May 5, 2020 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:57:37
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| One. | ||
| What's happening, brother? | ||
| How are you? | ||
| Good to be here. | ||
| Good to have you. | ||
| I have enjoyed your restaurant many times. | ||
| This is my favorite steak restaurant in all of Los Angeles. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And it's one of the reasons why I wanted to bring you in here because this is a really crazy time for restaurants. | ||
| And I mean, that's basically, that's the gist of it. | ||
| This is a crazy time. | ||
| It's bananas. | ||
| It's absolutely crazy. | ||
| Trying to just get a handle on it. | ||
| It's just overwhelming. | ||
| So for me, it's just head down and cook. | ||
| Try to help people that are in need, and then we'll figure it out later. | ||
| Well, I know you've been doing a lot of cooking for first responders and for hospitals. | ||
| What have you been doing with your time now that this is... | ||
| Well, it really first started where basically everybody was just staring at each other and saying, what is going on? | ||
| What's happening? | ||
| And I didn't lay off any of my employees, and it's all happening. | ||
| Everybody else is closing up shop, and I'm just overwhelmed as a business owner. | ||
| What am I going to do? | ||
| And I actually had my GM come up to me and, you know, because I'm trying to figure it out. | ||
| Everybody's asked what's going to happen. | ||
| My GM came up to me and says, hey, listen, you know, we're with you. | ||
| We know you didn't create the coronavirus. | ||
| You know, you do what you have to do. | ||
| And we know your heart's in the right place. | ||
| And I was just like, I just like kind of just let out a breath and I'm like, okay, well, I appreciate you saying that. | ||
| And then I was just head down, get down to business with it. | ||
| And, um, um, we had a cut back, um, 90% of the staff and, uh, we were just like, just cook. | ||
| Um, didn't know who we're going to, who's going to buy it or anything. | ||
| It was just crazy. | ||
| So would you just tell everybody, the steakhouse is called APL, and it's in LA in, what is that, like the theater district? | ||
| What is that called? | ||
| Yeah, it's in the heart of Hollywood, Hollywood and Vine, and it's right next to the Pentages Theater, which we, and what's ironic was, it was literally, when they closed down all the restaurants, it was going to be the night of Hamilton premiering, which was a big deal for us as a business, and, you know, all of a sudden it's like, it stops. | ||
| Yeah, we... | ||
| I went to your place right after we saw something. | ||
| It was... | ||
| Oh, it was Frozen. | ||
| Yeah, okay. | ||
| I have daughters. | ||
| Yeah, we went to see Frozen and that was the last time I was at your place. | ||
| It's... | ||
| It's got to be a very strange thing. | ||
| This has never happened before. | ||
| And one of the things that we've talked about a lot on this podcast is what's so devastating about this is there's a lot of people that have lost businesses in the past because markets changed and because maybe they didn't do what they could have done or work as hard as they could have worked. | ||
| But for so many small businesses and restaurants and bars, they've been doing the best work they've ever been able to do. | ||
| They're putting in the hours, they're showing up, they're putting out these amazing meals, and then because of nothing, that's their fault. | ||
| It just gets shut off. | ||
| It just gets shut off. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| And without any real understanding of how long it's going to take or when you're going to... | ||
| I mean, we just had a conversation. | ||
| I was saying we should just talk about this on air because we're just talking in the green room. | ||
| There's no clear indication of when you'll be able to go back to work and serve food to the general public and what that's going to look like. | ||
| I know. | ||
| It's the unknown. | ||
| But how I'm investing my time, how a lot of other chef restaurateurs are investing their time is trying to serve takeout to the public, but also doing charitable and things to provide for first line, you know, front line, you know, defense. | ||
| And one of the things is, you know, Jimmy Kimmel and I teamed up. | ||
| For every meal that we prepare, we donate a meal to St. Joseph's Center. | ||
| So that was the first thing. | ||
| Our attitude was, we want to help people and let them know that they're cared about. | ||
| And then the other thing is to really just keep even just the five people working. | ||
| Because we didn't even know if people were going to order. | ||
| So we jumped into it like that. | ||
| And then these services such as Frontline LA, which comes in and brings, it's like the glue between us and the hospitals. | ||
| And we prepare meals for 150 meals at a time for the hospital workers. | ||
| And do you guys package them up and then have them delivered to the hospital? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| I mean, so we'll just sit there. | ||
| They'll say, hey, we have a need for this particular hospital, you know, Hollywood Presbyterian. | ||
| Okay, great. | ||
| 150 people. | ||
| We package up the meals. | ||
| How do you do that? | ||
| Do they order off a menu or do you just prepare stuff that you think that they'll enjoy? | ||
| We prepare healthy things, things that they would appreciate. | ||
| And then also sometimes I just serve comfort items. | ||
| So sometimes I'll do meatloaf gravy and mashed potatoes because, you know, if they're just all healthy, sometimes they just need a little bit more of like, you know, warmth and like just kind of like pulling in. | ||
| That's a weird word, comfort food, you know? | ||
| It is, but that's what's happening now. | ||
| But it works. | ||
| Like when you say macaroni and cheese, comfort food. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It is. | ||
| That's what people are gravitating towards. | ||
| That's where my menu is right now. | ||
| It's all comfort food and barbecue. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So is that because that's what people are asking for? | ||
| Probably hard to cook steaks, right? | ||
| That's my read on the market. | ||
| I had experienced a similar thing where things shut down and people needed help, and that was during 9-11. | ||
| And our attitude was, how can we help people, those in need? | ||
| And really, comfort food really just blossomed out of that. | ||
| So when you're doing, right, so you're doing takeout as well. | ||
| And how does that work? | ||
| Do they order online? | ||
| Or do they call up? | ||
| Like, how's that working? | ||
| Like, we prefer curbside, as opposed to just doing Postmates and Grubhub. | ||
| You know, people can do that. | ||
| And so we'll get people to come deliver. | ||
| Yeah, let's get to that. | ||
| Because how does that work? | ||
| Postmates and Grubhub? | ||
| Is that good for your business? | ||
| Is it less good? | ||
| ordering directly from you? | ||
| How does that work? | ||
| Well, it's great for our business because it gives us a greater range, and we really can't deliver, so it gives us an opportunity. | ||
| So it's a whole other market. | ||
| But they charge a back-end fee on it, so we have to upcharge it a bit. | ||
| And for us, we'd prefer just to kind of sell directly to the customer curbside, which we're doing a good clip-up to. | ||
| It's probably about half and half. | ||
| So if you had to guess, what's the capacity for your business? | ||
| Full on, wide open, where people can come and sit down, versus now? | ||
| How much has it deteriorated? | ||
| Oh, it's maybe 10-15% of the business compared to. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So that's why I'm just focusing on, like, I just got to keep moving. | ||
| That's how I'm emotionally getting through this thing and also keeping the business going is just basically just cook for people that are in need, you know, focus on the hospitals and the neighborhood just right around us. | ||
| So it's a tough spot. | ||
| And you obviously have a lot of friends that are in the restaurant business. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| We talk all the time. | ||
| What's the general feeling? | ||
| What's the temperature? | ||
| How's everybody dealing with this? | ||
| First of all, knowing that a good number of us are not going to be around because just even figuring out all the rules and the laws that are going to happen around this thing are unfolding. | ||
| They're just very hard to read and get a clear understanding of what's happening. | ||
| A lot of people just don't know the unknown. | ||
| Landlords, we're deferring rent, but at the same time, they're not accepting of that. | ||
| So we're on the hook, and we don't even really know where we're going to end up with it, even just the PPP loans. | ||
| What is PPP? It's the Paycheck Protection Program, and that's really a government-funded assistance to supply restaurants and all businesses. | ||
| I think of all the loans given out, I think only 5% of all the loans given out were actually to restaurants. | ||
| So, they give you a chunk of money, essentially, that covers eight weeks of payroll, and also a portion of that for... | ||
| That's 75% has to be spent on payroll, covers for eight weeks. | ||
| And then the other 25% is for rent and utilities. | ||
| So, it's like an eight-week lifeline. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So... | |
| And so far, how long has it been now? | ||
| We're looking at like six weeks of lockdown so far or something like that? | ||
| It feels like longer. | ||
| It's got to be a little bit longer. | ||
| Like for me, it probably is that. | ||
| I don't even have a concept of time. | ||
| I'm working so hard. | ||
| It's just me and four other people. | ||
| And two are in the front and two are with me in the kitchen. | ||
| We're doing dishes. | ||
| We're cooking. | ||
| We're cleaning. | ||
| We're doing everything. | ||
| I mean, it's a great sense of accomplishment. | ||
| I got an email from a nurse thanking us for the healthy meal that we prepared for them, and that makes it worth it. | ||
| But, you know... | ||
| Like, for me, I'm actually, like, inspired and just kicking it into high gear. | ||
| I'm not going to, like, just wallow in it. | ||
| I'm just going to keep working, head down, do what I do, and just hope at the end of the day. | ||
| At the end of the day, people have to eat. | ||
| So the world's going to be different, you know, probably not going to be the same at all in terms of for my business, but what choice do I have? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You want one of these, man? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, sure. | |
| Kill Cliff CBD drink. | ||
| Delicious. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nice. | |
| Sorry for people listening to me slurp. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| So when you're operating at 10% capacity, obviously this is not sustainable. | ||
| 10% of your business is not sustainable. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Just because operating costs and all the above. | ||
| And then you're obviously in a very high profile area, which must be extraordinary rent too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We're just not paying the rent. | ||
| We're just pushing it off. | ||
| We don't have the money for it, so we'll have to work it out. | ||
| You look very stressed out. | ||
| I've never seen you like this. | ||
| Every time I've seen you, that's you right there with a big smile. | ||
| Whenever I see you at your restaurant, it's always smiling. | ||
| I found out about your restaurant online. | ||
| I don't have the answers. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| I found out about your restaurant online. | ||
| I was just Googling new places to go for dinner. | ||
| And I don't know, it was like maybe a couple years ago. | ||
| And I was Googling steak houses, and then I saw that you specialize in dry-aged steaks. | ||
| And I had a steak that you cooked once that was more than a year dry-aged. | ||
| It was delicious, but it was really weird. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| It's different. | ||
| Anything like a regular steak. | ||
| It tastes like, boy, it's like a different animal. | ||
| It's like you're eating something, you know, some exotic animal. | ||
| And that's what I like to do. | ||
| I mean, you know, more age doesn't necessarily mean better, but, you know, it's just different. | ||
| And that's, you know, for me as a chef, you know, I call my dry age room an environmental chamber. | ||
| Yeah, there's a picture on Instagram of me and Adam in the basement, that fucking weird meat room that you've got. | ||
| For people that have never been to a dry aging room, it's very odd. | ||
| There's fans blowing around. | ||
| Everything's a very specific temperature. | ||
| You've got all these different things labeled as far as what date it was put in there. | ||
| And for people who haven't seen dry aging, it's very odd, too, because you're like, hey, what is wrong with that meat? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| The outside crust of it. | ||
| Here's a photo of it. | ||
| Folks, you can see it in the background of the... | ||
| It's not working? | ||
| There it is. | ||
| So, for folks who can see it in the background, the meat has like a black crust to it. | ||
| And then you slice that crust off. | ||
| What do you do with the crust? | ||
| Get rid of it. | ||
| But is it edible? | ||
| It's not enjoyable. | ||
| What about for dogs? | ||
| I want to give something a dog I want to eat myself. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| You eat dog food? | ||
| What's that? | ||
| Do you eat dog food? | ||
| No. | ||
| Do you feed your dog dog food? | ||
| I don't have a dog. | ||
| I wish I did, to be honest with you. | ||
| I have a dog, and he eats dog food. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I love him to death. | ||
| But he actually eats ground elk mixed in with regular dog food. | ||
| Even that, I mean, it gets a white ash, which is almost like a... | ||
| I call it a... | ||
| There's a friendly oxidation, I referred to it, in the whole process, okay? | ||
| Is that white ash like the same as you get outside of salami? | ||
| It's like that. | ||
| It's part of it. | ||
| It's a mold. | ||
| And the whole concept behind dry aging is based on three things. | ||
| It's air velocity, temperature, and humidity. | ||
| Air velocity? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And it's really important. | ||
| When I teach people about dry aging, it's like if you're on a beach in Jamaica and there was no wind and you just start getting sweat and you're just uncomfortable, but then if trade winds went through, it would have, at the same temperature, it would evaporate the water off your skin. | ||
| So what we're trying to do is... | ||
| We're trying to, at the right ratio, evaporate the water off the surface so it doesn't get like a smelly, stinky, bad mold. | ||
| And dehydrate it slowly. | ||
| What it does is it concentrates the flavor. | ||
| It transforms the amino acids into a whole different compound and changes the flavor altogether. | ||
| And then also enzymes within the meat through the process of rigor mortis. | ||
| It breaks down so it becomes more tender. | ||
| So you get flavor enhancement. | ||
| You get tenderization, and it just blows it away. | ||
| So what does it do to the amino acids? | ||
| It transforms it into a whole other compound. | ||
| It's like a flavor. | ||
| Have you ever heard of the concept of Maillard reaction? | ||
| Yes, but I don't know what it means anymore. | ||
| I've heard the expression, but I forgot what it means. | ||
| Yeah, the Maillard reaction is basically like when you're cooking something. | ||
| Spell it. | ||
| God, I'm the worst spelling. | ||
| Is it mylar? | ||
| No, M-A-I-L-L-A-R-D. Right. | ||
| Mylar. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Mylar. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I said mylar. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's what I know as. | ||
| So, you know, whenever you're browning or you're doing different things at different rates, amino acids transform into different things and you get different flavor compounds. | ||
| And that's really what happens, you know, with meat. | ||
