486: New York’s Most Plugged-In Food Writer Isn’t a Food Writer with Rob Martinez

By Aliza Abarbanel & Matt Rodbard

This Is TASTE

28/10/24·1h 10m

We really, really love what Rob Martinez is doing on YouTube and TikTok. Rob is behind the voice and visuals of Eating With Robert, a delightful series of dispatches from restaurants around the world. As we find out in this interview, Rob has a film background and started his own feed as a way of highlighting his favorite New York City pizzerias, diners, Egyptian fish grills, and Turkish kebab sellers. Rob is doing the work, scouting and shooting the types of places journalists like Jonathan Gold, Ligaya Mishan, and Robert Sietsema became famous for writing about. Rob is as much of a “food writer” as any of us in the industry, and it was cool to learn about his approach, and some of his favorite places around the world.

Also on the show, it’s the return of Three Things where Aliza and Matt discuss what is exciting in the world of restaurants, cookbooks, and the food world as a whole. On this episode: The re-opening of Brooklyn’s Kellogg’s Diner in Brooklyn, Lola’s is one of our favorite new NYC restaurants, Famille du Vin canned wines are so good (and shoutout to Leitz Eins Zwei Zero Non-Alcoholic Sparkling Riesling too), Eater LA published a terrific package of stories about the new restaurant influencers, and how TikTok is transforming Los Angeles’s dining scene one swipe at a time. Also, some thoughts on the new New York Chinatown restaurant Bridges, and we finally made it to Yang’s Kitchen in the San Gabriel Valley and it totally delivers.

Take our listener survey! We'd love to to hear who we should invite into our studio for an interview and TASTE Check.