Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center, New York City News Stand Studios joined as usual with John. How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. All good, all good on a humid, humid, humid New York day.
Uh got uh Joe rocking the panels behind me. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. Thanks for joining us. In the uh in the lower left, uh, we have Nastasi the Hammer Lopez.
How you doing? I'm good. Good, good, good. And then somewhere in the general vicinity of Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, we I think we have Jackie Molecules. Yep, you're here and enjoying the not enjoying the not New York humidity.
Uh-huh. Well, well, you it's not it's never that humid in LA, right? Like you never pull like a swampy swamp, right? No. Hey, can I tell a secret that I'm not?
I'm saying I don't I don't miss it at all. There's somebody's parents. No. Who thought they could move no. Okay.
No. Okay. Uh, do we have Quinn with us today? Sure do. Quinny Quinn.
Upper left holding it down. How's uh how's life in Quinnville today? Uh all right today, just tired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And special guest, all the way from across the street.
Chef Sam Yu from uh well, we're gonna talk about it more later. We'll talk more about the restaurants later, but the oldest restaurant he has right now, Golden Diner, right? Yes. That's the oldest. Super old, like five, six years old.
Six years old. Ancient. That's an old man. That's an old man. Dinosaur.
In restaurant turns. It's like you've gotten over that hump. Although, didn't work for me. I got my bar over the five-year hump, and then when they renovated uh Soundbar, they're like, hey, we're gonna close uh we're gonna close your down. Like, why?
Aren't we making money? Yep. Well, why do you want to close us down? Oh, we want to turn it into a private dining room. I was like, really?
Yeah, yeah. I was like, you're gonna make less money. We don't think so. Guess what happened? They made less money.
Hey, I'm gonna shut down a really cheap to run cocktail bar and put in a private dining room that's only gonna run twice a month. Brains, right, Sus? I don't think I've ever told that story on air exactly like that. Hey, it's fine though. Like, listen, I'll say this before we get into our normal weekly garbage.
Uh by the way, if you have something to tell us and you're on the Patreon, call in two 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. It doesn't pay in life to get mad at people when people make people who have the power to make business decisions will make those decisions. And they're often wrong, right? You know what I mean?
And so you can't get mad at them if you can only get mad at someone if they go against what their contractual obligations are. But if you agree to a contract and then they just exercise the rights to that contract, okay. That's why you know, get mad at people for stuff like that. You can say to them, you're making a poor choice. But no reason to get mad.
You know what I mean? Anyway, uh life's too long to get mad. You know what I mean? Yes, yeah, yeah. It's a good philosophy, good way to think.
Uh all right, what do you guys got this week? What do you guys got going on? Uh I went to the real a really good isakaya called um Subaki, and I know how much you love chicken hearts. I do love chicken hearts. There was a yuckator.
So the menu, you know, I had like the usual stuff. It was like um, you know, skin hearts, everything else on the Octori, and then one of them just said special special hearts. I was like, what is special special hearts? Human hearts. And uh it turns out that's just it's just a version of chicken hearts where they kind of like trim away the outer part and just like it's like the you know, just the core, the core of the chicken heart.
Hold up, mean they didn't bother like cutting off the freaking aorta and stuff on their regular chicken heart? They just like straight out straight out of the out of the thing. What? I'm saying the special, special the chicken heart skewers are as you'd normally get, right? And they're delicious and amazing.
And the special special hearts are just sort of carved further. Wait, so it's like the center center. I mean, oh, they were split already or something, like laid out flat? I don't get it. I mean, it's not gizzards.
I don't understand. The regular chicken hearts come looking like a chicken heart. And then these ones are what splayed out? They're like butterfly for some reason because a chicken heart can't cook fast enough. I'm just picturing I'm that's sarcasm.
I'm just trying to picture what the special special one looks like. Didn't you first of all? No, I think I prefer the regular chicken heart. But it was it was interesting. Yeah.
Sam, what are your thoughts on chicken hearts? Love them. Love, love. Someone here. I forget who it was.
Maybe it was Nastasia Harma Lopez said that she went to a place and they gave her too many hearts. No, it's not a thing. Yeah, I went with I went with Aaron Polski and it was like there were like twelve chicken hearts on a skewer, and then five of those skewers of chicken hearts. That was one order of chicken hearts. That's too many chicken.
That's too many. For one. But what if you have a beer? I love chicken hearts. I really do love chicken hearts.
I have to say, I love gizzards, but I can have an enough gizzards. Although I was once served a duck gizzard salad in Paris, where I don't know how they trim the gizzards, but they were soft but not mushy. I don't know how they did it. Because I've done regular, I've done like hard cooked, like so that I've never gotten it to just that level of bite on the gizzards where I was like, oh, I don't know. Little confit and maybe a deep fry?
Confit deep fry, but then they confit, they keep testing it to make sure that they got it just right. They spent time. God, I don't have time. Duck gizzards. First of all, I don't know that a duck heart is much better than a chicken heart, but a duck gizzard is a good thing.
True or false. Ooh, duck hearts are good though. I didn't say they weren't good, man. I just said I don't know. Like I for many years I was like, I wish that I wish that our chicken was duck.
Like the Frenchish chicken is duck, right? Uh and then I was like, you know what? It's just I've eaten too much bad chicken. Chicken is delicious. You know what I mean?
The real chicken. Yeah, chicken. Chicken. Oh, by the way. Uh so what else did you have other than these special, not so special chicken hearts and the regular aka the better chicken hearts?
Um, you know, a bunch of crudos, like um bunch of crudos, um, what else? Really good collar. Um which which collar? Yeah. Like a like an animal collar or a fish collar.
No fish, fish, fish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tuna. That place is great though. Tuna. Yeah, tuna. How did your hands look afterwards?
Picking it all up and getting all that gooey crap all over your hands. Um not too bad. Went to work with the shops. Yeah. All right.
Uh so what did I do? Oh, you know what today is? I'll I'll give a little thing today. Today is and Jen, not Jen, my wife, neither of us like talked about it until this morning, 30th wedding anniversary. Today.
30. Congratulations, oh, that's Nastasia hanging up on me. Yeah, strong. Nastasia is gonna be like, I have to say this just so people know kind of what like our general life is like. As soon as I'm done on this, I'm gonna get on a bike back home.
Nastasia's gonna call me and she's gonna say, You scumbag, what are you doing for your 30th wedding anniversary? And I'm gonna say, not dying? I mean, I don't know. Like, what am I supposed to do? It's the middle of the week.
You know what I mean? Cook something nice. Go get like caviar and poix gras and champagne. Like, come on, Dave. You're a food professional.
Food professional. Here's the thing, right? First I have after the show, then I have a bar meeting and then a meeting at the bar. Remember, those are two different things. A bar meeting is when the bar staff gets together, and a meeting at the bar is when someone who doesn't work at your bar is coming to the bar for a meeting.
