The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1202 - Fred Morin & David McMillan

00:00:07.000 Good.

00:00:08.000 Here we go.

00:00:10.000 Three, two, live?

00:00:12.000 Boom.

00:00:12.000 We're live.

00:00:12.000 Gentlemen.

00:00:13.000 David.

00:00:14.000 Fred.

00:00:15.000 Hey.

00:00:16.000 Good to be here.

00:00:16.000 Good to see you guys.

00:00:17.000 What's happening?

00:00:19.000 Not much.

00:00:19.000 We're in sunny California.

00:00:20.000 Yeah, it's too close to the sun.

00:00:23.000 A little bit.

00:00:24.000 Been barbecued over the last week and a half.

00:00:26.000 I've been hiding in a hotel for six days.

00:00:28.000 How proper that we're here to talk about surviving the apocalypse.

00:00:32.000 Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

00:00:33.000 Your book is Joe Beef Surviving the Apocalypse.

00:00:37.000 A cookbook for Surviving the Apocalypse?

00:00:39.000 What's the purpose of the title?

00:00:42.000 Just a goof?

00:00:43.000 We haven't written a book in years.

00:00:45.000 I don't think we really wanted to write a second book.

00:00:48.000 When we started getting a bit of pressure to write a second one, we kind of...

00:00:53.000 You know, laid down the gauntlet to the editors and said, we're going to write what we want.

00:00:57.000 Are you in or are you out?

00:00:58.000 And they said, well, you know, show us a little bit of the framework of what this is going to be.

00:01:02.000 I said, I want to talk, you know, cooking doesn't define me or Fred.

00:01:05.000 It's not all that we do.

00:01:07.000 Like, you know, you see some people, they seem to, like, eat, live, and breathe cooking.

00:01:13.000 I said, no, I'm into the outdoors.

00:01:14.000 I'm into mushroom picking.

00:01:15.000 I'm into fermentation of berries.

00:01:18.000 I'm into canoeing.

00:01:20.000 I know all about canoes.

00:01:21.000 I love swimming in lakes.

00:01:23.000 I want to talk about multiple subjects.

00:01:25.000 I want to talk about the native Mohawks of Quebec.

00:01:28.000 So I said, let us write a book.

00:01:31.000 About the multiple subjects of which we're into, you know?

00:01:36.000 Hey Joe, if we're not cooking, we're building first aid kits and like survival kits for real.

00:01:42.000 Really?

00:01:43.000 Yeah, David goes to like LL Bean.

00:01:45.000 He has a lifetime membership there.

00:01:48.000 I have an off-grid cabin up north, like north of Montreal, about an hour and a half.

00:01:52.000 You can only get there by boat.

00:01:55.000 It's eight kilometers from the landing.

00:01:57.000 You know, 2,000 watts of solar power.

00:02:00.000 Completely off-grid.

00:02:01.000 You can barely walk in because of the jagged cliffs all around it.

00:02:05.000 Behind me is an old-growth forest that's protected federally.

00:02:08.000 And I have a suture kit and saline in my car.

00:02:12.000 Always?

00:02:12.000 Oh, dude, his car's outfitted.

00:02:14.000 Like, he's got shovels on the roof and propane tanks on the roof.

00:02:17.000 Two years ago, I drove to Alaska, down south, Arizona, back home.

00:02:21.000 Wow.

00:02:22.000 20,000 miles.

00:02:25.000 I grew up in Boston, and I did stand-up in Montreal for the first time, I think, in like 1991 or something like that.

00:02:31.000 And I remember thinking Boston was cold until I went to Montreal, and I went, oh, this is a different thing.

00:02:38.000 We had it last year, too.

00:02:40.000 We had a polar vortex last year come roaring through.

00:02:42.000 I think all the pipes blew in all the restaurants.

00:02:46.000 I'm sure.

00:02:47.000 Like, January 2nd, you know?

00:02:49.000 But what I was going to say is, do you think that living in such an extreme environment, a beautiful city, amazing city, but it's an incredibly harsh environment in the winter, do you think that makes you more cognizant about the need for survival?

00:03:04.000 It's always.

00:03:04.000 It's always in the back of my head.

00:03:20.000 Our city, over the last couple of years, have been talking about a complete ban of fireplaces and wood-burning stoves inside of homes, condominiums and houses.

00:03:32.000 The laws governing wood-burning in the city of Montreal are stricter than the ones in California.

00:03:40.000 And we die, man.

00:03:42.000 If it's cold, we die.

00:03:43.000 I go, this is irresponsible, you know, by the government to do this.

00:03:47.000 I said, okay, make sure we don't use them, but let's all have them just in case.

00:03:51.000 Same goes for...

00:03:52.000 Because if the grid goes down...

00:03:54.000 What are they worried about it for?

00:03:55.000 Are they worried about the...

00:03:56.000 Particle emission.

00:03:58.000 Particulates?

00:03:58.000 Yeah.

00:03:59.000 That's correct.

00:04:00.000 Man, but it smells good.

00:04:02.000 Like a nice wood-burning stove smells amazing.

00:04:04.000 Who doesn't like bagels?

00:04:05.000 Yeah, this affects everybody.

00:04:07.000 This affects restaurants and grilling food.

00:04:09.000 This affects barbecue.

00:04:11.000 This affects traditional bagel stores.

00:04:13.000 Traditional bagel stores cooked with wood?

00:04:15.000 Is that why you said that?

00:04:15.000 Yeah, of course.

00:04:16.000 Really?

00:04:17.000 Of course.

00:04:17.000 You go into my land, St. Vieter bagel, Fairmount bagel, all the other ones, you smell it.

00:04:22.000 It's a massive part of our culture as well.

00:04:24.000 You have to understand that food-wise, the province of Quebec, the city of Quebec City and Montreal, This is the first place that's populated in North America.

00:04:32.000 The Europeans, to get to anywhere in North America, came through Quebec first, New York afterwards. 0.89

00:04:40.000 The food culture in Quebec is over 400 years old.

00:04:43.000 You can't say that about...

00:04:44.000 Over 1,000 years old.

00:04:47.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:04:48.000 And wood is detrimental to that.

00:04:51.000 If it wasn't for burning wood...

00:04:53.000 I'm not saying we should do it for historical purpose, but man, if we run out of gas, there's still wood.

00:05:00.000 For safety's sake.

00:05:00.000 And then they're going to come and give you a ticket, you know, two grand, because you're having a fire?

00:05:04.000 A few years ago, like about a decade ago, we had this crazy ice storm in Quebec.

00:05:09.000 You know, the perfect storm of rain and then cold and then rain and then cold.

00:05:14.000 All the power lines went out.

00:05:15.000 All the pylons crashed.

00:05:17.000 Yeah, everything got thick with ice, right?

00:05:19.000 Yeah, for two weeks.

00:05:20.000 Yeah, two weeks.

00:05:20.000 There's a baby boom right after that because people stayed home, no television and no heat and procreated.

00:05:26.000 Then there was a true baby boom nine months later.

00:05:30.000 There was a ton of new kids born.

00:05:32.000 That's hilarious.

00:05:33.000 But you know the deep freeze, it also like cleans the city in the winter. 0.99

00:05:38.000 So from your perspective, if the shit hits the fan, they come and see us. 0.99

00:05:43.000 Because it's a pretty good city to survive anything, you know? 0.99

00:05:47.000 It's a pretty neat place because the winter just like sanitizes everything.

00:05:51.000 You start again every year, you know?

00:05:53.000 Yeah, as opposed to LA where you never really get that.

00:05:57.000 You can't get the full clean down.

00:05:58.000 Never.

00:05:58.000 It's the long haul.

00:06:00.000 Yeah, you do like a whore's bath. 1.00

00:06:03.000 You know, you just get it like you're in a restroom somewhere with paper towels that you wet down and sort of get your underarms or whatever. 1.00

00:06:10.000 That's what LA is.

00:06:11.000 The wet towelettes.

00:06:13.000 Yes, yes.

00:06:14.000 So you just wanted to write a book that kind of covers all of your interests, not just with food, but...

00:06:21.000 One of the things that I really enjoyed about, there was an episode that you guys did of Anthony Bourdain's show where you were ice fishing and you had one of those ice fishing huts and you guys cooked.

00:06:33.000 Tony told you it's notorious in the show that they never caught fish and whenever he had a gun he never hit anything.

00:06:41.000 So we knew that and we knew that there was not a pike and there was not a walleye that was going to bite. 0.99

00:06:46.000 So we're like, okay, option A, we sit there and we like take some fake fish and we fry it up in cornflakes and shortening in a hollow cabin.

00:06:55.000 Or we just went like Joe Beef crazy and we brought all the old cookbooks we had, all the spirits, like Cuban cigars, all the copperware, all the stuff.

00:07:03.000 And we made the menu from an old Leonet restaurant, Paul Bucuz, that he did a show at after.

00:07:08.000 And he knew nothing about that day.

00:07:10.000 And we just went from fishing after he asked us about like strippers in Quebec and like just a few funny banter.

00:07:18.000 And we just went in.

00:07:19.000 It was like magical.

00:07:20.000 It was seriously a tenth of the size of this room here.

00:07:24.000 Yeah, it was a tiny, tiny little shack.

00:07:26.000 And he tapped out that day.

00:07:27.000 Yeah?

00:07:28.000 Yeah, he was having a good time.

00:07:29.000 And we brought some fine wines and fine spirits and some really rare oddities, some old chartreuse and stuff like that that Fred had lying around.

00:07:40.000 And Tony was funny.

00:07:42.000 There you guys are.

00:07:42.000 It's up on the screen right there.

00:07:43.000 He let it go a bit.

00:07:45.000 He calmed down and enjoyed us and let us do our thing.

00:07:48.000 I'm a bit fatter, eh?

00:07:50.000 Oh, God.

00:07:50.000 Yeah.

00:07:53.000 That was in the wine drinking days too, right?

00:07:55.000 Yeah, correct.

00:07:56.000 Look at that.

00:07:57.000 God, that looks good.

00:07:58.000 Is that foie gras and some sort of mashed potatoes or something?

00:08:00.000 Yeah, that's a wild rabbit.

00:08:02.000 It's a French recipe.

00:08:03.000 It's called hair a la royale, where you cook the hair for a long time.

00:08:08.000 And hair?

00:08:11.000 And you serve it with truffles and you keep the blood.

00:08:14.000 This hair is snared, so it's still full of blood.

00:08:17.000 And you keep the blood and at the end, you thicken the sauce with the blood.

00:08:21.000 It's very good.

00:08:22.000 And I bet you, you know, it's funny.

00:08:23.000 I bet you it fits all the principles of nutrition now, you know?

00:08:27.000 It's like blood and all the organ meats and all that.

00:08:30.000 Same with cheese.

00:08:31.000 Look, this is like pure probiotics right there.

00:08:34.000 Isn't that interesting, right?

00:08:36.000 That no one thought of that until recently, that that was what it was.

00:08:39.000 People just thought of it as cheese.

00:08:40.000 And now people think of it as there's live cultures on it and organ meat is much healthier for you.

00:08:47.000 And people are so much more aware of that.

00:08:48.000 And look at the cheese thing, too.

00:08:50.000 It's like Now, a lot of the probiotic makers are doing lipo deliveries.

00:08:56.000 They coat it in fat so it resists the stomach acid, right?

00:08:59.000 But that's fat.

00:09:01.000 Probiotic from cheese is covered in fat.

00:09:03.000 You eat it after your dinner, it lives through you.

00:09:05.000 In a perfect world, it comes from right around your house, right?

00:09:10.000 So you eat a cheese and the probiotics are the same one that you're going to encounter later, so you kind of get immunized in a way.

00:09:16.000 Yeah.

00:09:17.000 That's the benefit.

00:09:18.000 That's what true local is.

00:09:20.000 Right, right, yeah.

00:09:22.000 There's a benefit to eating cheese after a meal?

00:09:24.000 Yeah, sure.

00:09:25.000 When it's a very pungent, advanced, alive, raw cheese, it'll be seen ultimately as a non-alcoholic digestif.

00:09:33.000 What is a digestif?

00:09:34.000 To help stimulate digestion.

00:09:37.000 Ah, no kidding.

00:09:39.000 Correct.

00:09:39.000 So it's almost like an enzyme.

00:09:40.000 Yeah, like a probiotic.

00:09:41.000 Wow.

00:09:42.000 But mostly, now they're figuring this out, that The problem of the low-fat diet and the, you know, like brown rice and chicken breast, you know, the bodybuilder diet, nothing triggers your fullness.

00:09:55.000 Because they realize that fat actually makes you full quite fast, right?

00:10:00.000 So if you eat a bit of cheese, you're done.

00:10:02.000 You tap out after.

00:10:03.000 You don't eat like a full plate of cheese or layer it on a hamburger, but just a little bit of cheese after just cuts you off and then you have spirits and cigars are not that healthy, but...

00:10:14.000 Yeah, I've been talking about that with a lot of nutrition experts where they say that your body, when it eats a lot of carbohydrates, you can consume carbohydrates far past what you actually need, whereas if you're just eating a lot of fat and protein, your body tends to regulate itself much better.

00:10:28.000 Satiate, yeah.

00:10:28.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:10:29.000 Now, you guys, how long have you been in Montreal?

00:10:32.000 And I have to tell you, and I've said it before...

00:10:35.000 If I had to say my all-time favorite restaurant, I think Joe Beef's my all-time favorite restaurant.

00:10:40.000 I don't like to say my all-time number, because there's a lot of great restaurants in this world, but damn, if I had to choose one, I think I might choose you guys.

00:10:47.000 No, you're very kind, but we have to take you out to other places to change your mind.

00:10:51.000 No, I don't think you're gonna, man.

00:10:52.000 You guys are the first.

00:10:54.000 If you're a horse lover, turn your head. 0.92

00:10:56.000 Plug your ears. 0.55

00:10:56.000 You guys are the first people that ever served me horse. 0.55

00:10:59.000 And I was like, what?

00:11:00.000 You brought over a horse tenderloin. 1.00

00:11:04.000 And I was like, what the fuck? 1.00

00:11:06.000 You guys are eating horse up here? 1.00

00:11:07.000 And horse tartare.

00:11:09.000 But it's a stigma.

00:11:10.000 It's a cow, an elk, a bison, a deer, a horse.

00:11:14.000 It's a four-legged animal.

00:11:15.000 And what if I put...

00:11:17.000 If I put a bison tenderloin and serve you a beef tenderloin and a cow tenderloin and a deer tenderloin, at the end of the day, it just has a couple of degrees of separation from the other.

00:11:28.000 It's all flesh, really.

00:11:37.000 We're good to go.

00:12:00.000 Like, all this is a bit of fluff, what we do in a way, because we're so fortunate to have enough food to decide.

00:12:06.000 My friend Remy Warren was on a backpacking horseback elk hunt, and one of the horses fell down and broke its leg.

00:12:14.000 And they had to make a decision.

00:12:15.000 They were deep in the backcountry, and they had to shoot it.

00:12:18.000 And it just wasn't going to get out of there.

00:12:20.000 And after they shot it, he decided that really...

00:12:25.000 This animal's going to go to waste.

00:12:27.000 So they took the back straps off, and they cooked it and ate it.

00:12:31.000 But he said it was a really weird moment where, like, this is an animal that was like everybody's petting it, and you're riding it, and it was a working animal, but it was an animal that you loved.

00:12:43.000 And then all of a sudden it's down, and you have to kill it, and he's like, well, it's going to go to waste.

00:12:47.000 He said it just felt wrong to let it go to waste, so they cut the back straps off of it.

00:12:51.000 You know, the reason I think we don't eat horse culturally is really based ultimately on the Battle of Wolfe between Montcalm on the plains of Quebec City.

00:13:01.000 You know, that was a decisive battle in North American history, whereas if the French had won that battle, everybody in North America ultimately would be speaking French.

00:13:13.000 You know, they didn't win that battle.

00:13:15.000 So British rule imposed. 0.50

00:13:18.000 So in England, you didn't eat horse by royal decree.

00:13:21.000 But the French ate horse. 0.98

00:13:23.000 The Belgians eat horse. 1.00

00:13:24.000 The Germans eat horse. 1.00

00:13:26.000 You see?

00:13:27.000 Oh, so that's what it is.

00:13:27.000 Yeah, it's very old history.

00:13:29.000 You know, it was mining...

00:13:31.000 It's just verboten an anglophone world to eat horse. 0.89

00:13:33.000 And all the mining countries, half my family is from Belgium, and it's traditional there because they bring the horse in the mine.

00:13:41.000 The horse, you know, it's sad for a horse to live in the mine in the dark, but they wouldn't bring it out when he was old, you know?

00:13:48.000 They would just eat the horse.

00:13:49.000 Most cultures, Turkish eat horse, you know? 1.00

00:13:53.000 Well, it was a necessity.

00:13:54.000 I mean, you couldn't pick and choose back when all this was instituted.

00:13:58.000 We're very limited in the proteins that we eat, especially in North America.

00:14:02.000 Quebec less so.

00:14:03.000 You know, Quebec is a very open-minded dining public, very advanced dining public, very old dining public, and of course Latin, French dining public.

00:14:11.000 The amount of proteins that are served in a Montreal restaurant...

00:14:21.000 We're good to go.

00:14:37.000 Lamb neck, lamb liver, deer is a hard, tall order.

00:14:42.000 Ultimately, Manhattan or America eats a limited scope of proteins, beef, chicken, so forth.

00:14:48.000 Whereas, you know, French culture, Quebec...

00:14:51.000 You know, we have all the proteins.

00:14:53.000 I have young dining clientele that have no problem eating kidneys medium rare, liver, lamb liver, deer neck, deer heart tartare.

00:15:04.000 It's not a thing.

00:15:05.000 Like, it's not what other restaurant people are eating.

00:15:07.000 It's just part of the registry, you know.

00:15:09.000 Little girls, like your daughters, raised eating, you know, the food that their dad hunts and the food that their parents buy.

00:15:17.000 Some people of lesser means eat pork liver and are raised on it.

00:15:21.000 So when they see liver on the restaurant, cute little, you know, 19-year-old girls that are about to go out to the club later will have a slice of liver. 1.00

00:15:28.000 You won't see that in New York City.

00:15:29.000 Are you allowed to sell venison here that you hunt?

00:15:32.000 No, not that you hunt.

00:15:34.000 You have to buy farm-raised stuff, and oddly enough, most of it's from New Zealand.

00:15:39.000 Most of the stuff that we're getting here in the United States is from New Zealand, and if they call it venison, it's most likely some sort of stag, and the elk that we get, if we buy elk at a restaurant, it's all from New Zealand.

00:15:50.000 So you can't harvest that.

00:15:52.000 When you do a kill, you can put it in your freezer?

00:15:55.000 Yes.

00:15:55.000 Okay, perfect.

00:15:55.000 Yeah, well, I have two freezers back here.

00:15:58.000 All of the elk that I get, I get from myself, and I give it to a lot of my friends, and I make sausages for my friends.

00:16:07.000 But that's the only way they're going to get it, unless they go out and get it themselves.

00:16:10.000 It's not a place in Los Angeles where you can go buy elk meat.

00:16:13.000 In Newfoundland, they're...

00:16:16.000 They're allowed to...

00:16:17.000 Hunters are allowed to sell moose back to the restaurants.

00:16:20.000 Really?

00:16:21.000 Yeah, moose were introduced onto the island of Newfoundland from Maine.

00:16:25.000 And there was no natural predators on Newfoundland.

00:16:28.000 And it's a perfect environment for them, so they just propagated.

00:16:33.000 And that's why they drive slow there, man.

00:16:35.000 When we shot with Tony, they drove slow.

00:16:38.000 Like, we drove for hours, like, full days to go, like...

00:16:41.000 300 miles because you can't drive fast because of the mooses.

00:16:45.000 So you can have a restaurant, like in the hotel we stayed, the restaurant had a permit to buy moose.

00:16:51.000 So they would make like moose curry and moose sausages.

00:16:53.000 Like a days in kind of vibe.

00:16:55.000 Not a great restaurant, like a hotel restaurant serving wild moose burgers.

00:17:01.000 But it's pretty cool that they do that.

00:17:04.000 That is cool.

00:17:04.000 But if they did that everywhere else, then we're just reinventing the wheel, you know?

00:17:08.000 We're going back to market hunting, which is what almost wiped out almost all of the animals in this country anyway.

00:17:13.000 Some chefs in Quebec would like to bring that back, and I said, listen, we can barely manage our roads, our infrastructure, we can barely manage our...

00:17:21.000 And that's the risk of foraging, too.

00:17:23.000 Like, eventually, you know, like, people go for mushrooms.

00:17:25.000 It's like, you heard about the fights between the mushroom pickers in Oregon and stuff like that?

00:17:30.000 No. 1.00

00:17:31.000 Ah, fuck. 1.00

00:17:31.000 Like, the people who harvest clams, too, eh? 1.00

00:17:33.000 Like, between the communities, there's huge fights for territories, and they'd hijack, like, trucks of abalone at night.

00:17:40.000 Yeah, geoduck, the giant king clam?

00:17:43.000 Mm-hmm.

00:17:43.000 Yeah, I've heard stories of a guy in his Econoline van with 500 pounds of geoduck going to the Victoria airport to send them to Japan, get hijacked on the highway at night, and they steal the clams because they're worth a fortune in Japan.

00:17:57.000 And same for mushroom patches.

00:17:59.000 Matsutake mushrooms as well, another famous white, it's called a pine mushroom, and in Japan, a Matsutake mushroom.

00:18:06.000 The closer the shape of the mushroom to a penis, the more expensive it is, you know?

00:18:10.000 So they'd actually hijack people on their way to the patch and undress them and make them turn around so they can never find a place again. 0.79

00:18:20.000 Wow.

00:18:20.000 Yeah, it's competitive.

00:18:22.000 Morel mushrooms, you look at a morel mushroom, it's, you know, how much, Fred?

00:18:25.000 Very expensive.

00:18:26.000 44 bucks a kilo in Montreal.

00:18:28.000 Dave, can you pull this a little closer to your face?

00:18:30.000 Absolutely.

00:18:30.000 Just try to keep it about a fist from your face.

00:18:33.000 Yeah, the morel mushrooms, I buy them online.

00:18:36.000 They're very expensive.

00:18:37.000 I buy them dried, but they're so delicious.

00:18:40.000 I mean, people who don't like mushrooms, like one of my daughters does not like mushrooms, but she loves morel.

00:18:45.000 It's my favorite.

00:18:46.000 It's the number one mushroom.

00:18:47.000 They're so good.

00:18:47.000 Good, with salt, with garlic salt and sauteed in butter.

00:18:51.000 They're sensational.

00:18:52.000 Great mushroom.

00:18:53.000 It's a strange flavor.

00:18:54.000 One of our favorite, there's a great recipe for that in the book, is like you poach chicken legs, right, until they're ready.

00:19:01.000 And then in the broth, very little broth, you know, you strain the broth, you add cream and saute morel mushrooms in there, and a little bit of sherry wine, any of oxidized wine, and you just add the legs in there and you let that simmer.

00:19:13.000 Man, that's good.

00:19:14.000 We have a picture in the book of some morel mushrooms of the size of these water bottles.

00:19:19.000 We've had morel mushrooms that are about the size of my hand.

00:19:22.000 You can stuff like half a chicken leg inside of them and serve one stuffed morel mushroom in broth for one customer.

00:19:27.000 It's brilliant.

00:19:29.000 They're a strange mushroom, right?

00:19:31.000 Where they pop up after burns.

00:19:34.000 Yeah, and they're also a spring mushroom, which is weird because most of the other mushrooms are later on fall damp, right?

00:19:41.000 And morel is like literally quite quick after the snow.

00:19:45.000 That's the first mushroom that appears in the forest.

00:19:46.000 So it's very different than all the others.

00:19:49.000 Are they commercially cultivated?

00:19:51.000 They could be, but I've never seen it in my career.

00:19:55.000 I tried growing mushrooms.

00:19:56.000 We tried everything at the restaurant.

00:19:57.000 I tried growing mushrooms, and you get everything but the mushroom you inoculate.

00:20:02.000 It's very difficult to keep the proper conditions and stuff.

00:20:06.000 That's why I'm not against the fact that they're expensive.

00:20:08.000 It's a good way to regulate a market price.

00:20:12.000 It's like, yeah, bluefin tuna is going extinct, but just make it three times the price.

00:20:16.000 It's going to regulate the market, you know?

00:20:19.000 I guess.

00:20:19.000 I wish there was a way to reintroduce bluefin to the wild.

