The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1765 - Philip Frankland Lee

00:00:12.000 So, Phillip, my friend Phillip here, who's the head chef of the greatest sushi place on planet Earth, I say to young Jamie, young Jamie, have you had sushi at Sushi Bar ATX yet?

00:00:25.000 And he goes, I don't like fish.

00:00:27.000 Yep.

00:00:30.000 Put that microphone in front of your face. 0.90

00:00:31.000 What's wrong with that?

00:00:33.000 What could you not like about fish?

00:00:36.000 Well, I've eaten it.

00:00:38.000 I'm not afraid to try it all the time.

00:00:39.000 I've worked at restaurants, and they've made really great halibut.

00:00:42.000 Okay, what about filet-o-fish sandwiches from McDonald's?

00:00:45.000 No, that's not. 0.99

00:00:45.000 What the fuck? 0.99

00:00:46.000 Those are goddamn delicious. 1.00

00:00:48.000 It's like a smell and taste to it that just... 0.99

00:00:50.000 I mean, have you tried fish?

00:00:52.000 I mean, obviously, you know, a Filet-O-Fish sandwich is not going to be, you know, $100 a pound Toro.

00:00:58.000 But it's still delicious.

00:01:00.000 Filet-O-Fish is like the best thing McDonald's ever figured out.

00:01:04.000 No.

00:01:05.000 Listen, yes.

00:01:06.000 Listen, I know it's terrible for you. 1.00

00:01:08.000 Like every time I eat one, there's like the brain is saying to the mouth, what the fuck is wrong with you? 0.98

00:01:14.000 And then the body's like, dude. 1.00

00:01:16.000 But the mouth's like, shut up, bitch. 1.00

00:01:18.000 I don't know, man. 1.00

00:01:19.000 I'm steak and potatoes from Ohio.

00:01:21.000 I enjoy steak and potatoes as well, though.

00:01:23.000 I just...

00:01:23.000 I don't know.

00:01:26.000 Some people just...

00:01:27.000 It's hard to say.

00:01:27.000 I always wonder if people just have, like, if their tongue works different.

00:01:32.000 Like, I have two...

00:01:33.000 My youngest daughter...

00:01:34.000 You've met my kids.

00:01:35.000 Yeah.

00:01:36.000 My youngest loves spicy food. 1.00

00:01:39.000 I mean, she can fuck with some really spicy hot sauce. 1.00

00:01:43.000 Like, I got this Senor Lechuga hot sauce. 1.00

00:01:47.000 They sent me a bunch of it.

00:01:48.000 It's awesome stuff.

00:01:49.000 And they sent me some with Reapers. 0.98

00:01:52.000 I mean, it's got a fucking kick to it. 0.99

00:01:54.000 That'll have it. 0.99

00:01:54.000 And she goes, what's that hot sauce? 0.99

00:01:57.000 And I go, this one might be too hot for you.

00:01:59.000 She goes, let me try.

00:02:00.000 I go, you serious?

00:02:01.000 And she's like dipping her finger into this Reaper sauce.

00:02:04.000 She goes...

00:02:06.000 I can handle it.

00:02:07.000 I go, wow, she's 11. That's gnarly.

00:02:09.000 It's gnarly. 0.99

00:02:10.000 My 13-year-old will not fuck with it at all. 0.99

00:02:12.000 She's like, yeah. 0.99

00:02:14.000 She barely likes crushed red pepper on pizza. 1.00

00:02:17.000 She can't handle that.

00:02:18.000 Yeah, I mean, everyone's a little bit different with the way that they're, you know, like, coffee.

00:02:22.000 I hate coffee.

00:02:23.000 That's so odd. 0.68

00:02:24.000 I think the flavor is disgusting.

00:02:26.000 I've definitely had that conversation with people before, and they're like, well, you haven't tried the right coffee.

00:02:31.000 And I've tried everybody who's suggested that.

00:02:34.000 I just think it tastes disgusting.

00:02:36.000 It tastes burnt.

00:02:36.000 Do you not like caffeine, or do you not like...

00:02:39.000 Well, I don't do caffeine.

00:02:41.000 None?

00:02:42.000 My body doesn't work well with it.

00:02:43.000 What happens when you have caffeine?

00:02:44.000 I just get shaky.

00:02:46.000 Oh, really?

00:02:46.000 I think I kind of OD'd on Red Bulls when I was younger.

00:02:51.000 I used to drink like four or five a day, and then one day I just didn't work anymore.

00:02:56.000 Did you see that refrigerator that we have out in the hallway that's the Black Rifle Coffee refrigerator?

00:03:00.000 Yeah.

00:03:00.000 They have these cans of Black Rifle Coffee.

00:03:03.000 It's like a cold, it's like espresso with milk and sugar. 0.99

00:03:09.000 It's so fucking good. 0.98

00:03:11.000 They're so delicious, but there's 300 milligrams of caffeine in every can. 0.99

00:03:15.000 Yeah, it could probably kill me.

00:03:17.000 I mean, what is a Red Bull?

00:03:18.000 A Red Bull is like, I'm going to guess, 150?

00:03:23.000 Is a Red Bull, let's guess.

00:03:25.000 How many milligrams?

00:03:26.000 Not even, no idea.

00:03:27.000 Too many.

00:03:28.000 What is it?

00:03:29.000 A 12-ounce can, it says 111. Okay, that ain't shit. 0.99

00:03:33.000 It's got that taurine in it. 0.98

00:03:34.000 I'm just kidding.

00:03:34.000 Oh, it's got that bullcum?

00:03:35.000 No, it's got other stuff in it.

00:03:36.000 Do you know taurine is bullcum?

00:03:38.000 I do now.

00:03:39.000 I don't know if Red Bull has it.

00:03:41.000 I think that was the original.

00:03:43.000 Hitler was into that stuff, apparently. 1.00

00:03:45.000 Yeah, I mean, that shit will give you wings, right? 0.99

00:03:46.000 I think that's the whole reason why Red Bull has a bull on it, and it has taurine. 1.00

00:03:50.000 I think the bull is supposed to...

00:03:51.000 I don't think they get it that way.

00:03:53.000 Actually, this says it has a thousand milligrams of taurine.

00:03:57.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:03:58.000 I don't know if that's a lot compared to something.

00:04:00.000 Yeah, I don't know.

00:04:01.000 That might be a small amount.

00:04:02.000 I have no idea.

00:04:03.000 I have no reference point.

00:04:04.000 But here's the thing.

00:04:06.000 You gave me this.

00:04:07.000 Thank you very much.

00:04:08.000 Absolutely.

00:04:09.000 It says the Yamakaze Single Malt Japanese Whiskey, and you said that this is a...

00:04:15.000 Yeah, so the Yamazaki Sherry Cask, 2016. This bottle won, I can't remember which, you know, Whiskey World Awards or whatever, but it did win gold.

00:04:27.000 And so this became, like, I don't want to call it the Holy Grail, but it became one of the most sought-after bottles of whiskey in modern times.

00:04:35.000 And mainly not just because of the fact that it won gold, but they only made enough to produce 5,000 bottles.

00:04:43.000 And so the bottles have been gone for quite some time.

00:04:46.000 Here we go.

00:04:52.000 Oh, that smells good.

00:04:53.000 I have a buddy, my buddy Alex.

00:04:54.000 Shout out to Alex.

00:04:55.000 He's really into, like, really nice Japanese whiskey.

00:04:59.000 He knows this.

00:05:01.000 Give me that glass, son.

00:05:02.000 Come on.

00:05:03.000 Give me just a touch.

00:05:05.000 Just a touch.

00:05:06.000 That bottle's gotta last.

00:05:07.000 There's not many left.

