Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New York City News Dan Studios. Join as usual with John back from Belgium. How are you doing? Doing great, thanks.
Yeah, I got Joe Hazen rocking the panels behind me. What's up? Hey, hey, hey. Welcome. Hey, we got uh Jackie Molecules over there on the uh West Coast.
How are you doing, Jack? Yo, I'm good. Yeah, yeah, you're 100%. Uh yeah, I put off the wooden teeth removal for another month. So what are you just taking copious drugs or what?
No, no, I put it off. I'm not, I haven't I haven't done it. Yeah, but it's not painful to you and causing you sinus infections. You're not like on well. I feel kind of crummy, but yeah.
So why'd you put it off? Same amount of recovery now as later. What the heck, man? Yeah, I had a lot of stuff going on, and uh it's a long story. You know what?
I picked the better dentist. Here's why okay, well, all right, better dentist. All right, it's for the better dentist. But you know, whatever. Yeah.
I always put things off, and you know what it does for me? Nothing good. Nothing good. Anyway. Yeah, that's true.
Upper left-hand corner, we got Quinn, what's up? Hey, I'm good. Yeah, all right. Sounds we have Nastasia yet, or is she calling in a minute? She's here.
Hey, we got Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. What's up? Hi. Hey. Uh, and special guest.
So here's what happened. Last week, John wasn't on the show because he was in Belgium, right? You know. His, you know, favorite favorite country at this point. Yeah?
Yeah. True. Yeah, Belgium. And he brought back with him in his suitcase, not only did he bring back mustard, but he brought back a famous Belgian chef. And so uh we have now you're gonna pronounce your name for me because I don't want to ruin it.
Michael, pronounce your last name. Vremut. Vremut. Is it how close am I? Vremut.
Yeah, that's okay. I can live with it. Yeah. And his buddy yours, also a chef. Are you a chef at the restaurant or no?
No. No? All right. I'm gonna pester you, but you're you're also like from Belgium? Yes, I am.
Yeah? Flemish Belgium, not like so. Question I have for you guys, because normally what happens for the first couple minutes we just shoot the breeze over what we've had in the last week, and it might be interesting. When did you get into the country? Uh Saturday.
Okay, so you've had you've had some food here. And do you get to come here often or no? Well, that's 10 years ago, so. No, long time. Big, big, a lot of difference, a lot of difference.
Yep. So, question for you. As uh, you know, a legitimate Belgian, Flemish Belgian. John, whose family is Flemish, only speaks French. Discuss.
Yeah, my dad's from Kent. He never taught me any any Flemish. But I think the northern part of Belgium, there's uh a lot of people who speak uh Dutch, but also speak French. Yeah. More or less a lot of people speak only French, so yeah, but yeah, but Ghent, he's a Gent fan, he's a Gent dude.
By the way, Gent of all the I didn't get to go to everywhere. I only went, you know, uh Brussels and West, but I didn't like go to Liege or any of the places like that, or the Ardenne or any of this. But uh I have to say, Ghent was my favorite. Ghent's a great town, and that's where your restaurant is, right? Yeah, I love Ghent.
We're situated in the city center, so I've been raised to an academies from uh Ghent. And then when I was 18, I left uh left to stay there. So happy place to save you. I only had one bad experience in Ghent, two bad experiences in Ghent. Two.
Here they are. Number one, the jerk who is like in like running the line behind the glass of your tower that you have to walk up was a huge jerk to my whole family. I hope he rots in hell. That's one. And two, those what do you call those things?
Cuberdon? Cuberdon, yeah. They're the garbage garbage. It's the worst candy that's ever been made. Is there a good version of it?
Yeah, it's only sugar. Is there a good version of it? That guy who's right in the city center area, like across the way from the mustard place, only takes cash. I don't have cash. I had to go, like, I had to walk like a thousand miles to an ATM that would take my my card to get cash to have what was arguably the worst candy I've ever had in my entire life.
Is there a good version of that? You want to describe it anyway? It's like a little pyramid. It's like imagine if gummies tasted bad. Everyone likes gummies, right?
Imagine if gummies were bad. Tasted like medicine. Like not even like a weak medicine. Just bad. Yeah, candy, but from that guy, also.
So it's not that everybody's making it. Just that guy? Yeah, everybody knows. Like he's always there, always on that square. He's standing with a his little trolley with before they were two, but they were fighting a lot.
Well, it's not in the newspaper, so he never had so much publicity of that. And then one of the two stopped. So uh yeah. Well, thank God you got rid of one of them. You only have one more to go.
And then you're a cube don't fit. Every every tourist is bossing it, so let's try it. People get this. It's called Cuberdon. It's a pyramid.
It is not any. I don't know what whether a cube is related to our word for cube, but it is in no way cubic. There's no shape or form cubic. And it's not even a nice pyramid. It's not even a well.
Yeah, but it's not even well rendered. You know what I mean? Sloppy, sloppy edges. You know, uh imagine, yeah, like a poorly constructed, like semi-conical jelly bean with no flavor, maybe a little little bit of like a floral garbage flavor and a like a weak lavender color, and you have only two bags pieces again. Rest fantastic.
I love it. Yeah. Uh all right. So, what what what happened the last week? Who's who's got something uh interesting from last week?
Did I cook anything last week? I know I did because I cooked every day. What do you guys got? I mean, I had an excellent time. I've been on a terrible diet, sucks.
Because of this freaking tooth? How good is this dentist? Yeah, I'm I'm no, I also had high cholesterol in my last blood. Like, I'm just in this phase of uh trying to, you know, tr triage everything going on with me. Okay, when they when they did your cholesterol panel, right?
First of all, let's go back to what Nastasia told you last week, what which is you don't get to like change your diet for a week and a half and then undo everything you've done in your life prior to that. Well, what about three weeks? No, that's just not how it works. That's just not what happens. You're like the guy who like gives up smoking when he's like 75 and hopes to have it like you know, fix the problem.
It's not how it works. You know what I mean? But the other thing is that like, you know, like which part of your cholesterol panels came back? Because some of this stuff is just calculated. A lot of this stuff in those blood panels is just calculated.
And let me tell you something. You know, it's no skin off of your RN or your doctor's nose to just tell you to change your entire way of living. Because you know what? They get to go home and eat whatever they want to, but they say something to you and they put the fear of God into you. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, that's that's right. Yeah. And like not only that, like, whatever, whatever, man. Whatever. Like, you know, like I need to remind myself of uh the better way to do this, which is just eat the same stuff you've always eaten, but less of it.
That is a great way to do things. If you need to eat less, you know, or don't definitely don't stress about it so much. You stress about it so much. Is there a country on earth that stresses more than the United States does about what we eat and how it's affecting our particular health, but at the same time. So the French also believe stuff like this, right?
They believe that Italians also believe that like every little thing they eat. You hate that about Italians, right? They're always talking about how like their digestion and their health and their food. But at least their traditional system is what they believe in, not whatever some rando, like you know, healthcare provider tells them. You know what I'm saying, Sas?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like they don't have to change their things because they've always eaten the same quirky, weird way that they always have. Italians always believe that they're not consuming liquor when they have their TV. You know what I mean? Somehow, like, but whatever.
