Chef's Kiss Subs and Table Kinks 🥪
Welcome to Secret Breakfast / The best place to learn how to enjoy Korean pony bread and pricey whale vomit while hiding your favorite recipes from the evil people
Hi there!
Sometimes this newsletter is... Well, you find the words.
Have a good one.
Piero
✹Orson Welles, from the movie The Other Side of the Wind. Mind your intake!
The bleeding-edge cookbook by the most talented evil guys
This long-awaited book arrives too late. The Noma brand doesn't feel quite right anymore. Chef René Redzepi has stepped back, and now—who'd actually want their guide to hidden flavors? Who'd listen to obsessives with knives, forced to invent carrot-based recipes for months, competing in a culinary fight club just to prove that bleeding-edge beats cutting-edge in the kitchen too? Who'd make Japanese quince butter, pine vinegar, parsley purée? Who wouldn't use ice to clarify mushroom broth? Me. I would. I want to know everything about this stuff. I'd even tattoo the cover art on my forearm. We're mad. Mad for flavor.
The Noma Guide to Building Flavour by René Redzepi and The Noma Test Kitchen
→ Shortplot: 🍄🟫 🧊 🥕 🧠
The ‘Oops, Forgot Everyone Hates This’ Syndrome
The other day I spotted a recipe for tsukemono—those fermented pickles that never miss a Japanese table (I was aiming for this recipe). I bought a beautiful, firm daikon, long as a forearm. Then halfway home it hit me: someone in my family can't stand the smell when I pickle things.
Sound familiar?
It's a real thing. You buy something with genuine intention, get home, and remember: «Oh, no». They won't eat it. It'll sit in a jar, slowly disappointing everyone.
It happens with so much food. Anything aged or funky, even humble fermented greens. You buy it convinced this time will be different. This time they'll try it. They won't.
But here's the plot twist: those "unloved" ingredients make incredible things nobody expects. Natto works silently into a pasta. Kimchi becomes the best fried rice base you'll ever make. That daikon? Simmered in soy, sugar, and ginger, it becomes something so gentle and deep that even skeptics ask for seconds.
So, what's your ingredient? What does your household refuse? And more importantly: what's the sneaky dish you've built around it that finally won them over?
🎬 Good for picnics: 13 Chefs From 13 Countries Make Sandwiches 🐋 Ambergris, or whale vomit, is worth millions 🌺 Hwajeon, azalea rice cakes, a Joseon royal spring ritual (★recipe) 🍞 Ugly Pony Bread is Korea's latest bakery craze🫖 Gen-Z is having a Tea Time Revival 🇳🇬 Quick Obe Ata, Nigerian tomato and pepper sauce (★recipe) 🥗 Sauce 2: Nam Yum, lime, fish sauce, chiles, palm sugar (★recipe) 🙅🏻♀️The Woman Who Hid 600 Recipes From SS Officers 🌉Diners across the country are turning meals into lasting memories with restaurant postcards 🥒Garden pickles with rice-rinsing water and carrot top furikake (★recipe)
Eat This, Not That
Robin Craig / Vittles
A steaming plate of pad thai becomes a battleground of control and surrender as a partner’s firm grip and commanding voice transform a simple meal into an intimate act of domination: this is the world of food-based kink, where the act of eating is stripped of shame and filled with erotic power. For some, like the author, giving up control over food - being ordered, fed, or even “forced” to eat - isn’t just play, but a profound release from society’s relentless diet culture, a chance to indulge without guilt under someone else’s command.
The Art of Antarctic Cooking
Christine Baumgarthuber / The New Inquiry
From the archive. On the frozen edge of survival, early Antarctic explorers like Shackleton and Amundsen relied on resourceful cooks to turn penguin, seal, and even sled dogs into life-saving meals where a simple stew called "hoosh" became a symbol of hope in a land more alien than Earth itself. Behind the epic races to the South Pole stood unsung culinary heroes, whose creativity and eccentricity kept teams alive and spirits high in the world’s most unforgiving wilderness. Food is more than fuel: it’s a lifeline to humanity.
