In the wake of the recent riots in LA, a lot of restaurants and liquor stores have been destroyed, but Felix and his crew managed to survive. They talk about how they managed to keep their doors open and what they ve been up to since being shut down. They also talk about what it s going to take to get them back up and running again and how they plan for when they re able to open up again. Felix talks about how he s been dealing with the aftermath of the riots and what he s doing to keep the restaurant open and keep the patrons happy. He also talks about what s going on in the restaurant industry and how to deal with the new regulations that have been implemented in order to make things easier for people to get back into the restaurant and get things running again. And, of course, there s a wild card at the end of the episode that could have a big impact on the future of this whole thing. We ll find out what that is! Thanks to our sponsor, Caff Monster Energy Drink! for sponsoring this episode and supporting this podcast! Thank you so much to everyone who has been supporting us, supporting us and supporting us in our journey. We can t do this without you! We appreciate you. We really appreciate it. XOXO, Joe, Janet, Evan, Jeff, and the crew at The Caf n Gaf and the support we ve been getting us through this crazy week. Thank you all so much love and support from our patrons. We appreciate all the support. We really do appreciate all of the support and support. xoxo, Joe and support you all. Joe, Evan and Janet. - Thank you for all the work you do so much, thank you all of your support, Thank you, Joe & the support from everyone else, and we really appreciate you all are so much of you, it means a chance to be able to support us to do this. and we re so much. thank you. We re going to keep supporting us. Cheers! - - Joe, Ella, Evan & the rest of the team. . and the rest we can do this... - JUICY. JOSEPHAPPY THANK YOU, JOE, JOSIE, JEAN AND KELLY, AND THEMSELVY - AND THE MOST LOVED YOU, THANK YOU.
00:00:39.000Like, if you told me that something happened in LA and people were rioting, I'd be like, well, if it happened in LA, it kind of makes sense that people are upset.
00:00:46.000And then you said, but they're smashing businesses and destroying restaurants and destroying small stores and family-owned businesses.
00:01:10.000There's nothing we can do about it now.
00:01:12.000But I also think there's been thousands and thousands of peaceful protesters out there.
00:01:19.000And the press is really not focusing on all the peaceful protests, which is our right to protest.
00:01:26.000And there's going to be, you know, a bad apple everywhere.
00:01:29.000And then you're going to get, you know, hundreds of people that and I think you were saying, you know, on your last podcast, it's a bunch of young people that don't know where, yeah, where's your iPhone made?
00:01:39.000Where are you going to get your shoes made from?
00:03:14.000Well, the wild card is the clientele coming in.
00:03:17.000I think people are going to come back in droves.
00:03:19.000I think if you were open full capacity, you'd be fucking sold out instantly.
00:03:23.000I really don't think there's any issue at all.
00:03:25.000I think there's so much fear mongering going on, but I think the actual attitude of people, way more people are interested in going out than are interested in being locked up for longer hours.
00:03:38.000Well, I think it's like different, you know, groups of people.
00:03:41.000So you have young people who want to go out and they don't care and they'll, you know, be seated at full capacity.
00:03:49.000But if you have any kind of health risks or you're older, you're not going to feel safe.
00:04:25.000So we're forced to become extremely creative.
00:04:29.000And there's one thing that I know about the restaurant industry where we're highly adaptable.
00:04:32.000We have to kind of play within this game where we have to be unwavering on all of our standards and then be completely adaptable minute to minute from everyone's demands and everybody else.
00:04:49.000There's also this extreme lack of communication as to what the timeline they're looking at and what will be the standards for you to be open 100%.
00:04:59.000The Comedy Store has no idea when they're going to be able to be open because restaurants are open and they're saying, well, aren't we kind of like a restaurant?
00:05:22.000That's why we have complete lack of trust.
00:05:26.000Everything in politics and how the pandemic has been handled and also handling the businesses, mandating overnight that we close our doors and go to zero revenue, but there's no mandates on how we operate with zero revenue.
00:05:40.000Moving forward, what do we say to our landlords who deserve to be paid?
00:07:57.000It was just nice to be able to go to a restaurant.
00:07:59.000Yeah, I think people are dying to get out, and we're going to see a lot of people that are going to just run to restaurants, sit down in restaurants.
