Hello and welcome to Cooking News. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookie Issues coming to you alive from the Heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center, New York City, New Stand Studios. Joined as usual with John Across me. How you doing? Happy New Year.
Happy New Year. Doing great. Yeah, happy, happy. Happy, happy, happy, happy. Happy.
Got Joe Hazen rocking the panels. What's up? Hey, how are you? Welcome to the show. Yeah.
2025. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Starting off the new year late. Old school style bike would not dog. It's in fact, the bike, for any of you who can see this on video, the bike is here in the studio with me, which for any of you who've never been to New York, it's a bone of contention in New York.
People are like, you can't bring a bike in here. You're like, but I'm not a messenger. This is my bike. You can't bring it in. But it's folded, but it's a piece of jewelry.
It's a freaking bolo tie. It's around my neck. You know what I mean? But that's when I used to have a foldie bike. I would say that.
It's like, now you have to take the freaking service elevator. So thanks, Joe, for letting me get the bike somehow into Rockefeller Center, because I know that was a pain in the in the Patoodleheimer. We'll call City Bike and have quote unquote words with them afterwards. I should get Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing?
Happy New Year, Stas. Happy New Year. What would the incentive be for me to do that? Just the joy of yelling at someone on the phone. No, no, thank you.
It's true for the person who threatened the life of a UPS. First of all, you you wouldn't do it for me just because we're friends. You wouldn't do it for your friend. Oh, all right. So now I know that I'll never move your crap again for no reason.
Like the last time ever I pick up all your creepy parts. And your crap too, and your piano and all your stuff from the Connecticut. I believe I moved the piano and you spent most of the time laughing at me. I believe what happened is you spent most of the time laughing at me. And you got kayaks, free kayaks out of the deal.
Oh, yeah, we forgot. Oh, I forgot all the VR about all about the free kayaks. Usually, I mean, not always. Sometimes I'm right. In this case, I'm right.
Jackie Molecules, how you doing? I'm good. I'm good. I'm back in L. Nice, nice.
Upper left hand corner, Quinn, what's up? Hey, I'm good. Knew you're treating you well. Yeah. Good.
And special Los Angeles guest, Mike Mike, Mike, Mike Capelfairy. So we know him from Thunderbolt, but now Thunderbolt LA, not Thunderbolt, Georgia, the town that Thunderbolt LA is named after. But there's a new bar you want to talk about, Mike? I haven't been yet, so you have to tell me everything. Yeah, you gotta come out and visit.
It's uh it's uh funny sort of reference before recording. You guys are talking about Jim Jarmage because it's called Night on Earth, which is the name of one of his films. Um it's like up on Koanga Pass, uh sort of near the Hollywood Bowl, adjacent to Hollywood and the Valley and Burbank and North Hollywood, and it is like a 50-year-old strip malled classic LA dive bar uh that was sort of converted to a club before we got our hands on it, and now it is the sort of like 80s version of the future, dystopian kind of blade runner-y, neon demony cocktail bar that lights up in very fun ways and has a very cool sound system. All right, so I have seen Night on Earth, but in my mind, I'm only thinking of the LA based 80 horror comedy flake uh night of the comet. I assume they're different movies.
They're very different. I don't know if it's like uh like 91 or 92, it's like sort of vignette y almost like four room style movie where it's like five cities around the world and it's a single fair with a cab driver in that city, so it's like a one owner writer in LA and um what's his name? Uh Roberto Gennini, ever in um in Rome. Very Hertzog too. Oh my boy.
Oh, and Ron Hard Song's in a best voice. Best voice. Best voice. Uh yeah. So that is quite different from Night of the Comet, but have you seen Night of the Comet?
I'm I'm not. I'm not. How can you live in LA and not see Night of the Comet? Stash, have you seen Night of the Comet? I don't know.
Who knows? No. Uh so the theory of Night of the Comet, like Is this one that takes place there where they go into the cinema? 1984. 84.
So the theory of Night of the Comet is like it always happens. The comet goes over, and anyone who sees it basically turns into a zombie. So people who like, yeah, I think they snuck into a movie theater, people who are underground are the people who are, you know, yeah. And then but some people are like semi-zombied, and then they end up being kind of the real bad folk because they still have kind of human emotions and interactions, but they're zombified, so they you know, they mess with you. Gotcha.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, Night of the Comet. But it's like for those of you that like want to know what LA was like in the 80s in terms of like there I believe now, I haven't seen it since I was 13, right? But like uh I believe there's some like you know, like references to kind of pollution and the destruction of the environment, and like there's some sort of like meta thing there. So it's like good LA views of like smog because that's kind of when LA was really peaking in terms of like just miasmal hellhole of like, you know, when you used to land there and like think that there is like, is that a storm?
Like, no, that's that's the air. That's that's just the air. You know what I mean? Uh yeah, I do. Yeah, all too well.
Yeah, it's a lot cleaner now, though. I was hoping for more of like uh I was hoping for more of like the demolition man version of LA. So that was the future I thought we'd have. Yeah, when you would hope for the thing. Yeah, you hope we would have dem the demolition.
I don't know. Flying cars and seashells instead of toilet paper. It's good. Yeah. Of all the movies with the word man in it, I always think of Repo Man.
Not Khan. Not what? Was that Amelia Westin's? Uh Repo Man. Yeah.
Yes. Yeah. First of all, like, not even my favorite movie of his, by the way. And P.S. I'm a huge fan of uh Emilio Esteves Schlock movies.
Like Maximum Overdrive, the I believe only movie completely scored by ACDC. I mean, what else do you need to know? Yeah. What do you need to know? Machines take over.
Written, written and directed by Stephen King. And Stephen King, I believe, said, I was completely high the entire time we did it, and I probably shouldn't be making movies. I think that was his quote. Yeah. But I've seen it more than 10 times.
And I made Dax I made Dax watch it too. So anywho. Anywho, all right. On to so Nastasi and Jack have been to your bar. What what what are the outside people think?
You guys liked it, right? It's the best bar in LA. Wow. Yeah, I agree. So you're basically telling Mike that his other bar ish is crap a hall and only the new bar is good.
To do a Daniel. No, it's not mine, that's Daniel Patterson. I I never say that. I'm happy if you like everything. Why do you put other people down here?
We've been updating Thunderbolt so it doesn't fall behind the new bars? You know, you gotta keep keep updating everything so it doesn't become uh obsolete when you open new stuff. That's the goal anyway. Wow, I yeah, man. Man, that that that like worrying about that stuff gets real old when you're in your 50s.
You know what I'm saying? Oh, God. Give me Ajita now. Stas, I'm s I'm saying I'm sensing I'm sensing some sort of like, did I do something? Did I did I send like a like a bag of poop to your mom or something?
Like I'm getting some evil vibes off of today. There's no evil vibes. I'm trying to be positive about this. Like we love, we think it's the best bar in the world. No, in general, not just this comment.
