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For my birth week three in Bushwick Brooklyn! Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing? Good. We got Matt in the booth who uh apparently is gonna get married soon.
Oh yeah, it's happening. Yeah, when's that? Next Friday. Next Friday? Yeah.
Where are you getting married? Newport, Rhode Island. So fancy. I didn't realize you were so fancy. Fancy man.
I'm a fancy man. Are you gonna be at the breakers? Are you gonna is everyone gonna be dressed in uh tuxedos? Are you gonna have monkey butlers? Sadly, none of those things.
Be right on Easton's Beach. Cool. Are you from Rhode Island? No, my parents have lived there for the last like half a decade, so sort of. It's nice over there.
Who's officiating? One of our best friends. Oh. Uh have you given uh him her the cooking issues guide to wedding officiance? No, I think he's gonna be alright on his own.
I was told that I made uh that I made Nastasia's friend the wedding officiant. I didn't how could I have made her cry? I've thought of the guide often. Yeah, yeah. There you go.
No. There you go. Well, anyway. Well, since uh well, uh are you gonna you're you're gone next week, right? Oh yeah.
Yeah. So if we don't uh so happy, happy wedding. Thank you. Yeah, have a good time. What are you doing?
Give him some advice, Dave. You love wedding. What's uh what's your uh what's what are you doing for the uh wine slash liquor situation? What's going on there? Uh Margarita as signature cocktail.
They tried to give me a jank recipe. I was like, no, thank you. I'll give you the recipe. Um what? Strong.
Always give someone the recipe. They'll still gonna f it up, but strong. And then uh a keg of a very good local brewery. Shout out to Gray Sale in Rhode Island. I like it a lot.
Um then I don't know. What are we doing? A bunch of wines. Red, white, rose. I don't remember what they are.
What are you doing for food? Uh buffet style, bunch of stuff. Most people went with the lobster. It's gonna be like real good. That's good.
You know what? Uh I hope they have to open it themselves. I hope there's a like a good spray. Uh, just a word of advice to anyone who ever, if you should ever hang out with me, don't sit anywhere near me if I'm eating lobster. I mean, I feel like that's the whole wedding is gonna be like that.
I think we should give everyone individual tables because they will be spraying. Yeah, I've had I've had people like get up, move in disgust, and like leave because of the general spray of lobster juice around me when I'm eating lobster. Because I just don't, if you're serving someone lobster, like that's it. Lobster. You know what I mean?
Yep. Also, I don't like crackers. I only like using my hands. I don't use any sort of device. I use only my teeth.
Teeth. I have you ever if you have a big one on the claws, I've almost broken my teeth on lobster shells, cracking open the claws. But anyway, lobster cracking, diff differ, different day, different story. Uh what was that, Nastasia? That was round one.
Round one? Yeah. Well, here's what happened. Uh, in fairness, I told Nastasia that she wasn't allowed to put her foot on the table holding the microphones and jam the table up and down anymore. So it turns out I was wrong.
When her foot is not attached to anything, the vibration level is so high. You familiar with um you familiar with the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Galloping Gertie? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Put that video up.
Yeah, for those of you that don't know, check that out. That was uh, it's the exact, almost exact same design as the Verizano Narrows bridge, in fact, but it had a resonant frequency that the wind used to make happen to it. I think it was in the 30s. And there's videos of the wind hitting it at just the right angle, hitting the resonant frequency, and the thing is going up and down like a jump rope until it finally snaps. So it turns out Nastasia needs to keep her foot on the table because otherwise the resonant frequency is so hard that she rattles her phone out of her pocket, all kinds of crazy stuff, right?
That's a mistake. It was a mistake. What, me telling you to take your foot off the table? Yeah, yeah. Today we have half of the people we're going to have on the air with us today.
We have uh well Jeremiah Stone of uh Contra NYC uh and Wild Air and what how many ways you have also the pizza place? What else do you have now? We're uh about to open a wine shop and a wine bar. Okay, I'm gonna get into this in a second. We're going to have in a minute, um, I call him Fabulous, you know, Fabian von Howski, but I've always called him fabulous since I knew him when he was like 19 when he started coming to the French corner.
He said 18. He was 18? He said he was 17 when he came to the I think he was 18. God damn. He lied to me and said he was 21 because I had him drinking at the beginning of it.
Of course he did. Yeah. So back, so anyway, so like well known, like, you know, at the top of the food game right now. I knew these guys back when. So call in your questions, either your Jeremiah or Fabulous related questions.
Two 7184972128. That's 7184972128. Fabulous will be here in just a minute. So I knew both of these guys. I knew um Fabulous when he started coming to the French culinary student.
He came twice. Yeah. He came as a culinary student and then as a as a pastry student. But I'll wait for that for when he comes. It's his fault, by the way, people, that um the technique of blending and then center fusing stuff is called Houstino.
We'll get into that later. But at the same time, Jeremiah, uh, I think at one point was a student, but I didn't really, I didn't know you when you were a student, right? A little bit, not really. What were you there? Yeah, then we knew him as a he was running the events, yeah.
Events in the amphitheater. So the way the French Culinary Institute used to work, maybe still does, is we had like an amphitheater, and every, what was it, like Wednesday usually, or like Tuesdays, Wednesdays, in the middle of the week, they'd get very well-known chefs or interesting chefs, or anyone who would come and do what I thought were pretty awesome food demos. Yeah. We did food demos, did you know, private events, uh, we did the classes with you, Harold McGee. Yeah, right.
But I mean, we had a lot of interesting people coming through doing like weird cooking stuff. Yeah. And so it was like a great opportunity to kind of meet people, like learn new techniques, see what was going on. And so Jeremiah was was down there. And so I, you know, at one point, like we were always friendly, but you were kind of my mortal enemy because I would go F up your kitchen.
You F the place up, F the place up. You were not my more I I don't know where you're getting that from. You might have F'd up the kitchen, but I I I love you guys. We we were always friends. Yeah.
Uh oh, here's Fabulous. So uh he's he's coming in. So anyway, so like I knew these guys way back when, and then I figured they'd both do something, but I had no idea they were gonna start something together. Which is weird. No, it was weird because I actually when he first started interning for you, I didn't like him at all.
Why not? Well, he's right here. My interns were very entitled and you know, they just they they wanted to be part of the whirlwind, so he's talking shit about you. Hey fabulous, hello. So uh Jeremiah is talking crap about you.
Says when you first came to the FCI, he didn't like you because all of uh all of the interns were uh he said entitled. I mean, I didn't like him either. So then how did you end up so like did you like him before or after he had $10,000 worth of sneakers stolen from him? I still don't like him. So for those of you that don't know, Jeremiah was was is a sneakerhead.
He came to me one day and he was like, I had $10,000 worth of sneakers stole from me. I was like, who the hell owns $10,000 with a sneakers? Yeah, but you're assuming that that's $10,000 of you know, $70 sneakers. It could be like 10 shoes. You know?
Was it well what was it? It was a lot of shoes. It's probably like maybe 12 shoes. Yeah. Just very rare.
But it wasn't, it was, I don't think it was 10,000. I think it was maybe 5,000. Who did it? Oh, somebody random. Because they well, they came in, they saw they took speakers.
It can't be random. Who knows who random thief is like, man, these sneakers? No, but it's hard to explain. I mean, like, it's thieves now walk around with like cell phones and like look look up the value of crap on the internet before they steal it. Oh, only steals your good books and the good sneakers.
No, if you see that they break in and they start, they take the TV, they take all the electronic equipment and then takes the TV anymore. And then he sees a pair of. This was 10 years ago. It was Jordans, you know. Yeah, this is when this is when the biggest TV out was 32 inches.
There were no computers then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yet this thief, random thief, happened to know about these uh fancy sneakers. Well, they're like, you know, everyone knows. I mean, everyone, if you steal, you steal.