| You know, so if I dry age, you have to handle dry age meat a lot differently. | ||
| You can't go out and say, okay, I'm going to slow cook this once it's dry age because then I just... | ||
| It develops a really nasty, kind of like funky flavor. | ||
| But if you cook it under high heat, like really aggressive, like that's why you have steakhouse broilers. | ||
| There's something about that browning of that dry-aged meat that transforms, that just like awakens your senses. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| So you don't slow cook dry-aged meat. | ||
| No, I don't. | ||
| It gets livery. | ||
| It's almost like a livery. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, I don't even... | ||
| If anybody wants dry age above medium, I try to talk about it. | ||
| I'll cook it any way you want. | ||
| But if you start cooking past medium, it's almost like, you know... | ||
| Seeing someone transform, it just ages. | ||
| When you cook it a long time, it just ages and just turns into something else. | ||
| It's just nasty. | ||
| Those people who want well-done steak are offensive. | ||
| You should go and eat Burger King, you monsters. | ||
| What's wrong with you? | ||
| When I go to dinner with someone and they order well-done steak, I just cringe. | ||
| Who am I eating? | ||
| It's a cultural thing I noticed with some people. | ||
| They just want to cook. | ||
| But if they want a well-done steak, then I recommend a wet-age steak to do well-done because at least you have a fighting chance for some type of flavor that would be appealing. | ||
| But it's weird. | ||
| Why are you eating steak? | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| You know? | ||
| It's true. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| That's for me, you know? | ||
| For everybody. | ||
| It's a criminal. | ||
| It's a criminal act. | ||
| You're wasting a piece of meat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's true. | |
| I kind of look the other way. | ||
| What, do you want ketchup with that? | ||
| Yeah, it's painful for me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's painful. | ||
| I mean, some people grew up eating well-done steak, and that's how they like it. | ||
| Joey Diaz eats medium well. | ||
| Medium well. | ||
| I'm like, what are you doing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why? | |
| Why? | ||
| It just doesn't taste as good. | ||
| And it's also, there's an art to the perfect temperature, right? | ||
| What's the perfect internal temperature of a medium rare steak? | ||
| Would it be like 135 or something? | ||
| No, it's a bit less. | ||
| But it's not necessarily the temperature. | ||
| It's kind of like how you get there. | ||
| Okay, let me explain that to you. | ||
| So I have this method where, particularly for thicker steaks, where... | ||
| I'll cook it, I start the cooking, and then I get it to about 105 degrees, and then I allow it to rest at 105. And what ends up happening is, I call the method just like tempering of the meat, and it basically, it starts transmitting the temperature in towards the center, and then I put it back in again, and then it'll heat up. | ||
| The temperature, if you, like, take it, I would say for medium-rare, even though, like, on many logs we'll say, okay, 120, 125 is rare, but it's not. | ||
| You know, for me, if you're going to do that method, a solid medium-rare will be about 120. Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So why do they think 120 is rare? | ||
| I don't really understand it exactly. | ||
| They'll get there. | ||
| I think they're overshooting it, particularly. | ||
| For me, it's not rare. | ||
| Rare is 110, using the method that I use. | ||
| Now, different people have different methods, which is really what's fascinating about cooking meat. | ||
| I ate at, a couple times, I've eaten at Bazaar Meats in Vegas, which is a fantastic restaurant. | ||
| Yes, fantastic. | ||
| Amazing chef. | ||
| It's an amazing place, too. | ||
| When you walk in there, it's just, visually, it's really interesting, because they have these grills with live logs. | ||
| I mean, they take, not live, obviously. | ||
| But they take logs. | ||
| They're cooking all over fire. | ||
| And they have these grates, these grill grates that rise and lower. | ||
| And you can see how they're doing it when you walk in the door. | ||
| As you're walking to your table, you're passing by. | ||
| And this method of, this idea of cooking over logs, like cooking over fire, some people prefer that. | ||
| And then some people like those crazy broilers where they're gas, but the broiler, it's on top, and you slide the steak in, and it's lowering down. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Is there a difference, and why? | ||
| It really comes down to... | ||
| What your taste preference is. | ||
| Okay, for me, like where I'm at right now, dry age without any type of smoke or wood is more preferable because I really want to taste the dry age. | ||
| When you start getting into the wood fire cooking and you're burning logs that aren't burnt out, I like to cook basically my wood down to charcoal, like to ash, so that it's cleaner. | ||
| Okay, so then you really taste the meat. | ||
| When you start You know, burning unburnt fuel, you know, the logs themselves, it has like these creosotes and different flavor compounds that will get on the meat. | ||
| And it's just, it kind of just like coats your palate. | ||
| So for dry, I like that for more wet age beef. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But for the dry age, I really like cleaner. | ||
| I like the steakhouse broiler. | ||
| I like using a plancha, you know, and that's just like a heated piece of steel. | ||
| It's like, you can do that in your home with a cast iron. | ||
| It's called a plancha? | ||
| Plancha. | ||
| You know, it's just kind of like this flat sheet of steel. | ||
| And it's all about crust development and surface contact. | ||
| So I like to cut the steaks on a saw. | ||
| So it's a perfect line and it's all about contact, direct with the surface. | ||
| It's about the browning of the meat. | ||
| If you're going to get in there and you're going to cook over live wood like that, he's doing it obviously right because he's amazing. | ||
| But when you raise and lower the shelf, like I was saying how I rest it, you can start on the higher level of the heat. | ||
| And then you bring it up higher, the actual grill higher, and it's actually resting while still getting the tickle of heat up there. | ||
| The tickle of heat? | ||
| Yeah, so I imagine the flames won't actually touch the meat. | ||
| It kind of tickles it. | ||
| So it kind of wisps at the bottom of the meat. | ||
| And so the way he's doing it at Bazaar Meats, he's using wet-aged steaks. | ||
| Because that's how you would cook over that kind of... | ||
| I don't know if he's doing it. | ||
| That's my personal preference. | ||
| I mean, I think he does do some aging. | ||
| He does do some aging, I believe, over there. | ||
| But it's just, I've watched YouTube videos on how to cook the perfect steak. | ||
| You can watch three different videos from three different chefs, and there's three different methods. | ||
| Same thing about dry aging, though. | ||
| I mean, all dry aging is not created equal. | ||
| I call it an environmental chamber. | ||
| So think about making cheese in France. | ||
| You say, hey, I ordered goat cheese. | ||
| And you think you'd get one type of goat cheese across the line. | ||
| I'm creating an environment, just like a cheese maker, that's unique to my own. | ||
| I actually have the culture from 15, 16 years ago that I've traveled with. | ||
| Hold on. | ||
| You put culture? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I have like a method. | ||
| I basically take meat that has been aged and I bring those spores, if you will, from that aging meat because, you know, there's a mold on it. | ||
| It's a friendly mold. | ||
| It's a friendly mold. | ||
| Yeah, I like it. | ||
| I don't want to like it. | ||
| I don't want to turn people off to it because this has been... | ||
| I didn't know that you brought your own mold. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just figured you just let it dry age. | |
| It's not as simple as that. | ||
| For me, it's each environment. | ||
| Again, so I get away from... | ||
| Someone can turn around and say, my dry age is incredibly clean at 100 days, 120 days. | ||
| Because I get there slowly. | ||
| My temperature is very low. | ||
| I like to dry age at 32 to 35 degrees. | ||
| I like a higher humidity so I don't dehydrate the meat too soon. | ||
| I like 85 percent. | ||
| Sometimes a little bit lower if I want to pull. | ||
| It really depends. | ||
| Lots of fans. | ||
| How are you bringing this culture in? | ||
| How do you get it to interact with the meat? | ||
| I basically take pieces from the previous dry age room and I bring it To that and so I put it up by the fan and it will circulate spores. | ||
| You put it by the fan. | ||
| How do you do that? | ||
| Well, there's a fan in a cooler, and it's blowing around. | ||
| It's like blowing the... | ||
| So it'll blow the spores around the room. | ||
| So my dry-age has a unique flavor. | ||
| You might try some great guys who are like master purveyors in the Bronx, which is... | ||
| These guys are like my heroes. | ||
| They taught me practically dry-aging. | ||
| They have their own flavors, so their dry-age tastes different. | ||
| Pat LaFried is another New York guy, does amazing dry-aged beef as well. | ||
| You know, his has a different flavor. | ||
| So, you know, for me, that's why I take a lot of pride, even though it's not the most cost-effective thing to carry, you know, $100,000 in inventory. | ||
| But it gives me a unique flavor profile that is my unique selling point for my restaurant. | ||
| So you have these pieces, so like those steaks that we saw in that photograph, you would take one of those dry-aged steaks when it's ready, and then you would trim the pieces off, then you use those pieces, those darkened pieces, which has the spores on it, and that would... | ||
| How do you know how much to put in there? | ||
| I'll put it as much as I can. | ||
| You know, I'm really, I don't want it too, like, clean, clean in there. | ||
| I want it to be an environment. | ||
| So it's like a cave. | ||
| And, you know, I'll put a couple of trays in and then I'm very tactile. | ||
| So I'll touch the meat and I'll feel it and, you know, I'll taste it. | ||
| I'll see where we're at. | ||
| I'm always cutting into a steak. | ||
| It's like a lot like... | ||
| When you say you taste it, you cook it? | ||
| Yeah, like I'll cut off a piece, like how are we looking at 30 days? | ||
| How are we looking at 50 days? | ||
| So each room is different because, you know, I had a dry age room in Vegas and we had, you know, ceilings that were 30, 35 feet, a lot of circulating air. | ||
| It was just, it was just like, had a different flavor profile. | ||
| We were able to age differently. | ||
| 150 days, and that was like our sweet spot. | ||
| And then here in Hollywood, it's a lot less. | ||
| I have a lower ceiling. | ||
| It circulates differently. | ||
| You have to really kind of taste. | ||
| It's not just like, hey, I have dry age. | ||
| Or you go to the supermarket, it's like, oh, you sell dry age? | ||
| Okay, great, I'll take it. | ||
| And if you think that's what it tastes like, it's a good indicator of what it is. | ||
| But if you really want to get down to it, each dry age can taste a lot different. | ||
| That's really weird. | ||
| So it's very experimental in a lot of ways. | ||
| It's constantly moving. | ||
| How long did it take you to dial it in? | ||
| Well, when I first did it, it was really by mistake, particularly the extended age, because you just weren't selling the meat. | ||
| So I had a lot of pieces left back for a long time. | ||
| And I cut into it, and I tasted it, and I was like, whoa, I mean, this is incredible. | ||
| And I was talking to the old-school guys who dry aged, like, oh, you're wasting your money. | ||
| Nobody wants steak over 42 days. | ||
| You know, it's just dehydrating, whatever. | ||
| It's like, no, I think we're onto something. | ||
| You know, there's a big difference here in the flavor. | ||
| And as, you know, we would see like a huge difference, a jump into flavor and like good quality, not like the funky stuff, like the full year. | ||
| That's another level. | ||
| It's very good, though. | ||
| You say funky, and I just want to clarify to people, it is delicious. | ||
| It is delicious. | ||
| But it's unusual. | ||
| It's like you're eating something from Africa. | ||
| Some unusual kudu meat or something like that. | ||
| Some strange game. | ||
| And you don't want to eat too much. | ||
| People want a whole steak. | ||
| I'm like, no, you just want two slices of it. | ||
| Savor it like a fine wine. | ||
| Understand it. | ||
| Get to know it. | ||
| But don't hunker down on it. | ||
| How come you don't want people to hunker down on it? | ||
| Because sometimes too much of a good thing is not good, okay? | ||
| And I say the same thing also for the Japanese Wagyu. | ||
| Like, oh, you see all that fat and the marbleization. | ||
| It's incredibly rich. | ||
| And if you eat it like a Westerner, it's not right. | ||
| It's just, it's too much. | ||
| So certain steaks, certain types of beef, you should be eating only a small amount and appreciating it. | ||
| Anything more, like, you just, it's just, I don't know, it gets me. | ||
| It's too much for me. | ||
| When did people start dry-aging a year? | ||
| Like, when did this really... | ||
| Because this is not something... | ||
| I mean, obviously, I know nothing about restaurants other than that they're great. | ||
| But when I had heard about dry-aging, I would hear, like, 30 days dry-age, 60 days dry-age. | ||
| I never heard of a year. | ||
| Like, is this a new thing? | ||
| You know, they were doing it in Spain for some time, particularly with the older animals like the oxen, you know, animals that are five years, eight years, ten years old. | ||
| And they would age these for long periods of time. | ||
| I was not aware of this when I started doing it, but they were the first people that I heard about it was doing it while I was doing it. | ||
| There was amazing food writer Jeffrey Steingarten who just like... | ||
| Dialed into me and we did a tasting with one of my culinary heroes, Harold McGee, who wrote the incredible book on food and cooking, which is a scientific manual to all chefs around. | ||
| He's an amazing guy. | ||
| And he had put in his book that there's really no difference in flavor. | ||
| When you get to that point. | ||
| And so that later stage. | ||
| So we cook three steaks and we cut a cube out of the center of it. | ||
| And at that point, he says, wait, maybe there is something different. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I mean, nowadays you hear more about it because we're chefs. | ||
| We like to play with things. | ||
| We like to push the limits on things. | ||
| But not many people want to make the commitment because it's so costly to carry the inventory. | ||
| And they're scared to actually do it because if you screw it up... | ||
| You know, you lose all the money. | ||
| So I see more of it now, but back when I was doing it, there really wasn't anybody else pushing the limits. | ||
| Maybe a few people. | ||
| I don't want to say like I was the only one, but, you know, possibly there could have been a few people, but, you know. | ||
| So what's interesting to me about just cuisine and cooking in general is that I didn't think of it until I watched Bourdain's original show, No Reservations. | ||
| I didn't think of it as an art form. | ||
| And then when I watched the show, I was like, look how into cooking this guy is. | ||
| That's one of the things about... | ||
| People being really passionate about something. | ||
| It's incredibly contagious. | ||
| And his passion for cooking and his fascination with different methods that these masters would use and the way he would just... | ||
| You could see it. | ||
| He was so... | ||
| Focused on it and so enthralled by these flavors and these creations that these chefs would make that I realized like, oh, this is an art form. | ||
| It's just an art form that you eat. | ||
| I never thought of it that way. | ||
| I just thought, oh, that place has delicious food. | ||
| This place tastes good. | ||
| And then you go to a really fine restaurant or a fine steakhouse like your place and you go, oh, these people are – they're artists. | ||
