5 of the best food podcasts

Of all the things to make a podcast about, you’d think food would be one of the trickiest. You can’t do lingering shots of a nicely turned-out Bakewell tart like on the telly, and the fun of finding out about new, delicious stuff you’ve never encountered before shouldn’t work without knowing roughly what it smells and tastes like.

And yet, food podcasting is massive. There’s a banquet table stuffed with food podcasts waiting for you out there. Table Manners kicked down the kitchen door; Off Menu burst through it, and surfed the wave of food podcasts which followed to become one of the biggest podcasts in the UK.

It’s food’s universality and specificity which makes it such a handy and bottomless topic to build a podcast around. You probably eat three times a day, maybe have some snacks. So, hopefully, do most other people.

But the infinite number of ways of eating, and what’s eaten, and why, make it one of the easiest ways to talk about big, complicated things like identity, class, childhood, family, and different cultures around the country and around the world. Bon appetit.

Off Menu

Well, obviously. Ed Gamble and James Acaster’s dream restaurant has welcomed the likes of Bob Mortimer, Louis Theroux and Claudia ‘I’ve never drunk water in my life’ Winkleman over the last three years, as well as half the stand-ups who Gamble and Acaster have bumped into on the circuit. Guests build a dream menu – poppadoms or bread, then starter, main, dessert, side and drink, not in that order – and bicker about it for an hour. A juggernaut. Listen >>

Table Manners

Again: well, obviously. It’s less about the celeb interviews, and more about the homely vibe which Lennie and Jessie Ware evoke from their kitchen, with each chat at the dinner table soundtracked click-clacking of cutlery on plates and scraping chairs. The interviews aren’t bad though. Paul McCartney’s been chatting pretty much non-stop for 60 years now, and thanks to Table Manners we’ve only just found out that he does eye yoga. Listen >>

Lecker

The name means ‘delicious’ in German, and there’s an appropriately international bent to Lecker. The stories and interviews come in different forms – sometimes it’s an essay-style consideration of the lockdown sourdough boom, other times an in-the-field bit of reportage on the World Bonnag Championships on the Isle of Man, and occasionally interviews with chefs and writers about the food culture they know best. Listen >>

Home Cooking

Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat is more than just a gigantic cookbook and endearingly goofy Netflix travelogue doc. It’s a kindly, beckoning hand through hundreds of different cooking techniques and essential recipes. Nosrat kept that vibe when she teamed up with Song Exploder’s Hrishikesh Hirway for this pandemic lockdown project which gives callers ideas of what to make. Apologies if those vibes are simply too cursed for you to contemplate absorbing, but this is a great place to pick up an upbeat jolt of kitchen inspiration. Listen >>

Dinner For One

New Yorker Sutanya Dacres had the archetypal fairytale romance with a French dude, fell in love, got married and moved to Paris. Unfortunately it ended in separation. This lo-fi podcast from her tiny Parisian kitchen is about both food and how she’s moved through heartbreak while getting her head around living in a foreign country. It’s a soothing, meditative listen, and Dacres is a great companion. Listen >>

Have you enjoyed the podcasts on this list? Check out the newest version of this list ‘6 more of the best foodie podcasts‘!