generosity and hospitality has really permeated what I value. The challenge of an entire generation of Iranians though, is that a lot of us were uprooted because of the Revolution in 1979, and for a variety of reasons, decided to leave the country.
There is this deep sense of loss when you look at a full generation of Iranians, those who left, those who stayed behind and felt like they lost members of their family, and this deep, deep, deep longing for all of those touchpoints that often actually really revolve around food.
Kerry Diamond:
You were old enough to remember all of that. You weren't a baby when your family left.
Nilou Motamed:
No. I left when I was nine years old, just shy of nine.
Kerry Diamond:
That's a tough age.
Nilou Motamed:
I remember being in Paris and missing everything. As a kid, you do have this real attachment to your family and your way of life. There's a rice that is a beautiful rice. It's perfect for you because it's a cherry rice, sour cherry rice. It's called albaloo polo. The way that you make it is that you get the sour cherries, you make a jam out of them, and then you make this beautiful, ornate, flavorful rice with sour cherry. That was something that I craved, and I would cry every night. It's so comical that, of course, looking back that I would be crying over food, but it was a touch point of just deep, deep loss. But there were no sour charities for some reason in Paris. Now, we have them here and I go sour cherry picking every July 13th up in the Catskills.
The reason I mentioned the sour cherry rice is because we were at a... I can't even describe the way that it felt, in that we were in a place where we didn't belong. I didn't speak the language. We, as a family, went to Berlitz because I had never spoken French before. I think the only way that I can describe what was happening to us, we were refugees. We didn't speak the language. We were living, four of us, in a one-bedroom apartment in Paris. We were very lucky to be there, but everything felt foreign. While we had gone to Berlitz to learn a little bit of French, while we had enrolled in school, there were things that just hurt. One of the things was missing, these simple elements of comfort.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night, crying about sour cherry rice. Eventually, even though there were no sour cherries in Paris, my mom ended up creating a rice called framboise polo. “Polo” means “rice,” “framboise” means “raspberry.” She basically created a tart raspberry rice, not only for me, but for all of our friends who felt like they were really missing this really simple touchpoint of comfort. I think that there's a lot of nostalgia with Iranians. And so we are always, unfortunately, having to look back. When I moved eventually to the US, it felt like all I needed to do was fit in. That was my main job. I was 13, awkward. I've written about this. I had a monobrow and a burgeoning mustache.
I moved to the suburbs in New York, to a town where the kids were unaccustomed to diversity, and like any teenagers, were not kind. I just realized that it was too difficult for me to hold on to my culture, and what I needed to do was do the opposite. All I did was get made fun of when I brought weird food to the lunchroom. Oh my gosh, my name got brutalized. My full name means “water lily,” and it's Niloufar. Niloufar is a beautiful Persian name that turns out no one here can pronounce. I insisted though, with that angry monobrow, that everyone needed to call me by my correct name. Nilou is my family pet name, my nickname. I spent a lot of time crying in junior high school, and trying to belong and trying to fit in.
I think the first chapter of my life was this real deep sense of loss and this sense of listlessness, and this trying to figure out how I could fit in and how I could make myself whole again. Oh my God. This is very emotional.
Kerry Diamond:
It just blows my mind because the person I know today is so brilliant and beautiful. It breaks my heart knowing what you went through. Yeah.
Nilou Motamed:
That's why I have, I think, a deep appreciation and respect for every single immigrant family and every very difficult situation that we've seen politically recently, where families get uprooted. This gumption that people have to leave their homes, not know where they're going, not know how they're going to subsist or thrive, and then to make the choice to choose happiness is a big deal. I think I was just as brilliant with the monobrow. It's just that people weren't quite aware of the fact that that was not an indication that I was less.
Kerry Diamond:
I know how important tradition remains to your mom, and especially culinary traditions. Was she able to keep those alive here in America?
