Category Archives: Interviews

Competitive Eating Champion Joey “Jaws” Chestnut Interview with the TastingBuds + Austin Ice Cream Festival

Number one ranked competitive eater in the world, multiple food eating record holder, and destroyer of 68 hot dogs in 10 minutes, Joey “Jaws” Chestnut graced us with his presence at the Austin Ice Cream festival this year. Why exactly was he in town? To take on a whole team of 5 other eaters at once to see who could eat the most ice cream in 5 minutes!

How did he do? We’ll get to that later, but the look on his competitor’s face above might provide a clue.

Click through to read our interview with Joey Chestnut!

Austin Daily Press of “The Great Food Truck Race” Interview

  • Amy Hildenbrand and Cory Nunez of Austin Daily Press

Foodies, chances are that you have spent time on the couch watching a Food Network show or five. Well get ready, because you’re about to get one more reason to park it in front of the TV, namely Food Network’s newest show “The Great Food Truck Race” premiering Sunday, August 15th 2010 at 10pm/9c.

One of the teams that competed in the coast-to-coast race runs hometown food trailer Austin Daily Press. I stopped by to chat with fellow Atlanta transplant now living Austin and co-owner of Austin Daily Press, Cory Nunez, about his favorite bars in Atlanta, the upcoming Food Network show, and his approach to running a business.

Click through to read the interview with Austin Daily Press

Interview with Olga Lee from Polkadots Cupcake Factory – Austin, Texas

Olga Lee - Polkadots Cupcake Factory

Polkadots Cupcake Factory (Menu), now fast approaching its 2nd anniversary, was one of the first cupcake shops to open up in the Austin area. We’re glad to see them thrive in an increasingly crowded Austin cupcake market, and the TastingBuds are fans of Polkadots, as shown in our Austin Cupcake Comparison Test from last year.

Peter recently visited the Polkadots kitchen to chat with Olga Lee, one half of the couple that owns Polkadots. She was hard at work, but had time to chat at the store, which specializes in custom cakes, cookies, and of course various types of cupcakes.

Click through to read the full text of the interview with Olga Lee of Polkadots

Interview and Photo Shoot with Seth Mazow from “Year of the Pizza”

Seth Mazow - yearofthepizza.com

I first met Seth Mazow from Year of the Pizza at the Austin Bleetup (Blogger Meetup). He was one of those interesting guys that everyone wanted to talk to. Reason? Seth has cool perspectives on life and is excited about whatever he does. On top of that, he recently won a whole year of free pizza from Austin’s Home Slice Pizza by keeping his hand on an eggplant sub for 7 hours. How cool / funny is that?

Intrigued by his funny story and his even funnier blog, I set up a meeting with Seth to ask him a few questions and snap a few pictures for an interview to be featured on the TastingBuds.

Click here to read more about Seth Mazow of Year of the Pizza

Man v Juan In a Million: An Interview with Eating Champion Christopher Huang

Don Juan Eating Champion Christopher Huang

  • Eating Champion Christopher Huang with store owner Juan Meza

Being a foodie isn’t always about eating fancy 3 course dinners consisting of food that’s hard to pronounce. On the contrary, often the best tasting foods are inexpensive, hearty working class comfort foods. In Austin, a perfect example of great everyday, utilitarian food is the breakfast taco. Arguably one of the best breakfast tacos in town is the huge ‘Don Juan’ (made with a generous serving of potatoes, egg, bacon, and cheese) at Juan in a Million, a mecca for hungry diners in East Austin that hosts an eating challenge so infamous it was recently featured on The Travel Channel’s volume eating show, Man v Food.

In the Austin episode of Man v Food, host and eating challenge extraordinaire Adam Richman attempted and failed to break the Don Juan Challenge record held by Christopher “Hong Kong Hero” Huang, who in 2004 ate an astonishing 7 Don Juan tacos in one sitting! Huang, who set the record while he was a student at the University of Texas in Austin, has worked many jobs in the food industry including selling peanuts at a ballpark, delivering pizza, serving in a fine dining restaurant, and his current job managing Berripop, a frozen yogurt store in Houston, Texas.

Fooding blog pulled Christopher away from his busy schedule long enough to ask him about his amazing record and to get inside the head of a certified eating champion.

Click here to read more about the life of an eating Champion!