It doesn't matter because they they don't have to change what they do all the time, so it doesn't cause them any stress. When you're constantly having to change what you eat, it's so stressful. When I was sick in Italy, I remember I went to the doctor and I was like, I don't feel well. You know, I need some medicine. And he took a drag of his cigarette and said, just go to the beach.
Oh man. Imagine if you said that to me, I would have spat in his face. You know what I mean? Or her face. Like the beach, you're trying to kill me.
I hate sand. That's why I hate sand. And I don't know if you can you can't tell over the radio, but I'm a pale dude. You know? Yeah.
Uh yeah. I show up when I my beach gear is what I'm wearing right now, which is long sleeve, like dark blue long sleeve shirt, long pants, shoes, hat. That's my beach wear. Okay. Uh all right.
So Jack has, you know, been ruining himself for the past couple of weeks because he's waiting for the good dentist to rip the teeth out of his face. That like that's just not okay, dude. Anyway, it doesn't hurt me any, it hurts you. I feel bad if you get hurt, you know what I'm saying? Thanks, Ben.
And plus also, I'm sure it's putting a crimp in Nastasia style because you're her going out buddy. I did I drank with her. I went out and drank with her on one night. All right. I broke the fat.
Okay. If we have any doctor, so on our Discord, if we have any doctors on our Discord, I want to hear the actual science about I can't have anything to drink because I'm on antibiotics. Right? Is that just a farce? Or is that real?
Is that a thing? Or not a thing? It's a thing people say when they're, let's say, pregnant and they don't want to drink at the bar. I'm on antibiotics. Like that's a classic thing to say, right?
I mean, it's not good for your liver. Antibiotics? And alcohol. Why? Well, I don't think antibiotics are on their own either.
Like ibuprofen and tylenol and alcohol, rip your liver out, kill you. Yeah. But like antibiotics wise. I mean, it depends on the antibiotic. I know the ones I take affect my kidneys.
And then the theory is that your kidneys are working harder if you're drinking. But is that if you're drinking a lot? Like if you're drinking like a six pack of beer. I don't know, man. Exactly.
I want to like so I want to I want to like talk to the person that came up with the original recommendations and be like, what's real? What's the real deal? What's actually happening? What am I actually worried about here? You know what I mean?
Whatever. Can you just ask your mom, the doctor? Yeah, I'm sure she's sure she would know, but I just haven't bothered because I've never followed that advice. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, and it's a terrible.
Here's a terrible argument. It didn't kill me. My son pulls that out all the time. He's like, I did it, it didn't kill me. I'm like, it didn't kill you the last time you did it, you little jerk.
You know what I mean? He's actually much bigger than I am now. Anyway, uh, all right. All right, all right. Uh Quinn, I know you I know you had something you cook last week.
You're gonna want to get in. What do you got? Yeah, well, we uh my dad bought a turkey from our favorite small local farmer, but the turkey was huge. I think they didn't like slaughter it last season, so it must have kept it growing. Was it tough as all get out?
Was it like chewing on nails? Uh we re brazed it because we we had to break it down. It was 25 pounds, which is much bigger than the turkeys we usually get from him. I mean, it could also be this different feed, different breed, but I mean, you braised the breast. No, no, we broke it, we broke it down into pieces.
Well, the breast is how tough was the breast? Oh, you haven't cooked it yet. So you don't have to. We haven't cooked that part yet. Yeah.
I mean, a turkey that was is over a year old, I don't know that I've ever eaten one. I've had chickens that are over a year old, and it's like they're delicious, but you know what I mean? Like the dark meat looked like duck. It was pretty wild. Yeah.
How'd it taste compared to duck? I think it looked very dark. You know what my favorite things used to do uh with uh like large turkeys legs is you you have to have a bandsaw because it doesn't work so well with a cleaver, but you you make them into fake asabuko, and then you braise them out, you tie them, then you braise them out like asebuco, and then afterwards you just go in with pliers and beep, beep beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, you pick out the uh the tendons. Hey, in Belgium, do they take they don't eat a lot of turkey, right? No, not too much, no.
No. Because people who've listened to me, you know, rant forever know that I hate the tendons and turkey legs because they're like solid like rocks. And they used to have machines that could take the tendons out before you cooked it. But you have to do it when you slaughter the bird. As soon as you chop the feet off, you can't rip the it's almost like you know how with game birds they do the same thing for tendons, they'll like with the pheasants we do, huh?
Yeah, you break it off and poo and you pull it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They used to have a machine, like a like a not even a machine, like but something on the bench that you could plop, put the turkey in, crack in like I did it before in the work where I worked a long time before was open the open a table, yeah, yeah. And yeah, yeah. Smart.
Why doesn't everyone do this? Why would you kill an animal and then not want it to be delicious? Are you uh bad person? Like, why do you not want the animal to be delicious? You're gonna kill it anyway.
First of all, with turkeys, they're killing zillions of them. Don't you want it to be good? You know how much extra work was it for you to do that? Oh, none, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, five seconds. I would pay. I would pay, I would pay an extra five dollars for the bird all in for that one action. And how many could you do in an hour? So many.
So many. You'd be making so much money per hour for removing the tendons. You know what I mean? True. How are the tendons in this turkey?
Did they kill you? Did you have to strip the meat off? I could poke somebody's eye out with a turkey tendon. They're the worst. We chopped up the dark meat for a gunbo.
We didn't like roast it all. Well, though you said you braised it. The breasts? I meant stewed. Okay.
But you chopped it up raw? So you had to scrape it off the tendons raw. God bless you. God bless you, dude. Um anyway.
That was my dad's joke. Yeah, what? What do you got? My dick my dad's in a similar boat to Jack in terms of diet. He got the the good news, bad news is uh, you know, diabetes is doing better.
And now he's on blood pressure watch. So they're saying you've got to cut the sodium down. Yeah, or just take the medicine that lowers your blood pressure and have all the salt that you want. Right? Right?
I mean, like that's the other alternative. Because let me tell you something about salt. Oh yeah. Salt. Like good stuff.
And did they better did they actually run a test on your dad? Does your dad have the type of blood pressure that is actually salt responsive or no? Or did they not do the test because nobody cares? And the easiest thing to do is to tell your dad not to have salt, even though he loves salt. Yeah.
Yeah. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Okay. Uh, what about you, Stas? What was? All right. What about you, Stas?
What do you got? Uh a friend of mine wanted all of her friends to come over with a recipe that they cooked from the Julia Child French book. The original one with uh Simone uh what was Simone Beck. Yeah. All right.
Volume one and two, or could you choose which volume, or it has to be volume one, OG OG? I don't know. It wasn't that strict. So I made. You mean cassoulet?