00:05:08.000 Come on.

00:05:09.000 Nothing lasts.

00:05:11.000 What, are you gonna live forever?

00:05:12.000 Cheers, my friend.

00:05:13.000 Cheers.

00:05:18.000 Oh wow, that's interesting.

00:05:20.000 It's almost like ethereal.

00:05:23.000 God, that's unique.

00:05:25.000 That is very unique.

00:05:27.000 That's a surprising taste because it is whiskey-like, but it's very different than any other whiskey I've ever tried.

00:05:36.000 It's also like, feel now, it's almost like tingling all around your palate.

00:05:42.000 So, when did you know that you wanted to be a chef?

00:05:46.000 Like, how long have you been, like, really into cooking?

00:05:48.000 Because you're a young guy.

00:05:49.000 By the way, congratulations on the Michelin stars.

00:05:51.000 Thank you.

00:05:52.000 Thank you.

00:05:52.000 That's giant, right?

00:05:53.000 In the world of chefs, that's the fucking thing, right? 0.99

00:05:56.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:05:56.000 I mean, I dedicated the last... 0.98

00:06:00.000 Probably 15 years of my life just to trying to get a Michelin star.

00:06:04.000 And when I found out this year, they had me on a Zoom call.

00:06:12.000 They kind of lied to me.

00:06:14.000 What they did is they said, first of all, you're not getting a star this year, just so you know.

00:06:21.000 But we want to send someone to the restaurant in Los Angeles, and we have some interview questions we want to ask you about how it was to operate during COVID. And I said, well, I'm in Austin, but I can fly back.

00:06:33.000 They're like, no, no big deal.

00:06:34.000 Don't fly back.

00:06:35.000 Just zoom in.

00:06:37.000 So I zoom in, and they have my wife, who's our pastry chef and my business partner.

00:06:42.000 She's at the restaurant, and so is my brother, who is the chef of Sushi Bar in Montecito, and our chef at Pasta Bar.

00:06:49.000 And they're all three there, just in the restaurant, and I'm at my house here.

00:06:54.000 In Austin, and I'm on Zoom.

00:06:55.000 And they start asking us some random questions about, you know, how is it, you know, what's it like being open?

00:07:00.000 And what if the, you know, pitfalls you had to overcome?

00:07:04.000 And then out of nowhere, they just go, oh, and I have one extra question.

00:07:11.000 Congratulations.

00:07:13.000 Two of your restaurants are getting Michelin stars.

00:07:16.000 Oh, they snuck it in on you.

00:07:17.000 They snuck it in, and I'm on, and the thing is, I'm on a Zoom, and so I was like, wait, what?

00:07:22.000 What did she say?

00:07:22.000 Like, I couldn't hear, and everyone, and I thought we had just gotten one, and it turned out, they said, no, no, no.

00:07:30.000 And I said, wait, which restaurant?

00:07:32.000 They said, sushi bar, Montecito, and pasta bar.

00:07:38.000 And pasta bar's in LA? Pasta bar's in LA. And I just started crying.

00:07:43.000 Wow.

00:07:44.000 I was just reading on the history of the Michelin star and that it was really back in the early days of travel.

00:07:53.000 They had a book that would show you where you can get your car repaired, where you could refuel, and then where you can get something to eat.

00:08:01.000 And then people got really obsessed with the where to get something to eat part, and then it became a separate entity.

00:08:08.000 I don't think they ever set out to become the world standard on cuisine.

00:08:16.000 I don't think that was ever the point.

00:08:17.000 The point was, we have to give you a reason to buy tires, and that reason is to drive, and so here's some things to drive to.

00:08:25.000 And so that's what the one star, two star, three star delineations have to do with.

00:08:31.000 Is this one is worth, you know, a stop, this one's worth a detour, and this one's worth a journey.

00:08:37.000 And so that's how you get one star, two star, three star.

00:08:40.000 So one star means if it's on your way, stop.

00:08:43.000 That was over a hundred years ago.

00:08:45.000 Now one star means, you know, fly there.

00:08:47.000 But three star means, like, upend your life and go find that place.

00:08:52.000 What's that?

00:08:53.000 Who's got three stars?

00:08:55.000 Here in America, not many people.

00:08:57.000 McDonald's, yes.

00:08:58.000 I think they have four stars, actually.

00:09:02.000 Is there anywhere in America that has three?

00:09:06.000 Yeah, a couple places.

00:09:07.000 Like what?

00:09:08.000 The French Laundry has three stars.

00:09:10.000 Oh, okay.

00:09:11.000 That's that place where Gavin Newsom got in trouble, right?

00:09:13.000 I watched a video on that.

00:09:15.000 Not on that, but on Bourdain.

00:09:18.000 I think it was the old show.

00:09:20.000 I think it was No Reservations.

00:09:22.000 Yeah, and he went to French Laundry. 0.98

00:09:24.000 It was pretty fucking incredible.

00:09:26.000 Yeah, I've only got to eat there once, but it's an institution. 0.97

00:09:30.000 It's that good.

00:09:31.000 Oh, yeah.

00:09:32.000 Oh, yeah.

00:09:32.000 I mean, for a long time, it was the restaurant in America.

00:09:37.000 Mmm.

00:09:38.000 The?

00:09:38.000 It was the restaurant in America.

00:09:39.000 And isn't it kind of a weird spot?

00:09:40.000 Like, you gotta travel?

00:09:42.000 Yeah, but that's part of sort of the allure of, and not to say they wouldn't be a three-star restaurant without, you know, having that part of traveling, but three stars is when you're worth the journey. 0.55

00:09:54.000 So you could be in, like, the Himalayas or some shit.

00:09:56.000 Yeah, I mean, a lot of some of the three-star restaurants around the world are not in, you know, they're not in strip malls. 0.76

00:10:01.000 They're not in city centers.

00:10:03.000 They're, you know, they've bought ranches.

00:10:05.000 They've bought, you know, they have land.

00:10:07.000 El Bulli was on the top of a mountain.

00:10:10.000 Where's El Bully?

00:10:11.000 Well, that's been closed for a long time, but that was in Spain.

00:10:14.000 Oh, yeah?

00:10:14.000 Yeah.

00:10:15.000 So, I mean, there's...

00:10:15.000 You're saying it like I know.

00:10:16.000 I don't know any of this.

00:10:17.000 Listen, let me into your world.

00:10:19.000 I don't know what you're talking about.

00:10:21.000 What's El Bully?

00:10:22.000 So, that was Farinadria.

00:10:25.000 They were named best restaurant in the world several years over.

00:10:31.000 It was really the restaurant that...

00:10:35.000 Really brought what became known as molecular gastronomy, all the food that, you know, Jamie would probably look at and say, this is, what am I looking at?

00:10:44.000 This doesn't look like food.

00:10:45.000 This looks like interesting abstract art.

00:10:48.000 But, you know, today you have restaurants where, you know, you'll get literally a balloon that's brought out to the table and you eat the, suck the helium out and eat the balloon and that's, you know, one of the courses.

00:11:04.000 Oh, wow.

00:11:05.000 Twelve iconic dishes of El Bully.

00:11:09.000 Mmm.

00:11:10.000 So this is like fancy dining, and this is like...

00:11:13.000 It's beyond fancy dining.

00:11:14.000 Someone from Jamie's lineage would look about this and...

00:11:17.000 If you asked him, like, what is this?

00:11:20.000 And you didn't tell him it was...

00:11:21.000 You wouldn't think that was food.

00:11:23.000 Yeah, Jamie's not into this.

00:11:25.000 I can tell already.

00:11:25.000 Is that sea urchin?

00:11:27.000 That is sea urchin. 1.00

00:11:28.000 Oh, delicious.

