Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. I gotta keep it a little bit on the down low to keep with the mellowness of the Carvel ice cream. And uh for anyone who grew up on the East Coast United States uh like I did, nothing makes your mouth uh water more than knowing on a hot summer's day that you can go to Carvel and get some of America's freshest ice cream. Especially if you happen to be able to go on a Wednesday, when as everybody knew, Wednesday is Sunday, buy one get one free. Yeah, Wednesday, Sunday.
Uh welcome to Cooking Issues. Uh have some special guests. First, I'll go through we got a full house of right with us. We got Jackie Molecules to my right. How you doing?
Great. We got John to my left. What's up? Not a whole lot. As usual, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez.
Yeah, yeah. And Joe Hazen rocking the panels. How are you? Yeah, I'm doing great. Uh you can call your questions if you're a Patreon listener.
You can call your questions too, 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. But special, there are two special guests. One, okay, first is Seth God. I'll just let you know.
Um, longtime friend of the show, uh, you know, blogger extraordinaire, uh, author whose most recent book is The Practice Shipping Creative Work in 2020. Uh bestseller available, you know, wherever fine books are sold. I hesitate to mention the A word because crap on them. A big poo on their on their flaming poo on their porch. Uh but uh so you know the so the the the fundamentals uh of like of most of the uh books of yours that I've uh read is kind of like uh they they are kind of in short chunks trying to get people into kind of a more kind of uh creative uh zone.
Would you say that's accurate? Yes, it's much better than being called a marketing specialist. Yeah, yeah. Well, uh, it's so funny. Like, hopefully, we'll get a chance to talk about it later, but I just uh did a seminar for Tales of the Cocktail, which we should put up uh a link to it on our on our thing, John.
Already done, Dave? Oh wow. To the video? Oh, aren't you the best? Lincoln Bio, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, Lincoln Bio. It's like Lincoln Park, but better. Uh the uh so uh on like tr uh how to maintain creativity, and you know, one of the through things in your in your book is you just have to work at it, right? You just have to work and do some work, right?
Exactly. And uh my friend Kathy, who's here, which you're gonna introduce in a second, is a prime example of this, and I learn from her every day because she shows up and she does the work. All right. So also ostensibly, we are calling you because you have some things to say about the everything bagel. We'll get to that.
But when you were first on the program back when we were at that other network, and uh you said, I happen to know the person. I don't know how Carvel came up, because it does, as as it does, because it it it really is a delicious product. Uh you you said, I know the person who invented Fudgy the Whale. I was like, shut up. I was like, first of all, like Fudge Fudgy the Whale, like I'm pretty sure came down the mountain with the tablets.
You know what I mean? It's like it's like you know not quite. Yeah, not quite. And you said, no, no, I really I know her. I know the person.
I was like, I was like, come on. I was like, you gotta get her back on the show, and lo and behold, this many years later, she is here, Kathy Dumas, the inventor. Uh I let me see if I got the year right. 1977. Nine 40 years ago.
40 years ago. 40 years ago last year. Oh, last year. So it was later. It was 70, it was a like uh well, eighty, nineteen eighty.
I remember it very well as a child. Which came first. Okay, let's just explain. Explain Carvel Ice Cream for those of people who don't have the good fortune of having grown up uh on our coast. Carvel Ice Cream was a um soft surf, still is uh soft surf franchise, um, which later developed into not just doing something for nine months, but doing something year round.
And Mr. Carvel decided to make um novelties and cake and everything so that his store would operate year round. Um wonderful ice cream, as healthy as it could be at the time, um ingredients, and he was a m a man who basically lived and died by this product. It it also it had it had a relatively low overrun, right? It was relatively dense compared to other soft serves.
I'm not gonna say that Mr. Softy has a lot of overrun in it, but Carvel is a relatively low overrun product, right? Thirty thirty-five percent at the time, yes. Yeah. Which which actually is the amount of air that goes into a product.
Norm there are a lot of the companies are almost a hundred percent, so it's uh, you know, fifty percent air, fifty percent product. But um no, Carvel was very, very low. And the reason that being the less air, of course, the smoother the product, the smoother it is when it freezes. So for every for every kilo for every kilo of base you're putting in uh for for every for every liter of base you're putting in three three hundred and fifty milliliters only of air instead of another whole liter there. Correct.
Yeah. Correct. Uh and but his claim at the time, I remember very distinctly that uh Tom Carvel, whose voice is iconic, the man did his own spots because it was a franchise it was a fran he sold franchises, right? But correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah, he used to go out of his way to try to help all of his franchisees make money, right?
If they made money, he made money. Right. Uh his his tagline his ta before Ben and Jerry's and all of that uh stuff when people became aware of overrun and density, his tagline wasn't the low overrun, it was America's freshest ice cream. Correct. Yeah.
Correct. Because it was we were manufacturing every day in the store. It wasn't being sent in. We were actually making every flavor in the store. Every flavor started out a soft serve.
And then later could be scooped. All of it made every day in the store. And the dairy would deliver, of course, mixed to you two, three, four or five times a week. Now the there was no product sitting anywhere. It was never nothing was ever delivered frozen.
Everything came in refrigerated and and fresh, yes, at the time. Also, Westchester's own baby, Carvell from Westchester. Westchester shout out. It's not a Long Island thing. I mean they have Carvel on Long Island, but it is not a Long Island thing.
This is a Westchester situation. Yeah. Uh now, uh so I had heard now i you just said earlier that it was uh a way to extend into the winter months to business, but I also heard that it was uh a way to use the leftover soft serve at the end of the night, you would put them into the cake molds and then they wouldn't get wasted, right? Correct. Absolutely correct.