| They're artists. | ||
| It balances between art and craft. | ||
| It's like there's a moment in time when – As chefs, we explore it as art, you know, because, you know, you're not going in with any boundaries and you're not going in any preconceived notions of what it should be. | ||
| And that's when cooking is a true art. | ||
| Most of the time, we're doing the craft part, where we figured it out, and then there's a regiment of lining it up to make sure it's consistent, and we pride ourselves in basically that consistency and team gathering around and doing something universal together. | ||
| But the art form for me is, and maintaining, just being curious and inquisitive, has just been my bug from the day I decided to be a chef and For many people, like Bourdain and every other chef that I know of, that's the key, that you know that you'll never learn everything. | ||
| But you keep trying, and there's just like a sea of information that's out there to explore. | ||
| Yeah, he would take you on these journeys to these, like, very strange restaurants in France where, you know, they're on the side of a lake and there's, like, ten customers and a hundred chefs working. | ||
| And they're creating these things, like, with fillet knives and a grape and, like, two or three caviar eggs. | ||
| And then they give it to these people and they're in ecstasy. | ||
| I'm like, what? | ||
| This is so different. | ||
| I almost felt embarrassed when I first started talking to him about this. | ||
| You know what it's like for me? | ||
| I've been a lifelong martial artist, and when some people believe ridiculous things about martial arts, And then you have to kind of, well, that's not really how it works. | ||
| You have to kind of explain to them. | ||
| And then they see it from my perspective and they're like, oh, you've been doing this your whole life. | ||
| This is something you're deeply invested in and you're very passionate about and you care very deeply about the true nature of what martial arts are. | ||
| Well, that's how cooking is to chefs. | ||
| They're all very similar. | ||
| I know people don't like to think of martial arts as an art form. | ||
| That's a great analogy. | ||
| Yeah, but they don't like to think of it as an art form because it hurts people, because it's violent and violence is bad. | ||
| But it is an art form. | ||
| It's just a strange one that it's beautiful to the people that appreciate it, that understand how difficult it is to pull something off and what this incredible dance between these people is. | ||
| On the outside, an ignorant person or a person with a very narrow-minded perspective would say, oh, that's not an art. | ||
| That's violence. | ||
| That's terrible. | ||
| Was it Meryl Streep that said that? | ||
| Wasn't it? | ||
| Yeah, it was. | ||
| It was. | ||
| Like, no, martial arts are not the arts. | ||
| Like, okay, lady. | ||
| Settle down. | ||
| People have their preconceived notions. | ||
| And I had an embarrassing preconceived notion about food. | ||
| And I say embarrassing because... | ||
| It's a great analogy, by the way. | ||
| It is, in many ways. | ||
| And comedy is similar in that sense as well. | ||
| Because people look at comedy like, oh, they're just telling jokes. | ||
| Yes, yes, they are telling jokes, but... | ||
| The process is so labor-intensive. | ||
| There's so much going on, and I think it's like everything. | ||
| So many things, you look at them from the outside, whether it's carpentry or sculpture, you look at it from the outside, and if you have no experience in it, people can dismiss it, and they don't think of it as this passionate art form. | ||
| But now I have a completely different... | ||
| I mean, I became good friends with Bourdain, and I did a show and hung out with him a bunch of times, and I got it then. | ||
| I'm like, okay, this is a different thing than I had this idea, this narrow-minded idea of what food is. | ||
| And then you get to meet other chefs and you meet all these people and you're like, these are these sort of underappreciated artists that are also feeding people. | ||
| He had that ability. | ||
| He had that ability to bridge the gap and to help people understand. | ||
| He schooled me once in trying to understand Japanese cuisine. | ||
| Yeah, you were telling me about that. | ||
| Tell me about it. | ||
| What was that like? | ||
| Well, I was sitting there around the table. | ||
| I was there with him and Emeril. | ||
| It was after an event down in South Beach Food and Wine. | ||
| We're all, as cooks do, all at the end of an event, you know, we're sitting around and we're just kind of reminiscing on things happening, and he was there, I was sitting next to him, and someone brought up the concept of, you know, Japanese cuisine, and I just said... | ||
| Yeah, you know, it's so simple. | ||
| And he just says, yes, but it's so complex. | ||
| And then I just took a step back and he just began to really school me on it. | ||
| And he just had the ability just to really communicate food and connection to community and culture. | ||
| And that for me was a big moment. | ||
| Like I just got to really see him as that person directly. | ||
| I didn't think that sushi was very complex at all, the Japanese food, until I watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi. | ||
| I know, that's it. | ||
| You watch that and you go, oh my god. | ||
| I mean, you just look at the fish and it just starts to curl. | ||
| You know, it's so fresh or they slap the clam and it just like curls up. | ||
| It's like, whoa, that's fresh and the pride and the seasonality and... | ||
| I mean, like, what blew me away, I've been to Japan a couple of times. | ||
| I have this amazing guy. | ||
| He's known as the Tokyo Fixer, Shinji Nohara. | ||
| All the chefs know him. | ||
| If you go to Japan... | ||
| Tokyo Fixer? | ||
| Yeah, he's known as the Tokyo Fixer. | ||
| Why is he a fixer? | ||
| Because he knows all the places in the books, off the books. | ||
| If you wanted to, let's say, just... | ||
| You know, know who, like, produces the best tuna. | ||
| He'll get you to the tuna boat and he'll introduce you to the guy, the main guy. | ||
| But, I mean, these guys who buy the tuna, for example, like, you're seeing them at the market, touching, feeling it, but the best sushi chefs know the actual captains and they know how they're handling the fish and they have a relationship that far before it actually hits the auction. | ||
| I mean, they're in it. | ||
| They're so committed. | ||
| I asked them one day, You know, he was talking about this big tuna auction that they do every year. | ||
| And I said, why would someone pay a million dollars for tuna? | ||
| Like, you know, Western, like, how do you make your money back? | ||
| He's like, no, you know, Japanese, it's considered, you know, an obligation, if you can afford it, to actually be able to, even at a loss, to your customers, because it's almost a duty to do so. | ||
| And that, for me, is profound. | ||
| That's why Japanese chefs, I went there, and I was just like... | ||
| The million dollar tuna thing was explained to me by another chef as a dick waving contest. | ||
| He said it's essentially, you're looking for, it's a prestige thing. | ||
| It's a prestige thing. | ||
| Yeah, like they'll show that they're spending so much money on this tuna, not because it's worth that. | ||
| Oh, it's definitely not. | ||
| Yeah, because that's why it's confusing to people. | ||
| Because people are like, how's a tuna worth a million dollars? | ||
| Well, it's not. | ||
| But culturally, deep down inside of them, it's like it's almost their duty to do it. | ||
| It's not as if, I mean, it's definitely like you could look at it as a show-off thing, but I mean, if you really understand from like Western culture, but in reality there, it's almost like it's a pride thing. | ||
| It's not like, hey, look at me. | ||
| It's really more like, you know, I'm able to provide this for my customers. | ||
| So to me, it's a little bit more beautiful to look at it that way. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, and profound and like even like why I got into making knives for me, It's like it's everything to do with my trips to Japan was because I wanted to, as a chef, to do everything that I can within the cycle of serving the steak on the plate, like up to the point where they cut the meat to have that control on it. | ||
| And then ultimately, whether they like it or not, that's their business. | ||
| But at least I did everything that I could to control it. | ||
| Because even just how you cut the meat has a different impact on how you would taste it. | ||
| Yeah, that's one of the interesting things about your place. | ||
| You make the steak knives. | ||
| When they serve you and they put the forks and the knife down, they tell you, you know, Adam Perry Lang made this steak knife. | ||
| And you're like, oh. | ||
| And I priced it at $950 on one cent. | ||
| Everybody's like, why so much? | ||
| I was like... | ||
| it's priced to be a deterrent. | ||
| It's one cent over the felony threshold. | ||
| What's the felony threshold? | ||
| It's like if you steal something and the value is over $950, it's a felony. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So in the state of California. | ||
| So from my perspective, I don't want to sit there. | ||
| People are idiots sometimes. | ||
| They'll go into the restaurant and they'll just take stuff and they don't realize what And I was like, listen, you know, I know I'm going to have a couple of bad apples in there, but the majority of people really are good people and they're not going to steal things. | ||
| But a good majority will take pepper mills and things, which infuriates us as restaurateurs. | ||
| That's so gross. | ||
| I never thought of that. | ||
| Oh, it's terrible. | ||
| It's terrible what they'll take. | ||
| Meaningful stuff. | ||
| Because you really want to do nice things for your customer. | ||
| Do you catch people taking pepper mills? | ||
| No, I don't put pepper mills on the table. | ||
| I won't even expose myself to it. | ||
| But for the knife, though, we have caught... | ||
| I have one story. | ||
| Only a few people have attempted, and I basically got to the point of pressing charges to get the guy. | ||
| But instead, I found him on Twitter, and I messaged him. | ||
| I was like, listen... | ||
| How do you know who took your knife? | ||
| You know, we know everything. | ||
| We have cameras and we have who the reservation is under. | ||
| So we had cameras all over the restaurant. | ||
| So when we put the knife down, we have a whole system of like knife in, knife out. | ||
| And this guy had slipped in. | ||
| I'm not going to mention his name because at the end of the day, he did the right thing. | ||
| But he had slipped the knife into the baby carriage, into his baby's carriage. | ||
| And I'm like, you mother... | ||
| So I called him very calmly and I said, listen, I don't think you realize what went into those knives. | ||
| I make them, no response, no response. | ||
| And then I reminded him, I said, it's a felony and I'm going to give you until six o'clock today to return the knife. | ||
| And then he realized we were serious. | ||
| He returned the knife and then So he returned it personally? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How awkward. | ||
| I had another guy and he returned it and he just like was pissed off. | ||
| He handed it back and he walked out the door. | ||
| Why is he mad at you? | ||
| Because he stole something. | ||
| I can't figure it. | ||
| Dealing with the general public, I mean, in a sense, this is a lot like comedy clubs. | ||
| Like most people are amazing. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And then you get a few knuckleheads that want to yell out things and interrupt the show. | ||
| You just try not to allow it to penetrate you, to start causing you to not make nice things so your customers enjoy. | ||
| So you try to block that out. | ||
| You just try to give a good experience to people the best that you can. | ||
| Yeah, that's the same thing with comedy. | ||
| You want to make sure that you never have a negative feeling about the audience. | ||
| But some people do develop that that don't understand. | ||
| It's almost like if you read every comment on Twitter, you know, most people are nice, but it only takes 1%. | ||
| Like, I was explaining to my friend Jack, who was on the other day, author Jack Carr. | ||
| And he read some comments. | ||
| He goes, now I know why you don't read the comments. | ||
| I'm like, I told you. | ||
| I go, listen, you just have to think. | ||
| If 1% of the people who are on my Instagram page are assholes, just 1%, that's 92,000 assholes. | ||
| It's insane. | ||
| You have to think of it that way. | ||
| Like, why would you risk your mental well-being and put it in the hand of 92,000 assholes? | ||
| And that's generous. | ||
| One out of 100 people. | ||
| If you went into a room and there's 100 people in there, what are the odds that one of those people is going to be a fucking idiot? | ||
| It's pretty high. | ||
| Well, you've got to think that way times three or four online because of anonymity, because of the fact that people are... | ||
| They don't think they're hurting a person when they say something mean. | ||
| When they look at a restaurant, it's like, oh, these fucking guys, they don't need this knife. | ||
| They just tuck it. | ||
| Or this will look cool and it's almost like there's an entitlement. | ||
| Yes, and oh, this meal was so expensive. | ||
| I'll steal a knife. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, they feel like you are doing great. | ||
| You've got this really nice restaurant on Vine in Hollywood. | ||
| You must be a baller. | ||
| Yeah, they don't get it. | ||
| No. | ||
| Well, hopefully they'll get it if they hear this. | ||
| They probably won't. | ||
| Maybe there's a guy listening that actually stole the knife right now. | ||
| He's like, motherfucker! | ||
| You brought me up! | ||
| We've gotten them back. | ||
| We've gotten them back, the good majority of them. | ||
| So there's a few out there, out in the wild. | ||
| A few out there. | ||
| And you can buy them, too, right? | ||
| Well, you know what? | ||
| I have sold it, but again, I price it to deter because I only have a certain number. | ||
| I think I made 320 on the first run, and then I just made another 500 with my partner. | ||
| He's a master bladesmith, this guy, KC London. | ||
| He's just... | ||
| You know him and I like we're head down and we can literally spend 12 to 14 hours just stamping an insignia into the blade and You know days upon days like thousands of hours of work go into these things and Who else does that? | ||
| Is there any other chefs that make their own knives? | ||
| Not that I really know you got that market cornered I guess so I guess so you know how did you get involved in that like it was that something you thought like hey This would be a great additional touch or were you always fascinated with knife making? | ||
| Well, I've always been fascinated by knives because knives to a chef are an extension of themselves. | ||
| So you can judge a chef just basically on how sharp they are and how they maintain their knives in terms of what type of quality of output they're actually going to do. | ||
| It's a sense of pride. | ||
| So if you're just someone who has a garden and grows a tomato, you're going to take that first tomato. | ||
| You think you're just going to grab any knife from the drawer? | ||
| You're going to get your sharpest knife and you're going to slice into it. | ||
| So like everything we do, it's like, if you're seriously committed to the craft, it's like, you want to make sure your tools are top notch. | ||
| And for me, I've always, you know, always had a knife in my hand. | ||
| But when I sold my business in London, um, I wanted to just take some time, and I got into this concept of wanting just to go that next step, that next level. | ||
| I was fascinated with steel, so I went to the New England School of Metalwork. | ||
| First, we learned how to make steel from iron, and then went through the whole process. | ||
| How long did that take? | ||
| They have these great courses, you know, a week, two weeks, three weeks at a pop. | ||
| So, you know, it's about a year flying back and forth to Maine to attend the school. | ||
| And then that community is like I remember a restaurant community before Food Network got involved. | ||
