Eat My Globe

Interview with Food Network Star, Justin Warner

Simon Majumdar (“SM”):

Welcome to a brand-new episode of Eat My Globe, a podcast about things you didn't know you didn't know about food. And I am so pleased today to have one of my closest chums from the Food Network, Justin Warner.

Now, I think it might be quite strange for people to see the two of us together. I'm very old school and Justin is very new school. I'm much older than Justin, but particularly over the years on Tournament of Champions, we have become very good friends. Justin is a self-taught chef who sees no boundaries in the kitchen. Most people will know him for reaching the final of Food Network Star, and then beating Michelle Ragussis, who's one of my friends, and Marty Duncan.

They will also know him from other Food Network shows, such as Guy’s Grocery Games, Cutthroat Kitchen, and of course, with me, Tournament of Champions. Apart from that, Justin hosts Eat the Universe on Marvel.com, has published three books, I believe, and now owns three restaurants in the downtown of Rapid City in South Dakota. Bokujo Ramen, BB’s Natural Wine Bar and Bokujo Bodega.

And as Justin always says, and he does do this, he makes interesting food for interested people, which I love. However, more than anything, he is my friend. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm so pleased to invite you to meet Justin Warner. How are you?

Justin Warner (“JW”):

Oh man, Simon, thank you for that introduction. I can't be anything short of perfect after hearing all that, especially with your eloquence.

SM:

Let's talk about you right now, if we can. So, tell us what you've got going on now. I know that we've started Tournament of Champions, which is great. But tell us about other things, events, podcasts, other things that you're going to be doing.

JW:

Oh man, what am I not doing?

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

I guess next week I'm popping up at a brewery in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. There's really no point in you mentioning that because it sold out in two hours.

I've been just really kind of just living a freestyle life and being a dad. My son is three now, which is very hard to believe.

SM:

Wow.

JW:

Yeah, I know time flies and. . .

SM:

It really does.

JW:

You know, I'm just trying to leave the world better than I found it often through food, but sometimes through other stuff. And I'm kind of in a maintenance mode right now. I asked my wife if for 2026 we could not make a restaurant or child.

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

And she agreed. So really just trying to, you know, make the things that I've already made better this year and, you know, maintaining the relationships that I have, including with all the fans of Tournament of Champions, which as you know has never been bigger.

SM:

It has never been bigger. And I love the fact that I'm now moving to, to chat to the judges. And we've got another person, Tiffany, to come in and talk about what you do, talking about commentating on it all. So, I think we've got a good threesome there. I think I don't know if that's the wrong word to say. But anyway, but let's go back in time a bit. I don't know this! Where were you born?

JW:

I was born in Maryland, Hagerstown, Maryland.

SM:

Oh wow. Where is it that I don't know where that is?

JW:

Yeah, that's okay. So, it's at the intersection of I-70 and I-81. It's known as the Hub City. It's centrally located in Washington County, which is in Western Maryland. If you think about how Maryland as a shape is reaching out towards West Virginia, we're in very much the skinniest part of Maryland. So, when we were kids, we would drive to Pennsylvania and race to Virginia, because you could do that whole thing in about 45 minutes, depending on your speed. I apologize.

SM:

Oh no, no, no, that's... I just love chatting with you anyway. And what people should realize is Justin and I, usually at the end of some of the Tournament of Champions, we go to the kind of nice diner close to the hotel and we just sit and we talk like this. So, it's fantastic for me to have him on. Now, before you came to New York, did you have any kind of other occupation before you came or was food always a thing that was you?

JW:

Honest to goodness, Simon, I started, I wanted to be a bus boy from an early age. probably when I was like 10 or 11, it clicked that children can work. And, I've always loved food and I've always had a no boundaries relationship with food. I never thought I can even actually. . . it's interesting that you asked, but I just flashed back to being a kid and I never had a problem with ingredients. It was only technique and I realized, I guess at an early age, that there are varying degrees of deliciousness, right? And that I'll never forget, I never liked canned green beans because who does? And then I had fresh green beans for the first time in my life at a young age. I couldn't have been more than eight or nine. And it was just like a light bulb clicked, that there, there are degrees of deliciousness that, technique is important. I'll never forget those green beans were sauteed with dill.

SM:

Ooh.

JW:

And I was like, this is living, man. So anyway, I'd go to a restaurant and I'd see children working. And I said, I want to do that. And I became a bus boy when I was 14, if not 15, and, they, put me in the dish pit as well, washing dishes. So, I intentionally failed at washing dishes so that they would give me more bus boy shifts, which were one more lucrative and also just in general, less dish pity.