So I have to dance between the raindrops and cook something. Maybe I'll cook something that we had on our honeymoon in Italy, 1995. Italy in 1995 was sick. It was real good. Um anyway.
And it's it's kind of good to go someplace when you don't have any money or expectations and you're really young because like everything is new. You know what I mean? Like everything is awesome. You know what I mean? Hard to recapture that.
Also, my ice machine broke. That's the other thing that happened. I think I mentioned this on the air. The ice machine broke. I do not recommend anyone get a professional ice machine for their house.
It's just not. I mean, you're like, it's awesome. I have clear ice all the time. And I lots of it. And then it's like, yeah, but it's loud as hell.
It dumps water everywhere. You go through filters like a demon. And it's just intensely wasteful. It's just like intensely wasteful. It's just another thing to sanitize every once in a while.
But you know, it I so I have a new seltzer system up and running, right? Same carbonator. Big Mac McCann. Never gonna give it up. Never, never, never, never gonna give it up.
Good carbonator. It'll be carbonating after long after I'm dead. I'm gonna pass it to my great-grandchildren, I'm gonna have this carbonator. It's gonna be good. But I've moved my chilling and dispensing system, but I don't want to talk about it because I have a cheap line and I might get another one, a backup before I tell you guys which ones to buy.
All right, so maybe next week. We'll see. Um all right. So what else we got? What else we got in this week?
This week, what's good? Quinn, do you guys? I have a question. Oh, I have a question. All right.
I have to go to a German hosted pool party. What should I bring? Wow. Uh toilet brush. Because they're gonna have that weird flat toilet.
You know what I mean? And you're gonna poop into the toilet, and then if they don't have the brush handy, you're gonna have to like what? Well, they're gonna have a bidet, so um, yeah. So not that. Oh, liquor.
What liquor should you bring? Separate question. Um like what what drink. Well, do they did they tell you in advance what they were gonna cook? No.
Just imagine it's German food. Okay. Well question, question. Okay, listen, listen, listen. Are you well schnapps?
Brings the schnapps. Listen, the question is do you want to bring something that says, hey, I've heard of Germans before? Or do you want to bring something that's not German because if they want something German, then they'll just do their own thing. I was just thinking more of a cocktail that they probably haven't had a while. Pick up some of their like canned stuff and like bring an assortment of canned night on earth?
McGill is a good idea. Okay. There you go. Yeah. Because otherwise, those things are in cans, they're good.
Otherwise, and they could chill them and drink them. You're gonna make something, it's gonna be in a bottle. They're gonna pour it wrong, you're gonna stare at it all day. You're gonna be boring holes through the head of the host because they don't know what to do with it. Like the cans throw them on ice, call it a day.
They can drink it along with whatever other, you know, Jody beer stuff they have going on. You know what I'm saying? And you don't have to feel you don't have to feel like you can feel proud that you brought something that's local that's made by a friend of a friend of ours, and then you also don't have to worry whether they consume it on the spot because it's not on you anyway. You know what I mean? Are you do are you doing the tiki truck pop ups?
So Nastasia's talking about something that no one here knows what the hell you're talking about. This is classic Nastasia, the hammer Lopez. They just drop like drop something onto like, you know, a podcast that anyone could be listening to that literally no one would know what we're talking about. I I don't know. Nastasi wants me to do it.
Nastassi wants me to do a Bastille Day event that she is doing and says that there's some sort of pop-up in in LA. Now, I'm gonna remember 30 30 wedding anniversary 30th? Right. Okay. So here's the thing about the being like married 30 years is that there's some give and take.
One thing that I can't do is like just take off and do fun stuff like that doesn't make money. Because and so like I need to figure out like how the money's gonna work, and like just getting a plane to get paid for at this point in my life, like, you know, when I don't know if you know this, there's this business called Booker and Dax that we founded like I don't know, a billion years ago, and we just don't make enough money for us to not have to make money doing other things. So, you know, I mean not to put everything out on the air randomly like someone I know just did a minute ago. But I would like to go, but I gotta figure we gotta figure out like, you know, how we're gonna make it work. I then have to go to Tales of the Cocktail the week after that, and then I get to go to Alaska where I'm planning on having some late summer berries.
Late summer berries. Ooh, delicious. The Thimbleberry, as I've said on the air before, is not God's berry from a texture standpoint, but from a flavor. Imagine a fresh berry that tastes like it's already been made into jam. Are you gonna go to the um the um the was it bear kills or bear uh oh the one where they have the salmon can?
Well, yeah, the same, yeah, because I watched it all the time. Yeah, no, uh that's in a like that's because if you do, I want you to like tell me when you're gonna go so I can watch you on the Well, have you familiar with that really stupid, stupid uh like YouTube thing where they do the silly salmon, and so like these two morons will be walking down the street, and someone will just say silly salmon, and then whatever else you're doing, the other person has to jump up in the air and start flapping like a salmon and into the water or into the ground or whatever. So if I do go, do you want me to do that right over the waterfall and see if a bear just picks me up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like on a sick.
Right? Bear just grabs me out of the air. It's like, oh, bears are not as big as your childhood eye thinks. I mean, they're big. Especially like not a brown bear, grizzlies.
Like Kodiak. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't think we're going there. We're gonna stop maybe by Kanae Fjords and a little bit in um Denali, but half of Denali more than half of Denali is closed because of a road slide, uh mudsli on the uh on the road. Hanging out in Juneau, which looks a lot like Dagobah.
Sick. Dagobah. Uh all right. So uh anything else you fools have uh cooking-wise. Quinn, you've been cooking or you just been uh just been recuperating.
Well, yeah, my dad, my dad's been cooking. Uh we did try uh we made risotto last Friday, and I've been trying a little uh cheat that I've been developing. So I did for every 100 grams of like a standard Italian rice. Uh in this case, uh kind of rolly, I did 20 grams of uh intentionally broken rice. In this case, uh broken sort of sushi rice.
Well, I'm trying to separate the variable of like having that perfectly cooked like rice grain and getting sort of some extra starch. In the surrounding. Wanna just use uh starch. I guess you could, like a rice flour. Yeah.
But you know. I I I had people do when they want to do that. But so and and and that's the only reason why you didn't use the same rice and just like blitz a little bit of it first. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, like I felt like I mean the most repeatable. Yeah, also the the the Italian rice is very expensive. So it's like it feels bad cracking it up. Okay. But like, I mean, the the most repeatable way is to just use if you want starch to leach out, just use starch.
You know what I mean? Like starch it up. And then you could adjust the exact uh amylopectin uh amylose ratio you want based on the starches you choose. Based on the starches you choose. You know what I mean?
No? Yeah, yeah. Okay, I I had I had both types of rice on hand. What kind of stock did you use? What stock did you use?