00:20:23.000 It just seems like the appetite that people have for those things is just untenable.

00:20:27.000 If you look at any given night in a city like Manhattan, how much red tuna is sold on the island of Manhattan any given night of the year, it's scary.

00:20:40.000 Yeah, I almost feel like it's like killing the last giraffe in a herd, you know?

00:20:43.000 Like fishing a giant tuna like that.

00:20:46.000 It's...

00:20:47.000 And again, you know, they're big, they're feisty, they're majestic, so that shouldn't guide my choice, my decision to protect them, but that's heartbreaking.

00:20:59.000 Well, the problem is there's complete lack of regulation in the open waters when these guys have these enormous ships filled with huge nets and they just drag them across the ocean floor and capture everything.

00:21:10.000 Or bycatch.

00:21:11.000 That's the biggest joke.

00:21:12.000 What is that?

00:21:13.000 They call it bycatch.

00:21:14.000 So you didn't set off to fish for tuna, but that's with kind of bit, you know?

00:21:20.000 Like, yeah, come on.

00:21:22.000 You know, you go fishing for what?

00:21:23.000 To catch a bluefin tuna in the first place, you know?

00:21:26.000 Place?

00:21:27.000 Oh, so they're pretending they're not fishing for it.

00:21:30.000 Is that what you're saying?

00:21:31.000 Allegedly.

00:21:31.000 Yeah.

00:21:32.000 Well, you know that whole thing with Japanese whalers. 1.00

00:21:34.000 They found a way to work around it, and the way to work around it is a science research boat.

00:21:38.000 So they...

00:21:39.000 Science research where we're going to do research on these whales that we kill and then they chop them up and sell them.

00:21:45.000 Sea Shepherd has been tracking that down and they hover over them, take photographs of it and report them.

00:21:52.000 It's ugly business.

00:21:54.000 Wild protein is ugly business.

00:21:56.000 We've worked hard at the restaurant to ultimately avoid it, to be more sustainable seafood focused.

00:22:02.000 The oyster is a great thing to eat.

00:22:05.000 We should eat more oysters.

00:22:06.000 We should eat more clams.

00:22:08.000 Florida, oddly, is an amazing sustainable seafood scene.

00:22:11.000 Just the work that they do with the Florida stone crab, right?

00:22:16.000 You know that every year they just harvest the left arm?

00:22:19.000 And they put the crab back.

00:22:21.000 And the next year, it's the right arm.

00:22:22.000 And they put the crab back.

00:22:24.000 Really?

00:22:24.000 Yeah, it's a brilliant fishing industry.

00:22:26.000 They don't kill the animal.

00:22:28.000 The claw grows back.

00:22:30.000 Right.

00:22:30.000 And they all fit nicely on the plate, all side by side.

00:22:34.000 I don't like that you're telling me something good about Florida.

00:22:38.000 They have a great shrimping scene.

00:22:40.000 They're actually leaders in sustainable seafood.

00:22:43.000 Well, the seafood and fishing is such a gigantic part of their economy.

00:22:46.000 It makes sense that they would do that.

00:22:48.000 That's a smart thing.

00:22:49.000 Yeah.

00:22:49.000 I mean, grouper fishing down there is a giant, giant part of their industry.

00:22:53.000 There's a good book that was published a few years ago, The Big Oyster, I think, Mark Kolanski.

00:22:58.000 He wrote a book about cod.

00:22:59.000 The History of the Oyster.

00:23:00.000 Yeah.

00:23:01.000 The New York and the History of the Oyster.

00:23:02.000 That's incredible.

00:23:03.000 And it's super interesting because his thing was like...

00:23:06.000 You know, we try to portray our history as, like, glorious, and we herded bisons before for protein, and that's how we started, like, modern farming.

00:23:14.000 But, in fact, we probably farmed oysters and snails and clams, because they don't move, and they're the most prolific and the most abundant source of protein.

00:23:25.000 In that book, Kurlansky brings up a premise, and I'm loosely...

00:23:30.000 I'm interpreting it now because I read this book a few years ago, but think of this for a second, right?

00:23:37.000 The island of Manhattan is a perfect—all the rivers around it, all the water systems around it—is actually one of the greater oyster situations on the Atlantic East Coast, right?

00:23:50.000 The reason that the population exploded in Manhattan in the early days was that any person could literally get off a boat, walk onto the island of Manhattan, homeless, broke, and sleep in an alley and walk down to the river.

00:24:09.000 And pick five oysters.

00:24:11.000 A small oyster is five grams of protein, right?

00:24:14.000 A medium oyster's got 10 grams of protein.

00:24:17.000 So a completely destitute person could just eat six oysters a day, you know, three oysters, and live again another day to find a job.

00:24:25.000 So the population ultimately, you know, New York City and its population was based on this huge supply of oysters.

00:24:36.000 Wow.

00:24:36.000 Yeah.

00:24:37.000 That's crazy.

00:24:37.000 It was a free, available source of protein that will make you live another 24 hours.

00:24:43.000 So if it takes you three days to find a job, four days to find a job, 20 days to find a job, you're not going to die because there's oysters.

00:24:49.000 Look at this.

00:24:50.000 And they found oysters.

00:24:53.000 What is this from?

00:24:55.000 Harlem River.

00:24:55.000 Oh, this is incredible.

00:24:57.000 There's actual islands that they thought were geological formations that are made of oyster shells.

00:25:05.000 Layers and layers of oyster shells.

00:25:07.000 The article that Jamie put up is from Thrillist.

00:25:09.000 Is that what it's from?

00:25:09.000 Pull up to the top so I can tell people what the name is.

00:25:13.000 Why oysters are ridiculously important to the history of New York City.

00:25:17.000 And it's just showing all these ancient photos of mounds of oyster shells.

00:25:22.000 There's an amazing program today.

00:25:23.000 You know some of the areas that...

00:25:26.000 They take these giant cages. 0.76

00:25:28.000 One oyster, if I'm correct, one oyster filters four metric tons of water per day.

00:25:36.000 From what I understand, I might be wrong with my math.

00:25:39.000 So take this for instance, you know, a cage, a caged box of thousands of oysters.

00:25:46.000 There it is.

00:25:46.000 There's the math.

00:25:47.000 A single oyster can filter about 30 to 50 gallons of water every day.

00:25:51.000 A little off.

00:25:53.000 And in case you haven't noticed, New York's waterways aren't exactly the cleanest.

00:25:57.000 The folks behind the Billion Oyster Project are trying to change that by recycling shells from the partnering restaurants and getting them back in the water to build oyster reefs.

00:26:05.000 The goal is to add a billion oysters to the water by 2035. So far they've restored 1.1 acre.

00:26:14.000 1.5 acres of reefs.

00:26:15.000 Don't say 1.05. 1.00

00:26:17.000 Bitch, you got an acre. 1.00

00:26:19.000 You just add in those extra two numbers. 0.99

00:26:21.000 1.05 acres of reefs and count 11.5 million newly grown oysters.

00:26:26.000 But the oyster will clarify the water.

00:26:28.000 It'll make a murky river clear again.

00:26:31.000 Wow.

00:26:31.000 But does that affect the taste of the oyster?

00:26:33.000 They don't eat those oysters. 0.67

00:26:34.000 I think those are pulled back into landfill after or mulched into gardens.

00:26:38.000 Or for the shells again to reap it for more reefs.

00:26:41.000 But the oyster is interesting.

00:26:42.000 It doesn't move, right?

00:26:44.000 It opens its shells to feed.

00:26:46.000 This is showing how they do it.

00:26:48.000 This is incredible.

00:26:49.000 And the oyster, you know that the oyster has a...

00:26:51.000 It will change gender according to the density of the population.

00:26:55.000 So it will go from male to female in order to balance the population.

00:26:59.000 That's incredible.

00:27:00.000 We're watching a video where the...

00:27:01.000 What is it?

00:27:02.000 The oyster recovery...

00:27:03.000 What does it say?

00:27:04.000 It was the time lapse of it.

00:27:05.000 Oh, sorry.

00:27:05.000 So it's a time lapse, but it said, what does it say it was from?

00:27:09.000 Oyster filtration.

00:27:10.000 Right, but there was a watermark on the video there in the corner.

00:27:13.000 It was showing.

00:27:14.000 Oyster recovery partnership.

00:27:16.000 Oyster recovery partnership.

00:27:17.000 Yeah, so the watermark is, so what they do is they have this horrible green water.

00:27:22.000 They chuck these oysters in and it turns it completely clear.

00:27:25.000 That's amazing.

00:27:26.000 I did not know that.

00:27:27.000 I did know that they used to eat lobsters and they thought of lobsters as poor people food because you just get them out of the river.

00:27:33.000 The rich kids eat bologna.

00:27:35.000 Isn't that crazy?

00:27:36.000 In New Brunswick, they used to harvest the lobsters to feed to the prisoners and keep the shells as fertilizer.

00:27:44.000 Jefferson was one of the first presidents to bring the lobster into the White House because it was seen as a servant's food.

00:27:49.000 When did it switch?

00:27:51.000 Jefferson.

00:27:52.000 So when he started doing that, that's when people realized it was so delicious?

00:27:55.000 No, that's what the lobster spaghetti at Joe Beef...

00:27:57.000 We changed the whole thing.

00:27:58.000 The lobster spaghetti at Joe Beef is insane.

00:28:01.000 That lobster spaghetti, that's off the charts.

00:28:03.000 You know, also the child labor laws where...

00:28:07.000 And stored primarily because of the kids that used to work in oyster shucking plants.

00:28:13.000 Really?

00:28:13.000 Yeah.

00:28:14.000 We had one of our best friends, if not our best friend, passed away like six months ago, John Bill. 0.69

00:28:20.000 He was a great shucker.

00:28:21.000 He helped us at the bar, but he was like deep into sustainability and history of oysters and everything.

00:28:26.000 And he was like the source for oysters for everything.

00:28:29.000 He wrote a beautiful book.

00:28:30.000 Yeah.

00:28:30.000 We'll send you a copy.

00:28:31.000 It's an incredible book.

00:28:32.000 They're a good food for vegans to consider too because they're more primitive than most plants.

00:28:37.000 Yeah.

00:28:38.000 Most mollusks.

00:28:39.000 John used to call them ocean cupcakes.

00:28:43.000 Well, they're delicious.

00:28:44.000 It's a great source of protein, but it's also, they don't have any nerve endings.

00:28:47.000 They're not feeling anything.

00:28:49.000 It's a sea vegetable.

00:28:50.000 Yeah, it basically is.

00:28:51.000 We have an issue, or some people, not myself, but some people have an issue with things that are capable of moving.

00:28:56.000 For whatever reason, we just decide that don't eat that.

00:28:59.000 But if you want to talk about something sustainable, like mollusks and seafood, I mean, they can be commercially farmed.

00:29:06.000 They actually do have a positive impact, as you're describing, on the environment.

00:29:11.000 Incredible source of protein as well.

00:29:13.000 Yeah, and really a complete source of protein, not like a very bioavailable source, unlike a lot of vegetable proteins.

00:29:20.000 So maybe we should do a protein powder out of dried oysters.

00:29:24.000 Just eastern oysters?

00:29:25.000 Clam protein?

00:29:25.000 Yeah.

00:29:26.000 No, totally.

00:29:27.000 How would you get so ripped?

00:29:28.000 Clam protein, bro. 0.55

00:29:30.000 I mean, a lot of people are eating cricket protein.

00:29:32.000 Have you guys ever serve any insect dishes?

00:29:34.000 No, but I'm not opposed to it.

00:29:35.000 Not knowingly.

00:29:37.000 I got a letter last week that someone found...

00:29:41.000 A bug in their salad.

00:29:42.000 You know, sometimes the people are a bit...

00:29:44.000 They want the cake and they want to eat it too because people want organic.

00:29:49.000 And we support that.

00:29:50.000 We love that.

00:29:52.000 Occasionally get an ant in there.

00:29:54.000 Yeah.

00:29:55.000 Organic is no pesticide.

00:29:56.000 Right.

00:29:56.000 That's okay.

00:29:58.000 Bugs aren't bad.

00:29:59.000 The idea of bugs being...

00:30:01.000 Roaches are bad.

00:30:02.000 Most other bugs are not that big of a deal.

00:30:05.000 Yeah.

00:30:05.000 If we're serving 100 people a day, that arguably being 40 salads, it's some kind of crazy work to really look at both sides of each leaf.

00:30:15.000 We try our best.

00:30:16.000 Right.

00:30:18.000 One will get past us every year.

00:30:19.000 I think you're better off.

00:30:21.000 The people that are freaking out about bugs, you don't want them coming in there. 0.99

00:30:24.000 Just give them their money back and get the fuck out of here. 0.99

00:30:28.000 Yeah, I agree with that. 0.99

00:30:29.000 That's my policy.

00:30:30.000 But when I was in Mexico, we checked into this resort and they had a bowl of fried crickets.

00:30:37.000 In the hotel.

00:30:39.000 They had some sort of flavor to them.

00:30:42.000 They added some flavor to them.

00:30:43.000 Yeah.

00:30:43.000 Rene Redzepi in Noma, arguably one of the world's best restaurants, is obsessed with serving ants.

00:30:49.000 Really?

00:30:50.000 Loves them.

00:30:51.000 Lemony fresh.

00:30:52.000 I don't know.

00:30:53.000 I think they're crunchy.

00:30:54.000 They're delicious.

00:30:56.000 He thinks they're fine.

00:30:58.000 Of course, and he's doing this wonderful Nordic cuisine.

00:31:02.000 And there's ants.

00:31:04.000 And when they forage vegetables and they forage mushrooms, there's also ants.

00:31:09.000 So why not forage those too?

00:31:10.000 And it's a homework they do for the rest of us.

00:31:14.000 They're doing the right thing.

00:31:15.000 People pay a lot of money, fly there to go eat there.

00:31:18.000 You know, he's doing some good legwork on how to prepare them, how to raise them, how to, you know, I'm not saying his food is based on that, but I'm happy that somebody did that part of the research.

00:31:28.000 And he'll bring the point up and they'll, you know, ultimately by osmosis, the other younger chefs.

00:31:34.000 We'll try to do that.

00:31:35.000 And they'll normalize it a little bit more.

00:31:38.000 So, you know, expect ants at Nordic restaurants.

00:31:41.000 Interesting.

00:31:42.000 So this is the new trend.

00:31:43.000 Get ahead of it, folks.

00:31:44.000 You heard them, Los Angeles. 0.99

00:31:45.000 I know you trendy fucks are out there thinking about what's coming. 0.99

00:31:51.000 Crickets are a weird one. 0.99

00:31:52.000 Crickets seem to be universally accepted, like cricket protein.

00:31:56.000 You see a lot of cricket protein bars.

00:31:57.000 You don't see too many other insects being commercially harvested.

00:32:01.000 David and I were in New York for Anthony's memory thing, memorial thing, and we walked in the Bowery, and middle of the afternoon, Hudson.

00:32:11.000 Oh, this is a good one.

00:32:12.000 And there's a little store.

00:32:15.000 No refrigeration and there's buckets of clams and you know like mesh bags like you put onions in this big mesh bag in a bin and it's full of giant bullfrogs.

00:32:25.000 Like looking up at us.

00:32:26.000 Like a hundred little bullfrogs.

00:32:28.000 But like lined up in a box like oranges in a box.

00:32:31.000 Like one, two, three, four, five.

00:32:33.000 And they're alive.

00:32:33.000 And their little eyes just looking up like this.

00:32:35.000 And I was like sure we have frogs in the book but that was...

00:32:39.000 So hang on.

00:32:40.000 Fred and I have been cooking for years.

00:32:41.000 You know 25 years arguably if not more.

00:32:44.000 I've processed every animal in French cooking.

00:32:48.000 So, of course, we just look at the frogs.

00:32:50.000 We don't say anything to each other.

00:32:51.000 We keep on walking.

00:32:53.000 And I go, hang on a sec, Fred.

00:32:55.000 Walk me through this.

00:32:56.000 He goes, how exactly does this work?

00:32:58.000 I know how to do a rabbit.

00:32:59.000 I know how to do a hare.

00:33:00.000 I know how to do a duck.

00:33:01.000 I know how to do any fish, any seafood.

00:33:04.000 Lobster, no problem.

00:33:04.000 So you get a case of frog in the kitchen.

00:33:06.000 What's your first move?

00:33:07.000 Right now.

00:33:07.000 What's our first move?

00:33:08.000 So we take the live frog.

00:33:10.000 Do I put it on the cutting board?

00:33:11.000 Do I hack its legs off? 0.90

00:33:13.000 And what do I do with the 60% remaining of the frog?

00:33:17.000 That's what I'm worried about.

00:33:19.000 Yeah.

00:33:20.000 Is it ground?

00:33:21.000 Does it end up in dumplings?

00:33:23.000 Where is that other part of the frog going?

00:33:26.000 Is it soup?

00:33:26.000 Is it broth?

00:33:28.000 You know, that's an amphibian.

00:33:30.000 Right.

00:33:31.000 It was fascinating.

00:33:32.000 Did you experiment?

00:33:33.000 No.

00:33:34.000 No, no, no.

00:33:34.000 I'm mortified.

00:33:35.000 And after that, we went to Tony's Memorial.

00:33:37.000 It was in a Chinese restaurant.

00:33:39.000 And I was just like, I couldn't eat.

00:33:41.000 Because by default, everything had like frog in it, in my head.

00:33:45.000 So you were freaking out just because they were alive, staring up at you?

00:33:49.000 No, because I know that the legs are delicious.

00:33:51.000 Right.

00:33:51.000 I know that, you know, if I chop the legs off and I peel the skin and I dredge them in flour and I fry them and I serve them with garlic cream, that they're delicious.

00:34:00.000 They're as delicious as chicken wings.

00:34:02.000 What I'm worried about is the frog is so big and...

00:34:07.000 The discarded part of the frog is the size of a softball.

00:34:12.000 It's like eating the stem of the apple and leaving the apple.

00:34:15.000 In cooking, we don't throw stuff out.

00:34:20.000 I want to know what happens to that part in Chinese cookery or French cookery.

00:34:28.000 The place that you guys were at was a Chinese market?

00:34:32.000 Yeah, it was one of those hole-in-the-door kind of, like, supplier.

00:34:36.000 And it was, like, we got it.

00:34:38.000 There were clams, there were periwinkles, there were, like, all, like, gooey ducks.

00:34:43.000 I've never processed frogs in my career, really.

00:34:45.000 You know, when I've gotten fresh frogs, I was working in France, and it was just the frog's legs in a basket.

00:34:51.000 But even then, I would wonder, in France, where does that other part go?

00:34:55.000 I know, this is a very disturbing story.

00:34:58.000 It seems like there's got to be an answer to this.

00:35:00.000 Maybe.

00:35:00.000 I don't know.

00:35:01.000 You would be the people that I would call.

00:35:02.000 That's the problem.

00:35:03.000 Wonton stuffing.

00:35:05.000 Right.

00:35:06.000 Like some sort of boiled and ground.

00:35:07.000 I'm hoping they're discarded.

00:35:09.000 I just Googled it and the video is graphic.

00:35:12.000 Let it go.

00:35:13.000 Let's do it.

00:35:14.000 Let it roll.

00:35:15.000 I'm not going to put it up on YouTube.

00:35:17.000 Okay, we'll put it up for us.

00:35:18.000 Put it up for us so we can see it.

00:35:21.000 Here we go.

00:35:22.000 Okay.

00:35:23.000 Oh, no! 0.99

00:35:25.000 They don't even bother killing them first. 0.96

00:35:26.000 They just do it on the fly.

00:35:28.000 So far, that's exactly how I presume.

00:35:34.000 Okay, so they squeeze it out.

00:35:36.000 Once they cut the head off, they squeeze it out like a...

00:35:40.000 What would you describe that like?

00:35:41.000 They're peeling it now.

00:35:43.000 Right.

00:35:43.000 They squeeze the innards out.

00:35:46.000 Like through the neck cavity.

00:35:48.000 Like the last of toothpaste.

00:35:49.000 Yes, that's a good way to describe it.

00:35:51.000 Okay, so then they take it.

00:35:53.000 Now it looks like a man because it's headless. 1.00

00:35:56.000 It's like a headless man.

00:35:57.000 It's like one of those mannequins that you use to draw bodies there.

00:36:03.000 Yeah.

00:36:04.000 At what point do you put the batteries to the hind legs?

00:36:08.000 Batteries?

00:36:08.000 No, in like high school.

00:36:10.000 Oh, right.

00:36:10.000 You put the little battery in the backlight?

00:36:12.000 No, we used to put cigarettes in their mouths.

00:36:15.000 So he's chopping them up.

00:36:16.000 It seems like he's leaving the bones on.

00:36:19.000 Is that what he's doing?

00:36:20.000 Yeah.

00:36:21.000 Okay, so you know what?

00:36:22.000 It's really great that we're watching this because I'm a lot less horrified by the whole prospect of it.

00:36:26.000 So he's just hacking it up, bones intact, and chucking it into a basket.

00:36:32.000 So it doesn't look like they're missing much other than the guts.

00:36:36.000 So it seems like the innards, and then they seem to be boiling all that stuff, and okay, so they put it in a soup with the bones intact, and you just sort of...

00:36:43.000 I need that.

00:36:44.000 Yeah, it's funny.

00:36:45.000 If I had to make a dish with that, I'd make the soup with daylilies inside.

00:36:48.000 Water lilies, I mean.

00:36:50.000 Mmm, right.

00:36:51.000 With lily pad soup with frog.

00:36:53.000 Yeah.

00:36:53.000 Have you ever tried anything with lily pads?

00:36:55.000 No.

00:36:56.000 With tapioca?

00:36:57.000 Those are hot right now in cooking.

00:37:00.000 Do you guys try to do that?

00:37:01.000 Like add some of the ingredients of the native environments of the animals?

00:37:05.000 One of the best tricks to cooking.

00:37:06.000 One of the best tricks to cooking.

00:37:08.000 Chef told me this a long time ago in France.

00:37:10.000 He goes, well, chef, what should I cook the lamb with?

00:37:14.000 He goes, it's easy.

00:37:15.000 What would it eat?

00:37:31.000 It's a traditional, more idyllic environment.

00:37:35.000 The problem is when you have lobster and you cook it with mangoes, right?

00:37:39.000 Where lobster is, where it comes from, there's no mangoes.

00:37:43.000 So the recipe doesn't make sense. 0.99

00:37:44.000 It might be delicious, but it's dumb. 0.87

00:37:46.000 But butter, lobster and butter, they go together. 0.97

00:37:50.000 Lobster, butter, potatoes, what else grows there?

00:37:52.000 Onions, there's clams.

00:37:55.000 Yeah, you go to Prince Edward Island.

00:37:56.000 Okay, small island in the Gulf.

00:37:58.000 One of the provinces of Canada.

00:38:01.000 We have cows, potatoes, and lobster.

00:38:04.000 The region.

00:38:05.000 The three resources.

00:38:06.000 Not the actual environment.

00:38:08.000 If you have a rabbit in your backyard.

00:38:11.000 In the line of sight.

00:38:12.000 What can you see there?

00:38:14.000 Rabbit with apples and carrots.

00:38:16.000 Makes sense.

00:38:17.000 That does make sense. 0.99

00:38:18.000 But what if lobster and mango is fucking delicious? 0.93

00:38:22.000 Yeah, but then, you know, it's for other people to do. 0.95

00:38:24.000 We have our principles.

00:38:26.000 It's academically incorrect.

00:38:27.000 Oh, academically incorrect.

00:38:28.000 That's fascinating.

00:38:29.000 One of my favorite pizzas, don't get disgusted at me, don't hate me, pineapple and anchovy.

00:38:34.000 Pineapple and anchovy?

00:38:35.000 That's right.

00:38:36.000 Pineapple and ham is out there.

00:38:37.000 No, no, no.

00:38:37.000 Pineapple and anchovy.

00:38:38.000 It's goddamn delicious. 0.99

00:38:40.000 I fucking love it. 0.99

00:38:41.000 I don't care what you say. 0.99

00:38:41.000 Who does that, though? 0.99

00:38:43.000 You'd invented that.

00:38:44.000 I might have.

00:38:45.000 That's good.

00:38:46.000 I want to try frog soup with lily pads and pineapple and anchovy pizza.

00:38:52.000 I go hard with both.

00:38:53.000 Hard with the pineapple and hard with the anchovy.

00:38:55.000 Do you want to write a book three with us?

00:38:57.000 No.

00:38:59.000 Cooking with Joe?