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

So that's where I started on the front of house path. And I kept chasing better jobs and higher check averages. And I learned very quickly that the more you know about your menu and the more you know about food, the better your tips are going to be because people want to know what they're eating. Call us crazy. But a well-informed attentive waiter is so much better than an uninformed attentive waiter.

SM:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

JW:

There's a lot more to it than just filling water. So, I kept chasing and chasing and then I decided I was going to move to Colorado because I spent summers there as a kid busing tables at an Italian restaurant. And when I moved to Colorado, I plunked myself down in a little town called Fort Collins.

SM:

Yeah.

JW:

It's not really little anymore. And the first job I applied at was a sushi restaurant and it was literally the restaurant closest to my house. And I had very limited experience with sushi. But from there, I met a chef who, just changed my life. He's the radioactive spider and when he, I'll never forget.

SM:

I have no idea what you're saying there, but thank you for sharing that. I have no idea, but...

JW:

Yeah, there is. He sunk his fangs into me and turned me into a superhero. So, the idea is one day he gave me a, Toro Donburi. So, a bowl of rice covered in Toro bluefin tuna belly.

SM:

Beautiful.

JW:

He gave it to me and I said, man, what would this cost in Japan? And he's maybe $200. And I was like, Masa, why are you giving this to me? We can't sell it. Why can't we sell it? It's delicious. He's like, people don't understand. And so, from there, it clicked that like the job, at least with raw fish in the middle of America is to prepare people for what they are about to taste. So, I developed a scatter plot of fish, oily and not oily, fishy and not fishy on the opposing axes, right? And by tasting all of the fish and putting it on the scatter plot, I could articulate to people and to new employees and to new chefs whose English was limited, how to prepare somebody for mackerel. Very fishy, very oily. So, there were no more surprises there. And then that just is where it took off. I then got another job at another sushi restaurant where, Simon, I'm not kidding you, they must have had some sort of strange connection to Japan because we were eating fish in the middle of Colorado that some Japanese people haven't even eaten.

SM:

Wow.

JW:

I'm talking about the sweet river fish of Japan. That's the fish that they used to get out of the cormorants bellies, those birds. Crazy stuff. And so, from there, I did actually cook a little bit at that restaurant while I assembled sushi rolls. But from there, then I got a job at The Modern in New York. And the Modern is a Michelin rated restaurant. So, they had one star when I worked there, two stars when I left and they promoted me to captain there. And when you're a captain, man, you need to know as much about food as anybody in the kitchen, if not more.

SM:

Tell people what a captain is. Obviously, we know that, but a lot of people who listen to this probably don't know that. So, tell us what that is.

JW:

Yeah, I don't know how to better say it, but a captain is a boss waiter. The captain is the person that is in charge of making sure your multi-course tasting menu and everything that you could possibly desire at a high-end restaurant is coordinated and brought to you. Generally, you're the point person to greet the table and you're establishing yourself as the if anything is not to your liking, I am the person who will correct it. And at least at the Modern underneath a captain is a front waiter. A front waiter is generally in charge of making sure you have your appropriate silverware, making sure that things are being timed appropriately. Oftentimes they will fire dishes to the kitchen, meaning they will send a signal to the kitchen. Hey, they're about to be finished. I'm about to be cleared. Okay, let's bring the next plate out and up. And then under that you have a server assistant and a server assistant is generally in charge of smaller tasks such as water refill, bread service, the folding of napkins and the resetting of the table. And so a captain, go ahead. Yeah.

SM:

Now, can I just mention this? Because the folding of napkins, I always think is one of the most important things because that shows you that the captain, they're all watching that table in fine dining restaurants. And if they see that that napkin is not folded, but it's left on the side, I always do this at every fine dining restaurant, I always scrumple it up and put it on the side. And you can see how great that restaurant is by how well that's if you go to the bathroom, anything like that. And the moment you come back and you see it folded or whatever it's going to be in one place, they even brought had someone standing there with new napkins on a plate. And when I came back, they put them up. And so, I think that's one of the most important things. And I don't see I don't know whether you do, but anyway.

JW:

It is absolutely one of the most important things. I do it at my ramen shop which was featured on Diners Drive ins and Dives. We’re probably the only napkin folding dive ramen shop on earth. But it is. . . it costs you nothing as a server or as an attendant, be it a server, server assistant bus or whatever it costs you absolutely nothing to fold that napkin and it means so much it's a it's an unspoken language. . .

SM:

Yep.

JW:

. . .but it means so much to the people that know how to speak that unspoken language. And it's such a flex, dude. Like when people get up at the ramen shop and I march over and fold the napkin, haste post haste, tuck the chair just right. . .

SM:

Yep.

