Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues Coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center, New York City News Stance Studios. Joined as usual with John behind me. How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks.
Yeah, I got Joel uh Joe Hazen rocking the panels. How are you doing, Joe? Uh, I was running 1K tone there. I'm sorry. That was 1K, that's what it was?
I was 1K. You know what it sounded like? It sounded like in the shining when whenever people get stabbed in the shining and Danny, and it's like that. Yeah, I'm so sorry. It's a great movie, though, The Shining.
Uh and we got a full house today, right? We got in the uh West Coast, we got some Jackie Molecules. How you doing? Yup, I'm good. Yeah?
We got Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing? Good. You haven't hammered anyone in a long time that you can talk about on air. You're keeping all of your murder secret nowadays.
I guess so. You know what I mean? Speaking of speaking of murder, I know we're not supposed to talk about rock stars too much. We'll talk about it more later, though, unfortunately. But uh, you hear that one of the people from Mr.
Bungle like murdered his girlfriend and got conveyed. How crazy is that? Whoa. Yeah. Yeah.
Unrelated. Yeah. What? Say who with buzz. Who?
Mr. the Mr. Bunk. It wasn't Mike Patton. It was like the saxophonist.
Oh, is it saxophonist, yeah. So my cousin James was like, barely a member of the band. Saxophonist is is that that basically means murderer, right? So our friend Pat, we're gonna send him that text and be like, you know, saxophone equals murder. At least in a rock song, saxophone equals murder, maybe.
Although I happen I happen to like rock sacks. You guys? Rocksacks? Anyone? Anyone?
Not so much. No? What about funk sacks? Better. Yeah.
I don't really like the sac. What about like a freaking berry or an auto sac? You have to hear it. Jack has to hear it every single day across now. Yeah, he hears that like uh that ridiculous like gigantophone that sounds like a like a dying elephant, right?
It's like the biggest saxophone on earth. Yeah, two backs. Tubacks. We gotta get uh we gotta get a jingle recorded with the two backs if Pat will do that for us. And in the upper upper, upper, upper, upper, upper left, uh holding it down uh on Vancouver Island.
Quinn, how you doing? I'm doing all right. Which you still haven't hooked uh the big fish of Vancouver Island. You got haven't gotten the Pamela Anderson. No, I guess I gotta start working on that again.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like, you know, she could be live in your studio. Think about it. She could.
Yeah. Anyway. And today's special guest in the studio from Ship's Right's daughter in Mystic. Mystic, Mystic Connecticut chef, David Standridge. First time on the show.
How you doing? I'm doing great. Yeah? I love Mystic. For those of you that don't know, uh my in-laws are in Mystic.
So I've been going to Mystic now for, I don't know, like 20, actually, a long, long, longer than that, probably a 30s something years, because my my wife's uh aunt and uncle like are from there from forever. So been going, love mystic. Cool. That was back when Johns was there. Dude, Mystic used to be like a very Mystic Pizza, which by the way, whatever.
Yeah. Like people still every so Mystic, so the way Mystic works is it's it's not a one street town, but there is the one street that everything's on. Yep, right? And there's this bridge on it, and the bridge just you know, randomly. It's the the mystic, get this bascule.
No one knows what the hell a bascule is, right? It's the it's the mystic Bascule bridge. Do you know what a bascule is? I thought it was a type of bridge, like a counter. You ever seen a different bascule bridge?
No. Just the mystic Bascule. There's more of them though. Yeah. Anyway, it causes a giant traffic jam, but like just up the hill towards the church where I got married is Mystic Pizza that was used in the Julia Roberts movie.
And still to this day, umpteen billion years later, there's always someone like get my picture in front of Mystic Pizza, right? Always. That's people still associate Mystic with Mystic Pizza. It's really fresh. Which is crazy, right?
And like most of the uh most of the a lot of the old school businesses in Mystic are gone. The overpriced, uh, the overpriced surplus store is still there. It is. Yeah. It'll never go away.
No. It was thoroughly in there. When you go in there with a kid, they don't touch anything. You know what I mean? Like it's like, you know, the funny thing about Mystic is like, even though Mystic is a fancy place, it's got a working class, military, like seagoing Coast Guard kind of, you know, definitely underpinning of the people who are actually there.
You know, and for a year, so much it was blue collar and very working class, and it was not fancy ever. Yeah. There was like rich people lived on the hill, but like Mystic was like a little bit, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Down to earth. Yeah, and there's kind of there's also there's two mystics, depending on whether you're anyway.
But like uh, but you know what I'm saying? And I like towns like that. Like, like the fancy weasels come in, yep, you know, they take their pictures, they get out. And then and then the people that are there are there. Absolutely.
We're one of the people who are there. We uh yeah, yeah. All right. So uh what do we got going food wise? Now, John, we missed two weeks ago.
We didn't talk about it. And it's gonna be it's good fun because now, you know, we got uh two working chefs on the on the show can talk about it. John just did a relaunch. I went to his friends and family now three weeks ago. I forgot to talk about it the first week.
Second week we had to cancel last week. So how's it going? It's been going well. Uh yeah, we sold a lot of food on Saturday, I think the record food sale since we've been opened, which was really good. Um and yeah, people seem to be receptive to it.
But it is like I was telling uh David before you got on, it's been hard to get our regulars to think of Temperance as a place for dinner rather than a place for snacks, as which is what we've been for the last three years. Um so I think you know, slowly changing that, but otherwise it's uh it's going well. So do you have a special menu that says you're not a regular anymore? It's a new place. No, we don't do that.
It's always hard to change your format. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, no, definitely. And it's hard to get the staff to kind of change their mentalities about that kind of stuff as well. But it's uh it's been an interesting challenge and something that I'm not that I wasn't excited about what I was doing at the you know, at when it was a wine bar, but now it's a lot more personal.
It's you know, things that I not that again, not that I didn't stand behind the food I did it when it was wine bar, but now it's just again, it's a lot more personal. Everything's kind of an ode to my dad, so it's something I'm taking a lot more pride in and just a lot more invested in. It's been a lot more fun. Sounds like uh you're not standing behind the food you did before. Sure, sure.
That's like the time we went, uh Nastasi and I went to uh Claw in California second time. And Patterson goes to us, he goes, How is the food? It was great. He's like, What about the first time? Also great.
I'm so much better now. You're an idiot. We're like, dude, dude. Yeah. Remember that, Stas?
