Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan or Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios, joined uh kind of now as usual, but even though he's not on the Booker Index uh crew anymore, we got John. John in the booth, how you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah, yeah.
Nastasia had to leave. Uh she's getting ready to go to you know back to the land of Los Angeles. She'll be on the show from Los Angeles next week, Joe. So there's no The Hammer Lopez now. And plus, they're filming something for Rockefeller Center.
She's like, I can't get the COVID. I'm about to get on a plane. So she she hightailed it out. Uh and Jackie Molecule's not also on the phone today because he, if you remember from the last time, is in Alaska. Who the hell knows what he's doing in Alaska?
I hope when he gets back next week to hear stories of giant mosquitoes that have drained him of half of his blood. You know, something like this. Uh you rocking the panels as usual. We got uh Joe Hazen. How you doing?
I'm doing well. How are you, man? I'm okay. I feel like I just shortchanged you. Joe Hazen!
Is that better? Yes. Yeah. And uh all the way from Vancouver Island, which if you don't know Canadian geography, is not Vancouver. Vancouver is on the mainland, and then you gotta take like a boat or apparently a 20-minute seaplane ride over to Vancouver Island.
We got uh Quinn. Quinn, how you doing? I'm good, how are you? All right, how are you enjoying your first full week as the customer service representative extraordinaire for Booker and Dax? Uh yeah, I think I'm I'm I'm customer service pretty good.
I'm hoping to be extraordinaire by you know week two or three. All right, there you go. That's good. I like that's aiming high because there's a lot, like already people have thrown him right into. We already had a friend of ours uh take two spinsaws, which is the centerfuge that we made and will make again.
Uh right, John. I hope. Yeah, hopefully. Oh my god, dude. I got the new rotors balanced and too much to talk about on air.
Too much, too much inside baseball. Anyway, so like already somebody in Europe has plugged not one, but two of them directly into 220 Mains Power and blown out the boards. So Quinn's getting a real, you're getting a real uh what's it called? One two, right? Yeah.
I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No good.
Uh Joe, I'm getting a tiny buzz. Is that going out? Yeah, yeah. All right. But uh, I am super uh psyched.
By the way, call in your questions too if you're listening live on Patreon. And if you want to be able to listen live on Patreon, John, what should they do? Uh cooking issues.com or Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Yeah. Sign up, lots of great perks, cool guests, obviously.
And yeah. Yeah. Great stuff. And you know, John set up a lot, like all of those Patreon perks that you that you guys get who are on Patreon, but Quinn is now looking into getting new Patreon perks, right? Is that true, Quinn?
Uh yeah, I've got some calculators I'm working on. Some will be exclusive to the Patreon slash Discord, and some will be sort of early active to my calculators. I like early early access to a technical cooking calculator, like backstage pass to calculation. It's kind of like it's kind of a funny, only our crew, right? Only our crew would be interested in it.
But I love it. I love it. I'm for it. I'm for it. Very much for it.
But like Quinn, I put out some 3D models on uh on our Patreon once. I don't know that one person has downloaded and printed these crazy 3D models. Listen, there is an opportunity for us at Booker and Dax. Let me introduce the guest first, and then we can talk about it. Let's let's do it that way.
Let's call in your questions too. 917 410 1507. That's 917 410 1507. Today's guest is Greg Baxstrom, who uh comes from Chicago. And guess what, people?
Even though he is a chef from Chicago, we are not going to talk about the bear at all. Not at all. So don't ask. Thankfully, no one wrote in a question about that, right? Right, uh, John?
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think so, yeah. Yeah.
All right. So uh worked in some of the greatest restaurants, you know, in the in the world, in the in the country, in the world. Was your first like kind of like super high-end one, Alinea? Or no? What was your first like super high end?
Yeah. I I started at a line about four. No, about a week into it being open. Oh, snap. Yeah.
And then I was there for four years. Oh my God. So that's right when I was at the Holy Crap. So yeah. Okay.
So they'd already opened it, right? So, like, how much of the staff from uh what was it called? Uh Clio Trio, whatever his original one was, right? How much of that staff was still there? Like, did he just have key people, or were a lot of the people in the Alinea kitchen from his other his other kitchen?
I would say about half of the cooks were from Trio, and then the other half are brand new. And back then, I mean, now it's I think they're up to like 20 something cooks, but back then it was about nine. I mean, we did we did all of that with like nine or twelve of us or something. Huh. And so you were there from then that probably means like oh what it whatever it was, oh five to oh nine or something like that.
That's right. And uh was Bobby Murphy there during that time? No. Had you opened, had they opened um aviary yet? No, way before all that.
Oh, because that might, you know, like when you get to be in your 50s, like all years kind of blend together and they not nothing has any meaning anymore. Yeah. But uh I I also can't remember, Stu Pak was the opening pastry chef or no? Yeah, when I was there, I mean, it's pretty it w it was it's uh David Barron, Jordan Kahn, Ryan Bartlow, Alex Stupec, John Shields, David Posey, uh I'm sure I could keep going. Just a bunch of no account losers, huh?
Yeah, they're just it's cr it's I mean, when you look at some of those old pictures, it's cra I mean, it's like early years French laundry pitchers, you know. Yeah, and the the funny thing about uh so Alinea was like along with uh Wiley and a couple other people at WD, they're really everyone everyone likes to say that, ooh, there was this huge movement going on. Well, there were like four restaurants. You know what I mean? So there was uh and and what I thought was really funny was anyone who had eaten, I'll just name three of the restaurants at that time, like that early, right?
WD50, who are doing kind of whatever you want to call it. What do you what do you want to call it, John? What do you want to call that kind of cooking? No, I'm not gonna say it even to tease you. Uh I will I you I can all these things are bolted, so I can't flip any tables, so uh I don't know, I guess modernist cooking you think.
Do you think that's back then they were just saying avant-garde? Yeah, yeah, back then. And then m modernist and molecular kind of trickled in. They but I think avant-garde was up there at that point. You know, modernist was uh Nathan et al.
Probably Chris Young, actually. So like in that group, Chris Young was still in Nathan's uh orbit, right? Uh that's not the right way to put it. But I still feel like that was a term before the books came out. Modernist?
Well, they were pushing everyone hated everyone hated molecular. Yeah, mele Modernist came out, I think you're right, it was with them. But uh, molecular uh was earlier, I think. Well, molecular was being pushed by uh uh listen, I don't talk poorly about people on the the show, or publicly really, uh, that are in the food business just because I mean, Greg, do I think it's hard enough to make a living in this freaking business that like talking bad about other people? You know what I mean?
Yeah, right? That's rough. Yeah. So you don't to speak ill of people, really, right? Uh not now.
