Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center, New York City New Stand Studios. Got uh Joe Hazenrock on the panels. How you doing? Hey, hey, hey, welcome.
Hey, and live from Los Angeles, well, from Los Angeles, but in our studio, taking the place of John today will be our special guest, Daniel Shentov. How you doing? I am wonderful. And uh, you know, food trucks, books, shoes, all that. But before we do that, moving on over to the uh what side is that?
The left coast. Uh we have no Nastasia the Hammer Lopez today, but we do have Jackie Molecules. How you doing? Yeah, I'm good. Nice to have the phone lines back.
Yeah, you know, phones, uh telecommunications, they're uh they're a good thing. And uh way on the upper left, uh, you know, past couple of weeks, we thought maybe the entire West Coast had cracked off finally and floated off into the ocean. You know, but uh anyway. Quinn, how you doing? I'm good.
Yeah? Nice. Hey, you sound nice. Everyone sounds bright and clear. Love it.
Uh all right. So uh, like I say, today, uh, no John. But uh before we get into our normal thing, uh, Daniel, so like just so people know, you can buy shoes from this man. You can hire this man's truck to come to your event and uh serve food the lime truck, right? That's correct.
Or and you s and you have the yakatori place as well, right? I do, yeah. Hatch. Yeah. So let me ask you a question about before we get into anything else, Yaktori.
What is your favorite Yakatori style dish? Uh Sukuna. Which one's that one? The chicken meatball. Chicken meatball.
My favorite is the chicken heart. Chicken heart, yeah. Chicken hearts are good. Yeah. I'm a chicken heart.
It's a lot of work to clean those hearts. Well, when you get them, you you cut off the little like uh little uh value, yeah, in the little pieces. Yeah. People get grossed out by the little flap doodle sticking out of it, or you just don't like the texture of it. I don't like the texture of it.
Yeah. But you still leave them like fundamentally whole. You're not a splay guy, right? Yeah, yeah, I'm not a splay guy. Yeah.
Now of the hearts. People who eat the heart want to see the heart. I see, I see. Yeah. How uh how like uh crispity do you get the outside of the hearts?
Like how much of a like a Yeah, I mean, you know, you're cooking with such hot texture, and then you're using you know, sugar to crystallize the outside. So I like I like texture. Um so we do get we got it pretty co pretty cooked. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I love hearts. Let me ask you this. In chick chicken heart, people very rarely get turkey hearts, so I won't get them into it. And when usually when you get a turkey heart, it's like you've pulled it out of the gravy mix, and so it's like, you know, it's pretty spent by the time you get it.
You know, no one I've never had someone be like, hey, here's a plate of turkey hearts. You know what I'm saying? I know what you're saying. Yeah. But like uh between duck and chicken, what's the heart of note?
Um I mean, just because I've eaten so many more chicken hearts, I would say the chicken heart. Uh, but I mean I'm sure the duck heart's good. I don't I don't know if I've actually had a duck heart. Oh, yeah, they're great. Okay.
Yeah. Uh here's another uh uh hot take. Uh Captain a beef heart, good musician, although no one really likes listening to Captain Beef Heart. Joe, does anyone like listening to Captain Beef Heart or we just respect him? Uh I mean, I like the I like I can't listen to a whole record.
Good. Yeah. What do you say? That's a good road trip. That's a good road trip album, you know.
Really? Road trip. I if I think so. You're like driving through like Appalachia or something. I don't know.
Through Appalachia. Okay. All right. And then so what is like, where are you driving when you're listening to all of your Zappa tunes then? Oh man.
It doesn't matter. That's that's like the best road trip music for me. You know, I kind of wish I had met him because he was so famously mean to interviewers. If they for those of you who don't know, Frank Zappa, look him up. But like uh, so like people would be like, I'm a fan, and he would be like, Okay, name your favorite song.
And they would be like, uh he's like, get get out. You suck, you're stupid, you're a dummy. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, respect in a way. You know what I mean?
Anyways. You should you should start doing interviews like that, Dave. I don't do interviews. No one ever asks me to go interview other places. You know what I mean?
It just doesn't happen. It doesn't come up much. Yeah. Um, how do we get on this? Oh, I don't beef heart, not my favorite heart to eat.
It's just so big. And I don't want I want like the bite-sizedness of the of the chicken heart, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Were you with me on that? You want beef heart.
You want to hear a funny heart story? Uh okay, but Quinn Quinn's going against me. But give me the funny heart story. Okay, so on my food truck, we wanted to do a taco called Heart and Soul. And it'll be a Korean, you know.
Yeah. This is uh like kind of goji jong-based heart. For those of you that don't know the song, Google Heart and Soul. So we uh we have it on my food truck and it's raw, and the guy who runs the food truck commissary is like a 90-year-old man, no teeth. Uh his name is Rosmi.
We love him to death. And he walks onto my truck and he goes, What is this? And we go, it's beef heart. We're about to uh cook it and make tacos. And he just grabs it and eats it raw with his hand.
And then later was upset. Uh we gave him raw heart and had a very, very difficult time uh swallowing it. And it was a toothless man eat raw beef heart. I mean, it was it was a spectacle. I said it's quite the story.
Right. So we so what was the misunderstanding wherein he thought that it was not that it was cooked? I have no idea. Honestly, I was pretty surprised. And he always would come up with a cigarette on our truck, and we're like, hey man, you gotta get the out of here.
Oh my god. You gotta get that stuff out of here. Yeah. Well, what uh so but I we you still to this day don't know wh why he got upset with you or why he did it. Yeah, no, but he called us young punks and he helped me with my first food truck, and I appreciate it.
Of course, anyone's a young punk compared to him. Exactly. How was the uh how was the taco? The taco was delicious. It was it was a great one.
How thin were the uh beef art slices? We went um maybe like quarter inch cubes. Okay, cubes, cubes, cubes. All right, and what size tortilla are we talking about? Uh we're talking uh a standard five.
Fiverr. Now, can you Okay, but Quinn, before we get on the standard tortilla set and double, right? Because it's okay. Uh at the time we were doing doubles, yes. Now I don't.
Really? Yeah, yeah. Now I I custom uh worked with this uh tortilla manufacturer to make it a little bit more pliable. So we use a tiny bit of flour in there, which I don't know. It is what it is.
Yeah, I know. It's uh uh mixta. And uh it doesn't break. And so for me. No offense, people.
No offense. We like Casamigos. We like Mike Meldman. All right, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah.
That was a joke, people, that you know, the big lawsuit about the agio, whatever. We won't get into it now. All right, so so now you're a single tortilla fellow. Yeah, we did it. It took a lot of work.
I I think I tasted tasted and made uh easily thousands of tortillas. But still rolling on fives. Still rolling on fives. Yeah, I like the fiver. Yeah.
Yeah. So what is the on a five, so a five inch tortilla is the perfect three taco situation, right? Yeah. And what do you feel like when people overload their tacos one a five? Um I don't let so we don't do like uh add onion cilantro kind of thing.
All my tacos are like composed dishes. So you're gonna eat it the way I give it to you, jerk. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I I I definitely don't want to say we invented the more modern taco but other than Rick Bayless we were probably the only ones charging more than five bucks a taco 15 years ago.
Yeah yeah yeah I haven't seen Rick in a long time I love Rick. Yeah weird. Yeah. Uh all right Quinn talk to me about beef heart. Oh yeah I think it's great for tartar.