Mr. Carvel always said it's kind of like Italian food, yeah. It's always cherry syrup, ice cream, crunch, crunch, syrup, cherry, ice cream, whatever way the novelty can be manipulated to make it look like something different, taste like something different, use all your ingredients. You know, he he was an immigrant and he firmly believed that everybody had the right to make a good life. And the best way to do it was to absolutely maximize everything that you had with a minimal amount of cost.
Now and uh and that's what you tried to do. Now a couple of things. One, was he a nice guy or not? Not that it matters because his ice cream is it was was on point. Was he a was he a a a a a good guy or not a good guy?
I mean I loved his voice growing up even though it's bizarre. I loved him. Uh he was for me he was like a grandfather figure. I met Mr Carbell I was seventeen. He was sixty five.
Um so it was a different relationship than let's say the executives already working for the company uh most of his franchisees liked him because they knew he put in the work he was a hard worker they had to work hard he understood what they were going through um but he was tough. He could be extremely tough if you were five minutes late in the morning he'd look at that watch and say, you know, good evening literally I was getting married and we were on the phone and I'm going, T C can I just go get married and we could finish this conversation a little bit later. He was like all right kid go ahead go get married conversation before really that's but he always called me kid um because we met I met young and um a really interesting man. You you liked him or you didn't. You had to understand you had to be a hard worker.
You had to work hard. You had to believe in the product to have to do things right. There was no shortcuts ever, anywhere. How could you not believe in the product? Yeah.
You know, it's very I've had three bosses in my life, and three of them, I mean, I've had others, but these three that and the boss that I have now, obviously, too, very much the same. Um hardcore, believe in their product, believe in truthfully the people that work for them, and um they will do anything that they can as long as you are giving your part too. So to me, Mr. Carvel, Helene, and someone else named Joanne Schoenfeld is not here with us anymore. Perfect people, great people to work for, because they love the product they're making.
Nice. Now, no other way to say it. For those who can't picture Tom Carvel, he first of all, you have to listen to his voice. He looks like a 1960s era comedic actor. He looks kind of like a buddy hackett with a mustache, right?
I mean, he's got yeah. I mean, I just the guy has character written all over his face. Anyway, uh so enough of that. We're here to talk about a specific Carvel item, Fudgy the Whale. Give us first of all, what came first?
First of all, sorry. A lot for people, a lot to unpack for people who aren't Carvel people. So there's two main cakes in the in in the Carvel universe, right? There's Cookie Puss and there's Fudgy the Whale, right? Now just so you know, Cookie Puss looks like Tom Carvell.
Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. That's true. Uh-huh. But Fudgy the Whale is also Santa Claus P. S.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Now were you Fudgy the whale for me? Were you also the reason that were you like, we could turn this into Santa too? Was that you or is that somebody else?
We had a group. We're a group together, and every mold that we made, um, and there were several just like think of the pumpkin mold, like Dumpy the Pumpkin became, you know, Mother's Day basket and became cut cookie puss and just crazy stuff. I never I never I never asked for a pumpkin. Fudgy I asked for. Cookie puss I asked for.
You had to because there was only a limited amount of space in the store. You had to max out every mold that you had and you only had so much real estate to keep this inventory in. So you had to invent a lot of things to do. We had a great art team, and um you had to make sure that and it wasn't once the mold was developed. It was wasn't the mold was not developed to be this, this and this.
It was developed to be one thing, and after that, then it was okay, now what else can we do with it? How else can we use it? True. Now you know the only time he actually he changed Fudgy the Whale, um was because he had a problem with the first mold and the tail kept falling off, and that's why he became fudgy. Because originally he was done like a regular Carvel cake, but it couldn't get the tail to stop breaking.
It was just so narrow at one end that it was like a nightmare. Every time I make the cake, the tail would fall off. And finally we talked and I said, you know, TZ, can't do this anymore. I I d we have to cover this. We have to do this somehow.
Okay, kid, go downstairs, do something, you know. And we I had fudge out on the out on the container and covered the tail with fudge, it held it together, it held up for photography, and that's how he became fudgy. Huh. All right, so why a whale? 'Cause Mr.
Carvel wanted a whale. It was a Father's Day for a mo. He wanted a fish and we're all looking at him like he lost his mind. Said TC, fish and ice cream. This is not a go.
And he insisted insistent. And he kept saying we brought him goldfish and salmon and I mean it was crazy the amount of fish that these people were drawing and doing and no it's not good enough. No I want more character into it. No, it's gotta be child related. Uh no I don't want it to be off of any other character in the world and little by little by little and then he said to me he says a whale you know why?
Because it's a whale of a dad. I want it to be big. It has to be in practice and that's why it became a whale. Not just going out fishing but you caught a whale. So it wasn't it wasn't like it wasn't like uh I want a fish and you're like how about a sea mammal?
It wasn't like that. He eventually was like no he wanted that he wanted that fish. That's that was it. Yeah. He said get no more ties.
I don't want to look at ties, hats, golf bags, bob putt I want something unique for Father's day. Yeah. And it actually became the biggest Father's day selling item we ever had. They used to run out of fudge. When I was a kid like you couldn't just was he of I don't remember I was a kid.
I didn't pay for anything but like I want to say nine ninety five no come on really Yeah yeah. You would go into the store and you'd be like, we're out of fudgy. And you're like, we're out of fudgy. Okay, here's the other thing about Carvel, right? Again, no offense to the Baskin Robbins Corporation, but like Carvel, to use a uh the phrase was the Cadillac of ice cream cakes.
You know what I mean? Back back in and still to this day. They now have them in in grocery store freezer cases. I don't know where they're made because they're not part of a Carvel franchise. I mean, I don't I don't even really know how it works anymore.
But for those of you that don't have, I believe Carvel invented that weird cookie crumble that goes in the middle of an ice cream cake. Is that true? Yes, he did. You know why? Because cake molded.