00:39:00.000 I'm good at elk steaks and I know how to order pineapple and anchovy pizza.

00:39:04.000 I have to say that when I see the picture you post of your meat cooking, it's always on point.

00:39:10.000 Thank you very much.

00:39:11.000 Because there's a lot of hunters Yeah, some hunters don't know how to cook.

00:39:28.000 We have a lot of hunters in Quebec and sometimes, you know, the hunter will bring by the...

00:39:32.000 Because I shot this beautiful moose, David.

00:39:34.000 It was 2,000 pounds or 1,500 pounds.

00:39:37.000 And he shows me a picture on his phone.

00:39:39.000 And then he brings me a jar of the spaghetti sauce he made out of the moose.

00:39:46.000 I'm like, really?

00:39:47.000 You shot a majestic moose in the forest and you made spaghetti sauce with it?

00:39:53.000 And I put kiwi in it because it tenderizes the meat.

00:39:58.000 Well, listen, spaghetti sauce with ground mousse is delicious.

00:40:02.000 I'll give you a tip.

00:40:03.000 You gotta have...

00:40:04.000 I eat everything.

00:40:07.000 I eat the whole thing, right?

00:40:08.000 I mean, I know how to make the roasts, and I use the ground for a bunch of different things, and I just think that...

00:40:17.000 If you do it properly or if you want to handle it properly, you've really got to read up on how to cook wild game as opposed to how to cook anything else.

00:40:27.000 There's a very low fat content.

00:40:29.000 It's a tricky kind of meat to cook.

00:40:31.000 There's a tool.

00:40:32.000 It's called a lardoire in French.

00:40:34.000 It's like a big needle with a swivel tip.

00:40:37.000 And what you do is you cut long strips of fat and you poke them through the meat.

00:40:42.000 Oh, and you inject it?

00:40:43.000 Yeah, you don't inject.

00:40:45.000 You put like long...

00:40:45.000 You're like threading it.

00:40:46.000 You're threading your piece of meat, like the loins or the fat, the back straps.

00:40:51.000 It tends to be leaner.

00:40:53.000 So you put long strips of pork fat inside and you cook it slowly enough that the pork fat will melt inside so in every bite you'll have a little bit of fat.

00:41:02.000 It's a neat thing.

00:41:03.000 It's an old French cooking trick.

00:41:04.000 That sounds sensational.

00:41:06.000 Or what we do, actually, like for the wild rabbit, which is extremely dry, we'll put a veal foot with the skin, so that'll give off the collagen, and we'll put a slice of pork belly with it.

00:41:20.000 That'll give off the fat. 0.99

00:41:21.000 When are you guys going back to Montreal?

00:41:23.000 Tomorrow.

00:41:24.000 Tomorrow?

00:41:25.000 Yeah.

00:41:25.000 I can't give you meat, right?

00:41:28.000 No, we couldn't get through the border.

00:41:29.000 It wouldn't work.

00:41:30.000 Not this way.

00:41:31.000 The other way works.

00:41:32.000 Yes, it works if you hunt it and bring it through.

00:41:35.000 I've brought meat back. 0.97

00:41:37.000 But, damn, I'd like to give you guys something and see what you do with it. 0.97

00:41:42.000 It's a lot of things. 0.99

00:41:44.000 It's our favorite meat, but...

00:41:46.000 You know, it would be sooner be cut with bricks of hashish than venison as restaurant owners.

00:41:53.000 You know, like you cannot have any wild game in your restaurant.

00:42:00.000 Even if it's just for your own personal consumption?

00:42:01.000 No.

00:42:02.000 Really?

00:42:03.000 Yeah, sturgeon too is a problem in Quebec.

00:42:06.000 Caviar.

00:42:07.000 We have a lot of sturgeon in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 0.98

00:42:09.000 The laws are like lights out ridiculous.

00:42:12.000 If you get caught with like a gram of caviar in your boat and you don't have a license, they'll freeze your bank accounts and seize your house kind of thing.

00:42:19.000 Really?

00:42:19.000 Wow.

00:42:20.000 It would go south quick.

00:42:22.000 What is the concern?

00:42:23.000 Is it such a commercial market for sturgeon caviar?

00:42:26.000 Is that what it is?

00:42:27.000 Yeah, exactly, yeah.

00:42:28.000 Wow, so people just go that far out of their way to get caviar that they had to just make these...

00:42:33.000 It's like a fish right now is worthless if you can't use a caviar, right?

00:42:36.000 Right.

00:42:36.000 We're allowed that there's a fishery for them.

00:42:38.000 They fish the sturgeon.

00:42:42.000 In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, when they catch them, they have to gut them.

00:42:45.000 They have to remove every egg and dump the eggs into the water.

00:42:48.000 That's crazy.

00:42:48.000 They're allowed to bring the meat back to smoke it and salt it and to sell it.

00:42:52.000 There is a commercial wild fishery for sturgeon meat.

00:42:59.000 So ultimately, you just put a price tag on the fish.

00:43:01.000 Let's say it's worth 200 bucks.

00:43:03.000 But all of a sudden, if you're allowed to harvest the eggs and the fish...

00:43:06.000 15 grand.

00:43:07.000 Yeah, it would just be...

00:43:08.000 15 grand.

00:43:08.000 Yeah, because they produce a monolithic amount of eggs.

00:43:11.000 Well, what's crazy is now you're making it useless because you're throwing it away, something that's incredibly valuable and delicious.

00:43:17.000 The quotas are very small, though.

00:43:18.000 Let's say if you had a sturgeon license, I imagine you'd allowed five or six or something like that.

00:43:23.000 And the First Nations, like Mohawks, the Iroquois, have the right to fish. 1.00

00:43:30.000 You know, we've been on boats where a guy was fishing.

00:43:33.000 You know, he showed us the traditional technique, and it's not sports fishing.

00:43:36.000 Like, they eat soup, they eat this, they eat, like, They love it.

00:43:40.000 It's great fish.

00:43:40.000 And themselves, they eat the eggs.

00:43:42.000 They make soup.

00:43:42.000 They put the eggs in it.

00:43:44.000 Oh, they catch sturgeon 20 minutes from Joe Beef.

00:43:47.000 Wow.

00:43:48.000 Yeah.

00:43:48.000 Right there, downtown.

00:43:49.000 It's a dinosaur.

00:43:50.000 Yeah, with a spear.

00:43:52.000 Wow.

00:43:52.000 Yeah.

00:43:53.000 It's a crazy animal.

00:43:55.000 When you see them in the water.

00:43:56.000 Oh, yeah.

00:43:56.000 You see the scales on them?

00:43:58.000 It's so bizarre.

00:43:58.000 I mean, they're from, what, 100 million years ago or something?

00:44:01.000 They're prehistoric animals.

00:44:02.000 They look like dinosaurs.

00:44:03.000 They really do.

00:44:04.000 Yeah.

00:44:04.000 And the guys that we know that fish them...

00:44:07.000 He's quite the character.

00:44:08.000 He's an interesting guy.

00:44:09.000 He's a Mohawk. 1.00

00:44:11.000 And he told us that the biologists put underwater cameras there to keep track of the fish.

00:44:16.000 And they said they see like 16 layers of sturgeon swimming, one on top of the other.

00:44:20.000 He said, I could walk on the fish.

00:44:23.000 Wow.

00:44:23.000 There's that many.

00:44:25.000 Yeah.

00:44:25.000 There's a ton.

00:44:26.000 Wow.

00:44:27.000 That's incredible.

00:44:28.000 But again, you know, the people don't really...

00:44:29.000 We even struggle with it at the restaurant.

00:44:31.000 For me to sell a plate of smoked sturgeon...

00:44:36.000 Tough sell.

00:44:37.000 I'll sooner sell other things than that.

00:44:41.000 Because people aren't interested?

00:44:42.000 I think it's a tough sell as a fish, let's say as a 200 gram or a four ounce piece of fish.

00:44:48.000 Look at that thing. 0.92

00:44:48.000 That is so crazy. 0.92

00:44:50.000 Is that the same river?

00:44:52.000 That's probably Columbia River sturgeon, it looks like.

00:44:54.000 Fraser River?

00:44:55.000 Yeah.

00:44:55.000 Fraser and BC. Look at the size of that thing.

00:44:58.000 That is so...

00:44:59.000 Ancient looking.

00:45:01.000 It looks like it shouldn't be here.

00:45:03.000 Yeah.

00:45:03.000 It's a fish that's a bit muddy sometimes, depending on where it's caught and everything.

00:45:09.000 How do you handle it?

00:45:11.000 Like if you were going to cook one of those.

00:45:13.000 We make Jamaican patties with it.

00:45:15.000 In this book we did.

00:45:16.000 In old French cookery, one of the ways to cook sturgeon is ultimately you apply cooking a piece of sturgeon loin as you would a piece of veal loin or pork loin.

00:45:27.000 Meat juice even is acceptable.

00:45:30.000 You know, roasted carrots, roasted onions, roasted celery, roast the sturgeon and serve it with meat juice.

00:45:35.000 Bacon, mushroom, red wine.

00:45:36.000 Bacon, mushroom, red wine, like Fred said.

00:45:38.000 So you treat the sturgeon as you would meat is possibly the best way.

00:45:44.000 To treat it as you would fish is not the best.

00:45:47.000 You know, people got to expect...

00:45:49.000 We were overly fortunate to have, you know, 300 gram, you know, like a pound of fish...

00:46:05.000 Right.

00:46:17.000 But a fish like sturgeon is great if you have a little bit in a sauce like David May talks about over like buttery mashed potatoes or like with like egg noodles or something like that.

00:46:28.000 It's a great way to do it.

00:46:30.000 And it's a great way to look at fish where like you need actually 75 grams of protein, not like 500, you know?

00:46:37.000 What is the...

00:46:37.000 Is there a comparison that you can make in terms of what it tastes like?

00:46:41.000 Yeah...

00:46:44.000 Veal loin a little bit, I guess.

00:46:46.000 Somewhat.

00:46:47.000 Braised veal collar.

00:46:50.000 What do you say?

00:46:51.000 Blanquette.

00:46:52.000 A larger piece of stew.

00:46:55.000 Not a small two-inch block of stew, but let's say a bigger piece of stew.

00:46:59.000 With a chunk of seaweed in it, you know?

00:47:01.000 Yeah.

00:47:02.000 It's neat.

00:47:02.000 Wow.

00:47:03.000 It's neat.

00:47:04.000 It sounds...

00:47:05.000 Now I'm hungry for it.

00:47:06.000 We do.

00:47:07.000 Fred made the McNuggets molds, you know?

00:47:11.000 Because, you know, the McNuggets have this, like...

00:47:13.000 There's, like, four or five different sizes.

00:47:16.000 Yeah.

00:47:16.000 Fred made the mold in the first book, precisely exactly like the McDonald's McNuggets.

00:47:22.000 And we used to do sturgeon McNuggets.

00:47:24.000 Or eel.

00:47:24.000 Or eel McNuggets.

00:47:26.000 Same fishery, right?

00:47:27.000 We have eels where we get sturgeon.

00:47:30.000 That's another weird fish.

00:47:31.000 We sold a ton of them at the restaurant.

00:47:33.000 It would literally, you'd be at Joe Beef and you'd get on your plate what looked to be like six McNuggets with a sauce and a little paper cup on the side.

00:47:39.000 People were like, what the hell is this?

00:47:42.000 I said, sturgeon nuggets.

00:47:45.000 Eel is a weird one.

00:47:46.000 When I used to go fishing a lot, people would catch eels, they'd be upset.

00:47:50.000 And then I would go to buy sushi later on in life, and there'd be eel sushi. 0.98

00:47:56.000 And I'd be like, what the fuck is going on? 0.98

00:47:57.000 It's a different wolf. 0.99

00:47:58.000 Is that a wolf eel?

00:48:00.000 Yeah, it's a different fish.

00:48:01.000 It's not a true eel.

00:48:03.000 In sushi?

00:48:04.000 Yeah, correct.

00:48:04.000 Even like the real eel.

00:48:07.000 I can eat bits of it, but if we were to take an eel and first you have to put a nail in its head and a nail in its tail and skin it.

00:48:16.000 You can cut its head off and peel it and put it in a cast iron pan with butter and it's still moving like a snake.

00:48:25.000 It's a horrific creature. 0.95

00:48:27.000 It makes you choke.

00:48:28.000 We had a little trout pond at Joe Beef that I built.

00:48:32.000 Really?

00:48:33.000 It was a bad experience because We had a refrigerator thing to make the water cold, you know, a cooler, and we had a pump.

00:48:42.000 Every time it rained, it would turn the breaker off, and now the fish, like...

00:48:47.000 Drown.

00:48:47.000 Drown, no oxygen.

00:48:49.000 Martin Picard gave us some eels.

00:48:50.000 And we found him the next day in the parking lot, like...

00:48:54.000 Dude, on the other side of the parking lot, in the baseball field where the bleachers were... 1.00

00:48:57.000 Look at that shit! 1.00

00:48:58.000 They're cooking it, and it's swimming at a rapid pace. 1.00

00:49:01.000 It's got no head and no skin at this point.

00:49:03.000 This is a grill.

00:49:04.000 What does it say?

00:49:04.000 It's a shocking clip of cooking an eel alive in Seoul.

00:49:09.000 No, but it's got...

00:49:10.000 That eel is beheaded and skinned. 0.97

00:49:12.000 Beheaded, skinned... 1.00

00:49:13.000 And it's still... 0.82

00:49:13.000 Nervous system is still very intact. 0.82

00:49:16.000 What are those things in the bottom?

00:49:18.000 Is it its legs?

00:49:19.000 That's probably its guts. 0.99

00:49:21.000 Oh, God.

00:49:22.000 Look at that thing. 0.92

00:49:24.000 Bucking it.

00:49:24.000 Oh, man.

00:49:25.000 That's real stir-frying.

00:49:27.000 I caught one once in Nova Scotia on a hook and line.

00:49:30.000 And when I caught it, the fisherman next to me said, oh, don't reel it in.

00:49:35.000 So I just held my fishing rod.

00:49:37.000 I wasn't reeling in.

00:49:38.000 And the eel...

00:49:39.000 We're good to go.

00:50:09.000 And I hear in French, one eel ordered up.

00:50:13.000 And then the fish chef says, go in the fridge.

00:50:18.000 There's a wooden box.

00:50:20.000 You take the cinder block off it.

00:50:22.000 You just lift the lid a little bit.

00:50:24.000 Plunge your hand in there.

00:50:25.000 Grab an eel and bring it back to me.

00:50:26.000 I was like, you're kidding, right?

00:50:29.000 So I literally do that.

00:50:30.000 I go into the walk-in fridge.

00:50:31.000 I pull the wooden box out.

00:50:32.000 I take the cinder block off the top.

00:50:34.000 I lift the...

00:50:35.000 It was just literally...

00:50:38.000 You know, 50 eels writhing together in a box.

00:50:42.000 That's like Indiana Jones, you know?

00:50:44.000 No, they live out of water, no problem.

00:50:47.000 Martin Picard at Pieter Cochon, in his restaurant right now, I was there last week, he has a lobster tank.

00:50:55.000 Right in the doorway, I think they hang your coats right above it.

00:50:58.000 And in it, there's like eight massive eels.

00:51:02.000 They have to chase them when they come at work in the morning.

00:51:04.000 They reopen the restaurant.

00:51:05.000 They'll find them like in the cash register, in the coat check, in the lettuce bins.

00:51:10.000 They have like cinder blocks down now on the top.

00:51:13.000 They got a plexiglass top with holes in it so it oxygenates.

00:51:17.000 And they're literally pinned down in that tank.

00:51:20.000 But even as you're eating...

00:51:22.000 And you just see those giant eels in a tank the size of your flag here.

00:51:25.000 It's just horrific.

00:51:26.000 You know what's the best thing about eels?

00:51:28.000 Talking about it.

00:51:29.000 That's the best thing.

00:51:31.000 Now, what about the flavor?

00:51:34.000 I like it super smoked, super salted down with a good sugary, salty brine.

00:51:40.000 So you have to cover it.

00:51:41.000 Yeah, like in nuggets like we did.

00:51:44.000 But even in that restaurant David was talking about, if you take a fresh piece of eel and put it in a cast iron pan, the smoke it does, it's like mustard gas.

00:51:53.000 Oh, yeah.

00:51:53.000 Really?

00:51:54.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:51:55.000 It's super allergenic.

00:51:56.000 I'm a little bit allergic to, I guess, not all fish, but some fish.

00:52:00.000 And when I used to work at that restaurant, we would literally put a knife through its head and into the cutting board, and then another knife through its tail so it would be straight on the cutting board.

00:52:10.000 So we'd pin down the left side and the right side of the eel.

00:52:13.000 Then we'd lift the fillets, skin them, score them, And then pan-sear them with artichoke and country ham.

00:52:22.000 And as I was pan-searing them, I was breathing in the vapors of searing the eel and my lungs would seize.

00:52:32.000 It would give me an asthma attack somewhat.

00:52:36.000 It was wild.

00:52:37.000 Now, is this a popular dish in France because of necessity?

00:52:40.000 Because of a lack of food choices?

00:52:42.000 A lot of old French cooking would be based on what you had in your neighborhood.

00:52:48.000 French cooking was very different pre-Federal Express, pre-Roads, you know.

00:52:54.000 So eels in French cooking would come from the Bordeaux region ultimately and, you know, would be like la matelotte d'anguille.

00:53:03.000 So it would be an eel stew in red wine, of course, carrot, onion, celery, exactly like a beef stew.

00:53:09.000 And I think also the thing about it is that it's a dish that you wouldn't make at home, you know.

00:53:14.000 So people would go, allez, on va manger de l'anguille, let's go and eat eel.

00:53:19.000 That's what there was.

00:53:20.000 You don't want to have the cinder block plexiglass case in your house.

00:53:24.000 Imagine your house with your kids or my kids.

00:53:27.000 They eat lampreys.

00:53:28.000 In Bordeaux, some of the famous iconic dishes of Bordeaux is lampreys.

00:53:35.000 This is like an animal from Dune.

00:53:38.000 It's like a big hole with teeth.

00:53:39.000 They're the ones that cling to the bottom of sharks.

00:53:41.000 Correct.

00:53:42.000 No, that's a remora.

00:53:43.000 Oh, okay.

00:53:44.000 The lamprey is a problem, actually.

00:53:45.000 Now, even in America, they're coming up in some rivers, and they attach themselves to fish with their suction cup head.

00:53:52.000 They're just horrific animals.

00:53:54.000 Toothed suction cup head.

00:53:55.000 Yeah, it's tooth.

00:53:56.000 It's like dune.

00:53:57.000 It's like that animal in dune.

00:53:58.000 It does look like that, yeah.

00:53:59.000 What do they taste like?

00:54:02.000 Probably crappy, like, eel.

00:54:03.000 We did a dinner.

00:54:04.000 Like a shittier eel.

00:54:06.000 We did a dinner for Tony and he did his second book, I think, at Liverpool House.

00:54:10.000 And we were much younger and I was like, oh, let's buy some, like, daring food, you know? 0.99

00:54:17.000 It was Tony Bourdain, let's buy something, like, fucked up. 0.97

00:54:19.000 So I ordered, like, two of those eel. 0.99

00:54:22.000 And I try to make soup with it.

00:54:24.000 I try to make everything.

00:54:25.000 And again, my classic joke, the best thing to do with it is to put it in the garbage.

00:54:31.000 You make stock, you reduce it, then you throw it away.

00:54:34.000 I'm sure there's a recipe that's good.

00:54:36.000 And I'm sure in case of apocalypse, after the winter succeeds, We'll fish for that and we'll eat it.

00:54:44.000 But until then, I'm okay with cutting my Big Macs in half so they last for two days.

00:54:50.000 There's a cool company, though.

00:54:51.000 I've been following a company online, I think on Twitter or Instagram.

00:54:54.000 It's called American Unagi.

00:54:56.000 They're up in...

00:54:58.000 The Atlantic Northeast, I think in Maine or Massachusetts somewhere, they're raising eels, I think, releasing them into nature, and they're selling eels commercially.

00:55:10.000 It looks, again, like horrific work.

00:55:12.000 Raising them and releasing them into nature.

00:55:15.000 Is there some sort of environmental benefit of having the eels in the nation?

00:55:19.000 Is that like sting about the lobster and put it away in a freshwater river?

00:55:23.000 They're a weird animal, right?

00:55:25.000 Again, loosely based.

00:55:26.000 My facts are old reading.

00:55:29.000 But from what I recall, eels are cool because all the eels, every year, go back to the Sargasso Sea.

00:55:42.000 Is it true then?

00:55:43.000 That's what I remember.

00:55:44.000 Is that folklore you think?

00:55:45.000 Is this an old fact in my mind?

00:55:47.000 The oyster filtration volume?

00:55:49.000 Yeah, oysters filter eels. 1.00

00:55:53.000 So they all go back to this one area?

00:55:57.000 Supposedly there's a breeding area for them called the Sargasso Sea.

00:56:01.000 Great place for swimming.

00:56:04.000 And where's the Sargasso Sea?

00:56:05.000 It's kind of a southern middle Atlantic, from what I recall.

00:56:08.000 That's a pretty safe bet.

00:56:10.000 Right where the mythical plastic patch is.

00:56:14.000 Oh, the plastic.

00:56:15.000 That's the Pacific.

00:56:16.000 You think that's mythical?

00:56:18.000 I don't know.

00:56:18.000 I've never seen really a real true picture of it.

00:56:21.000 There's a Sargasso Sea.

00:56:23.000 Eels.

00:56:24.000 Making their way.

00:56:25.000 Wow.

00:56:26.000 That's so creepy. 1.00

00:56:27.000 Look at that fucker. 1.00

00:56:28.000 Making his way. 1.00

00:56:29.000 Beautiful video, too, eh?

00:56:31.000 What is this?

00:56:31.000 Pretty cool.

00:56:35.000 Wow.

00:56:35.000 There's a guy named Boyan Slott, who is a young fellow that figured out a way to filter out the garbage patch.

00:56:44.000 And he developed this device and they recently started implementing it.

00:56:50.000 But he's been on the podcast before and went into great detail about it.

00:56:55.000 The garbage patch is real.

00:56:57.000 See, that's the American Unavi site. 1.00

00:57:00.000 Look at those fuckers just flopping around. 1.00

00:57:02.000 Yeah, so they're in Maine. 1.00

00:57:02.000 American Unagi's Instagram page we're on right now. 1.00

00:57:05.000 They're in Maine?

00:57:07.000 Yeah.

00:57:08.000 Our aquaculture.

00:57:09.000 That's cool.

00:57:09.000 The Amaroscata has great oysters there, too.

00:57:11.000 Yeah, amazing.

00:57:12.000 What about, have you guys ever cooked or eaten blueberry bear?

00:57:18.000 No, we don't.

00:57:20.000 Martijn in Montreal.

00:57:21.000 Martijn is eating bears.

00:57:23.000 He's hunting bears.

00:57:24.000 He goes and baits every weekend and then he goes in shacks. 0.93

00:57:28.000 What's a blueberry bear though?

00:57:29.000 My friend Steve Rinella has described this to me.

00:57:33.000 Apparently when bears eat blueberries, when they find, like it's towards the fall in particular, when they're trying to fatten up before they go into the den, they'll find these massive fields of blueberries.

00:57:42.000 He shot one in Alaska.

00:57:45.000 And this bear had eaten so many blueberries that when they opened it up, it smelled like blueberries.

00:57:50.000 The actual fat had a purple hue to it.

00:57:53.000 And it's supposed to be a spectacularly delicious meat.

00:57:57.000 That totally makes sense.

00:57:58.000 But you know, it's funny you say that because I was thinking about that with venison before.

00:58:02.000 We have some friends who had a venison farm and what they...

00:58:06.000 This is it right here.

00:58:07.000 This is Steve cooking it on his show.

00:58:09.000 The show's called Meat Eater.

00:58:10.000 Steve will actually be a guest on the show here Friday.

00:58:13.000 But see how the fat has a hue to it?

00:58:16.000 Amazing.

00:58:16.000 But he said it all smells like blueberry.

00:58:19.000 So he rendered down the bear fat, because this was all in the field, and then cooked the bear meat, this blueberry bear meat, chunks of it in the fat.

00:58:29.000 Well, if the pigment is liposoluble, then it would make sense that you find it in the fat.

00:58:34.000 But they made experiments, our friends with the deer farm, and what they did, they wanted to know if the taste of venison was owed to the fact that...

00:58:45.000 The diet of the animal or the way that hunters traditionally break down the meat in the field, the field dressing of the meat, you know?