Nilou Motamed:
Very much so, and I'm so lucky that she did. It's so hard to describe her. My mom is such an elegant, forceful, intense, passionate person. She is all of 4-foot-11, but she has always loomed incredibly large in my life. She is the person who has instilled in me a love of all the things that are the most important for me. Rating those it'll be oysters, caviar, beautiful gold jewelry. All of that is stuff that my mom has brought to me. Her mother was a very incredible powerful woman from Russia.
I think a lot of the things that my mom has learned were from her childhood in Iran, with my grandmother, Anna, and my entire life has been about trying to engage people in the experience of hospitality, because that's how my forebearers were. And that's how I was raised with my family. Always generosity, always more, always giving, always extending beyond this idea of over delivering is so crucial to my DNA, and obviously crucial to the idea of hospitality.
Nilou Motamed:
My mom, I think her Russian mother, Anna, was an incredible hospitalitarian. She would throw…
Kerry Diamond:
That's a word?
Nilou Motamed:
Yeah. It is, actually. It's hard to pronounce. She would throw these incredible parties. There were cultural gatherings with people who were artists and poets, and people would dance and sing. Oh, that's the other thing you have to know about Iranians. If there's a moment where we're all together, people are going to break into dance. That's just how it is. There's a sense of celebration. By the way, that's so common in so many cultures. It's just the one that I'm so well-accustomed to.
My mom came to America. She had traveled all around the world before, but English is not at all her first language. I think it's her sixth language. She came to America and made this beautiful life for us. My father, at this point, was with us. My sister was at university already. We moved to Westchester, Scarsdale, in case anyone's listening from my high school class. She started immediately teaching me how to cook, bringing me into the kitchen. That was really a way that we connected, especially because what I was going through in junior high school and in high school was so foreign to her.
This one moment of us being together around meals, around crunchy rice, around all the things that would make me feel a little bit more comforted at the end of a super hard day of being in junior high school, in a country where I barely spoke the language, I feel like that was where it came from. And then she started throwing parties and those parties are, imagine Big Night, the Iranian version. So giant heaping platters of rice, giant, beautiful stews. Everything is slow-cooked. Everything is redolent with flavor. We have this in common across all Iranians and this diaspora that we have.
Actually, one of the things that I'm so touched by with Instagram now is this connection that I've made with Iranians all around the world. They are so deeply proud because they feel like I'm celebrating our culture in a way that they hadn't seen before. When I worked at Food & Wine, fast forward dramatically, I did this piece about Persian New Year. Kerry, I think it's really important for us to realize how we are bifurcated from ourselves often in culture. I had been a magazine editor at that point for probably almost 20 years, and I felt uncomfortable about the idea of celebrating Iranian culture, because it felt self-referential. It felt like I was tooting my own horn in some way.
I think I see this with chefs now so much too. They spend so much time training in European kitchens and in a classic European, often French technique that it's a big step for them to take this moment and say, "I want to be true to who I am. I want to represent where I grew up." That to me, has been the biggest shift, almost seismic for me, that happens to be in parallel with where we are as a society, where we are celebrating people for their differences, rather than denigrating them.
Kerry Diamond:
It has been such a great movement. We've talked about this a lot on the show, but one of the places where I love seeing it is all these young women who have launched products and they are reclaiming their cuisines. For so long, it has been the province of the giant corporations to have these foods and these sauces and condiments, and you name it. They don't care. They're boldly going out there and putting out these products, and they're excellent products.
Nilou Motamed:
Amazing. We could list so many of them, but off the top of my head, I'm thinking about Diaspora, which is unbelievable.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely.
Nilou Motamed:
That spice company is incredible, and obviously you have celebrated them in a big way.
Kerry Diamond:
Fly By Jing.
Nilou Motamed:
Oh, Fly By Jing, Basbaas, incredible. I just met a young Iranian founder, Iranian-American founder. She has Táche, which is the pistachio milk. I think she's about to have a baby. She and her father are putting this business together because of her passion. We are obsessed.
Kerry Diamond:
We have to talk about pistachios, because pistachio is not a pistachio in your family.
