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Meet & Eat: Robb Walsh

Posted by The Serious Eats Team, April 6, 2007 at 7:00 AM

In this week's Meet & Eat, we talk to Robb Walsh, cookbook author, food critic, and, last but not least, proud Texan. Walsh, whose upcoming Texas Cowboy Cookbook will hit shelves April 10, is one of our favorite food writers. Mosey on in and say howdy.

Name: Robb Walsh
Location: Houston, Texas
Occupation: Food critic, cookbook author
URL: robbwalsh.com or Robblog on houstonpress.com

Favorite comfort food?
Refried beans on hot flour tortillas.

Guilty pleasures?
Eating while standing in front of the open refrigerator in the middle of the night.

Describe your last meal.
Rabbit cooked in Chimayo red chile sauce with black-eyed peas, Texas red grapefruit salad, and frozen margs.

What food won't you eat?
Haven't encountered it yet.

What's an unexplored food you'd like to try?
Mikigaq, an eskimo dish of fermented whale blubber.

Favorite food person?
Calvin Trillin

When did you first realize you were a serious eater?
When I started bringing my lunch to school. My dad made ham salad and my mom baked apple pie, and I always had stuff like that in my brown paper bag. I was shocked that other kids threw their lunches away and only ate the Ding Dongs.

What do your family and friends think of your food obsessions?
They used to be shocked by my six-barbecue-joint lunches. But it got a lot easier when I became a full-time restaurant critic. My wife still likes to remind me, "You have to taste it, you don't have to finish it."

Favorite food sites or blogs?
Serious Eats, ExtraMSG.com, DallasFood.org, The Homesick Texan. [The Homesick Texan frequently hangs her hat here on Serious Eats.—Ed. ]

Does great Texas barbecue exist outside Texas?
If you mean "Can you get good Texas barbecue at a New York restaurant," I would have to say no. We have great bagels in Houston. Made by New Yorkers. But they aren't New York bagels. And there are great croissants in New York, but they aren't Paris croissants. Call it terroir if you like or call it the connection between food and its cultural tradition, but eating it where it came from is a part of the charm.

Robb Walsh is the author of several books, among them The Tex-Mex Cookbook, the Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook, and Are You Really Going to Eat That? Reflections of a Culinary Thrill Seeker. His new book, The Texas Cowboy Cookbook, will be released on April 10.

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Tags: Meet and Eat, Q and A, Robb Walsh, Texas