Are there five basic tastes?

At this point, I can tell you only two things definitively about flavor and the pursuit of unwinding exactly what it is and how we can all appreciate it more. Thing one: Flavor is complex. And thing 2: I’m going to keep asking questions of the people who inhabit the world of flavor for a long time to come.

Which is my way of saying… season 1 has come to an end. BUT there will be a Season 2 of fever4flavor. I can’t tell you exactly when that will be or who will be on it, but I do hope to continue talking to the kinds of people you’ve heard from here: chefs, flavorists, and other passionate experts. And I hope that season 2 can be 20 episodes, or 30, or even more.

So check back in this space in the coming months for more news and an update. I can’t thank you enough for tuning in! As always, if you have any ideas for who I should be talking to, and fun foods or amazing recipes I should try, or anything at all related to flavor, or even to just say hello… you can drop me a line at podcast@fever4flavor.com.

Until next time! This is Evan Young, this is fever4flavor, and I’ll be seeing you in Season 2.

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You’ll hear me reference my travels quite a bit on this podcast. I always feel a little bit strange talking about the places I’ve been; I don’t want to sound like some kind of elitist, jet-setting, wealthy 1% kind of person who spends his weekends in Bali. I’m not that.

But I did have the luck in my 20’s—which was a couple of decades ago for me—of falling backwards into an opportunity to live in Bangkok for a few years. As the travel hub in southeast Asia, I also had the luck, or the guts maybe, of traveling extensively throughout the region. On a backpacker’s budget, I got to sip coffee in Laos, eat banh mi in Vietnam, try adobo in the Philippines. As I “grew up” and came back stateside, I also ended up working a job that sent me to Europe a few times a year. Again, lucky me.

But I’ll say this: what I took away from these travels was an unabashed love for all kinds of non-American cuisines, and in particular, the stuff you just don’t see all that often here in the US. For example: Burmese food. When I came across a cafe restaurant off of Rittenhouse Square called PS & Co, and saw they had a menu unlike any I’d really seen before in Philly—vegan and Burmese-inspired—I had to reach out.

On a sweltering hot day, sun blazing down, PS & Co owner Andrea Kyan and I sat in a small outdoor garden behind her shop. With her newly rescued dog Ginger at her feet, we talked about her mother’s influence on her cooking, the challenges of operating a vegan restaurant, the consistency of vegan bread, and more.

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Produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

If you’d like to support Fever4Flavor, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your input helps us make the podcast even better, points us to topics that are relevant to you, and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for Fever4Flavor, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Join me next week as we continue to explore the infinite world of food and flavors here on Fever4Flavor.

I don’t quite remember when I started drinking coffee, but I suspect it was at some point in college. When I needed to stuff as much caffeine into my underslept and over-hangovered face to make it through midterms.

But back then, coffee was simply a vehicle to transmit as much caffeine into my bloodstream as I possibly could. Now, coffee is an entirely different source of joy. I set the machine every single night; it’s among the first things I wake up to every single morning. A nice dark roast that slaps you awake with a daily jolt of complex flavor and aroma. A joke that too many people in my life have heard me say is that at any given point, my body is composed of about 88% caffeine.

But when you go to a great cafe… it’s not just about the coffee, is it? Of course not! You gotta have a little bit of a pastry too, right? Maybe a plain croissant on some days. Maybe there’s caution to the wind, we’ll do a chocolate croissant, or a beignet kinda deal, maybe a sticky bun from Dot’s in Ocean City New Jersey. Best sticky buns in the actual universe.

The hunt for people who understand flavors with serious depth and complexity, like coffee and wine, but who also understand the importance of the onsite customer experience, eventually led me to two people, actually: Kelsey Bush, chef/owner of Green Engine Coffee, Bloomsday, and Loretta’s, and Sara May, the Events & Operations Manager for the Bloomsday restaurant group.

Together, these self-proclaimed “gab specialists" and food and flavor veterans bring decades of experience covering the many ways that coffee, pastries, and an excellent dining experience can be delivered. So I sat down with them at Bloomsday with a sampling of orangedew and toad skin melon, and from white chocolate pistachio danishes to pop tarts, we chopped it up.