I like a beef tart. Like how like like ground up? He likes it raw too and Rosby. He likes it raw yeah uh yeah no just dice like a fine dice. I mean that's like a I'm just gonna that's very you know what I'm saying.
You know what I mean? Well you remove all the like tendony bits like the the vascular wall I mean it's literally the str I mean like it's not physically the strongest muscle because that's your you know typically would be the the your butt but in terms of like the you know goes the whole time never never stops your heart is like that's it. You know what I mean? Well you know it only gets to stop a couple of times. You know what I mean?
With most of us. Uh all right. Uh there's beef art chili obviously is famous but I don't know that that actually needs to be made with heart or if that's just a thing. You know what I mean? Like every time I've had beef art chili which is not that many times I've been like this could be made with a different meat and I wouldn't be like I miss the heart because I don't taste the heart.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah chili is a is is a layered experience you know it's it you're not gonna get very much individual right that's like what does alligator tastes like. I don't know. Fried food.
Yeah. You know what I mean? Or sausage. Yeah. Yeah.
What does a hot dog taste like hot dog spice and emulsified sausage, pretty much no matter what meat you make it out of. Totally. Unless the meat is so bad that you can taste how bad the meat is. Or if it's not made with meat at all. Right.
That's true. Is there have they made you know what I need to find a good uh one of these modern meat analog sage sausages? Is it who makes who makes the good one now? Uh, you know, I don't know. There's a little uh homemade sausage place on my like two blocks from my house, and it's in the right in the center of the Jewish community, and it's called Sausage Kitchen.
And I'm like, these guys must have picked the worst location ever, but they homemade sausage, and I I would recommend that place all day. But they make a they make a no meat that's sagey, a breakfasty. Oh, you want no meat. I need a no meat. I need to cook.
So Thanksgiving, which we can talk about, people, your Thanksgivings, right? But I invariably do tea two. You know what I mean? Like second Thanksgiving. This year I have to wait for my uh for my son to get home from Copenhagen.
So it's gonna be a late T2, but I gotta make my mom stuffing, but I have a boat ton of vegetarians coming too, and my mom stuffing isn't my mom's stuffing without sage sausage in it. So I need a meat free, and I'm not one of these guys, I don't want to make a BS one. You know what I mean? I would make a BS one and go with the classic. It's your mom's recipe.
Oh no, I'm making a I'm making two. Okay, okay. But I want the the yeah, I got I want the other one to also taste correct. You know what I mean? I mean, you can make your own Satan and sage it, and that would be pretty good.
Yeah, that's not time. I don't have time to be making my own sausage. I want to pay someone else. It's New York City, you can find anything here. You think so.
But you can't. You know what I mean? We've all been we've been ruined just like everyone else with uh, you know, online shopping. There's no brick and mortar like mom and pop vegan sausage place anymore. You know what I mean?
Not that there ever was. Not that there ever was. Oh, speaking of having to order things online. Have you had has any of you guys had this fancy peanut butter out of Michigan, kitsa or coatzah however you pronounce it? Michigan, so weird, using Virginia peanuts, weird, because they're God's peanut, but in peanut butter.
So I had to order a container. I don't know. It's it's gonna show up in the mail. I was wondering if any of you had some like pregaming on it for me. I I just got some mail order peanut butter.
Oh yeah, whose is it? It's uh it's the Kona Peanut Butter Company, they do a Kona coffee peanut butter. What does Hawaiian know about peanut butter? I'll tell you this is some of the best peanut butter I've ever had. Come on, really?
Yeah. Is it one of these sugar free jobs? Is Kotza one sugar free so I'm a little worried about it? No, I mean, uh I didn't taste too much sugar, but uh it's good. Yeah?
Yeah, yeah. Kona, Kona peanut butter. Yeah, Kona peanut butter. Uh huh. Distribution out of Las Vegas.
Okay. Okay. Like, you know, from like, you know, the like the most landlocked to the least landlocked, they did a change recently. It's easier to get the peanut butter now. Uh I would imagine.
I would imagine. So what what is your ideal peanut butter? What is your ideal like mass market peanut butter? Uh you know, I I like a thick, crunchy peanut butter. You're a crunchy person.
I like a I like texture. I'll I'll live for texture. I think texture and and everything is it really important. All right, I'm gonna tell you when I when I ordered this, that that was the big decision I had to make. There was two decisions I had to make.
One was was I gonna get their quote unquote organic brand, and I was like, nah, I don't care. I'm gonna get whatever their original brand was, because that's what I'm gonna buy. And then I was like, Do I go with the creamy or do I go with the crunchy? And I decided, maybe stupidly, that if I wanna see what they can do, I get the creamy. Okay.
And then if I love it, I'll get the crunchy. So it's it's a test. It's a test. I wanna I like I feel like the crunchiness, I feel like crunchy can hide some some flaws, like you know, like maybe some like tiny bit of grittiness or something that can be hidden better in a chunky machine than in a non-chunky. What do you think?
Like the shells? Imagine grind up, but these are but first of all, like what's your least favorite peanut? My least favorite peanut butter. No, peanut. Uh individual peanut.
Yeah. If someone serves you uh this kind of a peanut, I'm like, why did you and I Jack already knows because I think we've had this discussion on air. I mean, I think they're the the ones that are like blanch, unsalted. Oh, yeah, but I meant like the variety span I hate Spanish peanuts. Love Spanish people.
Uh the little ones with the within the biggest. With the skin that flies off. Yeah, what the hell is that? You don't like those? No, they're ridiculous.
I like those. They're poorly textured too. They have a bad texture. Yeah, I mean, the skins are a little frustrating. Yeah, and they're they're not like you're not they're not like ctung, they don't like go crazy in your mouth.
And like everyone is theoretically nostalgic for them because that's what's in Cracker Jack, right? I see. What about a boiled peanut? Love a boiled peanut. I love a boiled gas station boiled peanuts in the south.
Love it. You know what I mean? Takes you a while though. For the for those of you that never had a boiled peanut, like I need you to, um, before you place this thing in your mouth, to erase erase from your mind everything you think you know about peanuts and come at it fresh, right? That's like that's like uh to me, it's like uh the sardine problem, right?
So uh what's his name? James Beard, right? Famously wrote two things that are absurd. At least two things that are absurd. One is that the old school electric ovens, the ones with the little spiral snail shaped like uh elements, are better than gas ranges, I mean.
Just wrong. Just horrible pieces of equipment, terrible. He had them in his house. I've cooked I cooked on his once like a long time ago. Sucked.
You know what I mean? Legitimately bad piece of equipment. Second, is he said that tinned sardines are better than fresh sardines, and I argue both great. Mm-hmm. Not the same.
Not the same. Totally not the same. It's you know, it's like a salty briny or panned. Yeah. I mean, one is they're both equally not they're not equivalent.
Yeah, I would agree. Yeah. You know what I mean? You can't make a Caesar with a fresh sardine. Put sardines in your Caesar, not anchovies.
Nice. But uh you can't do anything. Look, I very rarely cook fresh anchovies because I don't get them. But sardines, I I love eating canned sardines. I grew up with it.
You know what I mean? But uh panned panned fresh sardines, deli I mean, whatever. I'm not gonna get into it. So what do you guys what do you guys do for Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving uh was a family affair.
It was my my daughter's first Thanksgiving, so we had to work around a nap time. Uh, when's nap time? You're one of those. Why don't you bend the nap time to the food? I'm just messing with it.
Oh, we do what you like. We did, but we had to maximize hours, so we could we got in a little late, which was which is a little unfortunate. Well, okay, so where was the Thanksgiving? Uh it was in Brentwood. Okay.
