Sporkful Dating Game: Suitcase Full Of Cheese Edition

What are a couple of moments in the date that really stand out to you that were most memorable? Well, one of the most memorable moments was definitely when he told me that he dissected a cat in biology class, in AP biology class. I have not stopped thinking about that. This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for lovers. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to get people to fall in love. All right, not every week, but this week, back by popular demand for Valentine's Day, we are presenting The Sporkful Dating Game. we asked those of you looking for love to fill out a google form then we painstakingly combed through the entries to find matches using our proprietary algorithm by which i mean we asked you what age range and what gender or genders you're looking for and where you live and we matched people based on that still it's proprietary and we did this back in 2021 at the height of the pandemic we arranged two zoom dates unfortunately neither of those matches led to a second date so we're already 0 for 2 in our matchmaking exploits. Can we do better this time? Once again, we set up two blind dates, but this time in person. One in New York, one in Chicago. We recorded the whole dates, then we talked to the daters afterwards. As an incentive, I promised the couples that if either of them gets married, I'll provide cascatelli for their wedding. So, will their love smolder like a kebab on a hot grill? Will they become as inseparable as the two slices of bread in a peanut butter sandwich? Or will they repel each other, like oil and vinegar and a salad dressing that hasn't been properly emulsified? First up, we have our New York date. Let's meet our daters, Shehzad and Stacey. I'm Shehzad, I'm 37. I live in New York, grew up outside the city, and I'm a marketing director. So for the past few years, I've been running a business called Zorce, which means say it louder, in Urdu and Hindi, and I make what I call like South Asian arts inspired joy wear. So here's a pet peeve of mine. Restaurants that have insane cancellation fees. If I cancel a plan for two days notice, you guys can fill that table. For a first date, the main thing I'm looking for is, are we laughing? If we're laughing, I feel good about everything else. And I'm curious to explore, you know, future dates. I'm Stacey. I'm 37. And I am a cookbook author. And I wrote a cookbook called 50 Pies, 50 States, where I baked a pie for every state in America when I was applying for my green card. I think that when you visit a new bakery, you have to get minimum six pastries, preferably three savory and three sweet, because then you kind of get like a full tasting menu. When I go to a new restaurant, I just go in blind. I don't do any social media look enough. I don't look at the menu. so I can like immerse myself in the experience. When I'm going on a first date, what I'm looking for is just someone that's like down and mellow to hang out with. And I'm always thinking in the back of my mind if they can hang out with my crazy friends. We sent Shahzad and Stacey to Leland, a Mediterranean restaurant in Brooklyn. You'll hear highlights from the date mixed in with each dater's confessionals, which I recorded with them afterwards. Okay, let's get to the date. Are you a sharer or you like your own name? Oh, sharing. Sharing? Okay. Yeah. All right. What about you? Yeah, I'm a sharer because I usually play food captain in my group, so I usually order everything. So, yeah. Food captain. That's like when you... Captain. So all my friends like to turn their brain off during a dinner, and then I'm the one... You're the only one who listened to the specials when they ever listened to it. Yes, yes, that's me. And you remembered, oh, yeah, that thing with art and chokes. How did Shehzad handle your food captaining? He handled it very well. He had a lot of input on what he really wanted to eat too. And so I included all of those things. So I had already eaten at Leland before. So I kind of knew what the vibe was. So it was really fun to see what he was excited about. And if it was anything that I was also excited about. Or if it's something that I tried before and really liked. Dee's a good food captain. I would recommend her. I feel like if you have that nightmare scenario of a 12-person dinner party and people don't really know each other very well and everyone's being shy and bashful and no one wants to make decisions, she will make the right optimal calls and not be ashamed to be like, all right, this is how we're going to do it. I think we should get the Gildas. All right, let's do that. Let's do focaccia Gildas salad. Yeah. And then what of the... The mushroom toast is really good. Do you like mushrooms? I do. Okay, we should definitely get the mushroom toast. And then the potatoes sounded good. The fish. And the whole fish. Oh my god, this is an amazing order. I'm kind of jealous, actually. Great. So what do you do for work? I work in tech, do marketing. It's kind of a corporate job that pays the bills. And then on the side, I have a fashion company. And so I make clothes that I think are really interesting. I wasn't ever into fashion, but I just kind of one, have a good platform. So Stacey was the food captain. Who would you say was the conversation captain? Who took the lead on the conversation? You know, I felt like we split it pretty well. I feel like in a lot of dates, I feel like I'm usually the bigger question asker and like conversation driver. I think in this case, like Stacey is like super thoughtful and