Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New State Studios at Rockefeller Center here in the heart of New York City, joined as usual with Nastasia, the hammer Lopez. How you doing? Good. I'm a slightly disappointed because I forgot to mention that last week you wore your amazing Christmas hat, and this week it you think it's too cold for your amazing Christmas hat, so you're wearing a fine hat, but not the hat.
It is true, but I still have three weeks till Christmas. Three weeks till Christmas. Oh, uh, if we have time, which we probably won't, I gotta tell you, I already told you, but the the new theory about Rudolph, about the one voice mistake I thought was in Rudolph and the red nosed reindeer. We maybe we'll get to it. It depends on whether our special guest enjoys these programs or not.
All right. Uh which there's no reason to think that she does. Anyway, uh, as usual, also we got uh Jackie Molecules back in California. How you doing? I'm great.
Guess what I just did? What? Contributed to the Sears Old Pro Indiegogo, which all of our listeners should do as well. Oh, it's true. Because guess what, folks?
At this rate, we're not gonna make it. And if we don't make it, unless the U.S. government decides out of the blue to give us a big old loan, which by the way, Stas, we've been asking for that small business loan for how long? Since May. May?
Yeah. May. You mean so like May like a month ago? Yeah. No, no, May's like May's like nine months ago.
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a month. Yeah, yeah. Do you know what's really hard to do?
See if you can guess. What do you think's really hard to do? Uh, I don't know. Uh make products without money. Yeah.
It turns out that uh factories in China, they don't like to just make you stuff and then you like pay them for it a long time later. It just doesn't work that way. Uh got uh John over here. How you doing? Doing great.
But just to quickly dovetail off that, go to indigo.com slash Sears All Pro and get pre-order your Sears all today. Do it. Yeah. No. Yep.
And he's just going, he's going for going for a little stuff he's gonna do. So next week we won't have him. We're very happy for the last time for a little bit. Having Joe Hazen in the booth. How you doing?
I'm doing great, guys. How are you? Well, well, thank you. You look really dapper. I just got off a train from Boston.
I was teaching at the Harvard University. Oh, the Harvard. The Harvard, yes. I was uh we could talk about that later if we have time, which we undoubtedly will not. Because today we have very oh, by the way, if you are a Patreon listener, you're listening live, call in your questions to 917-410-1507.
That's 917-410-1507. But today, I've talked about her and her restaurant many times on uh the podcast about how much uh I love it and I think it's great. But for some reason we've never had her on the podcast, which didn't make sense. So I'm super pleased to have Amanda Cohen from Dirt Candy on for the first time. I you've never been on here before, right?
No, I haven't. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, so psyched. So like I happen to be blessed in that I live fairly close to dirt candy, so it's not that far away from me. If you you know, if you're anywhere near the lower part of Manhattan, make a reservation to go to Dirt Candy.
It's one of my it's it's one of my favorite places. I don't go out. The reason I don't see you very often there is because I just don't go out very often, Amanda. It's just I just don't go out very often. But uh it is just a fantastic uh it's a fantastic place to eat, right?
And so like I'm just gonna for those of you that don't know the restaurant, right? It is a uh vegetarian, plant-based. Well, why don't you why don't you explain Dirt Candy the name to people who might not know you? Uh dirt candy is sort of like candy from the earth, which makes it sound like a much more hippie uh restaurant than it is. But that's what vegetables mean to me.
They are like candy from the earth. So we really think of ourselves uh mostly as a vegetable restaurant rather than vegetarian. And plant-based is such a weird sort of concept for me because it didn't exist when I opened. Like those words just didn't exist. It also I don't think plant-based sounds very delicious.
Plant-based. No. It it it doesn't. It would be like, well, I eat a meat-based like diet. I don't know.
Yeah. Plus meat. At the end of the day, it's all plant-based, right? I mean, really. Exactly.
You know, photos, photosynthesis are the they're the only producers. Every everything else, everything else, we're just, you know, living off of somebody else's energy at that point, you know? So it's all plant-based. But yeah. So well, and that's another thing I think people need to uh understand.
So you you first opened dirt candy in two thousand and eight. So at the time, right? So two thousand and eight, like what was the scene like for the kind of food and by the way, like you said, dirt candy sounds like it's gonna be a uh a hippie thing, and you know, I don't I don't know you that well, but you do not strike me like that at all. Like at all. And the food when you go there is not like that at all.
And unlike like other places that that uh you know, I have been that have uh let's say, let me put it I don't know how to put this in a so like there's some places that are vegetarian or vegetable based food that is because it's a cultural basis, right? Based on like where the food is from or uh, you know, a particular point of view about the world. And this is it's always seemed more like this is just kind of what you're interested. These are the problems you're interested in solving. This is the cooking you're interested in doing.
So it's all about nothing is like, oh, this would be great if it was something else. It's all about this is how this is great. Would you say that's accurate? Yeah, exactly. And I think sort of also there's a a difference between us and sort of many other vegetarian restaurants.
And there's nothing wrong with restaurants that are this, but like a lot of them are more ethos-based. So there's like a political reason for them, or like, you know, it's all about the environment or animal rights, all which are amazing things. Um I just happen to be all about vegetables. And so it sort of puts the food for uh it's the food is number one in any ethos that happens to happen is a very much so secondary. Well, I love that, especially because you are known for being out outspoken for you know, i issues that are w as you put it, ethos-based in the in the restaurant world, but like the core where the restaurant comes from, and maybe that's the reason I think it's so great, is that it's really just about like these delicious products.
I mean, I really think the food is is uh is really spot on. If you have not been go. You know what I'm saying? That's that's all I'm saying. And but I have not yet been to your uh to Lecca.
You want to talk about that? Yeah, so Leka's uh project I have uh with uh Andre Kirzner, who is the main investor, and uh it's a veggie burger uh place, uh burger shack, I don't know what to call it. Uh and it's sort of my response to all the um, you know, the more sort of uh uh lab burgers, which there is nothing wrong with those burgers. I think it's great. I think it's getting people to eat uh less meat uh which is a good thing but I also think that a good veggie burger uh can withhold its own against those burgers and and so this is our response to it and I really you know think that uh what makes it good is that it's pretty unique versus when you have all those sort of impossible burgers and beyond burgers they're all kind of the same just with different toppings uh no matter where you have them and and sort of in a different fun and here you have something that's uh actually made in a kitchen and it's cool because it's based on this 900 year old recipe from the Song dynasty.
