@voices
Voices of Swell
@voices · 1:42

The Voice of Simon Majumdar

article image placeholderAbout Simon Majumdar
Hi, everybody. This is Taylor with the voices of Swell. Hope you're having an awesome week, and I hope that this swell makes it a little more awesome. It is my pleasure and honor to be here with my friend Simon Majumdar to talk a little bit about his journey journey into the world of food. You might recognize him from his work on the Food Network, where he's judged competitions such as Cutthroat Kitchen Beat, Bobby Flay, Iron Chef America, and Guys Grocery Games

Author, podcaster, TV personality, and global culinary adventurer! https://www.simonmajumdar.com/about #food #celeb #swellinterview

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@SimonMajumdar
@SimonMajumdar · 3:14

Replying to @VoicesOfSwell

So it's been a great journey. I've been very fortunate. I've had a lot of wonderful people support me along the way, and I've worked hard as well. But it's given me the opportunity to have this very kind of varied career. As you mentioned, writing books, being a food critic, being on TV, writing the food History Podcast, which is my passion at the moment. It's what I'm doing right now
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@voices
Voices of Swell
@voices · 2:31

Eat My Globe Season 5 is on the horizon. Question about research...

And it does so in a way that's similar to the way your friend Anthony Bourdain managed to do that with his TV show. And I find that through your way with words and your way of speaking about these foods, I feel connected to them in a way that's priceless really. So with Eat My Globe in season five on our minds, I wanted to know a little bit about the process that goes into writing and researching an episode
@SimonMajumdar
@SimonMajumdar · 4:10
Hi, Taylor. Well, first of all, thank you for the very kind words about my career in general and about eat my globe. The Food History Podcast and as you say, much as I love everything that I do, and I really do very lucky. But the Food History podcast is a real pleasure right now, particularly when we've been locked down at home, and I get to spend lots of time doing research with something I really enjoy
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@voices
Voices of Swell
@voices · 2:18

The struggles of researching food?

I know that you mentioned what you really like to see is the response from listeners that they feel like they got that one on one course that you touched all the bases. But I really do think there's something to be said about the level of detail that you're putting in historically to make sure that the story you're telling is fully accurate and depicts the culture or the part of the world in which the food is coming from in a really fantastic and all encompassing way
@SimonMajumdar
@SimonMajumdar · 4:03
Hi. Well, I think those are two really great questions. So first talking about season five, which is about to launch next week. I hope we have some really interesting subjects for people. So we've got episodes on things like dining in ancient Rome, the history of Caviar, the history of cookbooks, which was a really fascinating one, going right the way back to ancient Mesopotamia
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@voices
Voices of Swell
@voices · 3:13
And as somebody who does not get to research these things in as much depth, it's always nice to know that I have this pod to listen to. I think back most recently to an episode that you did with Paul Friedman from Yale, and it revolved fully around American cuisine and American cuisine is something that when a lot of people think about it, they say what's American cuisine
@SimonMajumdar
@SimonMajumdar · 3:56
It's very much that hurry up and wait, hurried to stage, and the food is in front of us really quickly. They recognize that that food has to be in front of us. This is not the first time they've done this. They've done these episodes a million times with different shows. They're so good at getting that food in front of us as close to as possible as it would be if it came out of a kind of restaurant kitchen
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@voices
Voices of Swell
@voices · 2:29

Much love to all the hardworking crew members in TV and film!

Now, in terms of the food that you actually have tasted over the course of your many years with the Food Network, I'm sure there have been some absolute successes, and I'm sure there have been some pretty abysmal failures, especially on a show like Cutthroat Kitchen, where you have absolutely no idea what sort of sabotage the chefs will endure, what sort of ingredients they'll have to use to craft whatever meal it is that you're about to eat that sense of dread
@SimonMajumdar
@SimonMajumdar · 2:47
Again, those are really great questions because people often ask me what the best dishes I've ever eaten on a show are and what the less successful ones are. You know, I will say that the cooking levels of knowledge growth, grocery games are really terrific people if they understand the processes, they can get around despite some of guys challenges, and they can put something really delicious in front of us
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@voices
Voices of Swell
@voices · 1:30
So Jeffrey Zakarian is kind of a culinary hero of mine because we don't really see many famous Armenians in America. So I've always admired him. And I've wanted to go to one of his restaurants in thinking about how much I admire all of these chefs, I'm curious to know a little bit about your admiration for the culinary world
@Swell
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15

Welcome to Swell!

