Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the Heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center, New York City, Newsstand Studios, joined as usual with John over here. How are you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah.
Got uh Joe Hazen rocking the panels. Hey, how is everyone doing? Full house. Good, good, good. Upper left, Quinn, how you doing?
I'm doing. Yeah, well, better than not doing. Better than not doing. Uh down there in Los Angeles, I think we have Nastasi the Hammer Lopez. How you doing?
I'm good. Yeah, by the way, I don't think we're gonna tell the exact numbers, but Nastasia just got today how much more the tariffs are gonna be on the spinzels when they come in. And spoiler alert, it's a lot. F small business. Am I right, Stas?
Well, we We don't make much, so we're only gonna make like $10 profit on each of them, basically. You know, listen, listen, listen. Before, we were losing $10 on each unit, so. Anyway, uh point being um, nothing that this country hates more than a small business. Am I right?
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, you have a small business.
How's healthcare? All right, anyway, okay. Uh and uh we got Jackie Molecules, also in Los Angeles. How you doing? Yep, doing good.
Sound sound like you're uh owning it there, Jack. I love it. And we have two special guests today, but unfortunately, because Newsstand Studios is quite literally in a whole like a not a hole, more of a scoop in the wall, right? Joe, not a hole in the wall, because that would imply that it was like this is wider than it is deep. Not really a hole.
It's right long. It's 16 by six, sixteen by seven. Yeah. No long and narrow, and yeah, majority of the space is filled with wood uh uh cabinets. Yeah.
The only place narrower than newsstand studios that I go to regularly is Bar Contra. Behind the bar. Not in front, both sides of the bar. Like, you know, anyway. Someone someone shows up, wants to go to a table, we tell everyone with the bar, get out.
No kidding, it's not quite that bad, but it's damn close. Uh so we have two special guests, one of which is not in Newstand Studios, and Stas, you're gonna be mad about this. The boondoggler herself is here, but not in the studio, so she can hear what we're saying, but we can't really bust wise on her because she's outside. I think that was strategic. Oh you were like, you think she like texted everyone ahead of time and didn't have me on the chain and was like, hey, make sure I'm not in the studio so that Dave doesn't just like start going off.
Is that you think it's happened? I imagine, yeah. Well, we can easily solve it by giving her the phone number to call into. She is literally. All right, well, we'll see.
We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. And of course, uh the person that Rebecca brought to the show today, our special chef guest, Sean Gray! How are you doing? Formerly co now of uh Sgt Inn in Sgt.
You only have to remember one piece of information, right? That's it. That's it. Very simple. One.
Well, you have to remember it's an inn. In. They're like, oh, uh Sergeantsville, was it Tavern? Sergeantville. No, no, inn.
All you need to remember is the town where you're going and the inn. And Rebecca, you know, being like Philly, New York, right, is like, oh, it's easy to find. It's a one-street town. So dismissive, a small town America. I know.
What's that all about? Yeah, there's another street that intersects it. See? Could be on that one. Right?
Yeah. Happens not to be, though, right? No, no. No. Now, uh Sgt is uh before we get all into it, Sgt.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Yeah, it's uh three to I don't know, maybe four miles from the Pennsylvania border. And how far north-south, uh like from the water gap area? Um I guess you can't be north. Yeah, pretty far south.
I mean, it's probably twenty-five miles, thirty miles. It's a nice drive. You go up there to hang out. I mean, it's nice over there. Yeah, it's awesome, man.
I mean, to to drive up the river and you know, go for a hike or go for a walk or whatever. It's it's pretty it's pretty awesome up there. Yeah. The Delaware River, by the way, for those of you who don't know, never been to this part of the country. The Delaware River cuts through the area between New Jersey literally between New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
And the Delaware water gap is so named because it's a one of those weird situations where there was a river there after the last ice age retreated, however many thousands of years ago. And after the ice left, the land was like, oh, I don't feel so much pressure anymore. So the land starts to lift up around the river, and the river cuts a hole through it. So it's like literally like instead of like a canyon that's being cut down, it's like almost like sawing through it and the land is being lifted up. And that's the Delaware water gap.
And it's beautiful area, and you can go camping and uh, you know, Dingman's Ferry, all the hole, all that garbage. So it's it's beautiful over there. You ever go to this store in New Jersey, which I've well went into, I think once, because I'm always there when it's closed, the chocolate goat. No. Yeah, it's it's neat.
Look it up. It's pretty close to you. And its whole theory is is that hey, what if a chocolate was in the shape of a goat? Okay. That's what they do.
All right. I'm into that. They got like big goats? Like big goats. Yeah.
Little goats. Okay. Like white chocolate goats. Okay. Milk chocolate goats.
Okay. If you can guess dark chocolate goats. I mean, I've seen the sheep in the shape of or butter in the sh shape of a sheep. Is there a whole store? I think it's a seasonal item.
Sheep shaped butter? Yeah. Yeah. Now let me ask you this. I've never had sheep's milk butter.
I bet it's good. Is it not enough cream to make a good butter? Yeah, I bet it would be like chalky or something. Or it's just too expensive because they make all the sheep milk into cheese. Maybe.
Maybe. I don't know. What's your favorite current butter? One of the best butters I've had that I don't think is obtainable. Oh, okay.
You can give it some unobtainium. All right. Uh and I've been kind of on a quest. Not like actively, but I've thought about going on a quest. Um the butter that comes with the pancakes at McDonald's.
Oh, well, just all you need's a face mask. Very good. Just need a face mask. Break in. Yeah.
You know, it doesn't have to be a loaded weapon. I don't think it melts well, but flavor wise, that that that's pretty pretty top tier. So you're saying they jack it with something. It has to be. I don't it's probably non-dairy.
I don't know. Um what would be my number one butter? You know, always a fan of like all that nice French stuff. Yeah. You know?
Like the barat. Yeah. I don't know how to say it. It's like an L apostrophe. I don't know what the hell I'm thinking.
Oh, okay. Okay. Who likes it? Monsieur Le Franca, Monsieur le Belgique. Um but the uh my current favorite, I think I said this in the air, I can't ever remember what I say, because it's in in one brain, out the other.
There's uh it's not even cultured, but this Beppe Occino who makes some of my favorite Italian cheeses, including testum and like a bunch of like the you know uh soft mixed milk cheeses, he does an uncultured butter that's just so good. I don't know, I don't know what he feeds these cows. I honestly don't, but his butter is so good. That's awesome. Yeah.
Here's what sucks. Uh I was introduced to it by DiPalos, one of my favorite stores, DiPalos. If you're ever in uh uh in New York City and you're like, hey, I want to go get some Italian stuff, go to DiPalos. Anyway, so DiPalos like kind of this happens a million times. DiPalos will popularize something, and then the people who make it would be like, I could sell this to someone bigger, like Italy.
So guess who has the Beppe the Beppeocino butter right now, even though they haven't shipped it to DiPalos in a while. If you guessed Italy, ding, you've guessed correctly. But uh so I don't know I'm disappointed because if there's one thing I know about Italy, I don't love Italy, by the way. I'm not against Italy. What I'm saying is they know how to charge.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're not afraid of it. You know what I mean?