There was no way you could keep cake fresh and put it in into cake. It was really hard. We were cutting round circles, we were cutting squares, you were losing too much, it was wasted. Some people it would mold, and he said, No, no, no. I want fresh product.
I want fresh something. And they said, All right, TC, bake it. Bake it, see if you can make it hard and crumble. And he said, No, that's not enough. And how are we gonna preserve it?
How are we gonna hold it? So we have this product called brown bonnet, which is what a cone was dipped into and it hardened on the shell on the outside, which was basically uh a chocolate shell enhanced with uh coconut oil, which helped it stay hard and durable. And after baking cake, and we were making flying saucers at the time, and flying saucer crackers always had breakage. And he and he looked at me and he goes, Here it is, this is it. All this breakage from these flying saucer crackers we're gonna make, throw some bonnet in it, kid.
We throw some brown, this chocolate bonnet makes it even crunchier, holds it delicious in the ice cream, and from then on, there you go. That that crumbly stuff makes my mouth water. For those of you that don't know, flying saucer is the Carvel ice cream sandwich. It's kind of like a a what do you call it? A the cookie, a daisy-shaped cookie with a swirl, but you gotta get the swirl as you as you put the ice cream onto the lower cookie, you gotta s give it a little bit of a twist, right?
You know, what if you went to work for Carvel, you were first tested to see how you could work in an ice cream machine, and you had to make flying saucers. And you have to do the two and a half swirls, get the right weight. And if you pass the test and you made your flying saucers correctly, then you got the job. So my sister-in-law, Miley Carpenter, who uh started and runs the Food Network magazine, one of her early jobs, like a lot of people's first job was McDonald's, and she ran their ice cream machine for exactly one day because she used to just sit there trying to figure out how tall she could make the cone. You know, that it's that's not easy.
Trying and the worst thing is trying to make a cone for a television commercial or a photo shoot and have it stand up and have it not melt before the shoot is done, really was a nightmare. But you guys And it had to be the exact weight. You you guys didn't like the hyper tight swirls, right? You were kind of like a a mid-range swirl. Like you never did this straight up and down, but a mid-range, like a like a graceful, a graceful swirl.
It had to because we turned three quarters of them upside down. Remember, it had to be compacted, had to be turned in, had to stick well because we were turning them in to cones that were dipped all the time. Alright, so one last secret, maybe you can divulge. I uh go ahead for people who like know me with cakes, with the exception of like uh I like uh I like the icing on uh carrot cake. I like a like a that kind of a cream cheese icing.
I'm not a buttercream man. Carvel's ice uh icing on the Carvel cakes on point. I love to eat that stuff. Like like that weird texture, that like frozen fatty but not too buttery. Like what is that icing on the Carvel cake?
So Mr. Carvel's brother actually um helped invent that. And we made that. It was a whip topping powder that his his brother had made and we mixed that with Carvel ice cream mix and made our own whip topping in house to decorate cakes with. Wait, so it's like a it's like a base it's like a mix of ice cream base and cool whips.
Yes, I know. But the Yeah. Oh man. Now wait I mean it was w just for for Cookie Puss was before fudgy? Cookie Puss was after Fudgy.
After Fudgy. Were you involved in the cookie puss or no? All of them. All of them Oh my God, all of them. After Fudgy, were you like I mean how much swagger did you have in your step after Fudgy came out?
You know what, to tell you the truth, none of us had swagger. None of us realized the importance of fudgy until many years later. Yeah I mean so you didn't truthfully you didn't really think like there's all of these kids who are Jones and after this uh after this ice cream? No. Really really no it was only until people started to really kind of laugh with Tom over commercials and what he did and it just was you just didn't realize it at the time really w most of us didn't even believe that this would even work the first time.
We were like, oh this Father's Day is gonna be a disaster. Even some of the franchisees were everybody was so hesitant, thought it was so out of the box and it was incredible when it worked. And then it just took off. Then it was like, okay, let's make it into this. Let's make it into that.
Let's do it with this and it's a whole different ball game completely. So when you're slicing a fudgy the whale. Wait, wait, wait. Seth yeah S Seth, do you have like a is this the phenomenon like do you have a way to explain what happened since this is your I w I think it was just so different, so unique and such a novelty and it had ice cream and fudge and what else did you want? It wasn't round, it didn't look like a birthday cake.
It was perfect for Father's Day and then people just wanted it after that for every occasion. So we stopped making it just one time of year. It it kind of continued to go all year round. Maybe that's why it was always out because you guys only brought it out on certain days and my kid brain didn't know that. I was like, I want the whale.
I want the whale So uh Nastasia, what I s what I think we're seeing here is a phenomenon which is it was the first celebrity cake. Uh that Tom's incessant radio advertising made the cake famous. And that's one of the reasons why it was even more delicious than even say cookie puss, because it's like, you know, comparing uh Tom Cruise to a uh a second tier star in the firmament. You felt like you were in the presence of something important. Uh-huh.
Uhhuh. Yeah. Abs absolutely 100% true. Very true. Very true.
Are you are you a cut through the head lady or are you a cut through the tail lady? That's what I need to know. Trust me, I had so many problems with that tail I thought. Always tail. I never wanted to make that cake again, really.
I must have made fifty for the first commercial. Easily. 'Cause we make we made all the commercials in house, you know, and um, oh my god. Yes. No.
Easily fifty of them. When Fudgy becomes Santa, what happens to the other part of the tail? How do you decorate that? I I can't picture him as Santa. Yeah, you turn him upside down.
You kind of stand him. So the tail is up in the air. All right. And it becomes part of his hat. It's a red hat and then it's got a little ball on the other part of the tail.
Oh yeah. A white a white little um little fuzzy little ball there. Yeah. It's legit. Jack showing us a picture.