00:11:30.000 Do you like sea urchin?

00:11:30.000 No, I just tried octopus recently.

00:11:33.000 And?

00:11:33.000 Oh, okay.

00:11:34.000 I feel bad eating octopus because they found out how fucking smart they are. 0.99

00:11:37.000 I know, that's what I thought. 0.99

00:11:38.000 I was like, I'll try it so I can say I tried it. 0.96

00:11:40.000 But they're, you know, they're so fucking good. 0.94

00:11:43.000 They're very good. 1.00

00:11:44.000 But they are murderers. 1.00

00:11:45.000 I mean, they murder everything. 0.99

00:11:46.000 I'd rather have macaroni and cheese and steak.

00:11:49.000 Oh my god, macaroni and cheese.

00:11:52.000 I was just saying, I'd rather have something else.

00:11:54.000 There is good macaroni and cheese out there, by the way.

00:11:56.000 There's some places, I'm trying off the tip of my head, there was a place that had a truffle macaroni and cheese with really good cheese. 0.93

00:12:05.000 God damn it, what place was that? 0.86

00:12:07.000 I'm not going to get it. 0.99

00:12:08.000 I'm going to let it go.

00:12:09.000 My house for Thanksgiving.

00:12:10.000 That's where you get the best mac and cheese.

00:12:12.000 You make mac and cheese?

00:12:12.000 Yeah.

00:12:13.000 What do you do with it?

00:12:15.000 So it's partially my grandma's recipe.

00:12:18.000 So basically I make a cheese sauce separately with Gruyere, sharp cheddar, and then I'll boil the macaroni, cool it down, and then I'll take a bunch of shredded cheese as well and kind of layer it almost like you would be layering a lasagna a little bit,

00:12:40.000 and then cover the entire top with melted cheese as well.

00:12:44.000 And then, kind of the secret to that is, in the cheese sauce, smoked paprika.

00:12:50.000 Yeah.

00:12:52.000 And so when you eat it, it's got a little bit of the, you know, Kraft mac and cheese of like the, like the, what is it, like the sauciness.

00:13:02.000 But you have layers, and you build it when it's cold, so you have layers of just shredded cheese all through it, so you still have that pull of the cheese like a nice pizza.

00:13:11.000 And then you have a crispy cheese crust.

00:13:13.000 Lasagna-like almost.

00:13:15.000 It's really good.

00:13:16.000 Wow. 1.00

00:13:17.000 Damn, son. 1.00

00:13:18.000 You know, I am addicted to watching. 1.00

00:13:21.000 There's so many pages on Instagram now that are essentially like a one-minute cooking show.

00:13:27.000 Have you ever watched any of those?

00:13:30.000 Maybe.

00:13:30.000 I'm sure I flipped through them.

00:13:32.000 Why do people love looking at people cooking food? 0.98

00:13:35.000 Because I fucking love it. 0.97

00:13:37.000 Yeah, I think it's got to be something like psychological. 0.94

00:13:42.000 It's got to be something about like watching somebody nourish, like creating nourishment maybe, in some sort of like, you know, abstract way that you haven't really...

00:13:52.000 It's an art thing, though.

00:13:55.000 There's a beauty to it.

00:13:56.000 There's a creation of a delicious meal.

00:13:59.000 You know how good that's going to taste because you've had something similar.

00:14:03.000 And so you're watching them put together some dish with skill and all the different elements of it and all the knowledge that has to be...

00:14:14.000 You have to earn the ability to cook a delicious meal.

00:14:19.000 It's not something very simple.

00:14:22.000 To do it just right, it's an art form.

00:14:26.000 It is, but like most art forms, it's a craft.

00:14:30.000 And it's a practicable craft.

00:14:31.000 Yeah.

00:14:32.000 But I think back to what you were saying about...

00:14:35.000 Like, why are people attracted to that?

00:14:37.000 I mean, you can go on and watch, you know, people blow dry their hair or apply makeup, and that, you know, is probably attracting some people, but only people who care about, you know, makeup.

00:14:49.000 Where it feels like even people who aren't into food, who aren't like, you know, self-acclaimed foodies, they still like watching food.

00:14:58.000 And I think it has to be something deeper than just a craft that is interesting to look at.

00:15:02.000 Yeah, though that's one of the things that's fascinating about it, is that it is a craft, but it's also, like you said, it's nourishment. 0.90

00:15:08.000 I mean, everybody needs food, and it's also, it looks fucking amazing.

00:15:14.000 It's one of the only things where the artist, if you call him an artist, or craftsman, have to take enough responsibility and have enough integrity to understand that the art they're creating is going to be ingested by the audience.

00:15:28.000 Not just hung on the wall or worn.

00:15:30.000 Right.

00:15:31.000 It took me a while to figure out that it is art.

00:15:35.000 It really was Bourdain that showed me from his first show, from No Reservations.

00:15:39.000 I remember watching that show and one of the beautiful things about No Reservations and then also Parts Unknown was that his narration was all his writing.

00:15:51.000 And it was all so very specific to his writing.

00:15:55.000 In fact, his voice is so specific that, you know, he got obsessed with jujitsu and started posting on a Reddit jujitsu subthread.

00:16:06.000 And eventually people figured out that it was him.

00:16:09.000 Just because of his voice?

00:16:10.000 I don't know how they figured it out.

00:16:12.000 And it may have been posthumously that they figured it out.

00:16:15.000 But there was this whole article about Bourdain posting on this subreddit.

00:16:21.000 Like, real honest about his journey and his battles with Jiu Jitsu.

00:16:25.000 But he did it in a way that's very similar to the way he does the narration on his show.

00:16:31.000 Which was one of the more interesting things about the show.

00:16:34.000 Because you got an insight into an art.

00:16:37.000 Where the practitioner is explaining it, but he's so articulate and passionate.

00:16:43.000 Yeah.

00:16:47.000 I see people like, am I tripping?

00:16:48.000 Yeah, there's shooting stars in the ceiling.

00:16:50.000 But there's an aspect to the way he would describe it.

00:16:55.000 And I remember watching a show going, oh, it's art.

00:17:00.000 I was like, duh!

00:17:01.000 Why didn't I see it this way before?

00:17:02.000 I just thought, oh, that place is delicious.

00:17:04.000 But there's also an art to changing a tire or anything.

00:17:07.000 When you see someone who's really good at something, there's an art to it.

00:17:12.000 Right, especially if you're into that thing.

00:17:14.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:17:14.000 Yeah, I always talk about that with pool, the game of pool, because most people look at pool, it's fucking boring. 0.98

00:17:20.000 You're just shooting a ball in the hole. 0.96

00:17:21.000 Yeah.

00:17:21.000 Who cares?

00:17:22.000 But for someone like me who plays, I see someone like Earl Strickland, like a great pool player, I watch him play like, God damn it, that's amazing. 0.96

00:17:29.000 It's beautiful. 0.89

00:17:30.000 Yeah, I mean, when somebody can make something look easy, but also make it look sexy at the same time.

00:17:34.000 Mmm.

00:17:35.000 Sexy.

00:17:36.000 Yeah.

00:17:38.000 It's really cool that we live in a time where the entry barrier to expressing yourself in that kind of a way is so simple.

00:17:50.000 There's a guy on Instagram that I was just going back and forth with.

00:17:54.000 He's got a great page.

00:17:54.000 It's cooking__with__fire, and he makes bomb-ass Mexican food.

00:18:00.000 And he was a chef and he's just basically dedicating all his time now to putting online content out.

00:18:10.000 And he's doing like a one minute cookie show.

00:18:13.000 He just does the whole, like no matter what he makes, he bangs it out.

