Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave, our older host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios in the studio today with, of course, John. John Nahoul, how are you doing? Doing great thanks. Chef of Temperance Wine Bar.
Very true. Downtown. How's it? Everything good? Yeah.
Right, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Great. Awesome. Rocking the panels here.
We got Joe Hazen. How are you doing, man? I'm doing great, man. How are you? I'm okay.
I'm okay. A little bit of a uh, what's it called? A little bit of a uh, you know, nothing compared to the rest of the country, but you know, this little bit of rain today. But here's the thing. I'm biking today, New York, normally fine, right?
All of a sudden, a rogue gust, Mother Nature almost took me out. Like, it's fine. Biking in New York in the rain is fine. All of a sudden, wind is like, no, you don't. Boom!
And like blew me three feet across the road. Oh, wow. Yeah. Lucky it didn't blow you into a bus. Well, lucky for me, I'm lucky for some.
Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Uh in the California today, we have uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez and Jackie Molecules together again. How you doing, guys? Good.
Yeah? Good, good. Yeah? What's it like? Uh anything anything interesting happening in the world of food in Los Angeles in the last uh, I don't know, week or so.
Uh I've only been here for like two days, so no. Um I'm still subsiding on a diet of uh smoothies. Oh god. Oh god. Yeah, interview these people that make these uh these water bottles with uh crystals inside of them.
Oh Jesus. Isn't that ridiculous? Wait, wait, wait. What kind of crystals? Like what kind of crystals?
Poisonous, maybe? Got black obsidian in here, baby. I'm drinking water inside obsidian. Can I can I tell you something about obsidian? A little bit?
One thing. I mean man'm gonna man explain a little obsidian. Amorphous. It's an amorphous solid. It's a glass.
Can't possibly be a crystal. That's why I've that's why it's so good for flint napping, my friend. Go back and tell those crunchy, like freaking Sedona loving, freaking crystal mongers to stay away from amorphous materials in your liquids, man. Is the is the water raw? Right that was a move.
That was a real movement like two or three years ago. All right, right. Wow. If we have time, let's bring this back. Do you remember like there was the other one where like you would like chant nice things to water and Madonna like pumped that stuff, and there was that Japanese guy is the shaving water.
And like literally, like the dude would take the he's dead now, I think, but he would he would he would take water. Have I said this on the air before? He would take water and he'd be like, I love you. I love you, I love you. And then he would freeze it and there'd be a pretty snow crystal.
And then he would go, Hitler! Handler! Handler! And freeze it, and he would take a picture of a mutated crystal. Oh god.
And so they would sell water that they had like chanted nice things over. I I don't know, in case I guess it crystallizes in your body. That was real, real pretty pictures. Anyway, uh Quinn will not be joining us. He'll be back next week when our special guest will be Michael Lisconis, formerly of La Bernard End, now uh for the past million years, been running uh Ice's uh pastry, chocolate, and a bunch of other stuff.
If you want to call in questions about that, make sure to make fun of uh not I'm not gonna bring it up. Not gonna bring it up. Uh but today's special guest, we're extremely happy. Calling in from Tennessee is Sean Brock, who I haven't seen in in a million years, probably since 2015. How are you doing, Sean?
Oh, wonderful. Yeah, it's been a long time. It's been a long time since I've seen anybody though. Yeah. Well, can I say that uh I think I have said this on the air before.
I have not been to Tennessee other than maybe driving through it. I have not stopped in Tennessee since the nineteen eighty Knoxville World's Fair. Whoa. Yeah. Time to have time to reuse it.
I remember having a good time at the Knoxville World Fair though. It was good. Definitely. Yeah. Did you go?
No, you were too y you were too young. You were you're six or seven. Oh yeah. Um yeah. I was like nine.
I didn't go no, but that was a big deal in the South. Yeah. It was huge. My um my my great uncle had a a cabin up in the uh in the mountains, and my grandparents got a dog the same time, and we drove back to Florida from Tennessee and the dog puked on my lap. It was a little dog called the Besenji and it puked on my lap.
We counted it eleven times between Tennessee and Florida. And that was the first time I ever saw kudzu as well. You ever harvest a kudzu over there and like make something with it? Yeah, so one of my goals with my new project is to work on uh helping teach ways to harvest budzu for the starch, but also uh we we make a lot of serving pieces out of it and baskets and chargers and we certainly use the the route for um thickening and we thicken everything with it. Really?
Is there a way to is there I mean it makes amazing tea? Really? Like what does it mean like like uh is it like goopy or is it like what's the flavor? Well, I I always think of I always think about as coozive flowers. Oh, what are the flowers taste like?
Yeah, they're purple and I don't know, they're floral. It's it's hard to explain. They're very, very unique. And uh yeah, people look at you like you're crazy when they see someone picking cuddy around here. Yeah, I guess.
Well uh on the other hand, they should be like anything you can do to anything you can do to knock it back, right? Speaking of uh well, let's let's let's do this. Let's do this in order, because I have some ingredients I want to ask you about. Uh but I don't want to miss anything. I have a bunch of people who have written in questions.
And also if you're listening live on the Patreon, call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And uh you want to tell them how to join the Patreon if they're uh not already uh Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Bunch of different level of memberships, a lot of great perks and all the different memberships. And if you're listening, you should definitely join.
Let's get uh let's see whether Kitchen Arts and Letters will put uh, even though it's not like just out. Maybe did we already get uh Sean's book uh South on the Squin, but I'm sure Matt would be a little bit more than a little bit. Yeah, we'll get the Patreon people a discount there because no offense to Amazon, although crap on them, but we prefer if you buy your cookbooks through places like Kitchen Arts and Letters, right? That's all that's all I'm gonna say about that. Uh especially Kitchen Arts and Letters.