Nilou Motamed:
A pistachio is not a pistachio? What do you mean?
Kerry Diamond:
Well, your mother's very particular about…
Nilou Motamed:
Oh, there's only... Yeah
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah.
Nilou Motamed:
Oh, yeah. Of course. That's the other thing. I think exacting ingredient specificity is something that ... Saffron is not saffron unless it's Iranian saffron. Pistachios are not pistachios unless they're Persian pistachios. Mulberries are not mulberries unless they come from Iran. My parents, when they come back from Iran—thank you, Mom—bring back two extra suitcases of things from Iran. The sour plums that I like for my stew, they come from Iran.
It's funny. I was speaking of amazing Iranians. Nasim [Alikhani] from Sofreh, she does the exact same thing. She goes for her restaurant and brings back... She's like, "The dill in America is just not good enough." If you've ever made Persian food, or if you've made anything with dried dill, you used to use a lot. There is this beautiful lima bean and dill rice that she makes sometimes in the spring, and she's bringing all the dill from Iran.
Kerry Diamond:
That is very funny.
Nilou Motamed:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us about the restaurant, since you and I ate there a few weeks ago.
Nilou Motamed:
Yeah. Sofreh means... I guess there's two different definitions of “sofreh.” One is actually the literal definition, which is “tablecloth.” But it's also “the sofreh,” which is the thing that you lay out when you are being hospitable to people. And it's the food that you lay out. We also have “sofreh aghd,” which means your wedding sofreh. I had a Persian wedding, and so that's all things that are symbolic. But for “sofreh” in this case is what you lay out to welcome people to your home.
She's done such a beautiful job because A, being a chef is not something that's vaunted in Iran. She is self-trained. She's not a young chef. She admits this herself. She came to this very late, but she was so passionate and is passionate about celebrating our culture. Like I said to you, this is a through line with all of us. All of us are sitting around trying to figure out ways in which we can express our cultural joy to as many people as we can.
She opened a place in Brooklyn where she does refined Persian food. The other thing that a lot of people aren't aware of is in general, the food that you get in Persian restaurants is not the food that we eat at home. Like I said, you go to a kebab house on Fridays because that's the day that your mom isn't cooking. But the rest of the time, we eat stews and very elaborate foods that are not made in restaurants. She is making the food that we would eat at home from the lens of her upbringing, and it's magnificent.
I think the best part of it for me is that it's been so well-regarded and so welcomed in Brooklyn, and actually throughout the city. Obviously, The New York Times gave it a great review. We have a lot of pride as Iranians. I don't want to in any way state this, that it's... It's like this with everybody. It's like this with people who are from China. It's like this with people from the Dominican Republic. I can only speak to my culture and my heritage, and I feel like we've been underrepresented.
I think that partially because there isn't a big... It does sound like I'm apologizing. I don't mean to. Oh, that's another thing. We're pleasers. There's that. I think we have not been as represented partially because if you remember back to 1979 and the hostage crisis, we had a really bad PR situation. Iranians were not well-regarded. It was a long time where I referred to myself as an Iranian, but I know a lot of Iranians who referred to themselves as Persians because they wanted to separate themselves from that history.
Kerry Diamond:
There was no nuance as to who really lived in that country, and that everyone was painted as evil. I remember that very well.
Nilou Motamed:
Right. Right. By the way, the media showed one very monolithic, very dark, very evil, and still does actually... I will say that I feel heartbroken with what's happening in Iran right now because of the US sanctions, and because the policy toward Iran is not nuanced. But that, I could talk about politics in Iran for a long time too, but that's probably not what we're here for.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, no, I think it's good that people know that because we've got a lot of young listeners, and they might not know the history. They weren't around.
Nilou Motamed:
It's true. It's true. That's…
Kerry Diamond:
Late '70s, early '80s.
Nilou Motamed:
I think that's also something that's so wonderful. I'm so grateful that young people are so generous. All the bullying that I went through doesn't really happen, I don't think as much anymore. People are really sensitive to people's differences and respect them for them. This idea that we all explore through food and we are breaking so many barriers that were so firm before and are now so fluid, and it gives me a lot of joy and hope for our future.
