Hello and welcome to Cookie Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookie Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center, New York City, News Stand Studios. Joined as usual with John, how you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah?
Got Joe Hazen rocking the panels behind me. How you doing? I'm doing good too. Good to see you. Good to see you.
Good to see you. We do not have Quinn in the upper left. I'm sorry to say he's not feeling well. We wish him uh, you know, feel better and be back next week. But we do have back from his teeth rotting out, my man Jackie Molecules in LA.
How you doing? Doing all right? I'm good. I'm good. The choppers are working.
The ones you have left? Yes. Nice, nice. Yes. And uh no no uh no dry socket, but it was like a something crazy infection.
So I've been miserable. But did you put clove oil on it? Did uh what's his name come back from the dead and put clove oil on it from Marathon Man? Great movie. Anyway, no one's seen it anymore.
People need to go see the Marathon Man. You know what I'm saying? And of course, certainly not least, uh Nastasi the Hammer Lopez, how you doing? Good. Good.
And that's just our normal crew, but I'm excited to see I'm sad to say that Chef Alex Kemp could not come on today. We're gonna have him back at some point. From uh my my how do you can you do a Kebikois accent, John? No. Come on, man.
Do it do it keep qua. Do we do we do eat qua do we come on? Lu. It's I'm Lu? Yeah, I don't know.
It's I think the same for that. How many people, how many people you think go to the restaurant? Have you been to that restaurant, my loop? My loop. Yeah, oh my god.
Like Fruit Loops. Anyway, so it's unfortunate that we don't have. Oh my god, Fruit Loo. Imagine if the next restaurant was Fruit Loo, like a juice shop called Fruit Loo. Oh man.
Anyway, uh It'd be great. Because it no one would say it right. No one. Fruitloop. Anyway.
But uh as like it's old times, we have like former boondoggler in chief for the Booker and Dax Corporation when she lived in New York City. Oftentimes cooking issues guest back in the day, both on the Voldemort Network and when we were, you know, in that little studio on the uh on the other street here with Newstand, the palacinator herself, Rebecca Balcaves. How you doing? I'm good. How are you?
Yeah. Everything good? Yeah. Yeah. Excited to be here.
So instead of what we were going to talk about today, which is, you know, opening like, you know, a French, you know, a Quebecois French American restaurant in Philadelphia, we're gonna talk about restaurant PR and some technical cooking crap. Okay. Great. You're used to hearing that garbage. Yeah, all two now.
Yeah. Yeah. Strong. It's strong. Uh in the meantime, uh, if you're listening on Patreon, you can call in your questions to 917-4101507.
That's 917-410-1507. And John, why don't you tell them how they might do such a thing? Go to patreon.com slash cooking issues. Uh there you can check out our different membership levels. Uh you get perks at every membership level, including access to our Discord discounts for some of the great partners that we work with, like Kitchen Arts and Letters, Glassfin, uh, Grovenvine Olive Oil, and a plenty more.
We gotta get Captain Oily back on. Yeah, we should. The Coleman. Yeah. No relation to the stoves, the camping equipment.
Yep. Just oil. And base. His band is called I Believe Human Growth Hormone. It is, yes.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But uh yes, I wish you get them back on. But um do people still take human growth hormone?
Like just to like jack themselves up? Probably. Is that a thing? Well, there's a whole Olympics now where you're encouraged to take a bunch of supplements when wait what alternative Olympics with that? Yeah, well where it's like you're encouraged to juice up to try and break whatever world record, but it's not gonna count because you're juiced up.
This is a Saturday live skit. Have you seen No, this is real. Have you seen the Saturday Live Skid from the 80s? I have not. It's the I believe it's I forget.
I think it's Kevin Nealon. It's like it's called the All Drug Olympics. And they're they're announcing the all drug Olympics. And I think it's Kevin Nealon in in a in a fake like giant muscle thing, and he's reaching down to lift up, I don't know, like to clean, clean whatever they call it, clean and jerk like uh I don't know, like 3,000 pounds or something like that. And he goes, and he just rips his arms off.
And then like the blood starts shooting out of his shoulders. It's a really it's a good skin. At least it was back in the day. Yeah. I forget who the announced was.
Oh, he was probably involved. I think it was Phil Hartman. Oh, he was the one who ripped his arms off. All-time classic. By the way, you know Phil Hartman.
Oh, speaking of people who uh are gone, sadly, Sly Stone, sad to say Sly Stone's gone. Music extremely important to me growing up. Sly Stone. Um, you know, look, he lived to be 80 something, and we you know, with his kind of rough living, that's kind of that's a miracle, but you know, still sad. Beyond 27.
That's how I felt too. Yeah. I mean, like Sly Stone, I he's you know, look, of like the like the major people who I think change music like a huge amount. He's the one that I think the recent generation maybe doesn't know as well, or he didn't get as much play later on. But man, like that's one of those bands.
Imagine if you could be on stage. What? What did you say, Jack? I just wanted to share one very quick tidb. I wanted to share one quick thing about Sly Stone.
Um he was so doped up during the um there's a riot going on recordings that he couldn't get out of bed, right? And he because he was doing junk, and that helped usher in some new wireless microphone technology so we can just play there strongly. I like uh the the sound engineer's perspective. Yeah, strong. Man, that's so talented.
Could you imagine having that those musicians behind you playing? Can you imagine that? Crazy. And just in time for him to, you know, he just had that beautiful documentary come out. Something that's uh Sly Lives.
Sly lives. Oh, that's unfortunate. Sly lives. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, now I mean he lives in the he live music lives on, music lives on.
But man, I remember buying the album Stand. What a crazy album that is. You know what's weird? So I believe it's Future and Cher did a cover of Everyday People, and it reminded me of how goofy Sly Stone's lyrics were separated from the amazing music. Because Cher obviously, no slouch in singing, but like the music that was playing in the background, I'm like, what the hell?
You know what I mean? Without the horn section and the dun dun dun dun. Anyway, whatever. Sly Stone. You know, I have a drink at the bar named after him.
I had it last night. Yeah, in uh in in memorandum. Yeah, actually, yeah. Nice. How was it?
Very tasty. Good. It's good you put the separately prior. I don't know if it's in his past. It was like opening.
It was like it's still there from our opening money. You were taking advantage for our marketing. No, but now I will. Okay. I'm just kidding, I won't I I won't.
Should won't. Uh, I wonder whether more people will order it though. Gotta watch the numbers. Do I have to change the name so it doesn't look like I'm like cheesing off? No, just add in parentheses underneath.
This was already on the menu. I see. Okay. Smart. Uh a little more bookkeeping.
Uh we have okay, John. Peter Kim, and maybe Nastasia knows how to get on it. I think you can still see it. There's a couple more days this week. He's doing an immersive table.