I would love to claim that I invented it but uh certainly uh I didn't based on them but you want to talk about that um I'm interested I want to hear that I haven't heard this story before tell me the story tell me the story of the 900 year old recipe for the Song dynasty. Yeah so it was pretty cool. I had this uh opportunity to work with a food historian for a project that uh NYU was putting on and uh he was uh he's the uh who's food historian in like uh in Chinese culture and and food and uh it was sort of brilliant you know he was like look this is a recipe from the Song dynasty or the Ming dynasty and it would be like water hot green brook rock and I was like yeah and he's like so this is the recipe. This is for like spring onions, uh boiled in uh water and then charred over a rock and I was like wow you got something totally different out of those five words than I did. Um, but it was like, look, it's just completely fascinating how these recipes were written.
And most of them actually were uh the original recipes, most of them were vegetarian because it was the monks who are writing them down. Uh and the monks were vegetarian. Uh but sort of as an aside, he's like, Oh, I want to show you this really cool thing. And uh I was like, Yeah, okay. And he's like, This has nothing to do with the project.
And I was like, Okay. And he made this vegetarian lung uh dish, which sounds worse than it is. It was just sort of this uh uh bean dish. And I was like, let me just repeat vegetarian lung, correct? Vegetarian lung, as in like squishy, soft, squidgy lung with lung.
Yeah, basically. All right. Uh but you know, in that tradition of Buddhist uh temple cooking from China where uh they were really brilliant out of taking something and making it not necessarily uh be like meat as they were trying to like woo their uh potential donors who did eat meat, uh, but something as delicious uh and something to fool the eye. And uh he made it and I like I was blown away and and I didn't know what I was gonna do with it, but I was like, I will do something with this recipe. And I had never wanted really to have a I didn't really want to do veggie burgers and I had never done them before.
Uh the closest thing we had at the restaurant was our tiny little carrot burger uh made from a whole carrot. And when this opportunity came up, I was like, oh, this is why I've never wanted to do it before because I've never had a very good recipe. Uh and this recipe works perfectly for a veggie burger. It's firm, you can put it on the grill, you can flavor it any way you want. It's just brilliant.
So what's the basis of it? What's the basis of it? Beans, it's just how it's prepared. All right. Well, I'll have to go chill have to go check it out.
Yeah, it's pretty cool. I'm pretty proud of it. I will say that. All right. All right.
And are you playing it close to the close to the vest? I like that. You're not telling us exactly how it's made, but okay. All right. And you can buy those for nationwide shipping on Goldbelly, right?
Yeah, you can absolutely buy them on Gold Belly. All right. You know, I haven't started going on the gold belly thing of ordering things. Should I start doing that? You didn't do it at all during the pandemic?
No. I'm a terrible idiot. Come on. I mean, come on, man. I'm like in the I'm in the lower east side.
I, you know, I just I I just I've never ordered food. I've never ordered food to be shipped to me. I don't even really get takeout. I just cook every night. You know what I mean?
It's just kind of like, and I I've been on a sp like somewhat of a spending freeze, so I've just been at home cooking. So like you know what I mean? Um, to be fair, I didn't order gold belly during the pandemic. All right, all right. So now I don't feel so bad.
I don't feel so bad. But uh the good news about the gold belly, uh now how do you have you I'm sure you did, because it's kind of thing you would do. So have you bought like had it shipped to yourself or had it shipped to a friend in some far flung place and seen how it shows up on the other end? Yeah, we actually did it uh a number of times. Uh I shipped it to my mother-in-law and I shipped it to somebody I knew in California.
Uh, and then they would open up the box and take pictures and we would make sure it all looked okay. And we learned a lot with how to ship things and and how to pack things. It's really quite an art. It's how I felt about doing uh takeout and delivery uh over the pandemic, which we're no longer doing, but we did for uh a long time. Uh I was like, wow, people who do this on a regular basis and can get the food to your house hot and sort of in the right shape, they're brilliant.
Yeah, but they they that but they aren't because they can't. Because nobody can. Like the fact of the matter is is that none of that food was as good as it should have been and everyone just accepted it. You don't think that's true? It's true.
No, I I think it's I think it's true that it's always definitely better at a restaurant, but there are uh restaurants that are much better at it than others and I would not uh I would not say that was our our strong feeling. Right. I mean like you know unless you're ordering like I don't know like cold sesame noodles or something like that, everything's breaking down on that trip, you know? I mean I don't know. Everything.
I mean you watch the people and they work so hard the delivery guys, but you know their bags are a certain shape and your bags are a certain shape and you're like, well I guess that's all going in sideways now. Yeah yeah well now I'm gonna do a plug I'm gonna do a plug for myself. This is why you need to have liquid intelligence with you like Nastasia does to keep the hot foods separated from the cold food so that the stuff stays good longer, right, Stuff? Yeah you should sell it to Gold Billy. Oh jeez.
Okay. Uh all right so now uh I think maybe the f the first time I really kind of met you spoke to you you're doing an event at the Museum of Food and Drink around the launch of your book in like 2012 I think, right? When the when the book came out. Now let's talk about this let's talk about this book and then we can get into more more current stuff because that's 2012 it's not yet 10 years which seems like yesterday to me but I guess it's ages ago for most normal people. But when this book comes out like uh it's a graphic novel cookbook, right?
So it's like I'm sure it's polarizing for some for some people, right? But what was the kind of response you got off of it? Um I think well I mean certainly some people hated it. They were like, we just want the recipe. Um, or that we want pictures.
It you know, they were like, we want one of those beautiful coffee table books with pictures, and uh but for the most part, uh actually the response was really good because we we started hitting differ different demograph graphics. We vegetarians bought it, people who knew us bought it, uh people who are interested in food, and then people who really like graphic novels bought it. So we sort of broke down this barrier, and we had this whole other group where we're buying the cookbook, and you know, to my surprise, although I still haven't actually uh made money on it yet, but uh we're in the like eight printing or something. Oh, awesome. Well, I mean, I'm sure it costs a lot to with all the art that had to be produced and everything.
But the um I mean what's interesting about the book is and what I what I what I like about the format is that it really allows you to be extraordinarily kind of personal and kind of funny and but all and in at times breezy. Like, for instance, for those of you that haven't looked at the book, there's an ongoing conversation between Amanda and her nine-year-old self who hates nine, I think, who hates vegetables, right? Right. So it's like and it's going throughout the book, and like, you know, you get to have fun because it's it is a graphic novel, so like the nine-year-old wants a monkey, so in the second chapter a monkey shows up and hits you on the head, right? I mean, so you get to do all this kind of stuff, and you you know, you get to do all of like the you know, superhero martial arts training stuff, you know, stuff.