And did you do any of the cooking? Uh no, we made a pumpkin cheesecake. Oh. All right. How was it?
Uh delicious. My wife made it. Nice. I took the day off. Gram cracker?
Uh huh. Yeah, nice. Yeah, that's what it's like. Uh so are you like Dave Chang on that same coast who does not like pumpkin pie? And so you turned it into a cheesecake to mitigate the pumpkin piness?
I I think all things can be good if they're done correctly. A pumpkin pie, I've had terrible pumpkin pies, and I've had delightful pumpkin pies. I believe pumpkin pie requires whipped cream. Yeah. You need you need a sweet to offset the kind of spice.
Yeah, and the airiness for the I mean, even though like a good pumpkin pie, it's not necessarily like super dense, but it's just like, you know. I like a custard, like when they turn it into a kind of a custard and then they turn it into a pie. Yeah. Yeah, that works for me. I used to do a thing that was uh alternating, not a not a pumpkin cheesecake, alternating rings of cheesecake and pumpkin pie in one dessert, both with the graham cracker crust.
Like a bullseye. That's good. You're doing a mold or how are you gonna get you have to 3D printed rings and then you pipe into the rings the the two batters and you cook them like in a in a combi in a steve uh steam oven so that it's sets so that you can cook it all at the same time without either cracking the pumpkin or you know, overdoing the thing, and then you know, it's good. That's a complicated uh dessert. Yeah, you know, it uh complicated.
The thing is this is if you're already in the kitchen anyway, who cares? That's the thing about complicated or not, right? It's like if I'm already going to be in the kitchen anyway, what's another 20 steps? You know what I'm saying? I agree.
It's like uh it's it's when you didn't you you weren't gonna cook and someone's like, Can you make that thing that has 20 steps? And you're like, oh God. Because now I'm gonna be in the kitchen all day. So now I have to do a bunch of other stuff to make up for the you know what I mean? I know what you mean.
Yeah. Yeah. Um that's like, you know, people look at restaurant recipes and they're like, why is this so complicated? It's because the person's in the kitchen all day. What does it matter?
Yeah. You know what I mean? Like as long as the steps don't take a long time each, yeah. What does it matter? Yeah, right?
A little bit more active prep. Yeah. Yeah. Well, especially if it saves time at at uh at service. If you can finish the, you know, if you can uh cut down a couple of minutes when it comes time to fire that thing, you know.
It's a good day. Yeah. Half hour now to to save, you know, 15 minutes later, win. I uh I so whenever I'm doing uh expo, I also like to DJ. And a lot of times it it comes to a a colliding point where I either have to choose food or music, and so it's just dead silent in the restaurant until I catch up on tickets.
Well, that's the thing. It's it's incredibly hard. People don't respect anymore because everyone just has playlists. Yeah. But like actually looking at a room and trying to figure out what's going to come on next and never doing more than like two songs ahead.
Very hard. It's like a full-time thing. You know what I mean? Like you have to stop conversations in midstream. You have to be like Yeah.
No, it's literally like uh I need six of this all day. This is the vibe. You're like over here, over here. You know, but um when you do it. Table force from Oakland.
Table force, hit the loonies, hit the loonies. You know what I mean? Like when you do when you do get to do it right, you get to control the experience pretty, you know, holistically. Because like you're you're creating the vibe, the energy, the food, and it's like it's pretty beautiful. Yeah.
No, I like it. I used to I the only time I would do that was at Booker and Dax when all of the other people had gone home, because like Dave didn't let anyone mess with his uh I believe it was still iPods at the time. He would like hand iPods. They were already obsolete, but this way no one could mess with them. And then you would have to hit like shuffle, right?
So in the middle of uh, you know, in the at the wrong time of night, pavement would come on and you're like, not the right vibe, love pavement, you know what I mean? Not the right vibe. So eventually, like when I would go in late night, I would just start I just start playing stuff. Yeah, based on whoever was at the bar. You know, like they would mention something, I'd be like, okay.
And then we would like go with, you know, because you know, as long as you know a couple of tunes from every region of the of, you know, the country and the world, you can kinda you know, get with people anyway. Uh what about what about you over there? What do you what do you fools do for Thanksgiving? Well, I had um I had the, you know, I got shamed last year for this when my brother got shamed, but the the uh rotisserie chicken. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The store store bought rotisserie chicken. But then I also went to my girlfriend's uh family's Thanksgiving, which was in Milwaukee this year. And that was more of a tr traditional spread. How long were you in Milwaukee? For two and a half days.
Did you go to German German town and go to some of the bars there? Or wherever they call that place? No, not really, but we did go to uh cops. You know co K-O-P-P-S? It's like a frozen custard and burger spot.
Like pretty legendary. I think from the 50s. Um, and then that was very good. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. I would like to go back to Milwaukee. I think I might end up going back to Milwaukee again. I like Milwaukee. You know?
It's a good town. Went to Bryant's also. Do you know Bryant's cocktail bar? Maybe. Very old.
Been there, I think, for since I don't know, for 80 years or something crazy like that. And one of those bars which I love, where they don't have a menu, and they're just like, tell me what kind of cocktail you like, and we will give you some options. And did you say I like them delicious? Crunchy. Well I want my cocktail.
One answer for me. Yeah. Boozy bitter stirred. That's that's the only way for me. Really?
I'm always like uh I'm I just hate choice so much, man. I just hate choosing so much. It's my least favorite thing to do. Talking about this. Yeah.
So I wish there were no choices ever in any restaurant. Right? What a joy. Yeah. This is what's nice about catering, right?
It's like, hey, you're gonna get what you get. You don't get upset. I don't mind like if I see a bunch of things on the table, I can I can choose to pick something up. I'm not like paralyzed by my lack of the ability to, you know, I'm not like frozen and I can't like figure out what I want. You know what I mean?
But I don't know. No, my dream is like a c a cover charge at a restaurant. Just give me the cover charge and then start bringing me things. Yeah, do thrilled. The mistake, by the way, whenever there is a flat rate charge, yeah.
Yeah, well, I don't know. You know what? This is what I'm about to say is not true. I always go for the expensive crap. We talk about buffets or where are we going?
Okay. Or any sort of fixed situation where the amount of money I've paid is the amount of money I paid. Rather than getting what I would actually enjoy, I just go for the high-ticket items. I can't get it out of my system. Even though I'm in my 50s, I can't get it out of my system.
I'm just broken. Value. Value derived. Yeah. You know what I mean?
I know what you mean. And I have to constantly re-jigger what that means. So like when I was a kid, it used to be like hit the shrimp. Hit the shrimp. But now shrimp is you know cheap.
So if you hit the shrimp, you're being an idiot. You know what I mean? Yeah. Hit the steak. My man Joe here had steak on Thanksgiving.
He paid a pretty penny. Delicious. Yeah? Yes, sir. Nine orchard, uh, the corner bar.
Which uh which steak was it? The ribeye. Yeah, ribeye. God's steak. You know, it's funny because like uh I I I couldn't really place the herbs that it was encrusted in to I had the leftover the next day, and it was it was an it's simple Herbe de Provence.
It was outstanding. Well, those uh even saw folks and even figured it out. And even the uh um the leftover was an aim, an A. Really? Yes.
How thick was said ribeye? Hmm, maybe a little taller than an inch. Yeah, yeah. Beautiful marbles. I mean, they're cut the cauliflower there is you have to have the cauliflower.