| And, you know, it's all about craft and sharing information. | ||
| So you can go to these things called hammer-ins, where around the country there'll be an ensemble of maybe like nine to ten, you know, master smiths. | ||
| Who will show like, okay, handle making or, you know, making a dagger or tempering steel, you know, in a certain way. | ||
| And, you know, you learn. | ||
| And I just became fascinated with it. | ||
| Just to actually just... | ||
| Use a power hammer with a 5,000-pound anvil and thin out steel. | ||
| It just puts adrenaline through you. | ||
| It's like physical, like making something and then knowing that you're making something that will last generations if it's maintained. | ||
| I mean, that's powerful stuff. | ||
| You want to see something cool on the end of the table? | ||
| That's a samurai sword from the 1500s. | ||
| Where, where, where? | ||
| Yeah, hold on a second. | ||
| You need to see this. | ||
| I do need to see this. | ||
| I'm into this. | ||
| Oh my gosh. | ||
| Can I take a look? | ||
| Yeah, pull it out. | ||
| Don't cut anybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I won't. | |
| That's a legit samurai sword. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| With papers and everything. | ||
| With the stingray. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know whether the scabbard is original, but the steel, the actual steel is original. | ||
| I'm sure it's been rewrapped. | ||
| Can you imagine that? | ||
| Now look at this steel. | ||
| I mean, this steel is like... | ||
| It's 500 years old. | ||
| That's what's crazy. | ||
| And that's the profound thing. | ||
| I mean, there's something about making something that would last like that. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| No, it's amazing. | ||
| It's an amazing thing to have around. | ||
| And when you pick it up and hold it, it's got weight to it, but it's delicate in the sense that it's thin and elegant, but yet it's designed... | ||
| Can you see the curve in the blade like that? | ||
| And, you know, what's amazing about this is that when they do the quench, in other words, when they're actually putting the sole of the blade into it, the heat treatment. | ||
| So, you know, anybody can, like, pound out and make a shake. | ||
| Well, not anybody, but pretty much anybody who's handy with... | ||
| You know, making things can make what looks like a blade. | ||
| But the true soul of the blade comes through the thermal cycle, the heat treatment. | ||
| That's why, you know, people like, oh, Japanese steel is the best or German steel is the best because there's this whole process that is about aligning the molecular structure and the right type of stack and the type of steel that you do and then hardening it or softening it. | ||
| So if you want a softer blade or You know, that might be more utility or you want a harder blade. | ||
| That might be more brittle but can get really razor sharp. | ||
| That's what determines what the blade is and what it will be. | ||
| And it's that sole of the blade that, like something like this. | ||
| So this curve is actually produced by the quench. | ||
| So after you go through this process and you heat it up and you put it into the water, it actually just blasts. | ||
| It bows up and actually creates its curve. | ||
| And evenly, too, which is incredible. | ||
| That's why these guys are, to me, the epitome of, like, masters. | ||
| These craftsmen that make knives and blades. | ||
| Well, there's always the dopest scenes in movies where someone's making a samurai sword when they're about to go out and kill somebody with it. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| The thing is, the guy goes to the knife master or the sword master and he's pounding on it and the red-hot steel dunking into the fire. | ||
| I went to get a blade made for me in Japan, and I went to this amazing place, Corn Trading in New York, and the owner, she came to me and she says, well, the knife maker would like to have a picture of you. | ||
| While they're making the blade and at that time, I was just like, whoa, this is this before I was making. | ||
| So he wants to look at you while he's making it? | ||
| Yeah, for some reason. | ||
| I said, wow, that's pretty profound. | ||
| You know, I was like, okay, you know, puts your soul, your character into the blade. | ||
| So he wants to think of you as he's making the thing for you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I guess so. | |
| That's cool. | ||
| For me, it was pretty incredible. | ||
| This is amazing. | ||
| Yeah, let me get it out of here before something spills on it. | ||
| Yeah, I always... | ||
| People take pictures with this, and I'll have you take a picture with it at the end of the... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. | |
| See, that's why. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| You got so much cool stuff around here. | ||
| Too much. | ||
| This fucking... | ||
| That's a mess. | ||
| I'm cleaning it up today. | ||
| After this podcast, I've decided I gotta take Donnell Rawlings' black ash candle off. | ||
| I love you, Donnell, but I'm not into this smell every day. | ||
| But, um... | ||
| I want to get back to something you said earlier. | ||
| You said the way restaurants were before the Food Network. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, what happened? | ||
| You know, I think Food Network and food shows in general are a great thing. | ||
| You know, it empowers people to cook, and there's all different levels, and I think it's the greatest thing. | ||
| It also has given us as chefs a platform to do some incredible things, too. | ||
| But there was a different type of motivation between the cooks in the kitchen and a good number of the cooks today. | ||
| So before, there wasn't celebrity involved. | ||
| So you were there for the reason, for the love, the art of it. | ||
| Where as nowadays, I'm not going to say everybody because I cook with and I know there's plenty of people that are very serious about it. | ||
| It's about the craft, the putting in the hours, the repetition that doesn't make sense until all of a sudden you're doing something without thinking about it. | ||
| And that's what it was like really before. | ||
| Everybody who was in the kitchen was there because... | ||
| They loved cooking, not for any reason of celebrity or whatever it is. | ||
| So it really, it did change good, you know, patience. | ||
| Like, so people, like, the progression would be like, oh, you work as a line cook for three to four years, and then, you know, then you're a sous chef for a number of years, and then you're a chef. | ||
| And, you know, there was a progression. | ||
| And then when the whole thing came along, and then it was everybody was like, From culinary school to chef. | ||
| They wanted to jump right into it. | ||
| And do you think there's a significant number of people that are actually getting into cooking to become famous? | ||
| There's something about it, yeah. | ||
| There's an allure. | ||
| I mean, it has a thing. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Not the term. | ||
| Famous is a little bit different. | ||
| I'd say, like, notoriety, in other words. | ||
| They're, like, ready to show, like, hey, I can do this. | ||
| But with cooking, there's a certain number of hours you just cannot avoid. | ||
| You have to put this in. | ||
| You have to have the knife in your hand for thousands and thousands of hours before you really are starting to cook. | ||
| Because it's easy to do a dish, but it's difficult to do a dish and to cook consistently with all the different things getting thrown at you, like this coronavirus thing. | ||
| Like, okay, how do you adapt? | ||
| How are you resilient? | ||
| How can you bounce back? | ||
| How do you understand, like, no matter what, I'm going to get this dish up at 9 o'clock if that customer wants it at 9 o'clock, not anything else? | ||
| I mean, there's... | ||
| So the more that you can get in terms of your toolbox, in terms of the use of the knife, I mean, cooking, I don't think about cooking when I'm doing it. | ||
| It's just only when I step back and reflect and I want to teach somebody, I say, oh, yeah, I do that. | ||
| Oh, I didn't notice that. | ||
| But because all of a sudden your hands start moving and... | ||
| Because it's all about heat. | ||
| So you're like, oh, I have heat on the side of the grill. | ||
| I know it's not on the grill grates, but I'm going to use it to cook the side of the steak. | ||
| I'm going to push it up against there. | ||
| How often do you teach people? | ||
| Anytime somebody asks, I love teaching it. | ||
| I mean, for me, I love to share my knowledge. | ||
| And I mean, I'm at a stage where, you know, it's like martial arts. | ||
| So I did Aikido for a while. | ||
| And what was amazing to me was the learning process for the black belt. | ||
| So you're a white belt, basically, until you're a black belt, pretty much. | ||
| I know there's a brown belt in there, but, you know... | ||
| When you're training, by teaching and explaining and slowing down, you get to reacquaint yourself with something that is so familiar. | ||
| So that movement might be functional, but now you're seeing someone else doing it. | ||
| It causes you to rethink it. | ||
| So when I'm teaching somebody, I'm actually learning. | ||
| Yeah, that happens. | ||
| That's a big part of this process that happens in jujitsu when people start teaching. | ||
| And I've never taught jujitsu, but I've seen it from a lot of my friends that have become teachers. | ||
| All of a sudden, their level jumps way up. | ||
| And there's the only thing that could be attributed to is that they're teaching people. | ||
| So because they're teaching people, they're going over the fine details that you would ordinarily, you just kind of have it in your head. | ||
| Like, you know, when you pass the guard, you put your knee here, you put your foot there. | ||
| It's normal. | ||
| You do it all the time. | ||
| But then when you're teaching someone, it solidifies the important points. | ||
| And almost all the great jujitsu practitioners are also great teachers. | ||
| It's key. | ||
| I totally relate to that correlation for me. | ||
| It gets you to really dial in on the minutiae of details and perfect yourself. | ||
| Well, not perfect yourself, but strive towards perfection. | ||
| The craft of cooking. | ||
| The craft of cooking. | ||
| And again, there's probably a dozen or more different styles, right? | ||
| Everyone's got their own way to sort of prepare things and do things. | ||
| There's definitely a core. | ||
| You'll have different schools of how you approach things. | ||
| You say, hey, one guy does it this way, one guy does it that way. | ||
| But I think the best thing that you can say is that I think about it as like, hey, you have a golf bag and you have all these different irons and woods and all these different things in there. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| The circumstance, the environment, it's going to dictate how you cook. | ||
| Not say, hey, I'm going to cook that steak and I'm going to use a cast iron pan. | ||
| It's like, well, I don't have a cast iron pan. | ||
| So what are you going to do? | ||
| It's like, well, I'm going to cook and I grill. | ||
| It's like, you don't have a grill. | ||
| It's like, okay. | ||
| What do I have? | ||
| It's like, you have this, this, and this. | ||
| So I only have this shitty steel pan here and doing like this. | ||
| You take a look at it and you adapt. | ||
| Is a steel pan shitty? | ||
| No, no, it's great. | ||
| I'm just saying the steel pans are great. | ||
| Blue steel, I use that all the time in the kitchen. | ||
| I like cast iron just in terms of the heat recovery that it has. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| When you have a cast iron pan, it's slow to heat up, but then once it gets to that level, if I was to put a cold steak in it, the cold steak on a different type of pan would bring the temperature of the steel down, and then it has to heat back up. | ||
| And then by that time, water can start to develop underneath the steak, and then it starts boiling or steaming, and that's why you can't get a crust. | ||
| When you put in a steak into a cast iron pan, for example, and you can do a planche or whatever, the rate at which water is repelled is basically it steams or it goes away from the meat. | ||
| And so as a result, it then starts the browning and transforming the flavor rather than it boiling. | ||
| Because if you tasted a boiled piece of meat versus a Piece of meat with a crust, you'd say the piece of meat with a crust is a lot better. | ||
| So there's just something about it. | ||
| So the cast iron pan is basically when you put the steak in, the temperature is not even going to be moved because it's like a freight train. | ||
| It's just moving. | ||
| It's going to keep going. | ||
| But something like a thinner steel pan, if you put something big and cold into it, it's going to drop the temperature of the steel and then it has to recover not only with the steel but the mass of, let's say, a thick steak. | ||
| So it's got to compensate. | ||
| That's really why. | ||
| Now, I have a carbon steel pan that I sear steaks on all the time. | ||
| Most of the time the way I cook is I use a Traeger grill and I cook it very slow. | ||
| So I'll do it at 225 degrees and I do it until I hit an internal temperature about 125 and then I sear the outside. | ||
| That's been the method that I use. | ||
| Well, I'm going to just share my knowledge with you. | ||
| So I, you know, with cooking steaks, the term sear doesn't really, it's a misnomer. | ||
| There's only browning because like searing really only can happen when, you know, you have live flesh, so to speak. | ||
| So it doesn't actually happen like where it sears in or seals in juices. | ||
| What about like ahi tuna when they sear that? | ||
| Well, it's more like browning. | ||
| It's a terminology. | ||
| It's like keep searing. | ||
| I'm not telling you not to think like that. | ||
| No, I understand what you're saying. | ||
| The concept is it's browning. | ||
| It's not searing. | ||
| Bring me back on track. | ||
| Low temperature. | ||
| Okay, so for example, what I would tweak with you is like, I would say go to 265. You can have the same results in a quicker period of time with the same tenderness. | ||
| That ratio of speed is not going to impact your product. | ||
| So at the end of the day, 225, everybody says slow and low, but I'd say a lot of times like a bit hotter and a bit quicker is actually better for the crust development. | ||
| And also for the meat. | ||
| Because for the tenderness of the meat, let's say you have a thick, like a brisket, and it's got all this collagen in it, which is tightly wound protein. | ||
| I think about it as like a sponge that's dehydrated. | ||
| When you throw it on top of the water, it kind of floats, and then all of a sudden it catches and then soaks up the juice. | ||
| So when you're putting it in at that lower temperature, you're heating it up, you're causing the protein to squeeze out the liquid, and then if you're doing it at the right ratio, it's drinking. | ||
| The liquid into the collagen to turn into gelatin, which is that unctuous, beautiful mouthfeel that you'll get from a long-cooked piece of meat. | ||
| Now, if you get a long-cooked piece of meat, like a really well-done brisket, what temperature are you cooking that at? | ||
| Depending on the cooker that I'm using, but 265 is my typical dial-in. | ||
| So 265, you don't ever go lower than that for anything? | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| I can if I want to get sleep, depending on my schedule. | ||
| In other words, I'm going to get relatively the same results, but less crust development from 225, depending on how I handle it. | ||
| Again, there's lots of little variables. | ||
| But by 265, I've found that for brisket, for example, it's the right ratio of that collagen drinking it up to get the gelatin and also the right crust development. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A lot of what I cook is wild game, like most of it. | ||
| Which is a lot leaner. | ||
| And so that's why I would go a little bit hotter. | ||
| Try it the next time. | ||
| You got nothing to lose. | ||
| So 265. Go 265 on it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| And then how do you feel about that method of cooking it slowly and then browning the outside later? | ||