Kerry Diamond:
Same.
Nilou Motamed:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Same. I take hope from that. Some other things not so much.
Nilou Motamed:
Yeah, I know. It's a complicated time.
Kerry Diamond:
But food? Definitely. You moved on to media. You've had an amazing career in media. You were at Epicurious. You were at Food & Wine, so many great places. You're a great writer. You're amazing on television. You clearly should have your own podcast. You are a judge on the reboot ... Can we call it a reboot of Iron Chef? As I admitted to Esther [Choi], who was on the show, I never watched Iron Chef before. I remembered it seemed a little silly to me, Bobby Flay jumping on his cutting board or something. I don't know.
I love this new version of Iron Chef. I feel like it's not a silly competition show. I feel like you really learn something after you watch the episode, and it's not about this silly cutthroat competition. There's something more collaborative about it in a way. When they approached you, were you like, “Mmm,” or were you like, "Oh, I'm game, let's go for this"?
Nilou Motamed:
I have to tell you that it makes me so happy to get the feedback that you just gave, because that's what I've been hearing from people who watched the show before and who are new to the franchise. I love this show and I could not be happier with the way that it turned out. When Daniel Calin, who is one of the executive producers, reached out to me, I had worked with them previously on Top Chef. He is someone who has done really great work with a bunch of different shows, so I felt already very confident that he had the right idea in mind.
As we were riffing about the things that we could take from the original show, the Japanese version, and add to it, a lot of what he told me the reason why they came to me and the reason why they came to Andrew Zimmern, who is my fellow permanent judge, is because they wanted the show to have substance. I think that's how I would describe the show, as really meaningful and substantive. It doesn't feel like candy. It actually feels like a main course. The combination of having Alton [Brown], who is the OG, and Kristen, who is the…
Kerry Diamond:
Kristen Kish, so much fun.
Nilou Motamed:
Kristen Kish. Oh my God, she is just one of the loveliest people I've ever met.
Kerry Diamond:
Isn't she?
Nilou Motamed:
But also, incredibly thoughtful about food and understands the idea of these competition shows, but really understands the idea of the life of a chef. Everyone who is involved, and I won't go through the list of everyone who's involved, it's an incredible cast of characters. Both the Iron Chefs and our challengers are really bringing something of a story and of themselves to the table.
Nilou Motamed:
I think what I found of value being on set, but then also again, watching the show, is how much takeaway there is, how much substance there is, how much Iron Chef feels like it's carving out a new niche in food TV. That's saying a lot because there's a lot of food TV out there, and a lot of great food TV. For me, as someone who is a little bit of a cultural anthropologist, who, I think I live at that intersection of food and travel, it's exactly that.
Kerry Diamond:
And culture.
Nilou Motamed:
Of course, yes. I think it's exactly that. It feels like it over delivers on all those fronts. You get obviously the beautiful food. You get the storytelling. And from the Iron Chefs, somebody like Dominique Crenn talking about her family farm and the experience of…
Kerry Diamond:
She was the one who came to mind as soon as you said that.
Nilou Motamed:
Right.
Kerry Diamond:
Because she's as much a poet as she is a chef, and they let that side of her shine.
Nilou Motamed:
They did. I think no one is put into a cookie cutter of what they are supposed to be. Everyone really represents their true storytelling. You mentioned Esther, she's a perfect example of someone who is so passionate about celebrating the food that her grandmother has taught her. She did an amazing job. The show keeps on giving. I'm honestly so sad that it's only eight episodes, but hopefully there'll be more, because there was so much to explore. Even with the people, just the number of people who were there, we could have done so many different permutations.
Kerry Diamond:
It wasn't just food. The brief for the finale was, these had to be dishes that were meaningful to your life.
