Five Things You Missed on Heritage Radio This Week

Heritage Radio is the food-focused, listener-supported internet radio station that broadcasts from a studio attached to Roberta's in Bushwick. Every week, many of the big players in the food world host and appear on shows, and oftentimes they reveal interesting tidbits about their work. Here's a guide to five notable pieces of recent programming:

1) Cider Week Returns to NYC and Beer Sessions Radio:
Unnofficial Suds and Good Buds Ombudsman Jimmy Carbone of Jimmy's No.43 gathered a team of cider insiders to discuss the state of cider in America on this week's episode.  They taste through single-varietal ciders with input from the likes of Claire Paparazzo, formerly of Blue Hill, Food Writer Rowan Jacobsen, and Dan Wilson of Slyboro Cider.  Here's Steve Wood of Farnum Hill Cider on the unique qualities of the Kingston Black apple, the unusually distinctive cider apple:

It's been reputed for a long time in the UK for making a good single-varietal cider, for having a good balance of acid, tannins and sugars, for making a cider on its own...Kingston Black does what it does on its own, but it does it while being extremely expressive of where it's grown.

2) Felidia's Fortunate Nicotra on The Main Course:
HRN and Heritage Foods USA Founder Patrick Martins talked to 20 year NYC restaurant industry veteran and Executive Chef of UES Italian spot Felidia about developing their own line of gluten free pasta as a response to demand and dissatisfaction with available options:
We started to see something was starting to change maybe six or seven years ago, I don't remember having all these problems about ‘gluten free' until about 2006 or 2007.  And then one day in one service we have like six or seven people asking for ‘gluten free,' and we are not prepared for that.  So people coming into an Italian restaurant and wanting a gluten free dinner were not going to have the best that we can offer.  To say ‘Ok, no pasta,' there was something wrong there.
3) Wiliamsburg's Semilla:
Jessie Kiefer and Sari Kamin of The Morning After talked going from popup to brick and mortar with the team formerly behind Chez Jose and currently behind Semilla, Pam Yung and Jose Ramirez-Ruiz:
It was really heavily influenced by our time in Europe, but also it was heavily influenced by a lot of the things about the dining scene in New York that we really didn't like, where you go to a lot of the big restaurants and it's almost like robotic, the experience that you have, and we wanted to create something that felt real...so when we got the opportunity to do Semilla, we said, let's try to not change the whole concept, when it's not broken, why fix it?
4) Critic Talk with Adam Platt:
This week's episode of the Joshua David Stein Variety Hour...Half Hour featured interviews with fellow critics Moira Hodgson and NY Magazine's Adam Platt.  Here's Adam Platt on the state of reviews today:
When I started doing this for New York Magazine, the restaurant reviews were really tentpoles...and now I'm told that online, people don't really read reviews anymore.  There's too much competition.  And also with the website that NY has, they've pitched it to sort of a national audience, so food in that sort of buzzing, fashionista, recap of Game of Thrones...you know, a little review of a fried chicken joint is not going to gain a lot of attention, although frankly, if you want to review something that gets some attention, review a fried chicken joint.
5) Ruth Reichl:
Speaking of a meeting of critics, check out Ruth Reichl's visit to Radio Cherry Bombe this week, featuring host Julia Turshen bringing the pages of Radio Cherry Bombe to life:
If you're going to be in food you really have to study your own appetites.