I mean, I sure I I absolutely used to. Right. But I mean, like uh, you know, like uh I remember, especially when you're at like uh like uh uh you know, a hot new restaurant or a hot new bar, you hire like a young a young cook or young bartender, and they wanna show how much behind that they can kick. And so they go out and they talk smack about other people, especially now social. And I was like, no.
Like anyone who did that at our place, you get like one warning and then your toast. If you talk bad, if you go to another place and act poorly, that was it. I didn't want to work with you anymore. You know what was great was when I was at Alenia, there was a really healthy rivalry with Charlie Trotters and us because we were only two blocks away from each other. And like a lot of us went to the same bar after work, and so you know sometimes it was a little, you know, intense, but but it was it was pretty great.
It was pretty fun. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people forget that Trotter also, and I even forgot because I wasn't talking about it, but back in like oh four, oh five, like Trotter was pushing a lot of those same agendas. He was going to Madrid Fusion. So all of the people in America who wanted to be in this, we'll call it avant-garde because that's what I guess people were calling it at the time, right? They were looking towards the Spanish, the Catalonians, right?
And it was the kind of the first generation of chefs in America who were doing super high end work whose focus was not at all like French. Yeah, what Thomas was doing. Yeah, it was yeah, it was just completely different. Yeah. So whether, you know, whether they were focused on, you know, kind of Ferron style stuff, really, like El Calarcon Roco, even was was before it became huge internationally, it was punching way above its rate weight in chefs' minds anyway, back then.
I mean, you probably remember this. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's anywho. So there weren't that many restaurants doing this kind of work. But the other thing I always thought was interesting was that the work that was being done at Alinea was not anywhere similar to the work that was being done at WD or Moto or uh Trotters, or no one had the same interpretation of what it meant.
Yeah, and and it's very different now, not that in a bad way, but like what I still love about my experience there was like, you know, it was weird. There was things played on a pillow, stuff like that, but you could still see the French laundry training in it. Like it would have like all these different ingredients and a weird technique, and then just sort of this oddball thing, but you could see the through line if you looked close enough and uh and see the technique. Like we still had to make Villeju the proper way and all this stuff and and uh I don't really not that you know I don't really think that's the case necessarily now. Uh not with that restaurant, but just in general, how it's evolved.
Well, all the people who were doing that kind of work, and I'll let's just focus on WD and Alinea because as I said, I'm not gonna speak ill of anybody's restaurant on air. But uh oh, I remember who I said I was gonna say I hated uh Erveteese. And not personally, I don't know the guy, but he was the guy pushing molecular gastronomy, and he is uh Yeah, you're right. That's probably where it's that's right. Yeah when it was he's uh what's the word?
He's a liar. You know what I mean? He's a liar and a huckster, he's a Charlotte, and he's like a French P.T. Barnum of food. So it's like uh I didn't appreciate that.
You know, I mean, there's always either team Harold McGee or there's team Erveteese. I am fur and not that Harold would never say anything negative about Air Vatis, but like whatever. First of all, Airbate is does not give a rat's behind what any American thinks. I have not heard that name in probably 18 years. Right?
Right? You know why? Because his books sucked. You know what I mean? Like just saying.
But look, maybe he's better. Maybe he's a good maybe he's an okay guy now. Well, we all evolve. I d no, maybe, maybe not. Maybe.
I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. Do we all evolve? Hopefully.
I hope so, yeah. Really? Yeah. Really? Do you think that people you think people's core can get better or just they can realize stuff that they've been doing is wrong if their core is good.
I think like everything else, there's degrees even within that, you know? I think if people have uh monumental things that happen in their lives, then that can force them to change quicker than maybe someone else that doesn't have a monumental occurrence. So you're an optimist. Do you think most chefs are optimistic? But both could eventually get to the You're human optimist.
You're human optimist. So do you think that that helps in the kitchen or it doesn't help in the kitchen? Uh I don't know. I again it's so much more common. Do I think most like most people are disappointing, right?
Like Wow. So there's But it doesn't mean that uh that I look at people with this, it means that not everybody works out or or uh or maybe they're not a right fit for something, but it doesn't make me a bad person for thinking that or them a bad person because it doesn't work out, you know? Yeah, I agree. But it makes it's becoming increasingly harder to have that conversation. Yeah.
So then did you go so a linea like one thing that like if for any of you I've I've had two full blown meals at a Linnea. So if you go to a linea, they're gonna do everything. First of all, don't have a cocktail at a bar before you go. Don't nosh before you go. Take some Adderall.
Like take some sort of upper, because they're gonna convince you to get the long tasting. And the long tasting is not short. No. Like you're you're in it. Like, like if you just landed at O'Hare, is that your airport?
O'Hare? Yeah. Yeah. You land in O'Hare, you're tired as all hell. Maybe the plane's been delayed.
Maybe they lost your luggage. I don't know. And then you show up, like, God forbid, get an earlier reservation. Did this happen to you? Twice.
Because like any time I used to go to Chicago was for the uh restaurant show. And uh so I would go with Mills Norrin, who was, you know, my compatriot at the French Culinary Institute, and you know, everything was filling up because of the restaurant, you know, the the week that the restaurant show is there, it's like it's like here, it's like all the restaurants like, oh come on, really, you know what I mean? Because they get slammed, you know? At least that's my memory of it. And so, yeah, they were like, they only could fit us in for the full tasting, but like at like nine.
So you're like, you take this long flight, you get in, and you're sitting nine, and then you're there until like and you know everyone in the restaurant hates you, they want to go home. And you have the long ass tasting, and it's long. I mean, it's all great. I mean, the thing about Alinea, I thought that was so good was um, like you say, you're using all of these techniques, but the the base flavors of this stuff by and large were just kind of on point flavor choices and and flavor mechanisms, and then the the techniques were kind of layered on top. And I think that's kind of fundamentally different.
Like Wiley was much more interested in technique driving weird and different textures with hydrocolloids. And yeah, one time Grant said to me, Food is architecture. I believe that. Oh, we got a caller? Uh, caller, you're on the air.
Hey Dave and Dang, can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Hello? Hello. How are you doing?
Okay, I have a I have a I have a critique and a question. Which one do you want first? Uh well, does the critique does the does the critique build on my answer to the question that I have not yet provided? They're completely unrelated. The critique I'll go with the critique first.
Okay. Last week or two weeks ago, you were talking about the spice store in the East Village. Uh dual or dual. So it can be pronounced both ways. It's called dual.
It's called either. I've had a conversation with the people at the desk. I've walked up to them, right? Because you get some people who call it dual, and you get some people call it dual. And then when you go up to the to the desk and you're like, hey, did you get the uh the um the asaphetida rock back in?
Because you shouldn't buy asapetida powder. You should buy it in like the resin form and grate it fresh. Why? Because it tastes better, right? So when you go up there and you're like, hey, you got the fresh like uh like uh butcholochia peppers in yet, or you got the the assa fetida.