Yeah, especially Kitchen Arts and Letters. I mean, they're such a good place. You know what I mean? Anyways. We have a lot to talk about, so I don't even know how to approach it.
I remember the first time I think that you came to my attention was I don't know, I'm gonna want to say like maybe I've met you after a long time ago when I was at the French Culinary Institute, and you had somehow gotten a hold before anyone else had, of like all of the list of varietals that had been grown in uh at Monticello, and you were just single-handedly going down and trying to find people who were make like growing all of those things, and we're just going ballistic on this kind of like uh on this kind of like bringing these things or like from from a taste perspective, right? So I think it started, I mean, at least you told me back in the day, it started from just kind of taste and then became more. You want to talk about that whole journey or no? Yeah, of course. So I grew up um in Appalachia, way back in the coal fields, and there everyone grows everything that they eat.
Uh you, you know, the grocery stores are we had one, and um I we rarely went there. We grew everything. It was it was so cool. And I actually ended up living with my grandmother for a few years, who was a feed saver, not really out of you know passion, but just out of the just tradition. That's um you you travel around the south and you start to see these little pockets everywhere, and everybody has their own um beans and corn that you know happen to thrive there, and they hang on to those.
You know, it's kind of like a natural selection sort of thing. So I watched her seed saving my whole life and grew up eating straight from her garden, eating those heirloom um products. So I I that's just all I knew. And then when I when I um got my first restaurant job, I uh I remember tasting the food and um realizing that it was it tasted nothing like um what I grew up eating. And uh now I can link all that together and understand why um sorry my one's having a meeting outside my door.
I know what that's like. I know what that's like. D were you able to save any of your grandma's seats? By the way, your grandma Audrey, who you named your flagship restaurant after, right? Do we lose them?
Oh we are yeah, so you you the you named the restaurant after your grandma and you saved the and you did you save any of her seeds? Yes. I was lucky enough to inherit a lot of her seeds and I've been growing them ever since. Um one in particular that I've and since then I've I've become I've always been a collector. I love collecting things.
It's just part of my personality. And so I've been collecting seeds from all over the South since probably around two thousand six or so. And um, you know, beans are a big thing here. And my grandma had these beans called wild goose and they look like they were um spray painted with um like a I don't know, it's like speckled and purple and blue and so gorgeous. But I haven't seen those anywhere else.
Um and that one is uh now referred to as the Audrey Morgan bean. Nice. Um which was her her name. Uh yeah, so it's so neat. And and yes, I think for the most part these these things are more delicious.
Um is that is that a thick skin bean, a thin skinned bean, like kidney size, pinto, like like navy, like what size or like or like butter bean size. Like what c what were you talking about? I'm trying to figure out No, no, these are yeah, so in the South we eat a lot of these um beans called greasy beans or half runner beans, and they're enormous green beans with the the the seed itself is so huge. And and you can eat it in all the different stages. So you can eat it, you know, fresh right off the plant.
You can let it get medium sized and can it, or you can let it totally dry and you know, cook it like uh penta beans. All right. Uh here's a question I ask a lot of people, but I don't think I asked them on the air. In terms of New York style, all right. And then I know they grow them better elsewhere, but green or wax on your on your green bean style.
Green beans or wax beans. Choose one? Yeah. Hmm. Well, see, t I need to know the exact varietal of each one.
Yeah. That's what makes the difference. Uh you're saying that you're saying there's a green bean. Like 200 I probably have 200 varieties of green beans in my collection. Wow.
Hmm. It's pretty stupid. So um when you talk to Sean Brock, do not say garden variety as an insult. Definitely do not say garden variety as an insult to Sean, for sure. I have never had a green bean I like as as much as the best wax beans, but I am now embarrassed that I don't have the green bean uh, you know, I don't have the green bean palette because I don't have uh I don't have access to the to the dang green beans.
Now I feel like well, we we can fix that. You just gotta come visit. We can have a bean tasting a bean party. But what's neat is you look through this pile of seeds and they're all named after people or places, and I think that's so neat because now that's a link in this chain that is living history, living history of the food of this region. And every time I cook one of those and serve it, let's say it's um uh Henry Barnett uh half runner, his stories told.
And those stories, you know, they we can learn a lot, um, but it's also nice to to remember people. I so switching gears a little bit, most people, you know, you got you know most of your fame doing in in low country, South Carolina, Charleston, right? And now you're doing Appalachian stuff. But I kind of my question to you is it's such a like it's such a giant region. Do you really feel that there's something that ties together the in like the entire string of the Appalachians or no?
Culinary. Yeah. Um, yeah. The for me, well, if you talk about um plants, you're looking at three sisters, corn bean, squash. Because everywhere you go, there's going to be a different varietal of each.
And those varietals can be traced back to where they came from. And so you'll start to learn about the um different cultures who have have come to you know different places and left their mark. And uh also speaking of appalaches, I saw that you uh you did a forward for a new edition of the Foxfire cookbook. What's what are your feelings on Foxfire? Because when I was a kid, I collected them.
For those of you that don't know, Foxfire was a series of books that were written by high school students as a high school project where they went back to their families, people who were old, people who you know whose stories hadn't been told and tried to record a little bit of their history, and it's not just culinary, but culinary is there. It's also like crafts, like lifestyle, moonshining, whole whole nine yards. And I always thought it was kind of an amazing document, but since I'm not from there, like what's your relationship to that whole that whole concept? And it's so crazy that this this kind of document was written by high school students, you know what I mean, in the 70s. So look give me your thoughts on it.
It's so neat. It's one of the biggest inspirations for me. And it has been. I remember when I first discovered um Fox Fire, I was I just moved to Charleston, and that series became a way for me to show uh the other people in the kitchen where I came from and what I ate and what it was like to live there and grow up there. Uh it's just wonderful.