00:58:53.000 So what they did is they put a beef, like a steer, and they shot him and they prepared him.

00:59:01.000 They dressed him the way you would a deer or a moose.

00:59:04.000 And then they, at the same time, did the same thing with the deer.

00:59:08.000 And then they did The slaughterhouse treatment, like a commercial treatment for both animals.

00:59:13.000 And they realize that once you wait a little bit, even on the beef, before you gut it, before you skin it and everything, that funky or that gamey taste will come even to beef.

00:59:28.000 So you picture that's what, yeast in nature?

00:59:32.000 It's probably also they think that you might lack the skills to properly extract the guts.

00:59:38.000 You might perforate the guts.

00:59:40.000 Sometimes you might perforate the bile pouch there.

00:59:44.000 Parts of the innards might come in contact.

00:59:48.000 That makes sense.

00:59:48.000 The skin will be on too long.

00:59:50.000 Or it's not bled properly as well.

00:59:51.000 Yeah, it's not blend properly and then, you know, it's not chilled super rapidly.

00:59:56.000 You kill in the morning, the whole sun is out, you know, you don't have a fridge with you, you have no water.

01:00:03.000 But on the other hand, when we have the wild rabbits, they taste like juniper.

01:00:10.000 Like, very, very, very strongly like juniper.

01:00:13.000 And that's, in fact, the challenge is to get rid of some of that juniper taste.

01:00:18.000 Yeah, it's like the partridge that we shoot at the lake.

01:00:20.000 And in fact, it's...

01:00:22.000 It tastes like spruce, spruce tips.

01:00:23.000 And instead of, when we cook sometimes, we'll cook meat, and then we'll even add...

01:00:29.000 Partridge or at home, I'll have a partridge or a wild rabbit just as seasoning to the rest of the pot.

01:00:36.000 If you look at all the traditional French-Canadian dishes of hunters, all the games are mixed up.

01:00:44.000 So you never have...

01:00:46.000 This is a modern cuisinier, like culinary fancy thing to have a breast of partridge seared on a bed of cabbage.

01:00:55.000 You know, those things are always treated with, like I said earlier, with fat, with like all the spices, with wine, with cognac, with layers of like...

01:01:04.000 Even organ meats in there and you put a crust over it and cabbage.

01:01:08.000 Like we said, it needs a lot of skills to eat good games.

01:01:13.000 I've never had gamey venison.

01:01:16.000 I've been very, very fortunate.

01:01:18.000 First of all, I've learned to hunt from people that really know what they're doing.

01:01:21.000 So we didn't let anything sit out in the heat and made sure we opened it up and cooled it out quickly.

01:01:26.000 But one of the things that they do do when guys are deep into the backcountry and they have an animal and they kill it, and even in the summer when it's warm out, what they do is they hang it and give it a lot of air circulation and it develops a crust on the outside.

01:01:42.000 And then they cut that crust back and then the meat underneath it is sort of tenderized in a lot of ways.

01:01:48.000 And a lot of hunters say that it's even more delicious that way.

01:01:51.000 Yeah, it's protected by the crust the air is created.

01:01:55.000 And of course it probably starts, the bacteriological work starts to work inside of that crust.

01:02:00.000 There's two process, right, by which the meat gets tender.

01:02:03.000 The first one is the rigor mortis, right?

01:02:07.000 Like the meat rests and the rigor mortis, like all, I guess all the cortisol and everything that like stiffens the meat at death.

01:02:14.000 Well, the meat will rest.

01:02:15.000 And then it's an enzymatic reaction where the enzymes work and break down some of the meat fibers and the tougher muscles and stuff.

01:02:22.000 In French, the word for resting meat is called faisandé.

01:02:27.000 And faisand is a pheasant, you know, because they used to hang the pheasants by the neck.

01:02:31.000 Yeah, until they fell.

01:02:33.000 You'd say when the beak falls off the skull, then they're ready to eat.

01:02:35.000 Yeah, I've seen that before.

01:02:37.000 That is so strange.

01:02:38.000 It's hard to eat.

01:02:39.000 I've had it a couple of times.

01:02:40.000 What does it taste like?

01:02:42.000 It tastes like death warmed over. 1.00

01:02:43.000 What the fuck is wrong with these people? 1.00

01:02:45.000 Why are they eating it like that? 0.99

01:02:46.000 Because a lot of people love strong flavors like blue cheese, like Munster cheese in Germany.

01:02:56.000 Because ultimately, if you just eat it fresh, it's chicken of the woods, really.

01:03:01.000 Right.

01:03:02.000 But it's good.

01:03:03.000 By letting it go a little bit, letting it rot a little bit, they get these secondary, tertiary, intense flavors.

01:03:11.000 Maybe, too, we're talking about probiotics.

01:03:15.000 Those traditional ways, you don't always know why you do them.

01:03:18.000 But maybe initially, you incubate, you immunize yourself a little bit.

01:03:26.000 The taste is, you got to love it after...

01:03:30.000 You're used to it, but initially it might be a way to have some of the bacterias.

01:03:35.000 I think you talked about soil-based probiotics before I read about that.

01:03:41.000 We're realizing that, okay, yogurt probiotics are not the whole thing.

01:03:45.000 So maybe there's soil-based probiotic, animal-based probiotic.

01:03:48.000 Maybe we're completely wrong about what flora we're ingesting.

01:03:52.000 And maybe there was like a...

01:03:54.000 A good way to get your flora.

01:03:55.000 Makes sense.

01:03:57.000 I guess there would be some strategies for taking that stuff in, but I would think flavor-wise, it would...

01:04:03.000 Because pheasant, if you just eat it fresh, it's delicious.

01:04:07.000 It's light.

01:04:07.000 It's very nice.

01:04:09.000 I would think that...

01:04:11.000 Unless there was no other way to store it, and they didn't have refrigeration, which of course they didn't when they first started doing this.

01:04:16.000 Refrigeration is a super modern invention, if you look back.

01:04:19.000 I worked for chefs in my apprenticeship that told me stories about their apprenticeship, and it's like night and day.

01:04:28.000 They said, when we woke up in the morning, we used to have to fill the ovens with coal, you know, and go down to the ice locker and drag an ice block through the...

01:04:40.000 What's that stuff called?

01:04:41.000 Sawdust.

01:04:42.000 Sawdust shed.

01:04:44.000 I was like, what?

01:04:45.000 Wow.

01:04:46.000 A lot of these old French restaurants that are famous had coal-fired ovens and ice block fridges.

01:04:55.000 And the apprentices would live above...

01:04:57.000 And they'd take shift, you know?

01:04:59.000 One night, it'd be you that would make sure it doesn't die, because otherwise it'd be hard to start again, you know?

01:05:04.000 Like, real cold.

01:05:05.000 Wow.

01:05:05.000 Yeah, the stoves would burn every day, all the time.

01:05:09.000 Wow.

01:05:09.000 The restaurant stove was ultimately, it was also heating the whole building as well.

01:05:15.000 The hotel was heated by the restaurant.

01:05:17.000 Wow.

01:05:18.000 Yeah.

01:05:19.000 Well, it makes sense.

01:05:21.000 I mean, it really does.

01:05:22.000 But there's not a lot of animals that they would let get that funky, other than...

01:05:28.000 Shark.

01:05:29.000 Shark.

01:05:30.000 Oh, that thing they do in Iceland, the pickled shark.

01:05:33.000 There's a Korean dish that I'm actually curious to try, a skate wing that is fermented.

01:05:39.000 But until it gets that ammonia flavor, you know, like...

01:05:43.000 You smell a camembert and a poise and you smell it.

01:05:45.000 It smells good.

01:05:46.000 Funky cheese.

01:05:47.000 Then you go a bit deeper, you know, bigger whiff, and then you're like, wow, Windex.

01:05:51.000 You know, you got like the ammonia and some people look for that.

01:05:54.000 Different cultures are into different flavors.

01:05:56.000 A friend of mine, Andy, went to Calcutta three weeks ago and came back with the number one candy in Calcutta or in India.

01:06:04.000 It's this weird candy called Pulse.

01:06:07.000 If we had one right now, all three of us, it's a repulsive candy that tastes incredibly of sulfur and fecal rot.

01:06:16.000 But in India, that's the candy.

01:06:20.000 Like, people love it.

01:06:21.000 What?

01:06:22.000 In American winemaking and French winemaking, there's things in winemaking called flaws.

01:06:27.000 You know, usually the flaws of wine in France and in natural winemaking, organic winemaking, will always be volatile acidity and Bertanomyces.

01:06:36.000 Wow.

01:06:38.000 Volatile acidity smells, in the wine, vastly of vinegar.

01:06:42.000 And Britannomyces smells vastly of fecal matter, barnyard fecal matter, you know?

01:06:49.000 These, in North American wine and even in French wine, are considered as flaws, you know?

01:06:55.000 In Japan, they love...

01:07:00.000 Natural wines from France that have high volatile acidity and Britannomyces smells.

01:07:07.000 What would be ultimately considered a flawed wine in France in natural wine world is considered a delicacy in Japan in the natural wine world.

01:07:17.000 Wow, so do they purposely take ones that have that funky smell and ship them off to Japan?

01:07:22.000 Some winemakers, you know, the wine agent will come and visit the cellar and usually the winemaker will point him in the direction and say, maybe this might be for, and then he goes, yes, yes, this is what we like.

01:07:34.000 Do they cultivate it on purpose in that direction?

01:07:36.000 I figure, like, nobody right now will come up and say it outright.

01:07:41.000 But I believe so.

01:07:43.000 As in, they don't stop it.

01:07:44.000 There are Japanese winemakers now all through France that work in a very funky way and are more or less pushing those wines into the Japanese market.

01:07:54.000 Okay, I have to try this just because it's disgusting.

01:07:56.000 So tell me what the name of the candy is again.

01:07:59.000 Pulse.

01:08:00.000 Spell that P-U-L-S-E. It's a green mango candy.

01:08:05.000 Originally, it's a classic snack, right?

01:08:07.000 They used a sulfur salt.

01:08:09.000 It's called black salt.

01:08:10.000 And they put a bit of chili and sulfur salt on mango.

01:08:14.000 And I have to admit that when I had the real green mango with the sulfur salt, it's not that bad.

01:08:19.000 That candy was like pushed.

01:08:20.000 It's like the mega warheads, you know, that we had as kids.

01:08:24.000 I wonder, too, sometimes, like, the gamey flavor of the pheasant, the cheese, the this, the eel, the that.

01:08:30.000 I see it sometimes as a bit of a, like, you know, the ghost pepper.

01:08:33.000 It's a bit of a pissing contest between...

01:08:36.000 Ah, yeah.

01:08:37.000 You know, like...

01:08:37.000 Right.

01:08:38.000 Like, no one could possibly enjoy the taste of ghost pepper, right?

01:08:42.000 No.

01:08:42.000 I mean, does it even have a taste?

01:08:44.000 I mean, are you even responding to that taste?

01:08:46.000 I won't even try it.

01:08:48.000 Have you at all?

01:08:49.000 You know who loves that?

01:08:50.000 You know Olivier?

01:08:51.000 Yes.

01:08:52.000 Those guys, they have, like...

01:08:54.000 Well, they watch, like, Game of Thrones.

01:08:55.000 They get together.

01:08:56.000 And they eat ghost peppers?

01:08:58.000 Oh, yeah.

01:08:59.000 We're talking about Olivier Aubin-Mercier, who's a fighter in the UFC. Yeah, and they'll have, like, ghost pepper parties, you know.

01:09:05.000 And then the next day, they'll go to Comic-Con and dress up as superheroes and then play some online poker and then eat more ghost peppers.

01:09:12.000 But he's also a UFC fighter.

01:09:14.000 I mean, you gotta think, he's a very extreme human being.

01:09:17.000 He's a funny kid.

01:09:18.000 He's a very, very, very nice guy.

01:09:20.000 If you didn't know that he was a trained killer, you'd have no idea if you talked to him.

01:09:25.000 He just seems like a gentleman.

01:09:26.000 Yeah, he's a sweetie.

01:09:27.000 He's a good kid.

01:09:28.000 For us, it's interesting.

01:09:31.000 We actually have a bit of a chapter in the book where we talk loosely about those guys and that relationship.

01:09:38.000 Well, you guys sponsored him or something?

01:09:40.000 Before the Reebok thing.

01:09:41.000 Right, yeah.

01:09:42.000 Because I remember one of the fights that we did in Montreal, we went to your restaurant afterwards and Olivier showed up after his fight.

01:09:51.000 And you guys were congratulating him.

01:09:53.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:09:54.000 His fiancée, his wife, his girlfriend works with us at the restaurant.

01:09:58.000 Yeah, for a long time now.

01:10:00.000 And, you know, we met because...

01:10:03.000 These guys, it's interesting, eh?

01:10:05.000 They're super into food.

01:10:07.000 And they're open to a lot of things.

01:10:10.000 And they're curious.

01:10:11.000 And a lot of them get aimed in the wrong direction, you know, like the brown rice and chicken direction.

01:10:20.000 And you're responsible for, in big part, for the awakening, the nutritional awakening of these guys.

01:10:27.000 You know, a lot of them go for their gun license now, just to be able to hunt.

01:10:31.000 They go fishing on the weekend.

01:10:32.000 They go for, like, two hours hike in the wood and, like, little fishing rod.

01:10:36.000 They come back with trouts and we get a phone call.

01:10:38.000 He's like, hey, Fred, I go fish for trouts. 1.00

01:10:40.000 You know, what do I do with that?

01:10:41.000 You know, it's...

01:10:42.000 It's a great thing.

01:10:44.000 And yeah, we did sponsor them after, but then what we do now is we cook for them post-Way In.

01:10:51.000 Ah.

01:10:53.000 Yeah.

01:10:53.000 Marco did GSP at the last fight at Madison Square Gardens.

01:10:57.000 The boys were there for a week.

01:10:58.000 We've done...

01:11:00.000 Tim Kennedy after...

01:11:01.000 So they came for a week and just hung out and cooked meals for them?

01:11:03.000 We send the kids, Marco and Fred goes and Gab goes, Gabrielle Joppo, they rent a suite.

01:11:11.000 And they prepare all of the meals up to weight cut and afterwards.

01:11:17.000 And do they have nutritional requirements for the weight cut?

01:11:20.000 They do.

01:11:22.000 They have a nutritionist there with them, but then they have the plan.

01:11:27.000 But I have a take on that.

01:11:31.000 If the nutritionist writes a plan and the food's not good and you don't eat it, then it doesn't work, right?

01:11:36.000 It can be right on paper, but if you don't take the pill, then you don't do the job.

01:11:41.000 You can say chicken and kale, this much grams, but we can...

01:11:44.000 A professional cook...

01:11:46.000 We'll make the kale delicious.

01:11:49.000 Or Brussels sprouts instead.

01:11:50.000 And cook the chicken properly.

01:11:52.000 Because the kale could be bad and the chicken could be dry.

01:11:55.000 And the thing, too, that works...

01:11:57.000 The guys are already suffering.

01:11:58.000 The thing that works the best in that case is that all of a sudden you have in the room, we set up a little table.

01:12:05.000 It's not like PlayStation dirty underwears, like pre-fight vibe.

01:12:10.000 It's...

01:12:10.000 Dining with friends.

01:12:11.000 It's dining with friends.

01:12:13.000 Yeah.

01:12:14.000 Whether it's Marco, Gab, me, we know.

01:12:15.000 We don't talk.

01:12:16.000 If you don't want to talk, if you want to talk, we're here, you know, and we'll hang out.

01:12:20.000 But then you feel like you're eggs in a tortilla, you feel like you're eggs with potatoes, or, like, it's mellow, and it helps a lot with just the context of not being, like, ordering pizza from room service, you know?

01:12:33.000 George used to tell us horror stories, you know, before some of his biggest wins years ago, George said, eating, like, room service rigatoni.

01:12:42.000 And pizza before a major fight, you know?

01:12:47.000 So now it's different.

01:12:48.000 And it's fun because, like David said earlier, we have many interests.

01:12:54.000 And it's great to be able to explore them like that, you know?

01:12:58.000 Because we couldn't...

01:13:00.000 We couldn't do this job if it was for, like, 12 stoves in the kitchen, a bunch of pans, cooking pieces of meat, writing books about the seasons, and tomatoes, and starting again.

01:13:12.000 Like, I couldn't do it.

01:13:13.000 Like, we love...

01:13:14.000 Yeah, being a chef is, like, one-dimensional, really, you know?

01:13:17.000 And that, whether it's, like, Olivier, whether it's, like, going to visit a Neil farm, and, you know, like, it makes it...

01:13:26.000 Worthwhile up to this point.

01:13:27.000 Well, you guys have a great philosophy about that, and that's one of the things that really came through with the Bourdain show when you guys were in the ice shack, is that you enjoy living well.

01:13:38.000 Yeah, everybody has to live better.

01:13:41.000 Take care of yourself, man.

01:13:43.000 Turn your phone off.

01:13:45.000 Sit with your kids.

01:13:46.000 Listen to them.

01:13:46.000 That's one of the things that I really liked.

01:13:47.000 Brilliant things, man.

01:13:48.000 Turn your phone off and come with stories.

01:13:50.000 I had friends.

01:13:53.000 I have all my children now.

01:13:54.000 I love to sit at the table and I'm quiet.

01:13:58.000 I just let them talk and ask me questions and watch them.

01:14:02.000 It's just the best.

01:14:03.000 My relationship with my kids is better than any relationship I have with any of my best friends.

01:14:07.000 My kids are more interesting.

01:14:09.000 My family is more interesting.

01:14:10.000 It's work to stay in contact with your family and even the staff.

01:14:19.000 I enjoy very much working in the restaurants that we've built.

01:14:25.000 I work five days a week With people that I've been working with for 15 years.

01:14:32.000 These are important relationships.

01:14:35.000 It's not employee-employer.

01:14:37.000 It's if you quit and you tell me you're leaving, I'm going to go in my car and cry.

01:14:42.000 I've been working with you for 15 years.

01:14:44.000 My relationship that I have with many people that I work with is intimate.

01:14:48.000 I've seen their children born.

01:14:49.000 I've seen them go through breakups.

01:14:51.000 I've seen their parents die.

01:14:53.000 I've seen...

01:14:55.000 We go to war every night at 6 o'clock.

01:14:58.000 150 people are coming to eat in the next three hours in four restaurants.

01:15:03.000 We, you know...

01:15:06.000 It's a job that's so different.

01:15:08.000 Very high-stress environment for five minutes.

01:15:11.000 For two hours, we've got to walk properly.

01:15:15.000 We're knowledgeable of each other's space.

01:15:17.000 There's a ballet, you know, when you're washing the glasses and the food's coming out behind you.

01:15:22.000 You know, you have a sixth sense to know to move, not to get the plate to burn your elbow.

01:15:27.000 You know, there's this ballet we dance every night with these people.

01:15:31.000 And for us to think that, like, and most people still think that we're behind the stove cooking.

01:15:36.000 I've got more phone calls to get help finding a doctor, therapist, whatever, you know, nutritionist for the staff.

01:15:46.000 Then I got calls about recipes or food.

01:15:49.000 You know, our job is I'm an expert in drainpipes.

01:15:54.000 Artisanal plumbing?

01:15:55.000 Artisanal electricity?

01:15:57.000 Artisanal refrigeration?

01:15:59.000 I know about concrete pouring now.

01:16:03.000 Why?

01:16:04.000 Because you've done it yourself?

01:16:05.000 Yeah, we have these restaurants.

01:16:06.000 They're very decrepit old buildings.

01:16:08.000 And you can't...

01:16:10.000 We're running restaurants with employees and a constant burden of payroll.

01:16:15.000 And we can't just call everybody all the time.

01:16:20.000 By default, any good cooking school today...

01:16:23.000 What Fred is saying, and Fred is the example of what a great chef should be, should be a very good cook, a very good person with people skills, but should also have a minor in electricity, plumbing, and refrigeration technology.

01:16:37.000 First aid, you know?

01:16:39.000 Even now, like, we both don't drink.

01:16:42.000 We both, I wouldn't say a health kick, but just, like, want to be there, you know?

01:16:47.000 Mind and body.

01:16:48.000 We want to be, like, present.

01:16:50.000 And that's...

01:16:51.000 We built something cool.

01:16:52.000 I want to appreciate it and not be clouded.

01:16:54.000 That's overlooked.

01:16:56.000 People don't think about that when they get into this job.

01:17:00.000 They think it's this warrior thing.

01:17:03.000 We're savage.

01:17:04.000 We're going to drink.

01:17:04.000 We're going to party.

01:17:05.000 We're going to do this.

01:17:06.000 No.

01:17:06.000 If you want to do that until you're 60 and then get a little cottage and write, paint, watercolor, buy a sailboat, you have to think about it.

01:17:16.000 You can't live that life of...

01:17:19.000 Why do you think that life is synonymous with chefs?

01:17:23.000 We've been promoted and taught ultimately that you will get paid, you will make money, you will persevere if you understand how to promote excessive eating and excessive drinking.

01:17:34.000 You will be recompensed if you build a place where people come and eat too much and drink too much and then spend too much, then you will be able to have a life, a car, a house, and raise children.

01:17:46.000 Okay, so it's all good.

01:17:47.000 First you have to learn how to cook, then you have to learn how to run a restaurant, then you have to learn what a restaurant looks like, and how to host, what the playlist should be like, how to fix a plumbing disaster, how to fix an electricity disaster, how to fix a staff situation disaster,

01:18:03.000 how to run a clean house, or people are working together with all their different idiosyncrasies.

01:18:12.000 But...

01:18:14.000 For my whole apprenticeship, alcohol was a reward.

01:18:18.000 You did a good job tonight.

01:18:20.000 Drink. 0.99

01:18:22.000 And then it went from reward to, oh shit, there was like a blood bath in the restaurant. 0.99

01:18:28.000 We had to pick up this guy at the hospital. 0.99

01:18:31.000 Okay, it's not a reward.

01:18:32.000 Let's forget about it.

01:18:33.000 Let's drink.

01:18:35.000 And it was always there.

01:18:39.000 Great service.

01:18:40.000 Let's have a drink.

01:18:41.000 You're in the food industry, but you're also in the wine industry.

01:18:44.000 Because 50% of what you're doing is selling food to people, and the other 50% of what you're doing is selling alcohol to people.

01:18:49.000 So by default, you're part of the people that sell food.

01:18:54.000 A liquid drug.

01:18:55.000 And you're in that world every day.

01:18:58.000 You go to wine tastings.

01:18:59.000 You talk with people that sell alcohol at bartenders.

01:19:01.000 You talk to people that sell wine.

01:19:03.000 You're partaking, eating in your colleagues' restaurants and drinking wine.

01:19:07.000 Next thing you know, you have a little bit of celebrity.

01:19:09.000 You've been open for 15 years.

01:19:11.000 And you look back and you go, there's seven days in a week.

01:19:17.000 And I drank six of them.

01:19:22.000 I don't feel good on Sunday.

01:19:24.000 I'm just kind of recovering.

01:19:25.000 And then what happens is one week turns into two to four, and then you kind of look back and you realize in 2017 that you may have drank 48 weeks out of 52. And then it goes quick.

01:19:43.000 Then it's 10 years.

01:19:45.000 You're a 10-year restaurant, and you've been drinking...

01:19:49.000 Five days out of the week for ten years.

01:19:52.000 And then all of a sudden, you kind of have a problem.

01:19:54.000 You realize that, like, my day-to-day is based on food and wine.

01:20:00.000 Right?

01:20:00.000 Now, I don't want my...

01:20:01.000 It's not making me happy.

01:20:02.000 I've had all the wines.

01:20:03.000 I've had all the foods.

01:20:06.000 Am I better for it?

01:20:07.000 Not really.

01:20:08.000 What am I better for?

01:20:09.000 Restriction.

01:20:10.000 Eating less.

01:20:11.000 Eating clean.

01:20:13.000 Drinking only on very special occasions.

01:20:16.000 Do you still drink on special occasions?

01:20:17.000 I don't.

01:20:18.000 I'm completely sober, no.

01:20:19.000 Did you make that decision based on the idea that you weren't able to control it?

01:20:24.000 Or just that the best decision would be to just completely eliminate it?

01:20:29.000 Textbook case of a person who couldn't drink.

01:20:32.000 Yeah, I tried several times to stop.

01:20:34.000 I googled it.

01:20:35.000 I read about it.

01:20:35.000 It didn't work.

01:20:36.000 I was intervention by Fred and my managers of the restaurants in January 12th, around there, 16th, I think we figured.