But I got bored with it so it was just pork and beans say casole man that's like that's pretty hardcore dedication did you get the uh how do you pronounce those beans the how you pronounce those cocoa beans yeah well there's a couple yeah and then like uh the sausage and the duck and the then the cooking and the this and the that I mean it's a delicious stick to your ribs dish but you know it's it's a lot of work. Yeah a lot of patients also yeah yeah the best casserole is the one someone makes for you or you go to corcasson yeah so what was the stand who did the who effed up the worst what was the worst thing somebody brought the absolute worst oh god someone didn't um didn't set their custard uh uh the steak like they were gonna assemble at the house but they never put the custard in the fridge to set so it was just liquid and she poured it the pie and it was like well we had ice cream instead well that sucks yeah that feels bad too yeah and you know when you're in the car and it's like spoop sh poop sh poop and then you you look down at it and they're like it the the like the pie is splashed all over your seat it's a nightmare was the and you didn't even taste the crut like the crust was the crust first of all if you're not willing to give something the time to set just use a standard cooked custard or something like you know like whatever just make it the night before what is wrong with people anyway or like make it bulletproof there are custards that are I guess no she had to follow the recipe that was in the show. All right. Fair enough. Fair enough.
I have no I have no recollection of what I cook, so I'm not even gonna talk about it. But John, you were in Belgium, so what did you eat? Including at Michael's restaurant. Yeah. Um, I went to three fantastic two-star Michelin dinners, including Michael's.
Uh the first night I went to Le Chalet de la Forêt, which is in Ucle, just outside of Brussels, and that was in Ucle, that's uh the town name. Um imagine you live there. Well, that's the worst name. Sounds like you have like gastrointestinal distress. Give me the name again.
Ucla. Um hey Stas. Imagine if we did an event there and the only grocery store was Ralph's. Yeah. Yeah.
Go to Ralph's in. Second night I went to Ralph Barendens uh out near Liege and that was also fantastic. Uh oh, so you flew in when so it's over there. Flew into Brussels, then drove out. Did you go to uh Maison Dandoy?
I did, yes, for her. My mom likes it there. I mean it's delicious waffles, but yeah. Which waffle did you get? One of each.
Oh, nice. Okay. But at the outdoor stand. Because they only have the good waffles at the outdoor stand, indoor speckles only, right? Yep, exactly.
Did you go in and get those? No. Have you ever bought have you ever bought the giant ones? No. Has anyone ever bought Michael?
Have you ever bought the giant ones? Like the huge speculous cookies. You ever bought it? No. Has anyone ever purchased one and gotten it home?
Has anyone ever purchased? Imagine buying people. Imagine the most brittle cookie on earth. It's not like a like a like a like a pita. You can't roll it up.
It's the it's like you look at it and it shatters. It's thin and it's four feet tall. It's a stunt. How do you how do you get this thing home? Like you pay what?
Like like 40, 50 dollars for the cookie, and then what it's a thousand dollars to ship it to your house because like because it has to be in like art packing? What the hell? You know what I mean? Ridiculous. But cool in the store.
The lady did not want to talk to me in my French because she was French. My French not good enough to make fun of her in French. And I feel like you can't make fun of somebody unless you do it in their chosen language. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But the spec loose are delicious, and they're outdoor waffle game on point. Because they never stop making them. Yeah.
People are running, people are running like a like a in the United States, we used to have what's called bucket brigades. So like when our fire departments didn't work, you would literally have just like brigades of people with buckets like passing buckets, like to put out a fire with water buckets. And uh that's how they make waffles there. They're so fast. They have like a bucket brigade of like batter coming in and like dough balls for the liege coming in.
And so they're never sandbagged. They're delicious. Oh my god, you have to wait in line, but you should. Yeah. Which did you like better there?
Did you like the Brussels style or did you? I mean, Liege is always my favorite. Really? Waffle style, yeah. Really?
Always. Yeah. You're never like it's too much. No. It's my childhood.
Okay. Yeah. What about you, Michael? What's your favorite style between those two? And is there more styles that I'm missing?
No, the different to say like one or the other one. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a Gentish waffle? The real no.
We take the Brussel waffle with a fresh turn to vanilla ice. Yeah. Nice. All right. Yeah, Dave loved the waffle so much.
He was there last time he got his own proper Belgian waffle. I have an A I have an H V D A 57. Okay. Yeah. Weighs 90 pounds.
It's unconscionable amount of money. The thing is a monster. Everyone's like, but you people write these things all the time. I say this, I'm gonna be very brief. But people are like, uh, you know, you can make a really great waffle with any waffle iron.
No. It's because you've never used the real waffle iron. That's why you think that. I mean, you can make a decent waffle. You can do all sorts of tricks and like handstands and like jump through flaming hoops to try to make a waffle that is like close to what you could make if you have the real waffle iron.
But there's a reason that they make those waffle irons, and it's that they're fantastic. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Do you have one? In the restaurant.
No, that's so good. The crampus, Frenchie one, not as good. No. A lot cheaper. Their crepe maker, great.
I've had their crepe maker for 25 25 years or something, going strong, gas. I think it's a monster. I think some great. Yeah. Yeah.
On my last night ended at uh Chef Michael's restaurant and it was delicious. The staff was really friendly. Um your plateware is stunningly beautiful. I love the bread plates. Umbread plate.
Like I don't know, the like actual plate that the bread came on, like control flatware. Not a plate made of bread, not like a trencher, not a medieval style. Plate bread was really good too. Everything is eatable in my restaurants. Everything.
Everything. It's like you're the Willy Wonka of Ghent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like here's the thing. You could do it, obviously, you can make all the stuff edible, but could you make a delicious plate?
You could make an edible plate. Could you make a delicious plate that was non-absorbent? Can imagine that a little bit other y'all can make it. So maybe. Well, the thing is like, you know, like some of that stuff, I didn't I never got to eat.
I never when I w when I went to Spain a bunch of times, but I've never been to like one of the early 2000s, like, you know, butt, you know, butt-kicking, like fancy modernist place. I went to La Broche, but like in 2004, but I never went to like Moogaritz or any of those things. But how good now Harold McGee tells me it is good, but how good can a potato wrapped in clay taste? How good, because I have eaten kaolin, which is what they coated their stuff in. Yeah.
I'm thinking making plates. I don't like the texture of Kalen in my teeth. Do you? Did you have that dish? But I I don't I know which dish you're uh remaining.
Yeah. I didn't need it yet, but I had some friends. Can I imagine also if you're there, you experience it? You got like the the big three but all stones and then you guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did they like it? You experience it, I think. McGee loved it. Yeah. So I mean, maybe they have some way of making dirt taste good.
But it must be good, I think. Yeah. On a level like that, everything should be good, you know. Yeah, yeah. You would think.
Right. You know? I mean, whatever. So uh so of those, you didn't get tired of eating fancy? After the the third night, it was I mean, I couldn't finish all the food at Michael's restaurant.
You're an embarrassment. I felt bad. You're an embarrassment. But it was rich and decadent. I mean, the king crab that you had was intense, intensely delicious.
But also, yeah, we were getting tapped out. You had king crab from uh from like off like where we are, or do they have one in the North Sea also? No, from the North. Really? Really from yeah, it's not the North Sea, yeah.
Huh. Uh and it's similar to the one we get? Yeah, the really nice thick uh meatrice line. Yeah. Are they as expensive as the ones we get?