Nilou Motamed:
Right. As I was saying, we have spent so much time stepping away from ourselves in our professional careers, especially in the food world. I think that being true to yourself in this moment and being able to tell your narrative was really powerful. By the way, but I feel like even in every single episode with the challengers, with the Iron Chefs, they brought their stories. I think we got Hmong food. I think there was such a robust feeling of I'm not leaving anything left unsaid.
Kerry Diamond:
There was so much culinary technique on display. I think about the episode with Chef Dominique and Curtis Duffy, the chef from Chicago, and Dom's pastry chef.
Nilou Motamed:
Curtis did that thing that honestly, I think there was a moment where you saw my jaw drop to the ground, where he made that vessel out of the wax with the charcoal. All of us, all of us were like, "What in the what is happening?" And that happened all the time. Honestly, the most challenging part is that it's all happening in real time. It was great for me to be able to watch the show later and to have the closeups, because we actually are sitting. It's a huge set.
Kerry Diamond:
See, I didn't know that, and Esther explained that part. I was like, "This has to be edited. Come on. They don't do this in the timeframe that they say it."
Nilou Motamed:
Oh my gosh, it's brutal. They're cooking ninjas. I don't know how they do it. They come in, they cook everything in real time, and then we start tasting. Whoever doesn't win the toss is still cooking when we get the first bite of food. It's bananas.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. The chefs go in with a plan. They have some information, they can put their plan together. How does a judge prepare?
Nilou Motamed:
It's really interesting that you say that. I think we are the ones who come in the coldest, actually. In terms of how we prepare, it's the 25 years of experience I have. That's it.
Kerry Diamond:
You can't stop and say, “Can I Google that?”
Nilou Motamed:
No, there's none of that. There's not enough good intel because we don't know what they're going to be cooking, and so you really have to rely on your palate. The other thing that I think a lot of people don't realize, and I think it's important to stay, there's no one coaching you in your ear. Someone might say food is coming, meaning, stop chatting with Andrew [Zimmern]. It's time for you to eat. There's a lot of chatting, especially because the judges are all sitting together.
If Wolfgang [Puck], Andrew, and I are having a conversation, we might not realize that a chef is about to bring his food. They would say food is coming. It's time to focus. You start eating the food and within seconds, again because someone else is cooking and their time is precious, they will say, "What are your thoughts?" Kristen [Kish] will say, "Nilou, thoughts?" That moment is the moment of truth. You have to really be super focused, laser focused.
Kerry Diamond:
The eating and the talking would throw me for a loop.
Nilou Motamed:
I didn't quite realize how much they were spending time showing me eating. There was a lot of shots of me putting food in my mouth.
Kerry Diamond:
I loved each of them because I was like, "She's got to be dying that the camera is trained right on her mouth."
Nilou Motamed:
The cameras on us were far enough away that I wouldn't see them, which is basically a sign that you aren't on camera. And turns out, you're always on camera.
Kerry Diamond:
Because you don't want to be an eating meme.
Nilou Motamed:
Oh, so it's really funny that you say that. I'm sure someone could create that. If anyone does, please just tag me. I'd like to see it. It would be comical. There was a meme actually that they created. It was just me and Andrew, just oohing and ahhing when food got dropped in front of us. It's magic, though. It's like being part of a magic show. If you are like us, someone who's obsessed with food, the idea of being around this much talent is exquisite. Of course, eating that much food in rapid succession, not the ideal way to eat, but I would do it over again, anytime.
Kerry Diamond:
I thought maybe it was a month of shooting, which now that I think about it, that's ridiculous. Because who has those kinds of budgets? It was just one day per episode, right?
Nilou Motamed:
One day per episode.
Kerry Diamond:
I can't wrap my head around that.
Nilou Motamed:
Early mornings, going into late evenings, but one day. All in one day.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow.
Nilou Motamed:
It's amazing.
Kerry Diamond:
How much time did you have to sleep?
Nilou Motamed:
Very little time to sleep.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow.