All right. I never had cauliflower like it. It's like this tall, long shoots that look like almost like parsley shoots with tiny little florets at the tip. And it's green with white blossoms. So like a cauliflower broccolini situation.
Kind of, yeah. And a tahini is all amazing. Yeah. I actually really I love cauliflower. Mm-hmm.
In like a chip. And a paper plane to drink. Oh, yeah, your paper plane man? Yeah. I like it.
I like I like it like Jack says. Boozy and bitter. You would think that because of like kind of what I do for a living that I would have converted to this cocktail with dinner situation, but I'm still a wine with dinner guy. I am too. Yeah.
Yeah. You know? That's how you could tell I'm not one of the kids. You know what I mean? Kids these days, you know.
Well, I have that three and a half year old that kind of gotta get it in quick and fast. Oh, I see. Front load. Yes. All right.
And uh Quinn, did you uh did you have a an airzat's can like uh uh in solidarity with your American brethren Thanksgiving situation or no? No, but I did have uh special dinner. I think I've uh uh talked myself in terms of uh crazy local sourcing. So take a guess what I cooked with. Uh I don't know.
I don't know, like stuff from Pamela Anderson's farm. No, you gotta get some of that though. British Columbia grown saffron. I mean, in the in the autumn? Like so they did what they got it in the spring?
I by the way, I've heard foraging people say you could go out and find crocuses and pick some, right? But I've never and will never do it. You know what I mean? Like how what how was it? This might be a greenhouse situation.
But it it was good. I mean, yeah, we made um Rizzo Milanese, turned out really nice. And uh I've got uh uh saffron gelato, of course, but we made it last night, so it's it's still chilling. All right. So d Daniel, on the saffron note, seeing as how before the show you told me that you are of Persian extraction.
Yes. So you have to have you something inside you has to die when someone says that they have saffron from British Columbia or that's grown in a greenhouse, right? I was uh I I was curious about what the nuances of the British Columbian uh saffron would be. Well, so let me know about what about per because I cause like the person who runs the museum of food and drink, is she's you know, Nasli is Persian, right? And she hates all other people, not hate, but she basically looks down her nose at all other folks' saffron, including, by the way, Southern Europeans.
What do you think? What what was I I I don't feel like I'm qualified to know the difference between let's say a Southern European saffron and all of it, what that could entail versus like uh Iranian or Saffron is an uh is an elusive ingredient because how how it plays into food is very unique. And then in Persian food, you're normally layering it with like other than rice, you're layering it with really unique things like a dessert with rose water and pistachio. Rose water is a strong flavor, right? And so saffron brings subtlety and kind of this interesting sweetness.
Um I've only really used Persian saffron. We buy it from the Persian market, they source it from Iran, and so I don't know uh about this American version of uh of saffron. Canadian, Canadian. Yeah, sorry, Canadian. Canadian version.
Yeah. Canadian, please but I will I will uh I will take your word for it. I and I've also I've always wanted to pick it. I mean, I the process seems quite complicated and difficult, and so maybe uh maybe I get it to take a shorter trip because I can't go back to Iran. Well, let me ask you this.
Is there and I don't remember, is there a special like like uh because you pick it other than drying it, is there some special process it goes through? Is it is it in other words, like you know, vanilla is a big mishi gas. No matter what you're gonna do, you know, you you can't just m pick a vanilla pot and get vanilla. You gotta sweat it and ferment it, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. But like with saffron, is it pretty much as long as you can get down there with the tweezers, you can have saffron.
I don't know. Sorry, wish I could tell you more. So what Quinn, what you need to do is you need to purchase some super high grade like Iranian or am I always wrong? Is it Iranian or Iranian? I was Iranian.
Couldn't you can make some more things with that too, you know? Yeah, my caregiver is from Iran. So she's gonna try and get me uh the the real deal hooked up. There you go. So and then the the correct thing always to do is side by side.
Side by side. Side by side. I was gonna say share it with the homies, but yeah. But like do me uh do me a favor, and when you do it, pick something relatively plain so that I can figure so that you can explain to the people what the actual saffron difference is. Do the basmati rice.
That's that's the OG. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So when you're doing it, uh, how long do you do you let it bloom before you does it really matter? Because you're gonna be boiling the heck, not boiling, but whatever you're gonna be doing to the rice.
10 to 15 minutes. Yeah. Bloom out. Yeah, and that's uh you know, learn from from the women in my family. In like in in like tepid water?
Yeah, in uh yeah, exactly. Like maybe somewhere around uh like one four thirty. Yeah. Interesting. My caregiver said we put it with ice in the fridge.
Wow. I you know what? I have heard this for a long time. Is that to store it to use it on a daily basis? No, no.
Like again, she said we should have done it the night before. Well, what's the what's the reason for the what's the what's the reason for the yeah, for the ice. Again, just to like make the extraction slow, I guess. Like she didn't have a scientific explanation. No, but regardless of science, people always have a reason they do something.
It could just be we did this forever, but it's not like, you know, it's not like ice has been common for centuries. It's only been common for like maybe two centuries. You know what I mean? That's a good point. You know?
Yeah, again, yeah. So, but you know, I do know for a fact, because I've run the tests, that temperature of initial infusion does make a difference in mushrooms when you're gonna do dried mushrooms. And it is true that uh cooler uh pre-infusions up to a point, cooler pre-infusions do make for a better tasted, rehydrated shiitake, let's say. Oh, interesting. In the in the broth.
Uh I don't have in the top of my head because I didn't know we were gonna talk about this, the actual numbers of the tests that I ran to figure out um and I didn't run enough. I only ran like four temperatures, so I knew enough to knew that there was difference, but not enough tests to find like an optimal number of degrees. Um but yeah, it's very different. Like, so, like even like uh throwing them in a vacuum bag. Well, the way I did is I threw them in a vacuum bag and I circulated them at different temperatures for each for I forget a standard amount of time, hour, hour and a half, something like that.
Then uh took some, cooked them all to the same finished temperature and tested to see whether I could see a difference. And there was in the mushroom itself or in the in the water. In the broth. In the broth. Yeah.
Yeah. I haven't done the test with the actual mushroom. Yeah. Uh dry shiitakis bring so much good flavor. Yeah.
You know, that was the hardest part about cooking uh at the Yogatori restaurant. I went from food truck where in my opinion, it's like put a lot on a plate, a lot of flavors, really bold, tons of ingredients, to hey, you gotta make this thing with three ingredients. How are you gonna do that? You know, and it's like, yeah, you gotta work on temperatures. You gotta pick really powerful punches, you know, and that was uh that was quite a learning process.
So do you at the Yakutori place, do you do the quote unquote, even though the outside is actually cooked, the uh chicken sashimi on the breast? No, no way. Americans won't play that. Yeah, yeah. I won't play that either.
No. I've I had it with nostasia, and we were all like, I had it. Yeah, you know what I don't need it again. Yeah, I don't need it again. Yeah.
It's fine. Yeah, you know what I mean? I feel like horse is gonna be that way for myself. You you don't need the horse? I I mean I I think I'll try it, and then I think it'll be a one and done.
My man Jack, I'm sure, would eat the h heck out of a horse. Jack, how many horses have you eaten in your life? Uh uh full horse, come on, no. I've had I've had a lot of horse dishes, but maybe like five or six. Yeah.
And hi, and what was your what was your what was what was the what was the upshot? Was it a yay or hair that much? Couldn't help myself. Yeah. It's kind of an it's kind of uh honestly.