she was good at asking deeper questions. So you felt like in terms of who was asking questions and who was answering questions, it was about equal. I would love to see the data of the transcript, I mean, if that's true or not. There was no awkward moments or pauses. He can talk a mile a minute. So it was just, I can probably write a memoir about his life. I know so much about him now. Wow. Did he ask you any questions about your life? Not as much. I think he was very interested to tell me about all the exciting things he's into, like cocktails and hosting parties and the fashion line he started. And I was very much happy to listen. So, yeah. I feel like cocktail making during the pandemic made me realize, like, how I could play with flavors more. And then I was, like, living in the Hudson Valley at the time, and I got a better home bar. And then I was like, oh, I'm going to get nice and weird. You know, I think sometimes maybe he was nervous and just like, you know, when people get nervous, they ramble. Or he was also just really excited to tell me about him and tell me about his life. And I was ready to listen. I tried to do some like leading questions that would maybe help him ask me more about my life. Like I asked him like what kind of music he really likes because music is a huge part of my life. But, yeah, it never really went that back way. And that's okay, too. So is that the kind of music that you like? I mean, I think, like, house music is, like, my biggest, like, focus. But they're the most accessible shows and accessible artists. That's part of what it is. Like, there's a go-and-a-nonsense of, like, house music right now. And especially in New York, I can, like, see some. Like, relationships and partnerships. There's always a front of house and a back of house. person. Front of house meaning like in a restaurant, that's like the servers, the hosts, like the people who are more extroverted. And then you have the people who are kind of doing also very important work, but a little more behind the scenes. Exactly. Exactly. And the back house person, you know, gets things going, chugs it along, may not want to have as much face time with the outside world as possible. And I feel like he's very much a front of house person. He's very, very extroverted. And it's so funny and made me very quiet, but I also like to listen. So that that kind of worked out, too. But yeah it felt really funny as a front of house person to be the back of house person for the evening Bluegrass and folk and pop jazz standards at the time band It was like a very eclectic one I am very excited for you to try this mushroom toast. It does look very pretty. It is like covered in toast, the cheese and the saiyouli. Oh, wow. Yeah. Crispy. You two shared a whole fish. It's one thing to share certain kinds of food. but that's really, you're kind of both, you got to get your utensils in there. There's some work involved. How did that go, sharing the whole fish? It went really well. He was not as adventurous in the parts of the fish as I was. The cheek is my favorite part on a fish. I don't think I've even had like fish cheeks. I don't think I have. No? Have the other side. I'm going to have it. It's like... How do I dig into this? Where am I digging into? Use the spoon. Okay. And it's like right here. Do you eat the eye? I eat the eye. but you have to no i'll i'm gonna double try it yeah like all this meat part one of the highlights culinarily for me was that i had never had fish cheek before and stacy was like oh yeah like dig in right there get that part it's the tastiest part and because she was willing to dig in and show me and i was like all right great and i dug in and it was like a beautiful little i can still remember that taste really distinctly the fish cheek is just so smooth and like dissolves in your mouth in a certain way and i wouldn't have noticed it i probably would have been like i'm a little gross stop by the head and i wouldn't have dug in and she was like no no go for it all right i haven't really gotten that too is it this fat is it this fatty thing yeah i'm getting that i'll be honest i'm not like into the food into like whole food dissection whole animal this I couldn't get a vibe. There you go. I don't, like, suck the marrow out of bones, out of, like, beef bones and stuff like that where it's a very, like, it's not anything to do to eat that. Oh, really? It is. It is very much so. I grew up seeing my dad do it, and I was like, I'm not into this. Not for you? Hold on, let me just try this first. So, Shahzad, how do you think Stacey took your confession that you don't suck marrow out of the bones when given the opportunity? I don't, I don't, uh, hmm, um, I'd like to think that it came off as like one off little cute. I can self acknowledgement. You know, I'm going to be frank, judged him pretty hard. So you judged him because you felt like he wasn't being adventurous. It's so funny because I felt he was so adventurous in so many other aspects of his life that it was funny that the adventurousness didn't translate into his way of eating. I think just like at least suck the marrow out once, you know, like at least give it a shot. I'm all for that kind of eating. And yeah, it was like so funny to be to be just like, this is one thing that I do not do. At what point in the date did you find out what she does for a living? I mean, I I made an effort not to ask, what do you do for a living? Because I thought that's kind of like I prefer to keep it like on other topics first and if it comes up naturally. But I think it was like three-fourths of the