Nilou Motamed:
Very little time to digest. You ask, what do you do? You train for it a little bit. You try to hydrate as much as you can, but then these are the silly things. You're really wrapped in with a bunch of sound equipment and stuff and so it's not ideal to have to go to the bathroom; the basic things like you have to really not pee that much.
It was also incredibly cold on set, incredibly cold. I think I have to actually post this at some point on my Instagram. I had blankets. I had a heater under the desk. I couldn't have it at the judge's table, but when we were at the main table, I had so many layers. I had leg warmers.
Kerry Diamond:
I didn't know that. That's so funny.
Nilou Motamed:
It was because they have to keep it cold because the chefs get so hot, because they're cooking.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, right. And running around.
Nilou Motamed:
Running around and all of the heat. All of the heat is real.
Kerry Diamond:
And also the dessert courses, some of that.
Nilou Motamed:
They melt. The food melting. Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow.
Nilou Motamed:
Really, things have to set. Things have to do with what they need to do, like restaurant food.
Kerry Diamond:
Are you allowed to take notes?
Nilou Motamed:
We did not take notes because we are on camera the whole time, but we do our judging at each stage in real time, so everything's fresh in our minds. But no notes. I think, and of course, everyone has opinions. Everyone's watching it in real time, has their fan favorites. They want you to represent what they feel. I will tell you, it is so difficult. A lot of these chefs are my friends, and so it's always very difficult to not pick your friends. But that's not why we're there, though.
Kerry Diamond:
No.
Nilou Motamed:
That's not what we're there for.
Kerry Diamond:
You have to be so decisive in the moment. If you're a restaurant reviewer for a newspaper or some kind of media outlet, you've got weeks sometimes to write your review.
Nilou Motamed:
Yeah. And you go multiple times. What I think is the great equalizer is everyone's in the exact same boat, so everyone gets that incredible immediate response. The chefs, and a lot of it is obviously edited out, but we give the chefs extensive commentary. They hear from us a lot about the pluses and the minuses of a dish.
I think what's really validating for a "judge" is that they agree. They always agree. When you say, "I feel like this was under-salted, there wasn't enough acid, I feel like it was soggier than I wanted it to be," they're like, "Yeah." They say, "Yes, Chef." Because they know. I'm not a chef, but that's what they say because they're so trained for it.
But the fact that they keep on cooking, the fact that they come to excel, every single person there is a monster when it comes to cooking. The excitement? I think maybe they kept it cool because it was that exciting. I think they needed us not to be overheating. Your brain felt like it was going to explode because you were in front of so much talent.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. That's how I felt when I saw the trailer and who they had signed up for this. I was like, "Oh my God, it's Nilou. It's Kristen. It's Gabriela [Cámara]. It's Dominique. It's Esther. It's all these people. Claudette [Zepeda]. It's all these people we love."
Nilou Motamed:
Yeah. It's true. We're not mentioning the men, but the men are also incredibly talented.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. Sorry, guys.
Nilou Motamed:
No. No. No, it's okay.
Kerry Diamond:
There were men on the show.
Nilou Motamed:
There are men on the show.
Kerry Diamond:
I said this to Esther, but I'm such a gullible human being. I did not know the Chairman's nephew. I thought there was really a Chairman and that he was really the nephew. Someone on the Cherry Bombe team was like, "Oh, the actor who plays the nephew." I was like, "What? Whoa. What?"
Nilou Motamed:
Okay. Mark [Dacascos] is an amazing actor. I think he's a very classically trained actor. You may have seen him in a lot of action movies, like one of the Wick movies. He's a bad guy in that.
Kerry Diamond:
So you knew even from the first Iron Chef, this wasn't a real story?
Nilou Motamed:
Listen, but I think the lore of Iron Chef, and now that we have the addition of the Quest for the Legend, I think the campiness is part of the show. I actually love the way that they delivered it in this one.
Kerry Diamond:
I can relate to the campiness.
Nilou Motamed:
I know. Well, that's because you're a little bit gullible. But Mark takes it very seriously. He's always in character. I feel like there's not a single time where I took a photo of him where he didn't do the Chairman face, the pursed lips and stare. I have 1,000 pictures of him doing that, which gives me endless joy. And I send him a picture, an outtake every other day.