You steal everything. Yeah. You know, you know what Jordans are worth, you know. Uh all right. So now you two hated each other.
And then how do you hate each other? I just I just when I first met him, I didn't like him because I didn't like any of like I I ended up liking a lot most of the interns, but it's just the when you first meet them. Well, it's like you call them in title, but how much fabulous, how much did the FCI cost at that point? A lot. Like a lot, a lot.
Yeah. Like moot like a lot. I don't know. Well, how much was it? Like 40?
Yeah, just probably shy 40 at that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, this is what Nastasia never understood. We had these interns. They were real crappy.
And Nastasia, who ran the program after Mindy, uh, you know, who ran the program first uh left. Nastasia never ever, ever, ever understood that these people were not working for us, even though we were making them work. They were also paying forty thousand dollars, and this was one of the perks was that they got to be in this program. So Nastasia never kind of understood this. You know what I mean?
And that's where you're saying the sense of entitlement came from. But the fact the fact of the matter is is that they were both like they were both customers and employees, and it's a hard line to kind of write. Yeah, I I think you know, it's also especially when one was in interning with you, uh, you just got thrown into I mean, everyone was there at the time, like all the chefs who were like sort of relevant at the time were there, and you got to hang out with them and work with them. And you know, like I even with Johnny that I worked with afterwards, like me and him had a relationship prior to me working with him. So it was just a very weird situation where you just knew a lot of people, and then you know, in the in a very sort of short and like very close um place, proximity.
Yeah. So I think it was just very easy to get lost in in that, other than just working, and that's where a lot of it came, you know. I also didn't like a lot of them. Well, no, you hated everyone, and still do, really. Yeah.
I mean, the f the the the thing that was good back in the day that would like we can you can't do it anymore. Oh, you know, hey, you love weep. You just said he was. You know, we pop now owns one of the biggest clubs, and he apparently has the best stereo system in all of Southeast Asia. You know that guy at the pastry chef uh uh Nightshade is Weepop's cousin.
Wow. That's crazy. We weepop Supopi Pop. Bam, but you can call me bam. That's as I said, I started.
So this guy, he's one of the engineers who uh came up with uh Nomiku. So he worked on the original Nomiku, which was you know, whatever you think. Nomiku was was the reason that circulators are inexpensively priced now. Immersion circulators used to be like a thousand bucks. They were two thousand bucks, then they were one thousand bucks, then they were eight hundred bucks.
They're the flat screen TV of the culinary world. Yeah, and then Weepop was like, why is it cost that much? He started doing the Nomiku, and then as soon as Nomiku hit, everything was 400 bucks, and now it's like 200 bucks. You know what I mean? So it's like I think I think people don't give the the the Supapipot enough credit for that.
But remember, like he he shortened his name from Weepop Soup to Weepot Soupipot because he couldn't fit the name on his on his chef's whites at the French Culinary Institute, and he came up I thought it just continued underneath his armpit. Yeah, well, that he was like, he was like, just call me Bam, and we're like, no. What was his brother's name? I forget. Oh, yeah, his brother's name was like uh it was even better.
But he came in and we're all like, hey, and then we're like, hey, uh, you tie? And he's like, how'd you guess? We're like, what? You know what I mean? Like, there's 17 characters like Weepop.
Weepop's good business. Like Weepop Chow. Yeah. Uh Gotterball. No, Gutterball, no.
Gutterball I hated. Well, who was Gutterball? Ross? Oh, yeah, I like Rops. Yeah.
No, you know, Ross was Yahtzee. Oh, Rats was Yahtzee. Anyway, for those of you who don't know, all of the interns, so we had this program at the French Culinary Institute called the Tech Program, which for a long time was housed in a closet in the basement of the amphitheater. And then we when Nastasia started working, we moved up in the world, literally to the fourth floor and were put into a garbage closet. A garbage closet.
Well, no, I then we we ran out of that uh hall. Like the the we're, you know, outside of the Yeah, but he's saying that used to be a garbage closet. Yeah, that was garbage. That was a garbage. They didn't when we moved into the closet.
Oh yeah, you were in the hallway. We were in the hallway. Yeah, yeah. When we moved in, they didn't bother cleaning. So literally there was garbage dumpsters in there, and and the students would just hurl, or the, you know, the also the staff would just hurl bags of garbage into the dumpsters.
And so if you've ever been in a dumpster room, there's like that line of garbage at the at the level of the dumpster where there's like that spray of garbage. It's like you ever like on a griddle, you know when a griddle's not protected and you can see like the pancake line from when pancakes are flipped, you can see that line of grease and pancake splatter on the wall. So it was like that in the garbage room at the at the toss level, and no one ever cleaned it. Well, and then people weren't informed that it wasn't the garbage anymore. So they kept on putting garbage in.
Or they'd have an event and they would just shove every chair on the floor into our room. But what'd you do? So like I just got this is where like okay, this people, this is where I started becoming impatient. I used to be no seriously, my wife even asked my wife. I used to be a completely patient person because I worked with myself by myself for myself.
Like when I worked for the lawyers, I did my own job. I didn't like no one, I didn't have to work with anyone. I just did my job. I went home. So like everything was very mellow.
As soon as I had to start like interacting with people, that's when I lost all my patience. Like I think I had a finite amount of patience, and it was just never tapped. And now I'm just at zero all the time. I mean at 100, I guess, at the boiling point. So like yeah, I used to just walk in and I would just pick up the chairs and just throw them down the hallway.
Bah, bah, bah, bah throw them down the hallway. Because I'm like This is no exaggeration. Yeah, I'm like, if they have like so little. First of all, when I worked started working for the French culinary, they said they were gonna build me a lab, right? And it went from build me a lab to maybe we'll fire you.
Maybe you can live in the trash room. Maybe, well, they didn't start with the trash room. They started with a cubicle. Then they're like, okay, okay, you're too messy to be in a cubicle. Remember when they were like, you need to know what you do every day, and then you just wrote on the forum OTB.
What's OTV stand for again? OTV office, yeah, off off trap off-track betting. Yeah, yeah, OTV. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm I'm famously.
This is by the way, how Nastasi and I got into Appleheads. I got into another argument with uh a partner/slash employer who was asking me a bunch of garbage that made no sense. Yeah. And I'm like, you guys can't. Well we'll save it for when we do Applehead dolls.
No, no, no, just say it now. We can bring it up again. What's Applehead? Applehead. Yeah, you guys can't work together in other things.
This is when we were starting Booker and Dax. We're starting, yeah. So like they're like, you and Nastasia can't start your own business together. And this is when we were doing Booker and Dax. And by the way, at that time, Nastasia, they weren't gonna give Nastasia even ownership in Booker and Dax.
So, like, let's wait and see. This is like, you know what I mean? Let's wait and see. So I was like, God damn it. I was like, if Nastancy and I want to go make Appleheads dolls together, we want to start an Applehead business, you're not gonna stop me.
That's that's pretty much exactly how that happened. And it's pretty much exactly what I said. Yeah. Was this was this uh Chinatown Times? Yes.
This no, this is before Chinatown Times. This is when we used we also, Booker and Dax's first headquarters was in the back of Milk Bar Commissary. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Remember that, people? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Man, Tozy hated us because we were such a mess. Every time you walk in there, all the milk bar people.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would kill you. Yeah, yeah, they tried. They tried very much. Turns out, uh, I mean, probably at my age now, I'm probably easy to kill, but back then I was much more difficult to kill.
Yeah, but who's laughing now? Who's the multi-million dollar business? Booker and Dax, right? This episode was brought to you by 100 Bogart, a new building in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with meeting and event spaces available for on-demand booking. Looking for the next perfect outdoor location for your next gathering?