| I'm not a big fan of it because there's all these different compounds that are full. | ||
| It's not like – I mean they call it like a reverse sear. | ||
| That's like the terminology. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| For me, there's nothing like a crust that is created, because what ends up happening is, it's like, you know, if you're cooking it slow, all these juices start to get pulled out, okay? | ||
| And they disappear, like the juice on the bag, make it into a sauce, or it gets evaporated into the air. | ||
| The thing about doing that is, is like, if you're putting it directly in the pan while it's wet, All those juices are bouncing back and then re-adhering to the meat. | ||
| Okay, that's flavor. | ||
| That's flavor you would lose normally. | ||
| Now, the sacrifice is like, sure, you'll get it cooked from end to end perfect. | ||
| Okay, so it'll be pink to pink. | ||
| Okay, it's great. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But if you go back and sear it or brown it after, you miss out on all these compounds, and it's not the same crust. | ||
| I bet you if I gave you a blind taste test using both methods, you would appreciate the other crust over the reverse sear. | ||
| And this is even with wild game, even with the very lean meat? | ||
| That's a different story. | ||
| That's what I cook, though. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's a different story. | ||
| So with the lean meat... | ||
| I would probably say to brown it first and then go slow, the reverse, because there is a gentle way of, like, it's so lean, you want to kind of like slide into home, I kind of say. | ||
| It's like you develop a certain amount of momentum, and for the leaner meats, it's about the rest. | ||
| So you're cooking it, and then you're taking it out, and then you're allowing that heat momentum to kind of carry over. | ||
| Now, I gave you a bunch of elk meat. | ||
| How did you cook it? | ||
| A lot of it just hot and fast so I can really taste it. | ||
| I don't mind a bit of a chew. | ||
| Most people are different. | ||
| For me, I want to taste the meat. | ||
| I want to savor the juices of what that is. | ||
| Elk's my favorite. | ||
| Thank you for that. | ||
| I still have some of it. | ||
| It's fantastic. | ||
| I got more if you want more. | ||
| Oh, I'll take it. | ||
| That's the best. | ||
| Well, I want to try some of the way you cook it. | ||
| I want to have you cook some of that elk. | ||
| I'd love to do that. | ||
| Yeah, we've got to make that happen one of these days. | ||
| I'd love to see your method and what the difference is. | ||
| I learned how to do it from Chad Ward. | ||
| He's a world champion barbecue guy. | ||
| Whiskey Bent Barbecue on Instagram. | ||
| Is it BBQ? Whiskey Bent BBQ, I think. | ||
| Chad's a great guy, and I've been with him in camp on several hunting trips where he's cooked for Traeger. | ||
| Traeger will hire him to come and cook for us, and it's incredible. | ||
| And that's the method that I learned from him is that reverse sear method. | ||
| And it's incredible. | ||
| I mean, you can go to all different chefs and they'll get to the same place taking different paths and they'll get there. | ||
| For me, it's like fishing. | ||
| You know, it's like, which fly? | ||
| Like, you know, which fly do you choose? | ||
| Like, fine, you know, whatever the hatch is. | ||
| But it's oftentimes, it's the fly that you believe in most that is going to catch the fish. | ||
| I mean, okay, I'm drawing a terrible analogy here. | ||
| I know what you're saying. | ||
| Confidence that you have in it. | ||
| Yeah, because confidence, you're going to fish it harder, you're going to believe in it, and, you know, you embrace it. | ||
| And a lot of that... | ||
| It has to do with success in cooking. | ||
| You have to believe in what you're doing. | ||
| Obviously, there's some metrics involved. | ||
| But a master like that guy, for example, I can't refute it. | ||
| At the end of the day, it's fantastic. | ||
| I get there a different way. | ||
| Maybe there's subtle differences. | ||
| Maybe mine's better. | ||
| Maybe it's not. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| Well, I don't even think better is the way to put it. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| They're different. | ||
| And what do you prefer? | ||
| How do you feel about sous vide? | ||
| I think it has its place, but it's not the answer. | ||
| You know, for me, you know, certain types of proteins like shellfish, it's a godsend. | ||
| Shellfish? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Lobster tails or shrimp or anything like that. | ||
| Because the protein there, it's so delicate. | ||
| And if you can go slow, like Thomas Keller has a fantastic recipe, butter poaching lobster tails in sous vide. | ||
| And it just cooks it so that it's super tender and it's not tough. | ||
| Oh, so you vacuum seal it with the butter? | ||
| With the butter. | ||
| And some aromatics. | ||
| I want to cook that right now. | ||
| That sounds incredible. | ||
| And then take it out. | ||
| You can kind of like toast it on the grill lightly or put it in a pan. | ||
| It's something else. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| My friend Forrest Galante, he's a biologist and he goes off of Santa Barbara. | ||
| He goes out there and catches him. | ||
| So you've never done it with the butter and the... | ||
| No, no, I've never done it sous vide. | ||
| It's going to change your life. | ||
| Yeah, I've only done it on a grill. | ||
| I've only done it when it was delicious. | ||
| He gave me four lobster tails that he captured himself. | ||
| They were delicious. | ||
| But I cooked them on a grill. | ||
| I just followed a recipe that I found with butter and paprika and a couple different things. | ||
| Yeah, next time put that in a bag, seal it, follow the time sequence, take it out and then kiss it on the grill. | ||
| So what other shellfish is good? | ||
| Is scallops good? | ||
| Scallops is good. | ||
| Good with sous-vide, but for me, scallops, particularly if they're fresh, I'd rather just cook them in a pan. | ||
| There's something about that particular cell structure in the scallop that I want just charred in a pan and still just almost a bit raw. | ||
| There's a sweet spot with scallops, right? | ||
| Yeah, there's such a sweet spot. | ||
| And once you cross the line, it's just terrible. | ||
| Yeah, they get tough and weird and you kind of ruin it. | ||
| It's terrible. | ||
| How do you know when they're ready? | ||
| Well, for me, it's a feel. | ||
| And, you know, you want to kind of feel it so that, you know, when you touch it, it doesn't feel raw, but it starts to give it a slight spring, and then you pull it. | ||
| And then, like I said earlier, it's like you kind of like slide into home. | ||
| You let that residual heat and that temperature flow. | ||
| Kind of slowed down. | ||
| A lot of times, if you're going a bit fast, you take it and then you have some cold melted butter, not too cold, still a little bit liquid, and you cook it and then you just dunk it right into the butter and it just arrests the cooking. | ||
| And then you have it there and then the guests come and then all you have to do is just heat it up a little bit and then it goes. | ||
| It's not, though. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| But, I mean, it's like you've got to dial it in. | ||
| It depends on what you want, the end result. | ||
| So, you have guests coming over. | ||
| You want to enjoy your time with them. | ||
| You figure out little tricks, what you can get away with and what you can do. | ||
| My friend Tom Papa, who you met earlier, who's getting tested for COVID along with you, when he has been in here before, he brings this homemade sourdough bread that's just sensational. | ||
| I'm not a bread guy. | ||
| I don't eat a lot of bread. | ||
| I eat very little of it, in fact, especially now. | ||
| But when I eat his, like, my God, it's so good. | ||
| And he keeps saying, I'm getting better every time I do it. | ||
| I'm like, it's fucking bread. | ||
| No. | ||
| Are you getting better? | ||
| No, he's getting better. | ||
|
unidentified
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I get it. | |
| It's crazy. | ||
| I'm just being an asshole. | ||
| I know. | ||
| But he's my friend. | ||
| I'm just fucking around. | ||
| But it's similar in a lot of ways to your dry aging, too, because he has this starter, which is a living thing. | ||
| And his starter is, I don't know how many years old. | ||
| It's old as fuck, though. | ||
| But he's been using this same starter that he got from somebody else. | ||
| And just... | ||
| It brings soul to it. | ||
| It brings soul to the food for me. | ||
| And that connection that you have to the food is going to also make you care about it more while you cook it. | ||
| And it's not just a commodity where, okay, what are me 16 steaks in a box and bring it in? | ||
| I mean, you can push out food like that. | ||
| There's a place for that in this world. | ||
| Well, what I'm really hoping, really hoping, is that some sort of a rapid test for COVID, not even like the 15 minute one that we came, because I heard something about some saliva test that they're trying to develop that's extremely rapid. | ||
| That would be amazing if you could just test people right before they come into your restaurant and no one has to worry about shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We're gearing up for what the new world is going to be. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Temperature. | ||
| Everybody gets their temperature taken. | ||
| But that's not good enough. | ||
| See, the temperature thing is not good enough because if you're asymptomatic but you're still spreading it, why are we pretending? | ||
| That's avoiding science. | ||
| We need to find out whether or not people actually have it. | ||
| This temperature thing is just whether or not you're sick. | ||
| I know. | ||
| It doesn't mean you don't have it if your temperature is low. | ||
| It's real weird. | ||
| And that's what's going to be mandated on us. | ||
| I mean, there's a certain series of things that we're going to have to do. | ||
| Nobody knows for sure or whatnot, but who knows? | ||
| Well, at a certain point in time, I think we really need to make a decision as to whether or not we're just going to allow this to take over our world or whether we're going to do what we can do to protect the sick. | ||
| You know, if you're in contact with people that have a weakened immune system, you're gonna have to have a different life than someone who doesn't. | ||
| If you're a person with a weakened immune system, you're gonna have a different life. | ||
| If you're an older person, you're gonna have to have a different life. | ||
| But for the vast majority of us, we're gonna have to give people the freedom to make choices. | ||
| And to do what they want to do with their own life and their own health. | ||
| If you're giving people the freedom to eat terrible food, look, heart attacks are killing people as quickly as anything, right? | ||
| Cancer is killing people as quickly as anything. | ||
| Cigarettes kill a half a million people a year. | ||
| There's no government mandate. | ||
| It's trying to get people to stop smoking cigarettes. | ||
| In fact, there's not a single word ever spoken about it in presidential campaigns, in governor campaigns, congressional campaigns. | ||
| No one's out there trying to get people to stop smoking cigarettes, but yet it's killing a half a million people every year in this country alone. | ||
| We're so strange, and I understand. | ||
| Cigarettes is a choice in infectious diseases or not. | ||
| We're worried about protecting people who have these compromised immune systems. | ||
| But it's not most people. | ||
| The vast majority of people that are going to get this, it's not going to be fatal. | ||
| We have to figure out how to protect the people that are high risk. | ||
| But to quarantine the whole country, it just seems like maybe it was a good move to do initially, but we can't sustain that. | ||
| So now we have to figure out how to move forward. | ||
| And there's all these protests all over California now. | ||
| I'm sure you've seen it. | ||
| In Orange County and Huntington Beach, and there's counties in Northern California that are like, we're opening up everything. | ||
| We're going to open up restaurants. | ||
| We're opening up bars. | ||
| We're going back to business. | ||
| Texas is basically back to business. | ||
| Montana is doing the same, and they have a modified approach to dealing this, and we're going to have to figure it out on the long way. | ||
| But I just don't want us to lose... | ||
| I don't want us to lose any people, but I certainly don't want us to lose restaurants either. | ||
| I don't want us to lose bars. | ||
| I don't want us to lose comedy clubs. | ||
| I don't want us to lose small businesses that are crippled by this. | ||
| What is the world even going to look like? | ||
| I mean, here we are, like, you know, you talk about a comedy club. | ||
| Like, how do you even, like, okay, six feet apart and then there's a certain energy in the room. | ||
| Like, what type of world do we have, you know, in front of us the way it's slated right now? | ||
| I don't even know. | ||
| What kind of government overreach are we going to have where people are going to come in and police this? | ||
| There's no real science to that either, by the way. | ||
| They have a bunch of people jammed into a room whether six feet apart or not. | ||
| You're touching things. | ||
| You're breathing on each other. | ||
| I mean, I don't... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think you should allow people to do what they want to do. | ||
| You know, if it gets to a certain point where we have some sort of a viable cure or a treatment, like there's this... | ||
| What is that stuff called again? | ||
| This antiviral medication that Dr. Fauci has been... | ||
| Remdesivir. | ||
| Yeah, remdesivir. | ||
| How do you say it? | ||
| I mean, boy... | ||
| We're hoping for that, right? | ||
| We're hoping that there's some sort of a treatment where it's not a death sentence for people even with immune compromised systems. | ||
| So, I mean, I just, I feel so bad for people like you and for all the people out there that own these amazing restaurants that it's one of my favorite things to do is to go to a nice restaurant. | ||
| And for me to go to work. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It'd be such a shame if because of this pandemic, all that goes away. | ||
| I mean, and what kind of a buildup are we looking at to try to bring those places back? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, I don't have the answers. | ||
| You know, for me... | ||
| What can be done if you had a magic wand? | ||
| What would you do? | ||
| If someone said, Adam, fix this. | ||
| It's difficult for me because, you know, I hear your point, but I have just such great empathy for, you know, people that would get sick just by someone else's negligence. | ||
| And for me, it's a bit of a tussle here because, you know, I want to just, you know, on one hand, you have like an economy that is just tanking and businesses that are going to go out of, you know, business. | ||
| But then on the other hand, you know, you have... | ||
| Some people that are defenseless, some people that look healthy, fantastic, like a friend, 45 years old, goes in, and they're on a ventilator, and it's just like you can't give the answers. | ||
| I don't know if I'm even prepared to give you a summary on it. | ||
| I haven't formulated in my brain the way that I've just been coping, and that's all. | ||
| I'm just trying to hold on. | ||
| For me, I'm just trying to put faith in the fact that people have to eat and people like you really want to have restaurants around. | ||
| And in the end, we're going to find our way. | ||
| And the only way I know to get through this is just to head down and work and be really helpful to people that are in need and be there for the community and feed them. | ||
| But outside of that, I I don't know. | ||
| God, like if I had the... | ||
| I don't know how to answer you. | ||
| Yeah, nobody knows. | ||
| That's what's crazy. | ||
| Even if I was in control, I mean, you know, because I don't want people to die unnecessarily by people's negligence. | ||
| But on the other hand, I just don't know. | ||
| Well, it's such an incredibly messy situation with no clear-cut answer because of the fact that you do have these people that are seemingly healthy, 35-year-old people that are getting it and dying. | ||