You get to do that because of the format, but at the same time, the information's real and serious. It's like and and like, you know, there's and you don't have to like the book that I'm reading now, uh writing right now, to get the information out of it is gonna be like wading into like a lake full of muck with gators on, right? So the the information's there, but your legs are gonna be like whereas like here, you flip open, you see some pictures and it's like you know which which things should you uh blanch which things never to blanch a guy you know a person in the middle and it's like you know so I think it's a really kind of fun way to present what I in actuality are serious information serious recipes so I think it's kind of people who need the pictures why don't you get over what you need I got in I got in really big trouble I was in I mean I shouldn't even say Nastasi's gonna get mad if I even say say it I I'll say it one more time I don't understand why people like to just look at pictures of food that are like divorced from meaning right so it's like a picture of food plus meaning I love it. You know what I mean? But just a picture of food with no meaning I don't get it.
Do you get it? I I well I don't that's Instagram isn't it yeah and so like I'm like Nastasi's like you're a moron right Stas you're like I'm a moron. Well he said it to the editor of Eater so yeah yeah yeah well but hopefully they're providing some context some meaning right yeah in general they are one of the things with the the graphic novel that I think really were and what we wrote it this way for a number of different reasons. One is I just didn't want to write a boring cookbook. I was like but everybody like what's gonna make us stand out and a personality flaw of mine is I'm always like what can I do different from everybody else um and uh yeah and then I realized you know a lot of people get their recipes off the internet uh and then there are so many beautiful pictures of food on the internet, and there's coffee table books that were gonna be way more beautiful than mine.
I was like, So what's the point? Let's tell the story of the restaurant for everybody who can't come to the restaurant, let's really bring it to their living room and they can, you know, sort of fundamentally understand how crazy and chaotic this restaurant is. And the graphic novel format really works because you look at it and you take what information you want out the first time, and then you can go back, and there's like a whole secondary story happening there, and sometimes a third story happening in the little boxes in the pictures. And like even now, I go back and look at it, and I'm like, wow, I forgot we put that in there. That's really smart.
Yeah, and there's lots of like like ongoing keeping it real stories about like running a restaurant throughout it that are kind of funny, and like you don't even like you you paint yourself as ignoring somebody else when they're trying to tell you something. It's like pretty, you know, it's pretty funny, or like the fry, you know, uh it it I think it's a it's a it's a great book for an insight into a restaurant. Most like uh sometimes when you read somebody's uh cookbook where they talk about how the how the life is in in their restaurant, you have this like long several paragraphs or pages, and it just gets kind of ponderous. Where here it's kind of sprinkled throughout the book, and I think it's kind of a fun way to deal with it. I think so.
Um did you really get stuck in an elevator for 35 minutes after the Iron Shaft thing with Morimoto? I really, really did. We weren't stuck, we were riding up and down, and we couldn't like whatever it was always the wrong floor, the dwarfs were opening up on, and we still had like all this stuff we were taking back to the restaurant, and we were so jacksted and which is like all right, we'll just go up and down. That sucks so bad. That's so crappy.
Yeah. And you were doing broccoli, huh? I know and dynamically. Did Jeffrey did Jeffrey Steingarten really say, 'cause I haven't I've gone and rewatched, I don't remember. Does he did he really say that he doesn't like the flavor of broccoli?
'Cause that's a straight lie. I haven't spoken to him in many years, but he he was the first person who came to me and said, You remember when um I forget uh who it was, maybe it was Marcella Hazan, I forget. Or s one one of those people like that was was uh re-putting out you know those old school Italian recipes where you cook the broccoli for freaking ever forever, you know what I mean? And you do that yeah. He called me one day years ago, back when I was still at the FCI, and he was telling me about this like peep like the flavor of long cooked broccoli and how this is a long lost thing.
And so when I read that in the book that he said he hates broccoli, I'm like, what is this? What? I can't believe he said Yeah. And then awkwardly I hadn't seen him for years and in I think in like two thousand and fourteen, maybe or uh right before we closed the smaller restaurant. He showed up and I was like, Oh, and he's like, Can I see the cookbook?
And I was like, This is really awkward now. You know, you're gonna see yourself in it. I'm sure he could take it. I'm sure he could take it. He was fine.
He was great actually. He was like, Oh yeah, I remember this. This is great. He's like, Oh I'd forgotten about that episode and he was like, Oh yeah, maybe it should have gone differently. Yeah, for those what I got my like iron chef come up and 'cause I went to Canada and uh was an iron chef and uh I am undefeated.
Ooh, undefeated. Undefeated. Like uh that's awesome. I like undefeated. It's better it's better than like winning most of the time.
I know. Yeah. I know. Yeah. I get to actually say I'm undefeated.
Undefeated. I hold that. I think we're the only team ever. So for those of you that have never been to an Iron Chef taping before, right? You're not gonna believe this.
'Cause I I I actually I I've only have been to tapings back in the in the old Steingarden days. I went to um I went to see He Who Shall Not Be Mentioned, uh Batali versus Um uh Wiley, my brother in law Wiley Dufresne. Yeah. And I was like, and Jeffrey was, I think, one of the uh judges and um KB and I forget who the third judge was. And they actually make the judges sound nicer on the show than they are actually in the real life.
If I know if you can imagine that. I was like, what? What? And and they also cut it to make the judges seem smarter. So when the judge says something that's intensely stupid, like deep down stupid, they don't want the judges to seem stupid.
So they like cut that back a little bit. Yeah, they also get uh fed lines. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah.
They all wear headsets. Uh I don't know. And there's also like, I don't know, it I mean, how nerve-wracking was it when you went for for the first time as a you know, because I I've I was talking to someone who is an iron chef uh here, you know, in the US, and they were like, we have such a huge home court advantage because we know the kitchen so well. Like, did you find that when it when you were home court like a huge, huge difference? Huge.
I actually to the competitors who win on these shows, who like aren't the iron chef, I think they are brilliant. Like they must be the best chefs in the world because it is such a difference. Even going the first time as the iron chef, you know, we got a tour of the kitchen, we could spend some time, we spent time with the producer. We had a a a pretty good idea of like how things were gonna work. Versus my first time when I was like terrified and I didn't know what was gonna happen, and it was all sort of like big eyes and bright light.
And then you go in again like two days later to fight another battle. So the kitchen is yours. It's like literally you're inviting a competitor to come over and fight in your like home. Yeah. Well, of course you're gonna win you know where the like sink is and the fridges.
You don't have to, you know, stand there for a minute and be like, oh, I don't know which one's the freezer, which one's the fridge, where am I supposed to go? Right, because nine times out of ten, it's a time management problem, right? Always. Yeah. Always.
The people we competed against were uh as good if not better. The only difference for me the second time around, and if I'd been smart enough for the first time around, and that the competition really plays to my strength because it's what we do at the restaurant. We take one ingredient and we figure out multiple ways to use it, and not that's not necessarily how every other chef cooks. So, you know, for us in in my battles in Canada, it was I don't know, our first one was cauliflower. Well, I can give you like 25 ways to cook cauliflower immediately.
Like it's not that's not scary to me. And putting cauliflower in a dessert, that's not bizarre, but certainly to the competitor, that is more bizarre. Yeah. Uh I was at a place the other day. I was in Boston.