I'm like, "This was while we were waiting for something." And then I looked at him and he immediately gave me the face, which is good. It's like the Austin Powers face, but of the Chairman. I really feel like we all felt this when we were on set, everyone brought their A game and beyond. Honestly, I think when you think of an ensemble cast, this really was an exceptional group of people.
Kerry Diamond:
It was very thoughtful casting.
Nilou Motamed:
Yeah. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. Okay. I'm going to say the one thing I didn't like about the show.
Nilou Motamed:
Oh.
Kerry Diamond:
I wish they dropped an episode per week. I wish they hadn't dropped them all at the same time, but that's a Netflix thing. I know it's not exclusive to Netflix. A lot of networks will drop the entire series. It killed a little bit of the suspense for me that you could just speed through. I love when there's time between each, because you've got all that chatter all week and a little bit of the cultural conversation. I don't know. I know people love to binge stuff.
Nilou Motamed:
This is what's amazing, Kerry. People started reaching out to me within 12 hours of the show being out and said, "I've seen it all already." What I think is important about, specifically Netflix, and this show is, it's global. It's in so many places and so people are watching it at different paces. There is something compelling, especially when there's an arc like this one, and it is a storyline to be able to keep on watching. We at home, I don't know how you do it with shows that drop each week, we wait until all of them are done.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, you do?
Nilou Motamed:
So that if we want to watch two in a row, we can. And then if not, we can do one at a time. But there's nothing that makes me more bereft than if I'm really into something and then I don't get another episode. The Bear, I watched seven and eight in a row. But if it hadn't been available and I had to wait for eight for a week, you know what I'm talking about?
Kerry Diamond:
It might have been less traumatic if they had dropped The Bear one episode at a time.
Nilou Motamed:
It's such a good show.
Kerry Diamond:
Such a good show.
Nilou Motamed:
Such a good show.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. It almost takes your breath away.
Nilou Motamed:
It took my breath away numerous times.
Kerry Diamond:
How incredible it is. Yeah.
Nilou Motamed:
Numerous times.
Kerry Diamond:
What was interesting about the show too, is they didn't dumb down what it's like being in a kitchen in terms of lingo and things like that. They used all the lingo. They didn't stop to explain what things meant.
Nilou Motamed:
“Heard.” “Corner.”
Kerry Diamond:
Ugh, but the ticket episode.
Nilou Motamed:
Yeah. That sound, you could hear the PTSD as it was happening in real time. I think…
Kerry Diamond:
Did you ever work in a kitchen?
Nilou Motamed:
I have never worked in a restaurant, which is probably good because I'm clumsy.
Kerry Diamond:
See, I think every person in food media should have to work in a kitchen.
Nilou Motamed:
I think you're right. I think it is true.
Kerry Diamond:
I don't think you should be allowed to get a job. And if you do get the job, they have to send you for a week to go wash dishes.
Nilou Motamed:
I think that's fair. I think I would have to wear gloves. That's one thing you need to know about me. I never wash dishes without gloves.
Kerry Diamond:
I've washed a lot of dishes at Smith Canteen. I did not wear gloves. I probably should have.
Nilou Motamed:
Well, back to my mom, always wear gloves.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, you have a beautiful manicure right now. I did clock that when you walked in. Don't you think a one-week stage in the kitchen?
Nilou Motamed:
Listen, if you're going to play a chef on a show and you have to go stage in a kitchen or go to ICE [Institute of Culinary Education] and learn, why shouldn't you, if you're going to become an editor at a food magazine? I think it would give people a lot more context. We all have a lot of friends like you, or one of my friends who has owned restaurants, but we all feel like we are clued in to what's happening in a restaurant. But especially with a small restaurant, what people go through to keep the lights on is grueling. I think it's a good idea. Let's institute that.
Kerry Diamond:
What are you up to this fall?