Infinite Table immersive experience brought to you by Peter Kim, winner of the uh winner of the British ski jumping team guest Olympics. In other words, like he is to being a house guest like the British artist ski jumping, i.e. not good. But we're gonna have him on the we're gonna have him on the air. Right?
We're gonna have him on the air, and he's gonna talk about it because I think he's gonna run it again and then maybe do others in the series. So uh he wanted to know who to set it up with, and I was like, I don't know, John. Yeah, I don't know. Also, emerging cookbook author. He's coming out with his uh Raman cookbook.
Ramian. Ramion? Yes. Yeah, come on, please, man. Sorry.
Please, man. Not everyone's Japanese, dude. Come on. Yeah, no, I gotta get better. Thanks for getting on.
I appreciate it. Wait, wait, wait, wait. It's called Romulin. No, wish that'll be that'll be like yeah, that wish Romulan. Like that would sound like a Star Trek kind of.
Uh and I well, w who's our next uh chef that we have on? We have a we have a bunch of people lined up. Sam. Sam, you from uh Goldenhof. Golden Hoff, yeah.
Across the street. Very interesting story. For those of you that don't know, first of all, uh his place down downtown uh has the world's largest fluffy pancake. So he takes an omelet pan, right? And then he bakes a quote unquote pancake that is like the size of the omelette that literally domes over the omelet pan.
So he cooks it first on the stove and then it goes in the sally. So I'm gonna ask him the recipe, and he's gonna freaking tell us on air. He's gonna tell us on air, or I'll stab him. No, I'm kidding. But then like it's like you order it and you're like, I'll go finish it, and then you're like, oh my God.
Because it's got, I think it's like got honey and butter and all this other stuff. Very good. But the interesting one of the one of the reasons I really wanted to have him on the show is he opened a restaurant in the exact same location that his parents had a restaurant when he was growing up. And for a while it wasn't a restaurant. So it wasn't like it was passed down to him.
He got the lease again on his like familial restaurant, and it's right across the street from the studio. So that should be exciting uh to have him on. And what else do we have? Doing Tuesday lunch? I'm kidding.
Maybe he'll bring some stuff in. His kitchen's across the street. That would be great. Yeah. What else we got, John?
Anything else uh we got coming up in the in the future future? I'm blanking. I have an idea. You ready for it? Because like we had this conversation with uh Suzanne Cups when she left the studio.
We always have these fun conversations whenever we leave the studio, right? And I think Stas, you'll actually like this one, believe it or not. Is we got into talking about like weird things that we don't like. You know what I mean? Like foods that we don't like.
And I'm not gonna call her out because I think we have to do it in person. But whenever we have chefs on, I want to ask them random foods that normal, not normal, but that a lot of people like, but that they don't like. You know what I mean? And then like talk about like, does that make them a bad cook? No, I'm kidding.
But like how do they deal with their shortcomings? Yeah, how do you deal with your shortcoming? I'm gonna say, like, Suzanne's was a big was a big weird window where both John and I were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you don't like that? Yeah, she's like, nope, never put that on the menu. Right.
And I'm not gonna call her out. She'll have to come back for us to talk about it. But I think it might be a fun little thing to always ask people, what do you hate that you shouldn't? Yeah. And in my house, theoretically, when we were raising kids, we're like, we're gonna let them have one thing that they really want to.
Yeah, right. Booker is the opposite. There's one thing he does eat, just fish. Just salmon. Salmon, yep.
And can't tuna. So two things, and this weird. Are you guys familiar with the quote unquote Italian not quote unquote the Italian, American Italian bakeries version of the strawberry shortcake? I'm putting scare quotes around it, because it's not like a traditional southern strawberry shortcake. It is white cake, white icing.
Oh, yeah. Strawberry goop, a couple of Driscoll strawberries around the top, dipped in strawberry glaze with a light, flavorless, whipped creamy icing, right? Not whipped cream, but like like lard and whipped cream. Whatever. Anyway, you know what I'm talking about?
Like, this is his favorite cake, like bar none. And he will go to, he has taken the subway to infinity places in all five boroughs, bought said cake, brings it home, puts it in the middle of our lazy Susan, removes everything, takes a picture of it, and then eats it and then rates it. He's done some places, like his favorite place, which he thinks charges too much, but he loves a Betty Bakery or like Lagouli's or all these other weird little bakeries. He will take like five, six, he'll buy five or six whole cakes, eat them himself. Because Jen and I are like, we don't like this cake.
This is not our style of cake. It's nobody's style of cake, but Booker's. Anyway, he'll eat the whole damn thing, and then if he chooses only the best photo and then erases the rest. So he has hundreds and hundreds of cakes, but he only has his favorite photo from each bakery, and he has them all rated on various things. Which one's the best bar none?
Which one's the best value? Yeah, yeah. Why is that not a segment as well? I mean, I don't think he would want to come on and because like if first of all, as soon as I did the intro, he'd be like, shut up, dad. You know what I mean?
Yeah. He's like, uh cool. Well, like, you know, like you know how every once in a while when you're just like sitting around, you'll start doing stupid dances. He's like, Dad, quit it. I'm like, you know, can I just be me?
It's like, not if that's being you. It's the universal uh parental experience, I'm assuming. I know. Uh all right. So uh what have you guys done this week in food in the food world?
Anyone? Anyone got some food going on? Anyone do any food? Any cooking? My walk-in quote came in, so that's gonna get fixed.
Oh my god. Um, so that's an interesting thing. So what are you doing in the meantime? Do you have enough low boys? Did you go to PC Richards and buy a fridge?
I have enough low boys to keep most things, but like sauce work and braises are just things that I like stocks and things I can't really do because I don't have a way to keep it choled. You're kicking it, kicking it old school, just keeping it on the back burner, bubble. No, not even bubble adapt. Um, but yeah, it's really it's a constant annoyance every single day to rearrange every low boy, the two little boys in one kind of like tall region. Um, and yeah, just juggle everything there, putting a case of eggs in hotel pans to stack on top of the cheeses.
I mean, theoretically, you could leave the eggs out for a little bit. Yeah. I mean theoretically, but I don't know. We're also like waiting for DOH to come by. It's just oh, that's fun.
Well, at least your walk in will be in spec when they come. Yeah. No. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely.
You will have already poisoned everyone. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Uh Did you hear though? Do you guys hear that uh apparently they're gonna start giving notice as to when they're gonna do inspections?
That's ridiculous. Isn't it? They're gonna send a notice out like six months ahead of time, five or six months ahead of time, and then one like three or four weeks before, and then there's like a six-week window when they can come in, I think. Hey guys. What is the logic for that?
Isn't it? They're just short staffed? Sick of seeing dirty dishes in the hand wash sink? What? You know, I don't know.
Like, you know, it's like at least try to impress us. Uh I don't know. That's the craziest thing I've heard of. I mean, like, love them or hate 'em. I mean, how's that helpful for uh food safety?