01:20:45.000 Of this year?

01:20:46.000 Yeah.

01:20:47.000 I'm eight months sober or something.

01:20:48.000 Congratulations.

01:20:49.000 Thank you.

01:20:49.000 You look really good.

01:20:51.000 Thank you.

01:20:51.000 Thank you so much.

01:20:52.000 You do.

01:20:52.000 You look healthy.

01:20:52.000 I'm happy, man.

01:20:53.000 It changes the skin, everything.

01:20:56.000 Isn't it amazing when that happens?

01:20:58.000 Conversation.

01:20:59.000 I was angry for a long time.

01:21:01.000 It's not only alcoholism.

01:21:04.000 I think all alcoholics are codependent somewhat.

01:21:08.000 It had been part of my whole apprenticeship, not being sober for so many years.

01:21:13.000 It was all under control and funny for a very, very long time.

01:21:16.000 It was always a big part of my life, drinking wine, eating food.

01:21:21.000 Until it wasn't.

01:21:22.000 Then one day, I was 45, my relationship with alcohol changed.

01:21:26.000 I became dark.

01:21:28.000 I became unhappy.

01:21:29.000 I had success.

01:21:30.000 I had beautiful children.

01:21:31.000 I was not happy.

01:21:34.000 I tried many different things.

01:21:36.000 Nothing worked.

01:21:37.000 I was interventioned by people that I work with that are dear to me, that I love very much, I guess that love me.

01:21:43.000 They're tired of watching me.

01:21:46.000 You know, make bad decisions and I just went to a great rehab called Chatsworth that Educated me.

01:21:56.000 You know, I was sitting in a classroom with a pad and paper for six hours a day, learning about the disease called alcoholism, learning about a disease that 30% of the population has, you know, and how and why I was an addict,

01:22:12.000 you know?

01:22:13.000 First, I was an addict with food.

01:22:15.000 Then, you know, at a young age, after a traumatic event, then I was an addict with beer, then I was an addict with marijuana, like, you know, all drugs, and then I was an addict with wine.

01:22:24.000 Follow up a couple more traumatic events in my, you know, horrendous apprenticeship and the stress of leadership in these restaurants.

01:22:32.000 You know, one thing led to another.

01:22:33.000 My relationship with alcohol became not positive.

01:22:36.000 With help, I understood.

01:22:38.000 Through education, I understood.

01:22:39.000 And now everything's great.

01:22:41.000 It's funny, too, because...

01:22:44.000 I saw it as an example.

01:22:46.000 You know, I don't like to tell him, but maybe it's a little bit of mentoring, you know?

01:22:50.000 I was the canary in the coal mine for Fred. 1.00

01:22:52.000 You know, and I decided, I was like, fuck. 0.99

01:22:54.000 You know, after Tony passed, I was like, you know, I remember I was working on a new project doing tilings, and I was like, oh, I heard the news in the morning. 0.99

01:23:04.000 I went to tile all day, and then I couldn't wait to get home and have, like, two bottles of wine.

01:23:09.000 And I was like, why?

01:23:11.000 And...

01:23:12.000 We were the same about that.

01:23:14.000 It didn't matter, like, what we loved at a point.

01:23:17.000 Look, for example, we loved MMA, right?

01:23:19.000 We loved going to the fights.

01:23:20.000 We were, like, so fortunate.

01:23:21.000 We'd go and see, we met the Fertitta brothers.

01:23:24.000 We discussed, like, we sat with them at dinner table.

01:23:27.000 We met you.

01:23:28.000 We met all those guys.

01:23:30.000 David loves winemaking, met all the winemakers.

01:23:32.000 We met the best people in the field that we loved.

01:23:36.000 Charmed life, not happy. 1.00

01:23:37.000 Not happy. 1.00

01:23:38.000 Like ungrateful fucking little pricks. 1.00

01:23:41.000 Well, you know, I think part of the problem is that alcohol is a depressant. 1.00

01:23:45.000 Correct.

01:23:45.000 It's your problem.

01:23:46.000 Just you get down.

01:23:49.000 It brings you down.

01:23:50.000 It brings your energy level down.

01:23:52.000 It brings your vitality down.

01:23:53.000 It's also a solvent.

01:23:54.000 Alcohol is a solvent, and it destroys your soft brain tissue.

01:23:58.000 You know, I was taught that in rehab.

01:23:59.000 I said, would you drink acetone?

01:24:01.000 I go, no.

01:24:02.000 Well, if it was made by a lovely French vineyard and had great aroma...

01:24:09.000 But do you miss anything about the flavor of wine with a meal or anything?

01:24:14.000 Have you ever tried non-alcoholic wines?

01:24:16.000 I don't even know.

01:24:17.000 Non-alcoholic beers?

01:24:18.000 I go to wine tastings.

01:24:19.000 I was just at Raw Wine in Los Angeles.

01:24:21.000 I went to taste all the natural wines, beautiful natural wine festival.

01:24:25.000 And you can taste them still?

01:24:27.000 I taste them.

01:24:27.000 I don't swallow.

01:24:28.000 I rinse my mouth out.

01:24:29.000 I'm very much involved in natural wine and viticulture, reading, and all that stuff.

01:24:36.000 That's got to be so weird to have a mouthful of delicious wine just spit into a bucket.

01:24:40.000 No, it's the same.

01:24:41.000 Really?

01:24:41.000 Yeah.

01:24:43.000 Why did I drink wine?

01:24:45.000 Olfactory, the nose, the flavor, understanding the winemaker, his philosophy, the geography of where the wine comes from, his work...

01:24:55.000 You know, with using organic and biodynamic viticulture, not using sulfur, just making this amazing organic beverage with very little intervention, natural wine.

01:25:09.000 Without side effects.

01:25:10.000 I don't have to swallow it because the drug is the same drug that's in all the other ones.

01:25:15.000 That they can't change.

01:25:17.000 The flavor is what's different.

01:25:18.000 Yes.

01:25:18.000 And what I like is more of the story, the guy, the vineyard, the varietals.

01:25:24.000 Would you eat at a fine restaurant and have a delicious steak and a wine accompaniment and then just spit it into a bucket?

01:25:30.000 I've done it.

01:25:31.000 It goes to the bathroom.

01:25:32.000 I was really worried.

01:25:34.000 He shuts his mouth and he goes to the bathroom.

01:25:36.000 I was worried that...

01:25:36.000 With a mouthful of wine.

01:25:39.000 Ryan Gray, our friend from Elena that worked with us for years, Ryan goes to a restaurant and asks for a bucket...

01:25:48.000 He'll sit with other people, people in the wine business, and they all drink wine, and he tastes the wine, and he has discussions about wine, and he tastes it and spits it.

01:25:56.000 Because he's an alcoholic.

01:25:58.000 Yeah, he's a recovered alcoholic.

01:25:59.000 Three years, but he's a wine buyer, and he's very much involved.

01:26:02.000 He was my mentor when I got out of rehab, because in rehab they were telling me, you may never be able to go back to the restaurant.

01:26:10.000 What?

01:26:11.000 Yeah.

01:26:11.000 High risk of re-offending.

01:26:13.000 Yeah.

01:26:13.000 And I was like, I can't.

01:26:15.000 I don't know anything else.

01:26:17.000 I have no education.

01:26:18.000 I've been in kitchen since I'm 17. It's way too late for med school, and we don't do well in Adderall.

01:26:23.000 I really don't want to clean iceberg lettuce at the fruits and vegetables store and try to make a go of that.

01:26:29.000 And you know, it's funny, too.

01:26:30.000 Even de-alkalized beer, non-alcoholic beer, it's better than alcoholic beer.

01:26:36.000 What are you talking about?

01:26:37.000 Heineken 00, man.

01:26:39.000 Crisp.

01:26:39.000 Really?

01:26:40.000 Crisp.

01:26:40.000 Outstanding.

01:26:41.000 Really?

01:26:42.000 Heineken 00?

01:26:44.000 Outstanding.

01:26:44.000 It's really good?

01:26:45.000 It's fine.

01:26:46.000 Well, I've only had like O'Doul's. 1.00

01:26:48.000 No, that's not good.

01:26:49.000 Okay, so Heineken does it correctly.

01:26:52.000 The order of non-alcoholic beer, okay, in my head is Heineken 00, Carlsberg 00, Grolsch, zero.

01:27:03.000 Bex, zero.

01:27:05.000 And then everything else is not good after that.

01:27:07.000 Let me add to that because I'm also celiac, right?

01:27:11.000 And there's a Glutenberg they make in Montreal that's no gluten and no alcohol.

01:27:17.000 Now you can insert any joke you want.

01:27:21.000 People are signing off the podcast right now. 0.99

01:27:24.000 I thought these guys were going to talk about heroin and getting fucked up and eating meat. 0.98

01:27:28.000 Though we eat meat. 0.99

01:27:29.000 Yes, I'm sure.

01:27:30.000 I'm sure.

01:27:31.000 That's fascinating, though, that you actually still taste it.

01:27:35.000 It's almost like if you're a heroin addict just scratching the skin with the needle.

01:27:41.000 We don't penetrate anymore.

01:27:43.000 I don't recommend that.

01:27:44.000 My therapist and the people at rehab do not recommend that I taste wine and spit it.

01:27:50.000 I'm sure they don't.

01:27:51.000 But I have friends, again, I know a lot of sommeliers, and even I know winemakers, some of the most famous winemakers in the world I've met in Burgundy at an AAB that are completely sober.

01:28:03.000 Wow.

01:28:04.000 Because they wanted to break this cycle of my great-grandfather was an alcoholic, abusive person, my grandfather was an alcoholic, abusive person, my father was an alcoholic, abusive person, and I didn't want to take over this thousand-year-old winery, the legacy of my family.

01:28:20.000 I didn't want to work here.

01:28:21.000 And I'm sure, like, you know, with all the epigenetic stuff, if you don't drink when your kids are young, like, there might be a thing where you can stop the passing of the gene, you know?

01:28:31.000 But you did Sober October.

01:28:32.000 How'd you do?

01:28:33.000 Fine.

01:28:34.000 Yeah.

01:28:34.000 Well, I did, but...

01:28:35.000 You didn't love it.

01:28:36.000 No, it wasn't...

01:28:36.000 How was the relapse?

01:28:38.000 Sobriety wasn't...

01:28:38.000 This was a very crazy Sober October because we added this insane fitness challenge.

01:28:43.000 So I was literally working out between three and a half to five and a half...

01:28:47.000 One day, six and a half hours in a day.

01:28:49.000 Whoa.

01:28:50.000 Yeah, it was insane.

01:28:51.000 One day I did five and a half hours and I did another hour at night.

01:28:54.000 Six and a half hours in the day.

01:28:56.000 We were trying to kill each other to see who could get the most points.

01:28:58.000 We had a fitness tracker.

01:29:00.000 We wore this heart rate monitor.

01:29:02.000 Oh yeah, I heard that.

01:29:03.000 The application would score up the amount of points you would get.

01:29:06.000 Who won?

01:29:06.000 I won.

01:29:07.000 That's the belt right there.

01:29:09.000 If you get 70% of your max heart rate, you get three points per minute.

01:29:13.000 This is how crazy it got.

01:29:15.000 70% of your max heart rate is three points per minute.

01:29:17.000 80% and above your max heart rate is four points per minute.

01:29:20.000 One day, I got a thousand points.

01:29:23.000 So just think about that. 0.99

01:29:24.000 Think about how many minutes you have to exercise at 80% of your max heart rate to get a thousand fucking points. 0.98

01:29:30.000 So you think sober helped you with performance or recuperation? 0.99

01:29:34.000 I think I was on drugs the entire time.

01:29:35.000 This is what I think.

01:29:36.000 I think I was on the endorphins that come from long-range cardio. 0.99

01:29:41.000 There's what I was calling the I-don't-give-a-fuck drug. 0.99

01:29:45.000 There's you get this... 0.98

01:29:46.000 This feeling when you do, like everybody always talked about runner's high, and I never really experienced it, even though I had worked out really hard my whole life.

01:29:54.000 I'd never been into like long-range cardio.

01:29:57.000 I'd never done hours and hours of the same activity, just droning on, you know, either on a bike or running.

01:30:04.000 I'd never really done that.

01:30:05.000 I'd run hills for the most part, and I'm sure it benefited me and it made me relaxed, but it's at a totally different level when you're doing it for three and a half hours, four hours a day.

01:30:16.000 It's a true survival mechanism that kicks in.

01:30:18.000 It's that, but it's also you feel wonderful.

01:30:21.000 You have zero anxiety.

01:30:23.000 And you're still benefiting from that?

01:30:26.000 No, no, that's what's interesting.

01:30:28.000 I've been out of the house for a week now because of the fires, so we've been running around and the kids aren't in school, so they're here hanging out with me.

01:30:39.000 We haven't had a chance to get our stuff together.

01:30:42.000 It's been very stressful, so I haven't really been working out much.

01:30:46.000 I've only worked out like once or twice this week, so I have more stress.

01:30:49.000 I feel a little bit more tense, a little bit more take a deep breath, calm down, During October, I had none of that.

01:30:56.000 None of that.

01:30:56.000 I felt great.

01:30:58.000 I was like, if you could take how I feel and put it in a pill form and give it to people, everyone would be hooked on it.

01:31:04.000 Because you feel fantastic.

01:31:06.000 And I never understood that.

01:31:07.000 I would see these people running every day, and I thought they were just exercise fanatics.

01:31:12.000 Like, they just want to be leaner, or they want to just...

01:31:15.000 Maybe they're obsessed.

01:31:16.000 Body obsessed, yeah.

01:31:17.000 Yeah, maybe that's what it was. 0.95

01:31:18.000 But I think they're drug addicts.

01:31:20.000 They're natural drug addicts, but in a very positive way.

01:31:23.000 I shouldn't call it drug addicts.

01:31:25.000 Endorphin junkies. 0.64

01:31:26.000 That's what they are.

01:31:27.000 It makes sense, too, that you would...

01:31:31.000 Every cycle...

01:31:33.000 In nature, it's like feast and famine.

01:31:35.000 It's like running and resting.

01:31:37.000 If you're a hunter-gatherer, you don't hunt every day.

01:31:42.000 You follow a cycle.

01:31:44.000 For a month, you'll hunt.

01:31:46.000 You'll drag back the meat home.

01:31:48.000 You'll eat a lot.

01:31:48.000 And then after the next month, you'll be quiet.

01:31:51.000 You'll eat less.

01:31:52.000 And then the next month...

01:31:53.000 So there's very little exercise program out there that look at it like that.

01:31:57.000 But if you were to look at it over a year, maybe you'd see it like...

01:32:00.000 I see October is more quiet.

01:32:02.000 I'll do my month in October.

01:32:04.000 November will be quiet.

01:32:05.000 Busy with other things after that.

01:32:07.000 I'll go back to it in December.

01:32:08.000 It's better for the soul, too.

01:32:10.000 You don't have this...

01:32:11.000 Is there any obsession looming over you that you have to do it tomorrow morning and at night?

01:32:16.000 Well, my take on it was a little bit different.

01:32:18.000 My take on it is that everyone's anxiety levels and all the different stress and all the things we deal with, a lot of it is because your body has capabilities.

01:32:26.000 And you're not using even a small percentage of those capabilities, so it's always like, what are we doing?

01:32:31.000 Are we going?

01:32:32.000 We're going to go?

01:32:33.000 And we're in traffic, you're moving quickly, so you're constantly aware of all these cars around you, and there's all this stress, and there's very little physical release that the body takes part in.

01:32:43.000 And for most people, I mean, the great percentage of our population lives a sedentary lifestyle.

01:32:48.000 They sit in their cars until they get to the office, they sit in their office until they get home, they sit in front of the TV until they go to sleep.

01:32:53.000 This is a giant percentage of our population, whatever the number is.

01:32:57.000 It's very normal, and occasionally they work out, and when they do, it's a struggle.

01:33:02.000 When you force the body into rigorous exercise on a constant basis, your body's, all the needs of this capacity, the capabilities that it has, all those needs are satisfied.

01:33:15.000 So what I found is incredibly low anxiety levels.

01:33:19.000 And I didn't think I had anxiety.

01:33:20.000 I'm not an anxious person to the point where I thought about taking medication for anxiety, like I'm nervous or...

01:33:26.000 But I didn't know how anxiety-free I could be until I did this exercise program for a month.

01:33:35.000 See, I found that in sobriety.

01:33:36.000 I suffered, and Fred suffered from anxiety our whole careers.

01:33:41.000 Every day, 200, 300 people are coming for dinner.

01:33:46.000 Painful.

01:33:47.000 It's always there in my head.

01:33:47.000 It's crippling.

01:33:47.000 Is there staff?

01:33:49.000 There's 300 people coming.

01:33:50.000 It never goes away.

01:33:51.000 There's always people coming for dinner.

01:33:52.000 Are they happy?

01:33:53.000 I'm throwing 400 people every night.

01:33:56.000 But when I was drinking, that would just keep the stress going.

01:34:01.000 Now I'm fine.

01:34:02.000 It's gone.

01:34:02.000 That's interesting.

01:34:03.000 There's this magic number.

01:34:04.000 I kept on hearing in rehab, and I kept on hearing through therapy.

01:34:07.000 Four months?

01:34:08.000 16 weeks, man.

01:34:09.000 16 weeks. 1.00

01:34:10.000 I was like, yeah, shut up, fuck. 1.00

01:34:11.000 You know, what's this fucking guy who's always telling me about these 16 weeks? 1.00

01:34:13.000 They're like, 16 weeks, man. 0.99

01:34:15.000 Watch 16 weeks.

01:34:18.000 The morning, 16 weeks.

01:34:20.000 That morning.

01:34:22.000 I woke up that morning and my phone said, oh, 16 weeks.

01:34:28.000 And I had this peace and this joy and this childhood...

01:34:37.000 Innocence that I hadn't had in years on the day, 16 weeks.

01:34:42.000 Not because I'd been premeditating in my head and I was looking forward to the 16 weeks.

01:34:45.000 I didn't believe in it.

01:34:47.000 But it was literally 16 weeks of sobriety that brought this I was clear.

01:34:53.000 The drain is clogged.

01:34:55.000 No problem.

01:34:56.000 I'll be there in half an hour.

01:34:58.000 Yeah.

01:34:58.000 As it should be.

01:34:59.000 The fridges don't work.

01:35:01.000 The lights are out in the restaurant and five tables are unhappy.

01:35:04.000 I'm coming down.

01:35:05.000 Do you think that some of the anxiety was just your body responding to the fact that you were poisoning it all the time?

01:35:10.000 I also think it's the psyche creating reasons for you to drink.

01:35:16.000 Your mind is telling you, you're stressed.

01:35:20.000 I have a quick remedy for it.

01:35:22.000 Why don't you try drinking?

01:35:23.000 When you feel this way, usually what's your go-to?

01:35:26.000 I'd be like, I could taste sometimes when I'd fall into stressful situations at the restaurant, three tables I don't like, a couple of criminal elements behaving badly at one table.

01:35:37.000 Maybe on the border of lacking respect to their waitress, I might have to get involved, and I could almost taste Chardonnay in my salivary glands.

01:35:46.000 Yeah, your brain still plays the trick on you.

01:35:48.000 My brain was making me high before the high.

01:35:51.000 I was like, why do I taste Chardonnay?

01:35:55.000 I think it's the same with sugar addiction too, where people eat sugar, lots of carbs, mostly carbs.

01:36:02.000 Then you're like, oh man, I have to go for three hours without eating.

01:36:06.000 I have to bring something sweet with me because I'm going to get shaky.

01:36:11.000 It's like you're feeding basically.

01:36:13.000 I don't know if it's your gut biome that changes, but you're feeding a monster inside of you.

01:36:18.000 You're not feeding Fred or David.

01:36:20.000 You're like feeding something else, you know?

01:36:22.000 Like you're planning a weekend at the cottage.

01:36:24.000 You're like, the kids are going to be loud.

01:36:26.000 I'm going to have to bring like two more bottles of wine, you know?

01:36:28.000 And I have to make sure that the wine is cold and have to make sure we have that.

01:36:32.000 Or like you have to, you know, I have friends like that.

01:36:34.000 I have to make sure I have like four granola bars because I have to eat all the time.

01:36:37.000 And you know that.

01:36:38.000 If you don't have breakfast, you have like a quick coffee.

01:36:41.000 You can go till like four or five in the afternoon and not shaking and getting cold and sweaty, you know?

01:36:49.000 Especially if you have a good, healthy diet.

01:36:51.000 If your body's not sugar-dependent.

01:36:53.000 I think it's funny, eh?

01:36:55.000 Every time...

01:36:57.000 You know, sometimes we fall off the wagon and stuff.

01:36:59.000 And I was pretty solid for a few years.

01:37:02.000 I think that two weeks of drinking more water, having walks, and not eating ice cream and fries, and two weeks of home-cooked meals and water, cutting down on coffee, because that, too, will fuck with your anxiety, you know?

01:37:17.000 Sure.

01:37:17.000 We know this, too, like both of us.

01:37:19.000 So many diseases are based simply on overconsumption.

01:37:23.000 Mm-hmm.

01:37:23.000 Yeah.

01:37:24.000 Just period.

01:37:25.000 Overconsumption of cigarettes, overconsumption of alcohol, overconsumption of sugar, overconsumption of meat, carbs.

01:37:31.000 Restriction brings clarity.

01:37:33.000 Yes, and restriction diets are one of the best remedies for people with autoimmune diseases.

01:37:37.000 Oh, really?

01:37:37.000 Yeah.

01:37:38.000 They cut down almost everything.

01:37:40.000 One of the things that people are doing today that's very popular, but I keep talking about this, unfortunately, is the carnivore diet.

01:37:46.000 Because Jordan Peterson made it very popular when he was on the podcast.

01:37:50.000 It's really fascinating.

01:37:51.000 There's a spike.

01:37:52.000 If you look at the Google search results for carnivore diet, it's July of 2018. It goes like this.

01:37:59.000 Takes off because that's the day that Jordan was on the podcast.

01:38:01.000 So he's on the podcast, you know...

01:38:04.000 Whatever amount of millions of people listened and watched it.

01:38:07.000 Steak, salt, and water.

01:38:08.000 Because of his ranting and raving about the positive benefits that he's experienced.

01:38:14.000 On the carnivore diet, people really got into it.

01:38:16.000 I got into it as well.

01:38:17.000 What is it about this?

01:38:19.000 I started consulting a lot of actual nutrition experts and scientists.

01:38:23.000 What they believe is what's going on is calorie restriction.

01:38:26.000 Because of the fact that Jordan is only eating steak with salt and drinking water.

01:38:33.000 That is all he's consuming and he feels fantastic.

01:38:35.000 And not lean steak.

01:38:37.000 Real steak.

01:38:38.000 Yes, fatty.

01:38:39.000 So then you can't eat too much because you have the fat.

01:38:41.000 You're feeling full.

01:38:43.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:38:44.000 That fat is important.

01:38:46.000 Yeah, and because of this, quite a few autoimmune issues that he had went away.

01:38:50.000 He was having receding gums.

01:38:52.000 That went away.

01:38:54.000 He was having severe depression and anxiety and all these different issues.

01:38:59.000 That went away.

01:38:59.000 Lost a tremendous amount of weight.

01:39:01.000 His body leaned up.

01:39:02.000 And the scientists that I've talked about...

01:39:06.000 You know, this is a very new thing for people to embark on this and do it on a mass scale because there's quite a few people doing it.

01:39:12.000 What they're attributing it to is the calorie restriction, is that because of the fact that you really can't eat that much steak, if you eat a steak, you know, it might be a thousand calories, whereas if you eat a full, big, Thick steak, lots of fat.

01:39:26.000 1,000 calories of steak is a lot of steak.

01:39:28.000 Right.

01:39:28.000 But, I mean, he might be eating two of those in a day, whereas if you're eating french fries and soda, you're getting way more than that.

01:39:40.000 What do you think an 18-ounce ribeye is, if you had a guess, calorically?

01:39:45.000 11?

01:39:46.000 18?

01:39:46.000 600?

01:39:47.000 800?

01:39:48.000 Depends if you have like the end of the rack.

01:39:52.000 Okay, so let's just get crazy and let's call it 700. It's probably like 1700 calories a day.

01:39:57.000 Yeah.

01:39:58.000 Because he's not putting cream in the coffee.

01:39:59.000 He's not having a...

01:40:01.000 Seven to nothing.

01:40:02.000 Water and steak.

01:40:04.000 When I started eating no gluten, right?