00:08:24.000I'm not sure how comfortable I would even feel sitting indoors, where you come in with a mask, but then you're going to eat, you take your mask off, and then, you know, Joe blow two tables over coughs, and then you're sitting indoors.
00:08:37.000Whenever you're inside, you feel like you're in a Petri dish.
00:08:42.000I mean, just think about my dishwashers, okay?
00:08:45.000In the guidelines, those guys basically have to be in hazmat suits.
00:08:49.000They have to have full protection, face shields, and mask, and then have like, you know, the equivalent of like a painter's suit, essentially.
00:13:31.000It feels like one of the only streets in Los Angeles where it's, you know, like a neighborhood and a street that you can walk down.
00:13:38.000So luckily, I found this location on Abikini.
00:13:43.000And it's a long story, but I was working with another chef for about nine months.
00:13:47.000And then at the 11th hour, I had the location.
00:13:49.000We were all set to begin construction.
00:13:52.000And he just said, I've decided to go work with another restaurant group.
00:13:55.000And I was like overnight, just like left without a chef.
00:13:58.000And I only had one other name of another chef in LA, and it was Evan Funke.
00:14:03.000And a food writer just sent me an email because I was just out meeting people saying, hey, I'm looking for a chef that has a following, a super talented chef.
00:14:11.000And this one, Kevin West, shout out to Kevin West, sent me an email and said, Evan Funke is an amazingly talented chef and he's available.
00:14:21.000And so when this other chef bailed on me, and I was on vacation at that time, I was in Morocco of all places, and I asked for a week off to go off the grid for a week, and then the president of my company contacted me.
00:14:37.000She said, you've got to get on the phone.
00:14:45.000And I sent Evan, I felt that I had to send him a compelling email so that I could get his attention because I had no other, you know, options.
00:14:54.000And I said, you know, Evan here, you know, Kevin West says you're an amazingly talented chef.
00:14:58.000I have a location on Abikini, which is great.
00:17:08.000You know, I learned from Bourdain, from watching his show, No Reservations, the first show, I was like, oh, okay, I have a wrong idea of what food is.
00:17:20.000I had this idea that food just tastes good.
00:17:24.000But then watching his love of food and watching his deep respect for chefs and the preparation and all that's involved in making a dish, I was like, oh, it's art.
00:18:34.000And a lot of the digestibility of, in my opinion, people are going to freak out.
00:18:41.000But in my opinion, the amount of work that goes into denaturing pasta in order to get it flat via machine has a lot to do with its digestibility.
00:18:51.000Just like sourdough bread is more digestible because it's broken down in a different way.
00:18:56.000The handmade pasta is less manipulated than machine-made pasta, in my opinion.
00:19:02.000So also the types of wheat, the amount of wheat germ that's in it, the nutritional value, it all has to do with those elements within the flour.
00:19:13.000And to be honest, I've developed a gluten intolerance because I've been breathing raw flour for the past, you know, 12 years.
00:21:16.000And it's such a, when you have really good pasta, and then you have pasta that maybe you enjoyed before, you had the really good pasta, it's like having water in your ear.
00:22:34.000You know, I moved to Bologna in 2007, tail end in 2007. And started this journey with my maestra, Alessandra Spisni, of Lavecchia Scuola Bolognese.
00:22:44.000And she kind of opened up the door for me to start seeking out other pasta makers throughout Italy.
00:22:49.000And when I came back in 08, I ran a restaurant called Rustic Canyon for about four years and, you know, Not a lot of people were serving the style of pasta that I wanted to serve.
00:23:02.000So I started giving it away like a gateway drug.
00:23:04.000I would just send it to tables for free and they were like, what the fuck?
00:23:08.000And it just started gaining momentum and gaining momentum.
00:24:53.000And a lot of people, when we were opening, Evan did have his own restaurant, Bucato, before, which was also basically focused around pasta as well.
00:25:06.000But when we were going to open up this restaurant and we put in the middle of the restaurant the temperature-controlled pasta lab, which is taking up tables.
00:25:13.000So if you're a business person, a restaurateur, you say, how many tables could fit in there?
00:25:18.000How much is each table worth to your bottom line?
00:25:21.000You're using up that space to put in a pasta lab?
00:25:28.000Also, when you're thinking about training the people and how labor-intensive it is, People were saying, like, we're crazy doing this again.
00:25:37.000Yeah, they didn't think we could make money.