No, so anyway, so this conversation happens all the time with me with these people. So I walk up to them and I'm like, hey, what is it really? Because I've heard it both ways. Dual or dual, and they're like, we don't care. They just don't care.
Oh, they told me it's called dual because they sell spices and beer. Oh, that's hilarious. I know what I like your explanation, and I like what that person said to you, so I'm gonna do it that way from now on. I always used to pronounce it dual because that's the way it looks, and then I had people going dual to me, and I'm like, you know what? Again, for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, if you live or work more importantly, anywhere in the East Village area, this is a spice shop where you can go in and get spices and teas, but they're also open so damned late.
You know what I mean? They are open till what is it, like one? Something like that. If you want accefetita at one in the morning, it might be your only place in the United States. Yeah, well, if you run out of something and you need to bust prep out, like during service, you can run someone over there and get whatever weird spice thing is.
You don't need it anyway. So, okay, so what's the question? That was the critique. What's the question? Do all countertop ice makers suck?
Oh, yeah. Is there some that are good? No. No, no, they suck. Um countertop, wait, wait, specifically under counter or countertop.
Countertop with the reservoir. Yeah, I don't see how that's gonna be good. I just don't see how that's gonna be like if it is it huge. I mean, like it's a big ass one that makes pellet ice. Oh, yeah, I think that's fine.
Those are probably fine. But like you just need to look at uh efficiency. I mean, the you need to look at efficiency. I haven't used that. Like I I thought you meant like the crappy little ones that are basically Peltier garbage that like like just do stuff.
I haven't used any of the of the countertop pellet ones. Anything that's designed to be commercial is gonna do what it needs to do and just break a lot and cost too much. I mean, that's my gripe with it. Also, like, are you talking about a home or for work? For home.
Yeah. The problem with ice machines, I don't know about the reservoir ones, but the problem with uh having a real ice machine at home, aside from that they're intensely inefficient because they're running all the time and then melting and running. So you always have tempered ice, right? They a home ice real ice maker, so a freezer ice maker, for those of you that know what I'm talking about, they it makes ice and then it stops making ice when the icing fills, and because the ice is in the freezer, ice never melts. Ice is also not tempered.
Ice is also not clear typically, right? Ice machines, like a restaurant ice machine or a or a bar ice machine, they spray water onto a plate, and as they spray water onto the plate, it builds the layers of ice up into relatively clear, assuming that you filtered your water properly, the ice is relatively clear, then it pops it out into what amounts uh to an igloo cooler where it immediately starts melting. So it just melts constantly. It's not refrigerated in the thing. And so they're loud as all get out because there's always water going ringing like that onto the plates.
And then you got the bust out, and then you have the condits that pump, so it's a huge nightmare. I live that way because seltzer is that important to me. And I don't have a uh I don't have an ice bank yet. My next house, if I ever if I live to have another house, ice bank. So I'm gonna say if you s if you tweet me out a particular unit, I'll look at the specs.
The thing is is that most uh ice things are underpowered, and they also put out a boat ton of heat because they just do, and so if you're having on the counter, it can be a pain in the butt. All right. Now it's tweet me out what unit is, I'll take a look at it. Fair? Greg, is that fair?
Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Ice, I have to say, uh, yeah, it's real inefficient. I just have two trays in my freezer.
It sits on top of the chicken nuggets that I always keep in there. Yeah? Yeah. Like what brand are you a Swanson? Does Swanson still exist anymore?
Like who makes the chicken? L Evans. Bell and Evans, yeah. All right. They're good.
There's always at least four boxes in my freezer. I heard a I can't remember what it was, but it was it was so wrong as to be funny. A I hate uh bullsh bull crap uh food etymologies. And there was a really bull crap etymology of chicken nugget going back to the author, I think it's LL, the Wizard of Oz, LL Bomb? L L Baum?
Thanks so. Anyway, something about him saying like this early story where like it turns a chicken into a piece of gold, and so that that is the genesis of the chicken nugget. I'm like, nah. Nah, that's crap. You know what I mean?
Yeah. That's garbage. Uh all right, so we'll speed through this so we get to this stuff. So did you go directly from a linea to Blue Hill, or was there stuff in between, or do you want to talk about Blue Hill? Like you were Blue Hill Stone Barns or Blue Hill here?
Uh Stone Barnes. Yeah. So that's kind of crazy, right? That's kind of a crazy environment. Like you get to use all these cool ingredients.
Like, you know, what how what was it? What like what so it was but in between a lenient. So I went to Alenny when I left Alenia. I I had Grant set me up with a trip. So I did uh estage at LWE and Arzak and then I did a stand at Over Eats.
Uh about five months at Mugaritz and then were they both still working at Arzak or no? Was it just her at the time? Yeah, they were both still. They even had me make a dish. They were like, show me something.
Oh my god, that's so hilarious. So the uh restaurant Arzak, when uh, you know, I I never got I never got to go there. How was the food there? Uh it was really good. Weren't they were they the ones that were using the uh upside-down canisters of freezy spray and like making those like chocolate things, those like or was that uh Barasatigi who's doing that stuff at that time.
Man, I forgot about him. Yeah, yeah. Martin Barasati. How could you forget such a great name? Martin Barasatiki.
It's uh Andoni's uh old mentor, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's such a great name. Yeah.
I mean, those all those people have such great names. Arzac's also. They have restaurants on top of each other in one city. I've never been there. I've never been there.
Anyway, so never been. Oh my god. No one I never got invited to any of those conferences, and uh anyone that knows me knows I only travel on business. When I was there, I shared a room with about 12 other men. And well, not a room, a two-bedroom apartment.
There was three bunk beds in each of the two rooms. And not not one of us were from the same country. And uh and I only had like probably two grand that I saved for the entire like six months I was there. And that back then I was about to propose to my then my girlfriend, and I had like a ring taped to my chest. I was sleeping and stopped, you know.
I was either sleeping with all these guys or I was sleeping in a hostel wherever I could, and I would do it, I would do it again today. It's like such a good city. So uh so like how much of a tape burn did you get from the tape being around? Yeah, I was uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because it would move when I would roll around. That's no good. That's no good. And then like, you know, she when you finally proposed, she's like, What's this stripe across your chest? And you're like, No, no.
You just changed where it was and eventually you're totally clean. Yeah. Well, for that time that was relatively new. You were early to the game with that. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Nice. Uh so then I after that, after that six months or five months, whatever it was in Spain, then I came to New York. I worked at Per se. I liked it a lot.
I learned a shit ton and met a lot of great friends. What year was that? Uh 2009. Okay. And I don't think I knew anyone in the kitchen there then.
Yeah. And uh But I don't know. It was one of the you know, I didn't love it. And it wasn't from a culture thing. It wasn't for it was because I had already, you know, I already did it at a Lenia for four years.