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Produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

If you’d like to support Fever4Flavor, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your input helps us make the podcast even better, points us to topics that are relevant to you, and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for Fever4Flavor, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Join me next week as we continue to explore the infinite world of food and flavors here on Fever4Flavor.

As a working professional, my very first day at my very first corporate job, I stuffed envelopes. But the job was at a medical publishing company, and eventually, I worked my way up the ladder to spend a whole bunch of years there as a medical journalist. And if that sounds sexy to you, trust me, it’s a lot less sexy than it sounds. The good news is that eventually, I went on to other even less sexy-sounding jobs that we need not get into.

But while I didn’t love being a journalist, per se, I will give it credit: it forced the most scientifically curious side of me to dig into complex topics and try to unwind them. Flavor, along with about a zillion other biological processes in the body, is a fascinatingly complex scientific topic just as much as it is a fun and unique way to enjoy an ice cream cone. This podcast would be nothing if we couldn’t find and talk to an actual PhD and expert on human perception of chemical stimuli.

Luckily for all of us in and around Philadelphia, the Monell Chemical Senses Center on Market Street is a world-renowned institution dedicated to the science of taste and smell, and I was able to catch up with Paul Wise on the staff there. And I just started asking questions, from what the basic definition of flavor actually is, to what smell has to do with it all, to whether we can actually trust our eyes and noses and taste buds.

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If you want more content:

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Produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

If you’d like to support Fever4Flavor, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your input helps us make the podcast even better, points us to topics that are relevant to you, and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for Fever4Flavor, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Join me next week as we continue to explore the infinite world of food and flavors here on Fever4Flavor.

I have a wicked sweet tooth. As a kid, I’d take every single quarter or dollar I earned from raking the neighbors’ leaves, and I’d cut through the woods down the street. On the other side was an Acme, the Ritz theater where I saw Tim Burton’s Batman four times in the summer of 1989, and a 7Eleven. At the “sev,” the money would get spent on exactly two things: a Gauntlet arcade game, where the Warrior was my character of choice… and giant chewy Sweet Tarts.

My sweet tooth was insatiable; I once stuffed an entire vanilla Charleston Chew into my mouth and could barely breathe; another time, I was randomly rummaging through my brother’s bureau and came upon the Hubba Bubba he’d been judiciously saving, chewing periodically as a treat… and like a sugar-starved kid in a candy desert, I shoved THAT entire pack of gum right into my mouth. In my 20s, I ate a halloween-sized bag of Reese’s peanut butter cups in a 24-hour span.

And even now, as a much older man with a presumption of self-control, I find it challenging to resist a treat. Our family loves cake, ice cream, and pretty much every other dessert we can get our hands on. When we go to the movies, I’ll get Milk Duds, Junior Mints, Raisinets, AND sometimes a cherry-Pepsi Icee to boot. Every Christmas morning, I make homemade cinnamon buns from scratch. This is simply how we live.

So hunting down Eric Berley, co-owner of the Franklin Fountain and Shane Confectionary, was like a big-game safari for me. Franklin Fountain is unquestionably a hall-of-fame-worthy landmark of ice cream in Philadelphia, if not the country. The meticulously crafted ice cream parlor and soda shop has been dishing out wonder for over 20 years. Eric agreed to talk to me, so we set up in his new space called the Cacao Pod on Market Street, full of church pews and a chocolate roaster—and we talked about nostalgia, old-fashioned lemon ice cream, how to create an authentic and unforgettable experience for your guests, and more.

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If you want more content:

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Produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

If you’d like to support Fever4Flavor, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your input helps us make the podcast even better, points us to topics that are relevant to you, and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for Fever4Flavor, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Join me next week as we continue to explore the infinite world of food and flavors here on Fever4Flavor.

In one hand, imagine I’m holding a slice of cake; in the other, a slice of pie. I’ve got a pair of reflective glasses on, and I’m asking you to choose. Which one are you going with?

For me, it’s going to be cake all day. I’m not a discerning person when it comes to cake; I’m going to eat whatever you put in front of me for dessert, and I’m probably going to enjoy it. But if it’s a one and a half pound slice of German chocolate cake from 4th Street Delicatessen, or a delicious cream cheese icing carrot, I’m going to enjoy it a whole lot more.