00:26:21.000Yeah, they can't just say, you know, there is a balance between people's health and the economy, and they can't just shut everything down and say, well, we're just going to print a bunch of money.
00:26:29.000We're all going to be paying for this in the end, right?
00:26:31.000Right now, it's been $2 trillion, you know, because of COVID. They have to get us back up and running and working.
00:26:39.000And I've said from the very beginning, get your young and your healthy back out and working.
00:26:43.000And if you're over the age of 65, or if you have underlying health conditions, then you should definitely stay at home.
00:26:48.000And you have to wait for either a treatment or the vaccine.
00:26:53.000But, you know, they have to open up the economy.
00:26:56.000And it's been ridiculous how it's been handled.
00:26:58.000Yeah, that's what should have been done.
00:26:59.000It should have been, they should have, I mean, instead of taking this blanket approach.
00:27:03.000But I think there was a lot of misconceptions.
00:27:04.000They thought it was going to be something different than it was.
00:28:09.000Or David Chang closing two restaurants, one in New York City, one in D.C., and then he's moving another restaurant, consolidating his company, essentially.
00:28:18.000So when you see these iconic restaurateurs that are struggling to make it to the other side, it's, like, extremely sobering.
00:28:25.000And, you know, some experts will say they think 50% of restaurants will not make it to the other side.
00:28:30.000I don't agree, but I think 25% won't make it.
00:28:33.000And even in L.A., one of my last dinners was at Bon Temps in downtown California.
00:28:39.000L.A., Lincoln Carson, an amazing chef.
00:28:42.000I was blown away by the restaurant, and he's closed permanently.
00:28:46.000All that time to open, all that capital to open.
00:28:49.000You train whatever you're training, 50, 75 people to open, and he's closed permanently.
00:28:55.000Or Auburn, another restaurant that was getting great accolades, closed also permanently.
00:29:02.000They just got a finalist in the global industry.
00:29:06.000So they're getting these awards and they're closed permanently.
00:29:11.000And, you know, so, you know, it's really survival of the fittest right now.
00:29:14.000So new restaurants, because it's so hard, this business, you're very vulnerable when you're a new restaurant and you just have debt.
00:29:21.000You're just looking at a bunch of debt and then you're closed permanently.
00:29:24.000You know, you're going to you're not going to make it to the other side.
00:29:27.000And if a business was not making that much money, so when you see a restaurant in New York City like Lucky Strike that's been there for 31 years close permanently because it just wasn't doing that well.
00:29:37.000So all the businesses that were just kind of teetering on not doing very well, they're going to close.
00:30:36.000But 20 years ago in the US, most restaurants would make 20-25%, you know, the net profit margin, but it's gone down, it's gone down, and really, the business is broken.
00:31:26.000Well, 11 million of us and then you think, you know, and when you look at the supply chain, so we, the restaurant, restaurants employ 11 million people in the United States, but then when you add in the supply chain of the farmers and the winemakers and the linen cleaners and,
00:31:42.000you know, we employ 20 million people and we're the second largest employer in the United States next to the Pentagon.
00:31:50.000So, you know, right now we have to think.
00:32:51.000A lot of people are hurting right now.
00:32:53.000So it's hard to say, you know, romanticize restaurants right now.
00:32:57.000Come back and support your local restaurants when a lot of people are hurting.
00:32:59.000But I think if we think about the economic domino effect right now of essentially 20 million people, we need help to stay in business and not close down permanently.
00:33:10.000I think the economic effect right now will be staggering.
00:33:16.000Yeah, no, it's something to consider when you think about what you said about the people that clean the linen, the people that make the wine, all the various people that rely on restaurants.
00:33:39.000Do you see like the farmers obviously dumping, you know, tons of food and 36 million gallons of milk and nobody knew that restaurants are the number one purchasers from farmers, that and institutions, schools, institutions and restaurants.
00:33:55.000And they process the food in a different way for restaurants than they do.
00:34:34.000And if I knew how much fucking math that I'd be doing right now, I'm 40 years old, if I knew when I was like a kid, I would have studied the fuck out of math.
00:35:47.000It's a Jamaican saying, the fish rots from the head down.
00:35:50.000So, Janet, we were talking on the phone about what it's like for you to have all these restaurants under construction, and you were this unstoppable machine.
00:36:59.000It's a nice little neighborhood in Toronto and I wanted to buy this real estate, so I saved my money to buy the real estate.