Did Grant give you the in to per se because of the Keller Grant connection? Yeah, he helped set it up. Is that harder or easier to be there under like because you have to then not do anything wrong because you're gonna piss off Grant too? Uh I I'm pretty good in that environment. Yeah, you know, like I'm uh I'm you know, I don't have a lot of skills, but uh but I can I can thrive in that environment and and uh but uh but I uh you know I just you really and not this is not a slight either.
You have to drink the Kool-Aid if you're gonna if you're gonna commit yourself, if you're gonna like sign up and I'm a member of the team, and you're gonna go to training every day and and have a coach and and you're gonna learn a bunch of skills, like you have to drink the Kool-Aid of that. And um and I I w I what I knew pretty early on I wasn't gonna do that for another four years at that restaurant. Right. Because it was just too the food was completely different, but the the it was just the same thing a little bit for in my mind. Right.
I was still learning a crap ton. Uh but so Grant knew that. Like I was not planning on quitting or anything. It wasn't enough to where I wanted to leave. I moved from Chicago to But Grant ate at Stone Barnes and he his Chef Akitz has been like a he's still to this day, we still talk and and he's like insanely generous with me.
And he brought my name up to Dan when he was just eating. Dan called me the next day, and then like two weeks later I I had put my notice in and left. So back to the Kool-Aid for a second, because I think it's actually an interesting point that I don't know where we're gonna end up in our industry yet. And you actually, the work that you're doing, right? The work you were doing when COVID hit, which we talk about in a minute, the you know, the kind of um shift towards kind of a more mellow fine dining or like a fine dining that you can A afford and be, you know, you can probably eat more than once a year without having your your liver blow out or whatever.
Uh right. But in if you ever want to do anything great, it's really hard to do something great without there being some amount of Kool-Aid drinking because it's not an industry. If you can't even, I mean, not to cut you off, but to me it's it, you know, change it from Kool-Aid to something else. But like it's you know, I just had we just got all of the kitchen uh for the three restaurants. We got everybody that worked in the back of the house together the other day.
And uh, you know, we just sort of were talking just to like let everybody talk and like, hey, this thing's still broken. Can you get this fixed into like what's going on with Rockefeller Center later this year and stuff? And spoiler, they're gonna open a place here in Rockefeller Center. Yeah, yeah. But uh I don't know.
I think there's a there's a there's a there's a loss of onus of you need to be responsible for your own career and the own your the things that you need to learn to get you to the place you planning on going. And for me, that was Greg's gonna own his own restaurant and not work for people. And for for most of that career of working at like basically only top ten restaurants in the world, was I needed to have my own three mission star restaurant. My I I just needed to make Grant proud. Like that was the motivation.
And uh, and then you know, shit happens, things change. Like, I like what by the time I was opening up Olmstead, I had not eaten in a fine dining restaurant for like five years. So I just couldn't be the guy that's like, yeah, give me 250 dollars a portion or uh, you know, a meal. I just didn't, I just couldn't, I would not reciprocate, you know, and so I just opened up something more casual. But uh, but it but there's it's not like then I did something wrong because I don't have the fine dining restaurant.
Uh but you still need your crew. Right. I still gardenered uh uh an insane amount of skills and a in a in almost equally as important a network that influential, important people saw that I was really skilled and worked my ass off, so then they were able to come to bat for me when it was time for me to open up a restaurant. I mean, that was the o only because I knew a famous food photographer and a publicist that that I met once and and granacts and David Barber, and like only because of that was I able to sort of leap over being guy guy in the kitchen to guy that owns the restaurant. Right.
Well, there like uh people I don't think people should actually feel bad about leveraging their contacts as long as they try to give other people opportunities to rise. I say that all the time. I go, all of you, okay. First of all, if you don't know what makes the frozen yogurt here at Olmstead so popular, like then you're if there's only three ingredients in the whole thing, and it's like why very, very popular. So like it's a you just don't understand if you're gonna leave and you don't know how to make it, and then what those ingredients can be applied, you know, applied to elsewhere.
And then the other thing is I'm the only person all of you know that own four restaurants and opened them up in six years. So if any of you want to own anything, like we need to have a relationship now. And that's not just like I'm pouring it out. You need to you need to give me something, which doesn't mean working off the books or sacrificing everything, but it means it's it's like we're in this together. I want I only want great restaurants, and you want to own something someday, you know.
Uh and so my candidness will only open if there's a if we're beyond just uh person that clocks in and clocks out every day, you know. Yeah, yeah. But I'm trying to what I guess I'm trying to ask, when I'm trying to figure out, and John, you're probably working with this now too, is how do you set up because you know John just took uh an exec chef at a at a place that's that's not quite one year old, right? So you're just over one year old, like one year in two weeks, yeah. Right, you're totally doing whatever you want to pro anyway.
Yeah, point being that I think it's an interesting problem now, specifically to try to develop a non-toxic Kool-Aid mix to get people to drink. Yeah, yeah. Of course, I mean, it's uh I mean the real it's everything from like I mean, it's like the bear. That's generalized chef culture. That's not every chef I mean, like I can't tell you how many men and women chefs that are very skilled that don't act like that, but are visibly upset if somebody is doing something wrong.
And then I mean, there's so much rambling that comes out of a conversation like this. I mean, like people if we're really gonna change, then we need to change all of restaurants, right? So it's not just like get rid of the bad culture. It means okay, so then we need to be able to pay the back of the house more, which means front of the house has to make 20% less. And so that's not gonna go in because there's only a finite amount of money coming into the business.
So if we're gonna redistribute that that money, then that's gonna be its own problem. So then we have to reconcile that. And then we're gonna have to reconcile. Okay, so that means just in general, it can't just be that uh it's crazy if there's a $25 hamburger and it doesn't come for fries. Like now hamburgers are just $25, even in Iowa, and $40 in Manhattan.
Like, and we have to start to like if we're gonna we can't cherry pick the polarizing things, the the sexy things of the TV show or whatever, we have to have a real broad conversation because this is uh, you know, I have my own problems and and and uh uh I've evolved a lot over the years, but this is still the thing that I put uh a shit ton of hours. Like I have several 10,000 hours, Malcolm Gladwell, I'm an expert in this field. So this is the thing that I have no uh desire to leave or change, and that I want to be able to pass it on to people to other people that are whether they look at it as their career choice or whatever, I would like to pass that on. Uh but they're choosing to be in a very repetitive business that is just hot and small and uncomfortable, and customers don't you know really want to be part of the dialogue of okay, well, the cook that's not very good today is here, so you're gonna pay for a lesser product, but you know, it's how it is. Yeah, yeah.