It's not. It's gonna give everyone, yeah. We're just across the board. Leaning back, relaxing with that with uh what being food safety, yeah. Yeah, hey, speaking of safety, uh what's it like being in LA now, guys?
You guys alright? Is it like is it as crazy as I think it is, or is it normal and just like you know, in certain neighborhoods that you're getting overrun by the military? Certain neighborhoods where I'm at least it's yeah, pretty normal. So you don't feel like you're living Robocop? I mean, I do the state of the world, but you know.
Uh all right. So, uh but no, but come on, you just got your teeth fixed, man. You didn't eat anything since your teeth got fixed, Jack. You usually have some crappy restaurant experience. What?
Misery. It's been misery. I mean, so you're still in pain with the infection? No, but uh uh it's hard to explain. So because it didn't heal very well, so like I can't eat that much without stuff getting stuck in the whole.
Oh, I hate that. When something packs into the shape of what your tooth used to be, like your tongue and your cheeks make it pack into a fake food tooth. That's gross. Eating a jello. Mmm.
You jello? A lot of ice cream. Okay. And you try any new flavors of ice cream? I mean, I've been lazy.
I've been like ordering soup on Uber Eats and eating ice cream. Just the standard stuff. But matzo ball soup? That's too hard, right? You gotta eat that mozzaball.
You're gonna blend the whole thing. Or chata ice cream. A lot of delivery food, way too much delivery food. Which, as you know, I just redid my pantry, so I was excited about cooking. But well, you know, I mean, you unless you plan on dying tomorrow, you will be able to use your pantry in the near future, and that's gonna be all the more.
Hey, speaking of ice cream though, uh for those of you that were listening when uh Matt Sartwell from Kitchen Arts and Letters came on, he brought in um Marshall, I forget her first name, but Marshall's uh fancy ice book from the 1890s. And of course, I went down a rabbit hole because she built a and I can't find it. So if anyone can find one, I'm really interested in this. Her patent ice cream freezer. First of all, she made what's called a cave, which is fundamentally you just pack rock salt and ice into a into like a double wall cooler, and it makes it uh a freezer just with ice that's cold enough to solidify ice cream.
So that's cool. But her ice cream freezer, her hand crank ice cream freezer is the opposite of what became like our standard, the white mountain, like the tall, skinny one that freezes on the side. Hers is wide and flat and freezes on the bottom. But what's cool is that because she's only freezing from the bottom, and because the thing that spins can sink onto the stuff as it melts, you don't have to do that garbage where you're packing all the ice around the side of the thing and it's like catching on the side and like if you don't like break the ice up enough. Have any of you done this?
Is anyone didn't even know what I'm talking about? You have a wooden bucket, and inside of that wooden bucket, you have a metal bucket with a dasher in it, a thing that goes over the top of it, and you have to get salt and ice all the way around the bucket. And if you're lazy like me and you don't pulverize every chunk of ice, then an ice thing on the side will fit in one way and then like turn over to the side and catch against the side of the of the bucket on where the seam is and then make it hard to kind of power through it. I hate it. Sucks.
And then you have to keep it. I can't allow that. No, you can't. And then here's but hers, it just freezes from the bottom. So I'm really interested in trying an A B, an A B Marshall patent freezer.
But alas, eBay, nothing. Nothing. There's a couple that are in museums, but they ain't letting you use them because whatever. Someone I I there's kind of you asked? Who?
The museums. I mean, I'm I'm in a museum. I know that no one would let us do it. You know what I mean? Like, you need to find some knucklehead who like this is what they do, or they remake them.
Because I want to know if it is functionally not as good. Like, for instance, one reason it could be functionally not as good. Perhaps the scrapers. Like ice cream is a is a is both surface area of freezing, right? And removing the ice crystals off the side of the freezing surface, the scraping.
And actually, White Mountain is not as good as it could be with that because they're wooden scrapers. Suuck. But then you have to scrape the stuff off the side as the crystals form and churn it to make the texture, right? So perhaps you know, her you know, scraper is not as good, but it can't be worse than White Mountains. So, or like the other thing is White Mountain, because it's scraping on the side, has equal scraping motion all the way across up and down because it's being rotated.
In other words, it's being held um like a straight arm like someone's hitting you with a with a paddle, right? So it's scraping the same speed from top to bottom. Whereas the A B Marshall scraper, it's the actual radius of the circle is the scraper, so there's less scraping per second in the center of the of the freezer from the outside. The outside has a much larger like uh speed magnitude. Anyway, whatever.
I'm interested in case anyone's ever used one. So there's that. Okay. Uh what else? Anyone?
Anyone? Anyone cook anything? Went to uh your bar last night. Very good. Tasty food.
Fun pop-up with uh with folks over at Cato. Yeah, we got uh Austin Henley from uh Cato Kato Kato. Kato Kato. It's good. Yeah, no, it's good.
Yeah, food was good, the drinks were good. They're doing it again today because BCB uh BCB is today and tomorrow. Which is the dumbest name, Bar Convent Brooklyn. Yeah. Because it's based on the Berlin wait, the Bar Convent Berlin, which sounds better, I guess, in German, maybe?
Maybe. But in English, who says Bar Convent Brooklyn? You know, who says I mean I would love to all the time. All the time Brooklyn. Bar Convent, Brooklyn.
We're going to Bar Convent, Brooklyn now. You know what I mean? Like, what is that? Yeah. Uh you're uh, it's you know, what is it?
Ausgesteig uh ausgezeichnet. Yeah. That's you know, like like who who talks this way? You know what I mean? Anyway, uh all right.
So uh let's see. So Malkith or Malkithy, what do you think? Malkith or Malkithy? Malkitha? How do you pronounce that?
I don't know. We don't know. Anyway, asked a while ago on the fake amber gris, and here's what happened. Here's what happened. I ordered the uh Ambroxane, which is the fake uh amber gris, amber gris, however you're gonna say it, which is the whale poop that floats around.
It's the it's it's basically the the fat inclusion in whale poop, sperm whale poop that floats around in the ocean for a couple of years, finally gets beached, scooped up, and then turned into perfume for fancy people. It is of course now illegal because you're not allowed to trade in any form of sperm whale product, right? So it's illegal, even even if it is just poop. Strange story. Have I said this on air?
Do you know that it's illegal to possess eagle feathers? I do know that actually. Yeah. Someone gave me one in the UK, and I got really nervous and abandoned it because I was worried that I was gonna get in trouble coming back in the United States. I feel like that tells you a lot.
You probably would. So here's what happened to me. This is last year. I was in Juneau. Did I tell a story on air?
I was in Juneau. I'll tow her back real quick. There's a place called Eagle Beach. It's just like coated in eagles. It's just like it's like, you know how we have pigeons in New York?
