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PODCAST

Check Please!

Bella Castillo, Mason Adams

Check Please! is a podcast by two avid cooks and voracious diners with perfect taste where we chat about food, life and whatever we want. Pull up a seat at our table, this one"s on us. bellacastillo.substack.com

arts food

All Episodes

54:13

Ep. 21 - The Grape Man

Check Please! ·

2025/11/04

Have you ever tried one of those cotton candy grapes and thought “How on earth do they get this flavor in here?” The answer may surprise you.In this episode, we’re joined by CEO of The Grapery Jim Beagle, who comes from a lifelong background in agriculture and has answers to all our juicy grape questions. Jim shares how table grapes are grown, how they arrive at names like “tear drop” and “gum drop,” which varieties never made it to market, and the unlikely story of how cotton candy grapes took

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80:35

Ep. 20 - Kelsey Small

Check Please! ·

2025/10/14

In this episode of Check Please! we catch up with my dear friend Kelsey Small about the opening of his new restaurant Small’s Pizza, where the pizzas are actually quite large and extra crispy in a close approximation of New Haven’s signature style. Kelsey walks us through his storied culinary past, from growing up in Connecticut watching Emeril Lagasse to working at Franklin Barbecue and making an (alleged) appearance in Chef (2014), cooking for the HAIM sisters, and briefly starring in a Coca Cola

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74:51

Ep. 19 - Abi Balingit

Check Please! ·

2025/10/07

Welcome back to our table,In this episode of Check Please! the lads chat with the sweet and original author behind Mayumu: Filipino American Desserts Remixed. Abi Balingit is a New York City-based baker with a James Beard Award under her belt and opinions on the Hailey Bieber smoothie, the complexities of monetizing your hobbies, the reliability of baking blogs, the NYC dining scene and the steak and fries of it all.Tune in to learn more about Abi’s baking journey and unique POV, and follow her

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74:23

Ep. 18 - Tanya Bush

Check Please! ·

2025/09/16

Happy Tuesday divas,In this new episode of Check Please! Bella and Mason chat with pastry chef, writer, and Cake Zine cofounder Tanya Bush. Get a peek behind the curtain and hear all about the writing process behind Tanya’s just-announced debut cookbook Will This Make You Happy, what to expect in Cake Zine Vol. 7 - Forbidden Fruit, where she would grab dessert in NYC when she’s not making it herself and how she’s dealt with some of her biggest kitchen flops and grown into a better pastry chef

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47:12

Ep. 17 - Bella & Mason

Check Please! ·

2025/09/02

Hello old friends, it’s been awhile.I’m pleased to announce the return of Check Please! I have a new co-host but the same old je ne sais quoi. Allow me to introduce you to Mason Adams, my friend and colleague. Mason is a film & production professional, a novice cook and a real freak. Naturally, he fits right in. In this episode, the two of us yap about the Anthony Bourdain biopic, Pamela Anderson’s new line of pickles, the problem with food taking over the world of product photography, and the time

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72:52

Check Please! #16 Matrimony, Wedding Scammers & a...

Check Please! ·

2025/02/11

Welcome back to Check Please!In this episode, we sat down with How Long Gone co-host, professional DJ, avid foodie and married man Jason Stewart to share our thoughts on matrimony.Is your wedding day among the most joyous and moving occasions of a lifetime? Absolutely. Will the months leading up to it ruin you emotionally, financially, physically, and psychologically to a point that feels nearly beyond recovery? Maybe, yes, but that’s just showbiz, baby!Take if from three people who have recently

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73:14

Check Please! #15 Trends, 2025 Predictions & a Live...

Check Please! ·

2025/01/21

Is it too late to say happy New Year?We’re back with a new episode on all things trendy — bemoaning what’s out and predicting what’s in for 2025, featuring the expert opinions of our friends Daniel Emilio Soares, the mind behind NYC’s chicest party spreads and founder of Alimentari Flaneur, Savannah Eden Bradley, one of fashion Twitter’s most brilliant minds and editor-in-chief of Haloscope Mag, and Clue Perfumery founders and tastemakers Caleb Vanden Boom & Laura Oberwetter.We get a vibe check on

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62:00

Check Please! #14 Holidays, Canceled Christmas Songs...

Check Please! ·

2024/12/17

Seasons greetings!We’re back with a new episode, and we’re chatting about holiday traditions, getting passive aggressive with your family, how to be good at gifting and the single greatest Christmas song of all time. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bellacastillo.substack.com/subscribe

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64:27

Check Please! #13 Fantasy, Tubby Custard and Haruki...

Check Please! ·

2024/11/26

Welcome back to Check Please!In this fantasy-themed episode, we chat about some of our earliest food memories — the fictional dishes we read about and watched on TV. We name some of very real dishes that feel made up, and dish on the YA fiction we were obsessed with in adolescence. Josh shares some of his favorite video game soundtracks, Bella introduces you to an independent perfumer who makes fragrances fit for fairies and water nymphs, and we watch that one really horny Robert Pattinson for Dior

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50:32

Check Please! #12 Autumn, Thanksgiving Hot Takes & Yo...