01:40:06.000 It's fully diagnosed, right?

01:40:08.000 I'm not making this up.

01:40:09.000 I stopped eating gluten.

01:40:11.000 He gets flack every day.

01:40:12.000 What does that mean?

01:40:13.000 Everybody gets crazy about the gluten thing.

01:40:15.000 No, he is.

01:40:15.000 They don't want to hear it.

01:40:16.000 People don't want to hear it.

01:40:17.000 We don't want to hear it.

01:40:18.000 I sit.

01:40:19.000 But what does it mean?

01:40:19.000 I don't eat gluten.

01:40:21.000 Smoking cigarettes.

01:40:22.000 Smoking cigarettes.

01:40:23.000 But what does it mean, no gluten?

01:40:25.000 It means that you don't go to...

01:40:26.000 No drive-thru.

01:40:27.000 No slip.

01:40:28.000 Right.

01:40:29.000 There's no...

01:40:31.000 There's no options out there in the fast food world.

01:40:34.000 So I have to plan my day.

01:40:35.000 So I'll eat a piece of meat for breakfast or eggs or whatever, and then I won't eat until I show up at work or at home later and eat.

01:40:45.000 So it's what you've excluded that counts.

01:40:49.000 It's not that the steak is so good for you.

01:40:52.000 It's that you're not eating all this processed food anymore because you can't eat it anymore.

01:40:57.000 That's what the scientists are saying.

01:40:58.000 But the people that are pro-meat, it's really fascinating because they're just as culty as the vegans are.

01:41:03.000 The people that are the real pro-carnivore diets, they want you to think that it's the meat that's healing them, the meat that's helping them, the meat that's making them lean.

01:41:14.000 Well, it's not hurting you.

01:41:15.000 I mean, it's nutritious.

01:41:17.000 I mean, there's a lot of real nutrients in red meat.

01:41:19.000 And this is also a problem with a lot of studies that people have A lot of vegans love to cite about heart attacks, strokes, cancer in relationship to meat.

01:41:31.000 These epidemiology studies, they're essentially saying, look, when you look at people that eat meat five days a week, these are the people that have higher instances of cancer, higher instances of diabetes, all these different things.

01:41:42.000 What they're not taking into consideration is they're not just eating meat.

01:41:45.000 They're usually eating a cheeseburger with fries and a soda, and there's all this sugar.

01:41:50.000 Two gimlets before dinner.

01:41:51.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:41:51.000 It's bullshit that's involved with the meat. 0.99

01:41:54.000 There's not any studies that show that people who eat a grass-fed... 0.99

01:41:57.000 Only meat and water.

01:41:58.000 Yeah, a 12-ounce grass-fed steak with a good plate of sautéed spinach and olive oil and garlic that these people are getting cancer.

01:42:06.000 There's no doubt on that.

01:42:07.000 There's nothing.

01:42:08.000 You can't make a nutritional study.

01:42:10.000 It's impossible.

01:42:11.000 People fundamentally lie.

01:42:13.000 So you cannot have people, you cannot say, like, this is cocoa fat and beef tenderloin, I'm gonna give you a weak portion, you go home, then you come to report, we do blood tests.

01:42:22.000 You get anecdotal evidence from people that talk about their own personal diet, but yeah, it's very difficult.

01:42:29.000 And it's also...

01:42:30.000 Very ideologically based.

01:42:32.000 I mean, whether it's on one side with the vegans or the other side with the carnivore diet people, I find the same psychological characteristics in both groups.

01:42:41.000 They want to convert people, they want to proselytize, they want people to think that their way is the right way, and they are not honest about health issues that they're having.

01:42:50.000 You should make like a...

01:42:51.000 A conference on a deserted island, you know, in a rich man's castle, like a Bruce Lee movie, and you invite the vegans on one side and you don't tell them you're also inviting the other, you know?

01:43:01.000 And then both groups, you just have like a kumite. 0.58

01:43:04.000 Well, both groups think the other group is going to drop dead any second now.

01:43:07.000 The proof is in the pudding.

01:43:09.000 If somebody is on your podcast to talk about eating meat, he's alive and he's not dead, so it works.

01:43:15.000 You know, like, why look any further?

01:43:18.000 Well, who knows how long they're gonna last.

01:43:20.000 Well, none of us are getting out of this alive.

01:43:22.000 No, that's for sure.

01:43:22.000 When it comes to meat, do you guys prefer a grass-fed beef, or do you like corn-fed?

01:43:30.000 Because I had this discussion with Tony, and he was telling me that he actually liked corn-fed beef.

01:43:36.000 He's like, it's a fattier...

01:43:37.000 There's two schools of thought, and then there's two schools of what is quality beef.

01:43:43.000 Right.

01:43:46.000 So...

01:43:47.000 One school will say, yeah, quality beef is an organic animal, pasture-raised, eating grass, the flavor's different, it's not as tender, but it is high-quality beef.

01:44:02.000 Okay, then the other, of course, is, you know, a cow, USDA Prime, corn-fed, incredible marbling, ridiculous fat content, restricted motion.

01:44:18.000 I'd say a lesser quality beef than the other.

01:44:23.000 But they all start grass-fed, though.

01:44:24.000 Eating-wise...

01:44:25.000 They're all pastured at first.

01:44:27.000 Eating-wise, pound for pound, the corn-fed steak will be more delicious for some people.

01:44:39.000 And then for some people, the other one will be.

01:44:42.000 In my mind, the grass-fed, organic, pasture beef with its different flavor, for me, is a higher quality animal.

01:44:53.000 I prefer that taste.

01:44:54.000 Correct.

01:44:55.000 I feel it's a richer taste.

01:44:56.000 It's a denser, darker meat.

01:44:58.000 More of that iron taste.

01:44:59.000 Yeah, I just like it better.

01:45:00.000 And I do like a corn-fed steak.

01:45:03.000 I do like it.

01:45:04.000 But there is.

01:45:04.000 And the general public, the steak-eating public that come to restaurants and counter more corn-fed beef, and their first...

01:45:17.000 Judge of character to the quality of that meat is...

01:45:20.000 Marbling.

01:45:21.000 It's tenderness.

01:45:23.000 It's marbling.

01:45:24.000 It's not tender.

01:45:25.000 It's not tender.

01:45:26.000 That's the reoccurring thing that we fight with every day at Joe Beef.

01:45:30.000 Juicy and tender.

01:45:31.000 Just eat a 16-ounce foie gras.

01:45:33.000 I know.

01:45:33.000 Because they just want tender.

01:45:35.000 I know.

01:45:36.000 I mean, what are they looking for?

01:45:37.000 Tender.

01:45:37.000 It's not tender.

01:45:38.000 Don't your teeth work?

01:45:39.000 When we get a steak sent back, it'll be because...

01:45:43.000 It's too tough?

01:45:44.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:45:45.000 I usually go to this steakhouse and it's more tender.

01:45:49.000 Because you're serving a grass-fed steak.

01:45:51.000 Serving a grass-fed steak that's not as marbled as it's non-organic.

01:45:57.000 Well, it's an animal that's healthy.

01:45:59.000 But you can also have...

01:46:00.000 It's an upgrade file.

01:46:01.000 It's like the natural wine versus conventional wine fight that we're having.

01:46:05.000 Yeah, but it's also...

01:46:06.000 We're calling it binary.

01:46:08.000 Now it's like it's only corn or it's only grass.

01:46:12.000 No, I think the solution is maybe a little bit of corn, a little bit of barley, but mostly grass-fed.

01:46:18.000 A brief finish in quality grains.

01:46:20.000 Why not?

01:46:21.000 And then there's a whole other point.

01:46:22.000 Not giant feedlot.

01:46:24.000 I like to sell beef in my restaurant that comes from very close to my restaurant.

01:46:32.000 When we opened Joe Beef at the beginning, when the first book was written...

01:46:39.000 Beef was a problem back then.

01:46:40.000 You know, local beef was kind of difficult.

01:46:42.000 And, you know, we were buying beef from larger wholesalers.

01:46:47.000 And if we didn't know how to read the barcodes on the boxes, they would say it was Canadian beef.

01:46:53.000 But it might not be Canadian beef.

01:46:55.000 It might be Northern USA beef.

01:46:59.000 But we didn't know because only a professional could read the barcode.

01:47:02.000 But they were saying it was Canadian.

01:47:03.000 But one day I had a professional come into the restaurant and he said, Investiture is in Canada, but this is from Western Australia.

01:47:14.000 And I said, I don't want to serve anything in my restaurant from Western Australia.

01:47:19.000 That's super far.

01:47:22.000 Like, you know, just like remove beef from the menu or seek alternatives.

01:47:28.000 But it's a business that's complex because there's pastures and feedlots, slaughterhouse and packers.

01:47:37.000 Right?

01:47:38.000 And it's not like we have lambs.

01:47:40.000 Get a baby lamb that come from the parents' lamb and then they raise the lamb and they bring it to the slaughterhouse themselves and then we get a lamb.

01:47:48.000 Beef is like tracing bourbons, you know?

01:47:52.000 It's like trading and brokerage and stuff and we're not...

01:47:56.000 It's the most sketchy item on a restaurant menu.

01:47:59.000 Like, I know that I bought lamb from you and I know I bought rabbit from, you know...

01:48:04.000 Beatrice.

01:48:05.000 And I know I got goat cheese from this family.

01:48:07.000 And all of the products in my restaurant, I know exactly.

01:48:11.000 The farm, the farmer, beef is always dicey because beef always goes to the packer.

01:48:19.000 Beef always goes to the distributor.

01:48:23.000 And the general public only really eats two cuts of beef in restaurants.

01:48:27.000 You know, three cuts.

01:48:28.000 The tenderloin, the...

01:48:30.000 What do you call it in English?

01:48:32.000 The entrecote?

01:48:32.000 Yeah, the loins.

01:48:34.000 The loins and the ribs, right?

01:48:35.000 That's what people eat.

01:48:36.000 And the hamburgers.

01:48:37.000 Beefs are not that, you know?

01:48:38.000 There's two big humps, and there's two big shoulders, and there's a lot of braise.

01:48:43.000 So...

01:48:44.000 You know, it's difficult.

01:48:46.000 Did you guys see that documentary on steak?

01:48:49.000 Yeah, we were in it.

01:48:50.000 We were in it.

01:48:50.000 That's right.

01:48:51.000 You were in it, right.

01:48:52.000 What did you think of that?

01:48:53.000 Their conclusions?

01:48:56.000 What was the conclusion?

01:48:58.000 Well, basically we're saying that Peter Luger's Steakhouse in Brooklyn is the greatest steak in the world.

01:49:03.000 USDA, Prime, Corn Fed.

01:49:06.000 For taste, maybe.

01:49:07.000 It's a good restaurant.

01:49:09.000 Good story, good history, great restaurant.

01:49:11.000 I ate there just a few months ago.

01:49:14.000 It was very good.

01:49:14.000 Yeah, very good.

01:49:15.000 But again, it's a subjective thing, right?

01:49:19.000 Correct.

01:49:19.000 The flavor in terms of what you actually look for.

01:49:24.000 As they were talking about, like your customer was saying, they're accustomed to a certain type of meat.

01:49:28.000 They were saying that their customers are accustomed to this.

01:49:31.000 They're not interested in grass-fed anything.

01:49:33.000 But I understand that.

01:49:35.000 Yeah, they've been doing that for a long time and grading that beef that way, and I don't think they should change ever, not based on anything, right?

01:49:40.000 Well, it's a great place where you get consistency.

01:49:42.000 I mean, you go there, you get this fantastic steak.

01:49:45.000 I mean, it's so old-worldy, too, when you get in there.

01:49:48.000 I mean, how long has Peter Luger's been around for?

01:49:49.000 God, forever.

01:49:50.000 Forever, yeah.

01:49:51.000 120 years?

01:49:53.000 Something insane like that.

01:49:55.000 Moishe's is like that in Montreal.

01:49:56.000 It's a very old steak restaurant.

01:49:58.000 Moishe's is a famous restaurant in Montreal, and they do have their beef program, and they should not change because there's new conversations happening.

01:50:06.000 He knows what he's doing, Lenny Leiter, and he should keep on doing that.

01:50:10.000 In a small restaurant, let's say that Fred, marginal characters like Fred and I own, I always see it like...

01:50:19.000 Those restaurants maybe are public places.

01:50:24.000 My restaurant is my restaurant, of which I want to do what I want in.

01:50:31.000 We don't listen so much to the public.

01:50:35.000 I serve at my pleasure.

01:50:39.000 It's not the customer's always right.

01:50:40.000 It's the customer's often wrong, and I'm always right.

01:50:43.000 Because we can do salmon, chicken breast, and tender one.

01:50:46.000 I serve the food we want to, and I serve the wines we want to, and if you don't like it, you don't have to come.

01:50:50.000 But this restaurant is for us.

01:50:53.000 Well, that's one of the things that I learned from watching Bourdain's original show, the No Reservation show, that it changed my opinion on things.

01:51:00.000 Because I didn't have a strong opinion on food before that, other than I really liked it.

01:51:05.000 I didn't think of it as an art form and watching his show and seeing the passion, his appreciation for food and for the way it's grown and brought to table and the production of it and then ultimately the flavor of it and the taste and his admiration for chefs and you guys as well.

01:51:29.000 His admiration for it and his appreciation for the way everything's put together made me realize, oh, this is an art form.

01:51:37.000 It's a craft.

01:51:38.000 And, you know, Tony did something.

01:51:40.000 Tony was the most faithful, most, like, we were so lucky to be on that ship with him, you know, that he took us aboard.

01:51:50.000 Yeah.

01:52:10.000 But get a voice, you know?

01:52:12.000 Even outside of the television show, the work he did in private is massive.

01:52:15.000 And not look like a dirty guy that makes the pasta in the back, you know?

01:52:18.000 All of a sudden, it's like, yeah, the manager in the suit and the owners, but who's the guy in the back, you know?

01:52:24.000 No, he had appreciation for everybody, and he had a real passion for the process.

01:52:28.000 And the marginal characters, you know, there's lots of commercial restaurants in the city of Montreal, in any given city that he went to.

01:52:36.000 He's able to isolate, let's say, the marginal characters in every city that, you know, were...

01:52:45.000 We're historically bound, kind of. 0.99

01:52:47.000 Fred and I practice a weird faction of French cooking called Cuisine Bourgeois, and only kind of Tony and a handful of other guys could look at what we do and go, huh, those fuckers, they're up to that. 0.98

01:53:00.000 No one's up to that. 0.98

01:53:00.000 He curated his crew. 0.98

01:53:02.000 You guys are into that, really.

01:53:03.000 He goes, you guys are the only people, like the last of the Mohicans that do this kind of food. 0.99

01:53:07.000 I mean, oh, yeah, no, we can't stop.

01:53:10.000 We got to keep on.

01:53:11.000 What a great guy to get it, dude.

01:53:13.000 Yeah, because nobody does, right?

01:53:16.000 Nobody understands the rabbit hole we're down.

01:53:20.000 Tony did.

01:53:20.000 Yeah, the cognoscenti.

01:53:22.000 Yeah, he really did deeply influence my appreciation for food, the way I think about it.

01:53:31.000 And, again...

01:53:33.000 Treating it as an art form, which I just thought it was just delicious.

01:53:36.000 I didn't think of it as like, oh, these guys are making temporary art.

01:53:39.000 They're making art that you're going to enjoy now.

01:53:43.000 You can't put it on film.

01:53:45.000 I mean, you can, but you're not going to get it all.

01:53:47.000 You're just going to want to go out and experience it.

01:53:49.000 Yeah, ultimately food is, you can't, we go and do like, we're asked to do like demonstrations, you know, you can go on a big stage, 5,000 people to talk about food or make like little crackers with smoked salmon on stage.

01:54:02.000 Food is not fit for a stage.

01:54:04.000 Food is for a table for us to enjoy, you know, with a fork, a knife, we talk about it, we go hunting.

01:54:09.000 That's what food is.

01:54:10.000 People offer us food shows all the time.

01:54:11.000 And I mean, I can't, it doesn't work.

01:54:13.000 It's like, what's the concept?

01:54:15.000 Well, you guys can be in a pickup truck and you go and visit your suppliers and maybe have a bottle of wine with them after.

01:54:21.000 I was like, dude, like we worked hard not to copy our like fellow, you know, culinarians. 0.58

01:54:30.000 Yeah, you look at our food and it's like it's ours.

01:54:32.000 TV producers are out there just like blatantly proposing.

01:54:36.000 The previous show to you again, you know?

01:54:39.000 Well, that's one of the things right after Anthony died.

01:54:42.000 There was some talk about Gordon Ramsay doing some very similar show, and the outcry against it was enormous.

01:54:51.000 I mean, he was just getting assaulted online.

01:54:54.000 I mean, it was crazy.

01:54:56.000 Everybody that I was talking to, our agent who represents us for our book, And she was saying all the big production companies are being berated by people pitching who's going to be the next Tony,

01:55:15.000 right?

01:55:15.000 You know, I don't want to say that, but one of the characters, and you guys, you could take over.

01:55:22.000 Yeah, you could do it.

01:55:23.000 Because you guys, you know the way he went in West Virginia?

01:55:26.000 And it wasn't like Republican, Democrat, like he went to places and he's like, yeah, sure, I have my views, but let's break bread, you know?

01:55:34.000 And I always said that, that like all our countries are divided on issues, but there's nobody that overlaps them with a coherent vision.

01:55:43.000 Everybody loves each other when there's delicious food on the table, man.

01:55:46.000 Yeah.

01:55:46.000 And guys like you, with a clear view and a rational and science-based and evidence-based view on things, and like Tony, just have such a voice now in our countries that it's...

01:56:00.000 I could see you doing a food show.

01:56:03.000 I love food, but I'll never do a food show.

01:56:08.000 I just can't imagine.

01:56:09.000 No, because you ask good questions.

01:56:11.000 I like doing shows.

01:56:13.000 I mean, I love having guys like you on and talking about food.

01:56:17.000 It takes a special type of person to want to travel 300 days a year.

01:56:22.000 And that's essentially what Tony was doing.

01:56:24.000 And I think that has a massive toll.

01:56:27.000 It takes a massive toll on your body.

01:56:29.000 It takes a massive toll on your psyche.

01:56:32.000 Your family, everything.

01:56:33.000 Yes.

01:56:34.000 It's not healthy.

01:56:35.000 There's not enough melatonin or like CBD or like...

01:56:40.000 It cleanses to help you with that.

01:56:42.000 I travel more than enough already, and I've cut my traveling way back.

01:56:46.000 I'm down to only 10 UFCs a year now, and I do comedy around that and stand-up comedy, but I consciously make the effort to travel much less because I just don't think it's good.

01:56:59.000 I just don't think it's good for you.

01:57:02.000 And also that road life, you know, the drinking and all that other stuff that comes with it, that accentuates all the problems that you have with travel.

01:57:10.000 And I think that's also one of the things that was dragging Tony down when he would talk about the sadness and the loneliness of being on the road.

01:57:19.000 I can't help but, from knowing him and partying with him, I can't help but have thought that a lot of that was probably accentuated by the alcohol consumption.

01:57:28.000 And, you know, you guys could...

01:57:30.000 Speak to that now that you're clean and you're not experiencing those rugged hangovers every morning.

01:57:37.000 I was worried for Tony that way.

01:57:39.000 Just that, you know, that hotel living, planes, trains, and automobiles constantly.

01:57:44.000 And it wasn't like for a year.

01:57:46.000 It was like 12 years.

01:57:48.000 It's a sad life to watch River Monsters at 11 in the morning burping Jameson.

01:57:53.000 And I'm referring to many occasions in our lives where you're traveling in a hotel room and You're in a beautiful place, but, like, it just...

01:58:03.000 You feel weird.

01:58:04.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:58:05.000 Yeah, I've taken steps to mitigate some of that.

01:58:08.000 One of the big ones is I travel with friends.

01:58:10.000 I bring really good comics to work with me on the road so that when I'm in these cities, I'm in these cities with friends, and we just go. 0.82

01:58:17.000 It's like they're family, so we go, we'll go eat together, we'll go work out together, you know, and try to keep the unhealthy shit to a minimum.

01:58:25.000 Plus, I'm more of a marijuana enthusiast than I am a drinker anyway. 0.98

01:58:29.000 It's legal in Quebec now.

01:58:30.000 We have stores.

01:58:31.000 Yes, the entire country.

01:58:32.000 Canada is way ahead of America there.

01:58:34.000 Quebec, as usual, we got a little bit of special treatment.

01:58:38.000 Yeah?

01:58:38.000 Does it have to be in French?

01:58:40.000 On top of it, yeah.

01:58:41.000 You can't grow.

01:58:42.000 What do you call it?

01:58:44.000 Cannabis.

01:58:45.000 Cannabis.

01:58:46.000 You can't grow.

01:58:47.000 Can't grow.

01:58:48.000 No, and you have to only consume the government's...

01:58:52.000 People are going to grow anyway.

01:58:53.000 I'm not worried about that.

01:58:54.000 The government stash.

01:58:55.000 So you know what they did, right?

01:58:56.000 Yeah, it's like, you know, we have a Monopoly Liquor Board.

01:59:00.000 So we have like stores.

01:59:01.000 Liquor Commission.

01:59:02.000 Liquor Commission.

01:59:02.000 Now we have the Cannabis Commission.

01:59:04.000 So what they did, it got legal on October 17th at midnight.

01:59:08.000 The stores were opening October 17th at 10 in the morning.

01:59:13.000 The cops were giving tickets to people smoking weed during that little layover time because they knew that it was impossible.

01:59:20.000 They bought it legally.

01:59:22.000 So some people got ticketed for smoking illegal weed.

01:59:25.000 In the lineup waiting for legal weed.

01:59:28.000 Oh, God. 1.00

01:59:29.000 What a bunch of assholes. 1.00

01:59:30.000 We just drank the Kool-Aid on that one, I think. 1.00

01:59:33.000 Fuck. 1.00

01:59:33.000 That's good. 1.00

01:59:34.000 We'll put more money into Medicare.

01:59:36.000 Well, I think it'll ultimately lead to a relaxing of people's opinions and ideas about marijuana and what it is.

01:59:42.000 But I also think that marijuana, just like alcohol, can be used as a crutch and it could eventually overcome your life.

01:59:49.000 I like it, but I like it every now and again.

01:59:52.000 And one of the things that came out of last year's Sober October was taking a whole month off of it, realizing that, A, I don't need it, I can function fine without it, but it made me more apprehensive about regular use.

02:00:07.000 Like, instead of using it every day, I'll use it a day a week or two days a week or something like that.

02:00:12.000 And I appreciate it more when it does happen.

02:00:14.000 When I do get high with my friends on Friday night or something like that, it's like it means something.

02:00:21.000 It's almost like a sacrament We're experiencing a little moment together and just having fun.

02:00:27.000 That's the proof, though.

02:00:28.000 What you just said is the proof that you don't have addiction issues, you see.

02:00:31.000 I couldn't be able to prove that I smoked marijuana responsibly once in my life, that I drank alcohol once in my life, that I did drugs responsibly.

02:00:43.000 I'm fascinated.

02:00:45.000 I brought some of our cooks that were here in L.A. with us to a restaurant.

02:00:50.000 And we had a beautiful dinner and I ordered them a bottle of wine and they barely finished it and I didn't understand.

02:00:57.000 The first and only bottle of wine.

02:01:00.000 I was like...

02:01:01.000 Do you guys want more?

02:01:03.000 I was like, I would have paid for nine.

02:01:05.000 Right.

02:01:06.000 And they had one, and I was just sitting there.

02:01:08.000 I told Fred, I go, I don't really...

02:01:10.000 What is it like to be in that environment and watching people glass over?

02:01:14.000 Like, see the booze hit them?

02:01:17.000 They don't get drunk.

02:01:19.000 We say that all the time.

02:01:20.000 We used to think that everybody was smashed.

02:01:24.000 No.

02:01:24.000 It was only me.

02:01:27.000 It's like the beer goggles.

02:01:29.000 Right.

02:01:29.000 You just thought you were in it with everybody else.

02:01:31.000 I realize now that everybody at the restaurants, generally, like 9 out of 10 times, drink quite responsibly.

02:01:39.000 Well, they must.

02:01:40.000 Otherwise, it would be just accidents everywhere and violence everywhere you turn.

02:01:43.000 Right.

02:01:44.000 Yeah.

02:01:44.000 And I realize a lot of the people that I'm friends with drink responsibly.

02:01:47.000 They can have a glass of wine with lunch.

