Adam Perry Lang and Joe Rogan dive into APL’s pandemic struggles—90% staff retained, 10-15% pre-COVID capacity—while debating high-cost LA locations and comfort food shifts like barbecue. Lang’s dry-aging mastery (32-35°F, 85% humidity) clashes with sous vide skepticism for crust-heavy cuts, praising 265°F over 225°F for brisket. Ethical sourcing (Nyman Ranch, Temple Grandin) and grain-finished vs. grass-fed beef fuel their culinary clash, tying into broader COVID debates: rapid testing, mandates, and small-business survival. Lang’s grueling 4:30 AM butcher-paper rituals and exhaustion underscore restaurant resilience, ending with Rogan’s admiration for the industry’s grit and a mutual blessing. [Automatically generated summary]
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.