I I I just think it's um so cool that it's still going. Yeah. And uh that writing the forward for that book was, you know, that was a surreal moment for me. Um that's been such a big influence on on the way I see things and a point of communal pride. Um it's so neat to see it all documented.
And that project um had an enormous inspiration over the the restaurant. And um I will continue that work. You know, I I started a little project um that I will pick back up after these restaurant openings settle down a little bit. But yeah, I I I I want to continue that work. And luckily um they've been nice enough to offer, you know, anything that I need or to explore their archives.
Wow. Well where's the Fox Fire Institute? They have a museum. I've never been. You know what I mean?
Like uh Yeah, it's in it's in Georgia. Yeah. Someday. Do you know that they tried to do one in New England? Like also in the 70s?
I think they only did one volume of it called Salt. I don't know. Not as good. Not as good. Considering, I can't remember whether it was mass.
I think it was Maine. I think it was Maine based. And considering how cantankerous Maine folk can be, you'd think they could have like done like a whole bunch of stuff on it. You know what I mean? You know.
But uh yeah, no, they still can. Yeah. I bought it. I was like, oh, there's a there's a northeastern, there's like salt from like where I am, and then and then I mean uh sorry, like a Fox Fire from where I am, and then I was like, no, not really. Uh you know, they're not teaching you how to like, you know, you know, make a banjo out of a cigar box or anything like that.
I mean that that set of books is nuts. How many are there? There's like 10, right? I forget how many I have. I have like six.
There's a little more than there's a little more than ten. I think there's um around 12 to 14. They the original series was around 10, and then they put three or four out later. All right. Now, uh, I'm gonna let's see.
I'm gonna ask you, should I go ingredient questions first or non-ingredient questions first? I'm gonna go what do you think? Ingredient questions? Cooking questions or non-cooking questions first? Cooking questions?
Cooking? All right. Cooking. All right. Uh you have on your menu, I looked at your some of your sample menus from the restaurant, all right.
And uh salt risen bread appears, and what a baller move to try to do salt risen bread, because it can fail, right? Do you have a foolproof way? In fact, I was gonna put a recipe for it in if I ever finish my book. I was gonna put a recipe for it in the book, and then I was like, you know what? I'm not because I just don't want to hear it from people.
It didn't rise. It did it was too flat. You know what I mean? Like, what's what do you do to not have it go go south on you? You're the first person that's that's actually known how the as many we serve it every night.
And um, yeah, it I wanted to I wanted it on the original Huck menu back in 2010. I couldn't figure it out. And I gave up. And so when I started this project because you you have to have it every day if it doesn't, what are you gonna do? Just not serve bread or go buy it's it's terrifying for a chef to think about those things.
And um I hired these two extraordinary pastry chefs uh um who moved from New York City to work here and I explained it to them and they nailed it on the first try. Really? After a a decade of failure, they nailed it on the first try. Uh maybe because they wasn't they weren't scared or I don't know. But they yeah, they have it figured out and it is extraordinary.
It smells like cheese. I love it. And it blows people's mind warm it over the embers a little bit. Oh my god. I love it.
It's incredible. It's got a different crush texture. People need to wrap their head around like that it's not the same as but it's amazing. It's great stuff. You know what?
You're your your your uh crew, uh I can't remember. I didn't look up whether it's in the is it in the new book, a recipe for it or no? Is it in uh is it in uh no, this is a new one. Yeah. You know what?
No, they should do something. There's uh these two there's these two folks that have, I think, uh salt risenbread.org or something like this, and you know, they've done a lot of the history work on it, and there's uh there was uh a paper out at Cornell in the I want to say in the 1920s, uh where they did a bunch of tests on it and and you know, trying to debunk some of the myths, some of the hydration, some of that some of the temperatures. But uh the you know, these two people who have salt risenbread.org, like I think they want to have kind of like the cultural lock on it, but I feel like there's there's and they had a bakery, I don't know if they still do, but I feel if if your if your team can nail it every time and tell people how to nail it every time, you know what I'm saying? Or is it like something where it you need to have a certain amount of feeling in order to be able to nail it? Like uh I'll give you an example, like uh chipotties, right?
Recipes intensely simple, and yet yours are gonna suck for like the first 50, 60 times you make them, they're not gonna puff up, they're gonna roll wrong. You know what I mean? Is there is there something about like that to it, or could they tell the world how to make this stuff reliably? Oh, they're 100% success rate. We're almost about to hit a year of 100% success rate.
Um they use a circulator. Oh right then. Yeah. All right, well, you know, if they ever if they ever want to come talk about salt risen, you know what? If you want to come back, we'll get you, them, Harold McGee.
I don't know how we'll call all the people in on and we can get uh one of the microbiologists and we'll just do like a salt risen bread a thon. Cause I think it's a Yeah, he did a he did a cool little essay on it. Yeah, but the salt risen bread people were mad at him about it because he he Oh really? Yeah, well, because there's the there's a famous article from the from the uh twenties where a guy had saved uh clostridium perfingions from gangrene wound from a World War I trench victim and used it to make salt risen bread, and then also like then like re-cultured the bacteria and got like a rat sick with it. It was like, look, you could still get it.
You could still get the disease. Awesome. But the bread doesn't make anyone sick. And so these these people were like, You're bad mouthing our bread. Well, he's like, No, man.
He's like, that's good science story, man. You know, he doesn't talk like that. Yeah, exactly. You know, he doesn't talk to that way. Clostridium, fascinating.
Yeah. All right. So let's talk about the the restaurant here, because there's a couple things that we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about like the health of the team and kind of the thing, you know, all the stuff behind it. But what about this?
I read about this like crazy art collection. You bought Nakashima chairs for that? What the heck, man? What the heck? I had to.