Yeah, yeah. Weird, weird, weird. Uh so speaking of not uh breaking with the past, for you know, for those of you that I don't know, that's the first time you're listening to this show, you know. John, when he's saying he's dad, dad, Belgian. Uh John, the only the only uh Flemish Belgian dude that only speaks French right yeah kind of weak yeah yep admittedly yeah yeah your your dad could speak though right yes he could yeah yeah uh you know family you know fought the Germans during the war the whole the whole nine both wars in fact right yep and uh so he's you know switch to a more Belgique menu you know but whatever the however you how do you say Belgian in uh in Flemish you don't even know how to say Belgian B-E-L-G-I-E but I don't know how to pronounce it properly I know how to spell it wow an embarrassment to his family nice yeah you know say what you like about John he likes to take on the language of the oppressor at any time I hate you uh so one of the things I go in there I'm like oh he's he got the fries fries are always good but he still has the small size small gauge yeah go bigger gauge on the fries my guy used to bigger gauge to cowards you know what I mean yeah yeah literally they ply me with so much wine I'm at friends and family I'm eating everything's delicious my only comment Jen my wife was there with me she's writing a lot of thoughtful comments blah blah blah I'm like used to pick a fry as if I was a helly comment on the whole thing anyway uh you know what I didn't have that uh because I you know I can only eat so much and we were only at we were a two-top I didn't have the steak of poiv with the green peppercorn green.
Yep next time good huh? Yeah I think so yeah yeah proud of that one yeah yeah just come back some other time. Any surprises that you didn't think would be hits at R or vice versa? Um the leek, I don't know. I have a leaks dish.
It's one of those like more conceptual kind of things, but I still think it's tasty like I don't know, it's based on like the the dishes perch a flamands of the white asparagus with the clarified butter, uh chopped hard boiled egg, lemon, and parsley. Um I sort of rethought it with uh as a cold dish with a lemon vinaigrette, cold poached leeks, uh chopped almonds, cured egg yolk, and then fried parsley on top. And I like it, but it's I don't know, it's definitely been one of those more hitter miss things. Well, what's the name of the dish? Maybe that's the problem.
I forget. Leeks a la flamande. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. People also let's I don't know, like I think selling people on the cold cold on the leeks dish, period, but then also like a cold one is also like imagine if I just said like what do you get?
Onions. Like no one's like, oh, a leek, and then if they don't know what a leek is, they look it up, they're like, oh, it's slick and yeah, onion. And then they're like, onions? You know what I mean? Yeah, true.
Did you see the new Dan Barber garlic? I heard about it. I know it hooked me up. Big deal. Oh, I have garlic.
Heavily promoting that. Oh, yeah. I believe that. Tell me about it. All right, Quinn, tell me about the someone tell me about the garlic.
I I just harvested my my crop two days ago. It okay. What the hell is it? It's like a I would say it looks like a big scallion with but the um top is like flat and sort of a bit more papery in texture. The top, the the root end or the other, what do you flat?
The greens, the greens. Okay. Okay. But it's supposed to be essentially flavor wise, a cross between garlic and leek. And but the entire plant is edible.
Like the tops, the green tops don't get like super flavory. You mean like no matter how long you let it go? Apparently, again, we're going to be able to do that. That's something what's the word I'm looking for? Don't believe.
Yeah. They don't get as big as regular leeks. Okay. You know how like some onion grass is poisonous? I used to go eat that crap anyway.
Like apparently some onion grass is poisonous. But I used to rip onion grass up, sniff it, and then like chew on that stuff. Wild carrots, also those things. Oh, though, those will kill you. Yeah.
Yeah. Please eat those in asked you. Yeah, yeah. It says a lot about us as a general style of people. It's a generation of foragers.
So how was your first batch of garlic? Well, we definitely needed to grow more because we had the entire harvest. We got a lot of greens, and we're dehydrating those to make like a powder. But like all of like the bottom white part was one batch of soup. Alright.
Wait, let's say it's a cross between a leek and a garlic. You know what I can add to a soup? Yeah. Yeah. Leeks and also garlic.
But I mean, it was you know what doesn't taste like either of those things? A shallot. You know what I'm saying? It's like if something's only thing is it tastes like two incredibly readily available things. And we're gonna put it in an inherent mélange situation, like a soup.
Then does it need to exist? Well, I also think part of the thing is that again, it is that sort of leafy leaky flavor. So because it's a bit smaller and a bit more tender, again, it's that you know, whole utilization thing. Right, but this sounds like something you want briefly sauteed and served as a side so that you can enjoy it essentially. Well, I mean, in other words, like if I'm paying a billion dollars or having to grow something myself, right?
And its only thing is that it tastes like these two readily available, easily cooked items that I would want to serve it as its own McGill on its own to highlight its thingness, its specialness. Yes, that's a that's a good way to put it, David. For those of you that can't see us, because you can't unless you're on the Patreon. David is David from Chipwright's daughter, and Dave is me from here. Yeah.
Anyway, uh, but you liked it. So you're gonna make some. Why don't you just have some just saute some up? What do you think? Oil or butter?
Well, again, again, we again we used all the white part for the soup. You could you harvested every last one, you left nothing? Yeah. It was time. They were getting, you know, it was, you know, it's getting cold up here.
You didn't saute even one to see what the texture was like on its own? Quinn, quinn, quinn. Call it call up, uh, call up Danny Boy Barber. Call up Danny Boy Barber, he'll ship you some, maybe. Baldor has it.
Yeah. Do they? Oh yeah. It's out there. Dan Barber Boy.
All right. Uh I've never tried it. You tried it, David? No. No.
Because I think it's just garlic and leeks. It's got a good name. What's the what movie? Is that like a zoolander thing? Sounds like uh what's the one of his looks sounds like Garlic?
Oh. It's like blue steel and the other one. Yeah, I can't remember. There was a little commercial for garlic though that Dan Barber had on his Instagram that was like with his daughter. And basically his daughter was saying that she would rather have garlic than ice cream.
That's a weird kid. Or lactose intolerant. Could be. Yeah, but I mean that was great. Like she's incredibly lactose intolerant.
She's like, you know what I would rather have? Garlic, because the the other one rips up my insides. You know what I mean? In fact, I'd rather take a hammer to the toe than ice cream because it just tears me up. That sounds like a it sounds like a poor Landia sketch or something.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right, all right. Nice. Uh so uh what else we got going on, food wise?
Anything else in the in the past week, food wise? I'll tell I can't I'm gonna force someone to tell the food story. Nastasia the hammer Lopez. Nastasia the hammer Lopez for an unnamed location that is uh run as like a you know basically, you know, an in-house catering thing, right? So I I believe it's union, I don't know, but like I know that they're all about like like raking money in no matter who they're gonna rake money in, from the talent, from the guests, from whomever.
They're just gonna rake. They're a big money rake. And Nastasi was tasked on getting some decent food up in that piece. And what happens, Doz? I showed you the invoice that the artist was being charged, and I was like, this doesn't seem right.
And I was and I was supposed to negotiate the prices. And so for trail mix, it was like six dollars a head, you know. And what was said trail mix? It was those those good and gather wow. Really cargo.
For real, for real. In Los Angeles, in Los Angeles, a venue went to Target and bought Good and Gathered trail Mix. I don't even think that's the best of the supermarket trail mixes. I mean, Trader Joe's is better for snacks. Yeah.
For sure they are. I mean, when they're good. Yeah. Trader Joe's is like hit or miss. Trader Joe's is like, you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to experiment on you. See whether you like this. If you like it, you buy it. If not, you know what I mean? They're they're the Moto restaurant of snack mix.