It's it's whatever. Yeah. I don't know. Do you love horse? I mean, who really loves it?
The taste of horse. I've never had it, but the French folks buy it. Really? No, I do love it. Yeah.
Well, the Italians, cavallo. Oh. Yeah. I uh the closest I came was when uh I went to Europe at the height of Mad Cow, and uh a lot of people were doing, for instance, I was in Germany and all of the sauerbratten was f from fair, meaning from you know, horse. And I was like, yeah, I don't know.
Yeah. Something weird about it. Yeah, I don't want to have my first German sauerbratten be horse. I want an act, I want the regular sauer brotten. You know what I mean?
Yeah. I don't really understand the idea of sauerbratten anyway. Like like extremely acidic meat to me seems like it's gonna be real stringy. So I've never made it myself, but I'm anxious. I want to try it, but I want to have the most legitimate version of it so that if I still am like I don't understand this product, then it's not on on the preparation.
It's on the it's on the fact that this product and I can't get together. Yeah. Sour horse. Well, normally it's it's not. It's but it they were doing it from horse because no one could eat beef at that time because Matt Cow's.
No, no, no, no, no. They cook it with with acid. So like, but like, you know, when you cook meat in a highly acidic environment, yeah, it gets all stringy and stuff, which is fine for certain, you know, like completely shredded things, but yeah, you do like larb or you know, there's a lot of Asian dishes. I mean, have you had chicken adobo or pork adobo? Yeah, one of the things.
Yeah, but that's not like more beef. It's not um it's gotta be because the y it's layered, right? In in adobo. We use adobo on my on my food truck and it's uh it's light. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh I don't know, listen, like I gotta get like a legit German to come in here with some sauer bratton. You gotta go to the sausage ki kitchen in Los Angeles, I'm telling you. Do you think they make that stuff?
I think they make that stuff. To me, the the uh the my favorite German thing is the uh is like the um the uh what do they call it uh the Schweinhoxer, the uh like like the pork pork knuckle that has been like braised and then fried off so it's like super crunchy and big. And you see, you just like it's like it's like you could sink a zeppelin with that stuff. It's just so heavy inside of you, you know what I mean? It's German winners, you know.
You gotta make it through. Dude, I love that food though. Like people are like, oh, German food. I'm like, no, man, that stuff's legit. Like Spitzel?
Legitimate food. You know what I mean? Uh I mean, anyway. Uh all right. So anything else from you guys from uh Thanksgiving before we uh move on to uh other things?
Nothing. Oh, no. I'll tell you this. After after we went off air last week, uh Matt Sartwell from Kitchen Arts and Letters, uh, I asked him what he was making. And I asked him specifically about cranberry sauce.
We didn't do this on air, right, Joe? And uh he's like, uh, I'm I'm doing uh I'm doing an uncooked cranberry sauce. And I was like, I was like, blasphemy. Uncooked cranberry sauce. And he's like, yeah, I'm gonna do an uncooked cranberry sauce.
And I looked more into it, and apparently this year, this um I forget her first name, but an NPR uh like you know, person of note, somebody Stanberg has for the past 30 or something years popularized every year this uncooked cranberry relish on NPR with where she grinds it in a meat grinder, which by the way, I actually did spoiler alert, I made her recipe. It's Mama Stanberg's recipe, which was her mother-in-law's recipe that she got from Craig Claiborne, but Craig Claiborne in 1959 was like, You're good. You can call it yours now, because like, you know, she did so much to popularize it. And you grind in a meat grinder cranberries, two cups, which is random. Did you know it's not a full package of cranberries?
Did cranberries used to be a pound a pack? Now they're 12 ounces a pack. Is this one of those things where they've ruined everything again? Or was it always 12 ounces a pack? You know what I mean?
Yeah, okay, okay, okay. Good, good, good. So it's not one of these, my daddy was a pound in a bag. You know what I mean? Wasn't that?
Okay. So anyway, so it's not a full bag. Uh it's it's uh two cups of cranberries, I think half a cup of sugar, three quarters a cup of sour cream, two tablespoons of uh prepared horseradish. She prefers the beet prepared horseradish, and here's the weird one, a small onion, right? And raw onion.
Yes. Which my wife hates, right? So, like, so I it's our this is an interesting one. Yeah, so what you and it gets weirder, ready? So what you do is is you take the cranberries and the onion and you're supposed to grind them together in a meat grinder.
Now, I don't know if any of you out here have ever used a meat grinder. Do you have a hand meat grinder? Is that what you're saying? So I ha I was like, I have a hand meat grinder at home. I have a number 10 porkart, stainless steel though, right?
Come on. Okay. And I got it for a different old recipe I was gonna make years ago. So I'm like, I'm game. So I put it in, but like two cups of cranberries and and one small onion, by the time it starts coming out of the front of my, first of all, she didn't specify which plate, ma'am.
Oh yeah. Ma'am. There are different size holes in the plate. You gotta tell me which plate to grind it through if you're gonna tell me to use a meat grinder. But anyway, so by the time I put the entire bunch of stuff into my meat grinder, it's just already coming out the front.
So I'm like, now what? Like half of them aren't even done at all. So in her recipe, she says, I guess you could use a food grinder. I mean, uh, a food uh, what's it called? Processor.
Yeah. But, you know, you gotta get the same chunky texture. Don't use a meat grinder. I'm here to tell you that if you if you think, even if you own a meat grinder, don't bust it out. It's just not enough.
If you were gonna make five times her recipe, sure, use the meat grinder. You know what I mean? And then you can do what everyone does, which is feed the feed the first part through again so that everything gets ground and then clean it out. But I feel like half the stuff was in my meat grinder, whatever. Then so you take the ground cranberries and uh onion, and then you put in the sour cream, uh, the sugar, and the horseradish, and then you stir it up, and here's the weird one.
She specifies plastic container, which I think is odd, put it in the freezer, freeze it solid as a rock, right? Solid, solid as a rock, nothing's changed it. Thrill is still hot. Anyway, freeze it solid, and then you thaw it, and you're supposed to serve it like barely thawed. And that's the thing.
And people, some people love it. Martha Stewart likes it. Coolio. Coolio wrote her uh like did it on his Coolio's cooking show and wrote like a like a rap uh bar about it. About, you know, uh, and I thought it was good, but my wife was like, No Ronnie.
This is like you don't ever make it again. So I'm gonna make it again, but maybe with horseradish. So that's my only that was my going back. I'm gonna go back and try it without the onion. I love raw onion.
Same. My wife detests it. It's it it sounds like some kind of Russian kind of motted like beet scenario. It's uh I don't know. I did use the red beet colored horseradish though.
Yeah, you know, uh, whatever, what's the brand we always get? The horseradish in the container that's too thin. Golds, golds, golds. A gold's horseradish. If anyone who's involved in the gold gold's horseradish business, now I I could, in my neighborhood, because I live in the Lower East Side, I could go get legit freshly ground horseradish whenever I want, right?
Because that's a privilege we have in the Lower East Side from the pickle guys, right? But golds, please. The jar, I don't own a spoon thin enough to get into your freaking jar. If you if your jar doesn't fit, it's like it's like whoever makes those tiny caper jars. Stop.
Stop. The two-finger system trying to get in there. It's ridiculous. So I have like You need a cocktail spoon. Yeah, I know, right?
I have that. I also have like uh like drug spatulas. Like stainless steel drug spatulas that you know that I use for acids, not for drugs at my house. Uh acids. Not that kind of acids, culinary acids.