You know, or the my more expensive cook works Saturday, so it's more expensive. Okay, so since like you can't, you cannot have just the one part of the conversation. You have to talk, you gotta zoom out and talk about it all at once, and more people need to talk about it all at once, instead of just being so vindictive. Well, yeah, judgmental. There's just a lot of judgment going on.
Right, right. I wasn't trying to be judgmental. When I was talking about like the cool like I'll tell you, here's the thing. Because I think there's a lot of what I learned between the two bars that I had, right? Is I learned that not everyone who is valuable gives feedback the same way that I receive it.
Like, so, like what that's what I'm more what I'm talking about is like becoming better at like seeing talent that's not the same as me. Not everyone is the same, and not everyone could be treated the same. I mean, that's something that I've only learned recently. I I I uh a lot of my kitchen staff now are uh non-culinary school, first time, you know, they're they were in the dish pit and it was like enough. I'm sick of this.
I'm they're hardworking people, I'll just pull them and train them how to do it. I'm gonna stop waiting for for someone else to knock on the door. And uh so two out of my three restaurants are fully staffed in the kitchen by former dishwashers right now. That's sick. And uh they just you know, they want to be taught more skills, so that way then it's just logical, okay.
Then you'll pay me more if I know how to do the grill station too, and blah, blah, blah. And uh, and it's not toxic, it's not anything, you know. Right. It's just I think I feel that like we're as an industry getting better about recognizing different kinds of talent. Yeah, and people respond differently.
Some I look, I I I did not get screamed at at all these other restaurants. I was six four. People didn't really scream at me, you know. But uh but I came from like my parents raised me right, and I was in the Boy Scouts for like 15 years. And so a big part of the Boy Scouts is once you like learn a task, uh once it once an adult teaches you how to do something, they no longer will do it for you.
Like, that's like the crux of Boy Scouts. And so whether that's wielding an axe to chop down wood for for a fire, or whether that's first aid or whether it's cooking, a big part of that was cooking, and that's why you know I got into cooking. Really? Boy Scouts? Yeah, one of the things is like over the years, they're like they make it for you and hand it to you, and then they eventually give you like a can of beef stew and a can opener, and you gotta heat it up yourself, and then eventually you just have to make the beef stew yourself, you know.
And uh like Dinty Moore was that the was that the beef stew like of record? Or yeah, yeah. I've eaten many of those. There's probably one in my in my pantry right now. You gotta go check out uh you check out uh Armor did a movie in the late 50s, early 60s, and one of the things is the Dinty Moore line.
So you can see them packing the old style. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty good. Oh, cool. Uh so I'm just saying, like, so I was like pre-conditioned to, and I feel a lot, there's a lot of parallels that in the kitchen, right?
So you go into a kitchen, and now you know something. And the way I moved, I moved up, I was a sous chef at a three-mission star restaurant when I was uh 21 or 22 at a lennia, and it was because I just I just made sure I knew all the things that Grant wanted me to know, and that I could do it. So he I was just his go-to guy for those four years, you know. And uh but as soon as I saw someone that was ahead of me, I would just start learning their okay. Give me that, I'll I'll do that dish for you now, and then I'll do this.
And then I would just go up to Curtis Duffy or whoever one of the sous chefs was and say, I want to work that station now. And then they would just move me because there was no argument. And I I was in control of my own career, and uh I don't know. Well, one more linear question because I always forget. Was that was this stuff there?
Because I know uh like at Aviary, like all of the products were really siloed. It was like it was done like like Catalan style, like one dish, one person, like all the way through. It was a linear like that too, or were were multiple people working on other words, like did you just work on this one dish tonight and then tomorrow you worked on a different dish, or like how was that kitchen organized? No, uh people had like one or two, or sometimes three dishes on their station. I was put on meat for a long time, and I there were times where I had like eight or nine dishes on my station because almost every sushi every almost every cook had a sous chef that they would turn and pass everything to, and then that person would play it.
For like almost most of my time there, that person was Grant. Uh so we were just sort of on top of each other the whole for like years. Yeah, and but I I also forget, were they a quiet kitchen or were they a talking kitchen? Uh you could hear the cook tech's fan in that restaurant. Damn.
Yeah. Damn. What about you? But my point was like I was preconditioned for like discipline. Right.
You know, like my the way my parents raised me. And so like, so I that's that it's just that my point of all that stuff was just like so it's just easier for me. And I don't see it as abuse or something. No one was yelling at me. And uh, and I you know, there's no uh it doesn't mean that's other people don't internalize it differently.
Everybody perceives everything differently. But I I can't be that much of an outlier, right? I'm just some random person from Chicago. So other people say I wouldn't say random, but yes. But other people can work in these environments, not experience uh difficulties, or uh and just be accumulating knowledge and applying it to their career because they want to be the best.
They want to they so they're they're they're on the best team. You know, by the way, I love that you call out the cook tech. Cook deck is the Chicago induction brand that everyone everyone used Cook Tech. Are they still do people still use Cook Tech? Yeah, yeah.
They were they were the only commercial induction that anyone really used in the US, as far as I know, because the European ones they would break and you couldn't get them fixed. And the well, it was cool because both Cooktuck and Poly Science were both in the Chicago area. Yeah, yeah. Phil Preston. I mean, he he used to hang out with Grant all the time.
Yeah, yeah. He was there a lot. My my man P Press. Yeah. He's a funny dude, man.
I was uh I don't talk to him as much now that he sold most of poly science to uh to Breville. I mean, we should have him on the show once to talk about the history of the of the circulator. He's an interesting cat. Yeah. Yeah.
He would come by a lot with like the work on the cold plate and stuff. Oh my god, yeah. He well, he built the cold plate for you guys. You know what I mean? And I think he's had it finished.
I think the first proto was probably finished before Alinia opened because so the way back in the in I think it was oh five or oh four, before Alinia opened, someone that is I don't know whether it was Grant himself or somebody just started putting out all of this um blog content. It was him on Eagle It. Remember when Eagle was a thing? Yeah, and it was just like everyone was like, What the You know what I mean? Because it was just like he's gonna have this and he's gonna have this.
And people were just like, there was not it there wasn't the level of anticipation for that place opening up based on what people in my community were reading was just intense. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean you go I mean Eagle Hall was like a forum that people just posted like food questions and stuff on, and then I remember being in my culinary school library and someone was flipping through it, and it was Grant Eckett's at Nicokonis' house, like messing around. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And being like, what am I looking at? Yeah, it was a fun time also because like I was trying to build random crap for Wiley. I mean, I don't have the resources that uh P Press does, but like Philip Preston is was in his garage trying to manufacture snow. Did he ever bring any of that stuff over to you guys? I don't remember that.
He was trying to manufacture sounds like easy, right? Not easy. Snow crystals are very specific. And so he was trying to generate flavored snow, and flavored snow is even more difficult than regular snow. Anyway, good times, good times.