Get this for a dessert. Have you ever had this before? Mustard ice cream. It was good. It wasn't in a dessert.
I can imagine. Yeah, it was good. It wasn't in a dessert. Uh all right. So since you brought up Canada, uh, in advance of you coming on the show, John pulled some uh of your old uh editorials.
Uh because for the for those of you that don't know, for for some reason, you know, you are thankfully willing to speak out on you know, issues that are exasperating to to you and to hopefully that to to everybody, but uh I forget what year it was, but you said you you likened uh food journalism to a human centipede and you can you can say that right because that's a metaphor we can say that on a family show right human centipede stas we good I think yeah I mean I'm fine with it you're you're the one that has the issue I mean in other words like it's not it it okay so you basically I'm not gonna call the but you can call call out the the editor you know the he was so you know like uh like uh what do you call that nose to tail of of a human centipede in this world of journalism that couldn't get his head out of somebody else's behind long enough to like see what was going on but then here's what I thought it was like here's where and this is another thing if you read uh the cookbook that you'll get you have and I don't mean this you appear to have that that that sous of self-hatred that uh all great uh I think cooks and producers uh have that little bit of self-loathing so you say I was in a human centipede in Vancouver once uh and it was problematic I was like whoa I was like wow okay all right then but so uh I mean did you get a lot of response calling him a human centipede yeah I mean that certainly got retweeted a lot um yeah but I mean in general the the the article got a lot of good response because it was the appropriate article at the appropriate time it was you know in in response to a lot of the stuff that was happening and the gods of food. Right. Uh and uh, you know, you looked around and you're like, oh come on, even if even if they didn't think there was oh a female chef who was world class, which I would argue with. This is the Time magazine thing with the cover. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
From what 2020s are glued together. Yeah, jeez. All right. Um that that that image just lives in my brain rent free. Uh and uh anytime I want a good laugh.
It's more like you're paying rent. It's taking a toll on you. Charging you money. That's what's crazy. And I know.
Yeah. Um but the fact that they couldn't see that this was an issue to also be written about that they couldn't find uh a woman to really talk about in this entire issue. That's just such a blind spot that I you can't I mean it's not like it's like 1961 where I don't know I we're in 2000 in the teens. This is a huge problem if you don't think that there's as great women or female chefs as there are male chefs. And if you're not finding them then the the the onus is on you to actually find them and and to figure out why you don't think so.
And that sort of um self-recognition never happened. Right. Well well here so here's a couple of things. I wasn't actually planning on on going this way but one of the reasons one of the reasons that I you know I think I was like hey John let's see if we can get uh Amanda on is because when we're not on the air every time somebody mentions uh and I'm not anti EMP I like EM uh 11 Madison Park you know Daniel Hum a a l great team great everything I'm not saying anything negative about them. This is not about them.
What I'm saying is is that the incredible amount of hoopla around that, like no one had done uh, you know, vegetable like only fine dining. And every time I was like, I was like, well, what? Like, hello, dirt candy, what? You know what I mean? And that's not even like talking about like vegetarian like monk cuisine or like, you know, the host of other more culturally oriented very uh you know, vegetable-based restaurants.
And I was like, that and that's actually the reason every time I hear something, I'm like, we should get a man or something like that. But like, I mean, uh, I don't even know if you want to talk about that or if that's something you just want to leave where I just left it, or whether you want to talk about it or what. No, I mean, it was uh it actually is pretty interesting because they came out and they said they were, you know, they were one of the first ones and this is their like new dining room and ten years ago, even if I had been open for 13 years as I am now, I never would have been mentioned in any of the articles or even other restaurants. I wasn't the only one. Um and to me actually it's a testament to how far we've come.
We haven't come far enough. Uh, but the media sort of really did uh open its eyes and they didn't just write about uh Daniel Hum. They they were like, okay, let's go get quotes from other people. The when this was announced, my phone was ringing off the hook from journalists asking my opinion about it. Uh and I ten years ago, that would not have happened.
Uh I was pretty surprised that they decided to go vegan. It's a pretty hard business run. I'm I'm actually more surprised that nobody came and asked me. Um, not because I know everything, but I know what it's like to run a high-end uh vegan restaurant. And and it's pretty tough.
You're you're dealing with a whole set of uh different um problems than you would in a normal restaurant. Namely, uh you your alcohol sales go way down. Ooh. Oh how's come? Uh well I think once you sort of uh uh pass through you know like people who just really are curious about what you're serving and uh those uh you know your regulars uh you end up with a crew of people who are younger they don't have as much money to spend so they might spend money on the food but they'd rather go to a cheap bar to spend money on alcohol or they're healthy.
Well I mean and then they don't drink. Uh our alcohol sales are notoriously less than most mainstream restaurants. So we have to figure out ways to make it up. Uh but also the best thing about 11 Madison Park going vegan is I'm getting the overflow. So we're busier than we've ever been.
Wow well pandemic style though. I mean that's gotta still is have you how have you fully bounced back? Are you fully back where you were yeah we're absolutely back. I think uh we're pretty fortunate. One, we only have 44 seats so to like a you know if we do 90 people in a night we turn the tables twice basically we're we're at our numbers and and we can't do more because we're a tasting menu.
It's it's very hard to sort of a hundreds are top when uh we rarely do less than 80, 85. So that's sort of uh our lowest and our highest the difference is is much smaller than I think a lot of restaurants because of our size. And uh we when we reopened uh after the pandemic, you know, we sort of were really honest about how we were reopening and why and what we wanted to do for our staff and how we're paying them. And so a lot of people are coming not because we're vegetarian and not because we're dirt candy, but because they really want to support us and what we're doing in the restaurant industry. What percentage of your crew were you able to get back?
Uh very few. I kept my manager I kept my managers on throughout the whole pandemic. And then uh and we offered jobs to everybody before uh who had worked for us beforehand, and then actually uh only about only two people really returned in the back of the house. None of my front of house returned. Almost everybody either left the industry or moved away.
And so what's that like having to retrain a whole new group of people? Um it's actually kind of nice starting fresh. We um, you know, when we reopened, we really focused on changing the culture of the restaurant. And even though I don't think that uh we have the worst culture, I it wasn't as employee focused as maybe as it uh should have been. And well, I mean, you provide good health insurance, correct?
I do now. We didn't pre-pandemic. Oh, but you were you so you were fair wage, but not with uh the the benefits prior to the pandemic. Yeah, we didn't really make any money pre-pandemic, to be honest. Uh post-pandemic, we're actually, I mean, I wouldn't say doing great, but uh we're we're finally making actually money.