They're not afraid of charging you. Much like my partners at Contra. Not afraid of charging you. You know what I mean? But uh whereas like Louis DiPaolo, Louis Sal, Marie, the whole team over at DiPalos, are like almost actually afraid to charge you the money.
If they look at what something costs and they go, oh, then they they somehow I've seen them sell stuff like at cost just because they can't believe that it's that much money. That's cool. I like that. That's cool. Yeah, I mean, cool for us.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, keeps you coming back. You know, hopefully they're making money on something. I mean, yeah, they are. I mean, they've been in business for a billion dollars.
They also love to they also they also love to gossip. Oh, yeah, yeah, they do, yeah, yeah. They do. And Sal likes to tell the occasional dirty joke. Semi-dirty.
Depends on who's in the room. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. But he's got that old s when Nastasia used to live here.
You you love we would go to DePaul's all the time together. Yeah, no, I don't like that style of like you can we will serve you for 10 minutes, 15 minutes while there's a line of 30 years. Yeah, you shouldn't go. That's the thing. You wait in line an hour, and then when you get there, you get there.
They don't. I mean, like I'm okay with it. It's a lot different now. You know, since the pandemic it's changed. It's not like take a number anymore.
So you wait in a line, and typically, you know, it's now a 45 minute McGill instead of uh uh, you know, an hour and change two hour McGill. But uh I remember once I was there and this lady was like, How much more are you gonna order? I was like, Till I'm done. Till I've finished ordering the things I I have a certain list of things I'm here to buy. Yeah, and I will leave when I'm done purchasing them.
Hey, you waited in line. I waited in line. It's not like here's what I'm not doing. I'm not like because Sean, you would hate these people, right? If if you walked up, oh I don't know.
Sort of that. I'm like, no, I want the testum. Boom. Now I'm waiting for the test him to arrive. I'll then they gotta do their thing, the mushigosh, put it away.
I'm like, okay, I need some tra to tella. Boom. And I'm not like I'm not like, you know. You know, the rate at which I'm getting the things is the maximum rate at which this the crew is willing to output said things. You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So You're not holding them up. No, I'm not holding them up. And plus, since I've been shopping there for like 30 years almost, right? Who who would they rather piss off?
Moron behind me who clearly doesn't know the deal or me. You know what I mean? Jerks. Well, I had one guy, the power move is this. If you ever go.
For those of you that are gonna go, here's the power move. Don't bother shopping around first. You're gonna have a long time waiting. As soon as you tell them to get something, they're gonna walk all the way around the counter, which is about a thousand miles long. They're gonna pick up uh whatever cheese they need.
They're gonna come back, they're gonna look at it. You have to be there for one second to tell them how big a slice you want. They don't even ask me anymore. They just cut it. They know what I want.
That's the time. When they've moved away, that's the time to go get the stuff off the shelf. You don't need to be worried about getting the stuff off the shelf beforehand. Except one knucklehead, I did that, and he was like, yo, you know, he thought I just walked right up to the counter. And he's like, There's a line here.
And I was like, oh. I was like, I I've been here, I've been here for an hour and a half. I was here before you showed up. And he's like, hey, you don't have to get mad about it. I'm like, hey, I didn't start this.
I didn't speak. I didn't speak to you. Like, I I didn't open my mouth. I'm here buying cheese. You said something.
You know what I mean? And I was just like, oh, you know what I mean? I hate people like that so much. You know what I mean? But that's why I need to get out of New York, man.
Yeah, dude. You have to. Because it's like it's like you can't hear my knuckles rubbing together, but this is New York. Anyway. So uh many years at Co.
Oh, we didn't even we gotta shoot the breeze first. We gotta shoot the breeze. All right. Any of you guys have anything from uh anyone last week cooking related? I do.
I went to my first nomakase experience. And it was Ever? Ever. And it was phenomenal. Oh nice.
Um really delicious. One of the best meals I've had in a couple years. You want to call out the restaurant? Sushi Rayuse. I'm probably not pronouncing it right, but I'm 394.
You make up for it with your French pronunciation. Yeah, yeah. Uh all right, so what do you like about it? I just love I don't know, the pacing of everything was great. Just trying all these great delicious fish had my first Japanese firefly squid, which were really delicious.
Um just Oh, well, talk to me about Firefly Squid. I don't think I've had one. Little tiny things. They think they were just like quickly blanch. Are they better than many octopuses who are cute but not really?
I don't know that I've had I don't I haven't had mini octopus. You've had the mini octopus, right? I like the squid. Yeah. Squid is good.
But can we agree that the mini octopus is just a visual thing and that they're not better than full-size octopus? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um but yeah, just a bunch of different cuts of fish that I hadn't had before.
I obviously can't remember the names. It's just like really gross in the moment everything, but it was uh yeah, really delicious. So the square squid were blanched, marinated at all? Rice, no rice? No rice.
Um grated ginger on top, and that was basically it. Just really simple and straightforward, and it was really, yeah. So I'm I'm guessing that these fireflies mini ones are a zero iodine situation. You're not you're not getting like the not getting that some of the bigger squid get. I thought you hate that.
Yeah. Someone brings you a big ring of squid and you're like, it's gonna taste like pea. Yep. I wish I guess you can soak the pea out of them, but then they have no flavor whatsoever. Yeah.
Right? The little ones are great, man. Yeah. Super quick, high heat. Yeah.
That's it. What are your thoughts on thinking of high heat with uh seafood animals? Like my favorite is like super high heat uh razor clams. Yeah. Yeah.
100%. Love those things. 100%. That's how we did. Yeah, always cooked razor clams like that.
Echo is like bowl, oil, right on the plancha for five seconds and then off. Yeah, yeah. You know what I hate about razors though? I hate sand so much. You know, and uh so you know what are you gonna do?
What are you gonna do? I mean, that's like all that's like all that clam business. I mean, the sand the sand, I don't know. Sand makes it so hard. Like in to really you have the only way to know it's absolutely gone is to eat it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And purging razors is a pain. What about with razors? The thing about razors is when you go to buy 'em, they're for those of you that never bought razor clams, what are you doing?
Go out and buy some razor clams. Yeah. Second thing is is that at least when I buy them, they're in a bundle that they're in like a bundle with like two sets of rubber bands around them. And they put the bundle on ice and they're all sticking their foot-ish thing out of one side like a panting dog. And what you need to do is you walk up and you poke it, and if they don't go back in, then they're not going to probably last until the evening when you need to cook them, right?
So you want them to go back in a little bit, but if they if they if they die, you know, right before you're gonna cook 'em, fine. Right? I think so. Yeah. But you want them to be a little bit lively when you pick them up.
Yeah, sure, of course. Yeah. But then the question is getting the sand out and whether or not anything you do is actually effective or whether it's how they were caught and whether they were, you know, what what they do with the I don't really know. I don't really know whether anything I'm doing is effective or not. But they're the sweetest clam.
They are for me. Very good. Yeah, we'd always like peel them out and then just give them like a nice active rinse, you know, and then trim off the belly and then just sear it sear just like, you know, the clam part of it. And then do you s put it back onto the half shell or no? Uh I wouldn't, but people do.
I mean, those shells are also like it's kind of like eating out of a flu fluorescent light tube in a weird way. They'll cut the hell out of you, yeah. Yeah, like um So yeah, I'm a I'm a fan of the shellfish without shell. Yeah. All right.
