FR Test Kitchen: Harold Dieterle
Today we're live from the Food Republic Test Kitchen at Little Owl The Venue in New York's West Village. Keep checking back for interviews, anecdotes and fun with fire.
Harold Dieterle is chef-owner of Perilla and Kin Shop in NYC. He also won Top Chef Season One. He's the Top Chef O.G. in our book. Harold was cool enough to take an afternoon walk to our test kitchen, where we asked him to pull a random question out of a hat.
What single type of food would benefit from it's own national holiday?
Um, wow. That's a tough question. I mean it's kind of weird, but I'm a sandwich guy and I eat a sandwich every single day. Every single day. People are telling me that I should start blogging, but I'm not a very good writer and not very interested in sitting in front of a computer, but I could easily fill it 365 days a year with a sandwich I consumed for that day. For me, every day is sandwich day.
What sandwich did you eat today?
I just got a Cuban from a sandwich shop down the road over there. The Original Sandwich Shop. I was hoping the Meatball Shop was going to be open for lunch, but they're not open for lunch yet. So I mean I live right around the corner so I get there pretty often. They make a nice sandwich.
And if you're working the kitchen at Kin Shop, what sandwich are you making?
Generally, you know it could be a meatball sandwich, it could be a pork sandwich. It's usually on roti though — I don't really have any bread there.
What about at home?
I had some steaks a couple of weeks ago so I made grilled steak sandwiches on garlic bread. That's one of my favorites. I had some left over that's Indian – lamb saag, which is just braised lamb and spinach. I threw that on a whole wheat sandwich hero. It was pretty good with some sriracha sauce on it. It didn't suck.
So you think sriracha is overused?
Sriracha is overused. Most people don't know where sriracha comes from, what the whole deal is. People think sriracha is Vietnamese. They don't know.
Sriracha is good on everything. I've actually heard someone say that.
Sriracha is good. I do have to say. But it is overused and people don't really know the history behind it and where it comes from.
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