So uh yeah, I'm sitting there using this like drug spatula to get the horseradish out. I'm like unnecessary. First of all, who wants such a tiny amount of horseradish? When I want horseradish, I want horseradish. You know what I mean?
On and on and on. Hey, they didn't do the horseradish sauce with their beef, did they? At the at the corner at the corner bar for the Thanksgiving. That would have been good. I love horseradish.
I had a great one last night. Did you? I did. Poor Charles. Yeah?
Yeah. Talk to me about it. Uh it was creamy. Uh you can get the texture of the horseradish, so they left it like not fully emulsified. And then um, I want to say there was a little bit of uh spice and pepper in there, maybe white pepper or black pepper, and they just did a good job of balancing because I love horseradish, and when you go too creamy and too sweet, it really ruins it.
And so it was horseradish for uh cream. You know, who doesn't like horseradish and I feel embarrassed to say it? My son decks. I'm hoping that he was he's I don't know, someday he'll someday he'll wake up and be like, I've been wrong. Horseradish is so good.
You know what I mean? It's tough, uh, huh? When the kids don't like what you like. I mean, I can tolerate most of it, but I just don't understand horse like I just don't understand it. I pray every day that my daughter will eat everything.
If she becomes one of those kids where it's grilled cheeses, I'm gonna listen, don't don't don't even think about it because you're not gonna be able to control it. Don't even think about it. You know what I mean? I feed my daughter every week. Don't give up hope, yeah.
You can't yeah, you can't give up hope. I didn't eat anything but like chicken parm until I was in my early twenties. Yeah, what a child really. And now now it's eggplant palm. Two Long Island Italian uh Sicilian family.
Yeah, yeah. So it's like it's now it's the it's the two parms and then horse, whale. It's like any endangered animal. Yeah. There you go.
Really, really broaden up in the spectrum. Yeah, yeah. He's like, he's like uh you got chicken palm? No. Egg?
No. Eggplant palm? No. Any endangered animal? No.
Yeah. How about puffin? You have any puffin? I'll take that. I I'll tell you what.
Some British Columbia saffron. Yeah, I I would totally eat a puffin, though. Uh that's one I would I would eat the heck out of a puffin. Listen, I get that they're cute. You know what?
They're the dumbest looking birds when they're flying. They look dumb when they're flying. You know what I mean? But the presentation, the the meat has to live like be presented in the beak. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, true. I mean, I did I had puffing in Iceland. It was, yeah. It wasn't the season for puffing when I was in Iceland.
I had the split lamb's head and I did not enjoy it. And by the way, coming from like, you know, the Italian side of my family, like Caput Cell, split lamb head is a thing. Like we eat it. I like it, right? So I'm not saying I don't like splits lamb's head.
I'm saying the one that I got in Iceland was uh no good. You know what I mean? Like lambhead. Good. You know what I mean?
My family, they're like, we'd fight over who would get the the stuff out of the well, inside the nasal. Anyway, I don't want to talk about it. Uh we're not talking about my family now. Um anyway. There's hope is my point.
You they it can always turn around. Yeah. You know what? You're lucky though. Your your kids uh are under this new regime where you're supposed to feed them everything now.
Okay, I I mean I literally every fr uh Sunday maker uh three different courses, and I've done bone marrow, leaks, uh I've done horseradish, I've done I'm trying to open her up to a lot of different things. Yeah. Well, you know, the data keeps changing on what you're supposed to feed kids. People just need to like people take small amounts of data and make huge implications or recommend things to all of us to do with our kids that then can have effects on them later in life. It's nuts.
You know what I mean? Yeah, I think it just feels right. You know, it's like I'm making everything from scratch, I know exactly what's in there. I don't know. Well, I'm sure Joe, you got you have you must have issues with this doctors saying all kinds of stuff to you all the time.
All the time. Well, we're still allergic to eggs, we're still allergic to the coconut, which is really freaking tricky because it's not just so much in the food, it's in the uh the moisturizers and the cream, you know, all the lotions. Yeah. We started with making our own egg baked goods. Um, but he still has a reaction.
He's like, my tongue, but never. I mean, we're gone to this color palette. There's so tan. Uh everything's tan. So like brown.
So you gotta cook 70s style. In the 70s, everything was brown. Like my wife said, Well, maybe we should do fondue. Yeah. That's a fun one.
Yeah. I mean, like, uh, you should go like uh I have I have a lot of cookbooks from the 70s, and when you look through it, it's total brown town. You know what I mean? You're like, ooh, hey, you know what I haven't made in many, many years? Beef Stroganoff.
Ooh. We had one at Thanksgiving. Really? Yeah. How was it?
It was really modified. Oh. It was made with tofu. What? I know.
Family's interesting. Persian family making tofu stroganoff for Thanksgiving. Huh. It was delicious. Yeah?
It was like a 10. Maybe that's one of the items you can add to your your uh Thanksgiving for the vegan. Stroganoff. Yeah. Tofu Stroganoff.
Yeah. I was honestly it worked way better than expected. Really? Hmm. Beef Stroganoff.
The tofu. All right. Well, you need a couple of vegan items, you know. I had someone made what was it? Someone made like a mapo tofu that didn't have the pork?
Yeah, and I was like, I think mapo tofu is easily one of the best dishes in the whole world. It's delicious. It's it really is just mind blowing. I feel like you have to call it something else if it doesn't have some analog in it to take the place of the pork. Hmm.
Right? Yeah. I mean, you're building flav Yeah, no, I don't know. You could do it without pork. Yeah, yeah.
But just I just want to hear the same name. I just don't want to hear it. You know what I mean? I just don't want to hear it. All right.
All right. Uh what am I missing, guys? Am I missing anything? Or should we should we get on to some questions? Let's talk about shoes.
Let's do it. Before we do the question, let's talk about shoes. So I looked on uh I was like, oh, it's got a shoe brand. I was like, okay. And then I looked it up, and it's like uh Sirius Eats rates your shoe number one.
Yep. And uh I think on your website it said food and wine rates your shoe number one. Now here's the thing. You teamed up with uh some uh orth orthopedic uh doctor, right, to make these shoes. And and you had a why why'd you start this again?
You said you had a slip and fall? I had a really bad slip and fall in the kitchen. I mean, I still have slip discs or an A discs from that 15 years ago. Yeah. Jeez.
Yeah. Real bad. So you don't find the uh Canadian PSA funny. What's the Canadian PSA? You've never seen the Canadian PSA?
No. I've talked about this on air. I apologize, listeners, if you've heard this a million times. But there's a bunch of workplace PSAs uh from Canada that are maybe now 15 years old. Uh you know, 15, 16 years old, and one of them is a chef, and she's carrying uh like a giant pot of uh like oil or stock.
I think that's burning, scalding hot, I think it's oil. And she's like, you know, ah man, I'm doing great. I'm a sous chef, I'm gonna be executive chef by next year, and you know, uh, I'm supposed to get married, you know, you know, in a month, but none of that's gonna happen because I'm about to have a terrible accident. Somebody should have cleaned up that floor and shab boy. She flies up in the air.
Feet out from underneath her, head hits the the uh the you know, this the oven, the the range, the waldorf on the way down, spills the pot of burning hot, like you know, a five-gallon like stock pot of stuff on her face, and she gets up going like her face all mangled and screaming and stuff like that. And it's basically the whole all of these PSAs are about workplace safety and how there's no such thing as quote unquote accidents. That's gruesome. Yeah, well, or hilarious, depending on how you see it, but I'm guessing if you had a terrible Yeah. So now you gotta watch that.