And you put a Santa face on it and you're done. Yeah. And it's whole home. All right. I ha I had a question in from a listener who wants to know uh how you trained all the franchisees to have such neat handwriting.
It was part of the training course. We had trained we had the trainees for 14 days for two weeks straight. They came to stay with us in Westchester and uh they worked there was of course there was schooling, but they actually worked in the stores. They worked side by side with us and they went through cake decorating courses, cake handwriting courses. What was harder, the handwriting or piping the perfect shells on the outside of the uh thing?
I'd say a handwriting, the shelves you could get. The handwriting is difficult. I think it's spacing because you never know what you're writing. You know, people ask for happy birthday Tom, you know, and then somebody will come along and say, No, I need congratulations on your anniversary, Aristotle and you know Penelope or something. So it it's I think it's harder to do the writing.
Yeah, Aristotle and Penelope, that would be a difficult that's a lot of writing. It's a lot of writing for in cake. You know. Now I know what to do to really kind of uh freak out uh a franchisee. I'll just show up and ask for a very long uh statement, yeah.
Yeah. Uh so w what what are the fa what like what fail I didn't even remember the pumpkin. That's how little of a that's how little of a of a of a impact it made on me compared to Fudgy and Cookie Puss, which, you know, I legitimately think of a lot. Like what what what were your main failures? Uh what were your main failures there?
Because everyone likes to hear uh uh the failure that helped you do something else better. Well, Fudgy was a failure originally, only because we couldn't get him to stick together. But eventually it worked. And um I think some of the other failures maybe were John and Priscilla the Philbrums. You missed Sam somewhere.
Um, we we also had Tom the Turkey. Um I th wait do I do I remember that? When was that? What year was that? Oh the years I don't remember.
But um they came after Dumpy the Pumpkin. And um it's so funny to say these names now. Dumpy the pumpkin. I mean the thing is like like uh I mean, like look, Nastasi and I appreciate self-deprecating humor. Love it.
But like, you know, you know, dumpy? I mean like when I was a kid you know, we had the great pumpkin, right? Linus was like the great pumpkin. You know what I mean? Like that's it.
You're like, hey, what's your pumpkin's name? Dumpy. Dumpy. I want to see John into the case. I mean, there were a lot of other names, which I'm not even gonna go through, but there were it it's if it clicked to him and it made him laugh and he thought it was funny, then it went with it.
Nice. Uh and for those of you that are that don't live here but you come out here, like I still legitimately believe Carvel ice cream is a great product. I'm for it. I'm a hundred percent for it. Um I haven't had it in a couple of years, but I s oh you know what's really sad?
Uh I heard that in uh two thousand and eight the original in Hartsdale closed down. Why would they do that? Why didn't they why didn't they landmark that? I never understood I I have no idea why they did. They just knocked the whole thing in it's like an Andy says or something.
It's really upsetting that that happened. Yeah, I mean so recent, you know what I mean? And yeah, you would have thought the corporate, at least corporate, because Carvel sold the he sold the business um just before he died, and um sold it and then got sold again. I think it's on its third owner now, and um it the importance loses. I think the for some reason when the owner has the business, it's so different than when investors come in or corporate comes in or hedge fund comes in, you lose so much.
You it's just it's lost. Yeah, and I want hedge fund I don't want hedge fund Carvel. I don't want my hedge. I don't want hedge fund Carvel. You know, or like that guy from Billions who b bought that pizza joint and eviscerated it.
Yeah, don't want that. Uh that's what happened. So now we're entering the section of the program where we talk about uh not just invention of f uh fudgy. Carvell is sometimes credited as popularizing and by some people inventing the whole soft serve business in in the the United States. And the uh so there that's a competing claim, right?
And the other competing claim claim that we have Seth on to talk about is uh the everything bagel. So I don't know which one you want to tackle first. I mean uh I mean I think by all accounts, I mean, in for my opinion on the soft serve debate, it's like whether or not there was another human being who made a soft ice cream, because all s all as Tom Carvel said in many interviews, all ice cream is soft when you make it. He said this many times back back when he was alive. Absolutely.
Absolutely. And can't make it hard. Right. And and so like and so like uh regardless of you know this was accidental, you know, it was truthfully an accident. Yeah, you said his he said his truck broke down, right?
His truck broke down, he was scooping at the time, and um he it it product became soft and he tried to hold it together as much as he could to keep it something to sell. And um he said people were liking this very much, and he said, Oh no, no, no, I think I have to keep this in a machine. All the machinery he did. All of that, um it wasn't like he went out and bought an ice cream machine, he developed it in the in the plant. And um he borrowed the money, obviously from his wife Agnes to uh do all of this, and um it's a true story, it's absolutely true story.
And uh he just wanted to make sure that the ice cream could sit in this machine for the length of time, keep its consistency, and be served always at the same temperature and always have the same product. Yeah, so you guys weren't using tailors or electrofreezes or anything like that. Uh no, we were actually in some in the original, there were some Taylor machines in and out of the plants, but most of the uh most of the machinery was still at um Neverhead Avenue in Yonkers. Wow. At Cardinal Corps.
You don't think of Yonkers as being like an ice cream machine capital, but now I now I will. Now I will. And and for those of you will those of you that don't know it's attached to the carpet shop. You know what it's attached to all of that is part of all of that. Like soft serve ice cream is actually a difficult problem because you don't know when you're gonna draw it, and so it can't over whip, but you have to get the right amount of overrun and it has to draw and the texture has to be the same.
Not an easy problem. No, but you do it with a bunch of controls and ti you know, time and temp controls, how many times it's gonna move within that circulating cylinder, how cold it's gonna get, how it shuts on and off. Yeah, all these complicated little I was he actually let me going through school. I worked probably in every part of the corporation. I've fixed machines, I have worked in legal, I have worked in uh contract, worked in training, you know, worked in stores, worked on the field.