Like some of this stuff, this is going to try it on you. You're their experiment. It sells or it doesn't. But when they hit, they hit really well, I think. The Trader Joe's.
No? I never go. No? Never? Do they have one up there, Mystic?
There's one somewhere. I don't, I don't even know. It's bad kids. It's literally across the street from. Really?
You're a Costco guy. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Costco doesn't have it. I don't need it.
Oh, wow. Wow. Honestly, in my whole life. Yeah. You should go.
You should go to uh like coastal Alaska, where like everyone just goes to the one Costco and then resells it to everyone else. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Great business plan. Yeah, you go to like a boat, you go whatever they're whatever they call a bodega in Juno and it's all Kirkland products.
They're making their little slice on the slice. You know what I mean? Definitely. Speaking of slice on the slice, uh, we have a unit of spinzalls right now for sale in Modernist Pantries Warehouse. So you can go buy your spinzall 2.0s.
And I'm just gonna say this depending on how it goes in a couple of weeks. If the uh uh this might be the last batch, if the tariffs go up to 60%, it means that the units will cost. Get this, folks. You ready for it? You ready for it?
If that happens, they're gonna cost six hundred dollars more a piece. All right, six hundred dollars more apiece, which means we're probably gonna go out of business or just sell entirely to foreigners because we just won't be able to afford to bring them in anymore. So now's a good time, right, Sauz. Yeah. You know what?
You know what's a hilarious thought? The idea that if there's a 60% tariff on spinzalls being brought in from China, that Nastasia and I are just gonna be like, you know what? Let's make this in the United States. I never thought of that. I never thought of trying to make it in the oh, idiots.
There's no way we can make that in the United States for any reasonable amount of money. The tooling alone would cost us a million bucks. What? Yeah, how much would the cost to the customer if we made them here? Well, okay.
So like we would probably, even though it's already made, right? Even though it's already an existing product, we would have to go through certification again in the US. That's probably 50 grand, which is nothing. It's probably a million dollars in tooling. The issue is is that because we're only gonna make between two and three thousand of them a year for the foreseeable forever, right?
You know, uh, everyone's just gonna laugh at us. So it's gonna have to be built fundamentally by hand. And the United States can only really win when you either own the factories, like Vitamix owns their factory, so they can make stuff here in the United States, right? Or when you're making something in a large enough quantity that can be fully automated, right? Or it's such a big ticket item that you can fold the inherent cost of doing business into the vehicle uh into the thing like cars, right?
So it's like this is why nothing that you buy, you know, that is uh uh, you know, an electrico domestico thing that you have in your kitchen is made here because how are you gonna do that? Uh I have a like a uh flour mill, right? So the flour mills that I normally you know recommend to people are very expensive already. They're $400. They're made in Germany, and but they're always out of stock.
And I think they're probably losing money because they're only selling it for like a minimal charge over what it probably costs them to make it. That's como or mock Mill, right? The ones that are made in the United States, like the royal Lee Organics, I think is like $1,200. And the Red Cell, right? Which I also have a used one of, is like I think like $1,200 or $1,300, something like that, maybe $800.
But uh, and it's got big old industrial motor on it, it's good unit, but it's like no one wants to pay that much when they could buy and their customer services apparently rancid, but like no one wants to buy from them because they have like they have to make them to order because they don't have the money to make them in bulk because who does, right? And so making them to order, people have to wait six weeks to put their money down. It's a nightmare, right? So we can't do it. It can't be done, right?
Not for we would have to charge probably three grand a unit at that point. Go buy a freaking, you know, four-liter, you know, bench top. You know what I'm saying? It's like it's absurd, it's a joke. Anyway, just that's all I'm saying.
Just get it now, because you never never know. You never know. Uh, and if you're rich enough, right? If you're a big enough business and you're rich enough, then you have friends in government, and they're like literally, if you look at the HTS, the harmonized trade schedule or whatever that whatever it is, HTC, harmony trade code, whatever it is. What is it?
S or C stars. All right. What anyway, if you if you look at it, there's these bizarre carve outs. They're like, if you make a vehicle with three wheels where one is on a pivot that's basically they have a carve out that it's like one company. I'm like, when you actually look at it, you're like, oh, that company doesn't have to pay a tariff.
It's a it's it's scam. It's somebody's buddy, yeah. It's somebody's buddy. Totally. All right.
Well, then, you know, nobody can hear my rant over uh what it's like being a small business in this country. Because it's it's not just restaurants that suck as a small business, it's any small business sucks here, right? Yeah, I mean, I can only speak for restaurants. All right. Uh also, uh, this Sunday, I think I'm going to be so I I'm a member of a local garden here.
M Fundicalunga. It's on, it's between um Christie and Forsyth, between Delancey and whatever the next street is up Rivington. I'll be there for Halloween. Come check out a community garden in uh New York between I'm I think I'm gonna be there between noon and three. I don't know if I'm gonna have candy because all my full-size candy bars are for my own house.
I already have two hundred full-size candy bars ready for Halloween. Full size is the only fun size. You guys uh you guys have ho uh you guys have candy at the restaurant for when people come by? We do, actually. Yeah.
Not at the house, but at the restaurant. What's the go? What's the go to? What's the city? I don't even know.
That's not my department. I just get whatever. You can't do full size at a restaurant, though. No, it's insane. Yeah, it's not full size at home.
I like the almond joy. That's my favorite home. Really? Almond joy. Yeah.
Huh. Do you like those compressed coconut three-color coconut bars, like the Neapolitan compressed coconut bars? The Italian cookies? Yeah. Oh no, well, they make a they make a a bar that's real flat and rectangular that is just compressed coconut.
In a chocolate fake compressed coconut, fake chocolate. Coconut and then this fake coconut. I'm gonna say I don't like this. No. No, it's not it's not real coconut enough.
Like the almond joy kind of tastes like it's got coconut in it. Yeah, and not a mounds guy. I do like mounds also. Safical. I feel it like those commercials where they were fighting over that.
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don't. It's like analogy for the presidential election.
Yeah, although I feel that like I feel like some people, I feel that most people would always take one to the other. I don't feel like there's anyone who's like, eh, today I'll have this, tomorrow I'll then. Like you would probably almost always rather have the almond on it, no? Probably. Yeah.
I like things with almonds on them. There you go. It's a rule. What about trout? Yeah.
Yeah. As a matter of fact, I did. Yeah. Let me ask you this. Uh trout is the most consistently disappointing fish to me because I love trout, but then like people hammer the hell out of trout.
The only reason to eat trout is that you're far away from the ocean and it's the only fish. Wow. That's my opinion on trout. Have you ever had an actual where it's like 'cause you know what? I've done the ones where you buy the the BS trout out of the tank.
Yeah. They don't really first of all the not the best, even trout. No. Right. It's fine.
Yeah. But they know the trout the when I was a kid, it was all it's trout bleh, trout ta blah. I mean, like, okay. Right? Yeah.
Okay. It's all fine. Yeah. Trout smoked is like like smoked but not hammered. Like, can you do a smoked and not hammer the hell out of it?