way through where more of her job came out. He did not really find out much about me or what I did till dessert. Yeah, I used to bake pies at 4 and 20 Blackbirds for a couple years. Holy shit, wow. We might have run into each other in that context. I've never worked in the store, only in the kitchen. Oh, okay, okay. Have you gotten pie from there before? Yeah, but also, yeah, I mean, it was, I was like, there used to be a taxidermy museum right next to it. Oh, yes, the museum of whatever. Yes. So I would have this thing where I would go to, I went to the taxidermy museum at the Black 425. Yes, my friend Sue, who is a tattoo artist, used to teach taxidermy classes there. She taught the mouse class I always wanted to take. Oh my God, the mice. Yes. Did you ever dissect animals in high school? I don't think we, I think we did frog. Okay. Yeah. I did frog, mice, and like cats. Oh, you did cats in high school? Yeah. Very morbid. Where did you go to high school? So he brings up dissecting a cat. That's a choice to bring that up on a first date. Like, what does that do to the vibe? I think it changed the vibe a little bit. I'd say I was just like, I am an animal girly. I'm an animal lover. We had finished, I believe, the whole fish at this point. So there was, maybe that's where the dissection conversation came from, is that we had to, you know, take apart this whole fish together. And that maybe triggered a memory of when the cat happened. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I would recommend most people don't discuss dissection in a first date. I would say probably generally not a good topic. It's okay. So then did you want to stay in food? Like, did you want to like... Oh, I am still working in food. I wrote a pie cookbook called 50 Pies, 50 States, where I baked pie for every state in America when I was playing for my green card. Okay, that makes more sense now. I'm like, oh, because you have a lot of articulation around food, food memory, taste memory. I never read books. Oh, I read them covered. Yeah. And then my broken law is a chair. Coming up, we'll hear Shahzad and Stacey's final thoughts on the date, and we'll find out if they'll be seeing each other again. Then we'll get to date number two. What could go wrong on that one? You definitely don't want to make your date sick the first time that you meet. That's coming up. Stick around. It's time to open up a can of advertisements. Welcome back to The Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman, and our big live show in Brooklyn is fast approaching. March 19th at the Bell House with longtime friend of the Sporkful, Kenji Lopez-Alt, and comedy legend Judy Gold. What a lineup! It's March 19th. Tickets are going fast, so get yours now at sporkful.com slash live. Again, that's sporkful.com slash live. Thanks, and see you there. All right, back now to the Sporkful dating game. You heard the highlights from Shehzad and Stacey's date. Now it's time for final thoughts. So throughout the meal, Stacey, did you feel any sparks? Unfortunately, no sparks. He was a very lovely guy, but he would be, you know, a great person for someone that's like very adventurous in the world. So Shahzad, at any point in the day, did you feel any little bit of romance? Were there any sparks? I think that you can have moments of connection, but it definitely didn't like turn into, I think, a fire on both of our ends. We were in a corner booth and she sat like kind of far off, like further than the like place settings even were. And she didn't like move closer over time. Has there been any contact since then between the two of you? No contact since the day. Did you exchange numbers or Instagram handles or something? We did not. Okay. He didn't ask. He did not ask. And you didn't ask. I did not ask. Oh, man. When you combine this result from our last dating game episode, we're now 0 for 3. Which, frankly, only makes us slightly worse than the dating apps. Now, before we get to our next date, we did actually set up a third date for this episode at one of my favorite restaurants in Philly, Laser Wolf. It's an Israeli-style grill house. And the best part is that for appetizers, you get all these incredible little salads, It's like probably 10 or 12 of them with hummus and pita. There are so many flavors and spices, and it just guarantees you always leave feeling like you tried everything. When our daters, Jacob and Holly, went to Laser Wolf, they loved the food, they enjoyed the date, but they told us it wasn't going to lead to a second date, which means we're now 0 for 4. So there's a lot riding on this next date in Chicago. Let's meet our daters, Viraj and Diego. Hi, my name is Viraj. I am 38 years old. I work in higher education, and I live in Chicago, Illinois. My food pet peeve would definitely be when things are under salted My strategy for a new restaurant is I definitely want to do my research I check out social media I will look at menus beforehand but I still go in with an open mind And my favorite thing to do is actually to share a lot of dishes to make sure I can try the most. I'm really looking for someone that feels like a friend first, and then we align on shared values and interests. but someone who's just excited to explore the world, try new things, and have someone to do that with along the way. Well, I'm really excited, but definitely a little bit nervous to go on the state with the Sport Bowl. I've been a fan of the podcast for years, and so just really excited for a new adventure. My name is Diego. I'm 36 years old. I live in Chicago, Illinois, and I'm an attorney by