Um, but we we only we don't have a full dining room for them. They're so they're so hard to find. Um we have about a dozen or so. Um and and I love them so much. I'm so obsessed with his work.
The whole restaurant's inspired by George Nakashima, the entire restaurant, everything. Everywhere you turn, there's his influence. But you want to you want to talk about him as a carpenter? You wanna talk about him uh a little bit? Because I think maybe some people in this podcast don't know him.
George Nakashima came into America in the 50s. Uh he moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania, and was part of this program. And long story short, he was the first person. We're talking nineteen mid nineteen nineteen fifty-five, nineteen fifty-six. He was really one of the first people to um look at a tree almost the way a chef looks at ingredients, um, especially whole animal butchery.
Like, let's not waste anything. Let's not look at just what the industry norm is with what a piece of wood should look like. Let's let the natural edge show. Let's let the the cracks be mended, you know, the wabi-sabi thing, the Kinsugi ideas of of seeing the beauty no matter the values. And and he did that in a very contemporary and modern way, on top of that.
So it was this very beautiful m moment um that has now inspired so countless countless countless people um and his family's still carrying it on yeah I mean his books are still widely read um you know philosophical tree yeah this one yeah yeah uh right and the work's still being carried on by his family right good old new home PA uh all right so more ingredients this is nuts hickory nut oil what the hell man how do you even get that who the hell makes that do you like own a press do you want a nut press can you press the hickory nuts with the shell on them and get the oil out what's the story with hickory nut oil man so hickory nuts in general that has been a big focus for us for the years that's God's nut man it it's really really really special and every varietal of hickory tastes completely different and produces a different oil or a different syrup. Of course here in uh Tennessee our barbecues our country hands our bacon smoked with hickory which oh there's a whole nother episode of discussing how you can um you know pinpoint where barbecue's from in the south by nailing what tree was used um because it's also micro regional um but we ran across this guy who is obsessed with foraging these things like acorns and hickory nuts and black walnuts. Um because in Appalachia because no one is. It's so much work. And so there's this one person who collects these for us and and presses them.
We do have a press as well. Um yes, you you can't you cannot get the meat out of these things. Even the squirrels can't do it. No. Like we you know, I thought about like hiring a bunch of squirrels.
Yeah, was once you taste it, it gets you can't get it out of your mind. Yeah, there used to be a guy, he died, but he when he went to assisted living, all he ever wanted to do was crack hickory nuts, and so his daughter would sell them. Uh yeah, so it's there it's to me that's as luxurious as a black truffle. Somebody hands me, you know, a big huge bag of freshly shelled hickory nuts. That's the biggest you know, gift you can give someone.
That's so much time you're really gonna like somebody to to do that. Now, the hickory nut oil is I mean mind blowing. It's extraordinary. I've never tasted anything like it. And it's the flavor of this place, and those are things that I you know become uh obsessed with.
But I will say the syrup my is my the syrup we just got this year, it is in my top five favorite ingredients of all time. But that's a sap-based syrup or bark, because I make bark-based hickory syrup, but I've never had a sap-based hickory syrup. Yes, this is a sap one, and it's cooked over a hickory fire, and it's like you almost hallucinate it so good. Like your brain just just goes nuts. No, we were only able to get three gallons each year.
So, you know, we's killing me too. And it has to be sh shag bark, shag bark hickory. That's it. Well, I mean, that's the one. So well, okay, so while we're on hickory, first of all, is the syrup from the sap acidic like birch syrup or not acidic like maple?
No. That's just like maple. Can you make a pecan syrup from sap, since they're related, very closely related trees. Yeah, I'm sure you can. Um uh some friends of mine at Blackberry Farm did um black uh black walnut that way, and that's one of the craziest things I've ever tasted in my life.
Now, on hickory nuts, anyone who anyone who like picks up hickory nuts, right? The main ones we get here are uh we get pignuts, macernuts, uh bitternuts, shag barks, right? The macronuts are impossible to crack, so I don't even know what they taste like. Like, do they make good oil, I wonder? What about the bitternuts and the pignuts?
Do they make good oil even though the nut meat is too tannic? Do they still have a good oil or what? So this guy has gone through every he's become you know the expert on this. And he's gone through uh every uh species and shagbark is he keeps going back to that. Like that's the magic tree.
Yeah, it's good and easy to it's like one of the few things where like I could teach a four-year-old to find a shag bark hickory in the forest. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. Um that's that's been um Leo, my three year olds our our favorite thing now. We have um we just tried it ID every tree.
That's a good it's a good thing. My kids don't care, unfortunately. Now they're too old now. They don't maybe someday they'll care when it's too late. When I'm dead, they'll care.
Uh poke. So first of all, pokeweed is one of those things I regret very highly because it was super invasive where I grew up uh outside of New York City, and it's really only eaten in certain areas of the U.S., even though it grows everywhere. And there's all these different kind of harvesting tricks on it, because it's it's you know, everyone's like, it's poison. It's poison, which it is. You have to harvest it at the right time, boil it a bunch of times.
Why don't you talk about I've never had it. I've chopped it down, I've thrown the seeds at people when I was a kid, but I've never eaten it. You want to talk about uh poke? Pokeweed is uh what a lot of people would consider a roadside herb and uh and a roadside plant. And my mother is it's one of her it's in her top five favorite things to eat and and on the planet.
I don't uh she gets as excited about fried pokeweed as I've ever seen and really get excited about any piece of food. So when I was a kid, we were driving back from we'd be driving back from Little League practice, and she would see a patch and stop the car and make us all get out and pick this pokeweed while all our other friends drove by and we're gathering our dinner on the side of the road. Um I grew up eating it, I mean, a lot. A couple times a week. Uh when it's it only springtime for you guys?