They're so expensive. It's really expensive, yeah. And do you get them live? You can buy them live, but yeah, they're so expensive here. The live ones are ridiculously expensive.
And here's a here's a a tip, guys. Not you, you know. But when you're buying live crustaceans, the minute they come out of the water, they start dying. Like they they they stay alive, but they eat themselves from the inside and they lose what is is is good about them. So a lot of times, if you can get one that they fly that they get out of the water, they put it on an airplane, and they fly it to you, and it's at the restaurant, the restaurant buys it and serves it that night, great.
You know what I mean? Fantastic. Some of the best crab I've ever had is like that that was flown in for events for me. I loved it, right? But a lot of times the stuff that they instantly kill and flash super freeze on the boat is great.
Yeah. You know what I mean? Anyway. Anyway. So expensive.
So ridiculously expensive. Delicious. Yeah, it is. And then the crispy veal sweetbreads with the excessive amount of black truffle and your caviar potato with the crayfish muslin was delicious. In the kitchen, or do you do it at the table to make people spend more?
No, it's all from the kitchen. Everything is bald. So you give the good portion. But he eats a la carte, so we have to do it. My mom didn't want to do the tasting.
Good job, you can choose. You can choose in my restaurant. So we have two menus. We have one menu with fish meat, vegetable courses, and then inside that we have a menu pure vegetable. But it's also really interesting.
Um I must say like 90% of the people, they have the menu. You can choose the courses also. But it's a la carte you can't, of course, you can really choose whatever you want on that moment. And he still didn't finish it. The jerk.
He orders a la carte, he still didn't finish it. I didn't hear any complaints from my waiters, but I'll have to say this when you do go to a restaurant, especially how many seats you got? 24? No, 30 to 40 covers. 30 to 40, 30 to 40 covers.
30 to 40 covers. So if you go to a restaurant that does 30 to 40 covers in a night, they pay attention to whether you eat it or not. Yeah. They do. Somebody normally doesn't finish his plate, there's a problem.
That's why I tried to eat as much as I possibly could. So then I'm going to think that, because there was no problem. I mean, you can't. We probably told it to the waiter also that he didn't, they said it to me. So if the people don't say anything and they don't need it, then they will ask you.
They will say, like, okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because like, you know, people pay attention. Like, people take it personally.
They're trying to make you happy. And if not, it's an it's like not an insult, but it's part to personal, right? Yeah. But I'm I'm not I'm also not a big fan if you you have like 10 dishes, and every time the waiter will say, like, did you like it? Did you like it?
Did you like it? Yeah. Something like that. Well, I ate it. If it if it was really good, you will say it yourself.
Your fit your plate is finished. It means it was really good, I think normally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So how many courses did you say in the in the tastings? Typically?
Uh three, two. We have seven courses. Seven courses, yeah. Yeah. So like I think like uh what's the maximum number that's easy to course out?
Because I think a lot of people don't think about how difficult some of the longer tastings are, just the portion sizes, because the difference between a little bit more or a little bit less is the difference between leaving hungry and leaving like bullets. A lot of people can choose, so and the other and then at lunchtime the people can choose like three, four, three to seven courses. And for dinner, five to seven courses. So for me, uh like if the portion of the a la corte, but for me, still needs to be more than like taking the spoon, one bite. It needs to be like you have a few bites.
I'm really disturbed if you go to a restaurant, then the storytelling is more important than the amount of food that's on your plate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're talking about a product, you really want to taste it. You want to taste the sauce, you want to taste everything. So Quinn sent me a video that you did in English, because a lot of the stuff is uh inaccessible to an idiot like me who can only speak English and you know a tiny amount of German and a smattering of French and Spanish.
But uh uh you did uh what was it? It was the Belgian caviar on top of the crayfish, probably, no? Uh it was like a yeah, langust like a Langustine that was like uh like ceviche. What was she tortur? Yeah, yeah.
And what was the gele? It's from the heads made from the heads of the uh Langustines. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was like Langastined up. A biscuit, like you make a bisque.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And let me just tell you, if you go, it I is your caviar portion that healthy in the restaurant. He makes a canal of caviar. Crazy.
30 grams. With geez, Luis. With the two. So, first of all, canel, canal your canal point on uh canal game on point. Like, I have to say, although I never really developed the skill, and nobody I think even teaches it anymore.
And I mean, like you talk to like a you know, a young kid, they're like you canal something, they're like, can who? Canoe? And then like, but like, you know what I mean? Like they're just the right amount of jump jump by the way, what I'm doing with my hands is making the little canal motion, with the spoons, but I still appreciate it. Do you still I mean, obviously, you still appreciate it because you do it.
Like when people come in now, do they still know that where you are, or do you have to teach people how to canal? Yeah, one way you're later learning on school, but maybe less and less. Yeah. But yeah. It's like uh I think canals might be going the way of uh of like the turned the turned vegetable, which by the way, turned vegetables can can go, they can go, they can go die.
They you don't need to turn a vegetable. But I think even 20 years ago, 30 years ago when you were plating, it was like okay, when you would give like a mesh potato, it's like making three nice canals put side on the plate. Yeah, yeah. You don't see that anymore, of course. No.
No. Um but even like even like 15 years ago, especially on pastry side or like even savory when people were doing things out of the Paco jets. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shh, shh, you know what I mean? It's like, you know, you that was the way that they did the ice cream, you know. Anyway, I think some law skills should come back and some some should go.
You don't turn vegetables, do you? You know what you know I mean, turning? Yeah, pump shot two or something. Yeah, yeah. Ridiculous, right?
And the as if that's the only way. So the argument by the way, people, what we're talking about is you're basically making little pickle barrels out of all of your vegetables, like you know, we and you have seven sided football. They really you really learn it at school. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were sitting in school was like, okay, you make 60 for today.
Yeah. Everybody. Yeah, and they reject some, and it's a hazing. Like it's a hazing you, and like how good are you at the tournée, right? So you're like, and then they say that the reason that you do it is because it makes everything cook more evenly, but it's not actually a shape that cooks evenly.
Because it's thicker in the middle than it is on the ends. So the ends are always going to get beat up before the inside is done. And it's the most inefficient if you unless you're making veg stock every day. And who's making veg stock with well, maybe somebody. You can make a potato soup, I guess.
But my point is is that you have all of these trimmings. There are other ways to get evenly shaped vegetables, is what I'm trying to say. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's the question. Does it need to be evenly shaped?
No, no. What do you think? What do you? Oh, so that's a good point. So the way that they used to teach in the cooking school all the time was that even shape for even cooking, but you disagree.
Yeah, it's depending on what you're going to use, huh? What are you going to make? What's your least favorite vegetable? Least favorite? Yeah.
To cook. What do you hate? I'm not a huge fan of uh red cabbage, but really. You me I think I like to eat it on a sandwich, but I've never bought it. Also the smell when you're still at the smell, it's you're a green, you're a green.
But normally, normally I don't have I eat everything, so but when you buy it, you have a green and a red, you go the red. I mean the green. Go to the green. I like how that news was like a little green cabbage tart line. Yeah.
It was very delicious. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Speaking of, speaking of things uh that I don't know, red versus red versus green or white.