Uh and that's because we went to this one tasting menu. The pre-pandemic, uh we had the two tasting menus and uh post-pandemic, which is something I learned throughout the pandemic when we only had one tasting menu every night, which we would change every two weeks. I was like, wow, my booth costs are really going down. Um and we decided to stick with that after the pandemic and we've sort of actually pre-pandemic our food costs were 25%. And now we're at 14%.
Wow. That's a huge difference. Yeah, that's a that for us is uh profit or you know hemorrhaging money. And we are able now to and we because we raised our prices. Right, but but people, people don't don't go don't go crunching those numbers like it's a normal because like th there's no tips.
So don't go crunching her food cost percentage like you would crunch a normal number. Am I accurate about that? Like you can't no actually absolutely um and uh now we're able to offer so much more than we were and still uh turn a profit uh which to me was also something that was really important that I sort of figured out during the pandemic which was I was kind of running dirt candy not quite like a charity but I wouldn't say like a business business and you know we listened to all these stories of the slim margins in the restaurant industry and how hard it was to run a restaurant and I certainly was one of the loudest complainers and I was like I have to figure this out. I I can't keep doing this going to bed every night terrified that if I don't do if I only do 70 people one night instead of like eighty that I'm gonna close and we have to figure out how to actually run this like a business and give everybody who works here a lot more financial security including me. Yeah well yeah please uh so let me ask you a couple of questions.
You were one of the early people to go uh non tip, right? And so one of the things I've always wondered is what are the what are the guests like when you're because you have to pass the cost on to them. That's the only way it works, right? Which you say you're you're doing now. But I've always wondered whether that could work in a bar, just because I know that my bar friends, you know, who run a no-tip program like under like kind of the Danny Meyer umbrella, like they've had problems retaining like the bartender.
So like the front of house on like a bar staff situation, and I know you say that you know the majority of your sales aren't through liquor, like it's a real tough time convincing them that they want to go that model. So what's the what are your just feelings on would it would it work in in most hospitality situations or only if everybody did it, or like what what do you think? Well, the the the bigger reality and all this, it's never gonna work until the federal government accepts it. And that's for a various dundary reasons. We can get to that in a second.
Um at the moment it's really hard to make it work in most uh establishments uh because you have this group of sort of old timers who are holding on to the idea that they should be making X number of dollars a night, but that always comes at a cost to the kitchen. So if you're only in a bar, I don't see you know, we're saying we're passing these costs on to the customer, but the customer already had these costs. It it's just a different way of looking at it. Uh dirt candy, let's say we charge a hundred dollars for the tasting menu. We don't, but the tip would then be twenty dollars.
The customer is gonna pay a hundred and twenty dollars. It's just actually it's it we're it's i it's magic. We're just fooling people into thinking that they're not paying $120. But but they are paying $120. And they were gonna pay that no matter what.
You're paying you with no tipping your bill would be $120. Right, but that that tomfoolery works. Like I was in a restaurant in Cambridge where at the very yesterday we're at the bottom of two days ago, at the bottom of it, they they're like, There's a there's a five percent fee. It's like so it's just like okay, it's really 105 plus plus tip for whatever it is. Like, and you know, maybe you and I are smart enough to be like, hey, it's a hundred and five, but like the average person's like, oh, it's only a hundred dollars.
I know, exactly. And you forget about that extra five percent. It's a whole act, there's been a huge study about this. You never remember the tip. But if somebody asks you how much it costs to eat at Derek Candy, let's say we didn't have tips, you'd be like a hundred dollars.
Uh, as opposed to no, actually it was a hundred and twenty, you just forgot that you did math at the end. Yeah, that's like uh you know who the worst at that is, and this is why I never shopped there, you haul. You haul. $19 for a truck. No, it's a hundred dollars for a truck, my friends.
It's a hundred dollars to rent a truck at U-Haul. You know what I mean? But they do the that's the that's the restaurant trait. That's how they fool people into doing it. So you think there needs to be you you're advocating for like federal legislation to get rid of that tomfoolery or no?
Well, yes, because right now the system is sort of set up to punish people or restaurants that have gone uh non-tipping. The well you pay a lot more in payroll. Right. Um, so the government actually makes more money. Yeah.
Because but you pay so much more in payroll, and you also pay a lot more in insurance, like your limited liability and your workman's comp because it's all based on your revenue and tips aren't included in revenue. Yeah, listen, people, if you don't if anyone who's listening to this who works for like a big business and has like a like you know, just gets a W-2 and works for a big business, realize that like there are so many regulations. Everyone in this country says we're pro-small business. We are so anti-small business and so anti-small business and so anti-small business trying to do the right thing, right? It's like it it's maddening.
But I don't know if any of that stuff's ever gonna get I don't know if any of that any of that stuff's gonna get straightened out. Uh yeah, that's uh I'm now so depressed that I forgot the other thing that I was gonna ask you. So maybe I should just what were we gonna talk about? Now I'm just depressed. You're just depressed the hell out of me.
I'm sorry. If one day it'll change, I believe it. I don't think so. Oh, but here's another thing. Uh you're like, well, we're giving uh we're giving, you know, uh healthcare to people.
Ah, here's one. Pre-pandemic, you uh were saying, and this is 100% true, we need uh decent childcare in this country of decent affordable child care. But here's the problem. Having tried to use decent affordable child care in my, you know, life, uh it doesn't work if you need to be somewhere, right? So like like you know, many people have jobs where they can be like, I can't come in today.
My kid's sick. But when your kid gets a running nose, the the freaking uh the freaking daycare center is like, your kid's got a runny nose, they can't stay here, and then you gotta, and then you one of you has to, you know, of the two, if there's two, hopefully, you know, you make your life easier, like has to go pick up the kid. And then they're not at work. And guess what that doesn't work for? Restaurants, right?
So it's like absolutely. So there I have that question about how daycare could ever work for a hospitality worker. And secondly, and I'm really curious because this is real life and it's already happening. Back in the day, it was you're sick, do you look sick? Do you look like are you dripping from your face so that you're gonna scare the the the guest?
Because if not, your butt better be here doing your job. You know what I mean? Because whereas now that's just not cool. You can't do that anymore. So how's that working out?
Um, well uh yeah, not great. Um really what we've done is we have an extra person on staff sort of who can cover uh when somebody calls out sick, so it's not that uh destructive. And we might have to put somebody on overtime to sort of cover it, but uh we have enough bodies at the moment to deal with this, especially now is you know, we're so terrified of somebody at the moment somebody thinks they're sick, we're like you have to get a PCR COVID test and don't come back until it's negative. Um so I don't know if we'll absolutely continue doing this, but we we basically have an extra person on staff, which is kind of the only way it would work with you know, somebody if you had a lot of parents on staff. Yeah.