That, but for baldies. They're intimidating. And well, but they're just chilling, like pecking the eyes out of salmon, right? Yeah. And the beach is littered with eagle feathers.
And I was like, oh, eagle feathers. And so I like I picked up this huge armful of eagle feathers, and then I was like, and they're like, nah, man, that's totally illegal. I'm like, what do you mean? They fell off naturally, though. But it's still illegal.
It's still illegal because there's no way to prove that you didn't poach. In other words, like there's like no eagle products at all. You're not allowed to create any sort of commerce, trade keeping of any sort of endangered species things. Yeah. At all.
So I was, but for a while, I was a smuggler before I realized that it was illegal to pick them up off the beach. I was a I guess you're not a felon until you're convicted, but I would have been. Would have been a felon and a smuggler. Me too. Yeah.
So anyway, so uh here's the issue. So the ambroxane is extremely hard to get into solution. So about two weeks ago, I put it into into a solution because I'm making a you have to dilute it quite a lot. So I was doing an aliquot. And I guess the concentration I chose was still so high that it will eventually dissolve.
But it I looked at it three days later and I hadn't dissolved yet, and I forgot to look at it. Somewhere at the bar. So today when I go back to the bar, I'll try to locate it and maybe have an answer for how this fake amber gris tastes next week. Um the Wiener system wants to know, and John, maybe you have an answer. Maybe Nastasia has an answer.
Nastasia's good at figuring out like off-brand uses for the spin saw. Is there any good reason for a hot dog vendor to own a spinzall? I'm looking for any excuse whatsoever. Well, it helps it helps the Booker and Dax Corporation. Is that an excuse?
I don't know. Uh I don't know, Stas is what do you think? What could a hot dog vendor use it for? Huh? Um you made hot dog water once, right?
I bought hot dog water. No, I bought it. Uh remember Time Out asked us, is it safe to do it? Is it safe to have hot dog water, the dirty dog water? So we we went downstairs, we gave the guy five bucks and we'll give me a cup of your hot dog water.
He's like, What? I was like, I want a cup of the hot dog water. I'm gonna give you five dollars. He's like, You're gonna give me five dollars if I give you a cup of this water. I was like, Yes, here's a here's a cup.
He's like, okay. And he gave it to us, and it had a couple of onion floaty bull craps in it, right? No hairs. I noticed no actual dirt. The most like a hot dog I've ever had.
It tasted more like a hot dog than a hot dog. And that actually taught me a valuable cooking lesson, which is everyone's like, leaching the flavor out. Not if the not if the broth has more flavor than the stuff that's floating in it. That was isoflavor. It was completely isotonic in all flavor components with the hot dog itself.
You were not doing one thing to the flavor of that hot dog by having it float in that water. It could be floating. The same one that I tasted 15 years ago, we could be having it today, and it would taste the same if it was floating in that water because it's probably preserved hell and that water is so like I was like that. I was like, this is good. I was like, someone needs to, someone needs to like, you know, make here's my idea.
You ready for it? I think people should do a hot dog ramen. How has that not been done before? You just mean with the broth liquid. Right.
So like the packet would be hot dog like flavor. You do the rum, and then you could buy hot dogs and then throw them on top, maybe with an egg. I think people would buy the hell out of a hot dog ramen pack. You know what I mean? Yeah, definitely.
I think the museum should do it because we're we're we're gonna be doing uh food vendors. What do you say, Stuff? Giving away another idea that we won't make any money on. Well we would never do it anyway. That's like saying, you know what we should do?
We should go to Mars. I mean, I can't do it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not gonna develop a I mean, I'm not saying we should go to Mars. What?
Also, we're out we're out of your goals. Oh, okay. Maybe forever. Like forever. Yeah.
Zero exists on our own um platforms and zero exists at Amazon. So we're no more fear balls. Forever. Hey, guess what, people? Small business sucks.
Um we talk in tariffs. Sure does. Oh, we have a caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hey, how's it going?
This is Jacob from Des Moines. Hey, how you doing? Not bad, not bad. How are you? Doing all right.
What's up in uh what's up? You know, I again I've still never been to uh any area around Des Moines, any Iowa adjacent thing, although my wife was across the river in uh what the heck state is that? She was in Omaha, right across the river. Omaha, sure. Yeah, right across the river from some and I was like, were you near?
And she's like, no. And I was like, did you have uh the pork sandwich, the cutlet sandwich? And she was like no. She's like, no, she didn't. Who is the best one?
What's the best uh I d I don't have a strong opinions about it. Um For those of you who don't know, it's a goofy sandwich. It's a goofy, goofy sandwich. It's a s it's it's a sandwich that has approximately one tenth of the of the meat is covered with the bun. It's like it's like an 18 inch square like circle sandwich with like a full like a four inch bun on it.
I let's just say that that Yeah. That doesn't make any sense. It's a stunt. It's like an evil canil sandwich. It's so big that and and here's the other goofy thing, right?
If you were gonna serve me that sandwich, w okay, Rebecca, where would you put the bun? Underneath. No, but I would put it on the edge so that you could at least pick the sandwich up and and like dip the the the tenderloin cutlet in some sort of goopy sauce and eat it. Like it hold enough though? Like would it actually hold it up or would it just be a little bit?
No, it would not. But like you can't even use it like you can't there's no way to pick it up. You need two hands to pick it up because you need to lift it like a burrito bowl. What are you I'm telling you, man, get I mean, I'm happy I'm happy to show you around and we can go on a tenderloin tour and we can get some sweet corn. Like I'm happy to do that if you ever find yourself here, look me up.
Yeah, well, you still give me the phone like I want you to invite Dave to dinner and I want you to sit across from him and stare him in the eye as Dave eats that you can't eat anything. Okay. Okay. I think I think you could uh make a lot more money off of that. That's a deep deep cut stuff.
Yeah, that's that's that's you do an OnlyFans, man. Like I mean, I'm gonna say this is taking a dark turn. What is your question? Uh I have well, I have lots of questions, but I know Nastasia's rule, so I'm just gonna stick to the one that's most pressing. Um so I it's my question is about f uh extending the life of fryer oil.
Ooh. Um I have noticed um because I I work in a shared use kitchen that has a fryer that doesn't get used very often, and I do some consultation for a place where it's like a catering operation that they don't use that sometimes will go for like weeks or months without using it. I'm curious if there are any sort of best practices if you're not actively using oil for preserving it. My only thought the only two things that I can think of are like popping a lid on top of it or dumping it back into the plastic jug and just storing it in the jug until you need it. So both of those are the things that are in the case.
So like both both of those are great ideas. And so I always what I used to do on my fryer was I had a uh a cutting board that I had like routed a uh like a like a dado around the outside of the cutting board so that it fit right over the top like a lid, and then bam, and then when you're not using it, you know, if you need to rest something there, you can rest something there. Uh so that's what I did, and that helps uh like a little bit. First of all, it's like stopping obviously crap from falling into it, which is a nightmare. But still you know, you have a relatively but then it's like an oxidation.