JW:

. . . people are like, what? You know? And that's just like a Michelin reflex. I can't not do it. I can't see a crumpled napkin in an empty chair without doing it.

SM:

Yeah, and you've got to be able to and this to me shows you that the captain is seeing every table. Now, before we go on to the next thing that I really want to talk to you about you did operate your own restaurant in Brooklyn. Now, I do realize and I came. . . it was 13 or 14 years ago now that we first met and you first. . . . I still remember this you came up with dishes there that normal people don't and I still remember having this argument with you about the foie gras donut.

JW:

Yeah.

SM:

I still, we had this huge argument in your beaten old Jeep or something. . .

JW:

Yeah.

SM:

. . . about it and I hated it and you obviously had created this and loved it. But let's talk about that because you created so many dishes there that were so different. And that was when you first, I first really saw you apart from seeing you on TV, which we'll talk about in a moment. So how did you create those dishes? Because it must have come from some sort of brain area that I just don't have being so old school.

JW:

So here's the thing, man. When I was owning that restaurant and pivoting from server to chef. . . .

SM:

But what was it called?

JW:

Do or Dine. . .

SM:

Do or Dine.

JW:

. . . in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. Yeah. Even that is like, when the restaurant's name involves a pun on death, like. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

. . . and that was it, man. I was recovering from years of fine dining and years of trying to be some sort of inflated degree of excellence. And so, when you're doing that, as a human being who at best, you know, I am base. When you're putting on this artifice of not being a base person and you're serving uppity people for uppity money, you naturally have a subtle desire to subvert the system, to play a prank, to make a little fun. And, that keeps the workplace entertaining, right?

So, we just, I don't know, my partners and I at the time, we just wanted things to be fun and funny and for you to be in on the joke. And we called it fine diving. The idea was that food doesn't have to be pretentious to be great. And it also doesn't necessarily have to be great to be fun. And, man, that restaurant was like a, like a culinary jungle gym and it was just absolute freedom of self-expression. And there was something about that and the disregard for rules, but the appreciation that there are rules somewhere. So, I made a split pea soup that I served with banana chips and cherries, man. And so, it was banana split pea soup and pea and banana actually worked very well together. I learned it in fine dining.

SM:

Yeah, they do.

JW:

But I made this damn thing look like a banana split when it comes to your table. And then we would pour the split pea soup table side. And people were like, what? What? And this is a little bit pre viral food. It's definitely pre TikTok. It's not pre internet.

SM:

Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Well, it was. We're talking 13, 14 years ago.

JW:

Yeah. So, we figured out very quickly that if we created dishes that seemed interesting or seems unexpected or might be rough around the edges or poked a little fun at fine dining or haute cuisine, people would come in. And so, we kept doing it, man. We kept doing it. But then, that sort of virality of the virality of food became so commonplace that it was very hard for us to compete. And, I say once the cronut hit. . .

SM:

Oh yeah.

JW:

. . . you know, that was kind of the end of it for everybody, you know, then you've got rainbow bagels, then you've got cruffins, then you've got massive sundaes and milkshakes complete with a lollipop and Bloody Marys with a Cornish hen attached to it, and so. . . .

SM:

It was a little bit weird when that happened.

JW:

Yeah, the jig was just kind of up and the love of that specific game just kind of faltered. And so, we closed the restaurant. I focused on my life with Food Network and my wife. And I've been cooking ever since, man.

SM:

I know you have and yet I've never tasted your food.

JW:

You did once, man, and you said there was too much black pepper. Remember that event in Providence?

SM:

When. . . yes, yes, I do. Oh yes, I did. Yeah, there was too much black pepper in it. So, people understand this. As I said, Justin and I are very good friends, but we often have disagreements about food a lot of times. Yes, I do remember that. That was the ICCA or the G. . . . Anyway, let's talk about the Food Network because we both came to it at very different ways. I think you came not to Food Network Star but to another event first. Tell me about it.

JW:

Yeah, I was on a show called 24-hour restaurant battle with Scott Conant and I ended up winning that show with no culinary training. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

. . . and which was insane, but we had to make a restaurant concept in 24 hours and I was to be the chef of it. And I just said, how hard could it be?

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

And they were like, you are a jerk. You know, like that's the kind of ego you can only have in your mid-twenties. And then I ended up crushing it because it was a good concept that I could execute and from there they called me back for casting for Food Network Star.

SM:

Yeah, and tell us about Food Network Star. Again, I didn't see a lot of the early editions because I was in England and we didn't really see a lot of the American side. But tell us about that because you, and I know you had one of my great pals, Alton Brown, on there.

JW:

Yeah.

SM:

And so, I'd love to know how you got through that. And then we'll just talk about a little bit more about that. And then I want to get on to Mr. Yuck.