Like that well, that's a good question, because people different people are different. Are you a zero purple on the plant at all? Like zero flowers kind of person? Are you a leaf only person? Are you a young shoot person?
Because I not having had it, I've looked at all these people who have different ways of of dealing with it. What what's your what's your family's way of going with it? You're taught as a kid to be terrified of it here in the South. Um you're just taught to be just absolutely terrified of it. I think that might be because the um it was like a uh a a thing created to keep kids from playing with it because once it gets on your skin it's impossible to get oh it was used for war paint you know by the by the indigenous and it's the I love taking those berries and making like a lemonade with them.
Uh so so good. And it's good for you. The stage in which you harvest the leaves is all personal. I like the young shoots the tender ones I think they have more flavor and I love the texture of the shoots. But you can I I'm not scared of it.
I I don't have any to me I harvest it for flavor um not because I'm worried about um poison uh but you should see the the the local farmers faces when I tell them I'll buy the pokeweed if they bring it because it just grows everywhere. But I mean it you know it I remember I took pokeweed to France once and did a demo and it just blew there were chefs from all over the world doing demos and and there's no flavor like it on earth. It's such a unique flavor. And I I just think it's really really wonderful. The way my mom cooks it is really neat.
She'll she'll take um the young shoots and um spread them in cornmeal and pan fry them and a cast iron skillet but then she'll take all of the she'll take the breading station um combine it all together chop up some more and make little fritters as well um it's it's so so so good. It's so aromatic that's the thing it's like it's very herbaceous. Do you know what's killing me, dude? I know exactly where that crap is growing at my mom's house, like in Westchester, like in the spring. I could go get that, but they won't, they won't get it for me.
They won't get it for me. I I could tell I they know I know exactly where it is out by the wood pile. You know how like there's a whole bunch of it growing out by the wood pile. And uh I have some growing in my backyard right now, and that's exactly I had no idea that's what it was. Yeah.
It's literally hanging over my gate, and now I'm thinking about Poke Saladani. The great song. Well, wait till the that's a song. First of all, down that was my that was my mom's nickname on the on the on the truck driver's CB station. Wow.
Pokes on that. That's how hardcore she is about that stuff. Dang. All right. And it's and and down there it's salad with a T, right?
When it's when it's poke. Not salad. Yeah, it's salad, right? Yeah, and um, yeah, and then you see it written P-O-L-K and P-O-K-E. Huh.
Hmm. Throughout history. Um but you call it pokeweed. Yeah, yeah. Uh Stas, you'll talk about it.
You'll be happy to know they have sunchokes on the menu. And maybe if you go, he'll undercook it for you so that you can uh so that you can have all sorts of gastrointestinal distress. That's one of the stasia's favorite things to do is to serve undercooked sun chokes to people. That's her that's one of her favorites. Yeah.
Uh one last ingredient I saw because I what Stas, you got you got some? Uh I saw that you have a ham. First of all, in your in your new in your new book from 2019, you have a section on country ham, obviously. And uh you had some hams I haven't had. How's Bob Wood's ham from the hammery?
I've not had this one. I see he bones it out and then like cold presses it back, so it's like, you know, uh, is that a good ham? You like that ham? Uh that one's definitely one of my favorites of all time, maybe in the top three. Really?
Uh I remember I remember the first time I tasted it. Uh I was opening Husk in Nashville, and he dropped a sample by it. I tasted it, called him, asked him how many hams he had. He said that about 200. I said, Cool, I'll take them.
He left. Um I was it was so unique and so special. And the the um the way he's actually about to retire, unfortunately. Um, but he he built the smokehouse, his business in an old house that used to be a vet clinic. So um it's been converted anyway.
It's in it's in like a neighborhood, and he had to put a sign out front that said, uh we're smoking hams. Please don't call the fire department. Yeah. That house is not on fire. I love it.
There's a smoke there's still an extant smokehouse in uh Queens that from blocks away smells like like Awesome. Awesome. Smells like Eastern European smokehouse. Oh, we have a caller? All right, caller, you're on the air.
Hey. Oh, it's Quinn. Uh hey, Quinn, you made it. Good, good, good. Uh all right, all right.
Better late than never, my friend. Better late than never. Um all right. So Sean, let's get to some uh listener questions that tie in with uh with some of the uh some of this things that we need to talk about anyway. This is from uh Jalip Rao on uh Twitter.
Uh let's get right into it. Uh here's a question for Sean. There seems to be a deep sense in some parts of Southern white nationalism that African Americans' contributions to our culture should be discounted in a reassessment of our history. Sean is a student of Southern Food History. How do we understand and he uh how does uh he understand in his study and cooking of Southern cuisine the contributions of African Americans?
And how do we preserve our his uh our history whole while this process of erasure and extirpation is ongoing? Extirpation of African American contributions. My um answer to that is let the ingredients be the thing that allows the stories to be told, whether they're um pleasant or unpleasant. Um that's the power of food. That's what food can do.
And we need to tell those stories. We need to learn those lessons. Um that's that's wisdom that was hard fought. Right. So it's basically just talking about the actual history and bringing it out whether or not whether or not uh it's comfortable, right?
That's what you're that's what you're saying. Yes, and food can soften that a little bit. You know, people feel more comfortable when they're eating or when they're being fed, or you know, I think that's a it's a great example of how how food can teach us uh things in a little more gentle way. Uh well, and on a uh kind of piggybacking on that, because uh, you know, what are what are your thoughts? There's so much, I mean, I guess it can be gentle, but there's also so much animosity nowadays.
Um there's so much animosity that you would hope. I mean, like you know, look, from the museum of food and drink standpoint, which you know, John worked at, you know, I'm at, um, you know, we hope that food can help right teach about the past in a way that's not putting blinds on blinders on, and also in a way that helps everybody, but on the other hand, there's just so much animosity. It's hard. Um that's just a comment. Uh well, more difficult questions, maybe.
