Every culture has a food culture, right? How do you approach different food cultures? And, and, and what, what exactly is a food culture? Is it, is it the restaurants, the grocery stores, the way they cook, the way they sit down and eat, the spices and flavors they use? What makes a food culture?

I think it can be a lot of different things.

And as an outsider coming in, I try not to get lost in the idea of defining just a single food culture for a place or deciding for myself what's authentic or real or what the regional specialty is.

Like, I wanna go and just experience it as much as I can through the eyes and the expertise of the people that I get to meet there.

I think that's the most important part for me, is to really be with people that are living with that food, living with that cuisine every day.

Whether that's a home cook, a passionate foodie, or a chef, or somebody that's a food historian, like, all those different types of people offer a different perspective into the way people eat and why they eat that way.

I think it gets really troublesome when people are like, "I'm looking for the authentic version of this," or, "I'm looking for the traditional version of this." Because imagine you're talking to somebody who's coming to the States, and they're like, "I want authentic hamburger." What's an authentic hamburger? Is that McDonald's? Is that-

Why in the world would you hang out in a grocery store?