00:18:17.000 Cooking with fire seems to be hard to do in one minute.

00:18:19.000 Well, it's just a really well-edited thing.

00:18:24.000 He'll do the whole deal from creating the salsa to cooking the meat to creating some sort of a sauce to go on it. 0.99

00:18:32.000 And every time I watch his channel, I want to fucking eat like a pig. 0.99

00:18:37.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:18:39.000 So he's creating all these different things.

00:18:42.000 And then he's making...

00:18:45.000 Okay, this is just hot dogs wrapped in bacon.

00:18:47.000 You picked a terrible one, Jamie.

00:18:49.000 Excuse me?

00:18:50.000 Sounds delicious.

00:18:51.000 I think Jamie picked the one he wants us to cook for him tonight.

00:18:54.000 That is exactly what Jamie would watch.

00:18:56.000 I don't want to watch him cook shrimp.

00:18:59.000 But anyway, it's one of those things.

00:19:02.000 That's that little Nomad grill.

00:19:03.000 That's a pretty badass little grill. 0.98

00:19:05.000 You could take that sucker around with a suitcase. 0.94

00:19:07.000 It's all insulated. 0.89

00:19:08.000 But the point is that the entry barrier to putting out content like that is so minimal now.

00:19:18.000 It's like all you have to do is have a camera and point it at you when you cook and just have some narration.

00:19:24.000 Yeah, it's something that definitely wasn't there before, but I don't know.

00:19:29.000 I haven't really gotten that into watching it really myself.

00:19:34.000 Obviously, you've worked with some great chefs.

00:19:38.000 Do you like watching people put the food together?

00:19:41.000 I used to watch food TV religiously.

00:19:45.000 I think that was when I was just up and coming as a young cook.

00:19:53.000 The thing is...

00:19:55.000 Being a chef and being a cook are two entirely different things.

00:19:58.000 Obviously being a cook is a prerequisite.

00:20:01.000 What's the difference?

00:20:02.000 So if I was to come over to your house tonight and I was to cook you the best meal you ever had, that would not make me a great chef.

00:20:11.000 That would make me a great cook.

00:20:12.000 So you cook one thing.

00:20:13.000 Like maybe a chef means you can cook a bunch of different things?

00:20:16.000 No.

00:20:17.000 The fact that I did it myself.

00:20:18.000 If I cook you food, I'm cooking.

00:20:22.000 If I brought five or six people over to your house, and I got them to work together to make you the best meal you've ever had, that would make me a chef.

00:20:32.000 So, saying that, like, you know, my wife cooks great food, so she's a fantastic chef.

00:20:41.000 It's more like saying that a conductor of an orchestra, you wouldn't call the conductor a great violinist.

00:20:47.000 Now, the conductor probably needs to not just know how to play the violin, but also, you know, be very good at it.

00:20:54.000 Okay, so a chef can cook, but they really coordinate all these people that are cooking together in a restaurant.

00:21:01.000 It means chief.

00:21:02.000 But when you have a private chef that people hire to their home to cook for them, and that's an individual, what is that guy?

00:21:10.000 Now a private cook?

00:21:11.000 Well, you can hire a private chef.

00:21:13.000 That sounds a lot better than a private cook, but what is the job function of that person?

00:21:18.000 Well, I guess in that scenario, if you just have a—because there's some households that have, you know, a team, right?

00:21:24.000 And some households would have a single individual who's cooking.

00:21:27.000 So you can be the chef who also cooks.

00:21:31.000 It's not to say that if you cook, you are therefore not a chef.

00:21:34.000 It's just that the difference—and we're talking more about in the industry— Being a chef is to be someone who brings others together to cook, as opposed to someone who just cooks.

00:21:45.000 So you would call, like if you're working in a restaurant, a steak restaurant, the chef would be the main guy that tells everybody what to do.

00:21:51.000 That's the person who's typically writing the menu, who's handling all the ordering.

00:21:55.000 That's typically the person who's dealing with the broken dishwasher.

00:21:58.000 Oh.

00:21:59.000 Well, that's not glamorous.

00:22:01.000 No. 0.99

00:22:01.000 The fuck is that? 0.99

00:22:02.000 No. 1.00

00:22:02.000 Don't you have a guy that handles the dishwasher? 1.00

00:22:04.000 Well, I guess maybe if you're at a famous steakhouse, maybe the chef isn't dealing with that, but in a normal, you know, restaurant.

00:22:10.000 Small restaurant.

00:22:11.000 Yeah.

00:22:11.000 Yeah, and so the other people that are working for them, they're cooking the meals, you wouldn't consider them chefs as well.

00:22:16.000 Well, that's why the person who typically runs, like, the line is called the sous chef, under chef.

00:22:23.000 Oh, that's what sous means.

00:22:24.000 Yeah.

00:22:25.000 S-O-U-S? S-O-U-S. So you have chef de parties, which are basically station cooks, and then they report to a sous chef who reports to, in some cases, a chef de cuisine who reports to a chef.

00:22:36.000 Okay, so sous vide means underwater then.

00:22:40.000 Is that what it means?

00:22:41.000 Under pressure, I think vide is pressure.

00:22:43.000 I could be wrong.

00:22:44.000 But you're cooking in water.

00:22:46.000 What's the pressure?

00:22:47.000 It doesn't have to be water.

00:22:48.000 So you can cook sous vide in any sort of...

00:22:52.000 So what you're doing with sous vide is you're creating an anaerobic environment by...

00:22:57.000 What is sous vide?

00:22:58.000 Under vacuum.

00:23:00.000 Okay, so like a vacuum bag.

00:23:02.000 Yeah, so under pressure.

00:23:04.000 And so the idea is, you know, the picture over here on the right is what you would most associate sous vide with is one of these immersion circulators.

00:23:13.000 But you also can take that bag and you can put it into a steamer, which I guess does have water, but it's not underwater.

00:23:20.000 I've seen people cook sous vide in a Ziploc bag, though.

00:23:25.000 So what the hell's going on there?

00:23:26.000 Well, you've taken out—I mean, you didn't use a vacuum machine, per se, but you could do what we call ghetto vac.

00:23:32.000 And so if you actually take—let's say you take a steak, you put it in a Ziploc bag.

00:23:36.000 If you take a bowl of ice water and you submerge the steak into the ice water, it's going to push and force all the oxygen out the top, and you slowly put it in there until you just have the zip at the top, and then you Ziploc and you pull it out, and it's a ghetto vac.

00:23:50.000 Oh, I see what you're saying.

00:23:51.000 Okay.

00:23:52.000 But I've seen people do it where they just put it in there and just zip it.

00:23:56.000 None of that ghetto vacuum. 1.00

00:23:58.000 They probably aren't at a really nice restaurant.

00:24:00.000 No, they're at home.

00:24:01.000 Yeah.

00:24:02.000 I mean, yeah, you can do it at home.

00:24:03.000 But is the results the same?

00:24:05.000 So the less of an environment that is there, the more accurate you're going to have to cook.

00:24:11.000 So if you have a bunch of oxygen in that bag, then that oxygen is going to react at a different temperature or a different rate than if there's no oxygen.

00:24:19.000 Now, when you first started cooking, did you go to culinary school?

00:24:23.000 Were you cooking actively before you went to culinary school?

00:24:27.000 Yeah, so I went to culinary school.

00:24:28.000 I had been cooking for years, and I only went for a few months and I dropped out.

00:24:33.000 Really?

00:24:33.000 Yeah.

00:24:34.000 Look at that, kids.

00:24:35.000 You can drop out of culinary school and get two Michelin stars.

00:24:39.000 Why did you drop out?

00:24:41.000 I thought I was going to University of Food.