I like it like fresh, hot smoked. Yeah, yeah. Not like dried out jerky smoked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, herky jerky trout.
No good. Yeah. Uh I saw you did a uh what's it called? I saw you did a uh a video on sea robin. Yeah.
Now let me ask you this. I was on a boat once, like maybe the only time ever we went out to the sound. By the way, for those of you that don't know, uh, there's a the Long Island Sound, so there's a Long Island, hence its name is Long Island, and it stretches along almost the entire coast of Connecticut and then Peters out at a place called Montauk, which you might know from Jaws, the movie. And that is basically parallel with where kind of mystic Stonington is. So right around there it stops being the Long Island Sound and starts becoming the Atlantic Ocean.
And what's interesting is it's it's two kind of different ecosystems. The sound Long Island Sound ecosystem and then the Atlantic Ocean. So Mystic Connecticut is actually in a very interesting place from a seafood perspective. Would you agree with this? Yeah, definitely.
And we kind of get both of those. Although the sound ecosystem is not so great. I would say. Like there's no more lobster is like. I thought they brought them back.
I mean, not really. I don't think. I met a guy, I met a lobster uh person. He used to run the mailboat in uh in Maine up in uh up in uh uh near Sunset Maine, and oh salty sucker that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he was talking about like cutting people's traps, like you know. I was like, Did you take the lobster first? He's like, I'm not a thief. Just a vandal. Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, like if you you they have their waters, and if you put your buoy up there, let's cut it. You know what I mean? And so I was like, what do you think of even Cape Cod? I was like, what do you think of forget Long Island Sound? I didn't even bring it up.
I was like, forget that. I was like, what do you think of Cape Cod lobster? Mud bugs. And that was it. Might as well eat crayfish.
Yeah. I mean, of course, the Canadians are like idiot main weasels. They're like our lobster, yeah. The colder the better, I guess. Speaking of colder the better, you got your green crabs who are loving the warm weather.
They sure do. Yeah, sure you love it. Yeah, they're the reverse snowbirds of the of the aquatic community. So the green crabs, uh invasive and they used to die out because it got cold. They don't anymore, and you're cooking those suckers up, huh?
Yeah, we go through about well, at our peak, like a hundred pounds a week. Now, I had heard people were like capturing them, holding them in tanks, waiting them for them to molt, and then selling the softies. They're working on that. I mean, in in Milan, that's like a big thing. Softy greens?
Yeah. Uh yeah, delicious. I mean, the crab itself is delicious. There's not a lot of meat on it because it's small. So what do you do?
Hack it in half and broth it? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, we make a lot of stocks. We use all the derivatives.
Is there any decent way I saw a guy frying one of the softies? He didn't take off the little triangle. Loser. Yeah. Didn't you know?
Gotta take off the triangle. Take out the gills, cut the eyes. One on one. Yeah. Yeah.
Softy, one on one. Yeah. Yeah. Uh anyway. Uh so like are they are so in our invasive species?
I get it. You're doing a good thing by but uh and they have to taste good, are you not going to use them, right? Or find something that they're good in. That's a uh, but what are they like price wise? Cheaper.
Really? Well, yeah. Um, that's the other side of time to talk about sustainable seafood. That this is a species that are more abundant, therefore easier to catch, therefore less money, generally for the restaurant. So I mean, when we first started getting them, they're like almost free compared to like anything else you would make stock with.
So it was a good investment for us, but they're also just better quality. Uh and they still have that that crab, you know, it's like everyone loves crab. Yeah. If you can eat crab, you like it. I mean, all crab generally taste the same.
More or less. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Within a range. Like all chocolate tastes the same. It's like different kinds of chocolate.
But you know, it's not like you can eat a crab and be like, wow, it's tastes like an orange, you know. It's yeah, I guess a bad crab tastes like a like a shrimp. Like uh, well, a bad crab tastes dirty. Yeah. You know, like spider crab is kind of like there are crabs whose textures I don't love.
Like which? Uh what's the one in? Like uh there's one that I never am happy with when I get it that's really expensive. What is it? It's not stone, maybe Jonah.
Maybe I'm never happy with Jonah. Dungeon is you gotta go out west and get the dungeon saying it's good. Or is the guy in uh Juno called him dungeys? Love the nicknames. Yeah, what's your favorite?
Oh, the kinks and the dungeys. That's my favorite. Like, like uh, but uh, I mean, like, has anyone ever devised a machine that can pick a crab? Yeah, the beter machine. What?
You don't know about this? No. Yeah, it's amazing. It it does just that. You just put the crabs in and out comes the shells and the meat.
No. It's like a $40,000 machine. Freaking way. The guy who gets the crabs for us, Jason Jarvis in uh Westerly has access to one that they have at Johnson in Wales. And so he can get green crab meat.
Oh my. It's pretty amazing. God. It's the only way to do it. There's no other way.
Give me the name of that again. I'm gonna look it up. Bader machine. Bader machines. Like do they have like nicknames like Darth Bader and all this?
Like literally, like how fast can it do it? Like you're dumping in, so you so uh presumably you steam them out. Yeah, right, and then you cool them or whatever, and you dump them in. And how good is how good is it? Like how many shells are you picking out of the meat?
Like kind of like if you get like picked crab meat. Yeah. Like that. That's been through a beter machine. No one's handpicking that.
No way. Yeah. And is it uh can it separate the the lump, you know, like uh the lump from the knot? I don't think so. Well, I don't know.
Well, like little green crabs don't really have that. No lump in it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I'm not really sure how it works with bet quote unquote better crabs. But it's pretty cool.
And you're and so and you're buying that meat too, or no? No, we just use the whole live. I don't like to buy anything processed in any way. Yeah. And so I hear they're r rather fragile though, so they die pretty quickly.
No, they're really they're the opposite. Really? We tend to get that once we get crabs in, like a few days later, someone will come from like the laundry department be like, this guy was crawling around. Yeah. Like they just they're like kind of like cockroaches.
I lost uh I lost a bag of uh regular blues in my uh in my apartment once, like 20 years ago. It's not still alive, don't worry. It was like 20 or 30 years ago. And like uh, you know how like the first time that you cook crabs at home, they sell crabs, live crabs in New York anyway, in paper bags. Yeah.
They used to anyway. And so I was like, look at this. I pick up a bag, boom, bag opens up. Crabs, boosh, everywhere, all throughout my apartment. And you know, I'm running around the apartment, you know, picking them up, sorting the crabs from the cockroaches and like you know what I mean.
And uh I missed one. Yep. Yeah. The sneak next day. Yeah.
Yeah. Sneaky little bastards. Uh yeah. All right. Well, I I want to come up and try.
I I feel terrible. I go to Mystic often and yet I never eat out in Mystic because I'm always there a family. Well, yeah, but we gotta we gotta stop by. Yeah, you should sometimes so uh so C Robin back to C Robin. Are they related to puffer fish or do they just look puffy?
No, I don't think so. I think they're totally different. They're in the gunnered family. So there's like a bunch of species of gunnered. Some like in France they call them scorpion fish.