JW:

[Laughter]

SM:

But before we do that, I'd just like to ask you, because again, I think people who listen to this won't know how that happens. And for me, it was, it altered my life. And so, I'd like to know how it worked for you.

JW:

Yeah, dude, it was crazy. And I'll try it. You can edit as much of this out as you want. But so, after I won 24-hour restaurant battle, I created a mobile pancake cart and I was cooking pancakes with compound butter, which why wouldn't people do that? You never see pancakes in compound butter.

SM:

Yeah, it was just. . . .

JW:

But why wouldn't you? You can throw some orange zest in there and now you have orange pancakes. And I was also making the pancakes with booze in them to give them a little puff but also because it's a very easy way to sell pancakes. You tell somebody, hey, this is my mojito pancake. It's got rum and mint in the batter, and it's got lime zest compound butter. People go nuts for it. So, I was giving them away for free, and I would make so much money in tips and donations that people were like, yo, maybe dude can cook. Maybe dude does understand flavor, so, I did this outside of what became one of my partner's art galleries. We ended up finding a space. We ended up creating that restaurant. Once we created the restaurant, we were privileged because it became a hotspot very quickly to what they call a multi-agency reaction to a community hotspot. This is literally what you do not want as a restaurateur in New York. It's every agency in the city that can fine, levy, shut down or inspect a restaurant all at one time. Guns, everything. They thought we were like running a brothel. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

. . . or an underground gambling thing because we were in a neighborhood that hadn't seen a ton of high-end traffic. And so, all these escalades are pulling up as people migrate from Manhattan to come eat this dumb foie gras donut, yada, yada. Try these crazy dishes, because we had a New York Times article about us and once you get a New York Times article, doesn't matter where you are in the five boroughs, people are going to commute to you. So, I think maybe the neighbors or maybe the community was just a little concerned with what we were up to. And so, we had to shut down the restaurant for two days just to recoup and make sure that everything was tight. So, we do this. And then on the first day we were closed, I get a call. Hey, do you want to audition for Food Network Star? We're doing it today. I said, oh my God, all right. They're like, you need to bring a culinary demo. And I'm like, okay. And we were so broke at the time, man. We were getting food in the morning and cooking it at night. So, our food was incredibly fresh, but we didn't have a back stock of proteins that I could just go butcher. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

. . . or food that I could just demo. So, all we had was a bunch of hardboiled eggs because we were selling these crazy octopus deviled eggs. So, I roll up there with literally one egg in my pocket on the subway to wherever the casting was. It was in Manhattan. And they're like, where's your demo? I'm like, it's in my pocket. And so, I demonstrated scientifically how to peel a hardboiled egg. And dude, Simon, there was something so braggadocious about having one shot to do your demo and if it failed in real time, but it didn't fail. And I explained to them about loose albumin, tight albumin, yolk. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

. . . protein, the chalazae, the little things that anchor the yolk in place and, the membrane and hyaluronic acid that can be derived from shells and bro, it was straight Justin Warner BS.

SM:

This is so you. This is so you.

JW:

But it worked. Yeah, it worked. So, they called me back and that's the thing. If you can make an egg interesting, do you want to know the real secret to peeling an egg?

SM:

Yeah, you tell me.

JW:

Remove the shell.

[Laughter]

Where you see shell, remove it. There is no true secret to it.

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

But I just, I sold it as such. And so, they called me back for multiple more interviews and some culinary aptitude tests and then they flew me to Atlanta to meet Mr. Brown. And so, I did an audition with Mr. Brown and this was crazy. When I was shooting it, he asked me to do a culinary demo from a recipe that he had given us and I said, well, Sir, I read the recipe, but I didn't memorize it. So, you'll have to forgive me if I'm a little off, but I understand the basic concept of bananas foster. So, we're just going to have fun with it. And he said, okay. And so, I did everything right and ignited it. And I put it on a plate and he's like, okay. And I stood around all day waiting to see if I was going to make his team or what. And the production team called me back in and they said, Justin, we had an audio issue in the last half of your demo. So basically, we just need you to get the, the sign off from Mr. Brown and where he's saying he'll call you if he sees potential.

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

So, I go back in and I'm like wait so we're acting now and they're like yeah just give it give it your all. So, I'm like okay well this is bananas foster Mr. Brown and he says please it's Alton and you're on the team. And I said what. I couldn't believe it. They pulled the wool out from under me or the rug out from under me and they pulled the wool over my eyes to get an authentic reaction. They didn't lose any audio. They just wanted me to be utterly surprised.

SM:

Oh.