Just red stock. Something super simple, just onion garlic for the aromatics, a little white wine, homemade red stock, and then finished with a little bit of stock pureeed with some asparagus and a bunch of herbs from the garden. Did you pass the asparagus after you pure it or was it goopy? No, maybe we did the Vitamix, so we just blitzed the crap out of it. I had some actually, actually, you know what?
I did something else cooking this uh on Friday, Matt and Ted Lee from Boyle Peanuts.com, who by the way, I haven't read this book, but we should get them on the on the show. They wrote a book where they embedded as cater as catering helpers at $10 an hour for four years. You read this book, John? I haven't, but I know about it, yeah. Yeah.
It's called, I think Unboxed or Hot Box, Hotbox. Hot Box. And uh yeah, we should get you should get them on. Anyway, I did an event for them. I don't know what made me think of that.
Something that Quinn just said made me made me think of this event that I did on Friday where I was slinging slinging drinks and I made the wax cups, which are gonna show up at the bar sometime soon. The little embossed symbols. I don't know, made me think of it. Quinn, what did you just say? What was the last thing you said?
I used the Vitamix. Oh, I had very good asparagus at that party. The caterer built this weird special grill that like was uh completely wood fired, but it had under ovens, so they had like warming ovens underneath that were fired by the grill and like a massive multi multi-rotissery thing run off of a chain that looked like a torture device, and then they could also hang uh their veg above the grill to get a light smoke before they it was nice, all portable, all like out of a horse trailer. Yeah, I've seen some of those are pretty impressive. Yeah, yeah.
A lot of a lot of water jet cutting of their logos and stuff in it. Strong move. Yeah, yeah. Technology people, technology. Uh all right.
All right, very good. All right, so Sam, the reason I wanted to have you on the show, well, hey, uh I went for not for my anniversary, but for some some event. My birthday, I don't remember. I went to uh I went to uh Golden Diner, which is in the lower well, what do you it's like Chinatown, not Lower East Side. It's kind of in it's two bridges.
Yeah, two bridges. There you go. Which is a weird name, right? First of all, for those that don't know how New York City works, like we have two bridges that are really, really close to each other in Manhattan, the Williamsburg and the Manhattan, and then where they end up in Brooklyn are like a billion neighborhoods apart. It's so weird.
They completely diverge. But we also have two bridges that are relatively far apart from each other here in Manhattan, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge, and they're very close to each other when they hit Brooklyn. So it's like you drew two parallel lines across the river, and then you drew like a little line between the two, like a like a not equal sign. And that's our bridges. So two bridges is the area in New York that is close to actually it's closer to Brooklyn.
It's between Brooklyn and Manhattan, whatever. It's a thing. Anyway, so uh I went there and everyone wants to know about your pancakes. Oh God. Everyone asks you about the pancakes.
You're never gonna take these damn pancakes off the menus. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, imagine like a little omelet pan, right? So like I don't know, seven, eight inches, seven inches. I don't know, six inches. It's bigger than six inches.
Seven? I don't know. I think it's a six-inch pan. Right, but it's bigger on the edges. Six inches is the is the base.
Because pan measurement, let's face it, people, pan management is stupid. Pan measurements are the dumbest measurements on earth. Like, because you never know. Are they specifying the outside? Are they specifying the inside?
How do I buy a lid for a six-inch pan if I don't know the slope of the edges? It doesn't make any sense. None of the none of this makes sense. Whatever. So it's a six-inch base on the pan.
So here's what they do: they they put the pans on the oven, like some unconscionable amount of like butter in them or whatever. No butter. No butter? What is it? Just the butter from the thing?
Yeah. Oh, because it's tef, it's te it's uh nonstick. Not stick. So but it tastes like there's a lot in the batter then. Nothing?
There's no oh you put it on top, after it's a big thing. It's on top. It's in the sauce. A lot of butter in the sauce. There you go, there you go.
Goes on the oven, uh on the on the range, and then finished in the sally, right? That's how you did it. That's the way the night I was there. Yeah, okay, so but these pancakes are they're cooked all the way through. Let's just stipulate that now right now.
They're cooked all the way through. But they are how how big is that, John? Half? No, no, more than half an inch. Three quarters?
At least. Yeah. And it's a double stack. So these pancakes that are bigger than your head and and like thicker than my hand at its at its widest point. And I have like fat meat hands, right?
And so like a double stack of those with I guess the butter sauce on it. And it's a lot. Honey, maple butter. Honey, maple butle. Ooh, yeah.
So like, but everyone you must sell infinity of these every day. Yes. Like roughly infinity. Roughly infinity. More or less.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, plus or minus. Right. Yeah. So uh so what's what's the secret of that?
What like first of all, like what made you do that? And second, are you ever gonna be able to take it off the menu? Definitely definitely not. Definitely won't ever take it off, and we'll hopefully just continue selling more of them. Um man, we're a diner.
We need to have either a pancake or a waffle. Waffle just operationally in that space of a kitchen, very messy. Also, unless you bought the f the HVDs, you'd never have God's waffle anyway. So what's the point? If you're not gonna make God's waffle, what's the point?
Sure. Yeah, anyway, yeah, yeah. Uh and then we wanted to bring some homage to an Asian or Korean type of flavor. And so we thought of the honey butter pancake. And so in that sauce that has honey, maple, and butter, we also put soy sauce in there.
Um for to add a little salty. And then uh it's a honey maple butter that also tastes delicious. Uh I think the big thing is when we first made the sauce, it tasted like Werthers original. That's not a bad thing though. No, that's that was when we're like, this is done.
This sauce is done. And then, you know, just to lighten it all up, because you made this thing sound so heavy, we just finish it with a little bit of lemon zest. Now it's like it's got no calories anymore. It's like fruit salad. This was a lead weight in my stomach, but now I feel like I ate a balloon.
I'm just floating. Is it crude a taste? But uh and it's not heavy, but it is big. Like, in other words, like I like I could polish off any amount of pancakes by myself and then eat a full meal. I'm like, mocker.
You know what I mean? Like it's it but like uh but how do you ensure is it just a heat regulation? You just make sure that it's cooked all the way through, or because you go from the bottom for a while and then top without flipping it, you can get more control. Right. So we cook it about 90 per 95% of the way in the pan just so you get the nice color, and then you just finish it in the oven, uh uh in the sally so you make sure the top part isn't raw.
And when you were first starting, was it all cake tester or touch, or how are you like getting it like just and how how long does it take someone on that station to get it right? Uh cake tester and honestly, we would just like break through it a little bit. Because you're gonna flip it anyway. Right, no one's gonna see it. Yeah, no one will know.
Right. And then uh that station's that whole line is tough. It's not easy because it's a three man line, three person line, and we do volume. Like it's turn and burn, and we try to execute at a very high level. So how many burners do you have?
Are you six or eight? What's uh six, six burners, two fryers, thirty-six inch plancha? Well, your burners, man, they can't do anything but pancakes. It's just like Pancake veil. I mean, I'm saying you have some other spaces, but you know what I mean?