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You know what I did find the other day? And uh by the way, before uh Jeremiah and Fabulous opened Contra Wild Air, they came to uh I used to have we used to have a lab on 54 Eldritch, which was by the way, is is the ground spitting capital of the world, as far as I know. So, like we tried to video, we tried to do a video when we were gonna sell the Sears all, and we were trying to do a video in our in our lab, in our lab. And the person who was micing us could not get a clean sound take without uh a Loogie being hawked in the background. In fact, for years before Peter Kim from the Museum of Food and Drink, Peter Kim from the Museum of Food and Drink is now my generalized ringtone.
Him yelling in pain as he knuckles into the puffing gun the first time he ever tried to hit it is is my ringtone. But before that, it used to be it used to be from the Sears All shoot, like a giant like right outside of our thing. And so we would just stand out there, and like you couldn't, like literally you couldn't do a 20-second take without a Loogie Hawk. And then when you walk, oh, I saw Coconut Feet the other day. I was with you.
No, you're not saying that. Yeah, yeah, you remember coconut feet? Yeah, of course. So there was a guy he worked at the restaurant next door. He used well, he'd stand, he would sit outside on a lawn chair peeling in front of his restaurant, peeling his feet onto the ground.
It used to like make a little pile of shredded coconut on the ground, and so we always called him coconut feet. That was a veg like a vegetable peeler. Yeah. Yeah, it was like a like a Swiss, like a coonricon Swiss peel. Like an orange one.
And then people were like, I remember if I guess somebody don't know many nameless was like, you guys have it so easy. You guys, you know, all the resources you guys have. Meanwhile, like Loogie and Coconut feet. The reason literally we don't have a lab anymore is because we didn't have the money to fix the roll-up gate. And the roll-up gate was so broken that Nastasia one day, she yelled at me.
So the her word for like the like the general like female stuff is modka. Everything. Everything down there is modka. You're gonna break my modka, you guys. Baby making area.
And capacity and everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, so like one day I'm like, I was like, I don't need to be there for you to open the office. You can just open the office, you freaking self, God! Because like I was doing something else, and I wanted and Nastasi would not come in to work unless she knew I was already gonna be there.
She would not come to work unless she knew I was already gonna be there. That's that place was scary. So then literally she had someone open it, and then she stood there hanging on it, hanging on it like a gymnast or like a monkey, like waiting for me to show up, and like, there's aren't you want? You want me to break my matka? And we had, and then we had some guy quote unquote fix it.
All they did was pump eight quarts of lith grease into it, so that every time we touched the door from then on out, like we were coated in grease. Stinky, stinky lith grease. And Nastas and I were like, the hell with it, we're out of here. And literally, that's how we lost the lab. Yeah, yeah.
Such a beautiful space. Anyway, so fabulous before he opened Contra worked there for us. Downstairs with the Jesus poster. Oh my god, downstairs. So old school New York, we were talking to the landlord, and we're like, Can we rent something downstairs?
He's like, What do you want it for? And I was like, we need to store some stuff. He's like, Oh, okay. I thought you were gonna uh like open another illegal gambling joint in the basement because this entire block was illegal gambling joints and like, you know, coconut feet people. So like we we went in, we went downstairs, and in the basement or for our storage room, was just a room.
A room with nine locks, a mattress, uh, the the print of a refrigerator. You know how refrigerators who've been there for a million years and there's no cleaning, they have the line where the coils are on the back of the wall, a picture of Jesus, a mirror on the ceiling, and then a bathroom with just a hose. And that's it. And the locks were on the outside only. The locks were only on the outside.
You have to walk past that room to get to the other room where you kept all your stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was amazing. It was an amazing place. Uh I miss it.
Uh so then anyway, but when I came across and you were there for this fabulous, the very, very, very first Sears All that we ever made, the round one. I had to. Well, you remember the first one was at FCA when you were in Thanksgiving. Shoot it through a Sheenwall. You had No, you made the shower, you made the shower head version at FCI right before.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, right before I left. But remember how people got the red torch. Well, I have the I should say I have the very first uh contained prototype that wasn't like shower head. Remember we used to burn the hell out of ourselves with those first prototypes that weren't contained?
Yeah. That's how we figured it out. We're like trying to shoot it through this mesh, and then our knuckles would catch on fire, and we're like, maybe we should enclose it. You know what I mean? Oh, by the way, uh Dax says to me a couple weeks ago, he's like, Dad, how come you don't know how to use Instagram or the internet?
I'm like, because I don't care. You know what he's like, someone on Instagram said that Dave Chang invented the Sears all and you didn't. Oh my god. And I was like, I was like, I love Dave, but that's just not the case. What?
This is what I was telling you last night. You don't know. Nastasia Lopez says I'm not allowed to like a post that she puts up. No. He'll like to be a little bit more.
She's like, it seems robotic. And I said, We're close enough where I don't care that you like a story. It seems But if I like your story, doesn't that help other people see your story? No. No, man, that's not a good idea.
Yeah, in other words. It does work like that. That's not true, Jeremiah. If he's a good thing. I trust Jeremiah's skills over your skills, Nastasia.
But what does he do? Like say I like it. He'll DM me. I like DM. Yeah, that doesn't help anyway.
Hit the like button. So it's not a good thing. But there's no like button for the story. You press on it and it puts a heart on it. You press on it and it puts a heart on it.
No, but you're just sending her the heart. Yeah. I don't care about this stuff. So, you guys is opening a wine store. How are you getting around the laws here?
What laws? Where we're currently navigating all of them. Well you have to have a separate owner for the wine store, technically, right? A separate LLC. Yeah, well, so we have a wine shop and a wine bar opening next to each other, but they're we're allowed to as as um liquor license owners.
Um we have one off-premise license, which is the shop, and then you can you can only if you have an on-premise, which is what you have in a restaurant, you can only have one off-premise. I didn't know you could have any. So you could have a hundred restaurants in one shop. I didn't know you were allowed any. If you're importing, you can't.
But if you're only if you have a sort of let's say a restaurant, you can. Really? You can have one, yeah. And then the problem is when you're bringing alcohol in, you can't have uh importer and also uh like a retail shop. Right.
Well, you c also can't technically have a grocery store and a wine store. Yeah, because they yeah, they split beer and grocery as one category. This is this is a super old law to basically make it fair for the people who are in, you know, so beer and grocery is allowed to be sold together and wine has to be sold separately. So you can't This is New York people by the way. We can't sell a piece of cheese in the wine shop.
Yeah, no beer, no space. And why Whole Foods started a wine store on 59th Street and they couldn't because it has to be separate buildings, like separate structures, all sorts of you can't just have like a a different entrance. It needs to be like a different you need like demising walls. And this law clearly, this law clearly uh, you know, is important because no one in California like can get good wine at all. Where you can buy wine like anywhere.
Yeah, well in California you can have a restaurant and sell wine there at in the same space. So why are we here? Just crazy. Because uh we're not we're not gonna sink into the to the ocean, right? Have you like it's like that's never gonna people have been saying that since I'm a I'm a kid.
That it's gonna sink off, fly off into the ocean. That was the whole thing anyone said. Well, what'd you bring, Jeremiah? Oh, so talk about the wine store. When's this gonna open?
Uh we're gonna open in September. Now you guys were early on the is that a is that like a like a real open in September, or that's a yeah, yeah, yeah. We hope. It's not yeah. You're jinxing yourself, is what I'm saying.
Yeah. It's gonna open before next September. Yeah. All right, so listen. Uh those of you that don't know, uh, I don't know if maybe you've been under a rock or you haven't been paying attention.
Uh you guys have made how long ago do you open Contra? Like four years, three years? Six years ago. What? Yeah.
What? Six years ago. What? Yes. What?
Oh my God, does time accelerate? Yeah. Oh my God. Six years ago? 2013, yeah.
Jeez, Louise. Oh my God. So anyway, six years. What about Wildair? Four years ago.