The entire time since we started talking. I'm getting I'm getting some nasty vibes coming all the way across the country from me. I don't know, whatever. New Year's vibes. No, that's not true.
But I'm not gonna call City Bike, and I'm not gonna have you put down Mike's other bar. That's all. I didn't put down any bar. You did. You said he has two bars.
And one bar was the best bar in LA, meaning the other bars clearly not. That's all right. It's fine. And it's a Daniel Patterson reference, which we've made on this on this uh show a million times. Anyway.
Uh all right. So aside from starting new bars, or I bought a laser cutter. We could talk about that, and I finally modified my deep fryer. What do you guys have in the in the past? I guess it's like two or three weeks.
By the way, if you have questions uh for the new years, you can call them in to uh 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Of course, you can call in if you were Patreon subscriber. And uh who wants to tell them? Jack?
W uh John uh Yeah, I was I was in New York for a while, and uh uh apologies. I did not make it to John's place or Contra. But I did I did have uh I did want to shout out two places um that I checked out. Katana Kitten served crazy, crazy good drinks. Yeah, really, really good drinks.
And then the second place I went was the Sunken Harbor Club, which um I happen to sit down, I grab a drink, and I hear the bartender telling other patrons about their fancy centrifuge. Um which yeah it's yours. Um I mean Garrett's a friend of mine, so yeah, it wasn't him talking, but um it's his bar though. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, his bar. Yes. But but they were putting it to good use, making some some damn good tiki tea. I love I love Sunday. Anytime someone's like, I'm going to Brooklyn, where should I go?
I'm like, have you been to Sunken Harbor? No. It's the only place I've ever seen. You've never seen me chug a cocktail at my bar? Not at that rate.
You were they're shuggable. They are chuggable. His Pim Cups play. You know, oh it's Pim it's relatively low alcohol. You know what I mean?
And it takes a Pim Cup, which is always one of those drinks that like could be good but is not. Yeah. And he made it good. You know what I mean? So anytime someone takes something that could be good but is not, and they give it to you, and it comes to you and you're like, I trust this person, but this is gonna be trash, and you taste it, you're like, oh, you got boom, it just goes down.
You know what I mean? And then you have to get another one. Anyway. Uh yeah. That's how I felt about their zombie.
I haven't had a good like proper zombie in a while. And uh style of drink. So it was good though. I mean it's just not like it's in general that's not my style of thingamajig, but it was good. I'm sure it was good.
Anything that they put out, I mean uh I trust them. You know, I I I I I trust those guys. By the way, Contra, best bar that I have right now. Uh I only have one. It's definitely the best bar at 138 Orchard Street in Manhattan.
The best one, right? I guess, you know, whatever, it doesn't matter. Um all right, uh so that's fun. So uh thanks for stopping by uh Contra. You know, you would have drunk for free there.
I'm sure you paid money wherever you went. Oh yeah, I I did pay. Um it was a weird trip, man. I had I was not in control of everything, but I know that's like as soon as in fact I enjoy it. When I go somewhere else, and people are like, You have to go to X, you have to go to Y, you have to go to Z.
I go, I have no control, me, me. And it's so liberating to not have to worry about where you're going or like pissing someone off if just somebody else is in control. I don't like to choose at restaurants. I don't like any of that stuff. I hate choice.
I don't have don't you have enough choice in your dish to everyone. Right, right? When it comes to where you're gonna go out, what you're gonna eat. I mean, can't somebody else choose, right? Anyways, my feeling.
I hear you. Some people they love choice, right? That's why craft exists. No, right? Yeah, yeah.
Um choice. God, choice is the enemy. All right. What about you, Stas? What do you got for the for the past three weeks?
How was your Christmas, New Year's, blah, blah, blah? Um, Pierre Kim was here for New Year's, and he cooked a giant dinner in my house, and then he left all of the mess there. And then what? That does not check out at all. Oh, wait.
That checks out 100%. Yeah. All right. And then he stayed at Jack's house instead of my house, and he was supposed to help me clean the place. But then what happened, Jack?
You tell the story. Actually, I can't, Jack. You have to do it. I can't. He had an issue with the key that uh I left a fresh copy of a key and he uh had i it got stuck in the lock.
And uh he didn't know what to do about that. And uh he had a train to catch, so he had about an hour trying to figure out how to get this key out of the door. Well, yeah, yeah. You know, I I gave him permission. I said it's fine, dude.
I was like, just you know, lock the outside, get like it's fine, just leave it. I'll you know have the landlord come, and then what happened, Nastasia? And then I felt really bad for Jack because not only was my kitchen a mess and Peter never came to clean it because he was supposed to, you know, come for that hour, he was struggling with the key to help me clean the kitchen. I went to Jack's house and I was like, I'm just gonna see if this is a real issue or if he was sure. Don't tell me it was two seconds.
Don't tell me. Don't tell me two seconds. Two seconds. Two seconds. Well, first of all, let me ask okay, now let's let's be fair to Peter here for one second.
Not that that's my normal mode, but let how angry were you when you touched the key? I mean, is it possible that like only your superhuman anger was able to get the key out of the lock? Yeah. No, but it was it was crazy how it just came out. Like it was crazy.
Yeah. I wish I could say I was surprised. That's amazing. I love that story. I love that story.
Wait, I had something regarding a similar situation. Hmm. Uh anyway, regardless, I think what this goes to show is no matter how much you've had to drink, no matter how tired you are, do the majority of the cleaning before you go to bed. It's like it's just like uh, you know, uh you know how like uh you know how like people say, Don't go to bed angry, and then like you know, 20, 30 years in you're like, I'm just too tired. Can we just go to bed angry and wake up and fix this in the morning?
But when it comes to like cleaning somebody else's house where you actually have to go back to their house again, you just have to power through it, even if you need to take drugs to do it. You know what I'm saying? Like pops and he was across the street. Jack but Jack lives close to me, so it wasn't like a big haul for him to like come back over, you know. Still just get the get that done.
Why do you have to wake up into a crab hole? Oh, because he left the dinner early to go out, like until 5 a.m. But you can't you can't cook a dinner and leave early unless you're a hired hand. I know. Dave.
What was the dinner? What was the dinner? It was um stuffed cabbages, okay. Uh acabuco and I forget what else. Why do you need stuffed cabbage and asabuko?
Why do you need both stuffed cabbage and asabuko? That's like the time that I cooked two starches for Booker and you and you laughed at me for three years. The eggs, the egg you cooked some eggs and good, S. It was great. Wait, what are the eggs?
But like what do the eggs have to do? No, no, no. I'm saying you gave Booker a a hard boiled egg and a chicken breast for dinner, and I said, hmm, that seems like same thing, different format. Well, one's, you know, pre one's in well, whatever. Doesn't matter.
Does not matter. Anyway, uh all right, well, anyway. I'm sorry, Dave. I can't allow that. There you go.
Good uh good stories, good story. What about you, Quinn? What do you got? Uh well, uh, for Christmas we did a I guess a fresh ham. Like it wasn't cured, but it was the actual like back leg of a pig.