It's like it's true. It's it's Pancakeville. It's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because everyone who goes has to has to get it.
And and I think the most frustrating part sometimes is like a four-top will come and they'll come in for four pancakes. Dummies. It's like, what? Dummies. It's too much.
You need to start the rule like they used to have at the uh uh no one ever remembers this, so I'll be the only one I'll say it again, is the Royal Canadian Pancake House. Not that their c pancakes were fantastic, but they were huge and they knew people were gonna come in and try to share the pancake. And so they would like double charge you if you tried to share it. But you're like, oh, you want them to order other things. Just get one pancake for the group, fools.
It's more than enough. It's more than enough. You'll have enough pancake. More than enough. You know what I mean?
I hope people take this advice and listen. They're not gonna be. It's one pancake. It just bottlenecks us so bad and and puts the kitchen. How about this?
I don't I just 14. All right, okay. So let's say it's 14 bucks, right? Second one's twenty. You're on to something.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's like uh I had a dream never gonna do it, where it's a pizza restaurant where the pizzas are whatever I say they are, and then I charge you more to take toppings off. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
They're like, can I get it without the anchovies? Yeah, it's four dollars. Exactly. They're like, what? I'm like, well, you uh you have to pay me for the pain.
Right. It's not meant to be eaten that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you know, you can do it, but you know, I'm gonna charge you more.
Right. Like you can't you can't do that. People get so mad. You know what I mean? I guess rightly so.
You know, the there there's a thing, right? Where it's like for a while, like Dave Chang was all about like he I think he was early on the and then he left it you know in the right amount of time. It's like just if you want it not my way, go to a different restaurant. You know what I mean? Like so he was like, we're not gonna sub out a bunch of stuff, we're not gonna do this.
We're you know, if you want a vegetarian-friendly restaurant, he's not like this anymore. But like back, you know, when some and noodle bar, he's like, just go somewhere else. There's plenty of places. There's you know, 20,000 restaurants in the city. Um so I kind of see it from both from both ways.
Like it really does hurt, right? You tell me, you tell me, both of you, John and Sam, it hurts when someone orders something that you know is objectively bad because they've removed like the key ingredient from something. So but on the other hand, you know, they're the ones gonna eat it, but then the the thing that you hate is that then they're judging you based on a a poor choice that they made. So what do you think about this? That's a hundred percent true.
And just the thing about David Chang, I think back when he was doing that, that was so nouveau, because it was coming out of like the times of the Daniels and the where everything was like, yes, anything, anything. And it was just so that attitude was so new. But I think that doesn't fly anymore. No. That's that's that's over.
No, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think like look, it's like it's like everything else, you know, it's a pendulum, it has to swing, like, you know, every swing of the pendulum brings good and it brings bad. You know what I mean? And so he was the first swing of the pendulum in a while that way, and then goes back. But yeah, back to your original question.
We we make those mods all the time, especially up here in Midtown, just because they're it's a very different guest than who we serve downtown. Well, so this brings me to my second thing. So the second reason I wanted to have it on the show, other than to discuss your pancakes. Yes. Right.
Is that, and this I've this is a kind of a crazy, I've never heard of this. Maybe it's happened. Obviously it's happened before because there's billions of people in the world. But your parents had a restaurant. From when to when?
When did it close? Uh last March. Their restaurant closed last. Right. You shut it down, and then you opened a new restaurant in the same space your parents opened, which is crazy.
It's a crazy idea. But your your dad's involved, right? No, no. It's on the web. He's not at all.
Not not at all. Because that would be too much. That would be too much. We tried that. We tried that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So what's that like? Like, oh first of all, like, I can't imagine growing up in this world and then going to work in it afterwards. It's like, you know, I grew up going to uh the hospital all the time because my mom was a doctor.
And so I I basically grew up at Columbia Presbyterian, like, you know, hanging out in the ER and all this other stuff, you know, sweeping up mercury on the ground when the sphincterometer's broke and like, you know, stealing hemocrit tubes and all this stuff. You know what I mean? And I was like, you know what? Never gonna be a doctor. Not gonna happen.
You know what I mean? But you like grew up and you're like, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna do this. Or not. Like, how did you get to first of all, how did you get to wanting to like m go into this business that you grew up seeing? Right.
And secondly, what the hell is it like opening a place that you grew up kind of like going to in like a whole different place? It's gotta be crazy. Sure. Um I I didn't know it when I first like worked at my parents' restaurants in high school that this was the thing for me. They, as every Asian parent, really tried to not have me do restaurants or be a chef.
And so it wasn't until I graduated, like it was my senior year of college that I was like, shoot, this is this is the thing that I want. This is the thing that gets my blood flowing, being in a buzzy restaurant and and doing something that I actually care about. Um so we like like I mentioned, it there was a time after I worked at major food and had over a decade of cooking experience that I considered working with them at this space across the street from where we are now. Um and I worked with them for about a year and a half at New York Kimchi, which is what it was called. Uh and it didn't it it wasn't I I couldn't do that just because the way they operated was so old school, um like immigrant kind of mentality.
And you know, I had just finished working up my my way up as a chef. And so you not not just like all of like the Carbon Therese places, we also didn't you work at Co. for a while. I did. Yeah.
So it's like, you know. Places certain places, yeah. Places. Um and then uh during that time I was writing the business plan for Golden Diner and then just really just hustling, trying to stack up, working a lot of private dinners, doing what I could do, and then eventually I left and opened up Golden Diner in one year was it, 2019. So says the internet.
Yeah, I I can't remember the year I opened it. Everything blurs. Right. Yeah. And so then how did this opportunity to open this place here?
First of all, so break a little news so we can talk just openly. So right now it is two different concepts, upstairs, downstairs, two different names. You want to describe what's what's going on in the issue, and if you want to fold this into it, I'm super interested in locations and how they changed post pre- and post-pandemic. And so you get to open a new concept after the after the pandemic. How much has it changed since you saw it beforehand and afterwards?
So take those in any order and we can re-ask them again. Okay. So currently it's Golden Hof on the first floor. It's a Korean pub. Very focused on cocktails, beverage, uh, and a lot of bar food uh that go well with those cocktails.
Uh and the lower level is called New York Kimchi, an homage to my family's restaurant for over 12 years. And um it's a Korean raw bar and steakhouse. But we are in about a month to two months' time, we'll be transitioning out of the New York kimchi name, and it's all going to be one concept: Goldenhof, Korean bar, and steakhouse. So, but is the menu still gonna be because like that has been happening a lot in the past like 10 years or so is like different menu up and down or different menu front and back. Are you gonna keep different menus or are you gonna be like all one menu?