| And it doesn't make sense. | ||
| And then you have, you know, you hear, oh, guy, World War II veteran, 102 years old, beats COVID. You know, like, you see that, too. | ||
| So it's like, what... | ||
| How do I think about this? | ||
| Do I think about it like the common cold? | ||
| Do I think about it like the flu? | ||
| Do I think about it like some new thing? | ||
| I mean, everyone is unsure, and that's what makes it so strange. | ||
| I think the key is for us to get a vaccine as quick as possible so that we can get it, at least have some type of defense for this. | ||
| And I don't know how long that's going to take. | ||
| People are talking a ridiculous amount of time, but... | ||
| Well, it takes a long time to develop a vaccine correctly. | ||
| I mean, they're going through a bunch of trials right now. | ||
| We've talked about it before. | ||
| There's several ongoing, including ones with human beings that they're testing the vaccine on. | ||
| There was a woman in Seattle. | ||
| She was the first ever person to receive this coronavirus vaccine. | ||
| They did a story on her and they're monitoring her. | ||
| Because that's the only way for us to be sure. | ||
| I mean, because responsibly. | ||
| I mean, even just people coming into the restaurant. | ||
| Like, don't get me wrong. | ||
| I want the business. | ||
| I want to have a bar that's bustling. | ||
| I want to have a vibe. | ||
| I want people to be happy, well-fed, enjoy themselves. | ||
| Right, not be nervous. | ||
| Not be nervous. | ||
| Someone coughs and everybody freaks out. | ||
| Yeah, servers have masks on. | ||
| So now, all of a sudden, we can't have music because people can't hear the server. | ||
| And there's... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Nobody used to give a shit. | ||
| They would shake hands. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| You see people shake hands in a movie now, and you're like, oh, what are you doing? | ||
| I know. | ||
| You just get twitchy about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It happened so quickly, too. | ||
| That's what's weird. | ||
| The whole world shifted so rapidly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And people like you are the ones, I mean, obviously the people that get hit the hardest of the people, A, with the disease and B, that work with people with the disease, right? | ||
| The people that have the disease and then the first responders and hospital workers and all the different people that work to help those people, they're the most devastated by this. | ||
| But there are so many small businesses right now that are in this position that you're in where there's so much uncertainty. | ||
| The key is going to be the rent game. | ||
| I mean, at the end of the day, for a lot of these business, that's the looming factor, is being on the hook. | ||
| Not only just to make rent the following month with a compromised 50% occupancy, if you can imagine. | ||
| If you're paying rent for that, you have a model in terms of how much income. | ||
| Someone brought out the possibility of instead of forgiving the rent, taking the rent and putting it on the back end of it. | ||
| So right now, essentially, for the three months, you don't need to pay the rent, but you'll be at on three months to the end of your lease. | ||
| That, for me, makes sense. | ||
| But for us to turn around and work at 10%, 15% capacity and then all of a sudden get a bill for six figures, say, okay, you owe this. | ||
| So who's going to fill my shoes? | ||
| So if I can't make it at my location, who's going to come along and take on that rent anyway? | ||
| Nobody's going to do it. | ||
| So they're stuck. | ||
| We're stuck. | ||
| What are we going to do? | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's almost like the deficit that gets established is insurmountable for someone to come on and start from scratch. | ||
| How much... | ||
| I mean, you started that restaurant how long ago? | ||
| We have a two-year anniversary and I guess it's in four days. | ||
| So I must have found out about it right after you opened. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How long did it take to prepare to open up that restaurant? | ||
| God, if you want to include looking for a space and trying to find the right location, it's a couple of years. | ||
| So a couple years of preparation and then how long does it take to actually develop the space and set it up correctly? | ||
| What was it before you guys were there? | ||
| It was an empty space. | ||
| I mean, it was a project, you know, built from scratch. | ||
| So, you know, going through just the permitting process in L.A. and just going through everything. | ||
| You know, you have to hire so many consultants and people in between to get things through. | ||
| It's a lot different than New York. | ||
| So, I mean, for us, we were delayed, like every project is delayed. | ||
| I mean, it took us over a year to build it out. | ||
| And, you know, you're just like, let's open already, because each day that passes, you know, you're losing money. | ||
| And when you do something like this, were you working as a chef in another place while you were doing this? | ||
| No. | ||
| I was just basically living off of the proceeds from the sale of my business that I had in London and other projects. | ||
| And you just kind of like, as an entrepreneur, you're just putting it into the restaurant, hoping it opens as quick as you can, and then you have your cash flow. | ||
| God, the fucking opening up a business like that must be so insanely stressful. | ||
| Yeah, because especially not inheriting an existing restaurant. | ||
| For me, it's like, wow, I really believe in the area. | ||
| I love Hollywood and Vine. | ||
| It gave me a certain activity in the area. | ||
| It gave me a New York vibe. | ||
| I really love the energy. | ||
| Yeah, so I love the historic building. | ||
| It was built in 1923. It was LA's first skyscraper. | ||
| You know, it was a whole story. | ||
| Like as chefs and restaurateurs, we get romantic about it. | ||
| We get connected to the story, to what it is. | ||
| And sometimes it overrides the sensibility of, you know, building it out. | ||
| But, you know, you invest in it and you want it to work out and it works out. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| But it's a lot of work and it's a long road to get there. | ||
| That whole area seemed before this like it was experiencing a resurgence. | ||
| Like it was like super shady just about 10 years ago. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A lot of development, you know, I think that over the course of like the past, like within five years and two years, like six billion in development of buildings and hotels. | ||
| And there's a revitalization project that's taking place on Hollywood Boulevard that's going to extend the sidewalks and make it almost prominent on like. | ||
| And, you know, I think that, you know, If any place in L.A. should be that kind of place, it should be there. | ||
| I mean, I saw the revitalization in Times Square, for example. | ||
| You know, as a kid, like, don't walk down the street and don't go there. | ||
| And now it's Disney, you know. | ||
| It's a whole other world. | ||
| It's so weird there now. | ||
| Well, now it's really weird. | ||
| But before the pandemic, it was... | ||
| It's like it became a mall. | ||
| It became a mall. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| And, you know... | ||
| It was the dirtiest place in all of New York. | ||
| It was horrible. | ||
| I've only been there a couple of times back in the day, back in the 90s before it got cleaned up. | ||
| But I remember it was not a place I wanted to stop. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| 70s and 80s, I remember my dad sitting down and was like, okay, you don't walk down the street and you always look as if you're carrying something. | ||
| You always look like you walk as if you're carrying a knife or something. | ||
| This is a 12, 13-year-old kid, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Oh my god. | ||
| How do you walk like you're carrying a knife? | ||
| Really confident, like, that you can handle yourself and, you know, and not, you know, not look like a victim. | ||
| Remember the thing they would do in the movies where a guy would pretend to have a knife or pretend to have a gun in his pocket? | ||
| Over a scarf. | ||
| Yeah, nobody does that anymore. | ||
| Like, to have the gun in the pocket move? | ||
| That was, that sort of, that went away with quicksand. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, people start talking about those things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| When you first came out here, was that the first place that you opened? | ||
| Have you had a restaurant in LA before? | ||
| No, I did a series of pop-ups. | ||
| So for me, there was a huge lot by Jimmy Kimmel's show and I basically took a 5,000 square foot space and I built it out. | ||
| I have You know, a whole barbecue trailer on a tractor trailer. | ||
| So I have a 1,000-gallon propane tank that was custom-welded by Aaron Franklin in Austin. | ||
| He's amazing. | ||
| One of the top, top... | ||
| Franklin's Barbecue, that guy? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Top barbecue or top fabricator. | ||
| He's got some great YouTube videos. | ||
| Oh, he's tremendous. | ||
| And, you know, aside from, like... | ||
| The videos in terms of teaching people. | ||
| He's just a great down-to-earth guy. | ||
| He's fantastic. | ||
|
unidentified
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Seems like it. | |
| Yeah, he's tremendous. | ||
| So I just created just kind of like an homage to barbecue, to doing it right. | ||
| I had a little Airstream. | ||
| I slept in the parking lot cooking it overnight, served only lunch. | ||
| You know, everybody got the same thing. | ||
| So I did that for about four years before I opened up the restaurant. | ||
| How do you know Jimmy? | ||
| I did a show back in 2008. We hit it off right away. | ||
| And after the show, we were like, hey, you want a barbecue? | ||
| So then we ended up hanging out the weekend. | ||
| And he's into fly fishing. | ||
| We're into the same stuff. | ||
| We just became great friends. | ||
| So you actually are into fly fishing. | ||
| So you're talking about it not just as an analogy. | ||
| Oh, I'm obsessed with it. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Where do you go? | ||
| I'm obsessed with it. | ||
| Anywhere and anywhere, but a good majority of the places, places that I love, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming. | ||
| Are you one of those catch-and-release guys? | ||
| Absolutely, 100%. | ||
| How weird is that, though? | ||
| It's not if you look at it as just a system and environment. | ||
| We talk about this process thing. | ||
| It's like fly fishing. | ||
| It's the one thing you can invest your time in and you can do into a very old age. | ||
| So if you're lifting weights, there's a certain point where you're just going to stop. | ||
| But fly fishing, you can really invest your time into. | ||
| And there's just something about all the different facets of it that are absolutely amazing. | ||
| Gosh, I lost my track from thinking about it. | ||
| Well, I did a lot of fly fishing when I was a kid. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Where did you go? | ||
| Boston. | ||
| I mostly did it on ponds and lakes. | ||
| So like largemouth bass and stuff? | ||
| Oh, cool. | ||
| Yeah, I did a lot of fishing, but I did a lot of fly fishing as well. | ||
| How much better, though, is the take on a popper, on a fly rod of a largemouth bass, you know? | ||
| It's fun, but I also like topwater baits with a casting rod, a casting reel, a spinning tackle. | ||
| I like a lot of different fishing. | ||
| But fly fishing is for people who think fishing is too easy. | ||
| No, okay, this is what you had asked me to say, the catch and release thing. | ||
| So it's kind of like creating a sustainable culture and environment that gets passed on for generations. | ||
| Because there's so much more than just catching the fish. | ||
| It's that moment in time when you completely block out, you turn your phones off, or most of the time you're out of range. | ||
| You're with a fishing buddy, and you're almost like parallel playing, and you're sitting there, and you focus on a certain riff in the water, and you start casting to it, and you start figuring out what's going on. | ||
| And there's just some real beauty in the whole process of it that... | ||
| To me, it's like shooting an elk with a suction cup at the end of the arrow and the elk runs off like, I got him! | ||
| He's running off with a suction cup arrow that's going to drop off and he's going to be unharmed. | ||
| It's just weird. | ||
| I have done catch and release before. | ||
| I just state that. | ||
| But when I think about it, when I spend time alone thinking about it, I'm like, why am I doing this? | ||
| I'm putting a hook through this fucking fish's head. | ||
| Why don't I just leave that poor fish alone unless I want to eat him? | ||
| I like catching fish and then eating them. | ||
| That's my favorite thing to do. | ||
| So maybe I should just stick to that. | ||
| Well, maybe. | ||
| For me, trout doesn't really eat that well. | ||
| What doesn't eat well? | ||
| Trout doesn't eat well. | ||
| How dare you? | ||
| It doesn't. | ||
| Who are you? | ||
| You're a chef. | ||
| Yeah, no, it's true. | ||
| How can you say such a thing? | ||
| Don't you think there's a method to cook trout perfectly where it's delicious? | ||
| I've had trout in restaurants before, and it was excellent. | ||
| I'm not saying it's not delicious, but I am saying that there's so many other fish out there. | ||
| That are better. | ||
| That are better, and most of the fish I like to eat more rare and raw. | ||
| For me, it's more flavor. | ||
| But the trout for me, I don't know, like at this point, it's like a sacrilege to kill a trout. | ||
| I mean, I just identify with it, just that whole process. | ||
| Well, trout tastes better than largemouth bass. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| And I've caught and released largemouth bass before. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, because they're in a pond and it's this stagnant water. | ||
| It's swampy. | ||
| I've tasted them. | ||
| It is weird that, you know, that is a factor, the swampy water. | ||
| Because smallmouth bass, I've eaten, it tastes much better. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I liken it the same thing to my dry age room with that concept is that, you know, if you don't have that free-flowing air and that kind of that oxygen in the room, it has an impact on flavor. | ||
| If you have like a swampy, wet environment, it's going to impact the beef. | ||
| I think about that all the time. | ||
| But here's the monkey wrench in that theory. | ||
| Catfish. | ||
| Catfish is delicious. | ||
| It's delicious, but if you have a catfish from a pond, it's not as delicious. | ||
| So like river catfish is what you want because it's flowing water? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Probably. | |
| I mean, I've had catfish that is just absolutely phenomenal, but I've also had catfish that was kind of muddy. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| And there's different methods that people use to try to get rid of that muddy. | ||
| I've seen people soak them in milk. | ||
| I've heard people even soaking them in Coca-Cola, which is really weird. | ||
| I've never heard that. | ||
| I've heard milk. | ||
| I've heard buttermilk breaks it down a little bit. | ||
| But then again, if you're going to fry anything with buttermilk and crust, then you could have cardboard in there. | ||
| It tastes good. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| It's like the spices and the crust is what you're eating more than the actual flavor of the flesh itself. | ||
| Yeah, last time I entertained fly-fishing, I haven't done it in years, but last time I entertained it, I was with my family. | ||
| We were in Montana. | ||
| We were taking a whitewater rafting trip down the Gallatin River, which is really fun. | ||
| But as we're going there, there was all these guys that were fly-fishing, and they seemed like the most peaceful people in the world. | ||
| Just casting and just... | ||