JW:

And man, dude, when Alton Brown, who I idolized growing up, like when you're accepted to be part of the roster, the mindset and the potential was just through the roof. That's an opportunity. That's like learning how to play guitar from a rock star, and it just I was nuts and I was just determined I'm going to do the absolute best on that show. And if you're not familiar with Food Network Star because it's not on TV anymore, it was one of the very first what I call long form audition shows. So, America's Next Top Model, The Voice, America's Got Talent. All of these are long-form audition shows where they're trying to discover talent and Food Network Star was one of the first of them. It discovered Guy Fieri.

SM:

Yeah, absolutely.

JW:

It discovered Aarti Sequeira. It discovered Jeff Morrow, the Sandwich King, Damaris Phillips and myself. And so, when I got on that show, I came in pretty hot and Alton Brown said, hey man, you don't need my advice. You don't need my mentorship. Just let it flow. Be cool. Be you. Don't come across as cocky. Don't be arrogant. Just be who you are. And I said, OK. And that sort of endorsement from someone like Alton Brown who said, you don't need my guidance. That was, again, the radioactive spider that I think put me in a mindset where I realized that this is unscripted television. And everyone in this competition is trying to script themselves.

SM:

Yeah.

JW:

And if I get up there and I say a couple of ums or I get up there and I say something off the cuff or I get up there and even if I blank it's about how you handle yourself how you recover from those things and how ultimately you turn liabilities into assets. When he said that boom I was off to the races and America voted. And I don't know. Pretty cool to win an election.

SM:

Well, it was the same. And just to mention Alton again, he was the person I first met and I didn't really know anyone. There were lots of well-known people on The Next Iron Chef and they brought 10 of them out and they were very well known. And they introduced me to Alton who I didn't really know because I was again in the UK and from the very first moment we started chatting and I was talking about the history, which I'm talking about now, and he was talking about the science. And we, from that moment on, we always connected with all, and we've been friends and that's always been great. But let's talk about, like I said, the Food Network, I had no idea I was going to be doing it. I had no idea I was, yeah, and I went in and I did all this. Anyway, I went in and it totally altered my life because I thought I was going to be sitting at home writing, which is great. And I'm doing that now. But I loved doing the show, Next Iron Chef. So, tell me how your life must've totally changed once you won it.

JW:

Dude. Oh my gosh, man. I'll never forget. I don't know if you ever met Susie Fogelson.

SM:

Yeah, briefly.

JW:

But Susie Fogelson, yeah, Susie Fogelson was at the Food Network and she was one of the judges on Food Network Star. She's still a very real person, no longer with Food Network, but her point of judgment at the show was in branding and marketing, which is a huge part of becoming a personality is, yes, you make the shows, but how do you build a brand and profit from it and create synergies with other brands to continue to be relevant and propel oneself. And I told Susie after winning, I had a meeting with her where she wanted to talk about my future and I said, Susie, this is crazy for me. I don't even know where I'm going to go. I'm living in an apartment above my restaurant. I was literally living in the kitchen of an apartment.

SM:

Oh gah.

JW:

My friend had the bedroom. I had my bed in the kitchen of the apartment because we didn't need an apartment in the kitchen. We didn't need a kitchen in our apartment because we had the restaurant downstairs. And I was like, man, it's just crazy. I don't have any curtains on my windows, and even on Food Network Star, we had a scene pivot where we had to fly to Miami for South Beach Wine and Food Festival. I didn't have luggage, man. So, production had to buy me luggage.

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

And I was doing well as a waiter, but I put all of that money and all of that time and talent into making this restaurant great. And it was nuts. And, of course, you know, the next thing I get is a gift card from Susie Fogelson to get curtains.

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

But then I got my first major brand deal and, life upgraded. I said to my wife, this is absolute reckless. fiscal behavior, but before I turn 30, we will dine at Masa, which is a very expensive sushi restaurant in...

SM:

I've been there and it's yes it is.

JW:

It's in Time Warner Center, and at that time it was the most expensive restaurant in America, if I'm not mistaken. And so sure enough, for my 29th birthday, I took myself out to Masa with my wife. Chase Fraud Department immediately contacted me. How did you spend $2,000 for two people on dinner? And ultimately I actually didn't learn a lot other than I don't need to spend $2,000 on food ever again. But I did learn that I have, just like the man sipping Château d'Yquem and his American Express black card at the end of the Masa sushi bar, I also have a seat at this bar. And I'm not saying I paid the cost to be the boss, because anybody can eat there. But the work that I did on Food Network Star and the eyes that I opened and the money that I was able to make from Food Network Star put me in a position where before I was 30, I can eat in America's most expensive restaurant. I couldn't do that today. I wouldn't even want to do that today. But that's just a financial trajectory. People see me on the street, I can't go anywhere without. . . . I always say it's life's greatest privilege. I can show up to a flight that's been delayed and delayed and everybody at the gate is cranky, but then somebody will recognize me and their day has been made. I've done nothing. You know, you can put a smile on someone's face just by existing. That is the greatest privilege of all. And I think ultimately it's what all human beings crave is to simply exist and people are happy.