It's like the blue-based fish. Right. So do you use them for bully base? I don't. What do you get out of a uh sea robin?
Just the fillet, I mean it's which is small compared to the big old head? A little bit, not really. I think the yield is pretty good because the flays are really thick. So the yield's not bad. Doesn't it taste like?
Why is it considered a trash fish? Because people are stupid. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I can remember even when I was cooking when skate was considered trash.
Yeah. I still can't get skate. Locally. It all goes to lobster bait. It's infuriating.
Really? Wow. Yeah. Because it's the fluke, the guys who catch skate are generally going for fluke. Right.
And they get a quota of fluke, and that's how much space they have on their boat to keep things nice. So that's all fluke. And the skate just goes in barrels and rots and they just sell it to lobster. Wow. Yeah.
It's pisses me off. That's awesome. And do all the skate taste the same or do we have more iodiney ones too? Uh I don't know. I get so so little, like fresh skate.
We got holes for a while, and they were all pretty much the same. But there's different species of skate as well. The scallops you get, how do they compare to like a Nantucket scallop? I mean, we get sea scallops, not base gallops. I always think of Nantucket as like base gallops.
Yeah, those are God scallop. They're beautiful. Yeah. But they're good. They're really good quality from locally.
Yeah. But you know, everything's a little bit offshore. It's not like they're growing super close and people are. It's not the the I feel like the days of hand diving scallops are over. I can never see diver scallops where people are actually diving for scallops, they're mostly dredged.
Yeah, because how would you where would you what would you I mean the people used to do it? I remember our seeing a Martha Stewart episode like 20 years ago. Someone was diving for scallops. You know, my cousin is learning to as just something to do to free dive. Yeah, I'm uh super into that.
He can hold his breath for like infinity. I used to when I was a kid, I was really into it. So you could do it. I used to free dive in my lake. You could you could go down.
I could hold my breath for like three minutes. How much would you have to charge? If you were gonna dive down, free dive down, and not just diver scouts anymore, free diver scallops. Free diver scallops. Free diver scallops.
They wouldn't be free. Free diving's not free. You know what I mean? So like how much would you have to charge, you think? A lot because it's risky.
Yeah. But your costs are lower because you don't need air. That's right. Could get an embolism, but you don't need air. It's true.
Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that what what are the dangers? I'm told it's not incredibly painful to free dive once you're used to it. No, it's not.
The danger is that you don't uh come up fast enough or you come too fast. Like that's how you how free divers die. Basically, what happens, like real professional free divers where they're like 600 feet below water. When they come up, their lungs shrink down to like the size of a grapefruit under the pressure. And then when you come up too fast, they expand, they suck all the oxygen from your brain, and you die.
Sure, it's funny. It's just hilarious. The things that human beings figured out how to do. Yeah. You know what I mean?
It's not funny that anyone dies. But it's it's funny that the crazy things that people figure out how to do if there's some incentive to do so. Or even if there's no incentive, what's the incentive? Well, like what do you think professional freedivers make? Yeah.
Well, like uh, like for instance, uh, there's no reason to do death dives. You seen this one? No. It's the one where you uh do cliff diving, but you bought you belly flop, and like right at the last second you slap down, and so you slap the water, which helps kind of break the surface tension, and then you go in, but yeah. Why?
God knows. You're not even getting like a pearl or uh or a scallop or you know yeah, that's a uniquely human thing to do. Yeah, yeah. Maybe someone can figure out an economic reason to do it. It's a Scandinavian thing.
Do they TikTok it? Probably. That's the reason. Proly. I forget how it came to my Yeah, that's insane attention.
Uh you do you work with the Moromi people? I do. Yeah. Bob Florence. Yeah.
He's amazing. Yeah. And uh, what about the kelp folk? Yep, Susie Flores. Yeah.
Stone Kelp Company. I actually have a kelp t-shirt on right now. Let me see. I love this shirt. How is their kelp?
Their kelp is great. Yeah. Wow. Nice. Kelp dinner.
Yep. Yeah. Nastasia still, I think, triggered because we did uh we did a combu kelp a thon once at the French culinary studio, which is kelp for days, so much kelp. All the kelp. Yep.
And then I was like, Nastasi, what do you think of all of these kelp broths? And it was just like straight, straight kelp. Like nothing else. Sure. Yeah, like just the kelp.
Yeah. Remember that stuff? Like cupping. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. We'd be like, here's the same kelp. One at 50 C, one at 60 C, and one at 70C for three different times. Taste. And then we were taste.
We're stupid. We could have actually like gotten on some weird health crazed thing if we had sold like, you know what I mean? Like with all those different things, we could have sold it as some stupid marketing thing. Yeah. If only if only we were smart enough and or uh what's the word?
Uh unethical enough to do so. I mean, it's not unethical if you believe it. Exactly. But if you don't believe it, it's unethical, right? I mean, I've I never felt good.
Like I would occasionally say things like, Well, I don't believe it, but this is what some people say. I personally think that's garbage, but you know what I mean? Then that's not a really good sales pitch. No. You know what I mean?
The value of self-deception. Yeah, you can make some decent money. You know what I mean? If you're like this rock is magic and you believe it, then just go buy a bunch of that rock and sell it. You know what I mean?
You're rich. Only rock, only rocks. What about like salt? Is that the most magical rock? Oh yeah.
Oh yeah. Salt. Oh my god. I mean I mean, uh besides the fact that we need it to live. True.
Delicious. Delicious. Salt. Oh my god. Under salted food, please.
I mean, I I've there are people who can't have it, and then they adjust, apparently. Apparently, I've read the research that you can adjust to not wanting as much salt. Anyway, let's look at some questions before we but yo, Jack, did you have any food stuff before we run out of time? I'll very, very quickly just shout out the two places I've been to recently in LA that were fantastic. La Cita, which is an incredible rotisserie, like chicken and salt in in a sol.
Uh and then RVR, which is pronounced River, which is the team behind Juicida. They have a new Izakaya in Venice, which is fantastic. So for West Coast people, those are my wrecks. Why no, why no valves? What?
Why no vals? What do they have against what do I have against? Oh, because because it was based on the last place they did, which was MTN pronounced mountain. I don't know. I can't tell you why they're leaving vowels out there.
You can't Google River with a if you Google River, you get rivers, but if you Google R VR. Is that what it was? You get the restaurant. That'll come up. RVR.
Yeah. It was really, really good. Like very, very, very, very good. Yeah. So yeah.
But get to those questions. All right, all right, all right. You want to shout out any particular dish you had? Um ramen. Okay.
What kind of ramen? Yeah. Were you a tonkatsu man? Yeah, I I'm generally a takatsu man. Okay, here's why I'm a bad person.
I like ramen. I won't kill people for ramen. Well, who's killing people for ramen? People go ape. I mean, like, I love Tampopo.
It's a great movie, but like I'm I wouldn't drive across the country. I wouldn't drive across the country for that. For it, you know what I'm saying? No, because you live in New York. You can get a good bowl of rum in uh many places.