I gotta watch it. Yeah. Sounds like our commercial is already built in. We used to I used to play it for the students at the school at the French Culinary Institute, and uh, I would just look at the audience and you would see people would either be rolling on the floor or horrified. There's nothing in between.
It's like the movie Heathers. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Sure. Uh anyway, uh, so you had a bad slip and fall.
I did. All right. And then what? Uh and what shoes were you wearing when you slip and fall? You want to call them out?
Yeah, I was wearing Vans. Okay. So I was wearing the wrong footwear. I wanted to look cool as this young hotshot chef. I just want a big food network show.
I was like, oh, you know, like I'm opening my second restaurant. This is a big deal. And so this is 2011. This is 2014. 2014.
Yeah. Second restaurant was 2014. Yeah. And um I watched someone else open my line, which I don't know if you've, you know, the Mies is it's not yours anymore. You know, and I and I was like, I didn't love that.
And uh yeah, it was a tough feeling. And I was like, someone needs to make better footwear that looks cool. And like I had this amazing thought, or I guess it was an epiphany, that the people that design shoes for people to be on their feet for 12 hours have never worked a 12 hour shift in their life. And so I wanted to make it better. I didn't know how.
Partnered with one of the top orthopedic surgeons. And it took me 48 revisions in five years to launch our first shoe. I went two trips to China. I had a team from Jordan, Adidas, Nike, Biomechanics, Robots. I mean, I really wanted to make something different.
Huh. And uh, and like, look, they're not cheap, but they're not crazy unreasonable. You can get them now on sale, actually. There's a Black Friday sale going on right now if you guys are if you guys are interested. Ends today.
Yeah. I was gonna be like, maybe I shouldn't get them. The thing is, I don't know my sizing. Do you do you guys sell in brick and mortars or no? Uh we do, but not on in not in New York.
Yeah. So the one that uh is is the the one that got called out on uh what's it called? Serious Seats that was the clog, is that is that the the go-to or no? Uh it depends. So the shoe I'm wearing right now, the pro is my favorite shoe in the whole world.
This one uh we take running technology and we put it into a boot. It's pretty special. Um and it's easy to get on and off. But everyone, it's kind of like your your poison. Like I noticed with chefs, like nobody's really looking to reinvent the wheel.
They they like the silhouette that they like. I either like a boot, I like a trainer, I like a clog. And so whatever feels right for you, I would recommend that too. My problem is I got wide feet. Oh, yeah, our shoes naturally are wide.
Plus we make wides. Really? Yeah, yeah. But every I mean your feet swallow as you're on your feet all day, so we need really wide toe boxes. I know, I hate that.
That's like like uh mo most shoes I have to order them too big because they smash the front of my feet. You know what I mean? I know exactly what you mean. You know? Yeah.
So I can I can solve all right. Yeah, yeah. All right. And uh the snibs. That's the doctor's name, roughly, right?
He's Snibby. But this, but the brand you took off the E. So this is one of those, it's like, you know, uh Kate Spade, she's like, no, no, no, I'm I'm Katie in the real life, not Kate. So it's not named after a person. I'm like, come on.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just thought the name was really clever and Snibbies.
Uh I like snibs more. Yeah. No one's gonna go buy snibbies, but they'll buy sniffs. They'll but you know, and that's what made sense to me at the time. All right.
So how's the how's the brand going? You got some good uh what's it called? Uh like uh chef uh what's the word I'm looking for? Spokes folks. Yeah, they're actually um partners in our business.
So we have Nancy Silverton, Andrew Zimmern, and we just uh brought on Michael Vitaggio. Nice. Yeah, so some cool guys. I I it's really interesting because we want to find people that I really admire in the industry who still work on their feet all day. And so that's a unique factor because they they had to have been very successful, but they still have to operate and then they have a strong sense of personal style.
So I noticed and see whether you can talk to me about this, and sorry for people that were going deep into shoes, but uh so years ago, back when um barefoot running became popular and there was the people in Harvard, I kind of got sucked into the zero drop world. And so for those of you that don't know, like uh when you're talking about the drop, you're talking about how much higher the heel is than the toe, you know, naturally in a shoe, right? So I got kind of sucked into barefoot world, and I moved away from that only because the brand of shoes that I became kind of accustomed to wearing stopped being easy to buy. Uh and um, but I stayed zero drop. And you know, in your website, and we know the doctor says is that like you don't have a huge drop.
It's like point six three or something centimeters, right? So, you know, not giant, but uh, you guys believe that um for this application for kitchen, some drop is necessary. Yeah, so um how you position your hips. So, like when you're on your feet all uh here's what's crazy. Almost all studies in footwear are around athletics.
Athletics are meant to be worn for an hour or two. Um you you play a sport and you're done with that sport, you move on. Like you wear a hoka on your feet all day, like with the super cushion, and yeah, I'm saying it, like that's terrible for you. It and it it it cripples your foot as you're on your feet all day. It doesn't offer the support you need.
The dance go clog that looks arguably pretty ugly and is pretty clunky, that shoe will reduce plantar fasciitis. If you're standing on your feet all day, it will make your life better. You want a hard sole. This is contrary to the whole world's belief right now that these super cushy shoes are good for you. And so having your hip placed a little bit forward it if you're standing all day is actually good.
And that's why that there's a little bit of drop. And we did a bunch of biomechanic testing to figure this out. Um, but yeah, it is it is purposeful. When you're on your feet for eight to twelve hours a day, you you have a different environment than most people when you're when you're looking at shoes, and you need to buy shoes that are specific to that. Nice.
Yeah. And I think, no, you know what? My wife's gonna kill me. No, but I'll tell you this the zero drop is uh if I'm casually wearing shoes, uh, I love the zero drop as well. And I I I strengthen my foot.
I do a lot of it, you know, it's not just shoes. Like if you're on your feet all day, there's uh a routine that needs to happen for you to have good foot health. Yeah. All right. And uh unfortunately, I don't I don't have your book.
So your food truck has been around now, what is that, 14 years? 15. 15. Queen Ceniera this year. Yeah, oh really?
Yeah, yeah. You're gonna dress up the truck in a nice, like uh cool outfit. We were hoping to do so, yes. Yeah, it'd be amazing. Like you get an outfit for the truck and like, you know, you know, the the boys can have sabers and like all sorts of cool stuff.
Exactly. Yeah, it'd be sweet. That'd be sick. That'd be fun. Yeah.
Oh my god, that's gonna be good news. Anyway, uh but you also, and so you know, you know Nastasia, she couldn't be on the show today, but she had a food truck situation with Mark Ladner, hated it. Hated it. And so you wrote a book called, which I again, I apologize I haven't read it, Food Truck Mogul, where you kind of go through it and you're like, hey, not a get rich quick scheme. It's a it's a well, why don't you describe it?
Yeah, it's it's so I think you can make money in food trucks. You can make money in restaurants too. There's there's lots of ways to do that, but it's a grind. I mean, the food trucks, they don't generate uh a crazy amount of revenue. And so even if you're really talented at at making great margins, the revenue, the gross revenue isn't high enough necessarily unless you have multiple trucks.
And so what I love about food trucks, and it's still my favorite part of all my businesses is working on a food truck because it's instant gratification. You're creating the food, but you're also serving it and you're seeing the people eat it. And there's a sense of joy when people come to a truck because typically there's discovery and they have to find it. And so for me, it's a very dynamic environment. And I've had fast casual, I've had fine dining, I've had catering, I've done everything I think in food at this point.