SM:

Yeah, that's something that I find really great when I'm at an airport or anything and I wear a mask at an airport and people still come up to me when I've got a mask and a hat from and people still come up to me and go, are you Simon Majumdar? And I find that extraordinary that they would a, recognize me because why am I so recognizable, but also that they do it and they're very happy about it.

Anyway, let's talk about something else because when I had a chat with you over, you know, Chili at this diner, I still remember this. You said, I've got something. And you said, this might fit into your food history podcast. So, you came up with this chap and I'd never heard of him. So, that's what we're going to talk about now, which is really great. So, you tell us who he is and what he is.

JW:

Yeah, so this is crazy. And of course, this is the way I do a Simon Majumdar food history podcast is by bringing up yuckiness. Yuck. And just as a brief history before we dive into Mr. Yuk. . .

SM:

Yep.

JW:

. . . I believe the first written record of the word yuck was in the late 1800s. And yuck has no specific origin in terms of etymology or the provenance of the word. It comes from no language. It is simply an onomatopoeia of the opposite of eating, which I believe is retching.

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

And so, yuck became very popular, but partially as a descriptive food word. . .

SM:

Yeah.

JW:

. . . partially in part of a character named Mr. Yuk, which is spelled Y-U-K, they dropped the C from it. And so, Mr. Yuk is often featured as a sticker that you put on things that are poisonous or inedible. And I grew up with Mr. Yuk in the 80s, I was born in 84. I grew up with Mr. Yuk as being an absolute fundamental character in my household. He was the antithesis of food. He was the enemy of deliciousness.

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

And then I, when I had my kid at the age of, I don't know, 39, yeah, 39, I said, he's a kid, you know, it's a baby, we gotta get the Mr. Yuk stickers out. And my wife said, what is Mr. Yuk? And I was like, wait, you didn't grow up with Mr. Yuk? She's like.

SM:

Where was this, where was it founded? Where was, did it come from?

JW:

All right, here's the deep dive, okay? So up until about the...

SM:

I knew you I knew you would have done this, I knew you would go because the deep dive is what you do very well.

JW:

Thank you. So up until the 70s, generally the sign for something poisonous or toxic that is not meant for ingestion was the skull and crossbones. But with modern film and TV and just the curiosity of children, the skull and crossbones, which up until that point was associated with negativity, bootlegging, toxic stuff, et cetera, was synonymous with pirates. And pirates became cool.

SM:

Yes.

JW:

Kids were into pirates. So, they would see stuff with a skull and crossbones on it and be like, oh, it's pirate juice.

[Laughter]

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

100%. And so, kids were ingesting toxic things. And so, a pediatrician in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, came up with the idea of figuring out something different. He's like we can't do this anymore. Oddly enough, the year is 1970-ish when they start to come out with this. Pittsburgh's baseball team, you guessed it, is the Pittsburgh Pirates. So, he's like, wait a minute, in 1971 they end up winning the World Series. They're the most famous baseball team of that year. Pirate enthusiasm has never been higher.

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

He's we got to figure out a way. His name is Richard Moriarty, by the way. He's we got to figure out a way to stop kids from drinking pirate juice. And so, he started this poison prevention campaign and he did a bunch of focus groups with toddlers who are the most at risk for ingesting. . .

SM:

Sure, sure.

JW:

. . . eating things that aren't food. And so, after a while they developed this face. It's a round sticker and it is in my opinion and it might I don't know this is where I get crazy about this. If you've ever seen the Mr. Yuk sticker it's this round face with its tongue sticking out and a kind of an icky face it's going like this.

SM:

Well that doesn't help anyone who's listening.

JW:

Yeah, well if you screenshot it, so he's got his tongue out and he's making just like a classic toddler yucky face and it is the most putrid two shades of green I think you can imagine. And so during the development of this within the focus groups they did all sorts of things they had a dead face, they had an angry face, I think even they had something spicy. And the children said that the most revolting face was that of the tongue extended and the putrid green color. And it made the children think of sickness and they settled on that. And so, the Pittsburgh poison center created this Mr. Yuk campaign and this is where it gets nuts. I grew up in Maryland, not far from Pittsburgh. So, I understood maybe how,  concentrically it would reach me in terms of popularity because it really took off and parents loved it. And poisoning cases went down. Children rapidly associated Mr. Yuk with being gross. And so, Mr. Yuk also got its name from a child who said, that's a yucky face. And so, the word yuck was also perpetuated by children who learned about yuck from Mr. Yuk. Now yuck is the absolute parlance of not food or gross food or bad food.