So when I came across the Sugary, a delightful little cake shop a block from Rittenhouse, and owner Lesly McDevitt agreed to talk to me, I was extremely happy. Before you even listen to this episode, stop now and go look at the photos of some of her cake creations at thesugaryphilly.com. And you’ll see what I mean right away - Lesly is making some of the most fabulous-looking, picturesque cakes I’ve ever seen.

We sat down at her shop, nestled into the cleanly decorated pastel vibes, and went down the rabbit hole - covering how these cakes are sculpted, how they’re layered, and how bullets are sweated out when they’re transported to a wedding.

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If you want more content:

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Produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

If you’d like to support Fever4Flavor, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your input helps us make the podcast even better, points us to topics that are relevant to you, and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for Fever4Flavor, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Join me next week as we continue to explore the infinite world of food and flavors here on Fever4Flavor.

Do you have a relationship with social media? Because I do, and like all relationships I’ve ever had throughout my life with people, places, and things, it’s not a simple one. On one hand, I think that humanity is someday going to look back at this age of social media that we’re currently in—assuming we haven’t nuked ourselves into oblivion or heated up the planet to an impossible degree, or both—and very firmly recognize that social media was an absolute evil that drove a whole lot of divisive, mind-warping, polarizing spikes into our brains.

But hey: hilarious dog videos! Amirite? I catch myself scrolling all the time. I crack up at some of the ridiculous shit you’ll see on there. People chasing rolling cheeses down hills, endless highlights of the Eagles thumping the Chiefs.

And food. So much food. Juicy, squeezy, delicious, ASMR-scraping food beauty shots and video clips of people making and eating things that hit the eyes and the ears, although certainly not the nose and the tongue.

But on a podcast dedicated to flavor, why would anyone care about social media? Should we care? I think the answer is that we have to. And when I had the chance to drag Fidel Gastro himself, also known in real life as Marcos Espinoza, into a conversation with me, I couldn’t resist digging into the topic of social media with him. So we sat down together in a busy back room at Forest and Main Brewing Company and took up trying to solve the world’s social media food-born problems.

But flavor being what it is, there was plenty more to talk about too, of course. As it turned out, we both have the exact same opinion about the #1 best sandwich in Philly. So where is that sandwich from? Listen in, and you'll find out.

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If you want more content:

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Produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

If you’d like to support Fever4Flavor, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your input helps us make the podcast even better, points us to topics that are relevant to you, and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for Fever4Flavor, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Join me next week as we continue to explore the infinite world of food and flavors here on Fever4Flavor.

Let’s just go ahead and get this out of the way: I’m a meat-eater. I love a filet mignon and the smoked buffalo wings over at Ice Line. But I’ve often wondered how vegan or vegetarian restaurants approach their food. I’ve always kinds of assumed that they try to approximate the flavors and textures that us meat-eaters experience on a daily basis. Meaning, they’re probably trying to make a portabello “cheesesteak” taste just like an actual Philly cheesesteak made with beef…

Or are they doing something very different? Are they unabashedly creating from a flavor playbook and palette that exists uniquely unto themselves? Much of what I thought about vegetarian food changed the day I had one of the best sandwiches of my entire life, a portabello and broccoli rabe sub. It ended up being a creation from a chef named Rich Landau. You may know Rich better as the founder, along with Kate Jacoby, of Vedge.

Now Vedge is not just a vegan resturant; it’s an institution in Philadelphia, and one of the most important and ground-breaking vegan restaurants in the city. So Rich and I caught up out here in West Chester Pennsylvania. We broke the ice over a taste test of three kinds of sugars—piloncillo, jaggery, and a Chinese “old brown sugar” called hēitáng—then talked about the lengths that Rich has gone to to infuse flavor into the foods he serves, how some flavor combinations can reflect creative genius, why a pear is the perfect fruit, and more.

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If you want more content:

fever4flavor.com

podcast@fever4flavor.com

Instagram | @fever4flavor

Produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

If you’d like to support Fever4Flavor, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your input helps us make the podcast even better, points us to topics that are relevant to you, and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for Fever4Flavor, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Join me next week as we continue to explore the infinite world of food and flavors here on Fever4Flavor.