00:37:04.000So I was very cautious of growing the company and building a foundation.
00:37:10.000And then I bought one piece of real estate, then I bought another building, and then I put another restaurant twice as big as my first restaurant.
00:37:17.000And then I bought another building, so I've been buying these buildings and putting restaurants inside the buildings.
00:37:21.000Until I felt that my foundation was so strong that nothing could happen to me.
00:37:26.000So I could only put through the lens back then, before the pandemic, to say, in an economic upturn, people will eat pizza.
00:37:35.000On an economic downturn, people will eat pizza.
00:37:42.000And then we opened up Felix, and Felix has gotten, you know, incredible accolades, you know, in the press, and rightfully so, and Evans Cooking is off the charts.
00:37:50.000And I thought, you know, we're ready to really grow.
00:37:56.000And I built a company where, you know, I have a head office, it's a proper company, and I have an incredible team of people, and I felt very ready and very stable and with an incredibly It's a strong foundation that I said, we're ready to do this.
00:38:12.000And so 2020 was my big year to open five restaurants in one year.
00:38:19.000So I just before the pandemic flew to Toronto to open a 9,000 square foot restaurant to immediately close it.
00:38:29.000And that cost $9 million to open this 9,000 square foot restaurant that opened one day, trained 100 people for two months And then immediately shut that down.
00:39:06.000What I do is I buy buildings and then I get mortgages on the buildings.
00:39:10.000Then I use all the cash that I have anywhere that I can find it to open restaurants.
00:39:15.000So I might have a temporary, you know, lack of cash, but then, you know, backed by a very strong revenue.
00:39:22.000So I'm funding all the construction sites by all these restaurants that have extremely strong streams of revenue.
00:39:30.000So once again, I didn't feel like I was taking a big risk.
00:39:34.000Opening five restaurants in 2020. So I swear to you that the day the pandemic happened, I had to shut down.
00:39:41.000It was literally the day before I loaned out, I wrote a massive check for one construction site, like all of my money in my bank account, you know, out to one construction site, then we shut everything down.
00:39:53.000And it was like I was kicked in the teeth, like I was brought to my knees.
00:39:57.000And I had never felt stressed like that because of how conservative I am and how fiscally responsible that I've always been and feeling that I was untouchable.
00:40:06.000I just thought, you know, nothing could ever happen to me in this, you know, I could never risk anything.
00:40:11.000But I woke up one day when I had to close everything down.
00:40:13.000And first of all, the feeling of laying off 700 people when you know the majority of your staff live paycheck to paycheck was absolutely heartbreaking.
00:40:21.000And that I ran the real risk of losing everything, not only all the restaurants, but all the buildings, because the bank, you know, owns my buildings.
00:41:03.000We have to live with this for the next two years.
00:41:06.000And I think that we just have to live in a safe way.
00:41:09.000And yeah, wear the masks out, and we're going to go to restaurants, and people are going to be wearing gloves and masks, and maybe take your temperature, and we're going to sit You know, be seated six feet apart.
00:41:19.000I think this is, we're going to just find a safe way to live.
00:41:22.000But of course, there's going to be a second wave and a third wave.
00:41:25.000It's going to keep going until, but also when a vaccine comes, you have to inoculate, you know, between 60 and 80% of the world.
00:42:01.000Well, you know, what's interesting is what we were talking about before the podcast, when you guys were getting tested for the COVID, we were talking about Italy.
00:42:23.000Well, sometimes when you read things and you don't say it out loud, and all of a sudden you say it out loud for the first time, you're like, I don't know how to say that word.
00:42:28.000Yeah, there's a lot of words like that that I never use.
00:42:30.000But yeah, in San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, you know, they're saying that the virus no longer exists in Italy.
00:44:40.000Well, the real fear is that it's the police.
00:44:42.000People are worried that the police are doing it, encouraging people to throw rocks.
00:44:46.000So if those people throw rocks, then the police can come in and break up what would have been a peaceful protest.
00:44:51.000That's through the actions of agent provocateurs or just giving people rocks and encouraging them, you know, just by virtue of the fact the rocks are there.
00:45:01.000There was another thing that we talked about the other day.
00:45:04.000There was stacks of bricks in front of this synagogue, and we thought those stacks of bricks were also the same thing, sort of left there because people were protesting.