And then we sort of roasted slash braved it in a sort of Cantonese barbecue spiced uh broth. So that turns out pretty good. Did you underestimate it or did you cook it? Yeah, it's gonna take a long time. Like a long time.
And also like it did. Yeah. It seems like a hard problem. You know what I did for the ham? You know what I cooked?
You know who I pr whose ham I purchased? So for I can't remember, I think this was Christmas too, when like my parents were coming over, which they haven't been into the city since the pandemic, right? So my mom and my stepfather come in for the first time for the pandemic. And I'm like, you know what? Hell with it.
I'm gonna go. I'm gonna, I was driving through Milford, and if you ever driving through Milford, Connecticut on I-95, not on a Sunday, because I'm almost always either doing it at night or on a Sunday. Honey baked ham store is open. So I'm like, I'm gonna get a honey baked ham. Because let me tell you something about the honey-baked ham corporation.
They make a really good ham. The honey-baked ham for a city ham. I mean, it's not a country ham, it's not a cured ham, it's not like you know, cincohotes, like like, you know, iberico bayota fet, but honey-baked ham is a delicious ham. So I bought like uh a 10-pound honey-baked ham, brought it home. Here's the trick.
Ready? You want to hear how I made it? I put it, I've I left the aluminum foil on it because it comes in aluminum foil, right? Then I didn't have a bag big enough for it. So guess what's made out of polyethylene, which is the same thing roughly as saran wrap.
Trash bags. So I took a tall kitchen trash bag, unscented, unscented, right? Threw the ham into the trash bag, right? But it went and like spun the ham like a million times to tighten it up, like you do when you have something that smells real bad in the bag, and then stuck a zip tie around the top of it, threw it in the ANOVA steam oven at 135 Fahrenheit, which is roughly 57 for like infinity for like seven hours, and the entire thing was warmed through to 57 degrees uh uh Celsius, you know, 135. Perfect, perfect.
Took it out, cranked my big oven up to like eight billion degrees, stuck it in there, it flashed off the outside, like took it out. Genius. Maybe the best city ham I've ever made in my life, and super easy. And what a pleasure it is to serve to get honey-baked ham off of the right off the bone. You know what I mean?
Not to have to slice a ham. It's so nice. And then I had ham sandwiches. And then I used Steve Sando's Rancho Gordo black-eyed peas on New Year's to make the hoppin' john, which was a delicious, delicious. Although I did buy his, remember when he was on the show and he said Ojo de Cabra beans, he has Italian version of the same.
I got them, and to be, you know, to pay my due reverence to genuflect to the bean, I did it like he said, and they were good, but you know what I wish? I wish I'd added stock or something. You know what I mean? I wish I'd added some more stuff, but they were good. Anyway, whatever.
And what do you say, Quinn? Yeah, I had a question. If you're already going into a like precision oven rather than an actual water bath, what is the function of the bag? Well, you at 100% humidity, you're constantly getting like like uh like it's washing down. So like if you look into the tray in uh the oven when it's on 100% steam, there's like a puddle of stuff there.
Because it's constantly washing down. And if you have stuff that's soluble on the outside, it'll just keep kind of washing stuff down and getting wet. So like it's better to just put a barrier between you, I mean between the atmosphere and the item, so that all of the flavor and everything that is in the item stays in the item and doesn't like equilibrate with the filth condensate that's going around on the inside of the oven. So in general, everything I put into the APO is completely encased. I made that mistake in the APO before and like gave my gave my food like a two-hour long bath.
Yeah. And this is the first of all, this is the classic mistake people make with low temperature sous-vide cooking. Like in general, is they put too much liquid in the bag. And so what I try to tell people, but the problem is fewer and fewer people have had old school French food, right? So I'm like, like, do you know the difference between like a short rib and pata feu is like how much liquid the stuff was cooked in?
And if you have too much liquid in the bag, it comes out tasting like beef stew and not like like a short rib. You know what I'm saying? And so yeah, it's like there's just a different feel to meats that have been cooked in excess liquid. And in general, like if you want that, you want it. And if you don't, which most of the time I don't, if I'm not looking, then I then I don't.
You know, I've never had a sauer bratton that I thought was great. Speaking of meats cooked with like a lot of liquid and acid, because it's like all acid. Have any of you had a sauer bratton that that like kicked your behind? No. No?
No. All right. Uh all right. So anyone else? What else?
What else we got? Who we got? Me, I suppose. One to June, didn't say anything. One to Contra the other night.
Lovely. Oh nice. Good drinks, yeah. One of Theo's uh experimental drinks, I guess, like the gran adjusted granny Smith with some dill in there. It was really delicious.
Yeah, because we're running out of the tarragons uh uh out of season, so we're moving away. He he we had originally done a lettuce-based drink, and I was like, yo, yeah, that one's you know it's I love the lettuce, but it's a pain in the butt, it's pain in the butt, and it's not like because lettuce has so much water in it. And what makes it red? What gives it that reddish tint? Oh, you must have used the wrong lettuce.
It just might have been. They use the wrong lettuce. Okay. They use the wrong lettuce. I mean, if you get the wrong lettuce, you know.
Anything other than green is difficult because it like most things that aren't green that are our herbs have some amount of non-other color in them, and they end up going olive drab. So like purple basil, unless the purple basil is k then it it ends up kind of a gross gross color, which is fine if you can't see it, but not fine if you can. Yeah. Yeah. What about you, Mike?
What did you do other than Biz NAS for food and or beverage? Uh I I just went to Mexico City for a week, which was awesome. So I got back last night and family trip or business trip? Of a human being family, and uh traveling with a toddler in Mexico City's like a lot. Um that was a lot.
And there was nine adults and two kids on the trip. So it was hectic. Uh however, found some time to get some great drinks and eat some great food. And I I'm like not I'm not like a guided tour person, but um one of my previous trips I had taken this like mercado tour, and so I took everyone on that same tour uh and like convinced them all to come with me just so I could eat this one taco at the the uh Mercado Jamaica, which is a green chorizo taco, which is the only place I've ever had it, and it's like my it is like my platonic ideal of a taco. It's the greatest taco I've ever had, so we went back.
So describe the taco again, describe it again. No I mean it's it's very simple. It is a tiny corn tortilla and green chorizo. So it's like the chorizo is some families are making it for like five generations at the same stall in the Mercado and it's like uh pine nuts, marjoram, uh parsley. She said lettuce but I think that might have been a might have been a translation thing.
Um the pizza is like all ground up into this like bright green chorizo. So like lower on the pork content than most chorizos. That sounds delicious. Absolutely fantastic. And it's it's just like hit on the comal in a tortilla they use this like salsa verde and that's it's the only two tortillas or one tortilla?
Two tortillas 'cause okay here's the thing like if you really wanted to make it the best like their tortillas are fine. Like first time I went they were better. But these hobbies have been made like probably the day before. Oh they weren't pressing them out to order? The move is the move the they they were the first time I went.