Yeah, it's a really phenomenon, right? That's essentially what's happening. Yeah, I mean, look, in in a in a in a fifty forty, fifty, sixty pound fryer, it's still like a relatively small surface area on the top compared to how deep it is. Right. But a lot also depends, like modern stainless fryers are a lot nicer to the oil they're sitting in than the old um the old black iron ones where you know, even when they're kind of cured, you're stu I'm still a little worried that you're having um, you know, like like non non stainless metal contact with it because that can also accelerate metal, you know, metal uh ions accelerate oxidation.
But things will last a while. The main thing though is if somebody fries something in that oil that throws off stuff and they don't drain it and filter it, then you also have all of those crumbs and filth sitting in the bottom. Right. And that's doing a lot of damage. And in you know, in in one of those old school, when a nice, you know, cold zone fryers, it's kind of hard even to see whether or not uh, you know, what's what's there in the bottom.
They make relatively inexpensive. I mean Yeah, they make relatively inexpensive sensors that you can shove into the oil and it'll tell you whether the oil's in good shape or not. Uh you know, you your your tongue also does a good job. Just dip a l dip a crumb of you know, dip some bread into it and taste it. Wonder bread in there, yeah.
That's what I do. What about uh killing the pilot while you're storing it in the cutting the gas? I kill the pilot always. It doesn't stay hot. Well, you know, the the kill the pilot.
Well let's blow it out, you know what I mean? And and then the basil kick in, the ba the basal valve will kick in. Uh then of course, you know the whoever comes in to use it then needs to know how to turn on a basal valve. But like, you know, if you don't mean if you don't learn. Yeah.
Although like are you is an electric fryer guy. It's a gas. Yeah. Gotta love a gas fryer. Yeah.
All three tubes are going. That's something. Yeah. Oh yeah, and ours is ours is uh I don't know, I I guess I don't remember. I haven't seen another fryer since then.
But yeah, that when that thing lights up, it's like whoosh. Yeah. Pretty cool. But um cool. Do you okay?
Do you do you have any just off the top of your head general guidelines of when you should be like, all right, we should store this. You know, if it's like if you're you because like I said, you're talking about using using the fryer maybe one day out of a week at m uh at the least. Sometimes it would be even longer than that. Yeah, I would just the next on that. The next day, just like, you know, uh, you know, unf you should buy the the fryer oil strainer.
So there's funnels that like have like like paint uh almost like paint like I can't describe them. They're like paper paper funnels with like a nylon paint strainer in 'em. You know what I'm saying? And that you can use for oil or paint. Paper super fine, yeah, yeah.
So what I would do is I would just get the uh, you know, obviously save the oil cube taners, right? And then also buy buy stabilized fry oil, obviously. And then uh Yeah, of course. Yeah, and then just you know, I I wouldn't worry about doing it like that night, but the next day someone should probably come in when it's you know cool enough and then and then strain it all out because then you're just good, you know what I mean? Um that's what I would do, especially if it's gonna be that long, because in a shared kitchen, if it's just sitting around, you don't know what someone's done to it or any.
It's not you know your kitchen. I would I would just drain it, put it in the cube taners, keep it away from light, and and and I would still cover it. Yeah. You know, and I would still cover the fryer. Right.
Um man, I wish I no, you know what once? Uh so when I took my fryer out of the city and I I had a place in Connecticut for a while, I put it outside, and an outdoor fryer is obviously awesome. But I remember I fired it up one spring after I hadn't used it for a couple of months, and a mouse had built a nest in the uh in so the back of a commercial fryer. For those of you that never used one, there's there's three in mind, three big tubes, and those tubes are what the you light the fire in, and that's that's the who that we're talking about, that like huge amount of like you know, 80,000 BTUs or whatever it is, like of gas fire, and then all of that stuff goes through the front of the fryer, you know, from underneath through the through the tubes and out the chimney in the back, which is why you don't want to ever stick your hand over the back of a fryer when it's running. Never do that.
You know what I mean? Um yeah. And so I was like, what the and I incinerated in it an entire mouse family. Not on purpose. I was like, you you figured that out, and then you went turning.
No, it's like, you know, click, click, click, click, click, and then all of a sudden you I saw like, you know, you know, like hot rods when like the fire comes out of their exhaust pipe come out of it chimney. Yeah, I was like, what the hell? You know? Yeah. Anyway.
Yeah, it is rough. Uh so that's what I that's uh that's what I would do. Um and you know, obviously, you know, if someone fries stuff that throws off a lot of a lot of stuff, it's gonna be a problem, or if they fry a lot of un unbattered fish, who goes there and fries a whole bunch of unbattered fish in your oil and ruins it? You know what I mean? I'm gonna froze the fish with them.
That's something that uh every almost every person that's gonna use the fryer asks, they're like, who provides the oil? And it's like, well, if you're just because like for me, I do small scale sort of like more curated fancy catering and dinner parties and stuff like that. So like I'm frying like a potato's worth of chips or something. Yeah. Um, whereas somebody somebody else might be coming in and doing a fish fry pop-up.
And so what we tell them is, you know, if it's if you're if you're just doing a couple of baskets worth, then that's just on the house. But like if you're coming in here and doing like fried chicken or like a huge event that's like all out of the fryer, then we would have you pay for the oil. We would source it, but you would still have to kind of like pay us back for it. Cause yeah, there's that like were it me and just my habits, I mean, I could I could get several months of use out of uh just one batch of oil that then somebody else is coming in and they're frying 200 pounds of chicken, then that's done for the night. You know, you gotta swatch swap it out.
So we're super flexible and kind of like tr transparent and communicate communication is kind of the key to success in our particular operation. But yeah. Also, do you have any not do you have any I don't like it with recent recent professional folks who use it? Because the other thing is is that someone who's used to home frying who's never used a commercial fryer before is apt to crank it too high because they're used to the response time of a of a stove. So they're gonna overcrank the oil and ruin it a lot faster than someone who's used to a real fryer and knows you don't have to overcrank a professional fryer.
You know what I mean? Right. Most of the most of the sort of amateurs that don't have or people not amateurs, people that don't have the a professional experience that are like, yeah, I want to start a pot like a business or whatever. Most of them are deterred just because of the s initial startup costs and the cost of like renting the kitchen because it's like yeah we're not we're not necessarily a place that you want to start a business. We're a place that you want to expand your business.
You know what I mean? Like you should come in here with a decent following and decent cash flow. Um and so most I think the person that the the one other person that he's used it the most is I don't know twenty years of experience and has this awesome tamale company and like the only thing he's really used it for is like frying tortilla chips. So we haven't had that problem but it is something I'm I'm aware of so yeah. Tortilla chips are the easiest thing in the world to fry.