Check Please! ·

2024/11/12

We are so back.And the seasons have changed since we last chatted. In this episode, we discuss all things autumn. We debate which apples are the best apples and whether pumpkin is under, over or correctly rated. We share our Thanksgiving takes and traditions, fight about whether Yo La Tengo is girl music or not, and talk about the time Josh catered a party that had gold-leaf covered suckling pig on the menu and Fiona Apple playing live piano. We even discover that they make Gilmore Girls towns in

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55:29

Check Please! #11 Desire, Sexy Fruit & Suburban...

Check Please! ·

2024/10/15

In this week’s episode of Check Please! we chat about which foods have a certain sexy quality and whether aphrodisiacs are real or fake. We meditate on desire in all it’s forms, from the kind of yielding love it takes to make long term relationships work to the depths of depravity it can lead us to, as depicted in movies like Happiness (1998), Little Children (2006), and American Beauty (1999).We interpreted desire as a theme more literally in the musical arena, calling out some of our favorite

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81:02

Check Please! #10 Holiness, Mormon Casserole, & a...

Check Please! ·

2024/10/08

It’s a beautiful Tuesday to assess your relationship with god!The theme for this episode of Check Please! was the word “holy,” and it sparked memories of cocktail weenies in coulis, cornflake casserole and the time my dad broke a $50 in the offering basket. It led us to revisit Bible verses featuring culinary anomalies, and analyze movies like First Reformed (2017) and Mermaids (1990) with heavy evangelical overtones.We also sat down with Audrey Robinovitz, the artist, writer, fragrance expert and

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61:59

Check Please! #9 Opulence, Caviar Tasting & Ranking...

Check Please! ·

2024/10/01

Welcome to another week of Check Please!In today’s episode on opulence, we speed rank (almost) every Real Housewife, and discuss examples of culinary luxuries throughout history, including everything from Pâté en Croûte to porpoise. We examined movies with monied overtones like Marie Antoinette (2006) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and had the opportunity to taste test and compare three caviars kindly provided by Petrossian — all of which were delicious, but one particularly sparkled.Thank you, as

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69:14

Check Please! #8 Yearning, Brokeback Mountain & Queer...

Check Please! ·

2024/09/24

In this episode on yearning, I open up about the deep anguish in my heart caused by the distance between me and my favorite slutty fast-food Mexican restaurant, Josh gets an education in Mitski lyrics, and we muse about why the gays are simply doing yearning better.We discuss Brokeback Mountain (2005), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), and reflect on excerpts from Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Richard Siken’s Crush.Thanks for listening.Until next week,Bella xx This is a public

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101:40

Check Please! #7 - Malaise, Raw Milk & a Chat with...

Check Please! ·

2024/09/10

The topic for this episode of Check Please! is malaise.ma·laise/məˈlāz,məˈlez/noun* a general feeling of discomfort, illness, or uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify.We chat about the things we like to eat when we feel like sickly Victorian orphans, revisit my freaky alternative health childhood, analyze the plot of Safe (1995) starring Julianne Moore, and interview Taipei author Tao Lin about his low Vitamin A diet, the leeches he ordered in the mail, the eczema on his *******, and

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67:27

Check Please! #6 - Nostalgia, Onion Ring Towers and...

Check Please! ·

2024/09/03

Welcome back to Check Please! The word of the day is: nostalgia.We went to the mall to get an Auntie Anne’s soft pretzel and inhale the enthralling scent of Abercrombie & Fitch Fierce in the name of research. We talked about when curling your hair and going to Sprinkles Cupcakes was the most en vogue thing to do in middle school on your birthday. We made playlists harkening back to our adolescent years (mine even includes an actual cover image I took to post on Tumblr featuring a leaf of my mother’s

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18:27

Check Please! #5 - Ritual, Weed Gummies & Tarkovsky...

Check Please! ·

2024/08/27

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bellacastillo.substack.comIn this episode, we try Rose Delights, discuss if splitting a burger is the ultimate act of love, and evaluate the rituals in our lives, The Sacrifice (1986), Harriet the Spy (1996) & more.

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13:28

Check Please! #4 - Hotline (Aug. 13, 2024)

Check Please! ·

2024/08/13

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bellacastillo.substack.comIn this episode, we asked listeners to call our hotline with matters of the heart and stomach, and the phone was ringing off the hook! We resolved domestic squabbles over whose job it is to plunge the toilet, laid out the perfect recipe for a home-cooked dinner date, and settled on the only successful way for a man to attract a partner on Instagram.

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65:20

Check Please! #3 - Trends/Hot & Ready/3 Questions...

Check Please! ·

2024/08/06

In this episode of Check Please! Josh and I are running our mouths about all the latest culinary trends and debuting a segment called Hot & Ready in which we rattle off a few of our hottest food takes. If you’ve been hoping and praying to hear my controversial thoughts on tiramisù, the light of god has shined upon you today. We also did a little Q&A to really shed some light on the inner workings of our gorgeous, twisted brains, though the questions may have been more telling than the answers

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2:51

Check Please! #2 - Double Feature (July 30, 2024)

Check Please! ·

2024/07/30

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bellacastillo.substack.comListen now | In this episode, we review Burnt (2015) and The Taste of Things (2023) and chat about whether the Michelin Guide is racist, times we've cried at the movies and Juliette Binoche's **** **** ***.

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