There was like 'cause it was so busy when I went like six months ago or five months ago. But this time the tortilla was a little lacking. Yeah. Chorizo was still perfect. But like you just gotta go around the corner to the little tortilleria and bring your own like still piping hot tortilla and get it on there.
Because that that's kind of what's the difference this time. But still great. Highly recommend actually I think you're better off mercado jamaica getting the chorizo from them and then going to the tortilla people and going that way. Probably smart. Yeah probably smart.
I wanted to bring back some links, like freeze some links and bring it back 'cause I sell 'em, but uh they make they make links not just loose? Yeah, I mean it's like a it's like their main business is is carniceria. So they're doing regular chorizo, they're doing their family's like secret green chorizo, they're doing Sasena and all these other things. And then they're just like firing off these green chorizo tacos. It's amazing.
So when you saw that all of the tortillas had been sandbagged, did you give a little stink eye or no? I I mean well I told you know uh I tried not to like build it up to the eight other adults that were with me that this was like my favorite taco ever because you know I I as the person from that group that lives in LA they trust me on taco. So everyone loved it and was super hyped and like I didn't want to bring up like uh tortillas. Who are they from? And it could be way better.
Uh with friends in from Denver um Denver and then a couple friends in from North Carolina. We all kind of met in in uh Mexico City for a late holiday trip. Started the year off right nice. Be out of the country on January 6th just in case kind of thing. Yeah well nothing happened too cold.
Uh by the way uh what is e we didn't get the n what's the name of the new place again? New bar called Night Unearth. Right. And where is it? Yeah.
So it's on Coinga Pass. Uh so which is like it's kind of what the neighborhood is called it's kind of hard to give it a neighborhood because it's it's north of Hollywood button this isn't another place like Thunderbolt where like even the GPS can't get me there is it and it's like Yeah well no this is this one's great because you can find it's easy. It was right off the 101. It's easier to find and unlike Thunderbolt there's like 42 stalls in the parking lot. So how there is no parking anywhere in historic Filipino town or Echo Park where we are.
Thunderbolt, there is plenty of parking at this bar, which is very nice for us who is in the car with us, Doz when we were trying to find Thunderbolt? Harold McGee, and it just boggled his food science mind of three. It's pretty hard to find. And like we put up during COVID, we put up like actual big like hand painted signs. We've never really had signs before.
Um we tried to make it easier, but it was like the you know, it's one of those things. It says we're there, it says we're at Thunderbolt? We're on the highway, but it says we're at Thunderbolt. I don't know, open the window. Maybe someone will stick a drink in our window.
Like it was like crazy, right, Stas? Yes, yes. The thing I like about Mike's bar is that it's in this weird area where we were talking about how it would be a place where porn stars from the valley would go drink after they're done with their shoes. Did you see any did you did you see any porn stars? It's good to start with a goal.
I'm not I have not yet. I haven't well I wouldn't know. Is there a porn star industry card? Is there a porn star industry card that you could present for a discount at night on earth? I mean, I would love to I would love that and a Hollywood bowl, show me your ticket from your thing you went to tonight card for a discount.
Like those are the two things we would like to incentivize. Well, you heard you heard it here first, people. Like what what kind of rate you're gonna find? You know, I think it's like it all counts as industry, right? Like we give industry 15% at Thunderbolt across the board.
We can do that. We can do that in that on our own. 15% off of your already low low prices. Yeah, and it's it's very similarly priced at Thunderbolt where we kept the cocktails reasonable. And I will say it's in a neighborhood.
Uh that's probably used to paying more for drinks, but we at least as long as we can want to keep the prices very reasonable. So if if the goal is porn styles, what do they drink? What do they drink? So, in other words, like if the goal is porn tags. Yeah.
We have a like disguise, it's not called a porn stermartini, but we have this cocktail. Uh it's like, you know, clarified passion fruit, uh, pisco, cacao, a little vanilla, like basically carbonated porn stomartini. It's real good. Yeah. All right.
Yeah, we have a clean one. Yeah. Oh, a bad influencer? Nice. All right.
But do you think that that's like so like is that what you think people would actually consume after a shoot? I bet you they want beer. Yeah, yeah, we have that. We have Montucky cold snacks in a can. I feel like that, you know, I don't know.
I've I've never never been close enough to that industry to know. How's your canning set up at the new place? By the way. Speaking of cans, how's your canning set up? So okay.
All right. So the nerdy part is we're not we're not canning at the new place for a couple of reasons. One, uh, we're like the the nerdy part of this for people who may know what Federbolt does and how we make drinks is uh that on earth we're we're three degrees colder on our like specialized refrigeration, so we're at 16 degrees Fahrenheit instead of 19. So everything is kind of skewing a little smaller, a little higher ABV. Oh, baby.
And so it it kind of like unlocks some stuff with carbonation for us. So instead of doing eight and a half to ten point four percent alcohol, eight ounce carbonated drinks, we're doing like eleven and a half to thirteen percent alcohol, five and a half ounce cocktail. Yeah, that's what we used to do. And because they're 16, we're not we're not we're not serving them on ice. So we found like Kinto makes this uh, which the wife keeps telling me is very phallic, and I'm just ignoring it.
This like double walled champagne glass. So it's like a champagne flute that we can freeze, but your hand never touches the place where the you know it's double walled. There's a vacuum in the middle. So we're not you're not warming it with your hands. So that's what we're serving carbonated stuff in.
It's a great, it really, really holds carbonation well, no, no real foaming off when you pour so we can be much faster with it, so we don't need the can for speed. And as far as like re like the cocktail menu zero water waste. So I think it's hilarious. Hilarious that you s that you like were a pioneer in lower ABV carbs, and now you're going back to the higher AB V carves. Well, yeah, I don't want to do the same thing five miles down the road.
You know, I think it's fun. Like this place is more of a party. There's no windows, it's like uh it's dark, it's loud, it's it's more of a party vibe. Uh it's a Mike, I th I think you should leave that booth, that like sexy booth where we were sitting without a light. I think it's great.
Okay, so I bought a tiny lamp for that, like a really beautiful like design lamp for the corner, and we installed it, and it looks fantastic, but it lights the booth zero. Like it did not accomplish at all what we wanted it to. So I don't know. I and maybe we'll keep it. If you think it's good, dark back there.
I mean, yeah. You guys are sitting back there, I couldn't even see you from the bar. I know, but it was so it was so great for us. We like it was so you need to buy the monitors from the Star Wars hotel and make it outer space. Wait, what's the Star Wars hotel?
The Star Wars Hotel. Yeah, they they went out of business after like a day and a half, like, but like there was no windows in the entire hotel, and you had like apparently like you had to book a certain number of days in and it was all you were in outer space. It was like whenever you looked at a quote unquote window, you were actually looking at a monitor that was like super high def of like space or like wookies or whatever you were looking at. You know what I mean? Yeah, whatever planet you were staying on.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, they're closed down. So yeah, monitor. I'm sure there's a dumpster somewhere. You know?