So it's a it's there's gonna be two separate menus, uh 70% crossover in between the two, but we do want to differentiate the experience because downstairs there are the Korean barbecue tables, whereas upstairs there aren't. And also the upstairs uh vibe is just more geared towards drinking and um that sort of atmosphere versus downstairs, which is more of a dining kind of vibe. What's the ventilation like on those damn things? Uh so there is they're all connected to the hood. Right.
So there's a long uh long uh line that connects to each of the tables and it goes to one big hood, and it sucks down. Oh, it's a downdraft. It's a downdraft. Huh. And that all that actually g gets all the stuff or no?
It does. Really? Yeah. Now on down, did do you do you have to answer those things? Like how does it each one of those are answers.
Oh my god. Oh my god, that must be a pain. Big pain. And um and uh are yours or are you are yours like uh like a fired like traditionally or gas fired? What are they?
Gas. Gas, yeah. And like uh how how hard do they crank? Like pretty hard, or are they they they they could burn. They burn things, yeah, for sure.
Nice. Yeah. I love those things. I always wondered how the hood so like some places do the overheads or they're all downdrafts here. I I might be mistaken about this, but I think they're outlawing the downdrafts now moving forward.
But you're we have been around for So you're allowed to oh, because you have the old grandfather calling it. I I I'm not a hundred percent on that, but I've heard that. Let's hope so. So what is answering? Oh, it the fire suppression thing.
So it's like there's like a pipe that runs to it with a little with a little what do you think? It looks like a little chrome microphone or something. What does it look like? It looks like a little nipple. Yeah, yeah.
And then like if uh if the S hits the F, yes. Chemicals, it's it's a big thing. It the fire, fire department comes, but you know it's important. Most restaurants don't have an guest areas. It's true.
You know what I mean? I don't ever want to see a full dining room with a bunch of guest-coated in another. Well, well, it's it's underneath the table. Uh oh. So it comes from underneath So it wouldn't just like explode everywhere.
Yeah. I've never seen one go off. Have you ever seen one go off? No. I never want to see one go off.
Me neither. Nils Norrin, who I used to work with said he had it go off once that I for he was trying to stop someone from pulling it because he could have, he thinks he could have gotten and they actually pulled it. So it wasn't the you know how like you can either pull it or you or it can and someone pulled it and he's like, no. Yeah, toast. Toast.
Never want to see one go off. Never, never want to see one go off. Uh so what were else were you talking about? Oh, so how is the guest change here? Like I noticed, for instance, you're open for one hour at lunch.
Is that just because it's a crush here? Like one hour, or no, menu could have been wrong. The uh the internet could have been wrong. It said that like 11, 11 to noon. Oh 11 to we're open for lunch throughout 11 to 5.
Oh, okay. Well, see, the internet ruined me. Yeah. So fake news, fake news. So talk to me about just talk to me about anything you want to talk about.
What's up with the uh I haven't had a chance to go yet, so I'm embarrassed. So it's one kitchen though, right? I mean, I haven't. One service kitchen, one prep kitchen. So two kitchens.
Wait, are they are they wait? So the Okay, okay. But like all the food that's going out to the tables is coming from one kitchen. One kitchen. And then what do you do with the prep kitchen during service time?
Like prep for the next day? Yeah. That's smart if you have the space for it, because like if you ha I mean, it just means you have to have fewer shifts, right? So then can you shift people out of the prep if you get crushed and have them help you on service, or has that never happened? It doesn't happen just because there's skill sets, they're not trained to be line cooks.
Oh yeah. Um so it's hard to do that. But it's just smart because it creates more streamlining to not have um like if we had two service kitchens, then another chef would would need to be down in the other kitchen, that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the hardest thing, like for uh well, because uh what are the people like here?
What are the hours? When do people come here? That's the thing I was curious about. Like, like what are the so pre-pandemic, right? You would get, I mean, this is never been a late night area.
Well, for places that are destinations, yes. You know what I mean? But like if you and you're, you know, it's steakhouse, it's gonna be destination, and it's not that far from other places they can go. Yeah. So but like for non-destination to capture after work, that's gotta totally change, right?
Because people are doing a lot more of their after-work drinking closer to their houses. They're not coming in on Fridays. Like what what's going on in this neighborhood? How's it changed? So we're we're actually very we're living the day-to-day and figuring that out now.
What we're seeing currently is um lunch, lunch is steadily growing, and then uh like five to eight PM, it's busy. And only certain days, pretty much the days where the office workers are out, which is just like Tuesday through Thursday. But do you get crushed on Thursday when people are gonna see themselves for the last time? Yes. So Thursdays, Wednesdays, even today, you know, we have a fair amount of people on the books.
Um Mondays, not pretty. Uh Saturdays are decent, you know, not bad. Uh there's a decent amount of tourists, so we try to capture that as well. But it's it's like I said, it's a such a different market up here, and just trying to interject ourselves into, you know, these corporate offices that already have their Rolodex of 10 to 15 restaurants that they've been going to for the past two decades. Yeah.
So, you know, we're slowly introducing ourselves. The hard thing about the hard thing about being like open, like, you know, open for you know, all these days and all these hours, but having those hours and days look very different day to day is staffing, is a huge pain in the butt, right? So it's like because you need to have a certain number of people on shift to make a concept work at all, and then it's really hard to titrate. So, like I notice you have a late night menu. I mean, that's always a smart move, right?
Because you can staff down for the late night. I'm assuming that's why you do it, because I don't know, like and then but then eventually you could get crushed at late night. If if we if you get like, are you gonna try to open later or no? Are you gonna try to be later than midnight? Yeah, probably not.
I think we're gonna try to go later than midnight just because no one wants to go to a bar, no one wants to go to a bar at 11 if they know they're gonna get kicked out at midnight. So it's not like you it's not like they're gonna stay a lot after midnight, but you're not gonna capture anyone going out if they know that they have to be a one and done. You know what I mean? Even in a neighborhood like ours where there's a boat ton of other places open late, it's just hard to get those people in. You know what I mean?
But here, like I say, it's a destination. So I guess it's hard to, it's hard. I'm just trying to try I'm asking you like how to figure out like this to me is the most complicated thing. How to get how to figure out when the guests are gonna come and how to have the right amount of staffing for each time the guesses. Is that like is that the whole trick or no?
Or do you can you open just the top and have the bottom shut if you wanted to, or no? So we're we're we're trying all of these things out, like what you just said. Um because it's two different levels, it it's tricky to because some people one day downstairs will be busier than the upstairs and lunch. So we're gonna start uh opening lunch for upstairs, pack that out first, and then open for the downstairs area starting next week. And then um, yeah, I think for me, make me and my understanding of this neighborhood, the name of the game is trying to get as much large parties in as possible.
So hopefully by next week, we're just every night booking one to two large corporate or non-corporate, just like you know. You have companies around here, so that's gotta be good, right? Right. And and then so that way you sort of you're not relying on, you know, the the 50 to 100 guests that may or may not stop in that night and catering. Well, right.
