Eater’s Digest Radio Serves Up Good Eats and Tunes

Where’s the best spot for an avocado margarita and Tex Mex? Curra’s Grill in Austin according to Eater’s Digest, a new, weekly radio show on MIT’s WMBR. The show offers listeners adventurous food and music recommendations through interviews with chefs, touring musicians, and curated content on its blog.

“There’s a punk rock attitude that people in bands and kitchens seem to share,” says co-producer Phillipp Schmidt on the show’s inspiration. “There’s a shared attitude to living life in a big way,” he said.

Each week, Digest’s co-producer Tiffany Tseng ’09 sits down with musicians to talk food. “Touring artists are in a position that very few of us have,” said Tseng. “They are traveling all around the world and get to try so many different types of food.” The blog showcases some of these favorite food haunts on an ever-expanding food map.

In one past interview, Parquet Courts singer Andrew Savage shared his love for doubles, a Trinidadian breakfast dish with curry, pepper, and tamarind sauces served with fried bread. “It’s like a West Indian Sloppy Joe,” he said. The rock band always makes a stop at the Chicago Diner when in the Windy City and the Taqueria Cancún in San Francisco.

Jarvis Taveniere, instrumentalist for the rock band Woods, shared their band’s love of Whole Foods—“We go to it in every town—before and after a show”—and how cooking calms him down while on tour. “The band is behind me; it’s just me and the frying pan,” he reflected.

The Digest also focuses on chefs and their connection to music. In a recent interview, Jason Bond discussed his career transition from professional musician to much-acclaimed chef of Bondir in Cambridge. “I think music offers a person an outlet to express themselves and a way to create an emotion for the person you’re performing for,” said Bond. “I really got into food because it can do the same thing.”

His two passions intertwine in past Bondir food opera projects. Bond collaborated with composer Ben Hogue to create music that mirrored the colors and textures of each dish on the menu.

What do you hear when you eat white asparagus soup with citrus-flavored togarashi? “To mirror that in music, there’s a little chime-y stuff going on,” described Bond. “There’s heat [in the dish], so there’s some edgy high-pitched string stuff.”

At the end of the day, the show inspires listeners to live big. “You’ve got to taste the rainbow,” encouraged Andrew Savage.

Eater’s Digest is broadcast on WMBR 88.1 FM every other Thursday from 7-8 p.m. ET. Visit the show’s blog for recordings of past shows, a food map, and other food and music related content.