00:24:44.000 I enrolled because I wanted to learn why.

00:24:49.000 I wanted to learn.

00:24:51.000 And everything I knew up until that point in my career was just what the guy next to me had taught me.

00:24:56.000 And that was because he was like...

00:24:58.000 Alright, once you get here, okay, turn that, okay, you see what you're looking, and that's it.

00:25:01.000 Just do this.

00:25:02.000 As a line cook, you spend most of your time just doing what you're told.

00:25:06.000 And so I thought, okay, at this point, this is what I knew what I wanted to do.

00:25:12.000 And so I thought to myself that I'm going to go to school and really learn about this.

00:25:16.000 And then I got there, and it was cooking class.

00:25:24.000 And I had no desire to take cooking classes.

00:25:29.000 Well, what do you mean by cooking class?

00:25:30.000 It was just step-by-step basics?

00:25:33.000 They're teaching you the alphabet, essentially?

00:25:35.000 Kind of.

00:25:36.000 I mean, it wasn't even that it was the alphabet.

00:25:39.000 It was...

00:25:39.000 Well, there was a couple of reasons that I quit.

00:25:43.000 One was actually, we talked about the French laundry.

00:25:45.000 I had the opportunity, while I was in culinary school, one of my chefs...

00:25:50.000 I had invited me to go with him and another group of chefs to the French Laundry.

00:25:56.000 And I went to my teacher and said, hey, I need a couple days off.

00:26:01.000 I have been invited.

00:26:02.000 And they had this really strict rule of if you miss two classes in any semester, whatever, you fail the class.

00:26:09.000 And this was like a breakfast egg cookery class.

00:26:14.000 And I said, well, I used to work at a restaurant called BLD in Los Angeles.

00:26:19.000 And I worked both the plancha and sometimes I worked the egg station and we did 400 cover brunches.

00:26:28.000 I know that we're going to boil one egg at a time next week, but this is a fantastic opportunity for me as a young cook to go and have dinner with these chefs at the French Laundry.

00:26:41.000 And they said, sorry, if you're not here for this, then you're going to fail. 1.00

00:26:45.000 And I said, well, then fuck that. 0.99

00:26:47.000 I should be getting extra credit. 0.99

00:26:48.000 Yeah, it seems like that would be a wiser choice to give you credit, not fail you.

00:26:54.000 And I also said, well, look, I'll take the final quiz for this class now, which is, you know, you have to make the dish.

00:27:00.000 I already spent over a year working four undercover brunches at a really nice restaurant.

00:27:08.000 I'm not going to learn that much more than what I've already done in real life.

00:27:11.000 I've already left that part of my career to go on, you know, to the bigger and better restaurants.

00:27:16.000 So did you feel like the system was just too rigid, or just the way they were teaching it?

00:27:21.000 They ended up getting a huge class action lawsuit against them later on, and they had to give everyone their tuition money back, I think.

00:27:28.000 Why?

00:27:30.000 I didn't follow it.

00:27:32.000 I also didn't join the class action lawsuit, but I think it was something about over-promising and under-delivering.

00:27:39.000 Mmm, okay.

00:27:41.000 Well, is it safe to say that all culinary schools are not created equal?

00:27:44.000 Oh, 100%.

00:27:45.000 So if you went to another one, maybe?

00:27:48.000 I don't think culinary school's not worth it.

00:27:51.000 I just think that, like if you were to come to me, you know, 30, 40 years ago and said, I want to be a cook, I would say, don't go to culinary school.

00:28:03.000 Because if you go to culinary school, you come out with debt.

00:28:06.000 And if you come out of culinary school and we hire you at one of our restaurants, we're going to end up saying to you, great, everything you just learned, okay, don't do any of that because now we want you to do it exactly how we do it.

00:28:17.000 And we're going to show you how we do it.

00:28:19.000 You're also going to start out at the bottom of the totem pole.

00:28:22.000 So you're going to start out, you're going to be, you know, peeling onions.

00:28:25.000 So cooking, is it safe to say or fair to say that it's essentially it's a craft that is best learned on the job?

00:28:34.000 Yeah, I mean, think about, like, you've been around, like, tattoo shops enough.

00:28:38.000 Sure.

00:28:39.000 You know what the apprentices go through to be able to tattoo there. 1.00

00:28:42.000 Yeah, they tattoo on their own legs and shit. 0.99

00:28:45.000 Or they get their friends. 1.00

00:28:47.000 Or pig ears.

00:28:48.000 You could imagine if they went to school to learn how to tattoo and then went to the tattoo shop, they'd still have to go through that hazing.

00:28:57.000 Not that there's hazing in the kitchen, but you still have to sort of earn your stripes.

00:29:01.000 And one of the things was, when I enrolled in culinary school, they had said, when you graduate, you will be eligible to be a chef de cuisine.

00:29:09.000 You'll start around $75,000 a year.

00:29:12.000 And I think that's where they got in trouble.

00:29:14.000 I could be wrong, but when you get out of culinary school, you're going to work either for free—well, you can't do that anymore—but you still have to work for free, or you're just going to come in at the minimum, minimum wage because,

00:29:30.000 yes, you have a degree from culinary school, but that doesn't mean that you're going to know anything that we need for this restaurant.

00:29:36.000 Interesting.

00:29:36.000 So when did you start, and what did you do with your first job?

00:29:43.000 So I started, well I actually feel like I should answer the very first question you asked me, which is when did I know I wanted to cook?

00:29:49.000 Because that kind of gets us there.

00:29:53.000 So I guess my dad knew before I knew, because he just recently sent me a video.

00:30:00.000 It's actually on my Instagram.

00:30:02.000 It's my third birthday party and he's bought me a chef's knife.

00:30:06.000 Wow!

00:30:07.000 Yeah.

00:30:08.000 Your third birthday party?

00:30:09.000 My third birthday party.

00:30:10.000 And you can clearly hear him say...

00:30:13.000 It's funny, because I think...

00:30:15.000 I haven't gotten the full story, but I think my mom's holding the old camera, and it's kind of shaking.

00:30:20.000 And I guess he says...

00:30:22.000 Oh.

00:30:22.000 There it is right there.

00:30:23.000 I think he says, I don't know what else to get him.

00:30:24.000 All he wants to do is cook.

00:30:31.000 That's not a real knife, is it?

00:30:32.000 Did he get you a real chef's knife?

00:30:34.000 I actually haven't asked him, because he said that to me, and he said, look, you've always wanted to cook.

00:30:39.000 So I don't know if that's a...

00:30:41.000 But knowing my dad, yeah, it's probably a real knife.

00:30:44.000 And did he just hide it from you?

00:30:46.000 Here's your knife, and then I'm going to hide it.

00:30:48.000 No, I cooked growing up every day.

00:30:49.000 But did you use that knife?

00:30:51.000 I don't remember.

00:30:52.000 But you were three?

00:30:53.000 Yeah, probably not.

00:30:53.000 It probably wasn't.

00:30:54.000 That seems like a lot for a three-year-old, those little tiny fingers.

00:30:58.000 Let me see your fingers.

00:30:59.000 They're all there.

00:30:59.000 They're all there, but I'm missing some parts.

00:31:02.000 Are you?

00:31:03.000 Yeah.

00:31:03.000 Some tips?

00:31:04.000 Yeah.

00:31:05.000 So right away, you always wanted to cook?

00:31:08.000 Apparently I did.

00:31:09.000 I don't remember that, but I do remember being...

00:31:13.000 I'm the oldest of five, and growing up, my dad cooked every single night at home, and he never wanted to go out.

00:31:22.000 So my parents divorced when I was very young, and when we were at dad's house, he cooked.

