The LA Food Podcast

This week on The LA Food Podcast, Luca Servodio and Karen Palmer break down the biggest restaurant industry story of the year: the escalating Noma scandal surrounding chef René Redzepi and the $1,500-per-person Noma pop-up in Los Angeles.
Following a bombshell New York Times investigation into abuse and labor practices at Noma, protests erupted in LA led by former Noma fermentation director Jason Ignacio White. Sponsors pulled out, demonstrators gathered outside the Paramour Estate, and Redzepi ultimately announced he would step away from Noma’s day-to-day operations. Luca and Karen unpack what happened, why this moment hit differently than past allegations, and what it means for the future of fine dining, kitchen culture, and restaurant labor.
Before diving into the controversy, the hosts share their latest LA restaurant recs and recent eats, including meals at Republique, 88 Club, Bell’s in Los Alamos, Pinyon in Ojai, and more.
Then in Part 2, you’ll hear audio from the Noma protest press conference in Los Angeles, where organizers laid out demands including leadership change, worker reparations, and broader industry reforms addressing unpaid labor and abusive kitchen culture.
All that, plus Chef’s Kiss / Big Miss covering LA Times popcorn nostalgia, the rise of the San Luis Obispo Coast wine region, Expo West’s protein-everything food trend, and drama inside the world of food media.
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A new podcast is hitting the LA Food Podcast feed.
Welcome to the debut episode of Couch Potatoes: A Food TV Podcast. To kick things off, Luca Servodio and Father Sal are joined by Bits Nicholas of Compliments to the Chef to preview Top Chef Season 23 and hold the first ever Fantasy Top Chef Draft for 2026.
The twist? It’s Team LA Food Podcast vs Team Compliments to the Chef. Each side drafts chefs from the new season and will compete all season long to see whose picks dominate the competition.
Along the way the crew breaks down the Season 23 cast, early favorites, potential dark horses, and which chefs could flame out early. If you’re a Top Chef diehard, a Bravo fan, or just love food TV debates, this is the ultimate pre-season preview.
New episodes of Couch Potatoes will cover the biggest moments from Top Chef and the wider world of food television.

Matt Rodbard of This Is TASTE joins Luca Servodio as guest co-host on The LA Food Podcast for a wide-ranging conversation about the future of food media, restaurant discovery, and what’s happening right now in the LA dining scene.
They dig into Rodbard’s recent interviews with Emma Orlow of Caper Media and David Cho of the restaurant discovery app Postcard, exploring the idea of “post-traffic” food media, whether apps like Beli and Postcard change how we discover restaurants, and what the next generation of food TV might look like.
Plus, Matt and Luca break down their recent eats around LA — including Sqirl’s new dinner service, Max & Helen’s, Erewhon, Holbox, and brunch at Mirate in Los Feliz — before diving into the return of everyone’s favorite segment: Chef’s Kiss or Big Miss.
On the table this week:
• The Serving Spoon winning the James Beard America’s Classics Award
• Whether media like the New York Times shapes what diners order
• Restaurants getting paid to switch reservation platforms
• And the internet’s newest meme: The Pitt, but set during a Waffle House night shift
If you care about restaurants, food media, and how we discover what to eat next, this one’s for you.

Father Sal records his final episode as a bachelor, we launch our new Couch Potatoes Top Chef recap series, and then we head straight to Santa Monica for one of the most ambitious meals in Los Angeles: SELINE.
Chef Dave Beran’s winter tasting menu is structured around the idea of “outside” and “inside” — cold, memory, warmth, progression. We break down the sunflower sequence disguised as cod, the venison tartare that had us laughing mid-bite, the short rib slider moment, and whether SELINE is already operating at a Michelin-star level.
Then we zoom out.
We unpack the James Beard Foundation’s State of the Restaurant Industry report, produced with Deloitte, and talk about what it actually says: volatility as the new norm, alcohol sales declining, guests spending less per visit, full dining rooms that still aren’t profitable, and the widening gap between consumer expectations and restaurant economics. Oh, and here's that New School report we keep referencing.
After that, Chef’s Kiss / Big Miss returns — our recurring segment where we call balls and strikes on LA food culture:
Sqirl flips to dinner

The “restaurant monologue” backlash

Pizza losing ground to Mexican and Asian cuisine

And a few takes that might ruffle feathers

In Part 2, we sit down with Laurent Vernhes (founder of Tablet Hotels) and Tito Melega of MVA.wine — a 600-member wine collective that blind tastes 50–60 wines in Tuscany and only selects six. No filler inventory. No mass distribution. Just curation and scarcity.
And if you're interested in becoming an MVA member - a.k.a. a Vinefinder - the first 20 listeners to sign up get a $50 discount on their first collection with code "LAFOOD"
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This week on The LA Food Podcast, we’re diving deep into LA’s cocktail culture with James Beard semifinalist Max Reis, beverage director of Mirate and Daisy Margarita Bar. Max shares his journey from Napa to Los Angeles, how he became one of the country’s most respected mezcal advocates, and what it takes to build a world-class bar program.
In Part 1, Luca and Father Sal recap a legendary Echo Park bar crawl, including strategy, standout stops, and inevitable chaos. Plus, Chef’s Kiss / Big Miss tackles the New York Times’ essential LA dishes list, the Max & Helen’s review debate, smart glasses in restaurants, AI reservation bots, and the battle over dining-room photography.

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