Check Please! (Bella Castillo, Josh Turner)

In this episode, we chat about everything we love and hate about restaurants (from the perspective of patrons — working in the industry is a whole different episode), mourn the loss of Sweet Tomatoes, discover the last-standing Lone Star Steakhouse in the world, and review the Joe’s Crab Shack happy hour menu.

And yes…there is the sound of the leaf blower at the end. Forgive us. We’re still working out the kinks.

Listen 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 **** **** ***.

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. There’s even a bonus unboxing and fragrance review. Truly, we can do it all.

In even more exciting news, we’re debuting a special segment next week. Introducing the Check Please! hotline! We’ll be taking questions and offering advice on two of life’s greatest gifts: food & love.

How it works:

* Call this number and leave us a message with your culinary curiosities and/or relationship woes: ‪(512) 666-8927‬. This is as anonymous as you want it to be, no need to worry.

* Selected messages will be played in next week’s episode and responded to live on air.

Why you should call:

* Our credentials: Josh is a professionally trained cook. I am not, however, if you’re here with me, I will assume we’ve built up some trust in each other. We’re also both fairly well-adjusted, level-headed adults in healthy longterm relationships (married & engaged, even), ready and willing to (thoughtfully) meddle in your romantic affairs.

* It’s sooooo fun.

In 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.

In 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.

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 bougainvillea pressed against my tongue).

We mused on the dangers of receding into nostalgia as a place of comfort and critiqued the way therapy language has enabled adults to take things too far. We revisited the concept of the flat lay, a photo style that was pervasive on Tumblr and the earliest iterations of Instagram intended to communicate something unique and interesting about the poster.

You can say many things about me, but never that I’m above being a little cringy, a little embarrassing, a little vulnerable.

Thanks for being here with me.

Chat next week,

Bella xx

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 his forthcoming book “Self Heal.”

Note: We are well aware Josh sounds like a robot in this episode, and we are not proud of it. The reverb issue will be fixed by the next episode. Listen, we’re just cooks after all!

Thank you for listening.

As always,

Bella

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

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 always, for listening. We’re excited to welcome a special guest next week — something to look forward to.

Until then,

Bella xx

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 recent Catholic convert about her relationship with religion, navigating the murky waters of ironic Catholicism online, and her favorite perfumes featuring notes like lilies, church incense and beeswax.

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 tracks and artists of the same name, and shared a poem by Eileen Myles about wanting what you already have.

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 real life, that there really is apple cider in apple cider donuts and why Nico sings like that.

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 homme commercial.

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.

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 the new year with our friend Camille Guerin (aka @p0lar0idprinc3ss), polaroid photographer, tarot enthusiast and LA-based foodie as she does a live reading for us, and we highlight some of our favorite media from the last year.

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 done it. We’re chatting about all our wedding details, the folly of the wedding industry, what’s next for wedding influencers, getting divorced and then married again, the time Bella got scammed out of a wedding dress, why wedding DJs have such an attitude problem, cake fails, keys to a happy marriage and how to pull it all off on the big day.

Thanks for reading early girl! This post is public so feel free to share it.