Okay. So and Stas, I'd like you to weigh in on this too. What about when you get a seafood pasta and it's just a giant pile of freaking shells in the pasta? Stas first, what do you think? Not great.
Right? It's not great. It's somehow it's the sign it's the symbol of I bought fresh shellfish. Instead of trusting the person to have bought fresh shellfish and not have those stinking shells. I mean, look, there is a certain thing about a broth occasionally picking up a clamshell and go and sucking out of the shell, but most of the time they're just in my freaking way.
I agree. I agree with you, Styles. What do you think, Sean? Oh, 100%. Yeah, it's like you can't you can't really put your back into it.
You know, now that there's shells in the way, you gotta kind of like watch your teeth. You know, like I like to, you know, to really knuckle down with a bowl, you know, and if there's all of this inedible material, it's like it's kind of hard. Yeah, it's Kobayashi unfriendly. Yeah, it'd be like whole cinnamon sticks in a salad. Yeah.
If you get linguinian clams though, like the move is just like get all the clams out of the shells and then get to work on the dish. You know, then eat. Yeah, but like front load the work. Um okay. I appreciate, yeah, right.
But you know, you know who could have done that work? The folks in the kitchen. Yeah, like I don't I don't know where I don't work here. Hey, how about this? How about this?
If it and I think it is, if it's a matter of trust, as Billy Joel would say, right? Then why don't you just give me a bowl full of shells? Be like here, here you go. And then and then as soon as like you're done, you dump the bowl in the trash in front of them so they know that you're not reusing the shells. You know what I mean?
If really what it is is they don't trust you to use I mean, first of all, people, I understand this that there are plenty of people who don't eat a lot of like, you know, shellfish, these kinds of things. And maybe they wouldn't know if you gave them a canned or a frozen shelled version. But I mean, like, there's just establish this trust with your with your with your with your folks. You know what I mean? I don't know.
There's gonna be you know who is the opposite of all of us is my stepfather Gerard. My stepfather Gerard, if you could throw a couple of extra shells in for him to suck on and some chicken bones, you're like, hey Gerard, there's not, it's not even a chicken dish. He's like, I don't care. Just throw some chicken bones into it. So he's the opposite.
For everyone, like all of us, there's one fifth. There's one for every five of us, there's one Girard. You know what I mean? Yeah. Uh all right, Jack, what do you got this week?
Anything? Um, I had a great meal at this place called Horses that in LA had some crazy controversy. Uh wait, the horses what? So Horses is the name of the restaurant. Um it was a good restaurant.
Anyway, the the reason I bring it up is sort of related. It's uh it's like a hospitality pet peeve. Uh I I oftentimes like I'll sit at the bar and eat, and I am definitely a dealer's choice kind of guy. I like talking to the bartender and being like, I don't know, man, what's the best stuff here? Like, yes.
And uh I I you know, I do that. He you know, picks a great selection of dishes, and uh he's like, I just have to say thank you. And I'm like, for what? And he goes, You don't know how many times people come to the bar and they're like, What do you like? I'd love to do dealer's choice.
And then I tell them and they go, Well, I think I'll have the burger. Yeah, yeah. All right. You know, it's is it like yeah. It's really weird because like some bartenders get bent when you ask them, and some love it.
I think it really depends on where it's coming from from your perspective as a di where they see the question coming from. If the question is, which is how you would always say it, I coming here to to like experience this restaurant. I am up for anything. Like, what's the best experience of this restaurant? What are you excited about right now?
Anyone worth a spit should be like, I got you. You know what I mean? And then it's a question of whether you take their advice or not. You know what I mean? Whereas, you know, whatever.
I think there's also there's trust the other way. A lot of times, the server, the bartender, is not gonna trust a guest either. Right. So, like, you know, they're like, oh, this person's a chode, which is I believe a family friendly word. I believe we're okay with it.
We'll we'll find out. Uh so I'm gonna, you know, yeah, a bunch of toads made the children that live there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So gross. So gross.
Uh so like, you know, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna give these uh this this moron the most basic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or what everyone's afraid of, I'm just gonna jack them with the most expensive thing on the menu because looks like a finance bro. But I don't think that's how the majority of servers trust. Yeah. Trust.
Trust, man. Yeah. Uh what about you, Quinny Quinn? What do you got? I got a lot of things because I wasn't uh here last week.
So I had a bit of an interesting week. But last Monday, my local truffle connect is like, hey, I've got a bunch of truffles you've been waiting for. I'm like, eh, screw it. Um, so we got those last Wednesday, and we've been cooking with them all week, made some pretty good dishes. Well, hold up.
Before we go any further, before we go further, when you say local truffle connect, do you mean a person who is local to you but gets truffles from Europe? Or do you mean someone who's sourcing like West Coast temperate rainforest style truffles? So this is Yeah, this is on the on the mainland. So not like hyper local, but pretty close. And it is both the black uh Pacific Northwest type that's associated with like Oregon, and then there's also cultivated Italian white truffles.
Now, how are the cultivated uh Italian white truffles? Really good. I mean, I think you know, because they're way fresher than like any imported truffle would probably be. Well, I don't know about any. It's all a matter of money, Quinn.
Well, you put the thing on a plane. Yeah, okay. Fair. Uh now, but here's the thing like I'd be uh this is like the what I'm hearing from you definitely worth buying, right? So that's the first thing.
Is it worth buying at all? What about the what about the Oregon black? Sometimes with uh I I've did a little bit of work with the Oregon ones uh when I went out when uh Judy and Wu uh brought brought us out there to do, and I think we even had them on the radio show years ago, back when I was gonna train my dog to be a truffle dog, which by the way, he was good at. Really? Oh, yeah, so good.
You know how you train them? He I have a book I can email to the Patreon. Uh I somewhere I gotta find it. But I have a book on how to train your dog to do truffles because then his name's out of my head, but the the truffle expert from Oregon who we were going out to visit, he's like, There's truffles everywhere. It's just a question of whether they taste good, but they're everywhere, and you can train dogs to to to get 'em.
And because remember these this this whole they're uh they're not Basidiomyces, they're uh Ascomyces or and then they live underground and they make that stink so that they can get found and then spread around, right? So what you do is is you get I mean, if you can get high grade stuff or real, it's even better, but you just buy BS truffle oil and you like condition the dog to like he's like boop, and then you put it down, you choose a command for searching, and then when they go to it, because the smell is intense, you give them a treat. And then you go further and you go further and you're further. So I got to the point where I could go into a two-acre field, take a Q-tip with a little bit of truffle oil on it, put the Q-tip anywhere in the field, bring the dog back to the field, tell him to go, and he would go right to it. No way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, we I don't know what's under the ground there. So I can't train to what it was Connecticut. I I couldn't train to what was there in Connecticut. But you could anyone who's listening who knows that there are some sort of truffloid, it's not complicated.
As long as your dog has a good nose, it's not complicated to train a dog to look for truffles. Crazy. So anyway, so what I'm hearing from you is that it's worthwhile, which I like, Quinn. But uh what I've always wanted to do, and I've never done it is like, so um I've said this in the air a million times, but I'll say it again because you know, we've been on the show a million years, so I can say it again. So I used to get fresh uh sea urchin out of the water in Maine, right?