00:46:37.000There needs to be some serious refocusing of what it takes to be a police officer and what police officers can and can't do and what the punishment is and who's responsible.
00:46:49.000And then if you're a cop and you see someone do something horrible that's also a cop, you gotta step up.
00:47:16.000I'm also extremely hopeful even if I feel like I've been brought to my knees and I'm seeing other small businesses and friends of mine getting looted right now and I'm like, It's also senseless, and I feel for Black Lives Matter right now is like the most important thing.
00:47:34.000I didn't think anything could knock off the pandemic, but you know, it has.
00:47:37.000We're all thinking about this, but I do feel that it's been an awakening.
00:47:40.000And I think that it's in our face like it's never been before.
00:47:43.000And I think what you were saying, to witness a man essentially be tortured, It's something we can't unsee.
00:47:52.000And what you were also saying is for this one man to reverberate all over the world, really, to see the protests all over the world is really something.
00:48:02.000And I think we have to be super uncomfortable for change.
00:48:06.000And I think that cop has been doing that shit since the beginning.
00:48:09.000He's been charged with multiple times, multiple complaints since like 2006. And how crazy is it that one kid, a 17-year-old girl, films this, puts it out on the internet, and it changes the world.
00:48:26.000Imagine if he had any inkling that leaning on that man's neck with his knee for eight and a half minutes or more even, almost nine minutes, That that was literally going to change the world.
00:50:10.000You just look at all the systems and it's all broken.
00:50:13.000Like when we look at the restaurant business, it's actually a broken business.
00:50:16.000Our society is broken in that we pay teachers hardly anything for doing such an important job and police officers and people who are working on the front lines.
00:50:26.000And you're mentioning that the kid that's stalking the shelves and he's putting himself in harm's way making minimum wage.
00:51:06.000But they don't, again, I'll say they still don't know enough about this virus, and every day you wake up and you're like, oh, you're blood type, so I have blood type A, and that supposedly you'll have a rough time.
00:51:18.000You have a higher chance of having a rough time needing oxygen.
00:51:21.000If you have blood type A, we don't know enough.
00:51:26.000That's been like the most frustrating and for me at least the most frustrating and the most depressing thing is the literal like hour to hour changes of everything.
00:51:37.000And making long term decisions is literally impossible.
00:51:40.000And in this business, you have to make long term decisions.
00:51:50.000Is that, you know, just the other day, there was a curfew.
00:51:53.000It was at 6. I was in the grocery store.
00:51:55.000It was curfews at 6. And then all of a sudden, oh, we changed it to 5. And then all of a sudden, everybody in the grocery store was working there.
00:52:02.000It was like, fuck, we have to close in 30 minutes.
00:52:04.000And they're like, letting everybody who's in line outside in.
00:52:19.000So you have to do all these calculations when you're figuring out how many meals you're going to serve, how much food you're going to order, and you have to kind of guess.
00:52:31.000Do you guess how many people are going to order fish, how many people are going to order steak?
00:52:35.000You have pars, obviously, but you get into this rhythm.
00:52:41.000And Felix, I'm a student of consistency.
00:53:18.000A lot of what hospitality professionals are really missing is that connection to the people.
00:53:24.000Because that's the reason why we do this shit, is to see you, Joe Rogan, eat the steak at table 33 and say, fuck, that was the fucking best steak I ever had in my fucking life.
00:56:32.000If that's what they want out of the experience...
00:56:34.000Listen, sometimes people just want to yell at you, and that's what they want out of the experience at the restaurant, so you've got to give it to them.
00:57:22.000But still in hospitality, I mean, you know, we train our team to just, like, not make anything about you.
00:57:29.000And, you know, you just look at someone and say, maybe their mother died today.
00:57:33.000And if you just – it's so easy to diffuse, and it's really a lot of psychology being applied to To people where, you know, people need to be heard and understood.
00:57:43.000And so you just let people vent and, you know, there's ways to kind of mimic people's, you know, bodily movements and stuff to show that you've heard them.
00:57:54.000And it's just really powerful to diffuse that.
00:57:57.000And so in hospitality, you can't take anything personally.
00:58:23.000When you, like, I don't have kids, but so these restaurants, and I feel like I do have a lot of kids that work for me, but my restaurants feel like my babies.
00:58:32.000And then in the early days, I would read reviews, and it would be like somebody saying, your baby's ugly, so ugly!