02:01:51.000 Me and Fred opened a bottle of wine at lunch.

02:01:54.000 We'd go till 10.30 till we couldn't anymore and then that was it.

02:01:59.000 Last time we came to LA, we did Hell's Kitchen.

02:02:03.000 We're a judge for a show on ostriches.

02:02:05.000 It was disgusting.

02:02:07.000 Ostriches?

02:02:08.000 I've had an ostrich burger before.

02:02:11.000 Fuddruckers serves an ostrich burger.

02:02:12.000 It's actually delicious.

02:02:13.000 It's really bloody, right?

02:02:15.000 And there's that thing for cooking shows like that. 0.73

02:02:19.000 It's regulated by the Gaming Commission.

02:02:21.000 So they have to keep the camera rolling and they're not allowed to touch the dishes because they're the object of the competition.

02:02:27.000 So you take your break, you go to the green room, you wait, they're cleaning up the kitchen.

02:02:31.000 Now the food sits on the pass there, like for two hours.

02:02:35.000 And you come back, you sit at a table and there's like rare ostrich, tenderloin.

02:02:40.000 That's been sitting for two hours?

02:02:41.000 Yeah.

02:02:42.000 Two hours post-cook?

02:02:44.000 Yeah. 0.96

02:02:45.000 That's ridiculous. 0.98

02:02:46.000 And you have to like... 0.99

02:02:48.000 Judge.

02:02:48.000 Wait a minute.

02:02:49.000 You're judging food that was cooked two hours ago?

02:02:52.000 TV. That's so fucking stupid. 1.00

02:02:54.000 And I felt like, again... 1.00

02:02:56.000 That's insulting.

02:02:57.000 For guys like you?

02:02:59.000 No, but the thing is, I felt so bad because there's people who put a job on hold.

02:03:03.000 They left their kids at home.

02:03:05.000 I made it.

02:03:06.000 I'm in the casting.

02:03:07.000 I was selected to be part of Hell Kitchen.

02:03:11.000 And then...

02:03:12.000 We say something and then...

02:03:14.000 You know Gordon's gonna hate us right now, right?

02:03:15.000 No, the show's great.

02:03:16.000 But I felt like I felt sad.

02:03:20.000 But all that to say that whenever we came, we stayed by the airport, you know?

02:03:24.000 We stayed at the...

02:03:25.000 Just so you can get out of there quick?

02:03:27.000 Frozen margaritas at the hotel bar, man.

02:03:31.000 11 o'clock, we're in the whirlpool at the Radisson Hotel.

02:03:35.000 It's sad, man.

02:03:36.000 Having cocktails at the Encounters. 0.99

02:03:39.000 That hotel life can be fucking sad, man. 0.97

02:03:41.000 I know. 0.98

02:03:41.000 I get it. 0.98

02:03:42.000 And now we're completely not drinking.

02:03:45.000 They got us a room and we're staying at the Chateau.

02:03:48.000 I never thought I'd stay there.

02:03:50.000 I would really love to get drunk at the Chateau Marmont, though.

02:03:52.000 You did once, but not this time.

02:03:54.000 Yeah, that's like a spot.

02:03:55.000 You know, I've been here forever.

02:03:56.000 I've never even gone in that building.

02:03:58.000 It's beautiful.

02:03:59.000 Maybe I did once.

02:04:01.000 I think I was there once for a TV thing that I had to do, one of those party things in the 90s.

02:04:08.000 I think I went once.

02:04:09.000 It's funny because there's really B-list Hollywood stars hanging out at the pool, drinking champagne cocktails, trying to be cool, smoking blunts and trying to pick up girls.

02:04:20.000 That's where Tony used to stay.

02:04:22.000 He used to get a villa there.

02:04:23.000 When he was writing, he used to stay there.

02:04:24.000 He told me he loved it.

02:04:25.000 He just loved everything about the feel of it, the whole dirtiness of it.

02:04:30.000 We stayed at the Raleigh Hotel with him in Miami.

02:04:31.000 He loved that place, too.

02:04:33.000 He likes dirty spots.

02:04:34.000 The Raleigh was fun.

02:04:36.000 That's how Tony was.

02:04:37.000 He's like, guys, I like old food like you do.

02:04:40.000 What if we do a dinner based on old transatlantic ship boats, dining room?

02:04:46.000 Yeah.

02:04:47.000 So we say, oh yeah, sure.

02:04:49.000 He gets Eric repaired, Daniel Balu, a bunch of guys.

02:04:51.000 He's like, oh, I'll put you up at the Raleigh.

02:04:52.000 We're just going to do that one dinner, but we're just going to hang out for a week after, you know?

02:04:57.000 And we're in the pool.

02:04:58.000 The pool every day.

02:04:59.000 Sneaking cigarettes.

02:05:01.000 Otavia was like there with the kid in a rash guard all the time.

02:05:04.000 We went to Cyborg, Roberto Abru.

02:05:08.000 We went to school there, and I was just like starting. 1.00

02:05:11.000 Fucking killer. 1.00

02:05:13.000 Yeah, he's a monster. 1.00

02:05:14.000 How long have you been doing jiu-jitsu now?

02:05:16.000 I did it for a year solid and I stopped because I had a back surgery.

02:05:20.000 Oh, discs?

02:05:21.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:05:22.000 What's going on?

02:05:24.000 It's totally fixed, but I keep surgery.

02:05:28.000 What did you have wrong?

02:05:29.000 It was stenosis.

02:05:32.000 Stenosis, so shortening of the disc?

02:05:35.000 Yeah, and then compression and then they went in and chipped some parts out.

02:05:39.000 Mm-hmm.

02:05:41.000 In retrospect, I spoke to some rheumatologists, and it's interesting you're talking about, like, Jordan Peterson, because the autoimmune thing can be everywhere, right?

02:05:52.000 And now my doctor says, like, maybe celiac caused inflammation in so many places.

02:05:57.000 That's what I would say.

02:05:58.000 And all that, like, maybe the drinking, too, like this inclination towards abuse, you know, this inclination towards depression, this...

02:06:07.000 You know, back problem.

02:06:08.000 It's all related to that.

02:06:10.000 And again, the proof is in the pudding.

02:06:12.000 I don't eat bread.

02:06:13.000 I don't eat sweets.

02:06:14.000 Very little.

02:06:15.000 I eat mostly meat.

02:06:17.000 And I feel 100 times better. 0.99

02:06:19.000 I don't give a fuck if it's in my head or not. 0.98

02:06:23.000 Fred's also sober now. 0.99

02:06:24.000 Four months?

02:06:25.000 Five months, yeah.

02:06:26.000 Five months.

02:06:26.000 So it works.

02:06:27.000 I don't think that it's in your head.

02:06:30.000 It's definitely been proven that all those foods cause inflammation.

02:06:34.000 But I do think that jujitsu in particular is ruthless on your back.

02:06:39.000 Because of the torsions.

02:06:40.000 Well, it's just big people on top of you.

02:06:42.000 You're yanking them around.

02:06:43.000 You're moving your back.

02:06:45.000 And very few people strengthen their back.

02:06:47.000 That's a big issue.

02:06:49.000 And after we're done here, I'm going to take you into my gym and I'm going to show you some machines that I bought specifically to strengthen my back.

02:06:54.000 I've had some disc issues too, and the doctors are pretty adamant about putting me under the knife.

02:07:01.000 And I... I just didn't like the idea of it.

02:07:04.000 I've had many surgeries.

02:07:06.000 I've had both my knees reconstructed.

02:07:08.000 I know when you need surgery and when you don't.

02:07:10.000 And the more I looked into it, the more I realized that there's doctors that they have a hammer, so everything is a nail.

02:07:17.000 Like, oh, that's a nail. 0.98

02:07:18.000 Let me just fucking whack that thing. 1.00

02:07:20.000 They're not like, oh, you're going to have to change your diet. 0.99

02:07:23.000 You're going to have to lose some weight.

02:07:24.000 You're going to have to strengthen all those muscles around your back.

02:07:27.000 And if you do do that, I find that the results are superior in many cases.

02:07:32.000 Yeah, it's a combination.

02:07:34.000 Like, yoga works wonderfully for that.

02:07:36.000 Fantastic.

02:07:36.000 Yoga.

02:07:37.000 Decompression of the spine is critical.

02:07:39.000 Because you're always compressing.

02:07:40.000 You're always like, well, these chairs we're sitting in.

02:07:42.000 These are chairs from a company called Fully, and they're called Capisco's, and these are ergonomic chairs.

02:07:48.000 You notice we've been sitting in this place.

02:07:50.000 It's two and a half hours in the podcast now.

02:07:52.000 Wow.

02:07:53.000 Comfortable, beautiful chair.

02:07:54.000 They feel good too.

02:07:56.000 They're comfortable.

02:07:57.000 So I knew there was a solution.

02:07:59.000 Had to find a solution.

02:08:00.000 Luckily this company contacted me and sent us these chairs.

02:08:03.000 This is what we needed. 0.97

02:08:04.000 I tried a fucking shitload of chairs before that. 0.98

02:08:06.000 But it was the same thing with exercises. 0.98

02:08:08.000 I knew there was a solution.

02:08:10.000 I had to figure out what it was.

02:08:11.000 I tried decompression.

02:08:12.000 I tried a bunch of different forms of decompression.

02:08:15.000 I figured out the best ones.

02:08:17.000 You know, I have those...

02:08:18.000 Those things where you hang by your ankles. 0.99

02:08:24.000 What the fuck is the name of that company? 0.99

02:08:26.000 Hooks? 0.99

02:08:27.000 No.

02:08:27.000 The Upside Down thing?

02:08:28.000 Yeah.

02:08:29.000 Goddammit, they're a sponsor of the podcast. 0.99

02:08:31.000 Sex Swings? 0.92

02:08:32.000 Teeter. 0.60

02:08:33.000 Teeter makes those, like, just relaxing in those.

02:08:35.000 We have one back there.

02:08:36.000 You clamp your ankles in, just let that back just stretch out.

02:08:40.000 And then there's a bunch of different exercises that I do with yoga that stretch your back out as well.

02:08:45.000 We're in a constant state of compression, right?

02:08:47.000 Constant gravity, constant pushing you down.

02:08:50.000 And a guy like me, I'm always lifting weights too.

02:08:52.000 So I've got these heavy kettlebells and everything's compression and I'm pushing up and...

02:08:56.000 You've got to spend as much time lengthening as you do pushing down.

02:09:01.000 And you also have to stretch everything out because the more your hamstrings are tight, it's going to pull down on your back.

02:09:07.000 A lot of people that have back pains, it's connected to having tight hamstrings.

02:09:15.000 A theory, too, that a lot of things starts in school.

02:09:18.000 Because you look at kids.

02:09:20.000 I have two boys and one daughter, Henry, Ivan, and Eleanor.

02:09:25.000 Five, seven, nine.

02:09:27.000 They can do monkey bars, pull-ups, muscle-ups.

02:09:30.000 They do judo.

02:09:31.000 They play hockey.

02:09:32.000 They're very active.

02:09:33.000 But school, the way that physically a classroom is designed, is wrong.

02:09:39.000 It's like putting them in a cast for the next 15 years.

02:09:42.000 And then they're going to come out of high school, like I was, unable to climb a rope, unable to do monkey bars, unable to do anything.

02:09:49.000 And then they're going to go to more school and sit down for more times.

02:09:53.000 They don't get enough physical activity.

02:09:55.000 Not even close.

02:09:56.000 Not even the education towards it, not even the education of nutrition.

02:09:59.000 And they get...

02:10:01.000 We're graded and evaluated on how well they listen in gym class, which is completely insane.

02:10:07.000 Yeah, it really is.

02:10:08.000 I mean, it's just making them sit down for all that time during the day.

02:10:13.000 We're just preparing them for some job that's going to be unnatural in the first place.

02:10:16.000 Making good little taxpayers.

02:10:19.000 And look at it too.

02:10:21.000 This is a model of school that was based on like religious schools, you know, and like old Catholic schools, let's say in Quebec.

02:10:28.000 How did you keep them from like being distracted?

02:10:32.000 You know, the ruler and the fingers, you go to the corner, the leather strap.

02:10:35.000 Now we haven't changed the classroom, the schedule and the curriculum barely, but there's no more straps.

02:10:42.000 So like, okay, we haven't changed anything.

02:10:45.000 Like, it's normal that particularly little boys don't listen in school that well.

02:10:50.000 We have to find a way.

02:10:52.000 We have to redesign school from, like, the schedule, the design of the classroom, the hallways, the introduction.

02:10:58.000 You know, like, we have to bring restaurants back into school, like cafeteria and all that.

02:11:04.000 No, but, like, cafeterias.

02:11:05.000 And...

02:11:06.000 I don't know if it's you that talked with Jeff Bridges about that because he's in the like school lunches thing.

02:11:10.000 And the problem with school lunches is that if you subsidize half the kids, then you have a kid with like a badge here that says like poor, you know?

02:11:19.000 Yeah.

02:11:20.000 So the only way to do that, and I know some people are a bit anti-socialist, but you have to feed all the kids.

02:11:27.000 It's like crucial.

02:11:28.000 I agree.

02:11:28.000 I mean, the idea that that's a problem.

02:11:30.000 I mean, Jesus Christ, we're talking about food and also the sense of community that's established when everybody eats together.

02:11:36.000 You're going to create this rift between students where you establish that one student is poorer than the other one. 0.99

02:11:44.000 So it's going to fuck them up already. 0.89

02:11:46.000 You know, it's going to already make them insecure. 0.97

02:11:48.000 Unless you have the labor force with the kids.

02:11:51.000 Not to say that we're going to make the kids work, but it's going to be a learning experience and people can take their turns preparing family meals inside of the school system.

02:12:00.000 It's a valuable tool.

02:12:01.000 And if it was done and handled with respect and appreciation, if they had classes perhaps that showed how important food is.

02:12:08.000 I mean, maybe even show an episode of No Reservations or Parts Unknown and show how people can appreciate food.

02:12:16.000 What food really is, and then how great it would be.

02:12:19.000 I mean, and also, it would open their eyes to the possibility of food as a career, of getting into the same position that you guys are in.

02:12:28.000 I mean, this is something that's never discussed.

02:12:30.000 I mean, when was the last time a kid was encouraged to become a chef?

02:12:34.000 It's like a stand-up comedian.

02:12:36.000 You know, you never get encouraged to become a stand-up comedian. 0.99

02:12:38.000 They just call you a fuck-up and try to put you on drugs. 0.98

02:12:41.000 It never comes out when they do the survey. 0.99

02:12:44.000 You know, 90% of our labor force inside the restaurants is...

02:12:47.000 Anybody who cooks inside the restaurants...

02:12:51.000 As someone who didn't work inside the traditional school system, we employ dropouts.

02:12:58.000 Yeah.

02:12:59.000 But brilliant.

02:13:01.000 There's brilliant people on the team.

02:13:03.000 The school system did not work for them.

02:13:06.000 Well, that's the same thing with both of my jobs, whether it's the UFC or whether it's stand-up comedy. 0.99

02:13:12.000 Everyone that I'm close with is a fuck-up in the traditional sense. 0.98

02:13:17.000 None of us fit in. 0.99

02:13:18.000 There's very few people that get into stand-up comedy that were thriving in some other career.

02:13:23.000 Most of us were extremely frustrated with traditional environments, and most of us didn't do well in school because we felt confined and just couldn't wait to get...

02:13:33.000 I used to have nightmares about going back to school.

02:13:35.000 Did you have ADD as a child?

02:13:36.000 I'm sure I got it all. 1.00

02:13:37.000 Whatever the fuck it is. 0.99

02:13:39.000 Whatever it is that gives you energy, that makes you better at stuff, I got that. 0.99

02:13:44.000 They'll call it a bad thing and say, like, you can't concentrate. 0.96

02:13:47.000 Well, I'm fucking bored. 0.92

02:13:48.000 You have to harness it, not treat it. 0.98

02:13:51.000 Right, but give me something that I can concentrate on.

02:13:52.000 Give me something that I actually enjoy.

02:13:54.000 I got a lot of energy.

02:13:56.000 It's not that there's something wrong with me.

02:13:58.000 It's that I have no interest in what they're selling.

02:14:01.000 And it's being sold by some underpaid, under-motivated person who really is just following some sort of a curriculum and they have to do that because they want to keep their job.

02:14:10.000 This is what kids are being subjected to all across the world in the most fertile time of their life in terms of their imagination, their creativity, and their free time.

02:14:21.000 Frontal cortex is a sponge.

02:14:23.000 They're ready to take everything. 0.97

02:14:26.000 No one would ever say to some kid who's cracking jokes in class and running around being a fool, no one would ever say, hey, you ever thought about being a comedian? 0.97

02:14:37.000 No one says that. 0.97

02:14:38.000 It just never comes up.

02:14:40.000 But meanwhile, everybody loves comedians.

02:14:42.000 People love to go see comedy. 0.95

02:14:43.000 But nobody ever says to some fuck-up kid, hey, man, you might be a comic. 0.95

02:14:49.000 It just doesn't come up. 0.92

02:14:51.000 They'll do the test and like David was supposed to be a travel agent.

02:14:55.000 I was.

02:14:56.000 I was supposed to be a golf pro.

02:14:58.000 Is this something in Canada?

02:15:00.000 You were supposed to be a golf pro?

02:15:01.000 Are you really good at golf?

02:15:02.000 No.

02:15:03.000 And then according to the questionnaire and one of my friends who flies planes was supposed I think to be a folly artist, make sounds of horses with coconuts and stuff.

02:15:11.000 For movies?

02:15:12.000 Yeah, that's what they told them after the questionnaire. 0.99

02:15:15.000 What the fuck kind of questionnaire do you guys have in Canada? 0.97

02:15:18.000 The success of Restaurant though, you have to think though, is due to a lot of very sad people that have gone through the academic process. 0.99

02:15:26.000 I have a disproportionate amount of lawyers and professionals and people who wear suits.

02:15:39.000 We're good to go.

02:15:59.000 Just a constant state.

02:16:00.000 You can't wait to get to Joe Beef and, you know, relax.

02:16:04.000 It's like the Michael Douglas movie there.

02:16:06.000 Enough?

02:16:07.000 Oh, what was that called?

02:16:09.000 Falling Down.

02:16:10.000 Falling Down, yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:16:11.000 Oh, Enough is with J-Lo.

02:16:15.000 What is enough?

02:16:16.000 What does she do? 1.00

02:16:17.000 Jiggly, you mean, no?

02:16:19.000 No, no, no, no, no.

02:16:20.000 Enough is the movie with J-Lo where she avenges some ex-boyfriend that traumatizes her.

02:16:27.000 It's great.

02:16:28.000 I love those movies.

02:16:29.000 What?

02:16:30.000 Okay, there's something about airplanes.

02:16:33.000 I don't know if the altitude in the plane... 1.00

02:16:36.000 Stupid movies are great when you're in the sky. 1.00

02:16:38.000 The last two days I discovered he's quite the movie buff. 1.00

02:16:41.000 Yeah, he loves Notting Hill.

02:16:43.000 He was like, that's a beautiful movie.

02:16:45.000 I was like, what?

02:16:45.000 I don't even know what that's about.

02:16:47.000 What's Notting Hill about?

02:16:48.000 That's a movie with you, Grant.

02:16:50.000 Oh, Christ.

02:16:51.000 I wouldn't...

02:16:51.000 I can't remember what it's about.

02:16:53.000 You know what I love, too?

02:16:54.000 What?

02:16:54.000 I love the night at the Roxbury.

02:16:56.000 Start drinking again, man.

02:16:57.000 Something's happening to you.

02:16:58.000 Notting Hill, Julia Roberts, and Hugh Grant. 0.99

02:17:01.000 It sucks. 0.98

02:17:01.000 We were just... 0.98

02:17:02.000 You know, the chateau is right by the Roxbury, where it was.

02:17:06.000 And I couldn't wait to just get out of the car, go walk there, take a picture of it, and just, like, try to show...

02:17:13.000 Like, I sent a picture to everyone.

02:17:15.000 Nobody reacted.

02:17:16.000 Dude, it's the Roxbury!

02:17:18.000 You see?

02:17:20.000 You saw that movie?

02:17:21.000 Night at the Roxbury?

02:17:22.000 Yeah.

02:17:23.000 Yeah, I saw that movie.

02:17:24.000 And for me to travel there is like...

02:17:26.000 Did you like that movie?

02:17:27.000 Did you like that movie?

02:17:28.000 Yeah, I loved it.

02:17:29.000 Really?

02:17:29.000 Yeah.

02:17:32.000 Interesting.

02:17:33.000 Same reaction.

02:17:34.000 Yeah.

02:17:34.000 What else is your favorite movie?

02:17:36.000 What?

02:17:38.000 Alone in the Wilderness, Dick Prenneke.

02:17:40.000 That's great.

02:17:40.000 You saw that movie?

02:17:41.000 The guy that whittles hinges for his house in Alaska?

02:17:45.000 Joe, that's a must view.

02:17:46.000 Is it really?

02:17:47.000 It's like once a year you watch.

02:17:49.000 Really?

02:17:49.000 Yeah.

02:17:50.000 Alone in the Wilderness, Dick Prenneke.

02:17:51.000 Can you bring that up on the thing?

02:17:53.000 What is that?

02:17:54.000 Do you know what this, Jamie?

02:17:55.000 The guy runs away.

02:17:56.000 Is this a Canadian thing?

02:17:57.000 No, no, no, no.

02:17:57.000 No, it's Alaska.

02:17:58.000 A guy who just moves and lives in the woods for the rest of his life.

02:18:01.000 Is it like how the French love Jerry Lewis?

02:18:03.000 No, they play it on Vermont PBS as a fundraiser every year.

02:18:07.000 Wow!

02:18:07.000 This is it?

02:18:08.000 So the guy put a tripod and films himself, and he carves everything you need, hunts everything.

02:18:15.000 Oh, okay, okay, okay.

02:18:17.000 I did not know this guy's name.

02:18:19.000 See, I thought you were talking about a movie.

02:18:20.000 This is like a documentary, almost.

02:18:22.000 Self-made.

02:18:23.000 He literally gets dropped off there with an axe, and then he builds a house, and then he kills a goat, and then, you know?

02:18:28.000 Yeah, I do remember this guy in interviews that I think I probably saw on YouTube. 0.95

02:18:34.000 But yeah, he builds his own house, and Log cabins and shit.

02:18:38.000 Yeah, yeah, this guy. 0.76

02:18:39.000 Yeah.

02:18:39.000 That's, like, such a beautiful, like...

02:18:42.000 Did you guys ever see that Vice piece about the guy who lives in the Arctic?

02:18:46.000 Heinmo's Arctic Adventure?

02:18:48.000 No. 0.99

02:18:49.000 Fucking amazing, man. 0.99

02:18:50.000 It's a Vice guided travel piece where this guy got a very small cabin in the Arctic in like the 1970s and he's been there since. 0.99

02:19:02.000 The only thing he's ever seen from 9-11 is some photographs.

02:19:05.000 He had no idea what was happening when it happened.

02:19:08.000 Does he still love Michael Jackson?

02:19:11.000 I don't know.

02:19:11.000 But this is it.

02:19:12.000 This guy lives alone in Alaska with his wife in the Arctic National Refuge.

02:19:19.000 And you have to get in with a float plane and he just hunts caribou and lives with his family.

02:19:27.000 His wife is Inuit and they have children together and children leave and eventually went on to college. 0.99

02:19:34.000 I mean, it's fucking crazy. 0.96

02:19:36.000 One of their kids was two years old, died in a canoe accident. 0.99

02:19:40.000 The canoe fell over and the kid fell into the river.

02:19:43.000 They revisit the spot at the time of her birthday and it's really intense.

02:19:48.000 But this guy really believes that people are happier and healthier when they live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

02:20:00.000 Caloric restriction.

02:20:01.000 Look at that.

02:20:02.000 Yeah, I mean, all he does is eat caribou.

02:20:04.000 I mean, the guy is out there eating caribou, and during the time where they're filming this, his cabin and his caribou stash gets attacked by a grizzly bear, and he shoots the grizzly bear on film.

02:20:15.000 He chases it down in the night and blasts it.

02:20:19.000 One of the grizzly bears had eaten one of his dogs. 1.00

02:20:21.000 I mean, this motherfucker's out there living. 0.99

02:20:23.000 But he's a very smart guy. 1.00

02:20:27.000 He's not what you would think. 0.54

02:20:28.000 When you think of someone like this, you think of someone who is some weird kind of inbred half-wit who's living up there.

