The Sporkful

Chef Alon Shaya says that as a kid, he wasn’t just in with the wrong crowd — he was the wrong crowd. But with the help of a home ec teacher, he turned his life around and became one of the most successful chefs in the South. Still, it took him a long time to rediscover the foo...

Ahead of Veterans Day, we're recognizing our American troops. A lot of them will spend the holidays far from their families — but hopefully not far from a good meal. Of course, if you’re in a war zone, finding that good meal gets a lot harder. That was the situation for Charles Hedrick, who served in the Marines during the first Gulf War. After he volunteered...

A bottle of whiskey with no online footprint. A bar that’s long been closed. An address that doesn’t exist. Ten years ago, Akhil and Nisha Dayal found a whiskey bottle at an estate sale whose backstory they couldn’t trace. Can The Sporkful uncover the origins of this mysterious whiskey?

This episode originally aired on November 14, 2022 and was produced by Dan Pashman, ...

When Food Network star Duff Goldman got into baking elaborate cakes, he was just trying to pay the bills while pursuing his real dream of rock stardom. So what happened? This week we talk with the Ace of Cakes host about his deep artistic roots, the risks he took as...

On Halloween night in 1974, an eight-year-old boy in the Houston suburbs got Pixy Stix laced with cyanide. He wasn’t the only one. So did four other kids who were trick-or-treating that night. It made poisoned candy an overnight terror to parents nationwide. In this episode from our friends at the food true crime podcast