01:00:33.000But I think there's been a lot of focus on food over the last, you know, maybe call it 10 years where you have the chef's table and people really appreciating the art of cooking.
01:00:43.000When I started cooking, that shit was a blue-collar job, man.
01:00:46.000There were very, very few celebrity chefs.
01:00:49.000There was like Emeril and Mario when I started cooking.
01:00:54.000Overnight, it became like the hot shit to do.
01:00:57.000And all these culinary schools start opening and just meat grinder, just churning out these ill-prepared, entitled kids.
01:01:07.000And they sell them a bill of goods when they go to culinary school.
01:01:11.000You graduate from here, you're going to be a chef.
01:01:13.000What I didn't know, as soon as I got to culinary school, I was making $7 a fucking hour.
01:01:18.000$7 an hour peeling fucking carrots and potatoes and picking parsley and shit.
01:01:24.000And like you've really got to love it to get to that point.
01:01:29.000You've got to do it for 10 years to get good at it and then you've got to do it another 10 years to start making money from it.
01:01:36.000And a lot of the younger kids, they're just not willing to pay the fucking cost and they want to skip rungs in the ladder and – That's the case with every art form.
01:01:47.000We find that with comedy, with stand-up comedy.
01:01:49.000There's a lot of kids that they want to do stand-up and they develop a YouTube channel and then they get a following for making funny YouTube videos and then they think they're a stand-up comic and you're like, hold the fuck on.
01:01:59.000They're like, where's my Netflix special?
01:02:18.000There's also a thing, I think, in being a chef, what you were talking about, making $7 an hour, peeling onions and stuff, that's real similar to comedy in that you've got to do the road.
01:03:08.000But I really take my inspiration from tradition and try to pay homage to those culinary traditions in Italy.
01:03:16.000And I try to put as a minimal amount of ego and a minimal amount of manipulation towards the traditional product.
01:03:25.000And all I want to do is present whatever it is, whether it's cacio e pepe or tagliatella bolognese, the truest form that you can possibly get in the US, that's what I want to put forth.
01:03:37.000And if you take my Bolognese, The inspiration from that...
01:04:33.000It doesn't read the same way and that's really where the difference between good restaurants, bad restaurants and great restaurants really lives.
01:05:09.000And there's a lot of shit wine out there, but there's a lot of...
01:05:12.000Exceptional wine that is made by very small family farms, sorry, vintners, that the allocation is so small that they barely have enough to send to the U.S. So does the wine director look at your menu and then say,
01:05:56.000If it's a new dish or a new wine or it's the same menu in an old wine, a different vintage, a different area of the region where the wine is grown, there's so many different elements to choosing wine.
01:06:48.000Your bread and butter is really your returning customers in any restaurant.
01:06:53.000You're going to have an element of people that come in because they're traveling from other parts of the world and they want to check out your restaurant.
01:07:00.000But imagine right now where traveling is really hit.
01:07:03.000So if you don't have your local customer base built up, then you're in trouble.
01:07:07.000Now for someone like you that has so many restaurants and you have so many plates spinning, how do you not go crazy?
01:07:49.000And then I gave myself, I just gave myself a few days to be that way and have, you know, that reaction.
01:07:55.000And, you know, I'm an entrepreneur and I'm gritty and I just gave myself essentially a few days and then I picked myself up and I said, well, what are we going to do?
01:08:05.000Everybody in my industry, the industry has been decimated.
01:08:08.000And to know that we're in this together and to look at solutions where you have to adapt and innovate and renegotiate.
01:08:16.000So, you know, how are we going to create these other new revenue streams?
01:08:20.000And so I got back into working mode, working around the clock with my team.
01:08:23.000And a lot of my restaurants in Toronto, you can buy all of your groceries and essentials and just looking for other revenue streams to survive.
01:08:30.000Have any of them opened up in Toronto yet?
01:08:32.000Not for a sit-down and we're behind the US. Really?
01:09:54.000Do you just continue ahead once you get the green light and just say, let's make it happen?
01:09:59.000Well, each project, again, is very different, and I have different amounts of money invested in each project.
01:10:04.000So what we're doing is negotiating around the clock with, for example, if we have landlords in certain places, we're renegotiating the leases right now, and we're asking to put it on pause, put the entire project on pause until we come out of this, and I can start building the company again and have some revenue to put back into the projects.