But it's amazing how much you learn and how much you he did himself to make sure that everything was done. So working in the plant in the manufacturing part of machinery, I was able to see how all of this is put together, and it's a pretty pretty unique way to make sure that that product is consistent. Nice. So now for a second, let's talk everything bagel. So I uh here's another thing people might not know.
That i unless you're like roughly my age or older, right? You grew up where an everything bagel was always a thing, right? But in the 70s, it wasn't a thing necessarily. Like I don't remember everything bagels. When I was a kid, it's like, what do you want?
I want a poppy. I want, I want uh salt bagel. Sesame. I want sesame. I want a plane.
Right. At some point, you know, uh, all of a sudden, everything bagel was everywhere, and then all of a sudden people started taking credit for quote unquote inventing it, right? And uh, I forget the name of the person who claimed to have invented first claimed to invented some guy named Gusson, uh, David Gusson, who, like a classic thing claims as like a a high school student to have swept up a bunch of stuff off of uh off the floor of the oven, thrown it onto a bagel, and been like, I invented the everything bagel. Unlikely story. But Seth, unlikely, especially skipping it off the field.
Yeah, right. I mean, come on. For anyone who's baked anything, uh the stuff burns. The stuff that falls off is burnt, it's burnt. You know what I mean?
It burns. That's what the deck, the bottom of a deck oven does, whatever, it doesn't matter. Uh but Seth, you're like, I worked in a bagel shop prior to this 1980, and we were making an everything bagel. Explain. Okay, I did not invent the everything bagel.
This needs to be made clear to my progeny and to anyone else in the world. Yeah, yeah. I didn't say you claimed to invent it, you just claimed to say that you knew that before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.
Other people have claimed that I claimed, but I did not. What I did in my blog post, I wrote a blog post in 2008 in which I said, if this person invented the everything bagel, then I must have invented it. Because I was in 1976, a 16 year old teenager. I had gotten a job at the local bagel place in Buffalo, New York, by walking in and saying, I have 10 years of experience eating bagels. And for whatever reason, they hired me.
And in the first week, it was a new place. They didn't have a policy about employees eating the food. And my coworkers and I ate hundreds of dollars worth of bagels and locks. Checks out. Um and they made a new policy, but they didn't fire me.
And then my job was to clean the mixer. And the mixer is uh big enough to hold a couple people. And uh as I was cleaning it, it's all dried hard dough. Uh I would turn it on and off to see if I'd missed a spot, and I missed a spot, and I put my hand in to slow the blade down, and it started pulling me into the mixer a certain day. Was this a spiral mixer?
So I had to decide it was like a big dough mixer, yeah. Like a spiral or like a whole. I had to decide. Yeah, bigger than a whole bart. And I had to decide should I break my finger by pulling it out or should I die?
So I pulled I broke my finger on the bagel mixer. And the bagel the bagel guy screamed and yelled at me, the owner. So I didn't last very long in the job. But my thesis is this. For something to actually be an invention, it almost always happens when the people around you say that'll never work.
That inventions occur when someone has the boldness to lean into something that that a lot of other people are saying, that doesn't make any sense. And if you've ever made bagels in a bagel store and you've got the four bins of toppings, it is obvious that you're gonna make an everything bagel. It is not a leap of thing. So I did not invent the everything bagel, but I definitely sold everything bagels in nineteen seventy-six. So which finger did you break and was it ever the same?
Well, my body is a little bit of a battlefield c considering how lucky I was growing up, but uh I believe it was the uh ring finger on my right hand and it ruined my billiards game. But other than that, I've been fine. Wow, wow. And uh another question that a you know inquiring people are gonna want to know. While Buffalo is part of New York State, it is not in any way related to New York City.
So does the Buffalo bagel, of which I've never had, Buffalo famous for many food things. You got your beef on Wec, you got your wings, you got that sea foam can all that stuff, right? Great. Uh now, a Buffalo bagel, is it more beholden to a New York bagel or is it more beholden to a Canadian Montreal style bagel? Uh so the guy who started the thing was from New York.
Buffalo, you are correct, is four hundred miles away. It is more culturally aligned with Cleveland than it is with New York. But I did not taste the Montreal bagel until ten years after. Uh it there was no sugar in them, no malt in them. They were classic boiled New York City bagels.
So you think you you you're standing by, you're saying it was a it was a good quality bagel. I'm sure it was a good quality bagel. Yeah. Nice, nice. Uh yeah.
All right. And and the proof is they went out of business. So why is that why is that the proof? I like that. Well, because if you look at lenders and you look at the whole idea of the frozen bagel and you look at the idea that uh, you know, for bagels to become popular, they had to become unbagels.
The real bagels, the kind that are still hard to find in New York City, most people don't go out of their way for them because they're special. And um I think it's better to make something special than to make something popular. I mean speaking of Cleveland, wasn't Cleveland the place where that person posted that thing where they cut the bagel the wrong way and they were like, what? What's wrong with this? And then someone was like, there's a wrong way to cut a bagel.
Of course there's a wrong way to cut a bagel. It's like, you know, when when when uh when my kids, we know we're like, oh, you I need to juice some citrus cut and they cut the citrus the wrong way. I'm like, there's a way to cut it. You know what I mean? It's like a b what what am I gonna do with this?
Bagel. You know what I mean? That you've you've done it like it's listen, people, it's okay to slice a bagel properly and then to cut that half of the bagel into a quarter. This is fine. You can do this.
You know what I mean? But like just handing somebody a bagel that you've I don't get it. St. Louis. It was St.
Louis. Well, that means look at this. This person like put it into an egg slicer. What the hell is wrong with them? You have to wait for it to go stale and do that and turn it into bagel chips, which bagel chips are fine.