| Slowly manipulating this and then they were catching these these trout and then just gently catching them and then releasing them And we have a group of guys that we do this with. | ||
| We travel around. | ||
| There's maybe about eight to ten of us where we'll go and we'll go on a trip together. | ||
| Jimmy Kimmel does this with you? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, he is obsessed with fly fishing. | ||
| We are both. | ||
| It's just a whole journey. | ||
| We log the trips. | ||
| We talk about what was caught. | ||
| Do you rather tie your own flies? | ||
| Um, I've done it, but, um, I don't do it now. | ||
| I mean, with the restaurant, the way it is, you know, it's, it's always just so time consuming and now that they make such beautiful patterns, but there is maybe the next level. | ||
| Like when I retire, quote unquote, you know, like delve into, I have like a whole mailbox desk with all like the hackle and the everything there, but it's just sitting there. | ||
| You know how you talk about how making your own knives is like another level. | ||
| I would imagine that tying your own fly and then catching like a large trout. | ||
| It's that whole process to lead up to. | ||
| You have a pattern or it's even just like, what are they eating? | ||
| Seeing what's hatching coming off and matching the hatch. | ||
| The temperature of the water, the water levels, the speed. | ||
| Like the first thing we check before we go on a trip is, What are the water levels? | ||
| What's the water flow like? | ||
| Because if it's going too fast, the trout are getting all the dirt, everything hitting them in the face. | ||
| But there's a certain level where you look for where it's best for... | ||
| So it's always like, okay, what are the conditions like? | ||
| You go through it. | ||
| So it's like a whole process before the lead-in. | ||
| How did you start? | ||
| I've always loved fishing like any kind, deep sea, anything as a kid. | ||
| It was my escape since I was a little kid. | ||
| But I think that I always looked at fly fishing as the higher level. | ||
| I always aspired. | ||
| I remember being on the Delaware River and I was at camp and there was a guy just underneath a bridge and he just kind of picked up... | ||
| 20, 30 yards of line. | ||
| He just laid it down and I was up at high level and I just saw the fish come up and bite it. | ||
| And I was just like, I was just like, whoa, you know, just like blew me away. | ||
| And then from that point on, I always wanted to. | ||
| And then I bought my first fly rod and, um, they always remember your, you know, you always remember your first fly rod. | ||
| I still have it. | ||
| And it just started the obsession there. | ||
| There's just something about the connection to the fish and the whole thing as opposed to just kind of like going on a boat and trolling and waiting for them to strike. | ||
| Like this is more like hunting. | ||
| What you're doing is it's like you're trying to find the location of the fish and then you have to place the fly and you have to like let it drift without any drag and it's like this combination of skill and intuition and And hunting, that's the excitement, whereas just catching and throwing meat in the thing, okay, I mean, I've done it and I still do it. | ||
| I like being on the water, but fly fishing is just like this higher level thing. | ||
| Do you do any kind of fishing with lures other than fly fishing? | ||
| Do you ever, like... | ||
| Not really. | ||
| And I can't even – like there's so much social pressure amongst my group anyway because they get on me because most of the guys are dry – like Jimmy is like dry fly only. | ||
| Like even if like no fish – We should explain dry flies or flies that float on the surface. | ||
| Float on the surface. | ||
| It's like the epitome of like delicate presentation. | ||
| And then underneath, you can – Basically you follow like the life cycle of an insect. | ||
| So the eggs go to the bottom and then the larva comes up and it kind of floats to the surface and then it pops open and it flies away. | ||
| Most of the fish eat all the food that's subsurface, so before it even gets to the surface. | ||
| So their eyes are like straight down. | ||
| When the conditions are right, The trout are looking up because the hatch happens. | ||
| So that's when all the bugs are coming up. | ||
| And the take is you see the fish and it's more dramatic. | ||
| Jimmy is like straight up dry fly fisherman. | ||
| And it all comes from one of our mentors in this is Huey Lewis. | ||
| Huey Lewis in the news? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Really? | ||
| He's one of our group. | ||
| Hip to be square Huey Lewis? | ||
| Yep, 100%. | ||
| He lives in Montana and he is like, we talk about every year fishing on the Bitterroot for the Swallow Hatch, which is a certain kind of almost like a salmon fly. | ||
| It's very large. | ||
| And when these things come up and hatch, like fish are huge and they're hitting and jumping out of the water. | ||
| It's very dramatic. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And does everybody catch and release or does any, do you ever run into people that catch them and cook them? | ||
| Not in our group. | ||
| It's very looked down upon? | ||
| Huge. | ||
| I mean, even me, they tease me because if they're not biting on the flies, I'll drop a bead head, which is underneath the fly. | ||
| And so it's kind of like, they call it bobber fishing. | ||
| You're cheating? | ||
| Cheating. | ||
| They call it down and dirty, as opposed to on the surface. | ||
| That's so silly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Isn't it crazy? | ||
| Sometimes I just want to see a fish at the end. | ||
| Listen, there's bow hunters. | ||
| You know, I bow hunt and there's bow hunters that also rifle hunt. | ||
| And then there's bow hunters that look at rifle hunters like it's like legalized poaching. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Like, what are you doing? | ||
| You're using a rifle on an animal? | ||
| Same thing. | ||
| But then there's other people that have a really good ethical argument for that. | ||
| Like, hey, if I am at 200 yards and I see an elk or a deer and I squeeze that trigger, that is a dead animal 100% of the time. | ||
| It's a huge responsibility. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not 100%. | |
| It's not even 100%, but it's very high 90s. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's a huge responsibility for the animal. | ||
| I mean, you want the animal just to not suffer. | ||
| Well, it's also... | ||
| There's something about the difficulty factor of bow hunting. | ||
| It's very effective when the arrow hits the animal. | ||
| The animals die like... | ||
| They could die as quick, if not quicker, than a rifle with a well-placed arrow because they bleed so quickly. | ||
| It goes through the vitals and they're done in seconds. | ||
| It's harder to do, and it requires an immense amount of discipline and dedication. | ||
| And I'm sure fly fishing requires some, but with bow hunting, you literally have to practice every day. | ||
| I mean, you think you saw in the back, I have an archery range in the garage back there where you see there's a 45-yard range, and I shoot arrows every day. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| I have a bow, too. | ||
| I've never gone hunting. | ||
| P.S.C. Oh, I have a P.S.C. Yeah, it's beautiful. | ||
| It's a great bow. | ||
| I went down with my friend, Glenn Jonas. | ||
| He took me down. | ||
| He's a hunter. | ||
| He's like, this is what you get, and I got it. | ||
| And I don't get enough practice in. | ||
| I've never gone hunting with it. | ||
| Yeah, it's not something I recommend. | ||
| I wanted to, though. | ||
| I have friends that want to do it. | ||
| They're like, I want to go bow hunting with you. | ||
| I'm like, no, you don't. | ||
| If you did, you'd be out there practicing every day. | ||
| It's a thing that once you realize what's at stake, how difficult it is to do, how much respect you have to have for the art of archery, and how much effort has to be put into the discipline. | ||
| Most people don't want to do that. | ||
| If you really want to hunt your own meat, and this is one of the things that's come up during this pandemic, because people are really scared about the food supply, and they're scared about not having food in their home that they can rely upon. | ||
| And also, before that, there was this whole thing about gathering organic meat. | ||
| People were worried about... | ||
| The source of the meat. | ||
| They were worried about animals that weren't treated correctly and factory farming and all the different things that people should be concerned about. | ||
| And the ultimate solution to that is get an animal that's in the wild. | ||
| This animal's been living the way they've been living for hundreds of thousands of years. | ||
| And you stealthily make your way through their world, get yourself into a position, and then through hard work and dedication and understanding, take an animal ethically. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| I'm with you on that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think it's great. | ||
| And also I love the responsibility you take for it. | ||
| It's like some people don't understand hunting. | ||
| They think it's just a bunch of yahoos going out there. | ||
| And some maybe are. | ||
| But the people that I know that take it seriously... | ||
| You know, take a huge responsibility with it. | ||
| The people that I know that do it, that take a huge responsibility, they're some of the best people I've ever met in my life. | ||
| And the most dedicated. | ||
| And the kind of hunting that I do, which is western mountain elk hunting, requires physical fitness. | ||
| It requires incredible stamina because you're... | ||
| You're going, gaining and losing thousands of feet of elevation in a day. | ||
| You might trek 15, 20 miles every day. | ||
| I mean, you have to be fit and you have to be ready. | ||
| And then you have to be able to keep your nerves. | ||
| And then that final moment, you know, it's like... | ||
| Yeah, you could hunt for 10 days for one moment. | ||
| So you're hunting for 10 days for 15 seconds. | ||
| It's profound. | ||
| The build-up, it's amazing. | ||
| Yeah, you've got to keep your shit together. | ||
| It's hard. | ||
| And there's no catch and release. | ||
| No catch and release in bow hunting. | ||
| But when I sit down and I feed my family... | ||
| The code, though, if you really look at it, I mean, if you just focus on the catch and release or whatever, but there's a code to it, I mean, you get it. | ||
| I believe in that. | ||
| Yeah, the code, the difference between bow hunting and regular hunting versus regular fishing and fly fishing. | ||
| But even just regular hunting and bow hunting, I'm just saying you're hunting with guys that have an ethical responsibility, understand the environment, and follow the rules. | ||
| And I think that... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| Well, it's also... | ||
| The thing to consider is there's millions, in fact, billions of dollars every year that go into wildlife habitat, go into preservation. | ||
| All the different people that work as game wardens are all paid by this. | ||
| And this is all money that's taken from hunting licenses... | ||
| The Pickman-Robertson Act, they take a certain percentage of, I think it's 10%, of all the proceeds from ammunition sales, licenses, equipment, all that stuff goes to preservation. | ||
| And it actually is the number one... | ||
| The source, the number one source for economics in terms of financial, the amount of resources that go to managing these areas and keeping these animals healthy and monitoring them and monitoring their populations and even reintroducing different animals like Rocky Mountain sheep and all these different animals, elk, that get introduced into all these different places. | ||
| All that money comes from hunting. | ||
| And it's crazy to think that at one point in time, most of the animals in North America that we hunt on a regular basis were on the verge of extinction, including white-tailed deer, which is crazy to think if you live in a place that has white-tailed deer because there's so many of them, it's insane. | ||
| But there's more white-tailed deer today than there were when Columbus landed. | ||
| It's really, really weird. | ||
| And this is an incredible system. | ||
| The wildlife management system that's in place in North America, including the management of public lands and the access to public lands, is a truly special place. | ||
| It's truly special here in North America, and that is because of the people that love hunting and love these wild areas. | ||
| Yeah, it makes sense. | ||
| I mean, I love it. | ||
| The sustainability factor is everything. | ||
| And I think that's also why the catch and release thing is. | ||
| I mean, if everybody kept everything that they caught, there's just not enough in that environment to pull. | ||
| No, I understand. | ||
| And people say that about hunting, too, that if everybody went out and hunted, there wouldn't be animals left, which is really true. | ||
| But everyone's not going to do it. | ||
| That's like saying, if everybody became a marathon runner, those streets would be filled. | ||
| But then you're not going to... | ||
| It's not appealing to a lot of people. | ||
| Everyone's not going to do it. | ||
| And it's very difficult, especially the stuff that I like to do. | ||
| You can do it. | ||
| A lot of people do it. | ||
| But not nearly as many as go to the supermarket. | ||
| When you get your meat, do you have a specific rancher that you use? | ||
| It's a great question. | ||
| Everything is a process and it's part of the process. | ||
| So just kind of like aging the meat and then putting it on the plate. | ||
| But there's a whole backstory to this. | ||
| I've developed a relationship. | ||
| One of my closest friends and my mentor in beef is this guy by the name of John Tarpolf. | ||
| And, you know, he picks out the cattle and then it goes through the system and, you know, they audit the system. | ||
| And I knew him before he came on board with Nyman Ranch. | ||
| So I knew him when he had his own slaughterhouse in Granite City, Illinois. | ||
| And I met him through the guys, through Master Purveyors. | ||
| And then he became, I guess, the VP of Beef in Nyman Ranch. | ||
| And so I invest most of my focus with him, and he's taught me. | ||
| So he's picking out a lot of my cattle. | ||
| And it's done through family farms, all antibiotic-free, steroid-free, raised ethically. | ||
| Animals die with dignity. | ||
| They're not cattle prodded and pushed along. | ||
| How do they die? | ||
| Well, most of them, well, all of them, it's basically like a pin. | ||
| It's like a stun bolt. | ||
| Like No Country for Old Men, that thing. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That's exactly how it's done. | ||
| But it's done in a certain system. | ||
| Temple Grandin transformed the entire system of abattoirs in this country. | ||
| Do you know about Temple Grandin? | ||
| No. | ||
| Such an interesting woman. | ||
| Autistic, but she actually is like the cattle whisperer. | ||
| And she can go into the environment and she can see just like a shadow of light going onto the floor. | ||
| And all of a sudden, the cattle will see it. | ||
| They'll stop and it builds all the stress. | ||
| And as a result, the stress creates, you know, fear and worry in the animal. | ||
| Why are they afraid of light? | ||
| It just can be something normal. | ||
| I mean, if they walk clockwise as opposed to counterclockwise in the circle, all these things have an impact. | ||
| She's written several books on it. | ||
| They did a whole series on her, like a great movie, I think on HBO. Claire Danes played her. | ||
| But she'll literally crawl through the abattoir to understand all the angles and advise so the animals don't get super stressed. | ||
| A stressed animal has an impact on the quality of the beef. | ||
| And also, you don't want to torture anything. | ||
| There's a responsibility behind eating meat, I think. | ||
| So, you know, for me, it starts not only with the family farms that they're raising the cattle, the feed that they're finishing the cattle on, and then how they're transported, you know, and then how they go through the system in terms of the abattoir storage and then come to me. | ||
| I like to receive a majority of my beef in combos, which means it never sees the inside of a cryovac bag, the plastic bags. | ||