trade. Truffle oil can be a lot. If there's a lot of stuff on the menu with truffle oil, I start to get a little bit skeptical about everything else that could be there. My ideal first date is a good hang. I like to spend time around people who are thoughtful, respectful, kind of curious about the world around them. I'm excited to go on a date for the sport. I mean, it'll be a cool story and maybe it'll be something more. We sent Viraj and Diego to a Korean barbecue restaurant called Perilla Fair. Now let's get to the date. Hi, Diego. Hello. Hi, I'm Viraj. It's nice to meet you. Diego, nice to meet you. What were a couple of your first impressions? I thought Diego was super nice and friendly. I felt instantly comfortable when I sat down at the table and we immediately started chatting. I said beforehand, like, oh, I'm, you know, at the very least hoping for a good hang. And Viraj is definitely a good hang. It's like, wow, this was actually like probably the most interesting person that I've met, you know, through either the dating apps or being set up with somebody, maybe just hands down. I should say we gave each pair of daters some food related conversation starters, but we left it up to them if they wanted to use them. I did print out the questions that they needed us. I was going to say, I wrote them down and I also have them right here. So I don't know if you want to begin with that. Well, I'd love to get to know you first. I guess, however you want to do it. Yeah. Wow. Or should we start with first ordering? We'll start with that. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I think we were both maybe a little nervous. This is definitely a new situation for both of us. Right. You don't normally wear a microphone when going out on a first date? It seems totally organic to me. Totally. I think it took us maybe a few minutes to kind of find our rhythm and to see how we wanted to approach it. But I found it really easy to even just chat with him about how we wanted to go about having the conversation or making decisions on the food we got. When you're looking at this menu or any menu in general, what's your strategy? Where do you start? Usually I love sharing things. I have no dietary restrictions, blessed. And so, you know, I'll take that into account if, you know, the person I'm with has any dietary restrictions. But I do love like family style ordering. How about you? I mean, that's the best way to go, if possible. You get a chance to sample everything. But I guess, yeah, we're both in the family style. This is supposedly a good place to do for that. Agreed. So, that'll be nice. Yeah. Are you from Chicago? No, I've been here for a while. There were several similarities in terms of, like, oh, like, places that we've been to or things like that. I grew up outside of Philadelphia, and my family's still there. She spent a lot of time there. She's from the western suburbs. My dad's from the western suburbs. My name is Calvin. Yeah. I'll be helping you both out tonight. And this is the first time in for you both? Yes. It is, yeah. Typically, I come over, let you know my name, find out some little tidbits of information, and then let you know about Hamid. Yeah. Now, seeing as though it's your first time. The really long spiel at the top, it was definitely a little overwhelming, but the server was also just so passionate about the food that it was hard not to get more excited about the meal. So Stacey was the food captain. Who would you say was the conversation captain who took the lead on the conversation? Ribs should be put on like a TikTok challenge or something. Awesome. I promise it should. Thank you. And I showed. Your turn. Great. Thank you. Do you look at the menu beforehand or are you more kind of a show up? I did for this. Okay. How about you? Most of the time I'll take a look. Yeah. But in Scallion Pancake was one that I was like, oh, those are always great. A hundred percent. I would totally get that. Yeah. I was also looking at the rice cake royale. It's not pretty good. There's two things. And then honestly, one of the tasting plates probably sounds easiest. Okay, let's do it. And then he kind of sold me on the Sundabu, but... Yeah, I would agree. That's, you know... It's really hard to turn. I mean, that was such a sincere love he shared for that dish. Yeah, definitely. And I wouldn't mind having some Sam as well. Yeah. Cool. I think that sounds like a good order. I agree. It was quite painless and actually, like, it seemed like we were on the same page and, you know, got a well-rounded experience for what the restaurant had to offer. Did it feel like the two of you were compatible in deciding what to order? Yeah, it honestly felt kind of like we were doing some improv, like a yes and. That we both kind of like threw out things that we were interested in and we were both open to trying some new things. But editing as we went, it worked out to be a perfect menu ordering. And I appreciated that he went with a couple of dishes that were not even on his radar that I was like, oh, I really want the sundabu, right? And it worked out great. We have our banchan here as well. These are meant to be eaten on their own and not be put on the grill. They're traditional Korean side dishes. So this is going to be our wet kimchi or white kimchi. We use Korean pears, so it's not going to be spicy. I like the banchan a lot. Just like I think we should have just like more banchan. Like an appetizer sampler is a lot of fun. I always forget about the banchan when I order at a Korean restaurant. And I'm like, I'm so hungry. I'm going to order this