January Round Up

Cooking as art, Charleston restaurant recs, AI chefs, and more

Hey, everyone!

If you’re new here, the round up is a monthly post I put together with a bunch of things I think you’ll find interesting— recipes, podcasts, articles, book recs, random thoughts, etc.

As always, feel free to reach out if you find any of this interesting or want to share feedback!

Myles

Something I’m Thinking About

I’m listening to a podcast series right now about music theory, and it’s absolutely fascinating. The most interesting thing for me, as someone who is entirely new to the subject, is that it’s almost all described in terms of mathematics— there are perfect numerical relationships between different notes, octaves, and pitches that actually inform why something sounds a certain way— good or bad— to us.

One might study this and come to the conclusion that music is simply mathematics. Everything can be understood through that lens. I see a similar thing in cooking— you’ll often hear people describe cooking as “simply science.” And it’s true that much of cooking can be seen that way. But I think that both of these viewpoints miss out on something fundamental. When you approach music as just math, or cooking as just science, you lose out on something that’s largely indescribable— I can only think to call it “soulfulness.” It’s something that can’t be produced by reason alone— it requires intuition and maybe even divine inspiration. Rick Rubin and Steven Pressfield have both talked about this at length.

There are certain musicians known for being extremely technical— Jacob Collier is one. He’s an undeniable talent— perfect pitch, complete mastery of rhythm and tempo— and yet his music simply doesn’t move me. Compare that set to something like Prince’s guitar solo in this George Harrison tribute: it’s so full of energy and passion it feels like it’s bursting at the seams. Can that be explained entirely through a technical lens? I don’t think so.

Prince was not thinking about math in this moment.

And yet I recognize that there’s real value to learning the technical aspects of a craft as a foundation upon which to build. I’m not a trained musician, and learning music theory provides an approachable way for me to understand the subject. Similarly, a lot of what I teach in 80/20 Cooking is tantamount to “culinary theory.” There are scientific fundamentals in cooking that can actually make you more creative once you understand them.

But I think it’s really important to recognize the limits of this worldview. You must never forget that cooking at its best is an art. There are elements of soul and intuition that play important roles. The best food will never be made by a scientist who perfectly understands the interplay between various primary flavors. It will be made by grandmas who pour their heart into what they’re cooking, or chefs like Francis Mallmann and Chris Bianco who approach their craft as more than just a science.

If you lean too far into rationality, you miss out on something important.

Charleston Restaurant Recs

I recently visited Charleston, SC and absolutely loved it. My trip was way too short, but I did hit a few awesome spots. I’ve heard for years that Charleston has one of the best food scenes in the country, and I was not disappointed. For a city of its size it clearly punches far above its weight. I can’t wait to go back.

• Vern’s was an incredible meal— one of my favorite restaurant I’ve been to in a long time. If you go to Charleston, don’t miss it.

• Bar 167 — One of three restaurants in the 167 family, all of which came highly recommended. It was great.

• The Ordinary — Super cool ambiance. Great place for oysters, drinks, and small plates.

Sfoglini Pasta

I’ve been on a big pasta (and Italian food generally) kick lately. If I’m not making my own pasta from scratch, I prefer Italian brands like Seggiano. But recently I came across a cool new brand called Sfoglini that I really loved.

They slow-dry their pasta and cut it using bronze dies (meaning they do things the old school Italian way), but they source all their flour from organic North American grains. My favorite part about the brand is the fact that they have a few totally original pasta shapes they’ve created themselves.

I recently made their porcini trumpets with a spinach and tomato cream sauce, and it was excellent.

Delphi AI

I’ve cloned myself into an AI. It sounds as crazy to me as it does to you.

I came across Delphi a few months ago on Twitter, and I thought their technology was really interesting. It allows you to upload everything you’ve published (this model is trained on this Substack, my Twitter account, all my blog posts, podcasts, and more) and create a custom GPT from that data.

Why did I do this? There are a few reasons.

In putting together my 80/20 Cooking course over the past year or so, I’ve become quite interested in questions around how we learn, and how we can teach in a way that really improves student outcomes. There’s a phenomenon in education known as Bloom’s 2 sigma problem— it’s an overly complicated name, but the gist is that students with individual tutoring perform much better than students in traditional classroom settings. The problem with 1-on-1 tutoring is that it doesn’t scale. I think that AI agents like those created by Delphi might actually solve this problem. This technology actually enables anyone, anywhere to have an always-on, personalized tutor in their pocket…for any subject imaginable.

And while Delphi’s clones are really good at answering questions, the thing that excites me the most is how quickly this technology is improving. In just the couple months I’ve been using it, I’ve seen it get better and better as I add more training data and they add more features. And the simple fact is that this is the worst this technology will ever be. It’s early, but I do believe tools like this will be ubiquitous eventually, and I’m excited to play around with them in my niche.

The other thing I like about this is that it’s just convenient. I get plenty of cooking questions from people in my Twitter DMs, and sometimes I don’t have time to answer all of them. This solves that problem, and makes the response time instantaneous for whomever asks the question. The model also serves as something of a search engine for me. I can ask it, for example, “What restaurants do you recommend in New Orleans?” and it will instantly pull the ones I wrote about two years ago in this newsletter. I don’t have to go searching for them— I just ask and they’re surfaced.

I’ve got a few cool ideas for how I might use this going forward. But if you find this as interesting as I do or have ideas, I’m all ears!

You can try it out here. And if you do, please feel free to reach out with feedback!

The Karnjanaprakorn Show

In December I joined my friend Michael Karnjanaprakorn on his podcast, The Karnjanaprakorn Show. This was a fun conversation where we talked about ikigai, where to live, some cooking tips, and then brainstormed some fun business ideas.

De Buyer Stainless Steel

Several months ago I set out to test out a few different brands of stainless steel to see which ones perform best. I get asked for recommendations all the time, and I wanted to feel like I was giving an informed answer.

The best pan for you depends on preferences and budget, but I must say that recently I’ve been blown away by my De Buyer stainless steel pan. It’s on the pricier end for stainless steel, but it performs incredibly well. The biggest benefit, however, is that it works better on induction than anything else I own. And since my new kitchen has an induction stove, that’s been a game changer.

If you want a very solid stainless steel pan that won’t cost you an arm and a leg, check out Made In or Heritage Steel. If you want top-of-the-line performance and a beautiful look, De Buyer is fantastic.

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Looking for more resources to level up your home cooking?

If you like this newsletter, you’ll love 80/20 Cooking— my online cooking school and community for home cooks. The core program is a four-week bootcamp where you’ll learn principles and techniques that allow you to cook without recipes.

If you’d like to join, you can find more information here!

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