@SimonMajumdar
@SimonMajumdar · 2:25
And then a lot of chefs from different groups from around the world who are coming in now. So you're seeing amazing Japanese chefs, Thai chefs, really impressive people who may some of them may not have as big a profile as others. So I think there's a lot of chefs out there who really inspire me. But the ones who really give me the passion are the ones who go in, day in, day out, work on the line, work really hard
@voices
Voices of Swell
@voices · 1:35
The more you think about it is how many incredible sous chefs or line chefs there are out there that are just day in and day out, putting in work, long hours, unforgiving work environments and being expected to put out high quality food left and right. It's really hard to sort of wrap your brain around getting work done, getting it done the correct way in such a fast paced, demanding setting
@voices
Voices of Swell
@voices · 2:11

Travel and Food

So I'm wondering, in your travels, do you have a couple of favorite locations that you along for when you're sitting at home writing about your newest podcast episode, is there a place that you say to yourself, man, I wish that I could be there right right now
@SimonMajumdar
@SimonMajumdar · 4:08
So from that point of view, I think it really shows you that we are this kind of human family, and particularly when you look at news all the time, we're often kind of trying to be forced into kind of disliking other countries or talking about our own exceptionalism without realizing that other countries all have wonderful things to offer, too. So I think from that point of view, travel is really vital
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@voices
Voices of Swell
@voices · 2:15

Working hard in order to eat a delicious meal.

I know that some of the processes by which some of these food that we hold dear to our heart can sometimes be quite intense and take many days. Now, I know having traveled as much as you have, it can be hard to pinpoint just one. So if there are a couple that stand out, I would really love to know
@voices
Voices of Swell
@voices · 0:40
It's really incredible the amount of passion and dedication that you have put into what it is you do and that you're sharing that with somebody who seems equally as passionate and is completely along for the ride. And I think that that's a beautiful thing
@SimonMajumdar
@SimonMajumdar · 2:23
And for somebody who likes to be on the go all the time, just sitting still and reading a book for seven days was actually quite challenging. There are parts of the world where the reality is you do feel a little less secure and you just have to be more careful there. So there are elements of it. I think that we really need to think about when we travel and again, being respectful to the country and the people there
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@voices
Voices of Swell
@voices · 0:41

Let’s open this conversation up for the other Swellcasters!

I would like to to invite others here to join in the conversation with us. It's been absolutely incredible so far. And I'm sure that there are some people here that would love to know a little bit more about you
@SimonMajumdar
@SimonMajumdar · 0:42
If people can't ask now through this Voices interview, please contact me through the Swell app anyway way and ask me to kind of answer any questions that I can, which I will do obviously within reason. But thank you for the questions so far. I look forward to seeing if I get any more
@sudha
Sudha Varadarajan
@sudha · 3:03

Food as medicine

So in the last five years, I've actually done an almost 180 on my food habits, on my dietary habits, to the point wherein now we are so well educated on everything that we eat and why we eat it and how balanced it is and so on. But my knowledge is very limited to obviously Indian culture and tradition. It's knowledge that I got from my grandmother and my mother that I now will pass on to my children
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@SimonMajumdar
@SimonMajumdar · 2:05
Hi, Sudha, thanks so much for your question. That's a really great one. And I think in history, we've seen that food and medicine have always been linked
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@Missy302
Missy 302
@Missy302 · 2:24
Hey, Simon, I just want to say my husband and I are huge, huge fans of yours from the Food Network. The questions that you have been asked in this conversation are just so, so incredible, thorough and amazing. And you've pretty much answered most of what I have planned on asking you already. So I'm going to go for a little bit simpler question. My husband watched an episode of Cut Their Kitchen that You Judge a couple of years ago
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@BLUESMOKEBLAIRE
E Blaire
@BLUESMOKEBLAIRE · 0:21
Hi, Simon. It's Erica Blair from Blue Smoke. Blair's barbecue. A while ago, you said that food saved your life from a really dark time that you are experiencing when you're in London. I just want to know after everything that you've gone through now, since that moment, do you still feel the same way, or as that concept evolved into something different
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@SimonMajumdar
@SimonMajumdar · 1:13
What I've found is just the unique capacity of food to combine people who otherwise wouldn't normally necessarily come together over a meal, breaking bread. I've certainly had that with the barbecue community. When I've been involved at the American Royal, I've met so many different types of people. And so I think food now has become much more a prism through which I view life rather than just that one experience, which was very much at a point in time, which was very important
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:27

the Chef’s Table and "exquisite cuisine"

Simon, it's so great to hear your voice on here. And I have a question about The Chef's Table, which is a series on Netflix. But before I tell you or ask you the question, I want to tell you a quick story. There's an episode in that that series about Elbowle and about I think it was 2000, and I think seven or eight
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