Yeah. Oh, one more food thing quickly. Uh I sent a friend, a friend of mine, uh, Mike Cahill is uh on sabbatical in he's a law professor in uh England. He's like, What should I do? I was like, you should go to the Brogdale, which is their fruit collection.
It's in Kent in Favisham, which is like, I don't know, an hour and a half outside of London on the train, and you can walk from the train station, at least Nastasi and I did. And so I've been twice, and I told him I was like, it's real hit or miss. It's like if you go there when the plant weasels are outside, the British like horticultural nanny poos, then they'll stop you from picking all the fruit. But if you go and they're not out there, then you have a rip-write good time picking all the fruit. And they went and were able to pick everything they wanted and brought it back because it was raining.
And I think Nastasi, the time that we went there, was it raining? Uh it was misty, yeah. Yeah. And those lazy British fruit fools don't go out in the rain. Idiots.
And so if you're if you live in London and you want to try to chance it, right, go out when it's raining because those horticultural, like, you know, like uh pinky holding out tea drinking fools won't come and bust you if it's if it's raining. And if you do go and get busted in the rain, let me know so I can tell people that uh I'm wrong. Anyway. Uh those pears, those pears were so good, weren't they, Stas? Yeah, yes, they were.
Oh my god, those pears were good. Uh best pears I've ever had. Even though pear is not a fruit you should eat off the tree. I was gonna ask. Yeah.
Did you ripen it? No, we we weren't there that long. So, like, you know, we were only so certain some pears, like we would we would pick up drops and things that had like, you know, like uh, you know, done a little bit of extra stuff or stuff that was like on the tree a little bit too long. But even so you could get a feeling for it. And they also have a huge collection of uh wardens, which are the you know, cooking pears.
Yep. Um, and they have a huge collection of pear pears. And so it's kind of interesting to try all of those things. But if we live there, obviously take a bunch of them and like seller them properly. Because pear is one of those weird fruits where it's like, you know, you pick it and then you have to wait for the the 25 seconds where it's good.
You know what I mean? The avocado of well, avocado is also a fruit. I was gonna say the avocado of fruits. Yeah, yeah. I understand what you mean.
I think it's an apt, what's it called? Not an analogy, but it's an apt comparison. Sure. Yeah. Because, and you know that an avocado, the other stupid word for it is alligator pear.
Wow. So there you go. No one calls it that. That was gonna start calling it that from now on. Some some like some like white European guy was like, Well, that's an alligator pear.
You know what I mean? And then and everyone's like, no, it's it's an avocado, idiot. Dummy, you know what I mean? That's like someone saw like uh, you know, whatever they call the Korean pears now, uh, Asian pear. What are we calling that?
Yeah, someone's sand pear. You're like, no, no one calls it that. My guy, nobody calls it that. You know what I'm saying? Sand pear.
Although I tend to think they're kind of like sand pears because they're so gritty. Yeah, they're sandy on the outside too. Yeah, also if anyone can tell me why some pear O de V is you can taste the grit. Please let me know why. Like, what is what's going on where I'm getting a textural sensation?
What taste molecule is giving me the textural sensation of grit in a pear? Because I love that. I love when I get a pear O de V and get that gritty feeling. What's that Austrian one? We just met the the distiller.
The one, the one, yeah, Austrian. Yes, yes. I met that guy. He came to Connecticut. Yes, he could have told you.
I bet. Well, that's the one that's who we had it, Dave. Yeah, but he didn't tell us why. He just gave us he just gave us this. But we should ask Ariel or Harold.
Yeah. Oh, Ariel, by the way, Ariel, fan of the show, author of the Felivorama, just came out with a new pumpkin spice called Pumpkin Spice 2.0. It showed up at my house. I haven't tried it yet. Here's what I'm gonna do.
Here's what I'm gonna do. Ready for it? Jen, my wife, stopped taking sugar in her coffee. So in the wintertime, I used to make some spiced syrups to put into her lattes because she's a latte drinker. But now she hasn't taken it.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make a no-sugar pumpkin spice syrup with polydextrose. What do you think? What do you think a no sugar pumpkin spice? Would you think it would work or not work? I mean, yeah.
With polydextress. Yeah. Polydextrose. So it's so it's not gonna mess your viscosity up. You know what I mean?
It's gonna add that body that sugars there without the sweetness. Yeah. Uh I'll let you folks know. I'll try it with pumpkin spice 1.0. I'll just go buy some.
I actually I've never bought pumpkin spice. I always just kind of womp together a pumpkin spice. Yeah. I'm gonna try Ariel's pumpkin spice 2.0 and then my whatever my BS pumpkin spice is. But then you can add spice, you can add the spice flavor without worrying about oversweetening it.
Because that's the problem with the pumpkin spice juice. I mean sugar, sugar swamp. You just add them separately, right? Sugar, pumpkin spice. Well, but tippy's every one thing.
Well, because that's how they dose it. I mean not a pumpkin spice capital. That's how they dose it. Like when they're working commercially, they're like and you're like, you're like, uh just the just the one pump. Yep.
Just the yeah, yeah, they're pumping the hell out of it with them. By the way, do you know we moved away from pumps at the at the bar? Uh so we have a couple of ingredients that are too thick to use. And uh, we had been pumping them with Tarani pumps, and they're great when the syrup is full, right? But as soon as there's any sort of air that like works into it, then you get like like burps in the pump.
And those pumps are dosing pumps. Yeah. So if it burps in the middle, then everything you've done before is trash. Yep. You know what I mean?
So obviously you do that first, but because at the new bar, we don't have room for giant like seven like a bunch of 750s. We were like, oh my God, like these small bottles, they're like they burp from the minute you start. You know, unless also like, you know, before service, you have to sit there like you're like, you know, like waving a jet down the down a you know, aircraft carrier to spin all of the sti syrup down to the bottom of the bottle so that they don't burp. Now it's the only ingredient we weigh. We keep them in squeeze, you put them in first, and then we weigh out those ingredients based on based on their density.
But and then the rest of it's jiggered. So we would never want to have two ingredients that are weighed in a drink, but one. And we use c there's so many cheap coffee scales now that are meant to get wet and that have backlit numbers and they auto on and their USB C uh recharging. So we just charge them at night and then they work the entire bar shift. So cool.
Anyway, just a thing. Uh oh, by the way, which you work at? The original New York one in the Four Seasons Hotel. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Joel Robochong, rest in peace.
Weird guy, huh? Yes. Weird guy. Anything you want to say about him? Uh, I mean, it was awesome.
I loved it. I worked it a whole time. Yeah. Uh-huh. But not everybody loved it.
Yeah. It was a difficult environment. Yeah, yeah. Took me many years to like detox get you a normal human in the kitchen. Oh, was it was it an was an anger-based cooking?
Um, I don't know, it was anger-based, it was just very cutthroat. Really? Especially early, because we had a Japanese chef who I won't mention his name because he's such a psycho. But um, oh, I also like, but it was just a lot of like, oh, new guy, great. Let's let's just really throw this guy under the bus.
