Chris Morocco hosts a live recording of Bon Appetit’s Dinner SOS to solve Toronto’s most pressing kitchen dilemmas.
By: Mariana Schuetze and Mia Johnson
Bon Appetit food director and host of Dinner SOS Chris Morocco discussed grated tofu and knife skills at the Hot Docs Podcast Festival on Oct. 21, 2023. (Courtesy of Hot Docs/Gabriel Li)
It’s a Monday night and you’ve already got the garlic and shallots diced up for the rose sauce. The rigatoni is on the stove; it’s already boiling. But there’s no tomato paste in the pantry. What a fucking disaster. You're considering biking down to the grocery store to pick something up, but the desire has completely escaped you. You have lost all energy to deal with the fluorescent lights and overstimulating produce section at Loblaws. Dinner SOS may very well be your only solution.
Hot Docs Podcast festival curator Wilson Obiang deems Dinner SOS an “essential public service,” uniting all foodies. A podcast that works in tandem with home cooks and professional chefs alike, acting as a safety net in the midst of chaos.
Bon Appetit and Epicurious food director Chris Morocco brought a delicious conversation to the Hot Docs stage on Oct. 21. Morocco was joined by Bon Appetit food editor Shilpa Uskokovic to co-host a live edition of their cooking-helpline podcast, Dinner SOS. The pair teamed up with Toronto's very own foodie Suresh Doss and cookbook author Eden Grinshpan, host of Top Chef Canada, to solve the kitchen crises on Toronto’s mind.
This topical crew dive into the best place to stand when hosting a dinner party and how to get your guests to leave you alone when you’re still busy basting the chicken. Uskokovic suggests a collaborative idea like tacos while Morocco doesn’t trust anybody shucking his oysters.
Dinner SOS is Bon Appetit's most recent podcast venture. It premiered in November 2022 and has Morocco as the main host, who offers some well-needed cooking advice. In a usual episode of Dinner SOS, Morocco will treat each call like a therapy session for food, bringing in reinforcements from the Bon Appetit team. The recipes are then introduced and the caller will choose one or two recipes and cook them. The unique thing about this podcast is that it doesn't only offer a call-in service, the podcast hosts will follow their guests over the course of a couple of weeks to ensure their advice holds true.
This conversation-style podcast breaks down common kitchen emergencies. They discuss cooking for picky eaters, how to incorporate more fish into their diets and treating vegetables as meat. Morocco provides not only the caller but the listeners, with simple tips from specialists that eases the daily stress of food preparation, encouraging healthy and satisfying food habits. It’s thorough and an absolute delight.
At the Hot Docs Podcast Festival, Morocco switched things up. The two Bon Appetit hosts were joined by Toronto food specialists to have a casual conversation about food, Toronto and everything in-between. The audience had the opportunity to email questions to the panel before the event and they spent about one hour answering the questions and chatting.
Toronto-based food writer Suresh Doss spoke on how the Toronto food scene is changing with Facebook marketplace family-run pop-ups and the dying art of traditional food media. (Courtesy of Hot Docs/Gabriel Li)
Morocco and Uskokovic interviewed Doss, a Toronto foodie, to discuss the city's bustling food scene. He brought a refreshing perspective to the conversation with the two North American food editors. Doss charmed them on one of his famous food tours, "breaking their stomachs," and wasted no time moving from one place to another – Uskokovic dubs Doss an “excellent wrangler.”
He shows the audience that smaller communities in the GTA, like Scarborough, are instrumental to Toronto food’s community, although often overlooked. With places like New Kalyani on Kennedy Road that serve up Sri Lankan dishes like kothu, roti and egg partha; he highlights some spots closest to his heart. “This is where my mom goes when she doesn’t want to cook,” said Doss.
The food media scene has changed drastically in the last few years. Doss, who has over 15 years of experience as a food and drink writer, commented on how rare his job is nowadays.
"Because nobody can really afford to do what I'm doing if they don't have the car, right? I'm getting food, at this point, about 18 times a week. And who can afford to do that? And who will pay you [to do it]."
TikToks and Instagram reels are a big part of food media today, said Doss. The short 60-second videos are usually quick lists of the best places to go and Doss said he misses the human side of it – and a bit more context. "There's no story behind the owner, the story of like, why this place exists in this part of the city?"
With this in mind, he dives into the versatility and character that is missing from videos like this. Facebook Marketplace may be the best way to get a unique experience. Facebook pop-ups see new cuisines depending on the suburb. In places like Parkale where the food scene is rich in Indian cuisine or in Mississauga where we see an upsurge of Palestinian food.
“You get this really interesting, unfiltered, adulterated regional cuisine that you will never see in a restaurant,” Doss said. "I travel quite a bit and I'm convinced that we have the most insane, dense marketplace for home-cooked meals.”
Halfway through the event, the trio was joined by Grinshpan, who swiftly matched the group's charismatic and witty dynamic.
Grinshpan, a mom of two young kids, said the best way to have kids engaged is to have them become part of the process. She frequently sends her three-year-old out to the herb garden to collect basil or dill or thyme to get her more involved, contributing in these small ways.
Taking pride in the food we prepare and having the opportunity to share that with others can get kids excited about experimenting with new flavours. There’s originality and care put into the food we create.
Doss added that exposure is key. “It helps [his kid to] sort of build a relationship with what he’s eating.”
At the end of the night, we left with a mind full of ideas and a salivating mouth hungry for more of that conversation; and a fresh oyster; or a sourdough waffle.