Uh well you have to have an extra body who can who can fill in or who you know can really float between uh a number of different positions, so you're not totally screwed. Right, or they need to figure out a way to have daycare not work that way. I don't know. It is a huge problem. And like the reason why I had to stop using normal daycare was because for years, you know, I was flexible enough that I could do whatever, but then once I started having to be in a particular place at a particular time, and you know, you can't do it anymore.
It doesn't work. Yeah. Um I know. Yeah. But it's also part of a um problem is it's not just it it's so hard to come back into the industry after you've had kids.
Even if you had great child care, we're not ex exactly the most accepting industry. Yeah. Um, like it's sort of like once you're out, you're out. Yeah. Yeah.
In a lot of ways we suck, uh as a group. Um all right. So I'm gonna do some questions because I don't want to miss them because we have questions specifically for you. Also, do you uh do you do a lot of work with uh vacuum machines? Do you like vacuum machines?
You got any current uh cool stuff? Because I got a question about vacuum machines, but I can hold it for later if you're not interested in talking about vacuum machines. We don't do anything here because we're too lazy to write up a plan. I mean, or I would put it that you have other things you're worried about. All right, Jason.
If we had time at the end, Jason, I'm not forgetting he's a Patreon uh listener, so I'm not uh ignoring his question. I just need to get to the ones that are for you. All right. Uh okay. This is I need to space this so I can panda to panda to Panda Tudaka.
Ah, there we go. Question from Panda Tadaka. Good morning. Uh I hope you had a great weekend. Uh I uh weekend.
It's not I mean, I don't know. Did you have a good weekend, Amanda? I worked most of the time, so sure. I don't know. No.
Good shift. Good shift, Amanda. Good shift. Um Chef Cohen, uh, thanks for your work making the restaurant industry and the world a better place. What is an underused ingredient that you think people should start using more?
Oh, that's a that's a good question. Um, you know, it's not necessarily an underused ingredient, but I think it's an underappreciated ingredient in all its forms. So I'm gonna say onions, because although it's sort of like the backbone of the kitchen egg, nobody ever says their favorite vegetable is a an onion. Um, but I really, really like uh raw onions, and I there's a whole sort of like uh segment of the world that hates them, and to me it's like it's almost like like a it's like another umami flavor, and it's almost like salt. Like I think it heightens every dish.
But also I love onions and desserts. There's so much sweetness there, and so much um there's like this this really nutty, amazing flavor that you don't think that would work in uh dessert. But to me, it's as natural as like peanut butter and chocolate, chocolate and onions is brilliant. All right. I've we used to make onion ice cream, but I've never tried chocolate and onions.
I gotta try it. Can I feel good? Can I tell you your trigger me a little bit because I also love raw onions, love them, and you know who hates them? My wife hates them. And like even like you know how like, you know how like if you are cutting a lot of onions, then you wash it, you're kind of okay.
But then if you eat onions, all of a sudden then your hands smell more again like onions like than they used to. There's all this weird crap with onions. And so she's like, Oh, you were cutting onions. Oh I'm like, I love onions, but she's okay with cooked onions, thank God. You know what I mean?
Because I add an unconscionable amount of onions to all of my stews, and I do a lot of pressure cooking, so I use preposterous amounts of onions whenever I pressure cook, like ridiculous amounts of onions. Uh do you what uh for raw, do you have a particular uh I mean are you super particular of like uh this just goes straight like supermarket, like like let's call them red, yellow, and white. Do you like go as particular feeling for particular dishes, or do you like like them all raw or what? I probably like red most raw. Yeah, yeah.
Except for like uh unlike tacos and stuff, I do like the white just because I see Rick Bayless punching me in the face if I use anything else. But yeah, uh the red's the call. They're also my favorite to flash pickle the reds. Oh, so good, I know. Yeah.
Thin slice flash pickle on the red. Mmm. I think I could maybe get my wife on board with if there's enough vinegar in it, maybe I could get her on board. You know? I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, uh it's I mean, and that uh uh I love sort of the Middle Eastern, like eating raw onions with hummus, and you just sort of scoop it up, then all of a sudden like the whole there's this whole like flavor explosion in your mouth. It's brilliant. Do you know that at home when Jen's away? It's my wife, I can do whatever I want, right? Because you know, she's not gonna smell it.
But like whenever I have things like chili and whatnot, uh, or like when I have like uh like squash soup, right? I don't get to put onions on that on top. You believe that's there no, I mean I there is almost nothing I make at home that doesn't have running. It's like I'm pretty lazy cooked at home, and I often just have a bowl of like leftover rice from like whatever last Chinese state delivery we had. But I'm always like, Oh, I'm gonna make it more chefy and I add some raw dice onion.
And I'm like, oh, this is perfect. Well, there you go. Uh luckily Jen is not gonna listen to this, so she won't get mad that I'm throwing her under the bus. Uh from uh Omega 36 tilapia. So this person's clearly trolling me by doing the 3-6 mafia and tilapia in one word, but uh okay.
Omega 36 tilapia. Uh will there in the future uh be a distinction between this is for you, uh Chef. Will there be a distinction between commodity and non-commodity meat analog products? In the same way there are differences between, for example, bulk ground beef and like wagyu whatever steaks. Subjectively, I wonder if plant-based restaurant, um plant based restaurants are less uh high end if they use meat analogs versus focusing on whole vegetables, wild mushrooms, et cetera.
That's a that's a lot of questions in there. Um I mean yeah, I mean like you but I don't know, you heard you I don't need to rephrase it though, right? You got the whole all of the stuff. Yeah. I I I don't want to be too judgy and say they're less high end.
I just think that it's a for me, I the the greatest restaurants that are high end is they're very creative. And it's hard to be creative with something that's already sort of pre-packaged for you. Uh and there's not much that you can do with it. And and so maybe one day these those types of um analogs you really will be able to like do whatever you want with them. Uh personally for me, I I think the more vegetables, and it doesn't have to be Whole Foods.
That's I think that's a tricky uh sentiment, but uh the more vegetables do you use, you have to be more creative. And that's the kind of place where I'd be way more willing to spend a lot of money versus one that just used analogs, because I just think they all sort of taste the same. It's just, you know, it's just a something that with a sauce on it, though it tastes slightly different at each place, but it's basically the same. Right. But there is a line.
It's interesting. The point there is a line, right? So, like for instance, take cocktail bar, right? I wouldn't ever have bought somebody else's flavored vodka, but I bought gin, right? And so it's like, you know, uh, do I expect every place is gonna make their own tofu, even though they could?
No, because tofu is a thing. You know what I mean? It's like so there is a line somewhere, but it just hasn't reached that line yet. You know what I'm saying? It just is not at that place yet, I don't think.
You know what I mean? No, it's not. And it's not like most restaurants are unless they're doing literally a burger, are going through scads of ground meat. You know what I mean? Like ground beef, like what?