Um let's get back more into into current. Okay. So uh we'll skip over Blue Hill Stone Barnes for now, uh, unless you want to say something uh about your experience there. I mean, like I only ate there once or twice and I had fantastic meal. Yeah, I mean, the thing that was nice about Stone Barnes was like Dan would pull Hakkarai turnips out of the ground.
And uh, you know, I don't mean this to be an insult or something, but like he would look at me and be like, Per se couldn't fucking get these, you know. And like he would just so passionately talk about stuff that wasn't really talked about at uh per se. And uh he's a strange dude in his own right there. Yeah, I mean, he's definitely his own person. Uh but it was but that was the attraction.
I you know, I was sort of in the same school with with per se and and and Elenia, and it was nice to kind of have a different someone that didn't come from that same camp, you know. Right. Oh, it's true. That's true. Uh my god, it's so weird how like even at that tier level, there's all these weird cliques, and or is it click or clique?
What do you think? And so then that's like that's Christina Tosi, that's uh uh Cesar Ramirez, that's Dan Barber. I mean, that's it's like there's that family, and there's like there's although Tozy's a crossover, right? Because Tozy, like, you know, she did she did Wiley, she did WD, she was pastry at WD uh when Sam was there, and then moved to um to start working with with Chang, and those guys are all um Daniel Balud and and uh and um uh my god, JG, you know, Jean George crew, they're that sort of click, yeah. J J G Balud, like you know what I mean?
Yeah. I mean, so many crazy cooks came out of the JG kitchen and the Bulloo kitchen, you know what I mean? Will those clicks still happen, you think? In the future? I don't know.
Uh it's a great question. But I think part of like what you were saying earlier, where you know, you are looking for people who are working for you that kind of demonstrate that they want to have the knowledge and the connections and want to do this in the future and you're gonna nurture them, right? So I think it's gonna continue that way. I don't think it needs to be a pre-requ prerequisite. I don't think everybody needs to you know, I don't have that type of restaurant either.
But uh but it's still hard and like uh it's still unusual. Like it's more difficult just that I go to the farmer's market four days a week and bring a whole bunch of random stuff back that's seasonal than just having it come on a truck and it comes out of a box and it gets put into another like even just little stuff like that makes it harder to work at my own restaurant. And like I'm not gonna not choose that. Like I'm still gonna always choose that. Right.
By the way, I saw a video of you that you were doing it, you were doing the Union Square market because it's you know the best in the area. How the hell do you get all that stuff back? You had all this stuff in a cart. How what do you well you have a truck or into one Uber and now it's two? Yeah, so it's racking up.
I think I spend I mean I definitely spend enough to get a nice big car. But I don't know. I we're with this Rockefeller thing coming. I'm not really I don't really know how I'm gonna do that because well here, what are you gonna? Are you are you gonna cook it here?
Are you gonna the nice thing about you now is you have what one, two, three, how many places that you have now? You have uh I have three restaurants all within a block of each other in prospect uh heights. Right. So that's like a farm team. You so you can just pick people who can like work up here and like see how they work out in this environment.
I mean, that's gotta be good, right? Like have that home base that you can like Yeah, it's it's really it's been I mean, even just there, there's a lot of more camaraderie. There's like uh, you know, like one family in the dish pit and then their cousins are cooks at the other one, and and and uh yeah, it's it's been it's a it's been a lot honestly, it's been a lot easier to staff, uh, I think because we're so close to each other. Right. So, like, you know, you have the kind of close to each other empire, fabulous and Jeremiah with the Contra Wild Air and you know that other stuff.
I think it's kind of a good model. You know what I mean? I really do. So the my original thought was uh okay, if oh I have my Olmstead and then across the street is the French one and it's smaller and it's more bar vibes, that like Olmstead would be the dining room at Gramercy Tavern, and then like the tavern would be Maisanyaki. Like that was how I was trying to look at it.
That like uh that there would be a lot of cross-utilization. Well, didn't you say you were also commissarying a lot of stuff out of uh Olmsted into Mezzanyaki? Or was it the other way around? Yeah, yeah. I mean they they all it's all like if someone's making sugar liver mousse, they make it for each other and speaking of chicken liver mousse.
I saw your chicken liver mousse, and I have to say, thank God you serve it, at least the picture I saw with enough freaking like starch. I freaking hate when you get like one little tiny piece of bread and all this liver. What am I supposed to do? Just spoon it? It's not freaking pudding.
Yeah, you know what I mean? I mean, some people think it's pudding. Also, like, here's another question. So, like all the crew that you came up with, they are all cold foie people. Just asking about floa in general.
Are you a cold foie person? A hoffwa person, or are you agnostic? You like it always? Great question. I don't know the last time I had flour.
Yeah. Well, it's a that was like really on the time. I would go hot. Me too. But all those freaks love it cold.
They love the cold press. No, just pulling. It's either seared or it's a culturing, you know. Right, right. But like, what's better than hot eat it, right?
Yeah. It's good. Yeah. Tastes good. We would do a lot of like poaching pho at some of the restaurants.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't for me. So, yeah, so if you if you go to Olmstead, which by the way, I think we met at a bar once right before Olmstead opened. And I I think I think it was you, someone from your program, I think it was you. And I was like, is it I was trying to figure out like how much you guys cared about Frederick Law Olmsted.
I think we met at something, some quest love thing. Probably. And I probably peppering you about how much you cared about Frederick Law Olmsted, but I forget what you said. Do you do I worship him or something? Well, in other words, you name it after.
I mean, I'm assuming it's Olmstead because Prospect Park is blah blah blah or whatever. Because it's prospect park, but he also designed the Chicago World's Fair. And then there's he has this thing where there's like uh there's usually some type of greenery that he tries to design in between, connecting that as parks. And so we sort of started that from out front of the restaurant, added a 50-foot green wall that connects you to the back of the garden. So I mean, greatest parks designer in uh US history, probably.
And their family's been, I mean, there's like four thousand uh homesteads now, but they've been pretty pretty great to us. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Do you give them like a little like uh five percent Olmsted card?
Like, a little glasses something when they walk in. It's a little shy. Here's a little teaser. Hey, you really an Olmstead? That's what you give them, right?
Uh well, one of them is a food writer for Forbes. Yeah. How crazy is that? It's funny. That's hilarious.
And uh are they is their last name Olmstead? Yeah. Nice. Yeah, Larry Olmsted. So were you like, do you come by it honestly or is this some uh some sort of bull crap Olmstead?
Yeah, he loved it. He loved it. I thought it was great. Yeah. Anyway.
Uh all right, let's talk about um unless I missed something. Oh, I like something. So your rutabega, let me ask you this. So in Rutabega, you make this your well-known rutabega, like uh, what do you call it? Tell you tellers, yeah, yeah.