There's no there's no dishonor in a bagel chip. A bagel chip is a fine thing. Uh you gotta use the bagels that are left over. Oh my god, but Lenders is such a sad story. Bagel chips are the fudgy the whale of the bagel world.
Wow, wow. Uh all right. Uh so in uh in your I learned some things uh from your book uh The Practice. One is that you're not a fan of Gilligan's Island. Do you think it's bad television?
Well, everyone knows that Gilligan's Island is bad television. It's just famous television back to this idea that it w there were only three shows on at a time. So the networks all got a third as a given. That's table stakes. And when you, you know, if the professor is so smart, why can't he build a radio?
All right. Well, let me let me uh as someone okay, so Gilligan's Island, I believe, uh started in 1963. And here's the amazing thing about Gilligan's Island. It only ran for three years. Gilligan's Island only ran for three years.
Only two of those were in color. The vast majority of the ones they showed when I was a kid were the color ones, right? Uh after Bob Denver, who was Gilligan, pitched a fit and said that he wasn't gonna do uh the show unless they added Professor and Marianne to the theme song. God bless. I re I learned that reason recently that And you love the show.
Well, again, you gotta understand for those that grew up in New York, uh, which lady do you like the most? Marianne, everyone's a Marianne man. Marianne. Everyone's a Marianne show. Uh I mean, come on.
Anyone who's a ginger man is is lying, or it's like whatever. Everyone's a Marianne man. Wow. Uh I mean it's just true. Uh someone contradict me.
Okay. Uh the thing about Gilligan's Island is that uh they played it the same time every day, right? And uh because there was only two seasons in color that they played a lot, you saw the same episodes every so it was the YouTube kind of of my generation. We didn't have VCRs. We couldn't re-watch things all the time, but like because there was this like small number of Gilligan's Islands that were relatively small, you know, short episodes, you could kind of reabsorb them and they became kind of like like kind of old friends to you.
You know what I mean? Like the cosmonauts, like the uh exactly, yeah. You know, they uh the the uh they whatever it was it was Carmen, what was it? It was uh it was uh they did to the tune of Carmen, they did Shakespeare to the tune of Carmen, and then somehow the producer got rescued, but they didn't, and then he became a Broadway hit because they had a radio they could listen to, but not they could not talk back out. I mean, like stuff is genius.
I mean, you know, uh, but I understand how you know you were you're a couple years older than me, you're a little more of a jaundice view of Gilligan's Island as good TV. And yes, I mean, I guess from a what's it, what's it, from a more objective criticism point, the Sopranos is better TV than Gilligan's Island, I'm sure. But you know all agree on that. I guess. I guess.
Uh so uh one uh like are you interested in maybe I mean I don't want to like you know force you to you know give out like your your secrets here for free on our show, but do you want to talk a little bit about um because I think a lot of the people who listen to the show are interested in how to maintain the drive to be creative, both in in in making new menu ideas or maybe even new concepts uh for their place or um just how to stay mentally fresh because to me the hardest part that the thing that makes you m me most nervous is always wondering whether I'm still gonna be interested enough to stay fresh tomorrow. You know what I mean? Like it's like, am I going to still feel like what what I'm gonna do? I always feel okay when I'm just working. It's when somebody asks me what I'm gonna do that I get nervous because then I'm like, I don't know, I don't know, I'm just gonna work.
You know what I mean? Do you uh like what do you think? Well you one of the reasons that you are a hero to s to me and to a lot of people is because of your unbridled enthusiasm for better. And I wouldn't like to not be known as someone who didn't like Gilligan's Island or as the person who invented the everything bagel, but I would like to be known as somebody who is not an enemy of quality. And what is going on in cooking, and there are so many reasons this show should be called cooking issues.
But one of the issues is this there's a tension between the regular kind, between doing it the same way, between getting your mise en place correct and making it reliable, and the tension that comes from doing something that might not work. And a whole bunch of the molecular gastronomy stuff, a whole bunch of the things that you know you were doing with cocktails at the bar, all of these things are on the frontier. And we can't have a frontier if we don't have the place where we started. And that's why I thought Kathy would be such a great connection for the show, because Kathy has lived on the frontier, but also been a defender of quality throughout her whole career, including where she bakes now. And the same thing is true for the way you approach cooking, because you know what came before.
You've done the reading. And so for people who are interested in the kind of cooking you are describing, it's I know how to make it the way they made it in 1950 or 1990, but I'm also gutsy enough to imagine changing something and aware enough to listen to what happens after I change it to see if I did the right thing or not. Yeah, you have to be willing to be worried. And we go into that bakery, and it's always a a new challenge, Helene will say, Well, why don't you do this? You know, and I'll look at her, and it's a completely new way for me to bake anyway, because I'm used to butter sugar cream.
I'm not used to sorghum and brown rice, white rice, and all of this stuff. And she'll say, just let's try. Whatever happens, happens. Let's do it. Let's experiment with it.
Just go with it. Well, let's let's back up a little bit. We haven't that way. We haven't described the bakery yet. Let's talk I presume this is the link between this is the link between I assume the link between uh you, Kathy, and Seth is the bakery, by the way bakery, which is known as and and it's been an it was I think relatively early in in being like a a a like a a gluten a gluten free bakery.
Uh and how many locations do you have now? We have four locations and we also do a lot of baking for Hofoots and for a lot of other people. All right, so now we've introduced now we've introduced the bakery. Why don't now now please go go go ahead. And every day, if we're not experimenting or we're not challenging, yes, we can make a muffin, but can you make a muffin that does this, this, and this?
I think that's the only it's it's the only way to grow. It's the only way to keep fresh, it's the only way to stay ahead of the curve. And it also makes work a lot more fun. It it's enjoyable. Uh the same old, same old gets gets tiring, gets bland, and I think that's what happens to people if they're not willing to take the chance or take the risk.