Onions. Talk to me about this onion. What do you have? What's what's the name of the onion? Uh Seven.
Talk to me about this onion. It hasn't that's the white, it's a white onion from uh the south of France, the Aubrec region from uh France. But like that's kin to like our Vidalia sweet ones. You ever had our onions? Our sweet onions?
We need to have an onion on it. I don't think it tastes here, no. You've never had that's that's a really I I still remember the first time that I ate it was when I was on uh vacation in uh France. I was to I went to Michel Braun. Yeah.
And it was one of his dishes in the menu, so I never experienced it as you go to a high-level restaurant, and then the dish was like a half of an onion. So it was really like a big onion cut in two. It was braced, it was really colored, caramelized with uh a little sauce with it and some uh fruit with it, but it was just like a semi-onion, so you never thought like I'm gonna serve a semi-onion to the people. And it was good? It was crazy good.
It must be the first time that I really like really realized like how good can an onion be. And it was the quality of the onion was so good, so yeah, after that I also use it. You don't know my business partner Nastasia, but right now what I'm doing is trying to picture her face if we're at a restaurant paying through our nose and a plate shows up with just a half an onion on it. Trying to imagine. Trying to imagine the look on your face.
Uh perfectly braised, caramelized with a good juice with it. Let me ask you this. When you were eating this like Michelle Bra perfect onion after you had your gargi you or however you pronounce the salad that he always makes, when you cut into it, did it break apart so that the you know when I break when I cut into a braised onion and the skin flattens out and pushes all of the other parts of the inside of the onion away, I'm always like, no. You know what I mean? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, but if you if you see uh real nice Savannah onion cut it in two, it's like picture perfect. Really? So nice. It's all right. Yeah.
But you've never had an um uh you've never had an American-style sweet onion. But it's brace-free a long time then. No one ever does that because that's not something we do here. That's just not that it doesn't come up. I don't think, right, John.
Do we ever do that here? No, I don't think so. We braise we we only braise onions when we're doing like other people's cooking techniques. We've got the blooming onion from Outpack. Oh my god, have you had a blooming onion?
No. Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. It's the craziest. Wait, first of all, first of all.
It's very American, but very delicious. It can be horrific when it's wrong. When the batter on the inside's not cooked all the way through. So what they do is is they they have a special like uh like an onion press. It's like imagine you're doing like uh which muscle is this?
Triceps, whatever. You're doing like a pull down, right? And you have the onion and it goes blam and it cuts it into like almost like uh lotus petals, right? Then you soak it so that it like it opens up, right? Like this.
Then you take the whole onion and you dip it in in like a batter mix, and then you just deep fry the whole thing, and then you you put it on the on a plate with all sorts of like dipping sauce. And when done properly, it is delicious. Okay. When under fried, when the when the batter in the inside is not cooked, right? A nightmare.
What's the what's the West Coast think about the blooming onion? I have a crappy home version of like the cutting guide that we've done like one or two attempts. Yeah, it's not possible at home. I mean, like that's one of those tricks. No one here, am I the only person that's ever been to the Royal Canadian Pancake House before they closed?
I think so. Yeah. So they had the they did they instead of a blooming onion, they it wasn't, it was deep-fried, but not battered, but they had the blooming French toast. And so they did an entire loaf of bread that they would cut almost down to the bottom, like a Pullman style. Like they would cut almost down to the bottom, splay it open, like soak the whole thing in French toast mixture, Pan Perdue, if you don't want to call that after the French, and then uh and then just deep fry the whole deep fry the whole thing.
And none of these things are possible with a home fryer. Like just not you can't do that with a home fryer. You know what I mean? I guess if you had a giant kettle, if you're using a turkey fryer, you could do it like once and then your oil will get ruined. But it's like I don't know.
Well you have a butter and a butter sometimes. If you go to Japan, you go to a good tempura, they have a nice cooked uh onion and they put like a really tiny layer of uh tampura. You like uh you like tempura? I like tempuro before like a nice butter. I liked it when I was in uh Japan last year, it was like something else.
Yeah, yeah. No, it's it's good when you when you have it there. Like I I think like having other people try to do it in a kitchen and bring it to you, it's always I'd rather just have whatever the fried food is from the country where I am. In Kyoto is delicious. Speaking of fried food from where you are, are you uh are you a fruit man?
Are you a f are you a fry a fry cook or not? I like it. It's not that we serve it in a restaurant, but you ever you ever you ever do it? What is the what is the what is the technique that you like? Like first of all, what size French fry?
It starts with a good potato. Right. Oh, it's most important. And you have uh potatoes made in uh soil of clay. Yeah.
You have uh what's the name of not too much sugar in the potato, also. Yeah, it'll turn to two. When you're cooking them in on a hundred and forty degrees Celsius, then they're otherwise they're coloring too fast, and then uh you have a really nice colored fries, but it's not crispy. Do you rinse or do you go directly from the cut into the oil? Rinse?
All right, and then into 140. When I do it at home, I uh I cut my fries the day before and I leave them in water. Yeah, okay. All right. And 140C for how long?
Uh five minutes. Oh, so short spinning. And then I bake them, I bake them at uh 180 afterwards. For the second? Yeah.
Yeah. For finishing them now. Like super fast or no? No, also a few minutes, three minutes. Yeah.
How many millimeters is your fry of choice? A centimeter. It's like 10. So 10. So John at Temperance has small gauge fries.
It's fries. Are delicious. They crispy, but they're too small. Yeah. That's what most people like here, though.
No, that's not true. Right? Yeah. Nastasi doesn't like French fries, so I'm gonna discount her. Freeze.
But like how many, like how like how like what do you guys think? What's what is your favorite shape thickness of fry? Everyone. I want to hear everybody's take. I like thicker than shoestring, which is what's at my restaurant, but a little thinner than like typical Belgium.
So I kind of will have Z in between there. Yeah. To me, it's it must be between three-eighths of an inch and a half of an inch. That's that's the magic range. If you can make a delicious fry that's half an inch, what about you, Jack?
What'd you say? I think that's right. I was just agreeing with you. Yeah, well, a half inch is 12 millimeters. So like like that's the upper size for good.
And then the I don't know what three eighths is. It's gonna be like nine or ten, nine or ten millimeters. Like that's the lower range. That's that's the range. And John is below that range.
Maybe I'm gonna be too diplomatic, but I think it depends what you're having to fry. Wait. I was gonna use my mouth. What is it? What is it?
What is it that you what is it that you want a thin fry? First of all, thin fries also don't cool as well. Yeah. John's fries are like six millimeters. But then fry with a stick tartare.
You eat some uh maybe dinner fries, no? That's yeah. I'll agree with that. All right. Yeah, all right.
I had stick tartare every day last week. Have you been to Miami? No. They they do the the matchstick, the match stick potatoes on hamburgers. On the on their what are the what are they?
On a Cuban sandwich, it's classic. Yeah, the on the but what's the name of the uh mago diff uh is it fritas? They're Cuban burger though. Burger, eh kind of a burger. It's like it's burger-ish, it's burger adjacent.