So like office catering, like during the day. Do you do grab and go or no? Uh we do takeout and delivery. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, but not like, yeah, not like I'm not talking like steam table, so but like they can order it, pick it up, and go back to their office. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We are definitely doing a big that's gotta be big, right? It doesn't at least, I mean, you need kitchen staff for it, but you don't need a lot of upfront staff.
Yeah. Huh? All right. And how has it changed uh in terms of the the guests since you took it over? So pre-pandemic, I remember uh so just to give you an idea of what it used to be.
The first floor was felt like a Korean style chipotle. Where it was like 10 to 15 dollar check average, you get your peeping pop, you get your, you know, whatever it is. Um we used to crush between 11 and 2.30 Monday through Friday without because everyone was in the office. Right, right. Um and then after that, because it didn't have much of a vibe, it was like not that great.
Um whereas now it's such a sh limited amount of days out of the week where we get crushed. Um so it's just very different. It's a der very different world. Who knows with you know, people trying to get office workers back into the office, if that's actually gonna be a thing? Who knows, man?
It's like, who knows? Yeah. Who knows whether people are gonna start. No, I don't think we're ever gonna go back to like the hardcore, like the drinking lunches and all that. I think that's gone.
Like, you know what I mean? Yeah. I that was even gone by the time like I was doing things. Like, you know, you'd be like, ooh, you're having a glass of wine or don't. You know what I mean?
Like, this I don't think people do it anymore. I don't know. Do they? Nastasi and I once went to a meeting in the middle of the day. Remember this, Daz?
Where someone first offered us like whiskey at like noon in their office. And then we're like, no. And they were like, and then they were like, Well, you want to smoke a joint? And we're like, this is a business meeting. Remember that, Stas?
That was the best. Yeah. Yeah, that was good stuff. Uh all right. So uh got a question in for you, Sam from Nicholas W.
Can't wait to visit your new spots. There's a footnote on the uh New York kimchi menu that says you proudly serve is how is that haiga? Is that pronounced right? Haiga. Haiga?
Yeah. Which is semi-milled, right? Semi-brown. Is there anything different other than semi-brown, or is it just semi-brown? And that's the term for semi-brown.
Yeah, it's it's it's semi-brown, but it's also just really delicious delicious and has that like slight nuttiness without it being too hard, like brown rice. Yeah. So Nicholas wants to know like where are you source and what led you to the decision of of using that? I mean, it is delicious. I that's what I'd eat at home.
Yeah. I don't call it that. I I have I bought that little rice mill. You ever use that? The home rice mill?
I I've seen it. Yeah, I've not got it. We don't use that. Um it's it's just tamaki is the tamaki gold, but this is Tamaki Heige uh rice. So that's where we source it from.
How much do they mill it? What percentage? Yeah. I think it's like 30. Yeah.
And then the do because there's like special like protocols they use to keep the germ on. Is the germ still on this one or not? Yes, the germ. Otherwise it can't be it's not that's not. Oh then it's not because you can mill off and leave a certain amount of the of the the brown on, but like the germ gets knocked off.
I look in the bottom of my bucket all the time. I know I've gone too far because I see all like the germ in the in the thing, and I'm like, mm. Right. So I mean so that's that's a that's an interesting thing that we are debating as a restaurant and kitchen. That's like a product product we're proud of serving.
We want to be serving, but when people come, specifically Korean guests, they're not used to the dry the dryness, which we like, and they want like that more sushi, sticky rice. Glossy. Yeah. And so we're like, you know what? We pay literally five X for this product than what we could be spending.
Right. Why like what's the point? If they don't they don't even want it. And so these are all things that's like, oh, okay. Maybe maybe we don't pay more for these things.
Is it is it is it uh what's it called? Is it um because I'm sure a lot of guests who aren't traditional appreciate it. I will be honest, I don't know if people read that. So I'm actually really impressed that Nicholas caught that. Um I don't know if people appreciate it.
Huh. I I I think if you're an industry person and you're actually reading the menu and and being present and taking the time to do it, but I'll say maybe 10%, maybe 20% of our guests. Would it be prohibitive to like just keep some traditional around for like I mean, like I mean, just the amount of waste uh in doing that in terms of operations is Can you sell people on a health basic? I mean, I don't believe in health, but like, you know, theoretically it's healthier. I mean, I don't believe in that.
But I I just like it. No, I just like it. Okay. I'd like the flavor. It's like I cook, I cook not whole wheat, but I cook I I use only like between 85 and 90% extraction and flour because I like it.
Yeah. I don't believe it's healthier, but it helps other people to eat it. So I sure I'm okay with it. You know what I mean? Yeah.
But like, does that help with the with the traditionalists where you're like that's why we put that in footnote in there? Because it's like people will ask for brown rice, but like, hey, this is actually a happy medium where you can get, you know, some health benefit, but also the deliciousness. It is texturally better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good stuff.
I mean, it's like I it really kind of is the best of both worlds. I think from a flavor standpoint and a texture standpoint, it's delicious. But is it healthy? Who knows? Who knows?
I don't know. You know? Uh so uh I have to ask you this. Uh I hate to ask you this, but do you feel kind of pressured to to make a certain kind of since since Korean fried chicken is such a thing, do you feel pressured to make a specific style of chicken or or or can do you feel like you can do whatever you want? Uh the the form the former because if I'm calling it Korean fried chicken, it needs to have that that crunch, that double fried technique.
And we still do whatever we want in terms of how we the the steps to get there, but we can't call it Korean fried chicken unless it has that like glass-like texture, which is very different than southern fried chicken. You ever do like you ever do like a side-by-side, like two styles, like here's American, here's Korean, like like old old sambar used to do? Oh, they did used to do that? I don't remember that. Really?
He did like Korean fried next to the Oh actually noodle bar. Oh noodle bar, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so. Yeah, because I would have, I would have had that, like, I would have had that at Sam when I was, you know, there for all those years.
But uh we ever gonna consider doing that? Because like I think it's so funny. Like everyone tries to pretend like there's only like one perfect style of fried chicken. It's just straight wrong. You know what I mean?
Collaboration idea. It'll be good, right? Any any Southern fried chicken pros out there? Let's let's do it. Well, the thing is like who does the best roving fried, who does the best roving fried chicken?
So what's it called? Uh pies and old school pies and thighs did this. They were they were wet on, they were they were wet. I think they were wet on wet, like almost like a Willie May style. Apparently, someone from Pies and Thighs went to Roberta's.
So for a while, Roberta's had that pies and thighs style of fried chicken. If you like that. I haven't had some of the best. There's what are the best American style fried chickens here? Charles Pan fried country chicken.
Good. Very good. Yeah, where's where's that out of? Uh up in Harlem. I think there's one on the upper west side now.
Yeah, I haven't had really delicious. Yeah. Yeah. Is it is it uh is it dry? Is it dry or is it wet?
