Frequently Asked Questions

1. What's the meaning behind "Food Don't Lie?"

Food Don’t Lie is a homage to “ball don’t lie,” a phrase perhaps best popularized by Rasheed Wallace, 20-year NBA veteran center and all-time leader in career technical fouls, technical fouls in a season and game ejections. Here’s a YouTube video of him not caring about league-mandated post-game interviews:

“Both teams played hard”

According to the etymologists at Urban Dictionary™:

“Ball don’t lie is said when a player misses one, two or all three of his free throws after a questionable foul call is made by an official. The ball is, essentially, the unbiased judge who will not reward the player by going in if the apparent foul was indeed bullshit.”

Food is a similarly impartial arbiter. It’s good or it’s not, regardless if it’s crafted at a multi-Michelin star restaurant in Midtown or a $4 dumpling joint in Chinatown. I’m a firm believer that pretension and price are not a proxy for taste.

2. Where do you do your cooking?

I do all of my cooking in our apartment in Manhattan. It’s literally the smallest kitchen I’ve ever had, and our stove is small enough that most of our pots can only be used on diagonal burners simultaneously. Our sink is also a glorified bar sink, meaning unless I clean as I go the dirty dish situation quickly becomes untenable.

I love it though. I know exactly where everything is, and thanks to recently getting married we were able to snag some really awesome cooking supplies from our registry.

We moved to Queens. Our rent is cheaper, our apartment is (way) bigger, and our commutes are worse. We’re happy about the tradeoffs.

3. Where do you get your ideas?

On the Internet, mostly. Sometimes from r/cooking, often from the wizardry of Kenji at Serious Eats (who is my favorite food writer ever, by far), cookbooks I’ve accrued over the last couple years and a subscription to Cook’s Illustrated magazine that I finangled out of last Christmas’ Secret Santa.

I also develop an irrational confidence when I eat a mediocre meal at a restaurant. Eunice has heard “dude, I can do better than this” probably more times than she can count.

So I give it a shot.

4. What kind of camera are you using?

With the exception of the first short rib post, all of the photos on this blog are taken with my iPhone camera.

5. Why does this blog look so broken on my computer / laptop / phablet / e-watch / e-spectacles / virtual reality headset / Tesla dashboard?

This blog will likely undergo a lot of functional and visual changes over time. And the unfortunate circumstances of web development are such that some browsers are less equipped to provide a good browsing experience for users. Your best bet for viewing this blog is with Google Chrome or an iPhone 6, mostly because that’s what I’ll be developing it on.

6. Hey this blog sucks and I'm angry and my goal is to spread negativity on the Internet!!!!!

Yo. Chill. Go play with a dog.