Wild air is the four-year-old, yeah. Alright. So for those of you that don't know, over the past six years, uh Jeremiah and Fabulous have become kind of huge powerhouses in the food world. They're everywhere, they're all over the place. But I did.
No, you we I I mean we often talk about this, but you I mean you're the the reason why the restaurants exist is is because of you because we met basically through you. Oh well, I appreciate that. And they uh they have a cookbook out. How's that doing? It's doing great.
Uh we're in our second pressing. It's called A Very Serious Cookbook. Um and uh it's on sale now. Yeah? On the on the Amazon.
So anyway, so a drone will bring it to you. So six years ago, uh Jeremiah and Fabulous, when they first opened, they were the earliest people that were playing at the level that they were playing at in New York City that I'm aware of that was a food place. Food place, food that uh food food food library. You see uh Metalocalypse? Anyway, uh food library.
They they're the first place I know of at that level of food that was very dedicated to natural wines. Is that true? I mean that's my impression, but is that true? In New York, yeah. Yeah, I mean, uh I would I would give credit to um um two of our good friends, um Arno Earhart and and Jorge Riera, who uh who were uh running three sixty in Red Hook um in 04, which um was like a really simple menu.
They did like a twenty-five dollar set menu, just like simple kind of fresh food, great ingredients and just uh and they um that was really one of the and and also EC from Laurence Yard, like much more bistro driven. Um but I would say in Manhattan we were like there was not a tasting menu, not a restaurant that was you know, trying to do something that was elevated that had an entire list that was natural, what we what we classify as natural wine, even though I mean yeah it's a stupid name. And at the time I made fun of you like relentlessly. Yeah, everyone did. I mean you you don't now.
Yeah, as they'll do. But I mean, and so I think we've gone like kind of full circle with the n like all like I was talking to Jack Shram, uh, you know, the our head bartender who is a also a huge proponent of uh the natural wines and uh in fact his ex-girlfriend used to work for you for a long time. Yeah, my Mackenzie just um the the thing is that I think even like the the higher the like the old school sommelier's have kind of come around somewhat to your point of view, right? Well I just think that we've gotten to the point where if you just need to have like some of these wines on your list for younger people to relate to them. Yeah, but what is it?
I don't get it. I honestly I like it's it's it's I don't understand how it's happened. Here's what I think, and you tell me why I'm wrong. Because I'm sure I am. It's like you have a like the old school like to p to play the old school sommelier game, right?
It's all it's only about like super expensives. It's about can I get this rare super expensive thing, right? Yeah. There's also what do you mean by old school? So that's like Jean George tw tw 20 years ago.
So what I'm saying is like No, like the th there's there's a generation between now and that. Right, but like a lot of that generation still like pe so people like in their late 40s for my age, right? Like late 40s, like these people still grew up Well, it's a luxury thing. If it's pricey, that must be good. Well, but there's also like there's certain things that are recognized as the top of their of their game.
Like you, you know, have like how like how much of the you know the old growths have you had, like this year, that year, etc. etc. Some kind of shoreship of like some lesser known things, but by and large, the the people out spending money, if they were gonna drop money, they drop money on something that was known, had a certain kind of pedigree, and it was kind of about that. You know what I mean? Well, people yeah, people don't want to spend money on something that they can't um you know that they they can't fully predict or you know, there's if there's not very little consistency or if there's no understanding of exactly what you know they're gonna experience.
Because you're everything is everything is so dialed in, you know, because when you're talking about conventional wines, so much so much of the wine is about what like what you're learning is through, you know, I know what like this year should take. That's why they c that's why those guys can b you know, they advance sums and when you do your masters, they can blind stuff, they can you know that's why they study that because it's something that you can study, it's something tangible that you can study and learn certain years, certain regions, certain grapes have a certain profile. But they don't you know they don't always really appreciate the wines that are simply made because this is really how people used to make wine, but it's kind of like when you're making wine and well you used to make wine when? Hundreds of years ago. Hundreds of years ago.
Oh, yeah. Oh, oh yeah. By the way, it's like, you know, I mean, I'm pretty sure m you ever had wine on my honeymoon. You're talking like Greece or something. I was in Italy.
Okay. I pulled over to the side of the road, and this lady was like, you know, try my wine. Yeah, not everyone does it well. And it was garbage. Garbage.
And by the way, I was like very young guy. Like, we were like, we were like drinking prosecco like it was soda pop. Alright, I mean, like, I'm not saying I was like, I need to be fancy, but even I. Yeah, no, I mean, but there's no one saying that everyone that makes wine just because they're doing it, you know, at home and it that is done right. I make my I make my cars the way we made them hundreds of years ago.
Not at all. You do you build everything yourself. So not even if I'm bad at it, yeah. But I know, but I I mean it's I mean, it's less about it's not like oh we've we've come up with all these ways to improve things. It's just we've come up with ways to this is I mean, making wine is one of the oldest, you know, better.
Even conventional is old. Yeah. I mean, but like making wine conventionally, like, it's it's brought it to a place where there's, you know, it it's dialed it in. Which I don't I don't necessarily think is guy in front of me eating pizza with a knife and fork. What country are these people from?
Are they speaking English? Can you lip read? Yeah, they're speaking English. What the hell? No, no.
What's worse? Eating a pizza with a knife and fork or eating crust end first? What's worse? Crust end first or knife and fork? Knife and fork, I'd say.
Knife and fork worse than crust and first? Yeah, why would you? No, crust and first is the worst thing ever. Really? Yeah.
So one of the Dax's dirtbag buddies. Like, we had a birthday party, and we took a picture and sent the big picture to Miley, uh, my sister-in-law, who runs the Food Network magazine, and she says nothing but this. WTF, crust first, and then we like zoomed in on the picture, and like of all these kids there, she noticed that this one kid was eating crust first, and I was like, oh yeah, he can't come back to my house. Yeah, that's just like uh there's no sense to it. Why?
Yeah, why do you eat the handle? Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. You know what I mean? You've just eaten the handle.
It's like cooking with a pan and you grab the house. You know what I also, you know what I don't like? I don't like when there's no oil so that I can oil the crust at the end and eat it like it's bread. I like to oil the crust at the end. Like a little olive oil.
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so but uh the the middle generation you're talking about, I think is like the the Parker backlash, right? The people, so like the older generation like maybe like Paul Greco and Joey Campanelli, and like you know, even Joey's uh has a natural wine mark. No, that's what I'm saying. No, but they're they're more, you know, like I I think that they're they had they took an interest to um you know, more affordable wines, new world.
Yeah, but they're not affordable. That's the joke. They're not affordable. A little bit more. More than a first growth, but they're not affordable.
Like in other words, like, here's here's what I don't get, right? It's like I can go out and for $20, I can get a really good bottle of conventional wine, or I can get a lower end crapshoot. Right? That to me, like that's the that's the issue. What's the lower end crapshoot?
What do you think? Like if you're going like what natural wines are like less than 20? Most. Come on. Yeah.
At stores? Yes. No. Yes, they're all 20. Yeah.
20. And then uh it's like a how much this one cost? This would be at a store, this would be 33, 32. That's what I'm saying. If you told me to I'd bring a bunch of $20 wines, if but's taste this.
What have we got to do? So this is why I was saying, okay, there's a there's a complete misconception that natural wine the overall cost of natural wine tends to be more expensive, but I would say more expensive than the cheap because you have such a range, but we're talking about dollars, like a couple bucks here. Everything is in that you know 20 to 35 dollar range. There's not a lot of wine that you're gonna spend $50, like a lot of natural wine that you're gonna spend $50 on. Well, I thought I don't I don't think it has anything to do with the price.