They are the easiest thing in all you have to do is make sure that the tortillas don't stick to each other. Everyone hates a double tortilla that is floppy. Nobody on earth likes that. There's not one human being who like wait are you saying you're that person? I mean it I mean I don't mind uh y if it's floppy that's a problem.
But sometimes it's not and sometimes you'll get like it looks like a mui fui of tortilla chips if you will. And uh man that thing with some queso on it like it's got superior crunch. Well they better all be crunchy but the odds that someone turn their oil temperature down low enough to fully dehydrate a me f mu say say uh say say thousand leaf, John. Middle fee. Yeah.
Uh like any like if they have the oil temperature low enough to dehydrate a whole stack of those suckers before uh and the inside's not still soft, I mean, God bless. I would I would try that. Like, you know, Mark Ladner style, like thousand layer like lasagna, but with tortillas. That's money's great. Right.
That's how you that's how you that's how you can how you take a tortilla and turn it, put it on a uh eight course or 20 course tasting menu and charge like 300 bucks for it. It's like, oh yeah, no, we've got this million layer potato chip or uh tortilla chip. Hey, when you're doing uh big batches of tortillas, do you take the baskets out and fry without the b basket and just use like a spider to stir it around, or do you do it in the basket? I should I I can't it's been so long since I've had it. I've probably done all the things.
The real thing is to use the baskets to hold the tortillas down. So you dump them all in. So whenever I'm doing small batches, I always double basket. I'm surprised that they don't sell more just like basket pushdowns that fit in. So I bought a bunch of flat fry things to throw on top of baskets because tortillas float like a mother, but you gotta churn them first, right?
First you churn them with the tongs. Yeah, and then you sink. That's what I'm saying. It's like you gotta stir stir it around a bunch so they fry evenly and don't stick together. But uh, I usually, if I'm doing a bunch, I'll do it without the baskets.
I just dump it straight into the oil and well the question is this the important question you have to ask yourself is is has someone thrown away the grate that goes on top of the tubes? Because if there's no grate on top of the tubes, I'm not sticking anything in that fryer without a basket. But if they've left the grate in and haven't tried to use it as a cooling rack, like a freaking knucklehead, then yeah, you can go directly in. You know what I mean? Yeah, 100%.
100%. Cool. All right. Well, let us let us know. All right, well, like I said, if you ever find yourself if you ever want to make a cookie new shoes trip to Iowa, I'd love to show you guys around.
Uh someday. It's not a flyover spade. There's actually some cool and interesting things, and I personally am uh have good relationships with a lot of like interesting producers, uh cheese makers and mushroom growers and farmers and all that stuff. So yeah, open invite. If you guys are over here, let me know.
I'd love to be. Yeah. Have you been to the mushroom festival? Yes. We went last year.
You son of a it was great. Are you gonna you're gonna invite me? We're gonna do a cooking issues thing at the Do you want to go this year? I do it's in September. I do.
I'm gonna enter the fried mushroom. If you want to do a tour, we actually we actually just had our first annual mushroom festival here in Demor and I did a uh a processing demonstration for it. So if that's if you want to do a tour, a mushroom festival tour, uh, you know, think about stopping in Des Moines. We got the magic ones, the not magic ones. Yeah.
All right, all right. We'll do it. You gotta get here for you gotta get you gotta get some of the sweet, you gotta get some of the sweet corn too. I've heard people, you know, we've I've called and we've talked about this, and I've contemplated just flying some out to you guys, but uh not there financially. But uh yeah, I've heard uh testimony from other folks that we we've got the best, uh the best sweet corn here.
So uh it's worth worth worth the trip. Yeah, well, you know, you can't say, Rebecca, that that like our like, you know, like between New York and Pennsylvania, New Jersey style corn is the best if you haven't flown to Iowa and gotten the stuff that they don't export. It's true. Silver. I just thought it was fine words.
I didn't say they were wrong. Yeah, yeah. That's like anyone who says their tomatoes are are the best and haven't been here and had the world's greatest tomato. How are they gonna know? They think they've had a good tomato.
Anyway, all right. Let us let us know how the oil thing works out. And if I ever go to Iowa, we'll we'll drop you a line. Um sounds good, babe. Cool.
Z Banks writes in, I want to make a carbonated case. It's always nice when it's always it's always nice when a guest is a caller. When a what? Nastasia, I love that the rule was acknowledged and then just completely ignored. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. No, they do that all the time. They do it because like they don't respect much.
Yeah, yeah. It would be better if they didn't mention it. Hey, you know what? Speaking of respecting the audience, let's uh spend more time talking about it. Okay.
Z Banks uh says, uh I want to make a carbonated cucumber cocktail. Uh, how do I get clean cucumber flavor? And what's the best way to clarify the juice? Uh, Z Banks. There's a lot of technical stuff in here.
I think your issue is is that when you're clarifying you made an interesting point that you weren't getting foam when you're doing English cucumbers. And Austin actually has a special fancy from Cato pop-up Contra. Stay with it. So he has this fancy, like, you know, grown by a farmer in California, like Korean variety, miniature cucumber that he clarifies. And he said it doesn't foam nearly as badly.
And I saw it, it doesn't foam. He's doing like uh, I think a five or six to one of that cucumber with bittermelon in a carbonated thing that he's making at the bar today. Anywho, so I'm wondering whether American cucumbers foam more than like English hot houses and maybe these fancy Korean ones. So if anyone has some experience on carbonating like many varieties of cucumber, I just don't do it anymore because of the carbonation problem I had. That one time I did Pim's Cup for Kate Crater's birthday, and I wanted to stab myself with the foaming situation.
Um, but uh I think your problem here, Z Banks, is um you when you're when you're blending them and you're not getting good clarification. I don't think it's a starch problem. I think it's that uh you need to like you need to have enough solids in it for it to be sticky enough. So I would do the enzyme, the Kesel Salt, Kitus and Kiesel salt before you do any spinning. Do not try to get any solids out of it before you do anything.
And on a I don't remember whether you were juicing it or blending it, but if one didn't work, try the other. Uh let us know how it goes. Um Mathman writes in back in episode 53, I was talking up 53. Oh my god. What are we on?
Like 8,922? Gotta be near 400. Jesus. Anyway, it's about using a rotor stator homogenizer to make uh milks. Um yeah, you know what, Math Man?
Do you have like I don't I don't understand the the question? So Mathman, like uh unless we're just musing about it, I haven't had a homogenizer in a long time. I haven't I have a rotor stator homogene. I actually just got rid of it. You know, I put it in the trash because no one wanted it.
When Nastasi and I were I I how how hard did I throw that thing into the trash bucket, Stas? Oh, so hard. You were so happy to get rid of it. I was like, it's like, you know, like part of me, like the minute I get rid of something, like, you know, I know I don't have it anymore. But then there's also like I get so angry in those moments that there is a release to just hurling large pieces of equipment into a giant bucket of filth and having some like weird transfer stage in uh transfer station a-hole give us a stink eye the whole time.