Yeah, it's a burglar. Burgoloid, yeah. I'll tell you what, when I went to Sicily a couple years ago, everybody in the whole country it seems that everyone has French fries for appetizers. Yeah. Even if you're having pizza, you know.
As I mean, you know why? Cheap. They're good. They need to have the the pickles mayonnaise with it, no? Like Belgium?
First of all, I'm with you. Mayonnaise is God's condiment in general, but also for fries. Like mayonnaise, yeah, nothing else than uh mayonnaise and no sugar with it. In your in your mayonnaise? So you hate cupie.
If you go to uh to like a f a fruit shop or yeah in uh in Holland, there's a lot of sweets sweet sauces. I really don't like it. No? Jerks. They're ruining it.
What do they know? What do you think about that? Uh there's a bunch of fancy dipping sauces in that uh what's the name of the fr uh fry shop that's right on the main square in Ghent that's run by a Michelin Star Chef. From uh Sergio Hermann, yeah. Good.
You like his fries? They're good, but there's well, they're prepared, no? They're I don't know. They're cooked first and then dried, and then there's a little big process of it. Yeah.
Because the fries are always good. Yeah, yeah. So it'll be always crispy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's different than you, you have like a good potato you start with.
Uh, he has also good potatoes, not about that. Because the quality is really good, huh? Yeah, yeah. I went there right before the pandemic. The Belgium was the last place I went before the pandemic.
But he has truffle sauce, I think. Um, I need I don't know that I need truffles on my fries. I don't know. I mean, it's good. Like I mean, like, I think truffles, eggs, then you can eat fries.
So Quinn, what is what is the what is your optimum small fry food? Again, I think with a burger, if you're like sort of mentally referencing fast food, but you're making it from scratch. You know, you do a smash, a smash burger, and some you know, slightly thinner fries. Nah. I think that works.
Nah. I don't look it's for you. You you you get to choose. What do we say, Michael? We do the beef carbonate carbonate for me, the combination of the beef carbonado sauce with uh the mayonnaise and the fries.
That's for me. You put it a carbonate on the fries? Uh here's the thing. That would sell infinity in the US. In the US, we have this thing called gravy fries, but it's just crap gravy from a can at a dining.
Yeah. And it's fine. Like we like it. You like cheese on your gravy fries? Yeah.
Okay. But imagine like Carbonate fries. You taste that cheese. No, no, no. In Belgium?
Carbonate? Like the stuveness. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but like we America, we have our own gravy fries. They're just bad, but the carbonade is like what mustard do you do you use?
You put the bread and the mustard in your carvingard? You use this one? Tina then mustard. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
We have some of, by the way, God's mustard with us today. Yeah. But Michael, also I want to ask. So we're talking a lot about like stereotypical Belgian kind of foods and ingredients. What like what do you think about Belgian cuisine nowadays?
Like what are the main things that you like are interested in cooking that you think are better representative of that? Like I know you had a hopshit's special that I didn't get that night, but I don't like things like that that are. Yeah, it's a really seasonal thing. So yeah, more or less. I think everybody for sure the type of restaurant that I have.
If you want to work seasonal, you want to bring a kitchen with an own identity. Of course, I'm influenced by the past what I did, where I worked with chefs that I did. Um the restaurant exists now 12 years, so we are gonna say we've got our own identity and our own style, but it's influenced by French traditional. What is Belgium kitchen? Belgium kitchen is also like a little bit formed by the French kitchen, so but open-minded for the international influences.
I'm a really big fan of Japanese kitchen. So I will use pretty much umami taste. You won't always see it in a dish, but can make uh sauce more complex or yeah. So influenced. Speaking of ingredients I had never heard of that were on one of your reviews.
How do you even pronounce it? Like uh this fish from the North Sea. You put it in English, you would say pout. Pooh. This one.
And it looks like the back half looks like an eel and the front looks like the like a like a like a horse's hoof. It's a gross looking fish, disgusting looking fish. Poor P-O-U-R? Yeah. No, so it's poor poisson?
No, I don't know. I'm not familiar with it. Anyway, it's like one of these translations, but it's the ugliest fish. Do you cook a fish that is ugly as death? It looks like the back half looks like the.
Yeah, but there's a lot of a lot of fishes for sure in the North Sea who look not good, but it's I think my restaurant, like Gandhi's is situated 40 minutes from the coast. So the quality we get from the fish is like really, really good. Um theoretically wise, you can get like everyday new fish and every day. But of course, the fridge is really, really fresh. Just top to work with, no.
And I'm also an ambassador of the like a North Sea Chef movement. So from the moment that I start a restaurant, means that everybody uh more and less works only with uh fish from the North Sea. So, what are some good fish out of the North Sea that you don't get all over the world? For sure you have the seasons, uh the seasons like uh you go more to the summer, like now you go to the flat fishes, you're going to the the sole, uh the doversol. We have like the really big, nice thick ones.
So you have the sea boss with a sea boss line caught. How do you do your Dover Soul? Do you ever do the table side garbage? I love the table side garbage. What's a table side garbage?
Well, the filleting and presenting at the at the table. Yeah. Could do that, but I mean, do they ever do that in Belgium or not? I mean, like I still I think it's coming back. It's coming back.
I think one of the nice things. With the turbo, the big the big table side when the Yeah. I think one of the nice things that Michael does too is he greets everyone and then says goodnight, you know, at the end of the night. So it's like not necessarily doing the dishes, but he's still out there kind of doing his language. Doing the dishes is a weird thing that Thomas Keller like made popular because he's like, I do I like to do the dishes.
It's because he's perverse. He likes to do the dishes. It's not that it's not that he does everything in the restaurant, it's that he likes to do dishes. Yeah. Right?
So like don't take that as the sign of being a good or caring chef that you're sitting there scrubbing the pots. Well, no, no, I mean like he comes out and talks and no, that's it. I like that. That's hospitality. That's that's great.
For me, for me, when the people come and they arrive, they have a drink, they have the first appetizer, I go to the table and I give the explanation of the menus. So for me, it's also also nice to see to meet the people. So okay, that's the way I met uh Jean and you see, okay, there's somebody who's like uh he's feeling good. He's something who's somebody who's passionate about it. So it's nice you have a talk with people, and then okay, you feel already like as he open-minded for things.
I got sometimes such suggestions you could take that it's not on the on the menu that you know, like okay, this person will be open-minded for tasting things. Yeah. So thinking about this by like coming out and greeting, like running the restaurant in general. So it seems like the restaurant I'm trying to figure out how it works. Whenever I hear about somebody's restaurant, it doesn't do the same thing everyone else does.
So you have a relatively small restaurant, relatively relatively few color uh covers per night, and you don't how many days a week are you open? Four and seven. Yeah, yeah. So like how do you how do you make that work? Like when you're like working at a high level, everything's very difficult to keep going at a high level anyway.
Is that why you're only working a couple of days a week, but then the economics become difficult to to work with? Like how does how does it be a good thing? Well, it's not easy, it's a challenge for sure. I think for the whole uh restaurant, the whole hotel restaurant business to find the good stuff to go and to find the good people to get the job done. We were uh twelve full-time paid people, so I got some people like my second chef, my Metro Hotel, they work with me uh twelve years from the beginning.