And it was a real rocky area, and so they were real good. You know what I mean? As long as they weren't literally feeding on the body of a dead seal, which I have seen. Like, we're like, oh my god, look at all those urchins. Why is it in that ship?
Oh we didn't get those, right? But like, you know, if you're getting them, you know, you know, below, you know, they're out always obviously below high tide, but you go down on the rocks, you get them, straight out of the water, you know, take a pair of scissors, clack, clack, clack, bat, bap, bap, spoon it, eat it, bam, delicious. Candy of the ocean, right? Now, the ones that I get from California are delicious, right? But I'm like, the main ones are just as good.
But I'm like, how do I know? How the hell do I know? Because to Quinn's point, the ones from California have been dredged up, handled by 20 people, put on an airplane, sent over, given to the supplier, and then I get it. You know what I mean? Or even like more, like actually taken out of the shell and like put on those trays and like overwrapped and all that and sent to me.
So if those ones are that good after all of that, you know, hate to say it, abuse, and I've never really no one does anyone go buy East Coast uni if they ha if they could get the West Coast one. So if I I've always wanted to just rip two out of the water, fly into the middle of the country, meet halfway, and do it, like do a an same time test. You know what I mean? To see who's whose eggs reign supreme, whose gonads. They're not really who's whose gonad sacks rain supreme.
I like the Pepsi Challenge, it's good. Yeah, yeah, but I can't do it. And so we would want to do the same thing with Quinn, right? Is take like this uh, you know, Canadian uh cultivated white Italian truffle, and then like get up, get a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic, boop boop boop, get them, fly helicopter onto we it'd be happy, Nathan Mirvolt yacht. Like, like helicopter onto it, you know, I sift through the patent trolling and then taste them right there.
That's the midway point. But anyway, I don't know. Good point. So uh, but you so you like the uh the white a lot better than the uh Oregon black. Oregon blacks sometimes they lose a lot as soon as you heat them, right?
So they they have a really good aroma, but the aroma changes a lot with like so, for instance, if if you uncap them, like a lot of the really interesting aromas kind of fly away, and so, like, even just shaved, if they're not contained, you you almost want to do like Miso soup bowl situation where like you bring it to someone and like lift it and let them smell it because like some of that stuff's so fugitive. But how did you find it? Yeah, I mean, I thought it was I I did I actually found yeah, the black truffle a little milder. And again, a lot of the time we were doing like a little a little combo of each. And I thought the combo was was very good as well.
I felt like the black was like a little more of a sort of not basic, but like an earthy mushroom y, like base note, and then the white truffle with like a little more high aromatic, you know, aroma. When you said combo, I was thinking of cheese filled combos, combos really cheeses your hunger away, which is you know, when they invented those when I was a kid, I was like, they put cheese in a pretzel? Crazy. And my grandma was like, That's not really cheese. I'm like, okay.
You know what I mean? But they're good though. I mean, they're not pretzels or cheese, really. They are cheese-filled combos. Do you like them?
Yeah, of course. I'm Team Combo. Yeah. The what is it, the pizza flavor? That one?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not sure what makes it pizza flavor, but it's it's the dust. Oh, the pizza dust. That's that dust that they put all over it. I you know, Wiley was at my house.
What day of the week is it? He was at my house and he and he was like, I was doing grilled cheeses again because my uh nephew Orson, the like one of the only things he likes is grilled cheese. So he doesn't actually usually eat in my house when he comes over because they make him food for it, but he likes grilled cheese. So it was his birthday, so I, you know, I did grilled cheese. But I, of course, they did a million different grilled cheeses.
So I was gonna do like quote quote unquote Italian one, and Wiley's like, You didn't put Italian spice on it? I'm like, no. I thought he's like, he's like, do you got oregano? I was like, I got this fancy Indio oregano from uh Rancho Gordo. He's like, okay, fine.
I he's like, you got dried basil? Like, yeah, he's like, You got dried garlic? I'm like, No, I don't have garlic powder. Well no. And he's like, You need garlic powder.
I'm like, uh I've got granulated garlic, 'cause I had done some everything bagel. He's like, mm. So I put that in and then he's like, Do you have dried parsley? I'm like, No, I don't have dried parsley. He's like, Well then, sorry.
Yeah, you fail. No love. No love. He's very uh bop bop bop, you know? Yeah, it's good.
Yeah, I guess. I guess because he has a pizza journal. I'm sure he knows how they make pizza dust. Yeah. I always have dried oregano and dry parsley on hand.
Really? Yeah, not like here, but yeah, huge huge on it. Yeah? Yeah. Have you tried the Rancho Gordo uh India or the oregano Indio?
I've seen it on the website. It's pretty good. Yeah. I mean it's pretty cool. It's different.
Yeah. It's not the same as the have you ever tried the I don't have it. I I don't keep a lot of dried leaves around other than bay. But I'm not saying I hate on them. I just don't keep them around.
We make 'em. Like uh for me in the restaurant, like I've always almost always preferred the use of dried herb to fresh herb. Really? As insane as that might be to say. Like we would take, you know, nice herbs and then just lay 'em up in a X caliber with the the door off for a few hours so it can vent the steam.
Uhhuh. And then let them go overnight and they stay, you know, like like this green, like super super green, and then just pass it through a sieve and then use that a dried herb for everything. Hmm. And so what is it you don't like uh you don't like the biting greenness, or do you not like when they get mutilated and they're not cut accurately and you get mad and you look at it and you're like, Oh my god. Yeah, both.
Like uh uh like fresh herbs go bad. Yeah. You know, they they don't get handled well, potentially. Um, I like to use the c a combo of the two, you know, like some fresh, some dry, so you have like layers of how much do you love when the herbs come and they look like they used the back of the knife to cut them? I love it.
I love it. Yeah. Yeah, just half out of the back of the back. Yeah, it's good. Yeah you know, it's nice, like a little mulching action.
Yeah. You know. Yeah, you know. Yeah. It's like remember they used to sell those quote unquote herb choppers, which are literally just like, oh, those are funny.
But no, I meant they used to have ones that like look almost like a little like a jack in the box. And and it's got like these, it's almost like an ice crusher for herbs. They don't do squat. It's just doesn't, it's just not an effective way of doing anything other than making yourself angry. Although I I I was having an argument.
So I'm old enough, I don't know whether I don't remember when it happened, but there was a a garlic press backlash. So in the early 90s, everyone was like, yo, go buy a garlic press. Like in like 89 through like 97, everyone was like, you know what you need to go? You need to go buy a garlic press. Okay.
Yeah. Sean's making the ham motion. Yeah, but like not the not the crappy sheet metal one that bends and makes you angry. Xyless, I think, made a cast one that was like either zinc or aluminum or whatever, but it's ca I think it was zinc. Anyway, cast.
And it was like a little truck. It was like a Leno, it was like this, you know, little little thing. And you go, poof, and you s put the garlic in, and the shoe comes down and bamboo, right out, and it comes. And then all of a sudden, everyone's like, they're they're for idiots. It makes you a bad cook.
You're a bad person. And like, I was like, what? I can't use the garlic press anymore. Like, and at the time I was so young still that I was like, I don't want the way people feel about me if they see me use a garlic press. You know what I mean?