I got I don't have that. I don't have Disney money to to be buying this type of stuff. No, that's what I'm saying. They went out of business. It's free.
I'll take it. Yeah, it's like it's like outer spacey. I don't want to make it. Try not to be too on it. I don't want to be like a space themed bar.
It's just like kind of otherworldly in there. The whole bar is this like recycled recycled plastic material made from old appliances. It's like translucent blue and it's all backlit so the whole thing lights up and there's like animations that can do things. It's pretty cool. Yeah.
It is. You know what I like that. Literally very wild. So like I love and so like I I again in my 80s and my 60s confused, but like old liquid light show like oil oily, like Barbarella, like Dino Delorentes Sky, like oil light shows. Aren't those things sick?
You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. But I don't. I'm I'm thinking lava lamp in my head. What are you doing?
So lava lamp is like, you know, the you know, anyone could have version. But it used to be that people would get like all of these glass, like slightly curved glass the Joshua Light Show. Yeah. And they would put oil and alcohol and dyes and they'd spin them and they'd be like overhead projectors and stuff, and like they'd play behind Floyd and they'd play behind you know, all those. Yes, yes, yes.
I know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, man, they're awesome. Oh my god. They're so awesome. And then the cheapest version in the 70s when I was growing up was they used to make these like liquid crystal like fidget toys that you would play with that were just giant liquid crystals, and when you touched them, they would change color depending on the temperature and they get all swirly.
That was like the little kids' version of that stuff. Ah, I love that stuff. Swirly. Anyway. Alright, listen.
Uh oh, I'll say what I did real quick. I uh I finally got my 3200 watt deep fryer. So I took my cheap deep fryer off of Amazon. I remember last year, if you were paying attention, it wasn't getting it didn't have recovery time fast enough to fry properly because it was only 1750 watts. So I stuck my fryer on a burner.
I was gonna use induction, but the induction wouldn't register the pan, so I stuck it on a gas burner because I really wanted to cook. And I melted the entire bottom of the fryer. So I bought a new fryer, same exact model, and then I stretched and bent and modified it so that there are now two kind of two heating elements in that deep fryer. Two independent plugs, both with the safety breakaways, so it's all safe. And I plug into two separate 120 volt circuits because I don't have 220 in my apartment at all.
I only have 120. So I got two circuits, so now this little fryer, which holds a gallon of oil, is rocking at like third between 32 and 3500 watts, depending on what the voltage happens to be that day. It's creams, recovery time is pretty good instant, right? So I then built coroplast, which is the stuff they make uh like mail, mail carrying things out of. It's the corrugated plastic, the white stuff.
I made like a hut that fits over the top of the fryer and around it, and then I took a four-inch, which is relatively small, but pretty big for this, grow fan. So, like the stuff that the marijuana people used to use for like the vent fans, right? The four inch one, and then ducted it from the thing with a big like three 200 or 300, 300 CFM, like four inch fan, quiet too. Boom, straight out of a tube, out the window. So you cannot smell a thing.
And it's like dead quiet, and the sucker just cranks and cranks and cranks and cranks and cranks and cranks. So I like and cranks. I love it. I mean I fired it up because Booker was like, I need squid from my birthday. By the way, I'm not going to say how I know this because I'm not going to put anyone on blast.
But yes, it is true that if you eat too much squid ink, it comes out black the other end. You can color your entire insides from top to bottom black with squid ink if you consume enough of it. Don't ask me how I know. Anyway, so uh yeah yeah that's what I did. Yeah.
And I got a laser cutter. I haven't laser cut food yet, but I have laser cut things that I've used for food. Anyway all right should we wait should we do some questions real quick and then finish up on uh on the rest of the stuff? Should we do some Mike you're gonna you gonna join in on some questions? I'm I'm here for anything uh my limited knowledge assist with oh by the way oh yeah well we'll wait to see if we have time which we won't uh tomales writes in after a duck hunt last week the guide tasked with cleaning the ducks committed a horrible sin of breasting out the meat and discarding everything but the skinless fatless duck breasts oh my god what kind of guide is this what kind of guide what were they doing what is wrong with this person I mean they should not they should not be they should guide themselves into the into the dunce corner so working with what I have I recirculated some breasts at 130 Fahrenheit which is 54 Celsius last night and then briefly served them off in a ripping uh seared them off in a ripping cast iron pan maybe should have used a Searsol.
Maybe then it would have been better right stuff maybe they should have gotten a Sears all pro from Booker and Dax.com just saying makes everything better. We only have a couple left. Actually, Dave, we only have a couple left, and we only have a couple spinzolves left. So get them now because you know what the tariffs are going to be like. Well, we know they're gonna be worse.
We don't know how much worse they're gonna be. We know it's gonna be worse. Because I don't know if you guys are familiar with this, but apparently, if you put tariffs on goods that are coming in from other countries, it's the other countries that pay those tariffs and not the consumers. Incorrect. And also, I don't know if you know this, it's just easy as pie for small businesses like Booker and Dax to just switch their manufacturing of something like this from a place like China to the United States.
Super easy, right, Stas? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it's also super easy for, you know, like someone our size to just say, hey, hell with it. We'll we'll shop out, we'll shop out this thing that we only make 2,000 of a year and see if we can get all of the factories who are interested in bending over backwards to spend all this time figuring out how to build it in, like whatever, Thailand, Vietnam.
We can get it done, right, Sas? No problem. Yeah. You know, and the good news is, Stas, is that is that Quinn and you and I have enough of a cushion of money from Booker and Dax that we can just we can just go into a hole for a while and wait for it to become profitable again. Right.
Oh, wait, no, wait, that's no. That's the opposite of what we are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. So get them now because it is, yeah. Yeah.
It's not looking good. Yeah. Oh, oh, so this looking worse than normal. Okay. So uh yeah, well, you know, small losses are the new big win.
You know what I'm saying? You know? Yeah. Uh Jen said something amazing uh the other day. She was she was like, uh, she was like, not terrible is the new perfect.
Anyway, um so working with what I have, I research some of the breasts at 130 and then seared them in a ripping cast iron pan. Texture and dundess were perfect, but there's an obvious sulfury taste to the duck. I had a crushed garlic cove in the cast iron along with some thyme, but the off flavor didn't seem to be that kind of sulfur. Is there anything I can change with my process? Yes, yes.
Here's the issue. Duck, especially wild, but any game, but duck, even when it's like, you know, Long Island, like two-day old duck that like, you know, that they like, you know, fatten like as fast as can and slaughter as soon as possible. We'll go, I call it livery. You're I think calling it sulfury, but I think it's the same note if you cook it too long. So if you're gonna circulate, which I still do circulate, and this same goes true, by the way, for any like also things like uh uh tenderloin can do this sometimes, and it also gets fibry.