I think well like wine is one of those things where if you if if you like wine, you're gonna buy expensive wine regardless. I just think that these winemakers are just in in line with what the food world is becoming, you know. And I think a lot of it it's you know, when when we work with you, the food just like the tendency was to be like modern and like use technology and do all these things to make the product better. And then that turned, and you know, now it's all about farming where your vegetables come from, where everything comes from, you know. But everyone who was good at anything back in the day cared about that stuff too.
Yeah, but I think it was a little I think it was a little less. They cared about they cared about products being good, but not necessarily like seeing outside of, you know, now there's I mean I that's just not the you know that's not the case. Back then was when that's back when uh I mean you remember was doing all of his. Andre Soldner used to have to he makes his t-that with white bread, you know. Andre Soldner, though, is like eight generations before any of us.
He opened freaking Lutes in 1962 or so. So what yeah is it's I mean, I think the technology stuff wasn't happening. Andre Soldner didn't have a vacuum machine. And when I asked Andre Soltner why he never had a vacuum machine, he's like, I buy fresh every day, I did not need a vacuum. And I was like, but I think it was like, you know.
Very few people had the the economical capacity to run a restaurant that could be technological at some degree and also care about the produce they were bringing in. But no, but although the people who were technological were all spending ridiculous amounts of money on their food, all buying from like local, all stuff. I mean, look at where like Wiley used to buy his fish from. Look at the food cost of someone like crazy food cost with someone like uh Librant back in the day, who was running like over 50% food cost because he was shipping in this very specific thing from a very specific production of the state. I just think that's a false argument.
No, no, that's what I was talking about like the quality was always there, but I think now it's more important to be close to it than you know, flying fish from Japan, like manipulation. We talk to fishermen who fish, you know, we who have fish who it's domestic and it's close, and we can have an interaction with it. Where like we know, you know, it's not about your NOMA stuff fabulous also with the Noma for a while. No, I'm not building my nose off, but you know, at the restaurant we asked the fisherman, hey, like what's the best we can do? You forage for mercury in the Hudson?
Yes. And instead of uh, you know, getting halibut every week for the last five years. You know, I think there is a difference, and I think with these winemakers, that's the same difference. You know, these people become available to you. You can talk to them.
You have the information of what's happening as opposed to, you know, just buying wine from France, not ever talking to the winemaker, not knowing who picked the grapes, not knowing how the grapes were picked, not knowing all of this stuff. I mean, but I mean, look, I don't deal with the wine buyer, but I know even the big spirits, like the actual makers come and talk to you when you own a place. I mean, it's not like for the average person, the average person's not gonna know anyone. No, because he're just going to a store. And the average chef who's interested in wine, average bar owner or somebody can know all of the people that make all the stuff at every level.
That's just the truth in the industry. It's just what I think is Can or cannot. Can they that's not true? It is a hundred percent true. With liquor, you mean?
With liquor. Oh, with liquor. And and uh uh of like some like a lot of the wine buyers, a lot of the wine importers who do wine and liquor, they make their they make the wine people available too. You know what I mean? So like Yeah, but there's a that's a there's a big difference.
I mean, what it depends if you're talking about even if you're talking to somebody who is part of the family, it's very different how much they actually are involved with the wine making or how much they really know. These they're you know, you're gonna dealing with people who end up becoming salespeople, even though they're some extension of the family. They're the ones who travel, talk about these big wine houses because that's what they do. But if you're talking about understanding the true process of growing the grapes to making the wine, and the people that actually do that, that is you rarely ever see that on that level of the really high and expensive wines because they don't have you know an interest or time to go and talk to a small restaurant, you know, maybe like a really expensive, maybe like a place like Le Bernadette, they might host or Danielle, they might host a really special event that brings, you know, maybe a winemaker out from Burgundy or whatever, but you don't really have that access as like a restaurant on the Lower East Side, you know. Oh that oh, we're the scrappy folks from the Low East or whatever, or like in Kansas City or in LA or you know, or anywhere.
Toronto we're just too scrappy little dudes from the Lower East Side. But the um you know what I think it is, you're gonna disagree. I think it really is is that it gives you like a unique point of difference. Like the old world was knowable, unattainable because of price and exclusivity, but knowable. And this new world is unknowable because it's so big.
We've gone through we're at the other spectrum now where it's just you know, there's some people who respect it and who sell these wines because that's what they believe in. And there's also the part of like it's just trendy. You know, everything now, people now are so visual. Like you said, you know, Instagram is such a irrelevant tool for marketing. It's like people, you know, someone from Bonapet or someone from an important magazine or a celebrity, they post a photo of you know, the labels of these so-called natural wines are so much more enticing than your old school bolo wine.
So if someone puts it up and they're like, This wine is so cool, the label's cool, and everyone's just okay, cool. You know, there's like a really famous uh winemaker from Austria, Guragau, and he has these labels with like faces of families. And like you see it everywhere. Everyone posts about it all the time. And that's like, you know, everyone.
I hate that stuff. Don't you hate it? Everyone knows those wines. My mom knows those wines, my girlfriend knows those wines. What do you think?
You're good at Instagram. What do you think about this insta Instagram stuff ability of of the I mean there's things I hate about it. There's things that I mean it's good for business. Are useful, yeah. I mean, yeah, you know, you just before you had to deal with media to put your thoughts out there.
And like you it was a distillation of what you believed in that someone listened to what you believed in and then they wrote whatever they wanted, and now you can just share your point of view, just how it is to everyone that follows you or people who don't follow you. Right. So by the way, what are we drinking? Do you like this? I I didn't like the first sip, but I like it now, and my stepfather would hate it.
So specifically. My stepfather would hate it. My stepfather, by the way, my stepfather, like to he's an old school drinker. He's got a he's got a case of uh 85 DRC in his cellar that he bought as a future. You know what I mean?
So it's like that's the kind of like drinker he is. He's into like he has some of that. He yelled at my mom for a he ruined Christmas one year because my mom bought him a case of 85 DRC, which is Romane Conti, Latash Rieschborg, all that stuff. A case as futures. She spent like I think a couple hundred bucks on it at the time, in like 1986, I guess, when the futures were released for the 85 year.
And my stepfather ruined Christmas, yelled at her the entire time for spending that much money on that wine. The single bottle of Romanet Conte that he like that from that is now worth $25,000 on auction. You know what I mean? And he hasn't drink it, he can't drink it. He doesn't know what he's gonna do with it.
It's undrinkable because he's like, I can't drink $25,000, but I can't sell it either because I've never had it. So anyway, so that but he's into good value uh for traditional style stuff. He tends towards he tends towards he buys me stuff I like, which is like Barolos, Namrones and stuff like that, but you know, he tends towards like you know, uh Chat and Ufa and whatever. Anyway, uh he likes to be like you like big wines, you like it. Uh look, I I grew up, I started drinking before I I I started drinking right when uh Robert Parker, who's now retired, became popular.
So I like I like that. I also enjoy like the giant ridiculous American wines like Turley and like all that stuff, but I also like austere wines. You know, I like I I like a range of things. From Austria? Yeah, Austeria, it's my favorite.
It's like yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh so we're drinking um Matassa from our good friend Tom Lube. Uh he's in Prepignon, just like in the in the south of France in uh the Landelac Russian. Um this is I think it's um Macabo, Vignier, uh Mousque de Alexandre and Mousque de Blanc.
So it's cloudy, fine. It's it's a lot of oxygen is hit because it's acetic and oxidized. The acidity I mean there's a little bit of VA in there, which I think is blowing off right now because that's and you you were kind of not feeling that in the first sip, but um so that's volatile acid acidity for all you folks out there. AKA oxygen was touching the wine. It's like like um like a Wu-Tang um Wu-Tang wrapper.