And so, like, I don't even have one anymore. But I hate chopping garlic. I like viciously hate it. And remember Ann Burrell used to go on Iron Chef with, you know, Mark Ladner and be like, you don't need anything. You can just use the knife and whackity backity brackety, and like, you know, like, look how look how fine of a m but I hate doing it.
I hate how sticky it is. I did test it, right? Wiley comes over, I'm having this conversation with him on Sunday. He's like, he's like, why don't you just use a microplane? He's like, because I'm not gonna sit here with a microplane and microplane freaking 10 cloves of garlic.
I'm just not gonna do it. You know what I mean? Why can't I have my old and I bought this weird one, speaking of rockers, which put in my head. They now make one that looks like a sieve, but it's stiffer, and you're supposed to rock it back and forth to do the same thing that my 1990s Xylus garlic Xylas garlic press did, but in a way that somehow doesn't make me feel like I'm a jerk in the kitchen. You know what I mean?
So I'm gonna go back and buy one of those things because to hell with it. I can crush my garlic any damn way I choose. And it and that's it. Sorry. But that's how I feel about it.
Does anyone else remember when you were told you shouldn't use those things? I remember my parents having one. Yeah, and then they disappeared because there was a cool kids don't use it situation. Yeah. Those cool kids are probably all dead now.
Oh, easy. Yeah. So smelling like garlic. Yeah, they're dead. I'll tell you something else.
Like, if they're not dead, they're culinarily dead. They're not influencers anymore. I bet you you could show an influencer one of these things, and they'd be like, oh my god. They take a picture of themselves with it, and that's it. Eight million views.
They're gonna come back. Xyla should pay us. Put cherry tomatoes through it after? Well, you know what the thing about is is that uh as everyone knows, the skins don't go through those things. So there's always that little s not the paper.
I don't want to hear anything from people being like, paper, you can't take the paper and I'm talking about the paper. I'm talking about there is a skin on the outside of the garlic that always ends up in the thing. All right, all right, yeah. I feel there's a whole bunch of people that can't have garlic. Sorry for you folks.
Garlic is delicious. You know who doesn't love a lot of garlic? My wife. I moderate my garlic, so I go ape crap on my onions. Cooked onions.
Nice. Ape crap. And I've said this a million times, I'll say it again. If the only reason you own the induction freak, uh whatever it's called, control freak induction, or if like one of those old temperature controlled uh I use uh like the old uh oil-filled or water-filled, like uh uh wearing, or not wearing uh I forget the name of it, but they're like these like super, they're almost like you know the accu steam griddles. They're like that for home.
They're pretty accurate at the low end. If you only own that to do onions so that you can just walk away from your onions and let them go for an hour or two, it's been worth it. Yeah. It's been worth it. Yeah, because I do my one of my grilled cheese is Gruyere.
Classic combo. Onions. Yeah. Born, born together. Yeah.
Uh all right. All right. Uh so uh Snoz, you didn't uh weigh in on any uh any food-related uh garbage from the week. You got anything? Um, I would say to John for the almakase stuff, um, there's this amazing omakase on LaGuardia north of Houston.
And it's like nine eighty-five dollars, ninety-five dollars, and it's incredible. And nobody knows about it. Amazing. Thank you, Nastasia. Looking that up right now.
You know what's nice? Nastasia being very generous now that she doesn't care if that's space gets blowed up. I'm just messing with you, that's like I don't live in New York anymore. Ruin it. That's like uh that's like uh there is a place in the I think they're still open, but there is a sushi place that like all of the you know students who didn't have any money used to go to on Thompson, Thompson or Sullivan called Tomoe.
And it was no reservation, like decent quality, cheap, and there would always be a line out the door. So anytime someone mentioned Tamoe and was gonna make the line longer, you're gonna do it. Yeah, shut up. Shut up. Yeah.
You're you're a Tamoe fan? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. See what I mean?
And so I I'm talking like this was I I went like in the 90s. You know what I mean? So it's been around like a like I think a long time, but anytime someone mentioned it, z That's cool. Yeah. I like that.
Yeah. On the other hand, I mean, they didn't need the business. They're slammed. You know what I mean? Like it is a little mean to love a place that's not slammed and then not talk about it so they don't get slammed.
Cause I don't know if you know this, the business wants to be slammed. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Uh that's best case scenario.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's hard to maintain though when you get slammed. Anyway, all right.
So did I do anything in cooking? Oh, well, I talked about it. I did the uh who's my favorite? Who's your favorite fake broth? Uh like what do you mean?
Like in the uh refrigerated aisle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um is Pacific Foods an answer? They make a good one? I think so.
I usually go vegetable, you know. Um I usually go with vegetable broth. Yeah? Yeah. Just to keep it just to give me a little base layer, you know, if I'm cooking something at home, which usually almost never requires broth.
I've been using this better than bullion, their fake beef for like soups and like I don't like their fake beef better than their fake chicken. I also have their fake their veg. It's not fake veg, it's real veg. It would be amazing if it was fake veg. Actually meat, vegetable broth.
Just wait, it'll happen. It'll happen. Like it tastes just like vegetables. Just like vegetables. 100% beef.
All dead, dead animals. You know what I mean? That'll be that'd be amazing, wouldn't it? Anyway. All right.
So uh all right. So there's a question here. Some of these questions I think you would have something to well we'll we'll talk about this. So talk to me about Sargent's Village, your current place. So for those of you don't for the for the people who don't know, Co.
for how many millions of years were you at Co. All lot of them. Um people say 15 years. Okay. Uh and for those of the don't know, Co.
is like co is was the tasting menu portion of the uh the Momofuku Empire here. And by the way, I'm sure where you know Rebecca, the boondoggler from because you know, everyone was part of the evil empire at one point or not. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so yeah.
So Co. was so for those quick quick history. So Chang opens uh noodle bar. No one knew it was gonna be a huge success, huge success. Open Psalm.
Psalm was supposed to be a uh was supposed to be a fast casual, open Sam, Bosam burrito smash up, and then that didn't work, so he was like to hell with it. So he made a chef's menu, then that place, you know, became like the darling of like the I don't even know what you call that level of eating. I don't know. Yeah. Um new but it's like Bistro style atmosphere, Chang food.
Right? Or I don't know how to describe it. It's not like, you know, I know that they got three stars from the New York Times, but it wasn't that vibe. It was more like whatever. Anyway.
And then Co. was meant to be the Michelin Star machine tasting menu, like full on, you know, let's see what you've got. Yeah. Kind of a restaurant. Would you say it's accurate?
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Very like um I know it wasn't meant to be the idea was that it was not going to be exclusive. You know?
Okay. Right. Uh but yeah, I mean it, you know, it's I think where it were from where it started, it was uh so fair price was a fair reservation system. Like there was no love. Like no love given to anyone.
You know, and um this is pre, you know, any booking like app type like people used to come in with, you know, like their like Netscape email printout of like their reservation confirmation and you know, hand it to whoever's working the station. Yeah, like uh okay. Well, that's why I never went. And part of the uh I just went for Friends and Family, it's the only time I ever went. So part of the uh Yeah, I mean, I think there was a a part of that whole crew though that like lerved that.