But it wasn't until this sticker was adopted by poison control centers across the United States, created in Pittsburgh by one dude, that this word yucky became so popular. And so, where I became fascinated was back to the beginning of this. My wife said she didn't experience it. So, I put a survey out on Instagram and I said to my, 145,000 followers at the time, who knows who this is?

And I had a picture of the sticker because I bought the stickers. Even though they're free, if you write to the Pittsburgh Poison Control Center, they'll mail them to you. And people were like, that's Mr. Yuk. Or they had colloquialisms where they'd say that's Mr. Yucky Face. And then other people were like, I have no idea who that is.

SM:

Yeah.

JW:

I have no idea. I have no idea. No clue, no clue, no clue. And so, I asked people who understood or didn't understood, stand, Mr. Yuk, to tell me where they were from. And there was truly, and to give me their origin story with Mr. Yuk. And there was truly no rhyme or reason that I could find for why it was present in St. Louis, but not present in South Dakota. And people in California had it and plenty of people in Minnesota had it, but not in other parts of Minnesota. And I was fascinated by this. And so, what I was able to pinpoint, Simon, and this is insane and true history is that they were distributed with phone books.

SM:

Oh.

JW:

And certain phone book printers opted. . . .

SM:

Now, can we explain to people what a phone book is?

JW:

Phone book is, I know. . . .

SM:

Because there's a lot of younger, I mean, there's a lot of older people like me who understand what a phone book is, but there are a lot of younger people who listen to this and will have no idea what a phone book is. So, describe that first.

JW:

Yeah, so a phone book was a free printed list of everybody's telephone number, every business, every human being, and it was generally for a specific area. So, growing up in Washington County, Maryland, I had the Washington County phone book. And if I was doing business in another part of the town, you would request from your phone company, which was a landline. Your phones were attached to the walls and the walls were connected, or the phones were connected with wires through the wall and they would connect and when you would pick up the phone and dial a number that signal was transferred to a giant network patchwork pre-internet of switchways and the switches would connect and within minutes you could talk to somebody else but if you didn't know somebody else's phone number you couldn't get them and because there was no internet you had to have a book to look it up. The phone book was also used as a testament of strength because they were so thick that people would try and show their strength by ripping them in half.

SM:

Yep. I still see, remember seeing people do this for, was it one of the, yeah, the weighing, what do you call them? The strongest man in the world and having to rip these in half and see how many they could do in a minute. I still remember that. But anyway, without. . .

JW:

Yeah, the phone book was also like the original booster seat as a kid, like when I wanted to sit at the big kid table, man, they have to put a phone book under me so that I could reach the table. The phone book..

SM:

Anyway, we've talked about that for and I know and I know that we could talk about that forever when we were again sitting in our diner at Tournament of Champions. Before you talk about that there when we could carry on forever. Do you think? A, does it have any relevance now? Do we still get here his face being shown to be to young kids now?

JW:

I do think so. And I think it's really become a cultural thing. It's like some houses choose because I grew up with it, therefore my son grew up with it. And that yucky face to me is important. And like I said, growing up, he was the antagonist of all things delicious. And I wanted my son to have a deliciousness antagonist. And so. . . .

SM:

[Laughter]

I've never even heard of a deliciousness antagonist. Sounds like a, sounds like a disease from the 1980s or something, but anyway.

JW:

Yeah, so I don't know. For me, that's just a... I also wanted to have a visual reference to what is yucky, because it's very easy for a toddler to throw that word around. And I've trained him because we say, I don't know if you say it, but because you're more of a critic than I am, I always say in food conversation, I don't like to yuck someone else's yum.

SM:

Yeah.

JW:

And the reason I say that and what that kind of means is that just because I don't prefer something doesn't mean that it is wrong.

SM:

Absolutely, absolutely.

JW:

And so, I'm trying to teach that to my child at an early age because children that don't grow up with that, I believe, overuse the word yuck and they develop food phobias very early on. And, I don't know, having Mr. Yuk in my corner to show him that yucky things are poisonous things, yucky things are indigestible things. Food is never that yucky. I don't think food deserves the term yuck. I think inedible things and poisonous things deserve the term yuck.

SM:

And that I think is a great way to end this part of our interview. But I would love to ask you, if you don't mind, I always ask anyone who comes on. So, if Justin was a meal, so if you go back in time and you were a meal, what would it be?