00:31:28.000 And each of us had a responsibility.

00:31:30.000 You know, one of my sisters would set the table, the other one would clear the table, my brother would do the dishes, whatever that it was.

00:31:36.000 I was the only one who could see above the counter at a certain point, and so I was always the one who would help cook.

00:31:43.000 Interesting.

00:31:43.000 That's the days before phones.

00:31:45.000 Because now you'd be like, kids, get off your phones and help daddy.

00:31:47.000 Yeah, probably.

00:31:48.000 Just let me finish my TikTok.

00:31:50.000 No, but apparently I would stop playing video games to come cook.

00:31:54.000 Oh.

00:31:54.000 Yeah.

00:31:55.000 No, I loved it.

00:31:56.000 And I cooked all the way, you know, that's how I started, you know, when I was younger and wanted to, you know, take girls out. 0.99

00:32:04.000 It was...

00:32:05.000 A lot less expensive if you go to the store and you buy stuff and you cook at home.

00:32:08.000 Plus, it's kind of romantic and impressive.

00:32:10.000 Like, wow, Philip cooks.

00:32:12.000 Yeah, and you finish dinner and you're at home.

00:32:15.000 Yeah, it's very cool.

00:32:18.000 When you have something that you really love to do really early on, what an advantage that is.

00:32:26.000 Because that's one of the things that troubles people the most when they're young.

00:32:29.000 It's like, what do I want to do with my life?

00:32:32.000 You know, when you find a thing that you're passionate about early, God, it's such a huge advantage.

00:32:38.000 Yeah, it's really interesting looking back, because there's really only three things that I'm, like, that I excel at.

00:32:45.000 Cooking, playing the drums, and my dad bought me, or my dad, my parents got me a drum set when I was 18 months old, and poker.

00:32:58.000 I learned, my grandmother taught me how to count using cards.

00:33:01.000 Really?

00:33:02.000 And those are, to today, those are the three things that I have excelled at in my life.

00:33:06.000 So do you make money playing poker?

00:33:09.000 Not like professionally, but I have won money. 0.99

00:33:12.000 So when you go to Vegas, do you get real serious and take dootropics and fucking sit down and calm your mind?

00:33:19.000 I took tournament poker serious for a long time, but that's something I would go to Vegas for because in LA we've got fantastic tournament poker there. 0.94

00:33:28.000 But I would study and I would listen to podcasts and I would review hands and things like that.

00:33:35.000 Yeah, my friend Ari, Ari Shafir, when he was coming up in LA, he was making most of his money playing poker.

00:33:44.000 It's a fantastic discipline that creates a very difficult...

00:33:49.000 How do you explain it?

00:33:52.000 Well, I'm sure he's explained it to you.

00:33:55.000 I don't listen to him.

00:33:56.000 I'm here with you.

00:34:00.000 It's a very difficult life.

00:34:03.000 I tried playing professionally when I was 18. There were Indian casinos you could play at and I would go there and spend, you know, four or five days and I'd play for three days straight.

00:34:14.000 A room?

00:34:15.000 Yeah.

00:34:15.000 Get a room there and just crash?

00:34:17.000 Yeah, they'll give you a room.

00:34:18.000 Wow.

00:34:20.000 And then I started, one day I woke up and I was like, you know, I was playing for a lot of money at the time for being 18 years old.

00:34:30.000 And, you know, I'd sit down with a couple thousand in front of me.

00:34:33.000 And then I would, you know, question whether or not I wanted to add extra cheese at my Taco Bell order because it was 27 cents.

00:34:40.000 And it was like, the world just became so skewed to me that I was like, okay, I need to stop. 0.87

00:34:46.000 Because you were looking at money so fucked up because you were making so much money and playing for so much money when you were playing poker? 0.74

00:34:53.000 Yeah, it wasn't even that I was making it because I was, you know, it was that I was playing with the money. 0.96

00:34:58.000 And so you start looking at the world in terms of big blinds.

00:35:03.000 Big blinds?

00:35:03.000 Big blinds.

00:35:04.000 So when you're playing Hold'em, to the left of the dealer button you have a small blind, and then to the left of him you have a big blind, which is basically your minimum bet.

00:35:13.000 And so if you're playing a 2-5 game, and that's what I was playing back then.

00:35:16.000 What's that mean?

00:35:17.000 $2- $5.

00:35:18.000 So $5 is the minimum bet to join the hand.

00:35:23.000 And so it's forced action to the left of the dealer button.

00:35:26.000 You're required to put $2 in if you're the small blind, and you're required to put $5 in just to start the action.

00:35:33.000 So then you look at your cards and if you're not in one of the blinds, you can fold for free.

00:35:38.000 Or you can raise more money or you can put in five dollars just to stay.

00:35:43.000 And when you start looking at the world in terms of big blinds, it's time to either make that the only thing you do forever or do something else.

00:35:53.000 And were you thinking about only playing poker at one point in time?

00:35:58.000 Yeah, I was.

00:36:00.000 And I had a really good job while I was playing cards.

00:36:06.000 I was actually selling mortgages.

00:36:08.000 No kidding!

00:36:09.000 Yeah, so I was one of those guys that was selling the stated income mortgages.

00:36:16.000 So you were selling mortgages, playing poker, but you really wanted to be a chef.

00:36:22.000 Well, I wasn't 100% sure yet that I wanted to be a chef.

00:36:27.000 So when I was 15, I think is when I dropped out of high school.

00:36:32.000 And I did that because the band I was playing with was starting to take off.

00:36:37.000 And I spent the next several years touring.

00:36:40.000 And I would, you know, we'd be on tour.

00:36:43.000 You were on tour when you were 15?

00:36:45.000 Yeah.

00:36:46.000 That's divorced parents right there. 0.69

00:36:48.000 Dad's like, go ahead. 1.00

00:36:50.000 Fuck it. 1.00

00:36:51.000 Live your life. 1.00

00:36:52.000 Don't make the mistakes Dad made.

00:36:54.000 Get out there.

00:36:55.000 Those are the things Dad did too.

00:36:56.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:37:00.000 What did your parents think when you said you were going to go on tour at 15?

00:37:04.000 Well, the band played in my dad's studio.

00:37:08.000 My dad was a record producer.

00:37:10.000 Oh! 0.60

00:37:11.000 Yeah.

00:37:11.000 That makes more sense.

00:37:12.000 Yeah.

00:37:13.000 So I... We would play, you know, locally back then, and then we'd start doing, like, weekend tours, and then when it was time to, like, okay, I'm gonna stop going to school, the only deal I had to make was that whenever I wasn't on tour,

00:37:30.000 I had to have a job.

00:37:31.000 I couldn't just, like, sleep in all day.

00:37:34.000 So there was a Jamba Juice right by our house, and...

00:37:39.000 Got a job there.

00:37:40.000 Wow.

00:37:42.000 And what led you to not keep pursuing the music?

00:37:48.000 At a certain point, so while I was playing cards, sorry, while I was playing music, actually, I turned the studio certain nights a week into a little poker room.

00:37:58.000 So I'd have friends over and we'd play cards at the house.

00:38:02.000 But while I was touring, I eventually decided, because when I decided to stop going to school, I said to myself, if the music doesn't work, I'm going to go to sushi school.

00:38:15.000 So the music thing did work and a couple years went by and actually my godmother owned a catering company.

00:38:25.000 And so in between tours, I didn't really want to keep working at like Jamba Juice or Starbucks or anything like that.

00:38:32.000 And so I asked her if I could work for her.

00:38:36.000 And so I invited her over to the house.

00:38:39.000 I cooked dinner for her and she said, well, I'll introduce you to my chef.