You know what I mean? It's not that they they wanted it to be fair and somehow in some bizarre way egalitarian, even at that level. But on the other hand, they were also like, no, they're not gonna do a bar. You know what I mean? You know what I mean?
Or no? Am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. Yeah. And uh so it turns out also what from while you were at Co.
Uh, my current head bartender, uh, Theo. My favorite. Yeah. And so like, I'm like, yo, what should I ask Sean about? And he's like, I don't know.
Like uh, I have a lot of things, but he might not want to talk about them, but not in a bad way. Yeah, like, I don't know. But I've been told before we get into it, like, give me a shot clock. We gotta talk about your current restaurant. But I got into a huge argument at the bar with him last night.
Okay. Because he was like, yo, Sean's cold fried chicken is delicious. I'm like, it may be. I was like, but I'm sure that Sean's hot fried chicken. This might be the best that a cold-fried chicken can be, but I'm sure that his hot fried chicken is even better than it is when it is cold.
Yeah. It's and it's been a taken a very hilarious amount of time to get to that point. And uh I had a friend come out last week that had probably had the cold fried chicken at the bar like a thousand times, you know, and and he here he he comes out to Surgeonsville and has it, you know, hot, and he's just like, I cannot believe it's been it could have been this all of those times. He was kind of like he's very upset, you know. Um I'm like, yeah, it's way easier to make, too.
I'm like, Yeah. Like way easier. All right, so you gotta tell are you allowed to tell us what the old cause like I was like, yo, Theo, how many times do you he's like, we've fried it five times. I'm like, oh my god. Yeah, it's like crazy.
So are you willing to talk about it? Right. So what's the what's the because I'm a fried chicken person. Uh so other than what like like out in the wild, what's your favorite kind of fried chicken? Wow.
Um In the Wild. You know what I always loved was the that kind of like um like chain restaurant, like flake they get, like at like a you know, like a Fridays or um Right, because they're using the same batter dip, probably. They're probably doing it and then freezing it, Cisco style, but they're all sourcing a battery. Yeah, but there's all that like kind of like shake on it, you know, where um like I love I love that effect of fried chicken, like almost like cornflake in a in a weird. Yeah, I know I know what you mean.
Because it's like got like little blebs in the in the in the dip and they go in already. I mean this the one that we're doing, it's like you know, that batter style. So it's super super thin. So like wet on wet, wet on dry? So the first fry is just dry.
Well chicken arrives. Chicken's in the building. All right, chickens in the building. First of all, how are you getting you getting it pre-broken, you're breaking it? Uh generally we'll get legs and then split them.
Because I told you okay. So I told you oh, the kind of legs with the back attached, so it's like two legs. Hopefully not. Okay, okay. So uh I had someone I was talking to because I was asking them how Willie Mays, because Willie May's Scotch House makes great chicken.
It's maybe not the style of chicken that you know everybody loves, but it is consistently good chicken. And they are wet on wet. And to me, like in other words, right out of the you know, what right out of like wet, not dry, not to into a wet batter, into the fryer. So I'm sure their fry oil lasts forever because they're not contaminating with like a lot of like sinking flour. But uh, I don't know if that's why they do it, or just the way they've always done it, but I can't figure out how because to me, whenever I've tried wet on wet systems, it's a a crapshoot about adhesion.
You know what I mean? Like either it's too thick and goopy. And they just fry it once? Yep. Or you eat it right away when it's piping hot.
Okay. Yeah. And so his theory, the guy I was talking to, because Willie Mays won't tell you. There are some people who have videotaped them online. So in fact, you can see that they're doing wet on wet.
It's just they won't tell you any of the actual information, right? But you can see that this is what's actually happening. Okay. But it's American style, not Japanese, not double fried, not blah, blah, blah. So um his theory was is that they're using the protein drip.
So they're buying the stuff pre-busted. And his theory is they're using the protein drip from the meat in the s in the cart, you know. So for those of you who don't know, chicken comes usually in that weird brown or white, sometimes cut like waxy cardboard in a bag in a thing. He says they just take it out of the bag and dump it in with the brine, and the protein drip is what's giving them the adhesion. I don't know why that sounds so scary.
It does, but I don't know if that's true or not, but that's his theory. So anyway, okay, so chicken's in the building. Let's just talk about the legs for now. So you got the legs, it's two legs are pointing in the opposite direction, or they're separate, the back's already been whopped out of them. Yeah, the back's gone.
All right. Uh I like to call those the pants, the chicken pants. Yeah. So yeah, the the chickens in, you know, it's here, get split. Um.
So I make a brine that has uh water, salt, soy. And um we used to buy this creamy koji product, which is made and sold through New York Mutual. And I have not found it anywhere outside of New York Mutual. They don't carry anymore. They don't deliver to you.
They don't del they they deliver I gotta set up the account. And like am I really gonna set up an account? They're also the ones that carry the Ashiri and the and I think the IU fish sauce, right? They have ever all the cool stuff. Yeah.
Anyway. So um so what we're doing, what I'm doing now is making m my own like creamy koji. But all of that goes in the brine. You know, so it's kind of this like I'm sure Theo can easily give you that recipe if he hasn't already. Um so that that lives overnight.
And then so it's interesting what you're saying about the wet versus dry and this kind of stuff. So we used to brine it and then would take it out, dry it, like lay it up then for another like ten hours, whatever. Right to tack up. Yeah. So I I'm out of that game now.
What now I'm kind of using like it's like a much faster system. So I think to just to see what you think of this, so I'm thinking that like because I do the tack up, right? But what I'm doing is uh uh single fry. I think as soon as you're gonna multiply fry the tack up's not as important as long as you get decent adhesion from the get. Right.
Right? Right so it was always told that that was an adhesion trick, but I think it's actually more of a crispiness trick because you're getting some of the moisture off of the top of the skin before you fry. And I was doing I do brine, by the way, how salty, would you say your brine is like ocean comparative, more or less. Way less. Okay.
So like almost like just a light a light brine. All right. Yeah. Okay. And you don't no no acid or any of that, right?
So it doesn't make the meat mushy. Uh no. No. I don't like mushing. No.
Yeah, no, no. So uh so I would do brine, uh you know, tack dry, you know, dry off on a on a rack. Uh dry, wet, dry. Okay. Dry, wet, dry, fry, which is kind of an old you know, old man's way to do it, but you can tell old man.
So uh all right. So now you stop doing it because with whatever technique you're about to tell me now, unnecessary the the the drying it down, getting the outside tacky. Yeah, so like in uh you know, so we used to fry this so many times and it was kind of like, you know, we're kind we were kind of like banking that by the time that final fry is hit, the chicken is now cooked. Right. Um like uh but so you weren't doing it for the skin, you're just like doing it the same way that like uh like in tandor, in out, in out, in out so that the outside and the inside get done at the same time?
Okay. Um so what I mean, what I'm doing now is now I'm cooking the chicken like in a bag. Um I love cooking the bag because then you don't have to freaking worry about it. Exactly. It's done.
Don't tell Theo that we do that now. Do you do you flash it hot out of the bag? I used to flash it hot, so I would cut it out of the bag hot and then let it flash so that I would get good adhesion. Oh, that's a really good idea. Yeah, because a lot of people who a lot of people who claim about adhesion problems when they do bags, a lot of people told me, yeah, I was like flash if you're if you're having adhesion problems.