So we wanna you want to have people who get keep on being motivated and being yes, taking part of the team. You see, like a new generation of people are yeah, they're more busy with also sites, projects of themselves and hobby and uh yeah, leisure time is uh also really important. So you feel like if you see in a in the restaurant, the restaurant business for sure in Belgium, there's like I think uh eighty percent of the high-level restaurants are open four days. Where do people eat the other days, or do you shift it around? Like this is the person who's open on the Sunday.
If you go if you go to the coast, everybody's open on the weekend. If you go to the to the cities, more and more restaurants are closing Saturday, Sunday. So my restaurants closed to Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Alright, so people take note. There are good days and bad days to visit certain places.
Like what's the worst day of the week to show up in Belgium and be like, I'm gonna eat. Theoretically, Monday is like a lot of restaurants are closed. So what you're sure in Gent, if you if somebody else, yeah, Monday is really difficult, I think. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And on the US it'd be unimaginable. Like, I mean, I know two or three restaurants do it here in the US, but to be closed Saturday, Sunday, and Monday just never do it. You couldn't do it. Yeah.
Well, the other thing, I just don't know how I don't know how you would I don't know how everyone would get paid. Because you gotta pay the you gotta still gotta pay your rent. Suppliers, right? Suppliers. Your food has to stay in good stuff.
You need your prep done. So the prep needs to get done some of it anyway beforehand, right? You know, I guess it depends on on how you divise your menu, but like most of like even our stuff at a bar, yeah. I can't walk in in the morning and have service done ready by the night. You know what I mean?
And then they have lunch service going on too. So prepare. For sure, yeah. Tuesday is challenging. Tuesday is always like uh after three days, of course.
Um but on the other hand, like on a Friday, there's not much coming in anymore of ingredients because you have everything, more or less. Um what do you do? You can make a sauce, you can make a stock to make a good sauce the Tuesday. You can make bases that are are good. So you can vacuumate, you can preserve things in advance that you know to get started.
Otherwise, yeah, of course. If you start from scratch, it's so what's the best day to go to your restaurant? Wednesday? Because you've already slapped around your suppliers who were shafted you on the day that you reopened on the Tuesday. You've scrattened all that stuff out.
No, Tuesday to Friday, same level. I'm just messing with you. Uh all right. Um, hey Stas, I'm gonna trigger you here. One of the dishes, get this.
This is two things that Nastasia and I have an issue with. You do a pork loin cutlet, that's fine. Jerusalem artichoke and beetroot. So how what does this look like? First of all, Nastasia used to give people Jerusalem artichoke just to make their insides explode.
So, like, like how much how much uh Jerusalem artichoke are you getting and how are you cooking it? There's one one vegetable they can prepare like so good. Yeah. I think Jerusalem artichoke. You can make like the best chips of it.
Yeah. What do you what do you think? What do you call them in not English? At beer. Whoa.
Art beer. It's like uh yeah. See, that's like I only know I know the French and I know the English. Yeah. I'm a big fan of that.
Yeah? Yeah, and season we use it a lot. So Nastasia used to cut them up raw and put them in salads to mess with her friends. And their insides went to the body. Does it affect you or not?
Does it not affect you? Really? No. That's really good. Okay.
I inflate like a balloon. Yeah. Like when I eat those, oh my god, my insides feel like I feel like I'm you ever see the movie Scanners when the guy explodes. He just explodes. Take a look tonight.
Yeah, he's like sitting down and you know, and he just his head just boom explodes. That's my insights on on uncooked. Came from the warm wrong form, right thing. Yeah. Well, no, it's just like all the inulin, man.
And so and then beetroot. How do you do the beetroot? How does it come? So Nastasia likes when you hand her one big undercooked beet and a fork. Is that what you do?
Because that's what she loves. Undercooked, yeah, it's disaster, no? Yeah, well, so it's so uh well. We cook it in a salt crust, if we if we prepare it. So uh and then I make the sauce also.
We have a part of the beetroots you centrifuge, and then I put it, then I reduce it on the stove like for uh 80%. Do you really have a nice syrup with it? You can put like a little jam or some fruit with it. And then um the beetroots, you bake them two hours and two or two hundred degrees, two hundred degrees of Celsius in the salt crust, let it cool down in the salt crust, then take the skin off. And then for me, that's maybe one of the basic the best dishes that I found that I the vegetables did that we did was like a combination of uh braised, like a salt crust braised um beetroot, then we grill it all a minute, and then we get some uh beyonnaise with it.
It's like a really classical beyond sauce with uh beetroots for me, like such a combination. But the beetroots, you cut it in pieces, so you grill it, and then the sauce that I was talking about, like the reduced syrup of the beetroot, you put it around it so you glaze the beetroot with that, and then aside that you give the bearnay sauce, but like a classical terrican bearnaise, terrigen vinegar. So, what's the texture of the beet after all of that? My favorite beet texture. Remember when uh like maybe seven, eight years ago everyone was doing like semi-dehydrated beets and then cooking them and they got kind of chewy?
Like what's the texture of this one like? No, you don't want you don't want it beaten that it's crispy, no? Right. I really like it. The things you just said when you cut it really thin, but it's like more for like a salad or I like this, like the texture also, but it needs to be it needs to be cooked.
Right. Um, if it's not enough enough cooked. I don't like it. Yeah, though. So it needs two hours.
For me, like uh the size of a tennis uh tennis ball. It's two hours, two hours, two hundred degrees. But does it come so but with at the plate, you're not so it's still the size of a tennis ball, but it's been cooked. No, we cut it, we cut it and we grill it. Ping pong ball.
Trim it a little bit nice. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, Nastasi and I got uh ruined once by someone serving us like a giant undercooked beet. And ever since then we've been like uh it coxcomb, are you cooking the the plant coxcomb or the actual comb of uh rooster, a rooster like head piece? Which vegetable you're talking about?
Well, is it a because there's also a plant called coxcomb? I don't know if you can eat it, but it's say like on the menu, it's saying you do coxcomb. But I was wondering whether you're talking about the bird part. Uh like head the cook. Oh kick.
Yeah. So how do you cook that? Is it delicious? Is there it's uh it's a it's a gelatine texture, no? So there's a lot of people who don't like it, but like in the really classical uh if you gotta pull at the breast, uh like a vollevent or make a nice full of vent, they also uh I did it before.
Yeah. They put like the stomach. And how many do you get? How many do you not too much? You should you first gonna boil them in a stock.
Right. And then you need to take like a little little skin on it, gonna scrap it off. Takes a long time. But there's like also a hard piece where it's attached to the to the head. Yeah, yeah.
Gonna take that off. But when it's really nice cooked and you put it in a hot sauce, it's like a really nice jelly texture. Is it like similar to like uh duck tongues are kind of jelly-like? Isn't it? That's meat.
A duck tongue is really is it's more meat. And that that's really like it's it's glazy, if you see. Yeah. I've never had a coxcomb as far as I know. It's good.