So it gets both fibery, kind of mushy, gummy, and uh and livery. And it's just you can't cook it that long. So you have to keep your circulation time on something like that under 45 minutes, right? Because you could probably do a little bit longer, but I've had liver and sulfury notes start coming in around the hour mark, so under 45 minutes. And the good news about uh something that thin is it doesn't take that long to heat up.
You can do it in well under 45 minutes. You know what I mean? Like something that especially the idiot ripped off all the skin and fat, like that thing's gonna cook through in probably 30 minutes, you know. And so just pull it faster and sear it, and you shouldn't have that, uh, shouldn't have that problem. But that is a well, well, I wouldn't say well known, well known by anyone that we trained back in the low temperature cooking stuff at the SCI, but it is a known fact, let's put it that way.
Balloon Knot, I buy potato starch from several sources, several several sources, gram for gram. They have different thickening power. What determines the thickening power of these kind of refined starches? You know what? I looked it up a loon knot, and I wasn't able to find anything.
Are you sure you're not buying potato starch from one person and potato flour from another person? Because those things are different. It is true that some places like China, Europe, they grow potatoes especially for starch, and they use refined starch from those potatoes, and there can be some difference in like the actual starch granules from variety, potato to variety. Whereas like starch, uh potato starches made in the U.S. is typically made from waste streams of potato processing.
So it could be different, but I wasn't able to find anything specific. So just please verify that you're not using potato flour. Uh MJ says, My girlfriend makes a bunch of soups and potatoes. Dave. Yeah.
I'm just wondering if you want to jump down to Tom K. There are some cocktail questions that might be more relevant to everybody, including Mike. All right. Well, every okay, hold on. Let me finish MJ.
That my girlfriend makes a bunch of soups and pastas with kale and an ingredient which I happen to detest. She claims there isn't another green that provides the same bite when cooked down. Is there a replacement you suggest? Maybe spinach. No, collards.
Kale, collards. Collards is better kale, right? Yeah. No? Dandelion greens, too.
They're more bitter. Yeah, a little better, but yeah. So much better than kale. Yeah. Charred.
Charred. Yeah. Either Swiss or not. I mean, you don't have to rep the Swiss folks, but like, you know, I would I would go with any of those collards, because collards are good. The longer you cook a collard, the better the collar it is.
And it's gonna keep bite, right? If you're into bite, right? Chard, yeah. What was the other one we said? There's another one.
We just said I said dandelion greens. Yeah. I mean, like if you like bitter, yeah. Mustard greens are great. If you like bitter, escarrol.
Yeah. If you like bitter, escarrel. All right. Now, where am I going, Quinn? Let me ask you a question, Quinn.
Who sent these questions? Why didn't you put the cocktail questions to the top then? Well, I did them in order of chronological. Boom! All right, what?
So, all right. So, what am I going? Lucas? Am I going to Lucas or something? Am I going to Lucas?
Tom K. Tom K. All right. I'm sifting through the questions. Hold on a second.
Tom K. I've tried making a few drinks carbonated with nitrous oxide N2O, but it dissipates extremely quickly, and the only noticeable result seems to be in the foam of the drink. Uh online, lots of people assume this is because N2 should be used, not N2O. All of this is wrong. Don't listen to people online.
But people online, people, people can you can write anything online, even if you have no experience. I can go online right now and tell you how to take someone's appendix out. It does not mean that you should follow my advice on how to remove someone's appendix. I think he's using the word carbonating to mean like solubilizing gas into it. I think it should is like misusing the word carbonating.
I can't tell you. I can't tell you. I can't, Mike. I cannot tell you how many times I have said nitrous oxide. I've been using it for decades.
And I say nitrous oxide, and somebody says, You mean nitrogen? I'm like, I'm pretty sure I know what I mean. You know what I mean? Like, why would you think I don't know what I'm talking about? Anyway, like what what other that I've said so far, like leads you to believe that I make common errors on the gases that I use and what they're called.
You know what I'm saying? Like, but anyway, this is this mistake in particular irritates me. And I just rewrote the liquid uh intelligence section on this because I'm so irritated by okay. Dave and friends, what drinks uniquely showcase nitrous oxide? Do you have any suggestions for nitrogen drinks, tips and tricks, do's and don'ts?
No, I don't showcase. I use nitrous oxide for nitrous oxide tastes sweet. Uh and it it's weird on its own. I used to use it in mixtures, but the problem is that in mixed gases, where you're, as Mike was saying, carbonating and also using nitrous, uh, because the pressures are so high, it dissipates very quickly, and so the effect is lost a lot quicker than if you used either nitrous alone, which is gross for most people, or nite uh carbon dioxide carbonating alone. So because I can't control people, I can't like you know, ventriloquist puppet people and make them drink the stuff that I hand it right away.
I've moved away from that. Um, you know, nitrogen, I don't really do the nitrogen thing. It's it's uh nitrogen is is is insoluble mostly, so it makes tiny micro bubbles. Think Guinness, right? So they're nucleation sites for carbonated drinks like Guinness, or if you're putting like for some reason, if you want a drink that doesn't normally have this to have a rolling head of tiny bubbles, you could use nitrogen because it is very insoluble and makes micro bubbles versus nitrous oxide, which is sweet and very soluble and gas uh uh fat soluble, and is used in whipped cream and to get high with Mike.
What are your thoughts on this? Uh yeah, so I'm nitrogen we use at Thunderbolt because we have an espresso martini on tap it is only nitrogen, it's not blended gas. We don't want CO2 in there. Um, and you know, of course, it's like sort of that rolling cascade like a Guinness. That's sort of the idea.
So we have a direct draw draft system, we pump like 50 PSI of nitrogen into a keg that has a diffuser stone at the bottom and then pour it out through a stout faucet and you get like the Guinness Cascade. Uh which is really the only use I have for nitrogen. And it's also like the only cocktail I'm comfortable serving at the temperature you can put a keg at without having like a really big custom refrigerator. So because it's served at refrigerator temp, uh you know espresso machine is kind of the only thing I think that tastes good at that temp so we serve that on nitro, which is nitrogen when we talk about it. Do we use that term for the thing that's a bit more than this other thing that pisses the hell out of me is that nitro can mean nitrogen.
Or nitro or nitrous oxide can mean nitrous oxide. So like I stopped using nitro except for I already had like uh you know nit nitrous infusion nitro mudling is nitrogen, right? So it's like it's completely confusing, right? To the average but it sounds cool on a menu, you know, like served on nitro, like people think that's cool. Yeah remember have you seen there's there's two separate there's two separate documentaries out on American gladiator.
Speaking of nitro. I've only seen one of them. But nitro got totally jacked on steroids. But you need to make a nit you need to make an American gladiator because that's right in your air time area, right? A little later, I guess it's 90s.
You need to make like a uh like an American gladiator themed cocktail for me. Not that I'm an American gladiator, but so that I can come consume it and pretend that I am nitro. Nitro. Yeah. And the discount code for them too.