Uh from Spirits Journal, what uh is Sean's relationship with bourbon today? You don't have to talk about it, Feeling. Oh man, I I um I haven't drank bourbon in almost six years. And um I certainly I certainly miss it. And um I don't miss the addiction phase of it, but the history of bourbon is is fascinating in in the south and it is a flavor of our place.
Um so I cook with it. Um, you know, I don't I don't hate it. Well, uh, yeah, I mean, that's a good product. Um super regular from uh super regular from many New York restaurants, and including, you know, my places back when I had places, uh Jay Pasqual wants to know, and I'll chime in with him. Uh what's the thinking behind the cocktail program?
Uh he enjoyed the concept very much. And that's Jonathan Howard, and it's uh three ingredient drinks, which I love a three ingredient drink, right? Because they're not the easiest ingredients, right? Do you want to talk about that at all? Or I went to Japan uh probably let's see, probably my third trip to Japan, and I ordered a bloody Mary at this bar, and the person grabbed a tomato and muddled it and made the best bloody Mary I've ever had in my entire life.
And I realized like, whoa, how I look at cooking. I'm chasing the vibrancy of garden that I grew up in, uh, my grandmother's house. That moment of vibrancy only exists for two minutes, you know, what's just been cut or pulled from the plant or processed in any way. And then uh I was telling somebody about that note, you have to go to this bar, get Yamamoto. That's all he does.
He just goes to the market, picks out the produce, and then creates these drinks. And so I've been there several times now. Uh one of the coolest experiences. But I just I felt this immediate connection to to how we cook. And when I created the bar here, I you know, I I don't I don't drink and I don't hang out in bars anymore, so I'm out of the game.
So I was like, well, how can I how can I create something unique here to us? That mirrors the way we cook. And um that started to make total sense to me. And the three ingredient thing, that's to me, I just I love how discipline can push us to create new things that we may not have if we weren't if we just stayed in their comfort zone. But our our creative process for the restaurant uh we call the pie theory, um products, ideas, execution.
So we first start, we meet once a week, and we go, we say, here, these are the 15 products that are the absolute best from all the markets and all the farmers right now. Let's create some dishes. And so they do the same thing with the drinks. They they they're going to the walk-in, they're they're they're asking us to get certain things from farmers, and um they create the same way we create a dish. It's been so fun to watch, and I get to participate and I get to feel like I'm I'm uh able to contribute a little bit.
Um pretty fun. Nice. Uh so the rule is the rule is another another discipline is no machines. No machines. You can't plug anything in.
You mean b everything has to be juiced all the minute with no machines, no prejucing. Everything has to start with the product in its raw estate. Listen, I think any sort of uh any sort of boundaries you put on yourself are uh a catalyst for creativity for sure. Just a set of boundaries. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, if I ever if I ever get my butt to uh Tennessee, I mean I'm you know interested, I wanna I wanna you you're you're making me in like embarrassed that I haven't tasted a lot of these things, and so it's just I feel bad. Thanks for that.
Uh I think you would I think you would you would flip out over our research and development lab. It's it's pretty wild. Yeah. Again, someday. Someday, someday.
Uh Lewis uh just writes in, uh, what is your recommendation for someone that wants to learn, find and uh and look for any old South Heritage Florida recipes? Where can I find information? I have a follow-up on this for you. Uh where can I find information on how the country used to eat heritage grains, flowers, fruits, wildlife, etcetera, fish. I do not uh I do know of a type of corn they cultivate here called Zellwood, but only a small portion of old timers still grow it.
Not enough to supply restaurants in this state. Thanks for your thoughts. And I'm gonna ask whether you've ever had Florida cracker cattle, like those like weird, like thin Florida cattle that like grow there, whether whether they taste any good. So uh you have any thoughts on Florida? Yeah, I've got to do that.
Yeah, me either. I got a I got a uh a cow whip once made by a guy who that's where he grew up doing, like Florida cattle, but uh but yeah, I've never eaten one. So um to answer that question, I've had the best luck, and I think what is a missing link um in a lot of the research is chefs connecting with universities, especially agricult agr their agricultural programs. Yeah. Because what I've found is th they are full of people who are just as nerdy and just as obsessed and just as passionate about these things.
Um that seem you know, once something's not on Google, we kind of give up. And not everything's on Google, especially uh when we start getting into the history of the food and these tiny little pockets that each little region um how they show their their uniqueness. Um so fascinating. But what you'll usually find is someone who's very proud of where they come from and very proud of of the food, and they wanna they want to contribute to that. And um I've had some amazing relationships over the past decade or so from just reaching out.
Um uh seaweed's a good example. Uh I've I've uh I know that there's delicious seaweed uh in the American South. No one's harvesting it. We the first person we we reached out to sent us went went scuba diving, harvested it, dried it, and sent us a box of fifteen different kinds of edible seaweed from North Carolina. They're out there.
Any any standouts on the seaweed? 'Cause I'm I I like we are we're always raised uh you know, cold water seaweed, cold water seaweed. So what's a warmer water seaweed like I don't think they're that much different because um I we mostly use uh we we use Monterey Bay but also we use mostly stuff from Japan. Yeah. Um but no the local the it's it's wonderful and there's so many there's so much more to discover and that's the exciting thing about you know being a chef in the South is geez I'll I'll be making these discoveries for the for the rest of my life.
And I and I built this this restaurant with that in mind. You know, I'm gonna be working in this restaurant um forever. And I've got plenty to keep me busy, thankfully. Yeah. I once uh recently found a whole bunch of like a bunch of fresh kelp washed up in Maine and I started eating it and my family was like what's wrong with you?
I'm like, I don't know what's what's wrong with you. Anyway. Maine's got good kelp. You know? Uh yeah.