How many stink eyes did we catch that day, Stas? So many, but it was so worth it. Uh you know what? Like, here's the thing when people are throwing things away, you know, if you're working in a transfer station, I don't know if anyone who's listening to this ever works at a transfer station. Have some mercy.
The people who are doing this stuff, no one wants to be going and like, you know, having like a small window to throw away their life's possessions and like, you know, their entire work history into a trash hole because they can't afford to keep it going and no one knows what's going on anymore. Nobody likes that. Like, have some mercy. Right, Saz? Anyway.
Um, wait, can I say my food for this week? Yeah, of course. I had to go to a wedding. Oh. Not only did you go to a wedding, didn't you give a speech?
I gave a speech and I couldn't eat because I was so nervous because I hate public speaking so much. I didn't eat any of the food. I didn't drink. I was so nervous. Could you post load?
Could you do the speech and then post load? I postloaded. I postloaded. But um, but the yeah, I gave the speech and I killed it. I now I know how Pauly Shore feels.
Uh now I know what Paul Short feels. Oh my god. I guarantee you it was better than the set that Pauly Shore did the time that we saw him in uh what was that called? What was that place we call went to with him? Flappers.
Oh, in bursts. Flappers, yeah. You went there with him? He was you know, doing a set. Okay, but you you went, you bought tickets and you saw him.
You weren't there. I don't know if we bought tickets. I arrived at the table and I was told that if you wanted to order something, you press this button, this light will turn on, a human will come, and you can get Flappy's nachos. And I was like, why do I want Flappy's nachos? I was like, who's Flappy?
And they're like, it's what this place is named after. I'm like, was there a minimum? There's always a minimum. I don't think so. I think Saz knows all these people.
I don't know. I don't remember. I don't remember. There was definitely a minimum. There's definitely a minimum.
It's usually like $50. That was the era when Nastasia was just like like going on social media, finding whatever coffee shop that Paul Shore was going to to get his lattes and just like showing up in the same coffee shop. Like that. Yeah. That's how she rocked.
Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Very realistic. Oh, yeah?
Oh, yeah. Sure she wants to stay to say right now. Yeah, I mean, it can't be better. I mean, Polly I I like attainable goals though. That's what life's about.
Attainable goals. Anyway. Moderate success. Moderate success. Okay, hold on.
Let me get some questions and we're gonna we're gonna spend some time talking about uh PR. Okay. Uh Kevin uh over there in the Denmark. Uh some of you may be familiar with the uh I didn't know there were viral videos, so I'm not familiar with this, but I am familiar with the technique. Viral videos of shucking oysters by submerging them in liquid nitrogen to uh relax the adductor muscles and make them easy to shuck perfectly.
I've done this, but I have never seen a video of it. I haven't seen that either. Um yeah. I'm trying to replicate the process with lobsters, specifically the tails. I did some digging on an old e-gollum for it post.
Yes, I do remember e-gollum. Uh references modernist cuisine dinner that was done for Farran where they uh cryo shuck the lobster. And uh I asked uh Francisco McGoy about it, and he has no recollection, but I'm wondering if anyone else has done this. Uh tried it with a few tails, dropping in LN for 10 seconds and then into cold water to retemper, but the tail still clung to the inside of the uh tail and needed finagling. Um the idea is to remove the meat uh if you can improve the quality by not blanching it first in water before you cook it.
And this is an extension because remember, Kevin asked me about the uh Isousion all like lobster anesthesia. Here's the issue. I did not have any success with dipping lobsters. I have tried it. I had no, I I saw no benefit or advantage to sticking it.
The one that does have crazy success is high pressure. So it I think ruins the texture of the meat, but you can go and high pressure the lobsters and then the entire shell comes off, and you can get all of the meat, including the arms and stuff on a raw lobster. So there's crazy old photos of like lobsters that have completely deshelled, like just like weird, creepy, creepy, creepy. But the issue for me always was that trying to keep the flavor of the lobster, like to me, the most flavorful lobster is uh a lobster that has uh undergone anesthesia, but is still a whole lobster when it is cooked. And I know that's not what you're looking.
I know that's not what you're it's tossed a penalty. I threw the ball already across the rear bite. Nice. Uh I know that's not your goal, and no restaurants, but like like for me, the best eating lobster, and by the way, the best lobster in the world is crab. Let's just be clear that the best lobster in the world is crab.
Crab is a superior decapod, yeah. Crustacean, for sure. You know what I mean? But uh is lobster anesthetized cooked whole. Because anytime you break the lobster open, you get the the the leaking of the of the hemolith out, the ju the internal juices.
So, Kevin, I want to know what you're doing to keep that hemolith flavor in. And then but then I I'll think more uh more about it. Who is that chef stas that gave us the demo of uh of how to uh shuck uh a live lobster and use chopsticks and then did the special like twisty twisty and then also fried that fried that fish and made us made us made us made us physically ill by watching a a live fish being fried. Wait, no. Oh, it's a it's a it's a very so awful.
It it is a traditional technique. I was glad I have seen it, but I never want to see it again. Yeah, I would cry. You're familiar with the technique though? No.
You wrap you wrap the head in wet towels and then you deep fry the bow and fillet the body. Yeah, and then it comes out with the gill still moving. It's a traditional technique. Rough. It's like it's very rough.
And the Stas and I were both like, oh, that's rough. I went to the zoo yeah uh on Sunday and I cried one and a half times. Why? Because the penguin's eating the fish? No.
Well, there was a baby gorilla or no baby orangutan, and uh they were talking about the destruction of its entire habitat and uh except the habitat at the zoo? That's that's actually how I justify going to the zoo. I'm like, probably a better life. I don't know. Maybe, maybe not.
I don't know. Pretty soon we'll all be in zoos. It'll be great. Um worm road in, I originally pursed a rotovap that is paired with a water aspir for the way, water aspirator is a vacuum pump for chumps. So a water aspirator is you screw uh you screw something on onto a water faucet, you turn the water on.
Now they have circulating pumps, so you don't need to waste all of this water. And the water flowing past actually creates a suction that is the vacuum pump. But it's only good for relatively like uh you know, weak vacuums. I'm just gonna say, but that is the classic way in a laboratory to use a uh uh a roto vap because A, they don't care about the environment or water, so they waste it. Used to, they do now.
And B, they're usually evaporating things like acetone that don't require that high of a vacuum to get the temperature down to a safe zone. Okay, you with me on what an aspirator is? We good? I can move on. All right.
Uh however, I'm struggling with the lack of information out there on rotovaps. I've read Dave's primer. He mentions cleaning with an ultrasonic water bath. Well, any cheap ultrasonic, yeah, yeah, that's just for cleaning the grease and stuff off of your glassware. The problem really is that you can't like there's no ultrasonic bath I've ever had big enough to fit all of the glassware into it to fully clean it out.