01:10:23.000Some landlords have been unwilling in the beginning, but now they're more willing as they realize who can take my place.
01:11:58.000So, I don't have the answers right now, but I'm willing to walk away if I can't, you know, negotiate to be something that I can actually, you know, survive in the end, and not just pour more money into something that I'll just lose my shirt.
01:12:09.000I want to pause on the construction sites.
01:12:12.000It seems like there's going to be a long period of time before anybody considers opening up a new restaurant after this.
01:12:40.000And it's the unfortunate fact that from extraordinary These extraordinary circumstances, there's going to be a lot of leases that are available and there are a lot of people who want to open restaurants because it's the hot thing to do.
01:12:59.000I just think that there's going to be a lot of young people coming now because commercial real estate is going to be very affordable and they can come in.
01:13:06.000So I think a little bit there's going to be a changing of the guard.
01:13:09.000Well, restaurants in LA have very unique personalities, too.
01:13:14.000There's, like, celebrity spots, which I'm always, like, super wary of.
01:13:18.000And they always seem really gross, you know?
01:13:21.000But, like, I've eaten at Catch before, and there's, like, paparazzi waiting for you as you're walking in.
01:13:50.000And I think that's a lot of the reason why celebrities are attracted to Felix is that I'm just here to feed you and make sure you have a good time.
01:14:01.000And then if you need anything further on top of that, we're willing to supply that, whatever it is.
01:14:07.000And on top of that, the food's pretty good.
01:15:13.000And they pulled the Michelin Guide out of LA. The Michelin Guide existed here and then they pulled it out and they just brought it back last year.
01:18:07.000And they had an exceptional chance to really create some support for the list in Los Angeles, and they really created animosity throughout the city.
01:18:21.000Is there any other established methods of judging restaurants?
01:21:28.000I mean, honestly, I try not to create.
01:21:32.000Obviously, I'm putting my own, not a spin, but my own fingerprint on it.
01:21:37.000But I'm really just drawing from thousands of years of tradition and just trying not to fuck it up and pay homage to the people who created it.
01:21:46.000And anything on the Felix menu, I've learned from someone in Italy.
01:21:54.000Like I don't make pasta shapes that I saw on YouTube because for me that's cheap.
01:22:01.000There's more value to me to learn it from a grandmother in Italy in their region, in their house and pass that knowledge on to me so that I can authentically present it in the best way possible.
01:22:16.000So when you were learning and you were in Italy doing this, did you have this understanding that all this would eventually play out like that and that you would become a great chef and that this is the idea that you're putting in the work?
01:22:29.000Or were you just enamored by the passion of making that food?
01:22:34.000I absolutely fell in love with the Italian approach to cooking, the Italian approach to living, their reverence for land and tradition.
01:22:47.000And when I got – I classically trained French, French food.
01:23:53.000I just left it all behind, all those manipulative techniques that are very, very popular in a lot of the world, a lot of the restaurants in the world.
01:24:19.000El Bui's Fran, Adria's now closed restaurant and essentially the godfather of molecular gastronomy.
01:24:27.000And, you know, how many times can you go there and have the experience and say, fuck, I want to go back to that place because this was so good.
01:25:10.000So my goal is like if you have the cacio e pepe at Felix and you've been to Rome and eaten cacio e pepe, I want you to be like, fuck, this is better than Rome.
01:25:22.000Or remember that time we were in Rome, we had cacio e pepe.
01:25:25.000This is better or this is worse or whatever.
01:27:17.000I wish there was more emphasis by the government put on having you take strategies to strengthen your immune system and explain to people how important it is.
01:27:48.000Well, I don't know if your immune system gets weakened because of non-contact or it gets strengthened because of contact.
01:27:55.000If it really does get weakened because of non-contact, you're dealing with a bunch of people with severely compromised immune systems going out marching together, stacking on top of each other.
01:28:06.000It's really kind of a crazy experiment to see where COVID is right now because of these marches.
01:30:19.000The whole bit is basically heat up the sauce.
01:30:22.000Boil the water, add this amount of salt, boil it for three minutes, add it to the sauce, boom, add the cheese, you're good to go.
01:30:29.000It's been successful and I think a lot of restaurants took notes from us and started doing the same thing because it's really kept us alive and obviously people fucking love pizza.