00:38:42.000 And if my chef wants to hire you, then you'll be hired.

00:38:46.000 And so I went to her catering company, met the chef.

00:38:52.000 The first thing was like, okay, you're making family meal today.

00:38:54.000 And so I cooked for the whole staff and she said, I'll hire you as a dishwasher. 0.98

00:39:02.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:39:04.000 Was that because that was the only job they had available?

00:39:08.000 Looking back at it, I was offended and angry, but I didn't care because of what she said after that, which is you don't get to start being a cook.

00:39:18.000 You have to start as a dishwasher so you can have respect for what it is that the dishwashers do.

00:39:26.000 And she said, here's how this works.

00:39:28.000 The faster you clean that dish pit...

00:39:31.000 The more I'll teach you.

00:39:33.000 So whenever that dish pits clean, you come and find me and I'll give you a task.

00:39:37.000 But if there's ever any dishes, that's what you're doing.

00:39:41.000 So it kind of gave me that bit of work ethic of like, alright, I'm going to work my way into that next position.

00:39:48.000 That seems to be a theme with great restaurants.

00:39:52.000 And when you talk to chefs, this work ethic theme, because it seems like when you talk to people that have worked in restaurants, one of the things that they will almost unanimously discuss is the amount of hours and the grind and how difficult it is.

00:40:09.000 Yeah.

00:40:09.000 And that development of work ethic almost is like kind of a boot camp for chefs.

00:40:15.000 It is.

00:40:16.000 It's...

00:40:16.000 I mean...

00:40:19.000 It's not so much anymore.

00:40:21.000 Laws have changed.

00:40:23.000 Culture has changed.

00:40:24.000 But it was your spending, like a 16-hour day was not even a really long day.

00:40:31.000 I dated a girl once who went to college for restaurant and hotel management. 0.98

00:40:38.000 And then she got a job at this restaurant. 0.99

00:40:41.000 And I remember I would go visit her and she was Fucking miserable. 0.99

00:40:47.000 I mean miserable. 0.99

00:40:48.000 She couldn't believe the hours that she had to work.

00:40:51.000 But you have to love it.

00:40:52.000 Yeah, she didn't love it.

00:40:52.000 That's an industry you have to love.

00:40:54.000 Well, she just wanted a career.

00:40:56.000 You know, she went to school, she graduated from school, and then she had this job that was like... 0.97

00:41:01.000 And then she had this boyfriend who was a fuck-up, who was a comedian. 0.85

00:41:06.000 So it was like very, very weird for her. 0.98

00:41:10.000 Because like, I had most of my day completely free.

00:41:14.000 And she was working, you know, 14, 15 hours a day at least.

00:41:18.000 Yeah.

00:41:18.000 I mean, it's one of those things where if you really want to take food seriously and cooking seriously, you're going to have to, you know, make a lot of sacrifices.

00:41:29.000 Yeah.

00:41:29.000 Just the time.

00:41:31.000 You're not there for birthdays.

00:41:32.000 You're not there for anniversaries.

00:41:34.000 You're not there for Valentine's Day, for sure.

00:41:37.000 Because you have to work.

00:41:38.000 Because you have to work.

00:41:39.000 It's a big day.

00:41:39.000 Yeah.

00:41:40.000 Because someone has to cook at all those restaurants you go to.

00:41:42.000 Yeah.

00:41:44.000 Yeah, people listening, if you are thinking of going down this path, prepare yourself.

00:41:50.000 Yeah, it's a fantastic path, but you have to understand what it's like.

00:41:54.000 And I think the reason it worked for me, or the reason I loved it so much, is it really felt like being on tour.

00:42:00.000 Except I got to sleep in my own bed.

00:42:03.000 Well, like playing music, you spend all day getting ready for the show that night.

00:42:11.000 And there's something to getting to the restaurant and prepping all day, getting ready for the show that night.

00:42:18.000 And so I feel like the camaraderie of being in a crew is a lot like being in a band.

00:42:26.000 The hours are a lot like being in a band.

00:42:29.000 And the shenanigans, you know, after hours, are a lot like being in a band.

00:42:34.000 The boozing?

00:42:35.000 Yeah.

00:42:36.000 That's the other thing that I learned from Bourdain.

00:42:38.000 I didn't know how hard people partied.

00:42:42.000 Yeah, I mean, when I was younger, there was a lot of nights you just don't go to sleep.

00:42:45.000 You just get out of the restaurant at 1.30 in the morning, you go to the bar, then you go somewhere else, then you go back and open the restaurant the next day.

00:42:54.000 That doesn't seem good for you.

00:42:56.000 No, it's terrible.

00:42:59.000 That's where the Red Bull comes in?

00:43:00.000 Well, no, I quit Red Bull earlier than that, but thankfully I never got into drugs, so it wasn't that, but I would drink a lot, and I actually had one time where I finished service, took two steps and just collapsed, just hit the ground.

00:43:16.000 Whoa.

00:43:17.000 At the end of the day?

00:43:18.000 At the end of the day.

00:43:19.000 You pulled an all-nighter?

00:43:20.000 I think two or three days in a row, yeah.

00:43:22.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:43:22.000 But I was like 21. Two or three days of no sleep?

00:43:27.000 At 21. Yeah.

00:43:29.000 Maybe like an hour and a half sleep here and there.

00:43:32.000 Jesus.

00:43:33.000 But, yeah, I mean, my first sous chef job, I was on the schedule.

00:43:38.000 It said, next to my name, all seven days said OP-CL. Open to close.

00:43:46.000 We did breakfast, and we did dinner service.

00:43:49.000 So, I would open the restaurant at about 7 a.m., and I would leave around 1.30, too.

00:43:55.000 So when you opened the restaurant at 7 a.m., what time were you actually arriving?

00:43:58.000 Uh, man, this was a long time ago, but I probably was getting there.

00:44:04.000 I was probably getting there around 7, 6.45, 7. When I say open, I mean I would get to the restaurant and open the door, not that we were open in public.

00:44:11.000 So there was someone there that was already prepping.

00:44:14.000 Yeah, I'm trying to remember.

00:44:16.000 Because we were at this, in this sort of like, the restaurant was a lunch and dinner restaurant, but we served breakfast as like a commissary to like, it was like in a building complex.

00:44:28.000 So I really wasn't responsible for breakfast.

00:44:32.000 I think there was people there before I would get there.

00:44:34.000 Like an office building complex?

00:44:36.000 Yeah.

00:44:36.000 So they would just grab something quick?

00:44:38.000 Yeah.

00:44:39.000 I would get in there and the dishwasher would already be making ham and cheese sandwiches or something like that.

00:44:46.000 And so you were there from 7 a.m.

00:44:48.000 and then what time would you get out of there?

00:44:50.000 Usually, I mean, probably 1, 1.30.

00:44:55.000 And nowadays with labor laws, you really couldn't schedule that, right?

00:44:59.000 Well, I was on salary.

00:45:01.000 Oh, interesting.

00:45:03.000 But that salary would have to be, you know, 3x at this point.

00:45:06.000 Yeah.

00:45:07.000 Because now they've changed the rule a couple years ago.

00:45:10.000 Salary is no longer a contract between you and I. Salaries have to fall into a certain, you have to qualify.

00:45:18.000 So you can't just be like, oh, I'm going to not give you overtime by giving you a salary to have you work when I ask you to.

00:45:24.000 Right.

00:45:25.000 Now you have to pay everybody a specific dollar amount, and they have to hold specific responsibilities in order to not accrue overtime.

00:45:33.000 Yeah, I think that's good because I think there's a lot of employers that are abusive. 0.97

00:45:40.000 But I also think there's something romantic about this story of you almost dying.