And that's what we do every day. We take the chance and we take the risk. What do you what I think that's why it's successful. What are your thoughts on the kind of explosion of people who are working in that space in the gluten-free space now who are interested in the way things taste rather than in like you know some sort of just bizarre idea of what health is. Because you know when I was growing up as soon as you went into any and as soon as you went into any one niche away from mainstream, you in order to try to capture as much of that market, you would do all of the things.
You'd be like, well I'm not going to use any sugar and I'm not going to do this and I'm not going to do that. You know what I mean? Which is kind of a nightmare. That's why a lot of that stuff tasted so so bad. But there's such an explosion now like just in the past five, six years.
What do what what are your thoughts on that? I think it's it's funny that you say that because Helene will always say to me if we'll make something do you like it? And she's and she does that because she knows I come from a different a different ingredient place. And I'll say, you know Helene, this is incredible. It's it's actually not only what the customer needs, but it tastes good.
And this is how and this works and that's what we strive to do every single day. Not only make it because somebody can't have it it's allergy free it works with this diet but it also tastes good. I mean there's a lot of baked goods where frankly the gluten is just getting in the way. You know what I mean? I mean it's just getting in the way like a I don't know I don't know.
Um, but I do have a gluten-free question from one of our Patreon uh members. And so maybe as uh both of you, you know, being uh experts in this field and also Jack just coming back from Mexico, we have someone who's going to Mexico City on their honeymoon uh, you know, later on later on this year, but uh one of them is uh can't can't do can't do gluten and wants to know whether anyone has uh recommendations for that in Mexico. Anything? Have you guys have you guys been to I I have I have not been to Mexico City with an eye towards not having gluten. I mean there were a ton.
It seemed like most places had ice. I haven't eaten gluten in thirty years, unrelated to the bakery, because I hurt my shoulders a long time ago, not in a bagel accident. And um and there are the the the two words that are so magical are corn tortillas. Yeah, yeah. Because corn tortillas are gluten-free.
I found two or three extraordinary restaurants, they're not hard to find on Yelp. Some of the the the cutting edge uh regional cuisine in Mexico City is off the charts. And I haven't been there in five years, but it it's worth seeking out. Yeah, Rosetta's a great bakery team and they had a ton of gluten. Yeah.
I I think corn has taken on a lot. I think they've also known how to incorporate they have a different sugar, they use a pill and sell, they use different flavorings. Um he's going to be fine. It's and he's going to enjoy the food in Mexico for sure. Yeah, their tortilla game really is on point.
New York City's getting a little bit better, but I mean, uh there are some places that are making decent Nix to mall, but like, you know, I mean again, I haven't been in five years either. The the the correct answer is I need to go back to Mexico. Yep. You know, I haven't really been I haven't been anywhere. I haven't tried I haven't done I haven't traveled since the since the COVID.
I haven't been on uh on an airplane since the COVID. Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right. So I mean just get I mean we have a um I apologize, guys.
We have a uh some Patreon questions, and since now we are, you know, that's what we do for a living now. We have to we're we're it's not Alexander. I'm not saying that your question's not valid. I'm just saying I'm you know, I'm going outside of the realm of what Seth and Kathy are talking about. Anyway, here's this.
Hope you guys are doing fine. I'm trying to make a drink that I have previously made for a competition doable for sale. The problem is it requires a large amount of clarified juice from Cloudberries. You can tell we're dealing with Scandinavian here, red currents and hops and a hops cordial. Uh when I originally did it, I clarified the uh puree using uh the technique from liquid intelligence and a four by one hundred milliliter centrifuge.
Gosh, this person's a glutton for punishment, Alexander. Jeez, Louise, 100 mils. I will never forget being trapped in a basement in Bogota with one of those tiny centrifuges having to make enough product for like 500 people. Everyone else is hanging out in Bogota, everyone else is, you know, drinking Aguardiende and going to the top of the mountain and hanging out, doing all that stuff, and I'm in a basement, you know, uh you know, with the with uh whatever. Anyway, uh as you can imagine, that takes uh uh a a lot of uh problem.
Um so uh my plan was to get a spinzall, the version 2.0, but that's not realistic this year, uh, it seems, well, because we haven't made it. Well look, we're trying, Alexander. Jeez Luis, you do not know, mean maybe you do, how hard it is to get a factory to restart production once they've sold it and they and the all the people who made it before have quit. It's very difficult. All right.
Get to his question. Especially wait, especially because get this. Get this. I've never, I think, said the the actual problem. So listen, listen carefully.
This is how stupid the world is. Our original agent in China is a motor manufacturer. That motor manufacturer decided they wanted to be agents for people, so they hooked us up with the company who made this the actual factory that made the spinzall. Now, the motor company sells motors to that factory, which is how we got in touch with them. We are now trying to make the spinzall without that agent, because that agent turned out to be less than useful.
What's the less than useful? Opposite of useful, anti-useful, a hindrance to making it. But then now the problem is that they can't get the motor from those people anymore because those people won't sell them the motor because they're not our agent on that anymore. Nanny nanny poo-poo. Then we can't we can't get a new motor without changing all of the certifications that we have, etc.
etc. Yada yada. Then the company got sold in the meantime, night mayor. All we want to do, we for over a year and a half, we were saying push the button, make another run, make another run, do it, do it, do it. And we can't.
That's what's happening. Anyway, uh Alexander wants to know would Agar Agar work for this. The Cloudberries, especially I'm worried about seeing uh is where they are paying uh even with the centrifuge thanks and hope everything ends up working out with Booker and Dax. Yes, do Agar, don't do quick agar though. If you have the time and the CloudBries, all this stuff that you're listing here will last.
Do good old-fashioned freeze thaw. Your yield is gonna be higher. And uh, you know, it's a pain in the butt, but I'm assuming that if you're in Scandinavia, you got freezer space, just put it outside. I'm just kidding, I'm just messing with you. But like, you know, freeze it solid, do like, you know, uh two grams per liter of uh agar.