| For me, dry aging that way is also, it preserves a lot of the natural, good, friendly bacteria that's on the meat as opposed to putting it in a bag and then they put steam to almost sterilize the meat and they put it along. | ||
| And so there's all these different flavors that are gathered. | ||
| I think from John Tarboff and Nyman Ranch, they've really been my go-to nowadays. | ||
| But it's like John and his sons, they really have educated me on beef and give me a lot of pride. | ||
| There is a genetic factor for tenderness in beef. | ||
| I mean, I didn't realize this, but it's not just, oh, that one's really nicely marbled. | ||
| But it's not. | ||
| You have to look at the grain of the beef. | ||
| You're looking at the eye. | ||
| It's not only just the fat. | ||
| It's how the fat is dispersed. | ||
| And that has a huge impact also on stress. | ||
| I mean, you can look at a piece of meat and sometimes they'll be rejected and call it a dark cutter. | ||
| The meat comes almost like dark, deep, almost like burgundy red. | ||
| And when the animal's like that, and I've tasted it just because I was curious, but the quality of the beef is just because of stress. | ||
| The adrenaline goes through the animal and taints the meat. | ||
| And that's what makes it dark like that? | ||
| Yeah, it paints the meat. | ||
| What about grass-fed beef? | ||
| Grass-fed beef, I don't, you know, it's a great question. | ||
| You know, for me, I don't look at grass-fed versus grain-fed. | ||
| I look at nutrition, okay? | ||
| So just because something's grass-fed, I think sometimes the animals themselves, it's more stressful to eat grass that is not nutrient-rich. | ||
| So I believe in grass-fed with responsible grass farmers that are then allowing the cattle, you know, to do grass-fed right, which I've experienced over in Ireland, Scotland, and in England. | ||
| It's literally, it's about the nutrition. | ||
| So, I mean, you go out and you say, okay, this animal is grass-fed and you taste the meat. | ||
| It's like, this meat is horrible, as opposed to another grass-fed and like, this is great. | ||
| So it's not like absolute. | ||
| So for me, it's really more about the nutrition, like how healthy can you maintain the animal? | ||
| I'm not talking about like force-feeding the animal, but I think the right... | ||
| The right characteristics of beef that you and I love really come from grain finished beef as a mainstay. | ||
| But you can find some grass-fed that's competitive with that, but it's hard to find. | ||
| The argument about grass-fed beef is primarily taste, if you prefer it, and I do a lot of times, but also health, that it's healthier for you. | ||
| The essential fatty acids of a grass-fed cow are different. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| But again, it depends on how you look at steak. | ||
| Look, if you're an everyday beef eater, I think that that conversation is completely valid. | ||
| But if you're someone who looks at steak as an extravagance or something that is almost a celebration to enjoy, Grain finished beef is like butter. | ||
| The taste itself, it's deep, it's rich. | ||
| Remember when we were talking earlier about wagyu cattle? | ||
| Everything has its place. | ||
| But for that steakhouse experience, I would never want a grass-fed steak. | ||
| For like that broiler steak, which is cooked on, like that for me, it's like a really treat. | ||
| It's a real treat. | ||
| It's something like you can't get, like I like Black Angus or Angus Hereford Cross. | ||
| That's the cattle that for me brings Americana on the plate. | ||
| Yeah, Bourdain felt the same way. | ||
| He was not interested in grass-fed beef the same way I am. | ||
| But there's different levels of grass-fed. | ||
| I mean, I've had grass-fed, and again, it could rival any grain-fed. | ||
| Like over in Scotland and Ireland, I mean, look at their grass. | ||
| It's so nutrient-rich. | ||
| Over here, it's a different story. | ||
| Especially here, right? | ||
| Because it's dry and not enough water. | ||
| Over there, it's rainy every day. | ||
| Rainy. | ||
| It's green. | ||
| It's constantly in the cattle. | ||
| They're growing their own. | ||
| They supplement barley that they grow on the estate. | ||
| The whole thing is just, it works. | ||
| So, like, this whole concept of, like, saying grass-fed versus grain-fed, I think that there's another story, and that, for me, is really the nutrition of the animal. | ||
| But I do agree with you. | ||
| There is the concept of, you know, healthy nutrition that you'll find higher, you know, higher traits of that, but I'm not a nutritionist at the end of the day, so... | ||
| You know, are you aware of the carnivore diet? | ||
| I am. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Have you ever messed around with that? | ||
| Yeah, somewhat. | ||
| How often do you eat meat yourself? | ||
| Well, I taste it every day. | ||
| But to sit down and have a steak, it's a rarity. | ||
| But I eat a lot of red meat. | ||
| Like, I eat quite often. | ||
| But you don't sit down and have a steak very often. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I can't. | ||
| I can't. | ||
| I can't do it. | ||
|
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Why? | |
| Because I taste it all the time. | ||
| So to sit there and eat a whole steak, I might eat a half a steak. | ||
| I have that flavor. | ||
| It's like it's a whole... | ||
| For a whole month, I did it. | ||
| For the month of January, they call it World Carnivore Month. | ||
| I ate mostly ribeyes and elk steak and eggs. | ||
| What did it do to your mind? | ||
| I think I've got more aggressive. | ||
| And I'm kind of joking about that. | ||
| Maybe it gave me more energy. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's different. | ||
| Something happens. | ||
| It makes sense to me that if you're a cow, you don't need to be aggressive. | ||
| Because you're basically just eating grass and chilling most of the time. | ||
| However, there's bulls. | ||
| Bulls are very aggressive. | ||
| But... | ||
| I don't know if my analogy makes sense, but if you eat meat and only meat, I really feel like there's some kind of a shift that happens with virtually no carbohydrates. | ||
| I might have had a couple of pieces of chili mango and I think I had a few olives or something like that for the whole month. | ||
| And I felt great. | ||
| You would think you would feel like shit. | ||
| I did not feel like shit at all. | ||
| I felt really good and I had incredible energy. | ||
| But I got bored. | ||
| I got bored. | ||
| I wanted to eat other things. | ||
| But here we are, it's May, and that's a few months ago. | ||
| But I think sometimes, like, hmm, maybe I should get back to that. | ||
| I mean, it was only five months ago, right? | ||
| But I lost a lot of weight. | ||
| I got down to... | ||
| And that's the other thing, too. | ||
| I wonder whether or not how lean I would get or whether or not that would level off. | ||
| But I think I wound up losing 12 pounds or somewhere around that range. | ||
| Was it a lot of water weight, though? | ||
| I imagine so. | ||
| Because in general... | ||
| Because you're depleting your glycogen stores. | ||
| So at the end of the day, you're just like... | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Thirsty for that in your cells, you know? | ||
| But it didn't really fuck with my workouts. | ||
| You know, I thought, I worried about that, that it was going to mess with my workouts, but I had good energy. | ||
| But again, I only did it for a month. | ||
| I've had friends, my friend Trevor did it for, I think he said he did it for six months, but after a while he felt like he was dropping off. | ||
| But then I know people that have been doing it for years, and they feel great. | ||
| I lean towards that. | ||
| I can't do it like as a strict, you know, regiment, you know, but... | ||
| Have you ever tried to do it as a strict regimen? | ||
| When you say you can't do it as a strict regimen? | ||
| I have, you know, I have, but not when I have the restaurant in operation because, you know, I'm sitting there and, you know, I'm tasting everything, you know, making sure everything's right and includes like a pasta or something. | ||
| It could just be like a bite and just messes with you. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, the greatest thing in the world to me is intermittent fasting. | ||
| You know, for me, it's like, you know, not eat, you know, from that period of time and, you know, start eating at like four o'clock in the afternoon. | ||
| And that, for me, has always been like a godsend that just that works. | ||
| Yeah, that makes a big impact. | ||
| And especially for people that are struggling with their weight. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| You know, it's so easy to just shove things in your face. | ||
| It's so easy just to continue to eat when you're really not even hungry anymore. | ||
| You're bored. | ||
| Like for me, the struggle is late at night. | ||
| You know, when I come home late at night, especially when I was coming home from the comedy store, I just want to fucking eat. | ||
| You know, I'd want to eat chips or I want to eat some bullshit. | ||
| It's always bullshit when you're tired, too. | ||
| It's always the worst food. | ||
| Once you get sugar out of your system, you don't crave it. | ||
| But once you eat a little bit of sugar, then you constantly crave it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| There's something evil about sugar. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| It's so devilish. | ||
| There's something about it, but it's also so great. | ||
| Like, how can those two things coexist? | ||
| Because, like, an amazing, like, just ice cream with fudge and some whipped cream is so good sometimes. | ||
| But then the feeling that I have afterwards, like, you fucking dummy, why did you do this to yourself? | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| But, I mean, there's, like, a feeling, like, when you take a spoon of that fudge and ice cream, you put it in, like, it goes through your whole body. | ||
| I know, your body's so happy for that brief period of time, but then it's just a trick, because then you feel like you got poisoned. | ||
| It's a trick, 100%. | ||
| I remember one time, I was eating real strict, and then I decided to go off the reservation for a day, and I had a cheeseburger with fries and a giant shake, a big chocolate shake, and my fucking head hurt. | ||
| I had to lay on the couch. | ||
| And my kids were asking me questions that I couldn't even answer. | ||
| I was like, what are you at? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| What? | ||
| Who am I? Where am I? It was like my head was in a vice. | ||
| It was really, it felt like I got drugged. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was just like, oh, I had nothing. | ||
| Because your body's also super sensitive. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because, you know. | ||
| Because I wasn't eating like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, that's the dance between delicious and nutritious. | ||
| Like, what is that? | ||
| How do you manage that dance? | ||
| How do you navigate that dance? | ||
| Um... | ||
| I'm pretty disciplined. | ||
| Like, you know, I'll get into, I mean, up into this, like for the past, I mean, I was super into working out, you know, daily. | ||
| And then I got so focused on the restaurant. | ||
| You know, it just was like, I don't have time. | ||
| I've got to get back to it because I felt so good and so much energy. | ||
| But in terms of like the dance for me... | ||
| I'm like just little snippets of tasting good food, like great food, like all day. | ||
| While you're cooking? | ||
| While I'm cooking. | ||
| What is your day like when you get there? | ||
| Like when do you get there and when do you leave? | ||
| Well, now, normally I'd get in at, let's say, anywhere from 10, like 10 o'clock and then could leave as late, you know, typically like 10, 30, 11. So you guys have a lunch crowd? | ||
| No, it's even no lunch. | ||
| It's just preparation. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Well, I have barbecue for lunch, and so that's good. | ||
| So I would sleep there overnight, get it going. | ||
| I have this amazing chef, Marcus, who's been with me. | ||
| You sleep there? | ||
| Yeah, you sleep there because, you know... | ||
| We're talking about the temperatures and everything. | ||
| So there's a certain time when you need to wrap the beef, for example, in butcher paper. | ||
| That usually happens at like 4.35 in the morning. | ||
| And if you don't do it, you miss the window to do it. | ||
| So I don't like to hold the meat too long. | ||
| So to get the better quality, you have to write it. | ||
| A lot of people, they'll just make it earlier. | ||
| Put it into the warmer, and it will hold. | ||
| But, you know, I think that there's a huge difference. | ||
| So, you know, we'll wrap it really, really early. | ||
| So, that's usually what happens. | ||
|
unidentified
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So, where do you sleep? | |
| Downstairs. | ||
| On the couch? | ||
| On the couch, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And you set the alarm for 4.30? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yep. | |
| Yep. | ||
| It's painful. | ||
| So, you want to be a chef, huh? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, that's it, you know? | ||
| There's the agony and the ecstasy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, that's it. | ||
| But my usual routine, like particularly now, like I'll get in by 10 o'clock. | ||
| I take a list of what's, you know, going on like for that day, pack out meals, whatever, you know, finish like 10, like 8, 8, anywhere from between 8 to 10. That's a long day. | ||
| It's a long day. | ||
| I'm feeling it lately. | ||
| I mean, all like the muscles in my hands, like, I don't even know what's going on. | ||
| That's why I say I have to start training again, because I'm like, my transitional movement is slow. | ||
| I'm like an old man, like I get out of bed, I'm like, I make the noise. | ||
| Like, it's just been terrible, you know? | ||
| Well, I also imagine this stress is not good for you either and probably not good for your sleep. | ||
| I've been compartmentalizing a lot of what's going on right now. | ||
| You know, that's the only way I'm getting through. | ||
| You know, I have to be strong for my team. | ||
| I have to give really strong leadership. | ||
| I need to inspire them just through example. | ||
| That's the only way because a lot of people, they just want to take off and they want to collect unemployment. | ||
| You know, the way it's working now, they make more money. | ||
| I've been on unemployment and working. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Yeah, so I have to lead from the front. | ||
| First one in, first one out. | ||
| But I compartmentalize, so the stress is like there. | ||
| Again, I'm focused like, okay, I've got to feed the hospital workers. | ||
| I've got to feed St. Joseph. | ||
| And how can I come up with something that the neighborhood wants to indulge on, whether it's meat, loaf, and peas. | ||
| Mashed potatoes or it's fried chicken or it's, you know, chicken with grains, lemon and honey, you know, something like that. | ||
| Well, I can only hope that this is over soon enough and that things will bounce back. | ||
| No, me too. | ||
| But you've got an amazing restaurant. | ||
| It's really great. | ||
| I love eating there and I can't wait to come back there again. | ||
| I really hope that it's a short amount of time. | ||
| I mean, I don't know when and how. | ||
| I don't know how it's going to We're tough. | ||
| Restaurant people are tough. | ||
| Oh, you have to be. | ||
| Just the fucking hours that you put in, man. | ||
| Just do the best that we can. | ||
| That's all you can do, you know? | ||
| Well, thanks, brother. | ||
| Thanks for being here. | ||
| Thanks so much for having me. | ||
| Appreciate you. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| And hopefully next time I see you is be at your restaurant. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| All right. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Bye, everybody. | ||
| Okay, bye. | ||
| Bless you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You did it. | |
| Thank you. |
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