Really? And then laugh while you're like it's beaten in the corner, you know? Oh, like like like with like normal hazing, like vacuuming their clothes. Um, no, just like in general, like whoever the new guy was was gonna get beaten. I remember when I went to the front kitchen.
Physically beaten? To some extent, yeah. Wow. When I was moving to the front kitchen, I was like, oh, great, move in the front kitchen. My sous chef's like, don't be happy.
He just wants to beat you. Wow. It was true. Wait, so you're so you get to be new guy twice, you get to be new person in the in the back and then new person in the front. Originally, yeah, in that place, yeah, for sure.
But so weird because Robishon himself was very gentle in that sense. Never like yelled, never raised his voice, not one time. He would like torture you with like a whisper. Really? Like, just stop.
Wow. In the middle of a big rush. He'd just be like, just he just whispered to the to the chef, stop and clean. And we'd just stop everything and clean the whole kitchen. Start again.
So, like, but he would say that when he didn't like a particular thing at the pass, or I don't know what really prompted it, but he was his whole whole philosophy was like, you know, it's okay to mess up a recipe, recipes are very personal, it takes a while to understand them, but there's no excuse for not clean. So that would like I don't know. Very famously when we were opening, he we the first friends and family, he came in that day. So the chefs prepared everything. And right as it started, he's like, no, throw everything away.
We're not doing this. We'll reopen tomorrow. Literally threw away every piece of me's and plastic. Probably just sit to every restaurant, right? It was like a thing.
But it was his shtick. Probably, yeah. He did a lot of things like that. He had a lot of weird contract things that he would, and his his meant the philosophy was if you don't get the things in my contract right, like the tiny thing, like I need to have a diet coke on my nightstand done, then that means you're probably missing a bunch of other stuff. So he's the David Lee Roth of chefs.
Yep. There was one story where he like showed up to one of his restaurants, and I guess in his contract, it was supposed to pick him up in a Rolls-Royce or like a certain car at the airport, and they showed up in a different car, and he looked at it, he turned around and got back on the plane and went back to France. That's a weird that's a weird dude. It's weird, but it's like you really have to watch all the details. Like we were so on fire when he was coming.
Like everything had been absolutely perfect. And so like uh the people who were supposed to be eating that night, were they like Yeah, probably pissed. Although that's what you know, friends and family, it's probably not why you can say, yeah, yeah. Yeah, although but you know, you didn't make other plants. That's true.
You got a babysitter. Did you did he give him a drink anyway? I don't know. Shut it down. Shut it down, that's it.
We're done. I don't think I ever ate, I don't think I ever ate at any of his uh places because he also had the the second tier, like more casual place. So I never ate there. Weird art was ours was weird because you had the the mansion, like in Vegas, there's the mansion in L'atelier, and L'Atelier is more bistro-y, yeah. But here he just had the telly.
It's really like a combination. So we were two-star Michelin. That was the goal. I saw him once give a talk, Starchefs with uh Bruno Gusot. Because you know, like they they developed the first uh kind of like mass sous vide thing for the SNCF.
Yep. And so, you know, Gusot is always like Rebochant, Rebelchant. Yeah, yeah. And so like they were talking about uh like like sous vide or you know, he calls it jusquaton, because he's if it's not sous vide, he doesn't call it sous vide, but he doesn't call it low temperature either. He's because he simply said temperature is not low, it's jusquaton, it's the right temperature, you know what I mean?
Like, all right, Bruno. And uh, and they had eggs in like a half lexan with a circulator, poly science because of course, and just like four eggs. And it was like the egg was just like boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, smacking against all four, like it's like on a like on a carnival ride. And we're all there like those eggs are ruined. Those eggs are toast ruin.
You know what I mean? And meanwhile, this like you know, one of the most famous chefs in the world is sitting there while the thing, like, how is he not like laser burning holes in everyone's eyes? You know what I mean? Oh man, yeah. That was a crazy, that was a crazy one.
That's the same, yeah. Anyway, I won't I won't go into all the weird crazy stories about uh that era. All right. Okay, from down here on the Chesapeake Bay, serious crab country. Uh Josh Seaberg, who believes that a hot dog is a sandwich, he's incorrect.
He's incorrect. Totally. Just wrong. One piece of bread. Yeah.
Oh, good call. Yeah. We just had this argument at the restaurant yesterday. Yeah, I'm a more of a functionalist. If you think you're gonna have sandwiches and someone hands you a hot dog, you're not happy.
True. You know what I mean? Um, serious crab country. I'm curious uh what uh uh your view is uh your what on what your favorite case of beer group of friends, let's eat a ton of seafood item. See X seafood.
What's the X? Hmm Group of Um probably would be oysters, really? Yeah, how so like just raw, just raw with any sort of toppings? Mini net, really, yeah. Classic triggering style styles has a minion net trigger.
Really? Yeah, I don't know why. I don't like when people do things with mini-net that aren't mini-net. Ooh, give me a sample. Cucumber.
It's not part of it. You're like, come up with a different name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dice, tiny dice cucumber, an acid. You jerk.
You know what I mean? Yeah. I just want, I just want the thing. Yeah. Peppercorns, shallot.
No sort of horseradish product? No. Not an oysters. Well, unless you go below the Mason Dixon. And then you need it.
Well, what, to kill the poison from the fancy. Those oysters are like so much stronger. If I go down south, yeah, hot sauce always, yeah. Well, in like New Orleans, you like a cooked oyster? Um, I like a cooked oyster everywhere.
But you know, in general, like if I have raw oysters. Yeah, I only want them cooked down there. Down there? No, they're raw down there. It's great.
Okay, yeah. You know, I don't trust a warm water oyster. Vivriomia. It's crazy. Yeah, yeah.
Uh huh. So uh when you go to a low to mid-tier coastal uh seafood joint, and you get the admiral platter, broiled or fried? Fried. Yeah. Yeah, gotta go fried.
Gotta go fried. They don't know how to broil fish. No, they don't. And also it's like quality of the fish, and how good is it gonna be? It's probably frozen.
Oh, yeah. They they could they could be on the water and they're getting those frozen fillets. Oh, yeah. And you could taste, not that you can taste good frozen fish, it's good, but one that's been through a bunch of cycles, and you know that the the moisture's been crystallized out of it, and it has that that that texture of like yeah. I grew up going to the the the fried seafood places on City Island.
Oh my god, I only went to one. What's the good one to go to? Johnny. Are you from City Island? My grandparents lived on City Island.
So sick. For those of you who don't know, City Island is this weird place within a place. It's like this like one street, like the like water on either side, it's in the Bronx. It's crazy. It's like the South Bronx combined with Cape Cod.
Yeah, it's crazy. It's very strange. Yeah. I've lived there for like 15 years. Yeah, I mean, like, I've like for a while, I was like, maybe I should move this City Island.
It's great. You just get islandized really fast. Yeah, yeah. You never then you never leave, right? Yeah.
You're like, ah, I can't go to the grocery store, it's off the island. So where did it go? Is Tito Puente good? Um, it was actually Tito Punch is pretty good. Plus he used to play there all the time.