JW:

I think it's a delightful, nigiri only omakase. When I first learned about the idea that there is a potential order in which you can eat fish. . .

SM:

Yep.

JW:

. . . it's transportive, it's layered. And I like to think of myself as being a rather faceted creature. And I can think of no meal that, at its simplest sushi is fish and rice. At its most faceted, it is an absolutely kaleidoscopic journey that simply follows the form of a slice of fish on a rice ball. So, you might look at me and say, that's just a slice of fish on a rice ball, but boy, I contain multitudes, you know?

SM:

Yeah, no. And I think that is something really special. And there's, again, we could talk for hours about sushi and about nigiri. We could talk about it all and hand rolls and all of that. But I think that is a great answer.

Okay. Now, if Justin had to go back in time to any meal, going back in time, could be from the Mesopotamians up to modern day, what would, where would that be and what would it be?

JW:

I'm thinking maybe. . . I did a pop-up dinner for Salvador Dali's cookbook.

SM:

Oh yeah.

JW:

And if I could be at one of Salvador Dali's insane meals, just to be part of his weird retinue, I would enjoy that.

SM:

And what would you do for that? Would you be like a clock hanging off or I don't know what kind of meals did he do?

JW:

They were gaudy, extravagant, expensive, slightly ridiculous, and they were designed to be as shocking, I believe, as possible, but also delicious.

SM:

That sounds quite like you!

JW:

Yeah, yeah, I use the OG of that I realized.

SM:

[Laughter]

Well, that's a perfect one. And I think that would be the most and I haven't had anything mentioned like that. But the last question of this, if you were able to go back in time to see the invention of anything

JW:

Emulsions, man. When we figured out emulsions as human beings, I believe true cooking was unlocked.

SM:

Tell people again, just in case anyone doesn't know, what an emulsion involves.

JW:

An emulsion is when two generally liquids that repel each other and don't mix, for example, oil and water or oil and vinegar, become one cohesive liquid. They are blended together or, chemically attracted to each other via something else. It's the basis of vinaigrettes. It's the basis of mayonnaise, even butter, which is a naturally occurring product is an emulsion. And I think when we figured out that there is a way to make oil and vinegar become homogenous, that's because I remember I discovered this accidentally. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

. . . by whisking and slowly adding oil. And I was, Whoa, it's sticking together.

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

This is nuts. That sort of light bulb moment, I would love just to be a part of that in history?

SM:

That's fantastic. When do you think that first happened out of interest?

JW:

If I had to guess, man, I would say that I would wager that two substances were put into a pouch or a stomach and they were carted around and the jostling of things as they were either carted around, walked around, or ridden around, say on a horse, they opened it up and they were like, whoa. Those two things were separate, now they're together. This rules.

SM:

I love all that and some actually that's one of the reasons they begin to think that cheese was discovered it was in a pouch and it was on a horse or whatever. That's fantastic.

I have to say we're gonna finish off with your media sites, which I know are just fantastic. So perhaps you say those first any Instagram anything like that. What's it called now X or something.

JW:

Yeah.

SM:

And then yeah and then but I know you've got a lot of them.

JW:

Yeah, so if you need more deep dives on ridiculous things. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

. . . that are only slightly related to food, you can find me across the board at Eat Fellow Humans, which has to do with asking my fellow humans to eat, not cannibalism. [Ed. Note: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X]

SM:

I'm so pleased that we found a reason for you to come on using Mr. Yuk and it would be great just to have a chat with you as I just love doing that but finding a history item about is something that I need to do for this show and I'm so pleased that you did. So, thank you very much.

JW:

Simon, it's my honor. If you told the kid that was watching Next Iron Chef that someday he was going to be doing a podcast with one of the most ruthless judges on. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

JW:

. . . Next Iron Chef, man, I would have thought you were high. But here we are.

OUTRO MUSIC

SM:

Make sure to check out the website associated with this podcast at www.EatMyGlobe.com where we will be posting the transcripts from each episode, along with all the references and resources we used putting the episodes together, in case you want to delve deeper into each subject. There is also a contact button, so please do let us know if there are any subjects that you would like us to cover.

And, if you like what you hear, please don’t forget to join us on Patreon, subscribe, recommend us to your family and friends and give us a good rating on your favorite podcast provider.

Thank you and goodbye from me, Simon Majumdar, and we’ll speak to you soon on the next episode of EAT MY GLOBE: Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Food.

CREDITS

The EAT MY GLOBE Podcast is a production of “It’s Not Much But It’s Ours” and “Producer Girl Productions.”

[Ring sound]

We would also like to thank Sybil Villanueva for all of her help both with the editing of the transcripts and essential help with the research.