I don't remember. I went there pre-pandemic and don't remember, but just like huge cast iron pan, just chicken bubbling in there was uh yeah, really tasty. I'm uh I'm uh I'm a dry man. Yeah when I cook my own stuff. So what uh what is your so how do you do your style?
You willing to say, or is this like are you gonna be go all bonchon on me and and like you know, punish me for asking? No, no, I got it. Um so we we dry brine our chicken in garlic salt first overnight and then lay it out on sheet trays. So they form nice little dry skin on them. And then we dust it all in cornstarch, and then we put them in a wet battery and then we fry them for about five to six minutes, cool them down, pack them away, and on the pickup, it's a two and a half, three minute pickup.
Okay. So on the wet, and here's the thing on any wet, it's it's first of all, does the starch you said corn? What starch you use? In and the wet dry or the or the dry? The before wet.
Cornstarch. Okay. So you're in the cornstarch, and how much does that help the adhesion of the wet? And how important is the viscosity of the wet? Both uh yes and yes.
Uh it's it's um if you don't do that dry part to get it even drier, it won't stick. And then the viscosity of the way I describe it to the prep cooks is it needs to be like a thin Elmer's glue. Because if it's too thick, it it's it's it's not glass-like. Yeah, yeah. And if it's too thin, it's not glass-like.
Right. And it'll run off too, right? If it's too thin. Right. And it's just not crunchy.
So do you is there is it starch in it? Is it do you have to keep m stirring it or does it stay pretty good? Okay, because it settles, yes. Yeah. And so the are you which the do you gonna tell me which starch you use in the uh or do you use flour and starch?
Yes. Okay. Yeah. There's a bunch of other stuff in there that's just like crazy. Leavening or no leavening?
Uh leavening, yes. Yeah, yeah. Do you have to keep it cold or not? Nope. No.
Cause some people are worried about when I think that the issue on um I think the issue on keeping it cold. Some people are worried about gluten. I don't know. I think it's also pre like pre-blowing off of some of the leavening in in the in the thing, is I think one of the reasons. So gluten, definitely in tempura.
I think it's like a gluten issue and a um and a not functionalizing anything that that's in there while they put the ice cube in. What else why else would it be? You know? But like ice cube though. Yeah, but like you know, you know the old like, you know, you mix it really, you mix it with ice water and then it's like real and you just don't mix it and there's like lumps in it and stuff like that.
You know, some of that's gotta be hoo ha. When we do when we do tempura though, different recipe. Yeah. It's we definitely make sure the seltzer is cold. Yeah, yeah.
We use seltzer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So but this one doesn't need to be cold, can be room temp. Doesn't need to be cold, no. And it lasts all like how well, first of all, you're pre-doing it, so you can do it all in one big batch.
It doesn't have to last forever. We make whenever we do we make the batter when we do the fry. So we don't make we don't get ahead on this. Well, but that's the first fry, no? The first fry.
Yeah. But the that oh, so you're you're you're first frying all night. You can't just first fry sandbag it all and then do your second fry. Oh, we do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So but the batter doesn't need to last all night. Right. Right? It doesn't need to stay in good shape forever. Right.
Uh all right. And then do you do uh do you do coat and then redo? Or like what do you do any coating on it? Any lick like what's the story with the liquid coating? You don't like it?
Are you doing it? Liquid coating. You know, like afterward people like gloss it with like liquid stuff and then like have it stay glassy and glossed out, or do you do that or no? I mean, the only liquid coating after that is the sauce. Yeah, we don't do anything to add more crunch.
But the sauce you do right after the second fry? And then and then it stays crunchy, it stays glass like? Yes. You put it in a container to go, you put it in your fridge the next day it'll be crunchy. Come on.
I'm not joking. Do you what percentage? Well I wish uh for my 30 seconds. Oh, thirty thing. Yeah, bring bring wave.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come back all the way back up. Because we both live downtown. So how's like so like, how often do you get the uh the the two layers where it's like the skin is sitting above like a like a like a like a glass ceiling and the meat's a little bit below? I for me, uh a good fried chicken, Korean and Southern is like it's adheres.
So you it's always one. So you don't like the dough, you don't like that we when like the almost like the the drumstick is rattling around inside of the skin. You seen that? Yes, not for Korean fried chicken. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, not if if someone does it, sure, stylistically that's your choice, but not for me. Do you ever do the like the the small chicken hole? You ever you ever do those? Well, when we first created this restaurant, we were taking like little two-pound guys and like doing this same thing and trying that out. And how did it work?
So it's too much meat to our batter ratio, and we had such a good thing anyway. And if we felt like wings are much more approachable than uh eating a whole chicken, so we just stuck with what we knew. Do you think it would work with a quail? Yes. Okay.
Inside out bone that quail. And then make make like your fried chicken thing with whole quail with no bones. Yeah. Hey Dave, do you remember when we had those those Korean chips? They were the shape of a drumstick?
Oh, yeah, those were good. I forget the brand name. When I got back from Seoul, yeah, they were good. I forget the name of that. It was like a seasoning spice, right?
It was it taste it was like chicken flavor. Yeah, but they were good. Yeah. Do you know the brand? No.
I don't know the brand. But I've had this. I was at uh yeah, the hotel I was working at just gave me all like the what's the brand name of those hyper good Korean uh gummies that have the kiwi with the little seeds on the inside? Is that Orion? Anyway, probably real good.
Real good. All right, so uh upstairs, right? So it's all gonna be Golden Hawth. Golden Hoth. Korean bar and steakhouse.
Korean bar and steakhouse. But the menus are gonna stay roughly similar. So like upstairs I'm gonna get my steak free, and downstairs I'm gonna get like the more like blown-out experience. Barbecue, crude, steaks. We have a porter house, dry edge porter house.
Okay, so talk to me about that. So some people are getting Korean, some people are getting like traditional like table thin slice Korean barbecue stuff, right? And then some people are getting like a big old American steak. Correct. So how do you do your big old American steak?
Whose steak are you getting? Are you allowed to say? Like from where? Yeah. So we use we use a couple of different purveyors, but you have to.
Main Street meets. We really like Main Street because they I believe they try to source responsibly. Um and and their and their meat is delicious. Um big format, we have a hanger. Uh we just put on a strip, uh ribeye, prime ribeye and uh 30 uh dry age uh porter house.
Ribeye, ribeye's god steak. Do you are you a strip person or or a ribeye person? And then we'll discuss ribeye cap. Yeah, yeah. I mean come on, dude.
Come on. Yeah. Ribeye cap. Actually, just ribeye, period. Yeah, ribeye's.
Sorry. Ribeye. The only like I said this on the air many times. The only time that I is like when it gets really, really fatty, like like A5 Wagyu style, then I like strip. But like like in like regular people meet, like, you know, American style meat.
Right, like ribeye all day. All day. All day. Now here's my question. Porter house, very New York, very you have to.