It's good, yeah. How many do you get on a plate? How many do you want to get? You know, you're not gonna you're gonna you're gonna have a stew, or you're gonna have a like piece, a piece of a fillet of uh chicken, you're gonna have some uh minced meat of the same uh chicken uh legs. Um I'm gonna put like a little piece of the yeah, let's talk, not a whole piece now.
No. No, the people are gonna run away then. I mean, I wouldn't. You're gonna serve it to the people, you're not gonna say it and when they eat it like you like that, yeah. When they know what they eat, like, oh my god.
Really? But they like it. Even in Belgium, though? Or is that more of a body's open-minded for that now? Really?
Yeah. Huh. Hmm. All right. Good to know.
Now, I read, now it could be wrong because half the things I read on this uh thing were mistranslated, so I don't know. But uh it seems like we might share the same favorite cheese. You are a Vachram Mondor fellow, like I am. Yeah, for sure. That's God's cheese.
Vachron? Yeah, that's crazy good. Vachram Mondor is like Jesus' cheese. But we can never get a really good one here. It's true.
Must be not pasteurized, no? People lie, they cheat, but something about like the shipping. I don't know whether it's like the way that they have to pack them to ship or you know, uh, I don't know. But it's just like if you've ever gone during the season to buy them, I mean I I have like two or three shops. I've only ever really bought them in Paris over there, but there's two or three shops I go to, and it's just like that's all I want.
That's all I want, like all day. I just want that and some bread. And it's like but it's a winter cheese, huh? Yeah. Yeah.
And so I used to go, I used to go to Paris every like uh late January for uh a trade show that my wife used to go to, and I would go, so I would be like, I would just only eat vacherin. That's I was doing I was doing it on the last menu that I served to the people. I when I have my tasting menu, there's always a cheese preparation inside. So the last menu that I did in uh January, we did a preparation of uh Vacherin Mondor. But the thing was the the concept of the dish that I that I was thinking of was like, okay, it was what is good.
You put a Vachin in the oven, then cook some potatoes with it. Okay, I can't serve that on in my restaurant because okay, it's not original. And it's I want to do something with potato and with the cheese. So what we ended up at the end we uh we had an apple, so uh like a golden una golden uh apple. We uh really cooked it in a syrup, we take it out, and we had like uh yeah, the piece of the apple we filled up with the Vacherin Mondor, put it in the oven, and then some caramelized uh apple with uh the nice syrup of the apple with uh laurel with it.
So the people loved it. With what? With laurel? Laurel, laurel leaves. Like same like bay?
Bay leaf, bay leaf, yeah. Well, you want to tell us also about your um stilten ice cream dish? Yeah, that's preparation of stays on the corn. Like I think we do it like seven years now, and uh it was voted seven years ago like the best dessert of uh the year from a guide from a Goimio guide. So how stilton, how stilton y is it?
How salty is it? It is, but it's it's more less salty than a rock four, we know. Rug for it's a salt bomb. Well, what the the original idea of the dish was we had we had a taste plate, uh plates, a cheese plate with uh pieces of uh I'm just saying eight pieces of cheese, and it was also like a piece of uh stilton with it. And more or less every time there was like breaking a piece.
Oh, it's not nice enough to put on the plate. So at the end of the month, like uh the guy was saying, Hey, I have a big uh bag here, it's pretty much okay. I vacuumed it, but what do we need to do with it? Okay, it's an expensive cheese. So okay, we end up to do like uh we're gonna let's make I'm gonna make a base and we're gonna make uh an ice with it.
And then we make the ice with it, so I tasted it was like okay, yeah, like uh the little chocolate reminding taste, the cocoa taste, but it's okay, blue cheese and chocolate is good. So we ended up make like the ice with it, so then we gave a vinaigrette of a vinjone and apple with it. Some almonds, roasted almonds, and then we put some powder of cocoa in it. People love it. So there's no truck there's the the the chocolate chocolate's just on the outside, or the chocolate's also with the cheese in the in the ice cream.
It's just or just a pizza chocolate with it. No chocolate with it, huh? Just a little bit of cocoa powder in the colour. Some solid, some mold and salt with it? Yeah, two more.
So the Vanjon, like uh, do you use the I'm sure you're fancy, so you probably actually reduce it, but like they make do you know they make the these kind of like not quite vengeans that you can use for for reductions. Do you use that one or do you use a big one? Like a vinegar, also we use, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's also so expensive.
I like it. Delicious, yeah. You like the bottles too? They got the coolest little bottles. They do have really nice bottles.
But it's just so expensive. You know who uses that? Used to use that all the time? Jeremiah at Baracontra. I know what I ate this week.
I went to Temperance. The Temperance Wine Bar had a had a good good chunk of your menu. You're gonna go see American Belgique. No, you're gonna have no time this trip, I believe. So where have you eaten so far here?
Well, 11 minutes and pork Clement Bar, Estella we did also really nice. Yeah. And today we had the Apollo bagel with the liked it. It's really good. You could do a whole bagel trip.
Did you go do you have any of uh any of the things? That's your first bagel ever? Which one did you get? What'd you get? The smoked salmon.
Yeah, but smoked salmon. What kind of bagel making everything bagel? The one with the sesame. What kind of bagel? Sesame or everything or plain sesame and everything.
Okay, everything. Okay. Sesame is a good choice, but everything. Everything's the way to go, yeah. If you need listen, if you listen, you gotta go to Russ and Daughters, not for the bagel, their cream cheese.
Get the best bagel you can get. Get their plain cream cheese, not their flavored cream cheese, which is just Philadelphia. But Philadelphia is a fine product, right? But their plain cream cheese. They also have one of the best fish, like cured fish counters.
Yeah. And get their get their locks on it. Oh man. All right. So so yeah, that's the way.
But we're going to stretch this afternoon, so. Yeah, yeah. Well, uh, yeah, yeah. Good. Yeah.
I called uh I called Wiley. You're gonna go in there. So he's like, he's like, why? He's like, why does someone come from Belgium and they want to eat pizza? I'm like, everybody likes pizza, dude.
Coming from New York. Coming to New York. What's pizza? What else are you gonna? How when you when are you flying back?
Uh tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon. Son of a gun. Yeah. All right.
So you okay? So pizza. Chef Stable Brooklyn for it tonight. Okay. All right.
All right. Well, that's good, good, good trip. Anyway, thanks for coming on the show. Welcome back anytime. Oh, wait, we didn't even open the fancy mustard.
Give them the name of the super fancy mustard. Tirantan. Right from the square in Ghantha. Yeah, but there is one that's not real that sounds just the same. That's true.
Can't remember what that one is. So it's like an offshoot one, too, right? Yeah. Before we go, because I know we're late. Do you guys have any more secrets about the mustard?
Because the lady will not talk to me. I found out that after they make it, they let it sit for two days and then they start piping it upstairs. But I don't know anything else about it. And they still use that same half wooden barrel bucket. Yeah.
Oh man, it's such a good mustard. Sharp mustard. Yeah. If what you folks want is honey mustard, look elsewhere. Yeah.
Great. Anyway, thank you for coming on. Appreciate it. All right, cooking issues.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.