01:30:44.000And I think, you know, one upside to this is we weren't necessarily known for how good the pizza is at Felix, but now people fucking know how good the fucking pizza is at Felix.
01:30:54.000So you guys make good everything, man.
01:30:56.000But, like, so if someone orders a steak, are you cooking steak?
01:31:59.000Because that's all you got in restaurants, high heat.
01:32:01.000Low and slow is typically for braising, but if you're dealing with dry heat, it should be violent, it should be quick, and then let it rest.
01:33:57.000You learn the fundamentals and then throughout your career, you upgrade those fundamentals with new and relevant techniques or laws or whatever.
01:34:43.000We start with almond and then we add oak and then we add almond and then we add oak and it's just kind of fire maintenance is 90% of wood fire cooking.
01:34:52.000So it's just about how hot it burns and the distance, how high the coals are.
01:34:56.000And how deep the coal bed is and how evenly dispersed the heat is.
01:35:00.000We'll have a cool side and a hot side and then a fire side all within like a, you know...
01:36:29.000A lot of, like, Mastro's and old-school steakhouses have them because it cooks with crazy intense heat from top and bottom at the same time.
01:38:15.000And do you talk to them in advance and they say, okay, we've got great this?
01:38:18.000We talk about weather, we talk about soil content, we talk about water content, we talk about if it's going to rain, what's coming up, what do you have in the ground, what are you planning for three months from now?
01:38:28.000I've smuggled seeds back from Italy so that they can plant stuff.
01:40:40.000And if you're finishing cattle on corn or feeding it 100% corn, it's going to taste completely different.
01:40:46.000The marbling is going to be completely different.
01:40:48.000The steaks I brought you today are 80-20.
01:40:50.000So 80% of the steers' life is grass and then they're finished on corn because America is literally in love with corn-fed flavor and that mouthfeel from the fat.
01:41:58.000So if I was to eat you, Joe Rogan, right?
01:42:01.000If I was to break you down like an animal, I would choose the working muscles and then braise them because they're stronger versus your filet mignon.
01:42:10.000I don't even know what the fuck that would be on a human.
01:42:12.000But like it would taste different and it would have a different texture.
01:42:47.000If you apply certain herbs and certain, I wouldn't call them spices, but apply certain ingredients to it, it takes the gaminess all the way up.
01:42:54.000So for me, if I cook wild boar, I think Tuscany.
01:44:06.000And it goes back to knowing your clientele.
01:44:09.000Just because I want to put some ego into the menu doesn't mean that...
01:44:15.000Right, you don't want anything that's a hard sell.
01:44:18.000You want anything that's something that's going to be just...
01:44:19.000I want people to gravitate towards it.
01:44:23.000Well, it's also, the menu at Felix, the entrees, the secondi, it's a very small section because our kitchen is very small, so there's only going to be usually about two proteins on the menu, so you don't want to, if you have a much larger menu, You can be a little bit more creative or put on those cuts that aren't as popular.
01:44:43.000But when your menu's that short, you have to look at sales.
01:44:47.000And also meat of any kind, whether that's fish or whatever, is extremely expensive.
01:44:52.000And going back to the conversation of charging an accurate amount of money for a dish, it's hard.
01:46:32.000And it's one of the things that I worried most about this pandemic, other than the lives, was businesses that I enjoy and then restaurants specifically.
01:46:43.000Because it's such a great way to spend time with someone.
01:46:46.000I mean, it's one of the great pleasures of life to be able to go to a place and have a fantastic chef sit you down and cook amazing food and you enjoy it.
01:47:03.000Well, you know, I think over the last few years, restaurants in general have really, in North America, I will say, have really reached a pinnacle of cultural relevance right now.
01:49:03.000I know you are, and we appreciate you, and I know that you've mentioned Felix a couple of times on the podcast.
01:49:09.000It's really appreciated, and we all need help.
01:49:12.000Restaurants, in general, all need help right now.
01:49:16.000I just love when someone does anything with the kind of passion that you guys display at your restaurant.
01:49:21.000Whatever it is, whether you're making music or you're writing books or you're making food, I just love when someone does something like that because it makes me excited about all the things that I do.
01:49:32.000I think we, you know, as human beings, as we interact with each other and we explore each other's lives and what other people do for a living, what their passions are, you get energized by that.
01:49:44.000You get energized by other people's work.