Can't be cooked right, right? Like how do what what do you think about the fact that the two sides of the porter house? I'll tell you how we do it. Okay, okay. So we grill the whole thing first from cold.
Uh like what percentage of the way through? And are you using a deck? A deck? Deck oven? Like how do you Oh no, like char char char grill.
Oh, nice. Yeah. Grill, we grill it, and then uh enough so it gets the marks and the sear. Then we take them then we take the fillet off because we serve it all in the back. I this is why people, anyone out there, are you listening?
Any of you who think that somehow it's not manly for someone else to slice your steak, listen, idiot. Like, like this is how Sam is gonna make you a porter house that's properly cooked. Go ahead. Yes. And then we cook the two separately.
You're not an idiot. I don't mean to insult you, whoever you are. And I go, you're fine. Anyway, go ahead. And then we and when we um we cook the the strip and the and the fillet separately, just so they're both perfectly cooked.
One's still on the bone, one's not, and it's okay. And then once we're done, we get a little dry aged beef fat, and we just uh accentuate for that dry age flavor. Love it. Yeah. Love it.
I'm always uh after I cook it, I'm always uh I'm always all olive oil on top. But I don't know why. I just like olive oil. I like olive oil on a steak. I do.
I don't love olive oil in the bag when I do low temp, but I do love it on the meat, a nice finishing oil. I think we're getting Captain uh Captain Oily back on at some point to talk olive oil. Oh next week? You know what? We'll have to get him some over to you, get some oil.
You could try the oil next to the beef fat. By the way, we have a question in uh about steak, so let's just talk about it. Uh where is it? Uh can you find it, Quinn? Oh, here it is.
Anthony C. I saw on YouTube today someone vacuum frying a steak, and it looks good because it has a crazy kind of crust on it. So for those of you, I have not vacuum fried a steak. But a vacuum fryer is what it sounds like. It's you have oil instead of pressure frying, right?
So when you're in a pressure fryer, you increase the pressure so that like your chicken, let's say, uh can cook through faster because you can push a higher temperature through the meat faster, right? Uh in a vacuum fryer, you do the opposite. So the inside actually can't get as hot because the steak, the wherever there's water, it can only reach the temperature of the boiling point of water there, right? So by doing that, and if you look at the thing, it kind of rips it apart too, because the steak's gonna start boiling itself to pieces. It's gonna start ripping itself apart.
The vacuum fryer was originally invented so that you could fry things at a lower temperature and the sugars in them wouldn't burn. So you could, for instance, fry apple slices until they were crisp without the sugar burning because everything was happening at a lower temperature, right? And it also evaporates water like a mother. Now that's the problem. So if I if you look at their rig that they use in this video, they just have like a copper coil, like there's some sort of moonshiners in like just like a bucket of water, right?
And they're using that to recondense all of the steam out of a deep fryer, and he's wondering why his gauge is all messed up. It's because you can't evacuate, you can't. The amount of like stuff you're boiling off in a fryer requires serious vacuum evacuation to actually keep your vacuum at at a good level, which is one of the reasons why I never I never really used vacuum frying. I had one, right? Because the Spanish used to sell one.
I think it was called like gastro something. I don't know. They used to sell it. Um but you know, he did get a like a crazy result, and what I hadn't thought about with the crust is that you're gonna evaporate so much water from the outside that you're gonna form up the crust on the outside really quickly and get like a very th like crunchy, thick crust, and that by lowering the temperature, you're gonna get less of an overcooked line between the top and the center, right? So anyway, so it seems like an interesting idea, but they said it was too crunchy and it's definitely gonna ruin the texture.
You know what I mean? What do you think? We like what do you what's your feeling on how important the crust is, Sam? Super important or not, or like medium important, medio important? Super important, but I'll take like a grill mark, like a char grill flavor over like if like the crust.
Because the charred a a grill doesn't give as much char that sear as like a pan seared kind of crust. Right, right, right, right, right. But uh, how much do you how much do you try to limit or do you like flare-ups? I don't mind flare-ups, I think they make it taste good. Agreed.
Yeah. Because some people are all worried about flare-ups. Why? Why? I don't understand it.
Um I have a thing against uh so not saying anything, but back at the French Culinary Institute, right? They used to love like the quadriage marks that are basically just vestigial grill marks. There's no actual flavor there. It's just like, or like the theory of remember they they used to sell, they probably still sell them cast iron pans that have like the little like fake grill marks uh on them so that you can't cook your meat properly because it can't touch the pan. So it's got the marks of the grill, but not even the taste of the crust on the pan.
It's like, what's the point of that? What's the point of that? John, have you ever used one of those damn things? No. You've seen them.
Yeah. Why do they exist? I don't know. Why would they exist? Yeah, I don't know.
Instagram. Boom. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. They're kind of kind of old school.
Uh, all right. Uh WTS writes in uh I'm currently reading the book Cool Beans by Joe Yonan. And the book suggests that cooking a pot of beans with a strip of combu will help the digestion of the beans. The logic is that the combu contains alpha uh uh galactic I'm not gonna pronounce it, like uh something that gets rid of the uh stuff that makes you toot the fod maps, which is an enzyme required for breaking down the oleosaccharides. Uh what do you think?
Um, I tested that. Like you go look up the uh article uh serious eats uh and no, no, it doesn't work. Does make it taste like combu though, which is good. I like combo. Oh, speaking of, uh I read an article, maybe you wrote on Serious Eats that Quest Love.
You went to a set and like he he like Do you want to talk about that? We have a couple seconds, yeah, zero seconds, but talk about it anyway. Uh this was ten years ago while I was at New York Kimchi writing the business plan for Golden Diner, um I saw Quest Love. It was an amazing set, and here I am ten years later doing a pop-up with it. Well, but really?
You're doing a pop-up? Oh, we did one. Oh, how did it go? It was amazing. Yeah, so though it's hilarious, it well, what what what struck me was that like you're like it wasn't advertised, so like there was hardly anyone there, and he still gave everything to it, and that is the hospitality mindset, right?
You gave everything you can, whatever you can. And I kind of want to come hear your playlist. I've never had a playlist situation that I've liked at any of my bars. There's always something wrong. Really?
Yeah. Sometime we'll come like if you come back on, we'll talk about like like like bar versus bar versus restaurant playlist, what's the difference, like what makes a good playlist? Like making making a playlist that is good for your servers as well and your staff as well as your guests. You know what I mean? So important.
It's so important. And this is what we should have talked about at the beginning. And I totally forgot until it's already over. But Sam, uh, good to have you on. You're in the neighborhood, so stop by anytime.
Thank you. I'm gonna come by and try your chicken and your and go. You guys gotta go get that pancake. Just get one. Just get one.
When you go down to the diner, just get one pancake. Come on, man. Come on. Anyway, thanks for coming on. Cooking issues.
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