Uh West on Mains uh wants it has two questions which you can modify to your heart's content. What's your latest noteworthy fermentation project one? And then what was the tastiest thing you picked from your garden this year and since you probably don't want to pick tastiest, how about uh like just like either s most surprising well I can combine those two because um the the the tastiest thing I had this year that really um captured my attention the most was a tomato that I grew up eating uh as a child called Mr. Stripey, and it's a yellow and red striped tomato. It's extremely dense.
It's very complex in flavor. It's the perfect tomato. And um yeah, it is the best. It is the best. So what size?
Oh, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Um, they get enormous though. They get enormous. So they're delicious in all different um ages.
But one of the things that has come out of the fermentation lab that has changed so much for us. Um, Elliot, uh Silber, our our lab manager, he had this idea. Uh we big part of the lab is for us to figure out how to be as responsible and no waste as possible. So we're we we've run experiments on a lot of things that normally go into the trash, such as um we were making tomato water with the Mr. Stripes.
Well, you're left with all that pulp after you drain it through you know your cheesecloth or whatever. But he took that or anything from any juicing project. You juice butternut squash, you have all that pulp. Any of those things normally would go into the trash because they they've they have a lot of the flavor aroma has been extracted from them, but there's still plenty in there. Uh so we're always looking for ways to concentrate that down and and find these hidden flavors.
So he took those that uh tomato, those tomato um scraps and two percent salt in a bag two weeks, opened it up. Um I like it in a bag because that holds all the compounds in. Um, and you I've I've we've done tests that get taste you can taste the fresh tomato uh when you do it that way. It's really neat. Um but anyway.
Old school apples apple cider press, put it all in like a nut bag, like a nut milk bag. Yeah. Crank it down, crank it down, crank it down. Now you have this this delicious liquid that is salty and sour and acidic, uh, and then we put it in a dehydrator or a combi oven and evaporate it down to a syrup and it looks just like honey. Um but when you t it's I will say with great confidence is the best thing I've ever tasted in my whole life.
So uh real high real high yield. I'm just messing with you. Yes, nothing we do at high yield, unfortunately. Um but it was one of those things where I make everyone taste it. I'll just walk around the dining complete strangers and just say, Taste this.
And it is the most mind-blowing comp I mean, people like it knocks people back. And so now we're able to do that with everything. So we can make these these concentrates, these syrups that have umami and sourness, acidity, and salt. It's all it's a one-stop shop, it's an all-purpose seasoning. So if we want to really tell the story of the Mr.
Stripey, we want to put fewer things on the plate. That's why minimalism is is important is important to me. So now all we have to do is put them on a plate, brush them with this syrup sliced, brush them with this syrup and sprinkle salt on it. And people are never gonna forget that flavor. But how much how much of this stuff do you own?
How much of this stuff do you own? Like how many like 750s exist? So we've done it with so we're we we're just hitting a year in our lab and and we what we do is we put every piece of produce through the lab through all of our machines and through all of our techniques. And uh so there's just closets full of this stuff. There's we have storage units off site full of this stuff.
So that when you know um like for instance this year candy roaster squash comes back around my favorite varietal when we're sitting in the ingredient meeting the the pie fairy meeting Elliot can say oh last year I made blank blank blank blank blank blank and so now there's a dish on the menu in June that is just candy roaster squash but it's in seven different preparations from the lab and you eat it and it's the most intensely complex thing you've ever eaten so cool. Again me with the FOMO. Alright Tweety Impertinence wants to know what should I make with cartoon leaf stalks you know I've never cartoon leaf stalks I've never cooked cartoons I've never cooked cartoons. I love I love love love cartoons um you know what you should do is what I just just uh described chop it up two percent salt let it go for two weeks squeeze it out and then just dehydrate it you'll get this really cool I bet it's like very medicinal and it'd probably be great in cocktails as like a bitters type thing. Yeah.
All right. Tweety, let us know. I'll I'll I'll send it back to Sean to let us know. Uh Vic Vaughn wants to know how do you take the time to keep track of everything that's happening at your restaurants and various projects? And uh he met you at Joyland, which we'll talk about hopefully in a minute, last November, and it was awesome meeting you.
So how do you how do you keep track of all of this stuff? I'm assuming it's a pain in the ass. Oh, butt, pain in the butt. Yeah. Uh we have uh these meetings called steering meetings.
And there's we have an agenda, and anybody that is uh a manager for each restaurant, um you we we have a working list that just constantly gets updated, things get crossed off, and it's it's a way for us to sit down as a team for one hour a week and discuss anything that we're nervous about or any new discoveries, and we keep that on Microsoft Teams. And so even like I had COVID recently, so I was I missed those meetings, but I could go back on Teams quickly, I could you know watch them updating it in real time. Um Microsoft Teams has changed a lot for us. It's um it not only is it an amazing way to store information and share information, um, but it allows us to take better care of ourselves because um you can turn it off, and the only way we communicate with each other is through teams, and you're not allowed to contact someone on the day off. So it's like uh unlike Slack, which is just keeps pestering you no matter what.
So annoying. Yeah. Yeah, you just you just click it off and and no one expects you no one sends you a message because you know they're not allowed to, and no one expects you to answer if something does pop up. Um yeah, it's it's made a big difference for us. It keeps us very organized, very disciplined.
Um it's it's it's what holds it all together. Yeah, we can't uh we can't use teams because we're not team players here at Booker Index. Uh AAC Boyd, this is a question. Uh I'm glad that someone asked it because this is something that's an interesting problem. I'm running a restaurant in Connecticut, and the clientele is very conservative.