and that and this and that. And then the parade of banchan comes, and I'm like, I forgot about this part. And then all of a sudden, you're kind of like, man, this table is really crowded. Right, right. In a good way. Yeah, exactly. I love it. Exactly. Food was great. It was delicious. I love having sides to complement any dish. It was really wonderful to have an array of crunchy, spicy, sweet. Good meats. Have a ride. Awesome. And the first to hit the table would be the LA Galbi. Awesome. were you all comfortable grilling on your own or would you like a little bit of assistance i would prefer a little bit of help i would i would recommend assistance yeah i almost felt useless today everybody's just like yeah i'll do it i'm like oh oh no yeah well i feel useless a lot so it's okay yeah but you have a friend i won't steal the entire experience from you the server will come over and flip the meat and stuff for you so you you let them do that yeah and then well they do a little bit of it and then they kind to leave you to your own devices. I did the first go around and then she did the next go around. And I don't know, it seems to be fairly forgiving. You're probably not going to overcook it or anything like that. So is that what the concern was? You were worried about if you were in charge of turning it, that it would be cooked poorly and then you would really have screwed up. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's that's always a fear, I guess, whenever you're like, you know, on the grill or otherwise cooking. I was definitely nervous that I was under cooking. You definitely don't want to make your date sick the first time that you meet. In the end, did you like having the grilling at your table a component to a first date? Or would you rather have not had that stress? I think I would have preferred to not have that stress. It was fun to have it. But then part of the experience in the restaurant is also that the server helped us with grilling the meat. There was quite like several long periods where we were chatting with the server as well. and it ended up feeling like we were on a date with three people. Besides, oh, I used to live in Milwaukee for about six months. Okay. I went to Indiana for... And so it was just a funny addition to the meal. I think that I would have preferred if we could have chatted a little bit more solo. Without the server. Without the server and without the additional stress of like poisoning, giving food poisoning. Right. This is fun. Yeah. I've been very lucky in some parts of my life to explore some pretty cool places that had pretty cool food. Like I studied abroad in Oaxaca. Oh, I just went there for New Year's. Very cool. How was that? It was incredible. It truly was one of the best foodie trips I ever taken in my life Yeah Yeah the KCO is like I do think about that a lot Oh yeah The Oaxacan string cheese Yeah I am occasionally like you know I could just stuff my suitcase full of cheese Yeah. It can't be that wrong. But yeah, I like that a lot. Sounds like a dream, actually. Tell me more about this suitcase full of cheese. What kind of cheeses is it going to be? Walk me through it. Oh, man. Well, it's basically like a Oaxacan string cheese. It's like got a pretty mild flavor. They make it into big strands and just roll it up into a ball. You know, a suitcase might be a little much, but like duffel bag, maybe. Yeah. A carry on. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, don't mind me. Right. I mean, if I could, I would have also brought back a suitcase full of cheese from my recent trip. So I thought it was a funny comment to make. So if, hypothetically speaking, the two of you ever went to Oaxaca together and Diego started packing a suitcase full of cheese, you would be like encouraging him or discouraging him? I would trust him to make the decision that's right for him. He would need to pack his own suitcase. We're not sharing a suitcase. So you don't want the cheese suitcase for yourself? No, I'm good. I mean, listen, if he successfully brings it back, I would happily have some of the cheese, but you are managing that. Would you like to try some? I'll go ahead. I was going to say, if you want to, yeah, I can take over. How did it work out though? The cooking? It was delicious ultimately. Right. We both, I think cooked it a little bit differently. You could taste the difference of like when we both took it off the grill, but it was fun to compare notes on this together because I think we were both a little bit nervous about it. What was the difference? I think I cooked mine a little bit less. So mine was maybe more of like a medium rare. And I think he did a solid medium. Which do you prefer? I prefer medium rare. Were there any moments in the date that felt a little bit romantic? Any sparks? you know too early to tell but I really enjoyed meeting Diego I would definitely want like we have talked about maybe finding a time to meet up again and kind of seeing where it goes when we connected over some of our other common interests it was exciting it was nice to have some really great conversations with someone who I think we share some similar values there too right and I I have to say, I think that knowing that you're being recorded. Yeah. Even if the sort of constant awareness sort of falls away, you might still be able to have a great conversation, but that may sort of restrict the romance a little bit. Yeah. Sparks are a little hard to figure out in the moment when you're first meeting someone. And how did you leave it at the end of the date? We exchanged numbers and texted a