{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Savor with Tiffany Pham","title":"The Chocolate Chip Cookie with Johnny Norton, Co-Owner of Culture Espresso","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2071,"description":"Forty bakeries were invited. Two hundred judges. A blind taste test, an open bar, and a few Michelin-starred kitchens in the field. Culture Espresso won first place, and Johnny has been hanging his hat on it ever since. \"It was also a great opportunity to tease our friends in a Michelin-starred kitchen that one day they'll catch up.\"\nThe recipe hasn't changed in seventeen years.\nTiffany Pham sits down with him over the cookie that keeps winning. He is clear that there is no trick to it: \"no shtick other than really high quality.\" French ingredients, small batches all day so nothing sits, and a flat refusal to get more efficient. People have told him for years he's foolish to use an ingredient that expensive, or that a machine could replace half the staff. \"We haven't made a single stride towards efficiency.\"\nThe route there was not a bakery. He was a bookseller, then a teenage drummer who toured with punk bands and worked in cafés between tours. He got obsessed with coffee in the years before you could learn it on Instagram, when you had to find a secret coffee wizard and train with him. He was young and could not get a lease in Midtown on his own. His business partner Jody LoCascio had met the landlord of this building in a bar and been offered a good deal on it, and Johnny talked his way in with a pitch to run the coffee program.\nThe idea he keeps returning to is one he borrowed from the Eameses: the best, for the most, for the least. He knows a six-dollar cookie isn't the least. \"But I'd like to think that both Eames and ourselves made it as fair as we could while trying to make it as best as we could.\"\nSavor with Tiffany Pham, a Representation production, is a companion to the television docuseries premiering May 2027. Cinematography by: Kym Pham.\nCHAPTERS\n00:00 Meeting Johnny: \"the best chocolate chip cookies in New York\"\n00:40 \"Cookies are like pizza and bagels\"\n00:53 Forty bakeries, two hundred judges, one blind taste test\n01:36 Teasing the...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/IxuWnflAOf8GdA8Vg9De5VVZjd23x5Il6_3nWxFdE0c/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9hNTM4/MmQ5MGMzZjMzMTAy/N2U4Y2NmMGI2MGI0/OTJlYy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}