But yes, if it fits, you must have quits. Uh I don't like the idea of buying bags of ice to run the aspirator every time I want to use a rotovap, because remember, the colder the water is, the better the vacuum you can achieve. Uh I also agree with you. But a lot of chillers out there are very expensive. Would using a Vivor laboratory uh chiller be a good alternative?
I recognize this won't get much colder than ice water, but I'm not interested in spending more than a thousand dollars on a chill chiller. All right, listen. Here's the thing, uh worm. Just get a real vacuum pump. Don't use the aspirator.
You need a chiller. So there's two problems with a rotovap. You need to chill your uh you need to chill your condenser. And so, like, so I'm assuming you don't mean chill the water. There's two problems.
Are you gonna chill the water for the condenser? Is that what you're talking about? Or chilling the water to get a better vacuum on your aspirator pump. Both are problems. Pitch the aspirator pump right now.
Just throw it away. Get a different pump with a controller, just wait till you can find one on eBay. Regardless of your chiller, everyone makes a mistake. I looked up the chiller you mentioned, which was a $500 chiller, V VOR laboratory chiller, six liters, negative five Celsius, and it claims to be 800 watts. Here's what's not here's what's not written.
The important thing on a chiller isn't how many watts you pull out of the wall, because most of them are thrown away. It's how many watts of chilling power you have at a particular temperature. And just so you know, I'm giving you some numbers. To uh to to recondense a liter of uh water in an hour's time requires 626 watts of cooling, of cooling, not out of the wall of actual chilling. And you're getting a tiny fraction of that uh uh of your chilling of your power coming out of the wall is going to chilling.
For ethanol, it's a lot less. For ethanol, it's 200, uh, 200 uh watts of cooling power constantly for a full hour to get a liter. So that's the kind of range, and the Vivor did not mention how much cooling power they had at a particular temperature, which is the only piece of information that's useful to you. But everybody undersizes their chiller 100% of the time. Now, not 40% of the time, 100% of the time.
Uh all right, one last question. Uh Rock Baker says, I ordered a bun Ultra NX frozen drink machine. What are the guidelines for non-alcoholic and alcoholic success? Sugar alcohol, well, look, non-alcoholic just jack the sugar. Just jack it, because you need to get the texture right.
Like they're like high in sugar, like 12, 13% high. Um, and we are planning a non-alcohol uh coffee something and a Contra Green Piscolata. So we have a we have a chartreuse and pisco, you know, thing. Uh so here's what I say for shoot for uh an alcoholic drink, about 10 between 9 and 10.5% alcohol, uh, a percent below whatever the alcohol is in sugar, so like about 10.3, about 9% sugar. Percent.
That's when I say percent, I mean grams per 100 milliliters and about 0.73% acid. And so I'll rip this off real quick. You can go back and listen to it uh again and again to get the numbers. But oh my God, look at that. Can you even read that?
It's been like it got so wet on the ride over here. Green chartreuse, I think it's 187.5 mLs. Pisco Alta del Carmen, 254.5 mLs, two mils of uh 20% saline solution, 100.5 milliliters of polydextrose, 5050. Uh that's a one-to-one simple syrup with polydextrose, 194.2 of lime acid with successic, 334.8 uh water, 535.7 pineapple juice, 227.7 coconut milk. It's not oh yeah, coconut milk, 150.7 of Coco Lopez.
No relation to Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, and only use that one because it's got the all the emulsifiers in there, they're gonna make your life better. And 1.67 grams of Xanthan for a total of 101,989 mLs per batch. Ding ding ding. Let's talk about PR, Rebecca. So let me ask you a question.
A lot of people think that they uh can do their own PR. Why are they wrong? I don't necessarily believe that. Sell it. Sell it.
But see, that's how Well I I can I can give Rebecca a resounding um whatever. She's she's a good PR person because she's not fake and she tells the truth and she's really fun. She's like, you know what? This restaurant kind of sucks. Don't go.
And that's it. Thank you, Nastasia. Um yeah, no, I mean I I don't think everyone needs restaurant PR. Like it's if you look at how much it costs on a monthly basis, and you think about what else you could be doing with that money in a restaurant, whether or not it's like paying your cooks more, a variety of other things. Ficking fixing your uh walk-in freezer as well.
You know, two minutes, go, go, go. But yeah, so I mean, I think Well, how do you measure return on investment when you're looking at a PR? Maybe that's a better question. When should I get when should I get one? Why should I have one?
How do I measure whether or not like I'm getting what I need out of it? So I would say that it becomes worthwhile when you are scaling, I would say. Um also it really just depends on the person, you know. Like, and also no one should get PR if they don't understand the value of it because it's a lose-lose. Like when I do contracts, it's like if it's not working, it's not working on either side.
No one wants to be locked into it. You mean because if they don't understand the value, they're not going to give you what you need to do a good job. Or they even if you do a good job, they're never necessarily gonna see it. How important is it to mesh with your PR person? Because like very yeah.
Very good I mean, I've seen that go really wrong where the person doesn't like how they're being represented, blah, blah, blah. And also, I mean, for what I do, I would say PR is kind of just one part of it too. Like a lot of it is more internal, like, you know, for strategic messaging as well as helping to get ideas across the finish line. So at the end of the day, the best part is like having a great product. And if I can help you get to that point, that's when you're going to be successful and have more press too.
And also, I mean you know, I know for a fact you personally don't mind working with weirdos. I love weirdos. Which is good though. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Like some. So most people in this industry are weirdos. Well, yeah, I mean, like also like, you know, like cr crazy stuff, you know, spit and bubblegum, everything being held together with duct tape, wheels flying off the bus at all times. I mean, it takes a certain kind of personality to be able to deal with those kinds of folks, you know what I mean? Yeah.
I will never forget that stupid van that Nastasia rented that was supposed to not be moved. Oh. Oh my god. It was supposed to be a sleeping van. It didn't have battery, remember?
It didn't have an alternator. And like, uh, I remember the guy was like, uh, the guy tried to bum cash off of us in the uh in the gas station. At the gas station. I was like, buddy, I don't even have an alternator. I'm gonna give you five dollars.
You're like, I don't even have a working van. You know what I mean? Oh, geez. Anyway, tell people how they can find you if they need if they need some uh some boondoggling to go in their way. That's a good question.
I hate this answer, and I hate saying it, but honestly, I would probably say LinkedIn. Or you can just find me via cooking issues. There you go. Make more work for you guys. All right, Rebecca.
Well, uh just did a bad job selling myself, but I am good at selling my clients. Strong. Thank you. You spend so much time selling your clients that you don't sell yourself. It's true.
Thanks for coming on, Rebecca. Cooking issues.
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