And you put it through a sheeter and then you and then you roll it, slice it. What do you poach it off? You just like half cook it and boil like pot. You just boil it in water. Yeah.
Unsalt the water, otherwise it turns a mush. And then wait, say it again? If you put salt in the water, like you would think for pasta, the rutabaga gets too soft too quickly. Really? Yeah, so you you parkook it as like you take it to a point, and then you put it in the salt.
Yeah, probably just because it helps break it down a little bit. Huh. And uh I would have to investigate this. This is an interesting phenomenon. Yeah.
And uh, and so then it comes out sort of al dente, and uh, but there's like a butter sauce, like a truffle butter sauce, and it's very it's just heavy and noodly and and truffle. Man, you put like brown butter crumbles or something. Yeah, right. Like milk salad. Milk salad.
All right. My question is this. Very 10 years ago. I love uh rutabega. I think it's like underused.
I love it. However, the day after, if it's been refrigerated, like without a sauce or something, the something goes off in rutabega to me. I I like Rutabega. I'm a day of Rutabega man, man. But I know a lot of people aren't.
So I'm wondering like what I'm doing, or if you have any tips on, do you have this phenomena? Have you ever noticed that like rutabega gets a weird like a radish? Yeah. It goes in it goes in a different direction. Like I would just recommend not having leftovers.
There you go. I mean, it's fine in a soup. It's fine leftover in a soup or in a sauce. Yeah. But like if you like uh like a lot for a lot of dishes, what I've been doing with a lot the trim, because we have rutabega somewhere, and so we have a lot of rutabega trim.
We I turn it into just basically like a really simple soup, like there's not much going on there. And then I make a like a bechamel with Jasper Hill cheddar. But then I I combine the 50-50 with rutabega puree and the and the Burbac. No, sorry, the bechamel. Yeah.
And it just makes it, you know, like how if you eat mac and cheese, like after three bites, you're just sort of done with it. Yeah. Like it makes it so much lighter. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And then it still looks the same because it's the same color. Right. Uh, although sometimes it's okay to serve something that you only want three bites of if that's all you're giving them. Yeah. You don't want the family style restaurant.
So I would look like a jackass if I was given three spoonfuls of mac and cheese. Here's your family style. Yeah. Um, so another one on the thing. So the the the duck.
So you you are self-avowed uh duck lover, and you like an aged, not aged, uh dried duck to get the skin to render out. But you you're like, look, we don't have the room to age the whole freaking duck, and plus I don't need to age the rest of the duck that I'm not gonna do this kind of prep on. How do you so you you cut off all the all the all the breasts, you break the stuff down into what you're gonna use, take the fat off they're gonna use that, and presumably you're gonna render it out to do something else. And then you do a 14-day dry drying thing on the on the thing. But what do you do to stop the meat underneath from drying out?
Do you have like some sort of like you have them slightly overlap each other? So like we so it's just a duck breast, and then we cut we clean it so that way all the sinew and stuff's off the back of it, and then there's you know, a quarter of an inch or more of just auxiliary skin that's been trimmed so it's not as thick. Right. So it's the thickness of what's on the actual breast because right the outside stuff has some tends to be a little thicker. And then we score it, and then when you just lie them amongst each other, the within that 14 days, they they don't get uh funk.
I mean, if it's it's like pretty like if you're like three days past that, you're running a risk of it getting a little funky. Like I'll still eat it and like some people love funk on their on their duct. I've never been that person. I'm I'm not even a dry aged beef guy. I don't think that's a good thing.
Oh, really? You know what? I the thing with dry edge beef is I think dry. Someone said it was cool, and then everybody started to follow suit. Also, like uh dry age meat in a bag doesn't work for me.
You know what I mean? Like cooking it in a bag because then the that smell from the bone and the fat near the bone goes through the whole dang thing. And it's just a lot. It's just a lot. I can enjoy almost anything.
I'll I only ever once had a really aged birds at Hicks in London. And I was like, whoa, man. Like a squab or something? Grouse, like just like that, it was like all rotten, and I had to spit out the the BBs and all this other stuff. And I was like, I don't mind spitting out the BBs, but it's a lot.
Like, like uh it's a lot, you know, like when they they hang it until it's all rotting on the inside. It's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. But but people love it.
You know what I mean? They do. So um, you remember who um Alan Sayak was is? He's not dead. He was uh he was the he was the dean uh at uh the French culinary before Nils came on, and you know, along with Andre Soltner and um and Jacques Papin and and uh uh Jacques Therese.
Anyways, so he was at Le Cirque for a while, but his like big restaurant that he started here in in or was big at here was Lecine, which is the swan, right? And uh he was telling me these stories. He was a weird funny guy. I learned a lot from him because I came in to the FCI as this modern guy, but then I have to work with this old school French guy. And he would tell me stories about his dad making him cook these like rotten birds that are hanging in his basement when they when he was a kid in France, and like this just the disgust on this chef's face was just like priceless.
You know, you like a disgusted French guy, right? The look on the disgusted French guy's face. Yeah. Yeah. And so like whenever I think about the birds.
That's the argument of why a bird with buckshot and it's old is good. No, no, no. It's it's an argument like whenever whenever I feel like I have to like something, I think of like, you know, uh Chef Sayak telling me, you know, and the blood dripping down my father's face was disgusting. The whole thing was disgusting. I'm like, dude, man, geez, some freaking, you know.
I think I've I've evolved, at least I think I have to to where I don't I don't pretend like I like something out of respect anymore. That's a good age to be at. Yeah. Yeah. Like where it's like so qu like it's like you're s it's so cool.
You work at a line, you go somewhere and they send you something and it's like, Oh my god, I gotta call my mom and and then uh then you're uh going up in your career and like, oh you now you're starting to get like comp meals and that's crazy. That's so amazing. I gotta call my you know, and then uh now I just want to be left alone. I don't want anyone to talk to me. Don't send me anything.
Yeah, well it's a good thing. I don't want to talk about my restaurants. Especially if you're gonna talk about staffing. If you're going out like with your family, you like you just want yeah, yeah. Uh that's true.
Not that I'm like some guy or something. I'm just I haven't been out in like two years, so I'm not really pushing anything away. But speaking of two years, uh, so how did you Okay, so my experience when my bar shut down in the pandemic was that the crew was very nervous about working, especially just to like pump drinks out to people who wanted drinks, right? Then you took on this model where, well, you're gonna do a food bank out of your restaurant, keep your crew working, and also do uh, you know, help people out. How did the funding work for that?
And then also how did it how like how did the crew respond to that? Because they saw it as as good question, you know, useful, I guess. Yeah, I mean that that is what made COVID so exhausting, not COVID itself. I mean, we like we shut down and then within a week we were operating as a food book bank, like everyone was laid off and some cooks were were like, you know, okay, well, I'll just keep coming anyway, I don't care. And uh so we started making meals.