little bit. It's been just a few days. And so I think we have talked about maybe finding another time to get together and we'll see. Get together like a second date? You know, unclear. I think we'll kind of leave that to us to figure out. Is there one that you prefer? I'd be open to another date or to an official first date. Right. This was like the pre-date with the microphone. So like a proper first date without people eavesdropping. Absolutely. And I would also be open to hanging out as friends and then taking it kind of one hangout at a time. Right. I don't know. Go for it, Viraj. Just go for it. It was really refreshing to meet someone in person and actually get to know them without having pre-screened a lot or a profile to go off of, you know? Right. And having been matched by the most primitive algorithm on earth, the Sporkfuls algorithm, which uses only three factors. And I would say they resulted in a lovely evening. So maybe you got something going here. were there any moments during the evening that felt maybe a little bit romantic any sparks i don't know i would say maybe like as things went on we seemed to really enjoy each other's company and so i'd say you know maybe while not fully romantic all the time it was just like oh this is like this is really nice i really enjoyed hanging out with her i would be really surprised if we didn't hang out again has there been any communication between the two of you since the date? Yeah. I mean, just like she had mentioned, like, oh, it'd be great to hang out again, either a date or, you know, as friends or something like that. Did she say that? Did she say either a date or as friends or she just said it'd be great to hang out again? She did say that like, you know, or as friends. How did you read that? I took it at face value. I don't know if that was like necessarily like, oh, you know, would it be a date? Would it not? That would probably be something that we'd talk about. If you saw her a second time, would you prefer that it be a date or as friends i think honestly at this point probably more as friends but definitely with like the eye towards like potentially having you know something more i thought it was a really good first date there's somebody that i really liked hanging out with i'd be curious to see where it could go well if i can throw in my two cents here diego of course i wasn't i wasn't on the date so you obviously know more about how it went and how it felt than i do um i think you could interpret virage's text saying you know if you want to schedule something as a date or as friends as her kind of like protecting herself but i don't think she would have suggested the possibility of it being a date if she was not interested in that that's totally fair so i think i would just politely encourage you to be like let's go on a date and go on a date without anyone recording it and see how that goes well i appreciate the input and uh you know we'll definitely keep you posted That's my friendly advice for you. I appreciate it. Plus, I just really want to make a real couple on this show. Yeah, I was going to say, I know you have a vested interest, but I do. I am not completely impartial. But yes, that is my honest read on that exchange. Let me just check in with Emma real quick to see if there's anything else I should ask before we wrap up. Of course. I just want to chime in and say that I completely 100% agree with Dan's advice. Yes. Thank you, Emma. Thank you. I was thinking the same thing. I'm like, if she said it could be a date or friends, like that means she's open to the possibility of it being a date. So that's right. Come on, Diego. Shoot your shot. Let's go. Team Sporkful is speaking with one voice here, Diego. Yeah, we'll see. All right. We're counting that one. We are counting it. We are now one for five. Not bad. I think that's a pretty good percentage. Maybe it'll go up in future years. Thank you so much to all of our daters. As Diego said to me in our post-date chat, it was kind of an absurd experiment. But I'll say it was an absurd experiment in the name of love and deliciousness, which is the best kind of experiment. I also want to shout out the restaurants that hosted our dates, Leland in Brooklyn, Perilla Fair in Chicago, and Laser Wolf in Philadelphia. Next week on the show, I talk with a Muslim and a Jew about what to do when meatless pork products hit the shelves. How will it affect how they think about what they eat and about themselves? That's next week. while you wait for that one check out last week's very special crossover episode with the podcast Mike and Tom Eat Snacks that's the actors Michael Ian Black and Tom Cavanaugh and we debate all kinds of snacking including a deep dive on the science of chip dipping very important stuff check it out and hey did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the Sirius XM app yes the Sirius XM app it has all your favorite podcasts plus over 200 ad free music channels curated by genre and era plus live sports coverage does your podcasting app have that and there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXM.com slash Sporkful. This show is produced by me along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andres O'Hara. Our editor is Camille Stanley. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Special thanks to Chantelle Holder, Andrea Quinn, and Sean Olley. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM podcast. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman. And I'm Rachel Alfero in the city of brotherly love, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.