Gemini. Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah so nitrous oxide, we're really only using for the what you have uh developed in the first book uh for infusion. Like, you know.
We made we made like the hot pepper texture for a long time. We were doing uh we did we're doing on our original menu, we had like a cacao nib into bourbon that we were nitrous oxidants using. It's great for cacao. Night nitrogen is great for pressurizing kegs. It's also it's inexpensive gas that you can it's inexpensive and relatively insoluble and doesn't affect the flavor.
Frankly pushing we also push wine with it, you know. The problem with nitrogen is that the problem with nitrogen is that the tanks don't hold as much of it as they hold of CO2 or nitrous because nitrogen doesn't liquefy. So unless you have liquid nitrogen and you're using the the the gas takeoff at the low pressure for your nitrogen, which is kind of too low to push because it's like 20 psi or something like this, um you're just you go through the tanks quicker. It's not expensive, but you do go through the tanks quicker. We have uh because we were like we knew we were gonna have this espresso martini on tap of thunderbolt from day one.
We our CO2 company also provided us with a nitrogen generator that pulls nitrogen out of the atmosphere and puts it into a holding tank. So we just pay monthly and we have unlimited nitrogen. Oh, that's that that's money. Those are really those are really common now. And we got a sick deal on it.
We pay 80 bucks a month for it, but now eighty bucks a month, and how much how much does it cost to run? I want that. I mean your cost your electric bill, it runs on just a regular 2010 circuit. It doesn't, it's not using a ton of power. And it removes it.
It removes the oxygen. It removes the oxygen. It's not compressed air. It's not compressed air. It is nitrogen.
How does it remove the oxygen? Do you happen to know how it works to remove the oxygen? No, I don't. I don't. I'll send you send you the link.
They all do it now. Air gas does it. New CO2, which is like the big thing. They have such a wild hair up their butts. They are not the friendliest.
New York City thing. There's two places. They're kind of tyrants and run the world and sort of have a monopoly. But that's who we have at Thunderbolt. We have a different company at night on Earth.
But uh yeah, the all the all the companies out here do these uh generators. It's a big box. You gotta kind of find room to mount it somewhere. And like it has definitely enough, it has enough it it like it pressurizes enough nitrogen. Oh sweet.
I mean it fills up we have a there's a big holding tank. Like it's f it's filling up a almost it's like probably a third the size of my 300-pound bulk CO2 tank. Oh you you have you have curbside CO2 too? Man. Yeah.
There is someone in the lower east side in there who has curbside CO2. Do you love the curbside CO2? It's it's the greatest, it's the greatest thing ever. It's six years in, we've never run out of CO2, we've never had to change a cylinder. I mean how we use a lot of CO2.
What was the ROI on that? Zero zero dollars. What? We yeah, we don't pay we didn't pay an installation. I installed all the lines myself, so I ran all the lines.
But yeah, I mean like I trust did the carbonated water system. But no, but they do like I mean the same company quoted us for 900 99 bucks to install. And that was with them running everything to like a front of your building curbside like port that they plug into. I will say the only time anyone anyone in food services died from CO2, it was because of uh the high pressure line breaking and a liquid transfer situation that I'm aware of. It wasn't asphyxiation.
No. I mean it might have been, but it was as a result of that line breaking. There was a person who died from, but I don't think they were in the I don't think they were in the service side. I think they were in the keg cleaning side. There was some remember how you used to be able to get kegs that were made of uh fiber cut like like carbon fiber.
Yeah. Yeah. One of them blew up when they were changing it. I think that's why you don't see them as much anymore. Kill the guy.
Oof. During the during the cleaning. Brutal. Yeah. Yeah, we have to have CO2 monitors out here now everywhere and better that way.
I mean that makes sense in the walk in. We have one uh because we keep our CO2 down in the basement but yeah I mean I I think the person who was killed when the liquid line went knew about it. You know what I mean? Wasn't the silent killer when this when the liquid line goes um yeah totally. All right let me see here.
Ray says hey everyone me I'm so jealous now man. Son of a gun. All right uh Ray says me and some friends uh for New Year's felt like it would be fun idea to find who has the best bar nuts. Curious to hear what the community here thinks is the best place uh and what are some essentials for a boy nuts. I'm gonna open Ray's question all the way to snack mix all right uh what what are some of the essentials also is their favorite mix of various grocery store snacks that y'all like ideally uh uh if they're at home then not having stale uh stale up super quick is always a plus two vacuum that stuff down in mason jars.
Like get like mason jars, put them in the mason jar, vac the mason jar down. They make lid connectors for mason jars that fit. I I plug it into my commercial vac, but they also fit on punier vacks. They keep stuff real good. Granola, snack mix, uh, wheat.
That's why I have no bugs on any of my wheat. That's why I can have like a hundred pounds of wheat in a regular apartment and and never, never bugs. Um, personally, I like having wasabi pee in the mix like the ones in the in the Chinese and Japanese grocery stores. What are your thoughts? What are people's thoughts on snack mix?
Stas, do you like snack mix or hate it because other people can touch it? Uh you mean at the bar, yeah. I'm not into that that much. If they serve you your own bowl, are you do you trust it? Yeah, that's good.
All right. Yeah, that's better. I was at a bar in DC that I really like called Astoria, and they they serve goldfish as their snack. I was just gonna say that, yes, goldfish. Uh, which goldfish?
Yeah. Pretzel, cheddar, or blasted? Cheddar. Oh, cheddar. Oh, Joe's got some goldfish opinions over here.
I like just plain blue. Celery salt. They make it oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember those. Old school, yeah.
Like Julia Charles used to snack on those on PBS. My favorite snack mix of all time was when the Marriott Grand Marquee in Times Square, back when they used to have a rotating bar. Back when you could drive through Times Square, at on the seventh or eighth floor, they had a bar that overlooked all the taxis and all all the traffic going through Times Square. Mayhem. And it would rotate it, and they had a bald-headed piano guy.
And Jen and I could not afford these cocktails because you know, we had just got out of grad school. We had nothing. And these cocktails were hotel cocktails, so they were super expensive. And I would go get a Manhattan and I would pound their snack mix and listen to the bald headed piano man play stuff. And so like I still to this day remember how much I love that snack mix, but I can't tell you what was in it.
But because we were paying so much for the cocktails, I ate so much snack mix. You know what I mean? I felt like I would eat my weight in snack mix. But I don't know. What do you guys got?
What else you got? What what's the snack mixing up? Like a I like a dive bar uh popcorn chain. Does that count? I don't know.
Like my in LA there's some bunch of the old dive bars have popcorn cheese. It's not a nut. What do you think about giving somebody nuts that gen? What do you think about like what kind of bar do you have to be where you can give someone in shell nuts and then deal with like the detritus? And first of all, you have to be a Texas roadhouse, like in the middle of the country.
Yeah, right? And just peanut shells all over the floor. Peanuts all over the floor. Yeah. It's like that's the that's sort of the motivation after.