For maybe for sauces and whatnot, but they're not going through it for like, right? I mean, like, when was the last time you went to uh a fine dining restaurant and was like, here's the meatloaf? You know what I mean? Like, you know? No, I've I've never had fine dining meatloaf.
Although I do. Oh no. Now I'm sort of interested. Yeah, I do like meatloaf. Uh Stas, you like meatloaf?
Yeah? Ketchup, no ketchup? Ketchup. Okay. Uh, mix of meats.
Do you care? I don't care. I like a triple mix. I like triple. I like I like I like all three.
Anyway, uh from misplaced enthusiasm. What vegan foods, if any, do you think still need uh to improve? They still need improving to bring as much enjoyment as their non-vegan counterparts. Full disclosure, I work for a plant-based milk company, so this is research for me. So you're actually helping this uh person out.
Um I would say we're we're still a little bit law a long way off in the dairy department, specifically cheese. Oh and butter. Uh it I think uh we're not quite there yet. I think milks are great and baking and cooking with all the make milks, and they've come so far. Ice creams are like terrific.
Realm of vegan world. I just we're just not there yet. Well, I mean, like I I I had this uh there's a you know, right near near you and near me is that uh is that giant vegan uh cheesery i at Essex Market. Yeah. And the my issue is um like I would rather it just be marketed as like some sort of nut paste.
You know what I mean? Like I know. Yeah. Um because the other thing is is that like we expect cheese to do certain things, and the the nut paste is never gonna do all of those things. You know what I mean?
It's never gonna be all of those different things. Um and if it is, it's not gonna be good at all of them, right? So if you want something to melt and be stretchy, get something that's melt melts and is stretchy. If you want something that tastes like I I don't know, I think it's it's an issue. Uh right.
I've never had one where I was like, oh, I would eat I would eat that instead of Vachera. You know what I mean? It's like exactly. And it's so for to me, I I have no problem calling a veggie hot dog a hot dog. Like it's close enough.
Yeah. And even the burgers are the same, and we're those the cheeses, they're some of them are really delicious nut paste. Like amazing. But I I don't see them as cheese yet. And they have come so far and there's so much like happening in them, and I think it will happen one day.
Uh I'm not sure it'll happen outside of the lab. Uh, but uh I know we're gonna get there. Yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah.
I've I've been so depressed every time I've tried one. I'm not gonna think about it anymore. Okay. Uh from Jacob P. Chef Cohen, what are some ways you think uh that consumers can help push towards a more equitable restaurant consumers now?
Can help push towards a more equitable restaurant industry. Uh and uh as a less serious question, Jacob would like to know, uh, do you do a Canada Day menu every year at Dirt Candy? And do you have a favorite and least favorite stereotypical Canadian dish? And he's hoping it's poutine. I don't know whether it's your most favorite or at least.
Yeah, which one? Yeah. Um, okay. I don't love butter tart, so that's just personal. Wait, what's a butter tart?
It's like a specific Canadian like pie ish, but the the tart is sort of like it's it's not butter. I mean, it is butter, but it's like almost just like the the filling from a pecan pie, but without the pecan. Oh yeah. So it's it's just really, really sweet. Yeah, you know who said he likes that?
Dave Chang, because he hates pecans, so he would rather eat the pecan pie without the pecan. This is a mistake. Pecans are delicious. That sounds a lot like uh tartasuc from Belgium. Oh, listen, listen, listen.
It has a funny texture too. It's not it's a little grainy. I it's just not my favorite thing. So it's not it's not eggy like an egg tart. It's not egggy like one of those.
No, no, not at all. Okay. Um butter tart. And then uh that's a deep cut though. Us Americans don't even know about that.
Uh and then my favorite Canadian dish that's not poutine. That's a that's a tough one, because you know, poutine's pretty it's pretty good. I did, you know, I haven't eaten it in probably a good 30 years, but I really liked the chicken. I don't really eat chicken much anymore. Uh, but I like the chicken from Swiss Chalet and the sauce that went along with it.
And that's pretty Canadian iconic too. So, describe it. What's a what's their what's their chicken like? John is busily punching it in and he's like booking a flight to Toronto or whatever. Like, what is this Swiss chalet chicken of which you speak?
I mean, I don't it's it was like a fast I mean fast duty restauranting place. Um and uh probably not even good. Yeah, I mean I haven't had it in a long time, so remember I probably ate it when I was like eight. Yeah. So memories are weird, but just with like just like salty and savory and the sauce had the perfect gravy consistency to it and it was always hot and you would dip the chicken into it.
And you're you're you're from Vancouver? No, I'm from Toronto. It's Toronto. So you and you didn't choose pea meal? I love pea meal.
You never ate that stuff? I love peat meal. Uh not so much. We weren't a big bacon family. So no.
Yeah, love it. Um then the Canadian Day question. Okay. Yes. Every year we do something, if not exactly on Canadian Day, on Canadian Day, on uh uh July first, or we'll do something right around it to celebrate.
So what kind of what kind of menu items bust out for uh is it's not Canada Day, it's Canadian Day? No, it's Canada Day. Canada, all right. All right. Um our birthday.
Uh uh every year it changes, but usually there's cuisines and cheese curds and gravy and cheese curves. Uh we do something often uh there's a place in Toronto called Sneaky Bees. And they have the best nachos. So we'll do mini nachos for people and then uh off uh like uh maple broccoli, spicy maple broccoli. Can we get like normal food?
Can we get like where where in Canada are the cheese curds the most on point? And can we get them to fight like Wisconsin? Can we have like a a curd battle? Uh they're pretty good, sort of in you have to be in the dairy belt, right? So and a true cheese herd uh is not good if you're eating it an out more than an hour away from where it was produced.
Listen, I like that. Within like sort of like the same day. Uh and that's when you get the real squeak of it. Uh and so more than an hour away, it it's it's too late. Uh so for me, it's somewhere like in Quebec, and I grew up like before we moved to Toronto, I lived in uh Ottawa, which is just across the border from Quebec, and it's all in the dairy belt, and we had fresh cheese herds like whenever we wanted them.
Where's Guelph? Where's University of Guelph? Uh it's outside of Toronto, about an hour. Yeah. They got they got the dairy department, they got the sick dairy department there.
Well, that's the nice thing about Toronto isn't so much a dairy producing area, that part of Ontario, but uh it's it's one of the like the bread belts, right? Like the produce that you bake we can produce in a short time that we can produce produce is pretty amazing. Yeah, you guys got some good berries over there, right? Ugh, the best. Yeah.
Anyway, we gotta get this. I don't know anyone who can do this, but I I'm interested in eating the battle. We need to get within an hour of the two places and then meet in the middle. This is like I I have a dream, and here's my dream. Do you know how everyone uh everyone you know thinks that the sea urchins from the Pacific Coast, like, you know, off California, what is it?