And uh and that was with Rethink at Lee's thing. I'm sorry, no, that was with uh uh what is that thing? The Lee Initiative. And then uh and then sh shortly later, you know, a little bit later on, we start it was World Central Kitchen and then so it was Lee Initiative, Rethink and World Central Kitchen, sorry. And uh what's crazy is like Olmsted we had only one storefront when we opened and over the years we just expanded.
So the dry cleaner next to us went out of business. We grabbed it, connected it through the basement. So we were operating like this food bank bodega thing out of the main dining room out of Olmsted, and we just left the we just didn't take down the the vestibule. We left it up and used that as like this like barrier between the guests and and then cut to a few m uh like a month or two into it, we we were trying to bring other people back if we could. So we turned the private dining room into uh like a bakery, like a grocery store, and uh and then just we were able because we had the store, we were able to kind of justify a couple front of the house people and and then not that long after they l they uh they released uh outdoor dining, and so then that kind of you know, it was like baby it was baby it was a lot of and then we did this like black entrepreneur series across the street, and it was just it was uh I mean draining for them.
I but you know what, like uh the pe you know, again, uh my place shut, but the places that were open, I just like the level of kind of internal punishment that people had to take to be working in that environment. You know what I mean? It's just cause it wasn't it didn't look fun anyway. Like I only did a couple of things. I mean, it looked just like I don't know, God bless anyone.
I mean it was all beautiful, we're getting random things dropped off, but like sometimes we would literally get a truck of just beats and we were like, where are we putting? And they were like frozen prepackaged beats, so we didn't even have a freezer to put them in. Like it was uh you know, it was draining for for the stuff. But yeah. Uh just all those I mean my takeaway is is you know, transitions are much harder now.
Whether like that but then that could just meet a menu change, or that I want to bring in a chef or that I want to transfer a cook from one station to another. And uh I think that's that part should be acknowledged to why is that and how do we move forward? Like uh like what's you know, what's causing that. Yeah. By the way, are you uh uh are you a personally beat positive, beat neutral or beat negative person?
I don't think it's ever been on my no, I had a beat salad on Olmstead's menu. Uh I mean, does anyone serve it, not just with like beets and pine nuts and goat cheese? I don't know. Well, uh when I come up with that dish, I don't know. Um yeah, I mean the the anyway.
I don't know. I like I like that dehydrated beet thing that people were doing, like par dehydrated beet thing that people were doing and then roasting off like you know seven, eight years ago. I thought that was good. I don't know. The like the in the quick lime thing where they soaked it and then were they doing that?
I don't know, like Mike and B park. Yeah, no, I don't know about that. Anyway, all right. So let's get to the current stuff so that so that I'm I'm not uh shafting anyone. So uh Patty Ann, like you're getting like you're like you're getting a lot of uh uh like a lot of people are going nuts for this idea of kind of thinking about these things that are seen as uh what you call what you what is it called in the thing?
Midwestern, what would it midwestern comfort food? What's the what's the style? Although we eat stuff out here too, man. I mean, like I grew up with blooming onions too man, it's not just in the Midwest. Yeah, that's probably I don't know if I've had a blooming onion before I put it on the menu.
That was that was just that was very family friendly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So is there uh like how are you reinventing the the or are you not? You spent they're they're good. They're it's all I mean they're all creative outlets, right?
Like Olmsted is the vegetable, whatever I can do whatever I want with vegetables restaurant and and people like it, and and the one across the street is small French food because I like heavy French food, but it's small and it's more bar vibes, and then Patty Anne's, you know. I don't know how many times I'm in these articles or like these interviews where yeah, you can come to my restaurant once a week, it's neighborhood, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, I'm not eating at Olmstead once a week. At Patty Anne's, you can there's a bakery attached to it. There's breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Yeah, we got two minutes. Keep going. You know, there's breakfast, there's lunch, there's dinner, there's there's brunch. So there's a lot of reasons to to actually come back. And it is kid friendly.
It's not a kid, not kids running around everywhere, but it's like it's you can bring your family there and not feel weird rolling up with a couple strollers and kids and asking for a table at six o'clock on a Thursday. Did you take your whole crew to the Outback Steakhouse and order a blooming onion and see? It's too powdery. Their coating is too powdery. It's kind of dry and powdery.
I did just eat at a uh cracker barrel the other day. Oh, for some research. I saw that you did a crack you have a cracker cracker barrel conceptually, like I like giant checkers, but like I've never had a good meal at Cracker Barrel. Did you have a good meal at your cracker barrel? I had the a really uh delicious but very beige uh chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy the other day.
Chicken fried steak's a great idea with the white with the white gravy and basic. I swapped it for the brown gravy. Okay. All right. And uh talk to me about port wine balls because that's everybody's greatest 1970s thing.
Just the line cheese ball. Yeah, it's that thing that my mom puts out for every occasion that no one touches, you know. Nuts or no nuts. We made a good one. We went without nuts.
Oh, we did is we take cauliflower, different colors, and we turn it into couscous and pack it around it. Okay. So it's like kind of already the crude. So you just could put it on it. It seems sounds weird, but it's a that's a good update.
That's a good update. I think it has a good and and to you, because uh don't get anyone started on what a pig in a blanket is. What is a pig in a blanket to you? Because I grew up with the with the pancake around a freaking sausage or like that, you know. What we do is we buy bacon, new ski's bacon.
It's from the it's from Wisconsin from the Midwest. Good bacon. Yeah, and we make uh potato rolls and then we braid the bacon with the potato roll, and then we bake it off and serve with honey mustard. Ah, nice braided bacon. People call it a duvet.
Okay. Okay. And uh what is your uh first of all, cob is one of the great salads. Would you agree? One of the top five or six salads on earth is the cop.
So what do you do to the cob that uh what we do is we make a blue cheese, uh, you know, foam, and then all the layers kind of go over of the bacon and the egg whites and the yolks and the chives and everything in in the same kind of cob salad line. And then we serve endive as like a scoop. So it's more of like a dip form. Ooh, cob salad dip. So it's all the same, it tastes exactly like one, but it's more dip, dippy sherry, you know.
All right, well, I unfortunately have not been yet, but uh John, when you have a day off, we should go. Yeah, let's do it when I hire another cook. Did you have any qu I we're late already, but did you have any questions you want to ask, John? Because we didn't pipe in anything. It's all good.
No, no, we're good. I got the questions you want to listen. People who Patreon who wrote in non-specific questions for today will get you. Is next week no tangent? I think so, yeah.
No tangent Tuesday. All right. Well, Greg, thanks so much for coming on. I hope you had a good time. Cooking issues.
Yeah, thank you.
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