I put 15 plus years into this life and have worked at some uh amazing places, and I'm proud of what our team is capable of. But we mostly sell steak and burgers. Composed dishes are less popular. Any advice, Chef wants to know how to how to get his clientele uh more her, I don't know, to uh to to branch out more. What do you think?
Well, I I the same boat. I think we all are. I've been, you know, I've been doing this for geez almost 25 years. No, longer, almost 30 years. Jeez.
Anyway, I don't know that that's ever going to go away. And I kind of realize that. And so what I think for me, the future is is and I'm getting ready to make an enormous change in the way we do things at Audrey on our one-year anniversary. Um, for me, what's important about a menu and menu engineering is two things. One, I want to have access to as many people as possible because I want them to hear the stories and taste the food and um, you know, experience what the South can do.
But the second thing is the health and happiness of the team. And the simple menu, obviously, the easier it is for the team. The simpler, if even uh the format of the menu, not just the the the complexity of each dish, but how the menu is set up, whether it's pretty fee, a la carte, tasting menu. Um all the all those things are what I'm factoring in when I'm trying to figure out what the formula is. I don't know what the formula is at Audrey right now um we've tried five different things maybe four five and we're about to try a very big one um and uh same thing at my other restaurant uh the Continental you have and it's I think it's just like a way to look at life you know there there's there has to be room for both and you have to make it a priority to do both you they you need both if if people stop coming to the restaurant you're not gonna have any place to serve your tasting menu that you're so proud of um it's it takes a long it takes a lot of um it takes a lot of uh discipline to to make that realization and stick to it and accept it um you know because we what we do is an art and it's fun to be an artist and and it's fun to be creative and you know not that's not for everybody.
That's all right. We got something for them too. Well leading into what you were saying about your team uh a Jews Bush writes as a psychologist I want to hear more about your perspectives and actions towards supporting mental health both your own and your staffs. And if I could dovetail with us Sean so I'm do my first chef job I just started about three or four months ago how do you how do you prioritize this kind of stuff? Like how do you ingrain it in your day-to-day to-do lists in your you know week in week out how do you just make this like a a priority?
I'm I'm how can I implement this kind of stuff into my life? I don't realize I have a much smaller restaurant, much smaller staff and all that stuff, but I would love to get your insights on this during the creative process, the pie theory, the E is execution and that's the editing phase and we have a rule is the stress worth the contribution once I started asking that I realized that I've been doing a lot of backbreaking stuff that nobody else gave a crap about um and except for us you know and so you have to find a balance maybe maybe torn that carrot isn't I don't know maybe maybe we shouldn't spend five hours a day doing that that kind of thinking definitely you should um but definitely you should but we we as a company and any problem that we're ever faced with any choice that we're ever faced with making it has to go back to is this stress worth a contribution sometimes it is most of the time it's not and that has helped me um stay um much much much more grounded um and the second anyone and and for me this is very important but the second anyone isn't feeling well or seems sick go home I don't care if no one's gonna work your station go home get rest number one you need rest but number two you're gonna get everybody else sick um you just have to figure it out we can't we have to stop asking people to work sick because we're afraid the ticket time will go too long but for us uh you know we we I have um hire people to come in and teach meditation I hire people to come in and teach the Enneagram so we can learn about each other's personalities um you know, we have a uh a booklet that we hand everyone on day one that has uh a very specific way of communicating when there's a conflict. And you're it's called we call it the model. Um I learned it in rehap. And it's made an enormous difference in uh not only communicating uh while the conflict is present, but its existence gives people the courage to speak up because the model is designed to avoid triggers at all costs.
So you can say what you need to say, and that person can stay grounded and not go into their amygdala. Um, so we we focused on that, and um we have uh built a room in the restaurant that is full of different devices and modes that can quickly regulate the nervous system. So I do as much as I can to teach about the nervous system and the brain and nervous system work together and how we can actually have control over our nervous system and the importance of knowing how to recognize when you're triggered and when you're not. Um, and when you are triggered, go to the room. And so you go into the room, there's you know, sound bath stuff, there's aromatherapy, um, there's cranioelectrotherapy stimulation or voltage maps, it has its own sound system, you can do guided meditations, um, has comfy places to take a nap, has extra padding and shag carpet, so you're kind of like walking on a cloud, and it has a massage table.
You can go on an app and schedule a massage. Um, you know, just opening that room, it it starting to normalize the conversation of I'm not feeling well, or that's too stressful. You know, it now the team knows that we that we that's what we care about the most. We make it our priority because if we're grounded and happy and healthy, we're gonna cook better food and we're gonna give better service. Um it's it's a work in progress.
You know, because it's it sounds cut and I bet it's not. Every day is the ch is this new challenge, and and uh we know that we can all we can do is the best we can do. Um and that's what we'll try to do every day. They're gonna they're gonna kick me off the air pretty soon, but I want you to talk about your uh your foundation patchwork that you started up uh during the pandemic, right? We started uh our our kitchen was finished and the restaurant was finished with the pandemic hit.
And so we started um uh making meals for the neighborhood. We first started with some some some local charities. Rethink has been a great partner for us. And now uh that once the restaurant opened, we actually were able to move uh the entire run. The people who run uh patchwork were were brought here to to help run Audrey and fell in love with this work so much that that's that's all they do now.
So every time anyone eats at Audrey or June, we make a donation um that provides meal for someone. And so uh Thursday, Friday, Saturday, um there's specific days of the week where um we give out meals to the neighborhood um every single week. So every we we're you know, we're we're helping feed the neighborhood, and it's really it's been really, really neat to get to know everyone again, food bringing people together and and strengthening community. Um it's been it's been really eye-opening. Well Sean, thanks so much for coming on.
I appreciate it. Uh you know if you ever want to come back again, you're welcome anytime because like all smart people know, you square cut your biscuits so that you don't have to re-roll those tons of guns. Cooking issues. Thank you so much.
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