Where is it? Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara sea urchins, that they're the best, right? There was like, oh, you know, best, best, right? Now, it is true that when you buy the the main uh sea urchins like in the store, they're not as good, right?
But if you like jump off of a rock at low tide in Maine with a glove, and you take the the urchin out and you take your your kitchen shears and like rap dap dap and go blap blap and then like eat it right there on the rock, that that is the way that God intended you to murder a sea urchin, right? And so uh but I don't know, like would if I could do that same thing in Santa Barbara, if I could jump off of a rock, pick a sea urchin up off of the uh off of the ground there, cut it open, eat it. Would I be like, oh my god. So what I need to do is get two people to harvest them simultaneously and we like me meeting Kentucky, right? Like get on airplanes, meeting Kentucky, you know, or whatever the middle of the whatever the geographic center of the country, wherever, like, you know, it's probably Kentucky, right?
Probably somewhere. Anyway, uh, I I digress. Listen, you can't taste this. Uh we have a question in? I have one more question.
Okay, go. All right. What vegetable preparations do you think home cooks underuse and any tips for leveling up the vegetable game at home? Um well, my favorite vegetable preparation is smoking. And I think that uh people get pretty intimidated by it.
But uh it, you know, you can open your windows, all it takes is some wood chips and some a pan and tinfoil, and you can really up your uh flavor game with vegetables uh more than doing really anything else. Uh it's an easy trick. And then also the other thing I really I really like for people to try at home at least, is uh figure out how to cut your vegetables differently. This is sort of uh my main thing these days, which is the shape uh of your vegetable uh really changes how you approach it and how you taste it. And so uh it's a lot of work, but as a really easy example, if you like ball cucumbers versus slicing them, you get a whole different sort of flavor uh explosion in your mouth.
And it it changes the vegetable. It's like all of a sudden become uh the more ways you can figure out to cut the vegetable, it that vegetable becomes more than just one vegetable. So we have like 10 different ways we can cut a cucumber here, let's say, and it's all of a sudden ten different cuc kinds of cucumbers. You just you're giving movie names after movie names. Ten ways to cut a cucumber, the shape of vegetables.
These are all Benicio Toro's next movies. Right. You know what I mean? Like you gotta gotta get him. Okay, so listen, I gotta do this test, right?
This is a uh I I wish you were here for it because I have one for you, but Joe's gonna eat yours. You eat things, Joe, right? You you you're an eater of things, no? I eat things. Yeah.
All right, I got to. Okay. So uh the okay, so this is uh we haven't had an instant uh uh a what's a a version of this in in a long time. This is McGee's magic nuts, right? So for all of you who are longtime listeners, you'll know that don't eat it yet, I'll tell you what it is.
For those of you that uh listen for a long time, you know that Harold McGee, every once in a while just has these magically delicious nuts, right? So for a long time ago we had these walnuts that had these uh very low tin in skins, and I'm at his house and I pick up the walnut and I'm like, This is just a walnut. And I was like, Oh, these nuts. I was like, oh my god, I went crazy. And I was like, what the hell?
He's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. They the the walnut people, they know me, so they send me the good walnuts. He doesn't talk like that. Anyway, so I was with him uh last night, and he was like, Listen, Dave, I know I told you about the magic pistachios. You guys know about the magic pistachios?
No. Okay. Amanda, you're gonna appreciate this because we wish you were here to taste it. Listen, so in Turkey, right, they have this uh pistachio that's harvested uh younger than the average pistachio, and we think it's a different variety, but in Turkey, even in Turkey, it's an expensive pistachio and it's very highly regarded. Different from Bronte's, different whatever.
It's a special immature Turkish pistachio. Epistachio. And what happens is that uh it has an actual fruity note. So they make uh candies, uh, and what these guys are eating here are they're they're old, right? Because they're so they're stale, but you're just for flavor, not for texture.
Uh macaroons, macarons, uh macaron macaron. Uh, and they're uh these are made only with the pistachio, no fruit. And because they are related or they're related to mangoes, they're both anacardacies, these special pistachios have a fruity taste. Tastos. Tell me you don't get that m mango note out of them, which is crazy.
Crazy. Well, now I'm really fat, I'm not there. I know. Next time, next time you come in, you know, you never you never know when McGee's magic nuts are gonna show up. Um, right?
Can you get it when you breathe in, you get those fruit notes? Yeah. I'm so glad it's not a mango because I'm allergic to mangoes. Yeah, it's not even a man, it's not even a mango, so you're good. And now I want to find a source.
If anyone out here has the Turkish connection, some somewhere will find it. The Turkish connection, immature pistachios, and me. I will buy them. Just find those things. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. Uh wait, I'm being told I'm at listen, do you want to, Amanda? Do you uh do didn't do you know anyone that watches all of the all of the crazy Christmas stuff that Nastasia and I watches? Like, for instance, have you ever seen the Rudolph and the Red Nose Reindeer ranking and bass thing ever? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, I mean, not for yeah, I haven't seen it for many years, but I think we should save it for the like the the before Christmas show, Dave. We're gonna we're gonna have another show before Christmas. All right, we'll do it, we'll talk about it. But there is a secret. I want anyone who does watch those things, rewatch the Rudolph.
There is what I've always thought is an error in it. An error. See if you can catch the error. And my son Dax has come up with I think the genius thing that's not an error. I was too stupid to see it.
See if you can find it, and we'll write us in. If you find it, we'll give him a prize. What are we gonna give him? Are we talking about the animation? The uh the the stick figure animation.
Claymation. Yeah, uh, with uh Yukon Cornelius, Rudolph, Hermy, the Head Elf, Santa, Mrs. Claus, um uh the abominable, uh, uh the uh Charlie in the box, uh King Moon Racer, uh Sally. Uh so anyway, uh oh, uh what what's the what's the what's the the little doe's name, Stas? What's her name again?
Uh Clarice, right? Clarice, yeah, not related to the Jodie Foster character. Um, so see if you can figure it out. We'll figure out something to send you. Uh you're gonna do some announcements before we go out?
Yes, real quick. Um obviously, serious all pro campaign, please uh pre-order yours. For our Patreon members, we are just a reminder doing 10% off at Ed's words age meets. You can find out more about that on the Patreon post, or you can send us a message here and we'll get back to you with that code. And lastly, we have uh Chef Virgilio Martinez joining us next week from Central in Peru to discuss his new cookbook that he edited, the Latin American cookbook.
More of an encyclopedia. Yes. Yeah, big yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right.
Uh, all right. Well, listen, uh, Chefy Chef, thanks for coming on. I hope you had a good time. Uh, next time, you know, come on, we'll get you some magic nuts, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely.
I'll be there. All right, thanks. Cooking issues.
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