But if you're not yeah, I'm not I mean that's a that's uh that's a uh it's a great idea. Yeah. Because yeah, well, then you when you take it out and and now you have like now you're like sifting through chicken stock that's like you know, trash chicken stock. Yeah. It's like purple.
It's hard to use and yeah. So is there a way to make that stuff workable? I've dude, I've tried and like I was maybe I'm sure you could put it into like a stock pot situation with like a whole lot of other water and probably fresh meat. Yeah but it's like you know, you're basically at least in the brine, it's like now you're you're trying to make a sauce that has like a lot of salt in it. Right.
Has a lot of like shit you wouldn't want or things you wouldn't want getting pulled out, you know, coming out of the animal. You know, I like I when I reduce it, it just looks like pond scum. And it's c and it's then like this weird clear kind of color. I'm like, oh that's kind of gross. I wonder whether it could be used to reinforce like the base of a different stock you were making.
Right. Like just use the jelly. Yeah, if it was gonna go right, like you know, if you were gonna do something else and so you didn't have to look at it, you know what I mean? If you were gonna do a clarification later, or if it was gonna be in a cream sauce or some crap, I don't know. But it is a perennial question, is you have this stuff, you know.
Yeah, it's it's it's a little bit. I bet you could combine it with like a bunch of salt and koji and let it like just break down. Into what? Just like sort of not a garum, but like a savory koji. I don't know, man.
Now you're now you're beyond the stuff that I do. I don't know. I don't know. Get rich. Ask Rich.
Put the question into Rich. See what he says. All right. So you have the chicken, you cook it. What's your uh do you do uh a different temp leg?
Or you only do leg. So uh w what what do you do? Like sixty-five? Uh yeah, I forget what it comes out to be, maybe sixty-eight, like a little bit hotter. Yeah.
Um for less time. Yeah, it's one hour. Yeah, okay. Yeah, okay, great. All right.
Just taking the chill off. And the bones in or the bones out? In. Okay. So at 68, let's say it's 68.
At 68, you don't have persistent pink on the bone because it's fast enough that the pink goes away. Ding ding. Because that's what people hate. Yep. With low low temp chicken, I always do boneless, so it doesn't matter to me.
Yeah. You know what I mean? I'm not going to get persistent painting. Yeah. Which sounds like a good band, but it's bad with chicken.
You know what I mean? Yeah. So that was the goal. It was like, all right, how can we how to get away from this like visual? You know, and it's one thing when you're like a restaurant in the city and people are coming in and they're like, they're like, oh, this is like quality chicken.
I'm sure it's fine, you know, but it's different. You know, it's like, okay, we need to like really ensure that this is like pretty bulletproof. Um so from cold, the first fry is just dry. And that's a mix of uh well, now it's a mix of flour and cornstarch. Okay.
So it's flour cornstarch, I'm sure of some seasoning crap, which we don't need to do. Nothing? Nothing. So just the seasonings from the brine only. Yep.
And it's not dried off, so there's it's still some moisture. Yeah. And so you get good adhesion of just its fundamental flour coat into the first fry. Yeah. Okay.
And then is the first fry like super fast flash, or is that one of the s slower, longer fries? They're all pretty quick. You know, they're all, I would say. We used to do it with like a rondo on the stove. So to hell with that.
Yeah, I know. Oh my God. Yeah. Um so the first fry is a little bit of a lower temp, you know, and it's it's quick. It's like two and a half to three minutes.
Just to like lock it in, you know, just to like set it up, get it out, get it on a rack, and just let it chill. And you're but where your fryer is, where's your fryer set? If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to tell me, where's your fryer set? What temp? Yeah.
Uh three I would say three thirty is probably. All right. So like so, like fairly low, like where you would do to traditionally fry something for a long time. Yeah. Okay.
Okay, go ahead. All right. Um so that's that. I mean, and then you know I would go through and kind of do everything on the first stage, you know, and then start and then you make that battery. You know, we kinda had a system set up where we would it would be the the batter would be broken down to the ratios of um like a beer, like a can of beer.
Yeah, yeah. That's the way to do it. You know, so it it was like you know, it's like comes in a can, you write the recipe for cans. Yeah. Yeah.
So that that was that. I mean, you know, make this batter and it's super simple. It was a beer can batter. It was beer battery? There's beer, vodka, um, flour, and cornstarch.
We used to do rice flour for crunch? Back in the day. Just because I don't know, it was like, yeah, let's do like X percent rice, this percent corn, this percent that. It was like both corn and rice, like, unless you keep mixing them up, they fall. So we had a solution for that too.
So that the the, you know, so then you have like your pint that's like already, it would just tear it up. Yeah, yeah. And then you just mix the one X batch, it's enough to do the 24 pieces you have in front of you. And then on the second fry, you'd get a new mixing bowl and just do it again. That way it's you know, always the same.
Do the beer have to be cold or you don't care? Yeah. So the theory I have on and you know uh you didn't add any sort of baking powder or baking soda? Nope. Okay.
Because the theory on that I've heard from the same guy I was talking to about uh Willie Mays, is that you have to add that because if if there's not air bubbles being formed in the thicker batters, then the bubbles will form between the skin and the batter and blow them off. So if you create kind of a porosity, you can stop blow off. That's what he said. That's and that's why a lot of times they'll want to keep the batters cold so that you're not functionaling, functionalizing or whatever the non stupid word is for making the the thing start giving off gas before you want it to. Interesting.
I mean, not necessarily, because I think some people say it's a glue thing. Anyway, it doesn't matter. So uh okay, so so you do it, so it comes out, how long does it have to sit? Does it have to get cold off the first fry or is it just a couple minutes? It doesn't have to, but it helps.
You know, if it's if it's hot and then you're going into the batter hot. I definitely notice a bit of a difference. The first flour fry, when you're looking at it, it's like I don't know, it's like, is there any flour on there still? You know, but but it's like there is. And it's more quote unquote sticky.
Yeah. And then that's that first fry that's wet. Um by the way, the batter we're talking about like crepe like front. It's thin. Thinner than crepe, if nothing thinner than crepe batter.
Uh I haven't made crepes in a while. Uh what's something people would know for thickness? If there was like a uh like not heavy cream, not half and half. If there was something that was like uh like a like a 2x whole milk, that's like where we would be. Like, what is 80% whole milk if that if they make that somewhere?
Real thin. Yeah. Okay. Um and that first, you know, wet batter, everything just explodes off the piece. And you know, and again, you pull it up and you're like, man, there's only like it's like just a very little bit of batter on here.
You know, but when you get to that second one, you're like, oh, but it looks like the picture. And then the third one is like, wow, this is pretty awesome. And it's the same battery each time. Yeah. Huh.
Yeah. And how many do you do? How many do you do pre-shift and how many do you do service? What's the pickup? The pickup.
Oh, because it's cold. Ah! Yeah. But when you're when you're doing it hot, like for real. The hot one's easy.
It's it's just like, hey, drop it back in for two minutes. That's it. All right. Uh but when we did it cold, it was kind of wild because we would glaze it and uh wait. When's the glaze happen?