Really? It was amazing. Oh my god. You just show up. Seriously.
Pretty cool. Oh man. So what's the place to go though? Um, Ardi's is the best restaurant on City Island. And there's also a weird Italian place that's above this like catering hall.
I can't, I can't remember the name of it. But they the best part about that place is carpeted sidewalks. What? Yeah, I mean, that's luxury. Wow.
You know what? Uh so like the so the way to get into City Island, there's a place called Orchard Beach that you can drive past. And it used to be it used to be the dirty needle beach of record. Yeah. But I hear that you can't even get stabbed with a dirty needle anymore.
No, it's probably cleaned up over there. There's so many weird people in that area, though. It's so strange. Yeah. I remember there was this guy calling the midnight cowboy.
Because I would be driving home from the train station in the middle of the night, like through the park, and all of a sudden you see this guy in full cowboy regalia riding a horse. Come on. Through the park. A horse. A horse.
And it wasn't the naked cowboy. No, not that guy. Just a full-on cowboy guy. Sometimes you have bales of hair on the on the on the horse. For real.
For real. And then one day I got off the train and there's a horse tied up outside the bodega. What? And I'm like, I gotta see this guy. Did you go in and buy him a slim gym?
No, I went in and it was this guy who was like on his Bluetooth headset talking in great detail about transcribing classical music scores. What? So fucked it. You know what? For as much as I have issues with our great city, we we got some, we got some folk here.
It's the beauty of New York. Yeah, right. Yeah. Another one. Lobster roll of uh style.
I like the mayonnaise. Really? What? I hate that. Can you call yourself a Connecticut guy?
I'm not from Connecticut. All right. I don't like the hot lobster roll. Have you have you uh so if you don't like it, you know? I don't like hot sandwich guy.
Really? All said and done. Like, you know. Well, so uh for hot dog buns, do you like a top split though? I do.
All right. So, okay, so getting somewhere. All right, okay. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. I'm more of a main lobster roll guy. Yeah, I love a Connecticut. I love a Connecticut lobster lobster roll on a top split like bun. The one at Chester is great.
They're good. I used to do one when we we did it with lobster butter instead of regular butters. Yeah. Amped it up. It's real good.
Yeah. Everyone liked it. I don't know. Everyone liked it be you? Yeah.
Yeah. There's very few things that I make that I don't like, but I still make them. Like lattes. I don't like them. Really?
No, I drink espresso only. Oh, okay. I don't want milk in my car. I don't want milk in my coffee. I don't hate milk.
I don't drink it, but I, you know, I like milk products more. You know what I mean? You like like cheese. Love it. Love, lerve.
Like, you know, uh, like even like a milkshake. Yeah. If you freeze that stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah.
But just like pound a big old glass of milk. When I was a kid, I drank so much milk. One day I drank it, not in a row, not the challenge, but I had drunk through the course of the day by the early afternoon a gallon of milk. And I threw it all up. Yeah.
And then I haven't had milk as a beverage since. I have that same thing with gin. Really? I threw up on gin once in college, but I I got back to it. Yeah, I got back to it too.
Yeah. You go you come back around. Maybe you'll come back to milk. Maybe. I just don't see it.
I just don't. I like I I eat so much other milk. Imagine if you if you spent your entire life working with gin products, but you didn't drink the gin anymore. You might not be tempted to go back to gin the liquid because you're like a wash in gin products. Maybe.
I mean, I get my fair share of cow cow juice. You know what I mean? Uh all right. Uh Matt from Mystic writes in. Uh the Pavlova Chipright's daughter is really great.
Uh, can you talk a little about how the dish comes together and more generally, why Pavlova? I feel like you don't see Pavlova on menus that much these days. Thanks. Well, um, in my entire chef career, I've never had a pastry chef. And so I learned how to make Pavlova, and it's like a good showstoppery dessert that looks great, and it's just, you know.
Win. It's a winner. Yeah, I like a Pavlova. Yeah. Uh Stark Craving Man wants to know every season.
My brother and I put stone crab traps out and generally pulling about 100 to 120 pounds of stone crab claws per season. We have 20 to 30 pounds uh surplus frozen from last season. We've tried to figure out unique ways to eat them other than straight up with Joe's mustard and mayo sauce. Uh was thinking of doing crab soup with uh grouper headstock I made earlier in the summer. I have frozen or maybe a really decadent crab cake.
Would love to hear any input that you have. I mean, those both sound like good ideas. Maybe pasta. You can make a pasta with those. With the frozen, could you check it in?
Yeah, it's in the sauce. Uh oh, Frank M wants to know about uh grain mills. I'll definitely need to say that next week. That's like a long conversation about grain mills. That's a whole show on grain mills.
I just ran through. I have six in my house now. That's amazing. Uh my wife does not think so. No.
Uh okay. Christian writes in making mochi waffles. I ran into the issue of having them harden up after they sat for a bit. You mentioned that can happen when mochi cools off. I realize that must be what happened.
Does reheating solve the problem or keeping them warmed in an oven right out of the iron? You gotta keep those things warm. You gotta keep it. But the problem with mochi, and the reason I stopped making mochi waffles is really they are an aluminum nude kind of a thing. Like mochi, you want the outside to be super crispy.
And you want the inside to be really gooey. And like that's just not the way the world works. That things that are gooey on the inside and crispy on the outside, they just don't stay that way. So I don't know. If you had a CVAP or uh a combi oven, you could probably hold it for a while.
Doing a hot hold with a you know a wet bulb dry bulb stitch but it's never gonna be as good. You can re juzge them, right? You can put them back in the iron. So like you could sandbag a bunch of them, right? And then you can just you know nuke them up for like, you know, you know, in the uh in the iron for like uh a little bit, uh, or even just deep fry them to recrip up the outside.
But mochi waffles are good when they're good. And I I stopped making them because uh you can't force people to eat quickly. People are the worst. You know what I mean? This is why tasting menu situation, I can give them just a bite and eat it, eat it.
You know what I mean? Egg timer. Yeah, yeah. Oh my god, can could you do that? I've always wanted to.
For the general table time in general, but also I think for a dish, that would be great. Must be done by the time and it isn't long, Gary. It isn't long. You know what I mean? Give your like Wicked Witch of the West egg timer.
Oh my gosh. You you told them now someone's gonna do it. They're gonna rip off your ID. No, it's great. Anyone can do it as long as they call you out.
It's like a little credit somewhere, like in this in the pre-meal. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Why Shipwright's daughter, by the way? Um, well, we pulled it out of thin air, really.
But we wanted to have something that was kind of about the culture of mystic of kind of the shipbuilding culture and nautical culture, but also we're the next generation. Nice. All right. Well, uh, David, thank you so much for coming on. Uh I would say go to your James Beer dinner tonight, but it's sold out.
Are you serving any of those crabs up? Yeah, it's all green crabs. All green crab all the time? Yep, the whole menu. Yeah.
All right. Well, uh great to have you on. Please come again. Maybe I'd love to check you out next time I come up to Mystic. Yeah, please do.
All right, welcome. Cooking issues.
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