02:20:35.000 No, he's very intelligent, very introspective.

02:20:38.000 Slightly introvert.

02:20:40.000 Maybe introverted, but he doesn't seem to have a hard time talking to people, so I don't know if he's introverted.

02:20:45.000 But I mean, he's definitely restricted his access to dialogue.

02:20:49.000 I mean, he's out there alone in the forest by himself, but he makes a very compelling point that there's a natural...

02:20:56.000 Feeling that he gets from doing this where everything caught falls into place He's constantly getting exercise because he's hiking and chasing after these caribou But that there's natural human reward systems that are in place in his DNA For hunting and gathering and cooking this food over an open fire and the way he lives He just he just thinks it's the way people really are designed to live We're absolutely not meant to live We're good to go.

02:21:45.000 Yeah, and there was a real worry because of climate change.

02:21:47.000 That was going to be happening every year now.

02:21:49.000 People were like, is this the new normal?

02:21:50.000 I remember Shane Smith had some piece on Vice.

02:21:52.000 Shane had to walk out.

02:21:53.000 Yeah, Shane had to walk out.

02:21:55.000 He had some piece on Vice where they were detailing the inside of his apartment building. 0.98

02:22:01.000 The fucking thing was completely flooded, like six feet high in water. 0.98

02:22:05.000 And people were worried. 0.99

02:22:06.000 This is going to be what's happening on a regular basis now.

02:22:09.000 This...

02:22:10.000 Climate change thing has changed.

02:22:12.000 I have a heightened sense of, you know, since three kids, it's something that I think about.

02:22:17.000 It's something that I have ready, you know?

02:22:19.000 I bought a generator.

02:22:20.000 I have...

02:22:21.000 Yeah.

02:22:22.000 I check the batteries, the rechargeable batteries, for all of the equipment that I have.

02:22:25.000 I own solar panels.

02:22:27.000 I own a duffel bag full of everything that I need to throw in the back of my pickup truck, grab my kids, and I know which way to drive away from the city to go to the cabin.

02:22:37.000 It's something I've planned just because I'm the ward of these small humans whom I love.

02:22:45.000 It's funny.

02:22:47.000 You talked about restriction again.

02:22:51.000 I'm thinking of preparing.

02:22:54.000 The most common thing that people prepare is food.

02:22:57.000 They prepare cans and cans and cans of food.

02:22:59.000 But still, they eat so much of that food that the best way to prepare...

02:23:05.000 The best way to prepare would be to start to eat less and learn how to live at 1700 calories, you know? 0.96

02:23:13.000 And learn how to live with the people around you because if you're going to spend like two months in a bunker or in a bug out location or whatever, you're not some like asshole to your kids and your friends and the family and people with you.

02:23:28.000 One of the things that happens to people, this is really fascinating, when disasters do strike is everyone gets a lot friendlier.

02:23:35.000 And this is one thing that I've experienced myself this week.

02:23:38.000 Because when we got evacuated, it was 2.30 in the morning on Thursday, and there was fire, rocks throw from my house.

02:23:46.000 And I'm not talking a little bit of fire, I'm talking just hundreds of acres of fire.

02:23:50.000 I mean, it was just roaring over.

02:23:52.000 We started to see the gas lines explode.

02:23:55.000 Houses burst into flames.

02:23:58.000 And it was right down the street.

02:23:59.000 So we're seeing this.

02:24:01.000 And, you know, we got outside.

02:24:03.000 We're in the driveway.

02:24:04.000 The neighbors come over.

02:24:05.000 Everyone's talking.

02:24:06.000 What are you going to do? 0.92

02:24:06.000 I go, we're getting the fuck out of here. 0.92

02:24:08.000 And he's like, have they given the evacuation orders? 0.86

02:24:11.000 I said, no, we haven't.

02:24:12.000 But I go, it's right there, man.

02:24:14.000 I go, we got to go.

02:24:15.000 I go, if we're wrong and we come back and the house is still here, that's okay.

02:24:19.000 But...

02:24:20.000 You want to get out of these things quickly because they can turn south quickly.

02:24:24.000 But there was a sense of camaraderie and community that happens.

02:24:28.000 And then quite a few of us all went to the same hotel, including my friend Tom Segura and his wife and his family went to this hotel, too, with some of my friends from this neighborhood who were all there huddled in together.

02:24:38.000 But people were a little extra friendly.

02:24:42.000 And there was the same kind of feeling after 9-11 when I was in New York City.

02:24:48.000 There was people a little bit more friendly.

02:24:50.000 We felt that during the ice storm back in the day.

02:24:52.000 People were like assessing the street that we live on.

02:24:57.000 And then they go, well, who's got a wood-burning stove?

02:25:00.000 And they go, oh, Roger does.

02:25:01.000 And then people would go to Roger's house.

02:25:04.000 And all of a sudden, all these neighbors that just wave at each other were all at Roger's house by the wood-burning stove.

02:25:11.000 Going back to the houses to get blankets, planning sleeping arrangements, planning food arrangements, and assessing each other, giving each other their personal space, and learning how to speak to each other in a respective manner that we might have to do this for several days.

02:25:29.000 Yeah.

02:25:30.000 Do the best out of it.

02:25:31.000 Through tragedy, a sense of community was built somewhat or reinforced for a brief moment in time, which made going back to our regular lives on that street better.

02:25:43.000 Yeah.

02:25:44.000 You know?

02:25:44.000 Yeah.

02:25:45.000 Yeah.

02:25:46.000 Have you ever read Sebastian Junger's Tribe?

02:25:48.000 No.

02:25:49.000 It's a great book, and he kind of talks about that, about how, in part...

02:25:55.000 Situations of extreme stress and when people are really pushed, those people bond together and they find that these are the happiest times of their life.

02:26:04.000 People that even go to war, they find that they miss the camaraderie of the bunker.

02:26:09.000 They miss the camaraderie of being in the trenches.

02:26:12.000 They miss the camaraderie of being together, huddled up, not knowing what's going to happen in the future, but counting and depending upon each other for their very lives.

02:26:21.000 That's a thing that happens in very, very, very busy kitchens.

02:26:24.000 A bunch of no-education guys out of cooking school working a difficult restaurant line.

02:26:34.000 We're working six guys on six four-burner stoves every night, a difficult menu with a difficult chef.

02:26:44.000 In a very busy restaurant, those hours, you know, from 6 p.m.

02:26:51.000 till 10 p.m.

02:26:52.000 at night...

02:26:53.000 Like, it's intimate.

02:26:54.000 It's intimate.

02:26:56.000 You're bending over to get into the stove to get a chicken out.

02:27:00.000 I'm grabbing something out of the fridge. 1.00

02:27:01.000 My nose is in your butt. 1.00

02:27:03.000 Your nose is in my butt. 1.00

02:27:04.000 You know, I need your knife. 1.00

02:27:06.000 You need my knife.

02:27:07.000 Yeah.

02:27:09.000 It's very, very, very close quarters.

02:27:11.000 Often, like, some of my strongest relationships, some of his strongest relationships are, you know, the bond that I've built with guys that I've cooked on lines, whether in Europe or here, are unbreakable.

02:27:23.000 You know, these guys got your back.

02:27:24.000 Tony talked a lot about that, you know.

02:27:26.000 Yeah, I think people are better off when they're struggling.

02:27:29.000 Yeah.

02:27:30.000 I really do.

02:27:30.000 I mean, I think they're better off when they're, you know, when life creates challenges.

02:27:37.000 And there's things to overcome, and there's difficulties to get through, and there's real pressure involved in these, and there's physical activity involved in these pressures as well.

02:27:48.000 Yeah, it's like rowing on the galley.

02:27:49.000 Yeah.

02:27:50.000 A centurion and a cat-o'-nine-tails looming over you.

02:27:54.000 Well, all the years you guys have been in business now, what do you look forward to now?

02:27:59.000 What keeps you going now?

02:28:01.000 You have this established restaurant, this amazing menu, and you have fans of your restaurant like myself.

02:28:07.000 What keeps you going?

02:28:08.000 Tiny restaurant where David and I cook.

02:28:12.000 You saw the movie The French Connection?

02:28:14.000 Yes.

02:28:14.000 You see when Gene Ackman's on the other side of the road, it's like freezing in New York.

02:28:18.000 He's in a deli with a piece of pizza and a shitty coffee.

02:28:21.000 He has little leather shoes on the icy pavement. 0.89

02:28:23.000 And then the French gangsters are in the bistro and they're eating like snails and eclairs and like all the food that comes in the little crockpots on the cart at the table. 0.77

02:28:33.000 If we could open a place like that for like 16 customers that we have the key only, we decide to open whenever we want and we don't lose money.

02:28:42.000 That's all.

02:28:43.000 I want to build with Fred a tiny little French restaurant that we...

02:28:50.000 Do what we want at.

02:28:51.000 16 seats.

02:28:52.000 An art project.

02:28:53.000 Or I can take a four or eight or close it or just a toy to just practice this skill that we've learned all of these years to do this very, very weird, old, forgotten food that's not cool.

02:29:10.000 But that I adore, you know?

02:29:12.000 What is in the back of your head that you don't bring to Joe Beef?

02:29:17.000 Oh, you know, one that everybody would know, but to do a proper lamb wellington served for two people and a little trolley.

02:29:26.000 To still bring out the 12 cheeses on the little trolley.

02:29:30.000 To have a trolley just of digestif, you know, after dinner alcohol.

02:29:35.000 To do crepes tableside.

02:29:36.000 To do a duck flunk.

02:29:37.000 Flambe.

02:29:37.000 For two with orange sauce, table side for two.

02:29:40.000 You saw with Tony, we went to the Flambe place in Quebec City in the first show, in the first Parts Unknown.

02:29:47.000 And it was wonderful.

02:29:48.000 Like, little langoose, flambe.

02:29:51.000 And, like, there were skills.

02:29:52.000 Like, we want to be able to, like, this morning we'll do tartare and it'll be mixed table side and that's it.

02:29:58.000 Or Dover Souls.

02:29:59.000 To really practice hospitality at the level that it used to be.

02:30:04.000 Back in the day, to bring out the very old porcelain, very beautiful silver, not ostentatious way, just almost in like a kitschy romantic kind of...

02:30:16.000 Nostalgic.

02:30:17.000 Nostalgic sense.

02:30:18.000 What, you know, to build a restaurant from the 20s, you know?

02:30:23.000 Do that food.

02:30:26.000 Handwritten menu, flowers on it, you know, like...

02:30:31.000 Yeah, the appreciation that you guys have for it is very contagious.

02:30:34.000 It really is.

02:30:35.000 Dining is great.

02:30:37.000 Candlelit dining.

02:30:41.000 Heavy velvet, woodwork, silver trays, copper.

02:30:48.000 There's a Hemingway-esque.

02:30:50.000 Who's the other big guy?

02:30:52.000 Orson Welles.

02:30:53.000 Did you ever see those Orson Welles interviews at the Hotel Pierre in Paris?

02:30:57.000 Those are just brilliant.

02:30:59.000 You want to just eat yourself to death at Hotel Pierre.

02:31:03.000 That's kind of what he did, though.

02:31:04.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:31:05.000 It's the only way we could build a time travel machine, right?

02:31:08.000 Like, you read about it.

02:31:10.000 It's fun.

02:31:11.000 And you go to a museum when you see, like, silverware from Sunken Ship.

02:31:16.000 Yeah, it's nice.

02:31:17.000 But we'll never travel back in time, nor do I want to get polio, you know?

02:31:22.000 There's great, great benefits to living now and then, now and here, you know?

02:31:27.000 The art of it.

02:31:28.000 Yeah, and the beauty of it is like we've grown up watching like This Old House, Victory Garden, all those shows on PBS, right?

02:31:35.000 We're huge fans.

02:31:37.000 And the beauty of this is we can build a restaurant like that with our hands.

02:31:41.000 So it's just a matter of is it this year, is it next year, you know?

02:31:46.000 Well, yeah, we're doing it now, by the way.

02:31:49.000 Yeah.

02:31:49.000 Are you?

02:31:50.000 Yeah, I bought a farm and he's going to read.

02:31:52.000 I bought a farm.

02:31:53.000 I bought Fred a farm for me.

02:31:56.000 That's what the gag is.

02:31:59.000 Where are you guys going to do it?

02:32:00.000 I think down in St. Armand there, I bought a little farm right on the Vermont border, but there's a summer kitchen part that has beautiful brick, wood-burning oven situation and...

02:32:16.000 Big window, an old factory wrought iron window.

02:32:20.000 The room is just begging to have like three tables of four or three tables of four and a little stove and a zinc bar.

02:32:30.000 And I don't know.

02:32:32.000 He's been cracking out.

02:32:33.000 He's talking about going down there in January and starting to build it.

02:32:36.000 This is the polar opposite of the theme restaurant in Vegas.

02:32:40.000 TGIF. Well, not just that, but like the celebrity chef as you're going down the escalator at the airport, there's a giant billboard of this latest chef.

02:32:50.000 Did you ever hear this story about the Fertitta brothers?

02:32:52.000 No.

02:32:53.000 So they called Fred one day and they said, we're coming to Montreal.

02:32:57.000 We'd love to meet you guys.

02:32:59.000 I'm like, yeah, okay.

02:33:01.000 What's going on?

02:33:02.000 You know, we're not open for lunch.

02:33:03.000 What year was this?

02:33:04.000 Last year.

02:33:05.000 Last year?

02:33:05.000 After they sold.

02:33:06.000 I think they bought the palms.

02:33:07.000 They had all that cash.

02:33:08.000 It's burning a hole in their pocket.

02:33:09.000 They're great guys, man.

02:33:10.000 I love those guys.

02:33:11.000 Best.

02:33:12.000 Wonderful.

02:33:13.000 They get a hold of you?

02:33:14.000 So they fly privately to the airport in Montreal.

02:33:17.000 Three Escalades roll into Joe Beef at noon on a Tuesday.

02:33:22.000 All the boys get out, plus help and the crew that surrounds them.

02:33:27.000 Assassins.

02:33:28.000 Yeah, we make a table at 10. We all sit down.

02:33:31.000 Lorenzo starts off, first, I'd like to let you guys know that Joe Beef is my favorite restaurant.

02:33:38.000 And I'm like, what?

02:33:39.000 This dump?

02:33:40.000 You're Lorenzo Fertitta.

02:33:41.000 You're all over the world.

02:33:43.000 You live in Las Vegas.

02:33:44.000 Everything is at your beck and call.

02:33:47.000 You live in the...

02:33:51.000 So that was flattering, you know, and we prepared a little dinner for them, a little lunch, and we talked, and they pitched us to take over one of the rooms in the palms upstairs.

02:34:03.000 And, of course, it was flattering.

02:34:04.000 We had a wonderful meeting, but we knew right away as we were having the meeting that that was not for us and it was never going to happen.

02:34:10.000 We have young children.

02:34:11.000 We're in a bad place, too, at the time.

02:34:14.000 It was tough in our life, you know, still drinking, still slept.

02:34:20.000 Yeah, it was pretty dark, but it was nice and flattering.

02:34:22.000 And I think Fred moved them on to Mark Vetri, who eventually did the project from Philadelphia.

02:34:28.000 And in retrospect...

02:34:32.000 Yeah, it was nice, flattering, but we wouldn't do that.

02:34:35.000 There's no way we couldn't do Joe Beef anywhere else.

02:34:37.000 People don't eat.

02:34:39.000 The dining public doesn't exist unless it's on my street.

02:34:42.000 Montreal's just such a different place.

02:34:44.000 The idea is like, before they offered any room there, I said, is there like a decommissioned laundromat in the back that's for employees only?

02:34:56.000 We said all the wrong things, man.

02:34:58.000 800 square feet that we can make a five-table French restaurant.

02:35:02.000 They're pitching us the top floor of the pubs and we're asking for the door next to the garbage container in the alley with no windows.

02:35:09.000 And they were looking at us like we were insane.

02:35:11.000 He wanted a five-table French restaurant.

02:35:13.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:35:14.000 And Lorenzo was looking at his brother and his brother was looking at Lorenzo like, why the fuck did you bring me here? 0.99

02:35:19.000 Did we fucking fly here? 0.99

02:35:21.000 We sent them some books now. 0.98

02:35:22.000 Well, I'm sure they're happy.

02:35:26.000 It's such a funny way of responding to that.

02:35:29.000 We want to give you the top floor of the palms in Vegas. 0.99

02:35:31.000 Do you have a fucking 800 square foot room? 0.98

02:35:34.000 In the back alley that nobody can access? 0.99

02:35:37.000 I want to make it so expensive that basketball players think it's too much money?

02:35:41.000 Yeah.

02:35:42.000 Well, that would be a very interesting spot, and I'm sure if you did create something like that, or someone did, an unbelievably exclusive spot that literally has 20 seats available in a night, and they only open for one sitting.

02:35:58.000 Right.

02:35:59.000 And we want to build the, what's the movie?

02:36:02.000 The Roxbury?

02:36:03.000 No, the...

02:36:04.000 We want to build the French Connection restaurant.

02:36:07.000 No, the other one with J-Lo.

02:36:08.000 What's that one?

02:36:09.000 Jiggly.

02:36:10.000 Enough.

02:36:11.000 Ishtar.

02:36:12.000 Made in Manhattan.

02:36:14.000 Yeah, I mean, I guarantee if someone did do something like that, particularly because of Vegas, it's all about who you know and who you are.

02:36:22.000 I mean, if you can get in, you know, you can get into Joe Lamb.

02:36:25.000 Oh, it's Joe Lamb is in Vegas.

02:36:27.000 Right behind the garbage container, the leaky one next to the grease trap.

02:36:31.000 Yeah, girls and their Jimmy Choo's have to step in these puddles of grease. 1.00

02:36:35.000 La Boutin.

02:36:36.000 Yeah, on their way to the back.

02:36:38.000 It would, ironically enough, it would be probably the hot spot in Vegas.

02:36:44.000 I know, Joe.

02:36:45.000 Lorenzo didn't get it.

02:36:47.000 Probably wouldn't be very profitable, though.

02:36:49.000 Right, exactly.

02:36:50.000 Obviously.

02:36:51.000 Well, when they took over the Palms, I was excited.

02:36:53.000 I know that Nine Steakhouse there was excellent.

02:36:56.000 I haven't been there in years, but that used to be a great place.

02:36:59.000 But Mark who's there, Mark Vetri is an excellent cook.

02:37:02.000 Yeah, great.

02:37:03.000 He's really involved in like solid charity things.

02:37:05.000 I think he's also brown or black belt in jujitsu.

02:37:08.000 Really?

02:37:08.000 From Philly.

02:37:09.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:37:10.000 Mark Vetri is a resourceful dude.

02:37:13.000 Wow.

02:37:13.000 So is the restaurant open?

02:37:16.000 I think this week it was opening.

02:37:19.000 Oh, wow.

02:37:20.000 That's fantastic.

02:37:21.000 That's awesome.

02:37:22.000 And his food is delicious.

02:37:24.000 I'll try it out.

02:37:26.000 Yeah, Vetri is in Philadelphia.

02:37:27.000 It's like an institution.

02:37:28.000 We opened, like, there was one thing when we, what was the story?

02:37:34.000 The lobster spaghetti.

02:37:35.000 You know, we took the kind of like, there was a story in Bon Appetit magazine about Mark Vetri doing lobster spaghetti and fighting with his dad about removing a table to put a meat slicer in.

02:37:47.000 I think they had 24 seats and he bought a nice red slicer and he said, we're taking out four seats and now we're down to 20 seats.

02:37:53.000 His dad thought he was insane.

02:37:55.000 Yeah.

02:37:55.000 But he insisted that, you know, they have 20 seats instead of 24. That story was endearing to Fred and I. And he was doing a lobster spaghetti at his Philadelphia restaurant at the time.

02:38:05.000 So when we opened Joe Beef, one of the first items on the menu was our version of the lobster spaghetti that Mark Vetri was doing.

02:38:12.000 And just a simple homage to that story.

02:38:15.000 That's great.

02:38:16.000 Years later, we met him and we told him the story and became friends.

02:38:20.000 That's amazing.

02:38:22.000 So why did it take four seats?

02:38:24.000 What did this thing look like?

02:38:25.000 Well, you know, have you seen those big Italian red Burkle meat slicers? 1.00

02:38:29.000 No.

02:38:29.000 They're amazing.

02:38:31.000 They're not electric.

02:38:32.000 So did he do it just because it would add to the ambiance to have this cool thing in it?

02:38:35.000 Yeah, in Italy, this is a pretty standard piece of equipment that you'd have on the bars and cavernas.

02:38:40.000 It turns slow.

02:38:42.000 It's a big blade that rotates slowly.

02:38:44.000 It's very, very sharp, so it doesn't...

02:38:46.000 It's a pinwheel.

02:38:46.000 Yeah, it doesn't melt the fat of the ham, right?

02:38:49.000 So you don't get this white film.

02:38:51.000 So it makes like perfectly thin, cool slices of perfect ham.

02:38:55.000 And they're gorgeous objects.

02:38:57.000 Like we have a couple now.

02:38:59.000 We have a blue one and we have a red one.

02:39:02.000 They're gorgeous.

02:39:02.000 Got one for me, Jamie?

02:39:04.000 I'm trying to find one like cutting meat.

02:39:06.000 Oh, that one's nice.

02:39:08.000 Oh, wow.

02:39:09.000 Yeah.

02:39:10.000 Oh, you know, I saw one of these in Italy.

02:39:13.000 Yeah, sure.

02:39:14.000 They're all over the place.

02:39:15.000 Yeah.

02:39:15.000 When I was in Italy, I saw one of these.

02:39:18.000 They were making sandwiches with it.

02:39:20.000 Yeah.

02:39:21.000 Oh, wow.

02:39:22.000 That's like a $10,000, $15,000 machine.

02:39:25.000 Wow.

02:39:25.000 That's beautiful.

02:39:25.000 So when you remove four seats from your restaurant to put one of those in, you're kind of like, you know...

02:39:31.000 You're stepping up.

02:39:32.000 You're on the wrong side of business.

02:39:33.000 But you're in Dobie Point?

02:39:35.000 You're on the right side of business.

02:39:37.000 You guys have something going on tonight, right?

02:39:40.000 No, no, no.

02:39:41.000 No?

02:39:41.000 No.

02:39:42.000 We did last night.

02:39:43.000 We cooked an Animal last night in Las Vegas.

02:39:44.000 How was that?

02:39:45.000 Yeah, those guys are great.

02:39:46.000 Awesome.

02:39:47.000 Have you been there?

02:39:48.000 I've never been.

02:39:49.000 Yeah, John and Vinny's, man.

02:39:50.000 Amazing things.

02:39:50.000 Yeah, they're good boys.

02:39:52.000 They have John and Vinny's across the street.

02:39:53.000 Animal is a restaurant that kind of opened around the same time.

02:39:56.000 Joe Beef.

02:39:56.000 We were friends back then.

02:39:58.000 They came up to Montreal a bunch of times.

02:40:00.000 I brought them to all the weird...

02:40:01.000 We're all kindred spirits.

02:40:02.000 It's like the same...

02:40:04.000 Yeah, same thing.

02:40:05.000 They practice the restaurant business like we practice the restaurant business.

02:40:09.000 The restaurant's so similar to ours in weird ways.

02:40:12.000 And their relationship, John and Vinny, is very Dave and Fred.

02:40:15.000 It's strange.

02:40:16.000 You have these sort of connections with these fellow like-minded chefs.

02:40:22.000 All the pirates on Tony's pirate ship, man.

02:40:27.000 Yeah, well, he was the one who introduced me to you guys.

02:40:29.000 Yeah.

02:40:30.000 He told me about you guys.

02:40:31.000 Listen, Joe Beef, Surviving the Apocalypse.

02:40:35.000 Is it out now?

02:40:36.000 Yes, sir.

02:40:37.000 In a week.

02:40:39.000 24th.

02:40:39.000 November.

02:40:40.000 I have it already, you fucks. 1.00

02:40:41.000 Sorry. 0.99

02:40:42.000 But you're going to have to wait.

02:40:43.000 But please, go out, go buy it, support.

02:40:45.000 And if you're in Montreal, go visit my best restaurant, Joe Beef. 1.00

02:40:49.000 You guys are the shit. 1.00

02:40:50.000 Thank you, Joe. 1.00

02:40:51.000 Thank you so much.

02:40:52.000 Thank you very much.

02:40:53.000 Thank you.

The Joe Rogan Experience - November 14, 2018

Joe Rogan Experience #1202 - Fred Morin & David McMillan

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Transcript