The trick, oh one thing I'll I would test, I would just test the currents with Agar to make sure it sets because Cassis sometimes very heavy tannin skin stuff, sometimes can interfere with Agar Agar settings, so you might need to up the percentage uh uh uh a wee bit, but just do some tests on on the freestyle. Uh anyways, uh how is that? Was that alright? Was that a good answer? Come on.
That's it. That was those are the only two questions. We got we got the Mexico question, and now we can go back. We've answered all of the the Patreon questions, as as far as I as far as I know. Oh, if that Patreon listener is in the Discord, they can hit me up directly for that Mexico City recommendations.
So, what is Discord? It's like uh it's right here. Look, why do they call it Discord? Why would they name it after after after something contentious? Well, I I think that context is far enough removed, probably.
I don't know. Really? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's a good question. Why is it called Discord?
All right. Anyway, it's a chat platform and we have a Discord, so you should join if you're a listener. Now, Seth, something else that you brought to my attention in your book, and I'm gonna get her name wrong, but her hat, I looked her up on on the on the internet. Her hats were amazing. I grew up, I went to art school.
Some some people will know this, uh, grad school for art, and um we used to learn uh about uh Duchamp all the time and the fountain sculpture, which very famous uh upside down urinal, which was put, I believe that was into the armory show sometime in the in the nine in the 19 teens. 1917. Yeah, yeah. Uh and and it was signed the the the the reason you knew it was art, two reasons you knew it was art. One, it was in an art show.
That's one. Two, it was signed R Mutt, R Mutt. Uh and the famous picture, and it's one of those classic things that when you're an art student, they teach you because you're like, is it art? You're like, well, of course it's art because we're having this discourse about it right now. If we were, you know, come on.
Uh not really Duchamp's work. It's this other person. You want to talk about that? I had no idea. You brought this to my attention.
I I could talk about this all day. Baroness Elsa von Fiteg Loringholfen. So here's the deal. She's the original punk, the original downtown New York City punk. And she finds this urinal at a factory in uh Lower East Side, buys it, and starts treating it like a piece of art.
Her neighbor down the hall is the photographer, Arthur Penn. He takes a picture, and Duchamp, trying to be, you know, the helpful uncle, decides to put it out there, and it becomes a sensation. And in his early descriptions of it, he says, My neighbor made this. But over the years, as he confronted artist block, he took more and more credit for it. And by the end of his career, he said it was his.
Totally checks out with all of his other weird, like he's kind of the Andy Couchman of the art world, right? Rose Sela V, all of these things. You know what I mean? So like my neighbor did it would be a classic of him thinking foisting something off, but in reality, he was just taking from somebody, which is mind-boggling. And at the time, like so freaking typical.
I think of like, you know, uh Charlotte Perrion and Corbus, like all of these kind of like toxic, uh toxic famous dudes taking from uh women at the time, designers and artists, but I just had no idea that Duchamp was part of that Duchamp was part of that that thing. That's kind of depressing. Right? Yeah, no, the pa the patriarchy runs deep. And um my mom was the first woman on the board of the art museum in Buffalo.
So I grew up with modern art. And when they shut the Albright Knox a couple years ago for renovations, they had me come back and I did a tour uh to sort of take people through this arc. And I worked on it for weeks, and that it was gonna end at a Duchamp uh Cornell box, which was a little Dadaist thing that he did. And I I land, I race the to the museum, I do one run-through before all the people arrive, and the Duchamp's not there, it's in storage. And so like it takes away the whole punchline of the the arc and the story.
But I said to the curator, look, from now on, when you got priceless works of art you want to put in storage, just leave them in my house. Hey, you speak about price priceless works of art. Uh, for those of you that are young enough to still have it be a goal to become the president of Yale University. If you become the president of Yale University, you get to choose any work of art that the UAG owns and put it up like in your office and like where and like in your in your like the house where you live. Can you imagine their art collection is so sick.
Their art collection is amazing. That would be Yeah, the president's house better be climate control does. All I have to say if they're getting really nice. So Seth, John is a John comes from uh uh art history, he was an art art history professor at UConn. So uh yeah, so he's getting mad about the fact that like you know, you know what?
There's one work of art that I would steal from Yale. It's a small, it's it's uh Max Max Reichlich is the artist. It's called the Jester. And I feel like my whole life is based around this picture and around uh Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Those two works, uh like I think my whole life is based around it's a jester with this look on his face, eating a soft boiled egg, it's dripping down his chin, and he's got a weird jester scepter, and then like a small animal over his shoulder.
Love it. I'll find it, I'll find it, I'll put it up on the uh You've done it before. I mean, it's it's my classic face. It's my it's it's you know, and it's like it's like that beautiful color on board, you know, work. Anyway, you know, German weirdness back from the whatever it was, 14, 1500s, whenever.
Um can you say her name again? Because I need people to look up the hat that she was wearing on the on the Wikipedia page. Who? The the name of the Elsa? Yeah.
E L S A Elsa von Freitag Loringhoven. L-O-R-I-N. Loringhoven. I mean, that's what a great name. Uh all right.
So uh I'm being told, yes, that I'm officially out of time. Seth, thanks uh so much for coming on and bringing Kathy. The uh the stories that you have told me about Carvel have just completely reinvigorated my love for Carvel ice cream. I might go out and get some right now. I've I've made my kids love Carvel Ice Cream.
I mean, Carvel Ice Cream, again, for those of you that are, I don't know, not in this country or not East Coast people, it's a thing. Carvel ice cream, it's a thing. Am I right about this? Sure. You're right.
100%. All right, guys, thanks so much for coming on. What a pleasure. All right. Cooking issues.
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