Well, and the cold one, you would finish the last stage of frying and then let this thing rest until it's at least room temperature or below. Me personally, everyone everyone that's worked at this restaurant has the best way to do this, of course. Yeah, Theo says he has his own way. His is very hit he's up there. Like he's got a his is better than mine.
Theo's like, uh I only have to fry it three days. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. He's got some.
He doesn't talk like that. He sound doesn't sound like a criminal. Anyway. So uh for me, like I would glaze it when it's at that room temperature and then straight in the fridge. The the the thing that we figured out was the it doesn't matter what temperature it is, the gla I think it's the glaze has to be hotter than the chicken is.
And as long as the as long as the what you're putting on top of the thing is hotter than what's under it, when you put it in the fridge, the hotter thing is gonna evaporate first. Huh. If that makes sense. I mean, I understand what you're saying, but I have to taste the difference to see what's going on. I was not a believer, and this uh this other kid that worked with us, he's like, hey, I've been working on this a lot.
I want you to see this. It's like I think it's better. And he's telling me this process, I'm like, dude, you're crazy. And it was like, we, you know, we had the chicken on the tray. It's not glazed yet.
It's dead cold. Like it's been in the fridge now for six hours. He's got the combi oven going in the back at like Mach 3. You know, it's like six I'm like, it's 620 degrees. I'm like And he and he puts this chicken in for 30 seconds.
30 seconds, pulls it out. The glaze is there in, you know, uh Baemarie, whatever, and it's like dip, dip, dip dip. To me, this makes sense because you're not no moisture is migrating from the chicken. Right. It's just moisture flashing off from the hot section of the where the skin is that is already low moisture, so it's flashing sh crap off the glaze.
So he's like dips in I mean, it's like two of us like, oh, oh, oh, like real quick. And this chicken is like, you know, 600 odd degrees. And then it's back in this combi for another 30 seconds. Just a flash. And I'm like, and then it's like the timer goes off, it's like get out of the way.
And it's like right back in the fridge. And you put the tray in the fridge and it's like all the steam is coming off, you know? Destroying everything else in the fridge. Five minutes later, you're like, wow, this is like this is insane. And it's super crispy, completely caramelized, dead cold.
Well, I have to say, if we've said nothing else this episode, I don't think we've ever had this in-depth. I think people some people are gonna go out and try this. Some points that we haven't given out, and it's not possible. The thinness of the batter that you use is gonna be very dependent on your ratio of flour to starch because it doesn't take that much liquid to make a very thin batter with starch or uh you know, with any form of starch versus flour. So a lot's gonna depend on that.
So you guys are gonna have to experiment and get back to us. People have to learn some stuff for themselves a little bit. Yeah, trial and error, man. Oh man, we only have two minutes. So talk to me about so what's it like cooking in a inn from the 1700s?
It's awesome. It's awesome. The people are great, space is great. You know, it's like you look out the window and there's tractors driving by, stuff like that. Yeah, it's not.
But like it like is it hard like to like have a modern kitchen in an old building, or is it just like uh it's challenging. Like, but it's kind of challenging in like that East Village kind of way, you know, where you have like this quirky little space, and it's like, well, hey, that's where that goes, and that's where that is, you know, and it's um it's been there for a long time. Yeah, all right. So listen, uh we're gonna talk more. We have a couple, we have two like a minute and a half, but the place is Sgt's Ville Inn in Sgtville on the border between you know New Jersey and and Pennsylvania, and you should go because like I I is it walk, can you walk in?
Do I need reservations? You can walk in. Uh you can make reservations, but it's always cool to walk. And you do have fried chicken there. We do.
As well as other, but you're doing like a mixture of like it's like the real Americana kind of style. It's like half-roast chicken, a burger, great steak, you know, pork. Strips. Yeah. You like strip better than uh ribeye, or it's just better serve at a restaurant?
Uh uh both. But I do I am a strip guy. I'm only strip strangely on like wagyu style stuff. Um like strip. I like a wagyu style strip better than a wagyu style ribeye.
Sure. I think the strip I like the the snap of a strip when you're eating it. Yeah. Oh my god, I have so many questions I'm gonna have to get to these uh next time. Uh but there is a question uh was the one there's one that's one that you would like here.
I have a 600 uh CFM hood uh installed in my kitchen and I've been a little disappointed so far. Tried serious steak tonight and noticed that the uh air quality index spiked up for 10 minutes while I was steering the steak. I was doing it with 18k uh BTU burner. Just like, yeah, I thought that installing a hood this powerful would mean that I could cook it and fry it with impunity without having to worry. I was wondering if this is reasonable.
No. No. No, no. No, you're looking at like Sean, back me up on this. It's like 400 CFM per foot.
And the average hood that people put in at home doesn't even extend over your range. Yeah. Yeah, like you know what I mean? And so, and it doesn't have makeup air. You need makeup air to get it to work right.
Open a door. Yeah. So, like, you know what I do? I you can build a mini hood with a low CFM that's like literally goes over a single burner. Okay.
And that works like a that works like a mammogram. That's how I fry at home now. I have like a little house I've built out of core plast that fits over my fryer and has a six-inch tube that goes uh maybe it's even four only right out the window. Oh, cool. With a with a with a marijuana grow with a marijuana growing inline fan.
Now it's not safe because it's not meant to take the heat, but you're only using it, you're not cooking, you know what I mean? You're not brazing overnight. No, no, you're not doing anything. Oh my god, do we have any more time for anything? There's one that I thought Quinn, were any of these questions good for Sean?
I can't remember. I see gone. Uh the Village of Nixon lifestyle. Or we could address Kirk Gibson. Uh just for a future food.
Well, Kirk Gibson, uh, I'll just read it. I'll read it. Um, I work for a charity that helps out food and beverage workers, Giving Kitchen.org. We offer emergency assistance if someone is facing injury slash uh illness, funeral, natural disaster um situation since they often don't have uh uh private you know ability to get that. We also offer free suicide prevention training for any FB manager in the country.
I would love it if one of our founders could come on the pod to talk about the industry. Sure. And we have one of them on rent. Uh we are definitely wish that people in the industry had a little more support than they do uh in kind of all ways. Um anyway, Sean, thanks so much for uh coming on.
Come on again. I you know I gotta go I occasionally I do drive out that way. Yeah, come on out. I would love to. Yeah, it's nice.
Check it out. Get the fried chicken. Okay. Do you have any cold for people to do A B? I've done it.
I've uh what one person was like, hey, would you can I just try it? I never had it. And I was like, yeah, it's not it's like it's not, hasn't been through the inferno, you know, tech. But um All right, so here's one thing. I'm sorry, I'm gonna leave this.
I know we're late. Listen, JJ Basil. JJ Basil also works for the Empire and used to work for Wiley, was my student for a while at a French Culinary Institute. JJ Basil is the person who developed that foo fuku sandwich, right? Have you guys ever had a chicken off?
Uh no. Uh oh, no. Oh, come on, dude. Yeah. I know, he's good.
Where there's life, there's hope. You guys should have a chicken off, but we need to have multiple chicken offs. You need to be like best category cold, best category sandwich. And just like go, chicken! Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Best wing, best leg. We gotta do it. Best breast.
Yeah, yeah, gotta do it. All right. Anyway, Sean, thanks for coming on. Great. Talk to you soon, I hope.
Thank you. Cooking issues.
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