A K A B A K A Volacity. Um feeding it. But I think that I mean I think this is I thought it like this is two thousand eighteen, and I think you would have liked seven seventeen was a little bit cleaner, and I was not expecting it to be this wild. Uh because I told she Nastasia asked me if I was gonna bring something funky to kind of like show and I was like, No, I was gonna bring something like more mainstream. I mean the thing about uh like okay, so fair notice I don't drink a lot of like if I if I want vinegar, I'll drink vinegar.
You know what I mean? Like come a lot of kombuches, like I'm not like I don't like I don't know. I don't like acidity in here then. I mean that's not a that's not I there's other acidity. I don't like I don't like Basque cider very much.
Yeah. You know what I mean? Like that's not it's not that it's bad, but like there's a reason they have to pour it from like a five-story building for you to be able to drink it. Yeah. And um, but the good thing about that is is that after the first couple of sips it does blow off, but also you acclimatize your palate to it, and then you're f you're fine with it.
You know what I mean? So like if that's meant to be the thing, that's meant to be the thing, and I'm good with it. I enjoy drinking, I'm enjoying drinking this wine. Yeah, I don't think that this is a thing. This is a characteristic of all natural wine.
But there's also misconception where people who tend not to drink natural, not quote unquote on natural wines, think that everyone who drinks natural wines think that all natural wines are good. Which is not true. Yeah, you know, even that even you know winemakers, you like you'll buy a bottle of wine and it'll be amazing, and then you'll buy another bottle of wine and it'll be absolutely undrinkable. And a lot of it has to do with it is it is so much more volatile than the conventional because conventional wines have even natural wines have things put into it, but not as much as the conventional wine. Well, nothing, just a little bit of self, a little bit of SO2, that's it.
I mean, but so this wine has uh a small amount of SO2. I mean, this year I don't know if he did. Um I know in the past he has with with um this cuvet, but sometimes you know you kind of decide what you're gonna do. It's but it's on such a minuscule level. Um but I don't think it's like it's not like oh if you like natural wine, you you're like I like f wines.
That's not really show. Oh I like funky wines. Yeah, yeah. That's not that's what you meant. That's not that's not the point.
It's you know, there's there's plenty of wines that I could taste you on that you wouldn't know what it was conventional. I mean, like as the geezer in the room, it's what's hilarious. So two chefs, I happen to know you personally, so it's not like what me. Oh so like oh for sure. Like when Nastassi is the frat boy in the group.
Did you know this? Dave can only have one frat boyfriend. Yeah, I only have one frat boyfriend, it's Nastasia. Yeah. Uh dude.
Oh my god. Oh my god. She's like, anyway, like definitely if she sits on your coat, she's gonna be she's gonna be tootin' on it. She's a super frat point. Anyway.
She handed someone, a friend of ours, she handed, handed. It's like I'm leaving. Yeah. I was sitting on his coat. Sitting on his coat.
Why? Who knows? I don't know why she didn't pick it up to put it on the back of the chair, but she's like, I tooted on this multiple times. And then hands it to him. I'm like, this is why you're a frat boy.
So but as a chef, right? Here's the here's the thing I find interesting about it is like all the people I know who as cooks are all about consistency a hundred percent of the time. Are excuse me. God's choking me. Uh are all about like wines that like show this difference as agricultural product from from year to year, from thing to thing.
So it's like they're very non-interventionist in their wines, other than kind of like this hand of the maker kind of a thing. And yet in the kitchen are all about control. No, but I mean, I think something can attest, I'm I would rather have like uh well, eating and cooking. Consistency is important, but you know, there's certain things I find important to be consistent. Other things I like the nuances of it being different.
And I don't like that's why we you know we cook every excuse me, I just burped on. Uh I'm the frat boy now. We you know, uh when we cook and when we enjoy eating something, I like that you know, something might be, you know, when it when it feels like it's done by hand and it feels like you know it it's not a machine with a timer and somebody that you know is is doesn't maybe necessarily have those those intuitive skills to to prepare something without those things. So I mean, yeah, can you don't want to be like, oh we're we we strive to be inconsistent, but I but I'd rather like you know, we're cooking, you know, we're cooking each piece of fish you know just in and out of an an oven so it it it's it you know one person might have a slightly different like we're not cutting each one with like a mold like a ring mold and and making a torch on so it all cooks perfectly I think you So you're saying that like I might get a bad piece of fish? No you're gonna have a different you have a different piece of fish from somebody who ate the day before or who's eating at six and you're eating at eight but I mean hopefully it's all good.
It's like Fabulous is giving you a look like he's gonna chop your head off not at all I just I think it's you know I it's somewhat true I you know I I spent like a lot of time in in those restaurants that everything even I mean you mentioned Noma but Noma was the same you know they're like even to a a bigger degree because you were picking herbs and like herbs are like you know no unless you work in a lab herbs are just gonna look different all the time. But you have to pick the herbs that look the same. Yeah and it's it's crazy you know and I think you just spend so much time in places that like that that you you crave the chaos a little bit. You know you try to control as much as you can but there's also aspects of just the uncertainty that are quite appealing. You guys still make the squid at while there no we well we do soft shell crab in the summer.
Do we use that same battery talk about your super crocante uh fried s uh fried batter for the squid oil it's gluten freak gluten free for the new generation. Yeah, yeah, give it to me. It's good though. Yeah, we just we're we but it's crunchy, but not super hard. I hate everyone who mistakes hard for crunchy.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, it it's uh corn and uh Which is weird because I normally don't like cornmeal batters. Well, it's not like uh it's corn and potato. You are I'm just potato.
Uh Dave, we have five minutes. What? Into your books. Hold on, wait, first like I gotta tell you. So are you willing to give out the the recipe?
I like potato starch because it swells like a mother. It is buy the book. Buy the book. That's great. There's squid, and I guess now they're they're saushed crab delicious.
You don't like this recipe? I do, yeah. It's a good recipe. Yeah. I'm just thinking my mind works.
Oh, if the recipe in the book is the same as the rest of the book. I'm just kidding. It does fast. You know that chefs always buy a lot of DMs about recipes. Well, chef, like uh someone who's an actual professional chef is different from like they have to take something that they make in a restaurant, which is entirely different from how you're gonna be able to do it.
Well, you know, when you make something a recipe that's very specific and it works. But then you give it to someone else and they just mess it up. Right, because they're not with you. And like I'm like, I don't know what to say, you know? Like this.
And she has to look at the recipe every time. It's on an index card. It's the same one she's had. It's like brown. And she gave she photocopied that and gave it to a family friend, and they just it just was a mess.
And like that's the thing is like some things you just you write the recipe, but you don't really consider oh I kind of well, I do this that way, and like it's because of the temperature of of my stove and this, you know, like there's all these little things that you just can't explain. Well, you know, it's thinking about it. When you put a recipe in your book and it says iota carry in, and then someone messes you and uh they message you and they're like, Hey, I don't even have iota, I had cop-up and it didn't work. That's like yeah, you're like, well, yeah, yeah. I I didn't have a kickball, I had a BB, and this game was not fun.
You know what I mean like yeah yeah yeah people are yeah as we all know people are the worst so uh okay so before I get into the final segment which you guys are gonna be part of uh explain how Justino happened the term Justino for blending liquor and and Justino so my my the the sushi Vajan George uh when I was working for uh Johnny was named Justin Bini and I don't know why we can just kept talking about it and who was it was it weep up I don't know we well no not weep up it was you were calling Justino because we would all do fake Spanish Fabulous is from Mexico City oh it's families actually you could talk about mummies too and one a lot though sure the mummies like right now the strawberries yeah anyways but like he used to like do fake Spanish with me all the time so we would call Justin Justino which isn't fake that's how you would say it yeah I guess yeah you want to talk about mummies remember when he would go into convulsions like no no no when you like are on the floor yeah yeah like that remember we used to do that all the time stuck on your throat yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um because faggots would work like a 12 hour day and then come back to school and be an intern like uh did you ever sleep were you want methamphetamines he never sleeps anyway so like this is how this yeah yeah so then what happened uh so then what I don't know I actually I actually you know to be honest, I don't think I was part of the process of how it began. I I just came back one day and you guys had my made a drink. And you were like, this is a Justino. Hey, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alright, so during the time that you guys were there, what was the worst thing and the best thing we made? Worst thing, uh ketchup chocolate for sure. Everyone hated the ketchup chocolate chocolate. I hate it to this day. I mean conceptually you love it, right?