Nilou Motamed:
We have a tradition to spend some time in Italy, in September, which is our wedding anniversary. So I'm hoping that we're going to be in Italy in September.
Kerry Diamond:
You are a world-class traveler. I just have to say that.
Nilou Motamed:
We love to travel.
Kerry Diamond:
You know where to go, when to go, what to eat, where to stay. It is your thing.
Nilou Motamed:
I met Peter [Jon Lindberg], my husband, at Travel + Leisure where we both worked for so long. I worked there for 14 years as the Food Editor. He was there for over 20 years. A lot of our shared joy comes from that moment where we are on a plane headed somewhere. I think a lot of couples have that, but we do it professionally. He's a travel writer. Lo Scoglio is where we want to go for our anniversary.
You've had Stanley Tucci on. We've been glued to his show. That restaurant that he goes to in the Amalfi Coast, where they have the zucchini, the Nerano pasta, that family is amazing. My fantasy meal is always being on that dock at lunchtime and starting the meal. You arrive by boat. You start the meal at let's say 1:00, and you don't leave until sunset.
Kerry Diamond:
Wait. Have you had the zucchini pasta?
Nilou Motamed:
Oh my gosh, yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, I'm so jealous.
Nilou Motamed:
I even tried to make the zucchini pasta, although it's not the same. It's really not the same. Everything there is grown by the father, Peppino, of the family. Antonia [De Simone] does the front of house. The brother is in the kitchen. I will tell you of all the dishes, I think there's a pumpkin dish, it's literally just a pumpkin antipasto. It may be the best thing I've ever eaten in my life.
Kerry Diamond:
Wait. What is it? Tell us more.
Nilou Motamed:
It's just pumpkin with…
Kerry Diamond:
Purée?
Nilou Motamed:
Purée, yeah. With incredible olive oil. It's sweet and earthy.
Kerry Diamond:
It's a dip?
Nilou Motamed:
No, it's one of those things that they bring with the tomatoes. It's one of those things that you just scoop onto your plate with a bunch of other things. Their melanzane, which is their eggplant, it really is a delicious…
Kerry Diamond:
You're killing me.
Nilou Motamed:
There's this dappled sunlight, the water, there's people on the beach just waiting.
Kerry Diamond:
The dapple.
Nilou Motamed:
The dapple. It's always good with a dapple. But it's the black sand beach, and people are in various states of turning their bodies so they can get as much sun as possible, which is the opposite of you and me. I'm wearing a hat and another hat on top of it.
When I was at Food & Wine and we put Italy on the cover, it would always be a bestseller. We all have these food moments that transport us, and that's what you and I live for. We live for that moment, which we can recreate, by the way, when we go to Frankie's in our neighborhood every once in a while, where you're in the dappled sunlight and you order a perfect plate of pasta and you feel like all is right in the world.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, Nilou, I can't think of a better place to end than that. I've nothing to add.
Nilou Motamed:
Well, also, because we're hungry. We want to go to have lunch.
Kerry Diamond:
We're a little hungry. Exactly. You are amazing. I'm going to say it once again. You are so amazing. Thank you for coming on the show.
Nilou Motamed:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. You're a joy. You really are. We are all lucky that you are in the world, and Cherry Bombe is really such a gift. Thank you. Thank you for that.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, you've been a big part of it since day one and a big supporter, so right back at you. Congrats on Iron Chef. We can't wait for season two.
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Nilou Motamed for joining me. If you'd like to keep up with all things Nilou, follow her on Instagram at Nilou Motamed. And make sure to watch Iron Chef: Quest For An Iron Legend, streaming now on Netflix.
Thank you to Whole Foods Market for supporting today's show. If you enjoyed today's pod, check out past episodes with other food TV faves, including Padma Lakshmi, Rachael Ray, and Samah Dada. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Our theme song is by the band Tralala.
Thank you, Joseph Hazan, Studio Engineer for Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center. And thank you to our Assistant Producer, Jenna Sadhu. And thanks to you for listening. You are the bombe.