Yeah. I like peanuts. You know what I bought? Uh so hickory nuts.com, Ray at Hickory Nuts.com has his new shipment of this year's hickory nuts in. And I bought a bunch of grade B hickory nuts, and they are really, really, really hard to crack.
I have a new cracker, but here's the problem I was thinking about I could bring these into the bar, and like it takes like 10 minutes to crack one. So if you were gonna only eat these hickory nuts, you would die of starvation. Like the way that they used to use them back in the day before they had like fancy nuts, is you just smash them into a pulp and then make a nut milk out of it and strain it. You know what I mean? Because you could not crack these suckers.
Uh but they're like God's pecan. But the point is, is that as I'm cracking, I realized you could never even like even as a joke, I couldn't bring this into the bar and give someone like you know, a pound of nuts and then wait for them for a week to shell them all. Because like little chunks of nut would fly into people's eyes. You know what I mean? And like end up in other people's drinks and stuff like this.
So you couldn't trust people with a hard-shell nut. But I don't think I think a cashew is delicious nut, but it doesn't say bar. Do you feel what I'm saying? A cashew is too soft for for bar, too soft. Delicious.
Too sweet, delicio. Oh yeah? I think they're a little too s I I love them, but I can that's more of like a dessert for me. Yeah. Virginia peanuts are a delicious nut for a bar.
You know what I mean? Pistachios, high end. What about shelling pistachios? What about sitting there popping pistachios? No.
My cuticles and nails hurts thinking about it. Huh. I mean, yeah, it does slow down a lot of work. It slows down your intake. It slows down your intake, I'll say that.
Yeah. So the question is is the function of the nut mixtachios if you're not shelling them, you know? Right, yeah, yeah. You just pound them. Like my question is, is the nut mix there to give your hands something to do because you're bored?
Or is it there because you're hungry? Is it like what is the it depends on what the function of it is, right? Isn't it keep you drinking? Isn't that like as as a bar owner wouldn't you want to do it? You know, if you if you yeah, but it also gives you gives you something to do.
It's the same way that like when I'm at a party, I drink a lot more than when I'm home because like I don't have anything to do and I don't want to talk to the people. Right. So my hand keeps on doing something, and whatever my hand happens to have. It's a fidget. Yeah, it's a fidget.
A fidget drink. I used to know the exact answer to this, but it's because uh it's because like certain pistachios were kind of red, but they would be uh some would come in discolored, and so then to cover it up so that people thought they were all the same, they just dyed them red, red, red. Oh, crazy. But I I it had something to do with like certain Iranian pistachios, and then when California started producing them and they didn't look the same, so they just dyed the hell out of all of them bright red and like my hands were staying when I was a kid. You definitely couldn't do that now.
I think at a bar, people get bent if their hands turned red every time. My son would love it. Yeah? Like some red dye number, whatever. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh I mean, I'm not against food coloring, obviously. All right. All right.
Well, Ray, we can think about this more. All right. BKP twelve. I would love to hear uh discussion of non-alcoholic cocktails for the home enthusiast. Any ideas to replicate the complexity and body of a boozy classic cocktail home, i.e.
Manhattan Negroni old-fashioned, etc. Some of those are easier than others. Uh the carbonator cap and CO2 tank, well, that's not gonna help with a Manhattan or Negroni or an old fashioned for sure. Yeah. Uh if you have any good ideas, um, and then there's uh there's a thing about the Surgeon General, we'll get into that later.
What do you think, Mike? What do you got? Uh yeah, I mean, uh look, this is all this is definitely thanks to you, but we're using things like polydextrose and glycerin uh in our cocktails to really sort of give them more body. I think uh, you know, my favorite sort of like low-tech do-it-home thing is we do like a lichee daiquiri of Thunderbolt, where we just take the whole can of liche, liquid and all, blend it into like a fine puree, run it through a not so fine strainer, and then we add one percent uh by weight glycerin and one percent by weight rum extract, and that becomes like our base, and then we do two and a half ounces of that, three quarter ounces of lime, shake it up, serve it, and it's like a very good, very full-body daiquiri. It's kind of a slower sip.
Yeah, and if you're if you're if you're car if you're carbonating, like I would do what he says, get get some polydextrose and some glycerin so you can lower the sugar level and uh add something that like catches you in the back of the throat, like a tea or some wormwood tincture, something like that, um, when you're carbonating. But just lowering the sugar and adding a bodying agent like glycerin or polydextrose gets you nine-tenths of the way there, I would say. What do you think, Mike Yeah I think so I mean we do I I like things using things like virtue incarbonated stuff things that sort of bring acid and and and flavors you're familiar with and boozy drinks into it but yeah all right uh one more quick cocktail if we can uh Joe uh question for Dave and Mike have you guys played around with using Buchner funnels for filtration at all wondering if they'd work well for speeding up straining milk punches I can't afford a spinzall at the moment so I'm looking for the next best thing I would not use a buchiner funnel just get a milk bag buchner funnels are a pain to clean and they cost too much money I just I just don't see any reason to have one. You like I just don't see any reason to have one. Therefore like filtering precipitates out like you know on filter paper not for like bar I I think they look cool.
They make you look like like science but they what do you what do you what do you think Mike Okay shout out to Austin Henley at Cato who showed me this technique like I love spinz all I'm I I'm a huge spinzel guy I've used them for absolutely everything but I do not use them for milk punches because I have found the vastly superior way is to take a deep Lexan, insert into that Lexan a four inch perforated hotel pan, put inside of that hotel pan a uh linen linen tablecloth or apron and pour your milk punch through that you can do uh I don't know ten quarts at a time that way put a lid on it and stack those four high stacks instead of four high you can just have that running all night it is the clearest the most efficient way to make milk punch in my opinion. Yeah surface hyper hyper fast. Yeah lots of surface area to build a raft. You sort of have to run the first like three minutes worth back through the raft once you built it. But then you can stack those high, have them in the back of the house.
You're not having to hang a milk bag. Uh you're not having to leave like a fly trap out overnight. Everything's covered while it runs. And uh although although you're incredibly efficient. You're triggering memories of back when I used to do free saw clarification, and Nastasi and I had every freezer in the French Culinary Institute filled with hotel pans of grapefruit juice, and then the next day every single fridge in the French culinary institute.
Because we had to do an event for 1,500 people with freestyle grapefruit juice. And I wanted, I wished I was at that point just buy f buy clarified grapefruit juice from a company. I'm gonna give Mike this on the way out. I crunched some numbers, and there are a few liqueurs that make their own blender drinks without adding any uh sugar. You ready for it?
Strego. Two and a quarter Strega, one lime, a hundred and eighty grams of ice, hellfire bitters blend. Much better than you think. Much better than you'd think. Anyway, what do you think about that?
Crazy. Mass. Math. Mike, thanks for coming on. Go see uh a night on earth.
Night night of the comet. That's his third bar, hasn't opened yet. Night on Earth in LA. Happy New Year's cooking issues.
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