Yeah, conceptually I love it, yeah. Actually, I was in Copenhagen and some they were making chocolate out of uh rye or something, and they were like, Oh yeah, we made this fake chocolate. I was like, you're like 10 years ago. You're like, you're five years too late, eh? Yeah.
So what was good then? The cracker jack. Oh, the pork rinds cracker jacks? No, no, the we made the bourbon ones. Wait, which ones?
We made uh we distilled like the actual I I actually like the beaver tail, pup beaver tail is good. Yeah, puff beaver tail is good. I mean, the onion ice cream wasn't bad. Onion ice cream was good. Actually, no, the best thing I I gotta buy uh those ducks.
Oh my god. Yeah, pressed duck. So the interns wanted to make pressed duck. This was when, like 2010 or something? No, this is eight, this is eight.
Yeah, so we went to go buy. I was like, if you want to do pressed up for real, because the the I think Danielle had donated a duck press to the French Culinary Institute for like you know, Sultner or Sayak or one of these old school French guests. So it's in the library, and I'm like, the hell! Is it sitting in the library? This is garbage.
You know what I mean? That and so like I was like, and so one of our interns, I think it was Yahtzee, right? Was it Yahtzee? Yeah, it was Yahtzee. Who wanted to make uh pressed duck?
I was like, well, you know, if you really want to make pressed duck, you can't just go buy duck, it has to be duck with the blood in it, so you can't like cut it or do anything normal. So we had to go buy a duck from a live poultry place, and I was like, and I can't be part of this in any way shape. This was this was a perfect example of why I don't speak Spanish to people just because he made me speak Spanish to the people who work there. It's in a Spanish neighborhood. They're like, they're like, we don't speak Spanish.
But then you kept doing it. And he's like, I told you this is a halal joint. I don't speak Spanish. Yeah. And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But yeah. Then we bought the ducks, took them back to I was not a part of this people. What's about to transpire? I was not a part of. We took them back to uh Nick Wong's apartment.
Because they who's, you know, yes, from uh, yes. And then, yeah. Nick Wong now the uh the chef at UB Preserve. Yeah, yeah. And they had to dispatch them personally in a humane way, but in a way that was good for the thing, and I could not be a part of it.
So it's it was a nightmare, right? For you. Yeah, it was. It was a nightmare. The duck was good.
Yeah, duck was good. Yeah. Duck was good. Okay, now uh we have a new segment on the show guy. By the way, what's the name of the wine shop gonna be?
Peoples. Peoples? Yeah, peoples. Peoples? People's pee, not peeples.
No. Peoples? Peoples. With a B? No, with like peoples with a peeboo.
Like people, like pee pee peoples. Like everyday peoples? Yes. Yeah. Peoples.
Peoples. Isn't people's like a store? It used to be. It used to be a drugstore. You remember that?
Yeah, peoples. Yeah, it became CBS. Let me ask you a question. Doesn't this have badge search engine optimization? Peoples?
Peoples. There can't be anything that comes up when you look up peoples. Peoples? People's. Peebles.
And then you could do McGill of Gorilla, but he was Peebles. Mr. Peebles. Remember this? Anyway, for those of you that like uh so now uh okay, good.
So we got that out of the way. What's the name of the wine bar gonna be called? Also Peoples? People's now is that a legal problem calling the store and the wine bar Peebles? Well, it's gonna be called uh People's Wine Bar.
And the other one's the wine bar at People's The Wine Bar and People's Shop at People's People's Wine Shop, People's Wine Shop. Can you have a mascot, Mr. Peoples, and like have it? What do you think their story is? This is construction workers?
I don't know. Oh, this is the concrete warehouse supply uh center of the city, which is why all the streets around here are terrible and you get choked out with concrete dust when you walk out the door, and there's big plops of concrete in the bike lanes that cause me to almost die every time I ride my bike around here. So if you need concrete in the greater New York metro area, come to Bushwick where it's like hipsters and concrete. We got everything you need. We got hipsters, we got concrete.
Anyway. So uh Go Dave. Hi, Nastasia Louise. She's Louise. So now we come to the it's gonna be the final segment.
We got no callers, by the way. People don't like us anymore. Can you stop at that? Why do you usually get callers? Sometimes.
We had no questions, no callers. He called me. People don't have phones anymore. So this is called Classics in the Field. It's about classics in the field.
Yeah. So today's class classic is actually uh you ever been to uh been to like uh like uh where's pal's books? Pal's books is in Portland, right? So I was in Portland, and we go to Portland's. Yeah, we've been there.
Yeah, yeah. Not Portland, Maine. We've been there too. Oh so uh I was there and I found this random book called The Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices. And uh I searched through it, and it is the craziest cookbook that I think is ever, ever, ever, ever.
So the story is there's a guy named George Herter in um in Wasika, Minnesota, who in 1935 started an outdoor store like Cabela's or something like this. But he was also like Sears Roebuck, he had a catalog, and this catalog shipped everywhere. And so he became one of the best known kind of outdoor dealers. The business went bankrupt in 1977. Cabela's, and it went bankrupt.
It's kind of an interesting, like I won't get into it, we don't have time, but like basically, like uh someone who clearly has a certain political bent was like, as soon as they stopped being able to sell guns over the inner uh over the mails in the thing, he went out of business. So it was like, but anyway, so it's like hardcore, like they sold guns and ammo and and stuff. Anyway, Cabela's bought their Cabela's bought the name, and you can still buy Herter's brand, I think like decoys and ammo's from Cabela's if you want to. So but George Herter, aside from being an outdoors person. Is that natural wine enthusiast?
It was natural, it was natural wine enthusiast. Uh it was that's exactly what it was. But um basically he started writing a series of books in uh he started writing in 1959, published them in 60, called The Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices, Volume 123. He also has a lot of other well known books. And you can look through it, like his the list of books he's published are uh I'll give you some Professional Fly Tying and Tackle Making Manual and Manufacturer's Guide, Fitting and Finishing Gunstocks, The Professional Netmaking Manual, and here's the good one.
The only way to professionally fillet and clean fish. Oh wow. Strong. Uh so these books, the interesting thing about it is is that he is an old school crank. Like a hard school, hard, hard, hard old school crank.
So, you know, he's a mid-century, mid, you know, 20th century, like white guy, American, conservative. He hated New York City. He hated all that. He says things that are whatever. You know, so that comes with everything that it would come with.
But you have to read these books because Orientals. Oh my God, that's yeah, that's for sure. Like, like, uh that's mild. Yeah, yeah. Uh but he's not, it's not like he's not like saying anything.
He he's not intending to be at all. He's not like an overt racist in the book or an overt misogynist in the book, but he says things that are, yeah, like Oriental, which is just, you know, at the time, or like the ways that Native Americans are characterized, which he thinks he's characterizing them in a good way, but obviously, you know. But that's not what's interesting about the books. What's interesting about the books is they are 100% factually incorrect. So he was writing in a time when he he was one of these weird, semi-learned people who traveled the world taking notes on things and then writing, above all, recipe books with all of these weird stories that are just dead wrong.
And if you look it up, for some reason, uh, it's not uh it's on the internet. I don't know why, because it's not in the public domain yet. But you have to read, you have to read some of this. Uh the very beginning of it says in the lumber camp days and pioneer days, the cooks learned from each other the secrets uh of old world cooks. Each taught each other, uh each each taught uh his other the country other countries' secrets.