And there's something about the joy of service. But it's hard. Uh it's a grind. Well, how much better are the economics in a catering situation versus a I'm a part my truck situation. Aaron Powell for the food truck specifically.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Catering is worse. We so we do 95% catering. Um I love going to events, but I do them with uh a different initiative, which is typically to drive brand.
So I'll go to the Brentwood farmers market knowing that we might lose $80 to $100 at that event, even though we gross maybe $1,200 or whatever it is, just because I know that that's the right demographic to book more catering and it's where I would like to be. And so I think the street corners are you could still make those successful, but the inconsistency in stops is it it almost makes it impossible to run. Right. So like I mean, I'm sure, I mean, uh if I was gonna do it, and is this like in the book like like working backwards? Like, here's the footprint, here's how many covers I of stuff I can fit, or what do you call them?
You don't call them covers there, do you? What do you think? Yeah, call them tickets, covers. So here's how much I can fit in the truck. I need to figure out what the split is roughly gonna be.
And then do you do a constant resupply? Yeah, I mean, we could uh those trucks are so big now. I can I could do 15,000 out of my truck and not need a resupply. So it's you you can definitely there's enough um storage now in my new trucks that I can do any volume. But um to your point, you have to have menus that scale just because um if you go to one stop and there's uh 200 people and you only brought food for 80, that's gonna hurt really bad.
And if you go to a place that you thought was going to be 200 and you made food for 200, you're gonna be throwing away a lot of food. So you need a menu that uh allows for the ability to scale up or down. And that typically it takes a lot of sourcing. Like, you know, you use the cryovact tuna, like right, and those come in like one-pound bags that you could defrost at a time, they defrost quickly. Okay, well, that's an item that you can flex on if you need it.
Yeah. So I cryovac pork. I mean, I I I I've done a lot of things now over the 15 years to understand how to like um handle different volumes. Yeah. It's a pain, what a pain.
It's uh, but you know, again, but so is the book detail these kind of things. If somebody wants if somebody wants to do this, should they read the book to try to figure out like the like just the rough outline of what they need to think about? It's crazy. I I think for someone to start a food truck and not either read my book or go through my master class, it's like 20 bucks of the master class 100. Like, it will change how you look at food trucks forever.
Like I've literally telling you like 15 years, I've had you know 10 trucks, I've opened trucks for other brands, I've done activations, I'm doing uh potentially a truck for one of the coolest restaurants in the world from where your son's at right now. Like I've done it all. We won't name them, but uh it rhymes with with Paloma. No, no. But it's um but but it's the to the point of is that I've just I've done it, right?
You know, 15 years, I'm pretty much one of the oldest people in the industry. So let me ask you this tid like a tidbit. So as anyone who's ever tried to do anything in this industry knows, it's very thin line between making money and going bankrupt because like the way the numbers can swing when you make a mistake, like they can swing way against you. They rarely swing way in your favor. You know what I mean?
Uh but so you know, you could look at someone and they could have incredibly high revenues, but they could still be sucking wind. And that was my that was my second year. We won the food network show. We had three trucks and we went from one to three. Every time I opened my truck, there was a two hour line.
I grossed 2.4 coming off 400,000 the first year, so six times the amount of revenue, and I made 30 grand. Yeah, ridiculous. If people don't understand this, so like what is the one thing, because then I gotta answer some questions before we go out. One thing that people don't factor in that's gonna suck money out of their out of their business. Uh I mean it's just it it's to your point, controlled controlling labor, controlling food costs, like it it it's hard.
And especially in uh in those environments. So I I mean I'm really about budgeting and and holding people accountable to that. And I think that's the biggest thing in the restaurant industry that I've noticed is like your fixed costs, you know what they are going into it. It's your variable cost that can eat you alive, and you gotta be crazy strict about it. You know, like uh w one of the biggest challenges of a yakatory restaurant is you're making tiny little sticks that you sell for two to five dollars, which we don't do anymore, and there's a lot of labor there.
And so, you know, that model doesn't work so easily anymore. And so you have to be really tight on controlled uh on variable costs. Now you have to sell them for six dollars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but you gotta figure that out, right?
Yeah, well, yeah, it's like I don't I can't I can't conscience what cocktails cost nowadays. All right, let's do some questions. Oh, also before I do that, son of a gun. You guys don't use uh seed oils. Yeah, no seed oils.
Yeah. You like a seed oil? Is that uh is that a disappointment face? No, well here's my here's the thing, right? So like the argument is is that linoleic acid is good in some quantity, but not in the quantity we do.
But the whole reason we consume those is because we were told not to consume other things. So I just don't know that I just I gotta look at all the the data. Sure. You know what I mean? Like anything that's a swing one way or the but you you think the quality of the oil is good?
I mean it's night and day. If you do just a blind taste test, let alone what I think the implications of cheap fryer oil is, which is what the ninety-nine percent of food trucks use and buy. Um, it's pretty amazing. I mean, I like a stable fry oil. Is this mean I'm getting kicked off or what's the thing?
Yeah, we got two minutes. We got two minutes. We got two minutes. Uh all right, listen. Desert platypus wrote in and wants to make a uh a Mai Thai non alcoholic, and I haven't I've been thinking about it ever since you wrote about this Desert Platypus, and I don't have a good answer for it yet.
I need someone in the Discord or someone to come out who can figure out this problem because my tie is particularly difficult because I can't fake it on texture. It's poured over over rocks. Making it non-alcoholic is just, I don't know. Uh I 'cause I don't use like quote unquote non alcoholic spirits, and so it more. Um Rock Baker wants us to ask everyone their pet peeves, but I don't know if we're gonna do what's your give me one pet peeve real quick.
Uh Pep peeves. In a kitchen. In a in a kitchen. Yeah. Uh Pepivina Kitchen is uh come on, Daniel.
I I think I don't like uh I I like focus. I think when uh when people come in and then then there's things to do on the line and they start talking, uh it's it's a little distracting. Yeah, if you if you have time to lean, you have time to die. There you go. Yeah.
Um Elliot from Berkeley, I mentioned something on the uh show about juice changing over time, but I'm not exactly sure what I said. So Velly, if you could be more clear on what I said, I could try to be more clear on what I meant. Um Azu 14 is buying high protein seltzer at Costco. I don't know how they would do that. Most proteins really foam quite badly.
So I don't know what I'd have to find a protein that doesn't foam a lot, but I need to talk to some uh I need to talk to some people about that, because I don't know. I would just take some protein pills and drink seltzer. But I don't know. It's an interesting uh thing. Justin F.
asked me about clams and immersion circulators. The best clam I ever had that was done uh it was done at Combi, not in a circ, was uh the uh modernist cuisine uh gooey duck, which was done as a noodle form and low temp. So I'm gonna try to for the next time look up the recipe and figure out what the temperature was, but I don't ever cook clams that way. To me, I've said this a million times, God's clams are razors on a plancha. I love razor clamps.
East coast we've got to be. Yeah, gooey duck is delicious. Um pray to that gooey duck, though. It's like 200 years old. Well, you know, gotta die sometime.
Uh all right. The rest uh we'll get uh we'll get to later. Got a couple more uh questions. Uh and from Kevin, who you might know from uh from Noma, who's in California right now, preparing for some stuff. We have a question uh uh from him, but we'll get to it later because we got no more time cooking issues.
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