Out of this mixing came fine food prepared as nowhere else in the world. I'm putting down some of these recipes that you will not find in cookbooks. Each recipe here is a real cooking secret. So throughout all of this, he says he's giving you all these like crazy secrets that you can't know anywhere else. I'm also publishing for the first time authentic historical recipes of great importance.
By the way, none of them are authentic historical recipes. For your convenience, I will start with meats, fish, eggs, soups, and sauces and sandwiches. The art of French frying desserts, how to dress game, how to properly sharpen a knife, how to make wines and beer, which his recipes are terrible. How to make French soap, and here's my favorite. What to do in case of hydrogen or cobalt bomb attack.
Keeping as much in alphabetical order as possible. So for those of you that don't know, a cobalt bomb is when they add stuff like cobalt to a uh an atomic weapon to make it rain uh more radioactive fallout on you. And I'll I'll basically I'll give you the in a nutshell what he says to do in case of a hydrogen bomb attack. He says uh that what you want to do is don't go in your basement. He's like, everyone says to go in your basement.
He hates magazines, by the way, even though he was a huge uh catalog salesperson, he hates magazines and uh editors of uh cooking sections, especially. Like every other page is a reference to how much he hates these people. And uh he says, anyone that tells you to go in your basement is an idiot. You're gonna be crushed by all of the house that falls on you in your basement. He says you want two five-pound containers of tobacco.
He says, that's gonna be your money. He's like, when money is worthless, tobacco will still be currency. And he says, get a 22 rifle and a thousand rounds of ammunition so that you can hunt squirrel and whatnot uh when the time comes. This is his uh recipes for success in a cobalt bomb attack. Um anyway, let me uh give you some other stuff.
So uh like I say, everything he says is wrong. So uh like literally everything he says is wrong. I try to find one. Uh I I wish I had time to get into this. He has this whole section on Wyatt Earp.
You know Wyatt Earp? From the OK Corral. He goes, at Dodge, his boiled sliced buffalo tongue pickled in vinegar and his thinly sliced buffalo liver fried with bacon and onions were famous. His Wyatt Earp breakfast consisting of half-inch thick slice of beef or buffalo eye of rib steak with thinly sliced onions on top, put between two slices of buttered bread with the butter well sprinkled with salt and served with two fried eggs, was both very popular and justly so. And then he gives a recipe for here's the Oriental Saloon that Wyatt Earp ran.
He gives a recipe for Wyatt Earp's uh doves. And so he gives this whole long recipe. First of all, he goes into how Wyatt Earp used to shoot people, etc. etc. And then he goes into this entire thing about how Wyatt Earp cooked doves and the whole secret of Wyatt Herp's doves.
Ready for it? Soy sauce. Soy sauce. Soy sauce. He has fake secrets for uh fried chicken.
He says, never use charcoal for broiling, by the way. He hates charcoal. Says it's noxious and uh gives off noxious stuff. He was also a believer, early believer in alkaline versus acidic foods and acidosis, which is one of my favorite crank health theories of all time. But he says, no shit.
I mean, you don't think that sometimes you need a balance of alkaline and acidic foods? Or it's all hocum, dude. Like, what are you gonna stick a pH paper in your butt and figure out what your uh pH is? No, no, no. I'm just saying like eating more like high alkaline foods when you know you've had a very highly acidic diet.
Yeah, but acidic and alkaline don't mean any like in other words, like maybe if they ascribed, maybe if they said, if you eat a lot of this, eat this other thing. But like, for instance, apples are an alkaline food. Yeah. Why? Lemons are an alkaline food.
Yeah, why? What does that mean? Ah. Give me a meaning for it. Supposed in the pH wise, I guess.
Of what? Your butt? pH of what? Your blood? Like what?
Like this. Again, like this doesn't like make any sense to me at all. But he says, he says, uh, always use hard coal. It gives off no carbon fumes like charcoal. No such things, no such thing.
And it gives the meat, fish, or fowl a much cleaner taste. Hard coal never obscures the flavor of meat, fish, fowl, or as charcoal definitely does. The use of hard coal, like anthracite coal is what he cooks with, instead of charcoal in Minnesota for broiling, has always been the accepted practice. Many other parts of America also discovered this to be true. The famous restaurant, Gage and Tolner's in Brooklyn, which unquestionably broils the finest fish and meat in the East, uses nothing but hard coal, never charcoal.
Then he gives a recipe for uh the guy liked fake the guy here's here's some fake history for you. Mary Louisa Roquefort stuffed chopped beef. Mary Louisa was an Austrian woman, the daughter of Francis I of Austria. She married Napoleon I of France, becoming the Empress of France. The French spelling of her name is Marie Louise, the same as it is spelled in English.
Austrian cooking has always been excellent. This is true. This is not a lie. He says, Mary Louise was a woman who instinctively knew good food combinations. Her Roquefort stuffed chopped beef, if you like cheese, is one of the fine dishes, and like all really good recipes, is simple to make if you know the trick.
And then he gives, quote unquote, the original recipe, which is ground beef and roquefort cheese, like on a on a bun. It's like as though, and then he says that Napoleon would order this constantly. He said, uh, Roqueford stuffed chopped beef and chow chow mustard pickles. Chow chow mustard pickles are an American thing, straight up. He goes, Roqueford stuffed uh stuffed chopped beef and chow chow mustard pickles and French fried potatoes were one of Napoleon's favorite meals.
I don't know where he gets this stuff. When he was prisoner on St. Helena Island, he requested that he would be served this menu item at least once a week. His request was never granted. I have always thought that this was carrying punishment way too far.
And then he also goes on a diatribe about how everyone else messes up this recipe that you've never heard of by cooking it wrong. It's like the whole book is an amazing just diatribe against everybody. Palm Springs, cookbook writers, like he hates Palm Springs, loves the place. He literally, I believe, wanted uh Palm Springs to be cobalt bombed so that he could get rid of all the humans and people could go back in there and live nicely. And the one piece of advice I've never tried of his, which I think I uh like someday if you ever need to, and I think I've said this on the air before, if you need to kill a turtle and it's pulled into its shell, what do you do?
You put a chopstick in its butt. Ding ding ding! Did I tell you this one? That was his advice? Yeah.
I learned that from you. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's because I learned it from him. So and then you stick a stick out, you put the chopstick in its butt, it bites the stick, chop off the head. Yeah.
Yeah. All right. I just thought Chinese people came up with that. Well, yeah. Now I don't know, maybe.
Who knows? This guy didn't. Maybe this guy did. George Herter, Bull, uh the uh the bull cook and authentic recipes. Classics in the feed, go look it up, go find that on the internet.
It's it's like it it's not as cool now in the era of like fake news where like, you know, everything we see is fake all the time, but like back then, like it was a good dose of can you believe this guy actually wrote this book? And some of the recipes I've actually tried, some of the recipes are actually decent. Almost all the history is fake with a little sprinkling of truth. So don't necessarily take his advice on how to survive a hydrogen bomb attack. Uh, you guys got any last uh words on the show?
Uh they're looking at each other, nodding. People can't hear the nods. Check out um the Elfab and Jerry's show. Oh no. Can't plug another.
Oh, wait, wait, yeah, you can. I thought you guys are gonna have us on. Yeah, because we're gonna have you guys on. When are you gonna have us on? Uh let's do it this weekend, Saturday at like three or something like that.
Nastasi doesn't like where is it? Is it is it shot in Brooklyn? It's in the canal Canal Street Market. It's it's a canal in like Lafayette right by the school. Uh it's touching the stasis.
Does that work for you guys? We'll talk about it at last. All right. Anyway, thanks, guys. Thanks, Dadulus.
Thanks, Jeremiah. Thank you. Cooking issues. Bye. Bye.
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