00:45:47.000 You know what I mean?

00:45:48.000 I mean, like, I do appreciate, like, long, hard work days.

00:45:53.000 There's something to that, because, like, I hear that, and I know you got through it, and you became very successful, so I'm like, see, it works.

00:45:59.000 Look, when I think Margarita and my first date was at that restaurant, and it was, I mean, people ask me all the time, how did you get her?

00:46:09.000 And it's food.

00:46:10.000 It has to be.

00:46:13.000 That's hilarious.

00:46:14.000 Well, you're a cool guy.

00:46:15.000 Don't tell yourself short.

00:46:16.000 Plus, you're kind of cute.

00:46:17.000 Appreciate it.

00:46:18.000 Jamie?

00:46:22.000 I'm top three in this room for sure.

00:46:24.000 Top three?

00:46:26.000 I'd say so.

00:46:28.000 But so because of that schedule, I couldn't take her on a date.

00:46:33.000 And so I remember the very first date we had was at the restaurant.

00:46:38.000 I told her to show up at 1230 after I sent everybody home.

00:46:42.000 And I had spent all day secretly prepping a special menu.

00:46:45.000 And she showed up. 0.80

00:46:47.000 And I sat her in the dining room that, like, overlooked the kitchen, and I would make a course, bring it out to her, sit down with her, have a sip of wine, and then go back in the kitchen, make the next course.

00:47:00.000 Oh, wow.

00:47:01.000 Yeah.

00:47:01.000 What did you think she did during the time we were in there cooking?

00:47:04.000 Well, I told her to bring a friend with her, because I told her that I'm going to, you know, otherwise she's there for 20 minutes in between each course.

00:47:11.000 That's, well, listen, man, that's a clever move.

00:47:13.000 Look, it worked.

00:47:14.000 Yeah, clearly.

00:47:15.000 Yeah.

00:47:16.000 That's interesting.

00:47:18.000 I mean, I would imagine that that's probably one of the most difficult occupations to date in.

00:47:23.000 Yeah.

00:47:24.000 I sacrificed a lot of relationships prior to that one.

00:47:31.000 Yeah, I can only imagine.

00:47:34.000 In that way, it's very similar to stand-up comedy.

00:47:36.000 Not in the work ethic part, because comedians are notoriously terrible at that.

00:47:41.000 Yeah.

00:47:41.000 But it's hard because you date a girl and they want a normal evening life.

00:47:47.000 And you're like, I gotta go do a set.

00:47:49.000 And, you know, I had relationships where they're like, you don't have to.

00:47:52.000 And that was like the record skipping in the room.

00:47:55.000 Like, yes, I do.

00:47:57.000 Yeah.

00:47:57.000 Yes, I do.

00:47:59.000 Because I have friends who've had relationships where the girl said, you don't have to, and they listened.

00:48:06.000 And I saw what happened.

00:48:07.000 They eventually fell off the radar and then vanished and stopped being a comic.

00:48:12.000 And then they would come to the comedy club, you know, like, seven years removed.

00:48:17.000 Like, hey, I'm thinking about getting back into it.

00:48:18.000 And everybody would look at you like you said, I have AIDS. Like, they just backed away from you.

00:48:24.000 Like, not even AIDS, because AIDS is not like, it's like, I have COVID. Sure.

00:48:28.000 Like, I'm right now filled with bugs that I could spread on you.

00:48:33.000 Like, we wanted to run away from them.

00:48:34.000 Whatever they had, maybe it's contagious.

00:48:36.000 Like, you quit! 0.99

00:48:38.000 You quit the greatest fucking job on Earth, and now you want to get back in? 1.00

00:48:42.000 Just get back in! 1.00

00:48:43.000 Don't tell us you're thinking about getting back in. 0.99

00:48:45.000 Fucking get back in! 0.99

00:48:46.000 Well, I think it has to do with communication. 1.00

00:48:49.000 And I think that's what a good relationship is built on.

00:48:52.000 And when we started our relationship, I was like, this is what I'm doing.

00:48:58.000 And at that time in her life, she's like, this is what I'm doing.

00:49:01.000 And we made an agreement that our careers would always come first.

00:49:06.000 And luckily, our careers overlapped.

00:49:11.000 And for the last...

00:49:15.000 13 years we've worked together.

00:49:17.000 That's awesome.

00:49:18.000 Yeah.

00:49:18.000 That's very cool.

00:49:19.000 And it's very cool that it works and you guys still get along so great even though you're in this like highly stressful like very strenuous sort of an environment.

00:49:30.000 Well, I think, again, it's because we have boundaries and we have rules for, like, this is where...

00:49:36.000 So, like, if we're sitting at home having dinner or if we're at a restaurant, you know, for her birthday, and there's a call from one of our restaurants or we have something, like, that always comes first.

00:49:47.000 And so there's never really been an issue where it's like jealousy because one of us has to do what we have to do because that's what we do.

00:49:57.000 How hard is it for you to go to restaurants?

00:50:00.000 Really easy.

00:50:00.000 Are you judgy?

00:50:01.000 No.

00:50:02.000 That's what I mean.

00:50:02.000 No.

00:50:02.000 You're not?

00:50:03.000 No, I can appreciate food.

00:50:08.000 I love food.

00:50:09.000 Food's like my favorite thing.

00:50:11.000 That's why I got into this.

00:50:13.000 But I do think that there are times when I eat something and it really comes down to only one time and it's value.

00:50:22.000 Is what I'm eating worth what I'm paying for it?

00:50:27.000 Because here's the thing.

00:50:29.000 If I go and spend $500 on dinner...

00:50:32.000 It should be at a certain level.

00:50:34.000 You're asking to be, not judged, but you're asking to be held to a standard, right?

00:50:40.000 If we're at, you know, Jamie takes us to some spot to go get some, you know, bacon-wrapped hot dogs, I can just appreciate it.

00:50:49.000 It's not supposed to be life-changing.

00:50:51.000 Right, right, right.

00:50:52.000 No, yeah.

00:50:53.000 I mean, that was always the case with like street food, right?

00:50:58.000 Like street food is delicious, but it's unpretentious.

00:51:02.000 Food doesn't have to be pretentious.

00:51:04.000 I mean, look, one of my favorite things to make is a cheeseburger.

00:51:07.000 Yeah.

00:51:08.000 No, I know.

00:51:08.000 Yeah, I need to try your cheeseburgers.

00:51:11.000 I've heard legendary status from the people at Vulcan.

00:51:15.000 They're good.

00:51:16.000 When you set up out there.

00:51:17.000 Yeah, they're good.

00:51:17.000 Well, how did that happen?

00:51:20.000 How did this smash burger thing come into prominence?

00:51:24.000 Because all of a sudden, in my view, within the last five or six years, smash burgers became a thing.

00:51:34.000 I'll be honest, I wasn't really paying attention.

00:51:37.000 But all of a sudden?

00:51:38.000 Yeah.

00:51:39.000 I mean, it's really good.

00:51:41.000 I mean, if you look at In-N-Out, right?

00:51:42.000 Yeah.

00:51:43.000 They're essentially making a Smashburger.

00:51:46.000 They're not physically smashing the burger, but they're making a really, really thin patty, right?

00:51:52.000 Yeah.

00:51:52.000 So the only difference, like, if you're gonna ask me what's the difference between an In-N-Out burger and a Smashburger, an In-N-Out burger starts as a thin patty, and a Smashburger ends up as a thin patty.

00:52:01.000 A Smashburger starts as a ball.

00:52:02.000 Which you physically smash.

00:52:04.000 Yeah.

00:52:06.000 But I think just that style of like backyard pool party barbecue California I mean that's like the burgers that we make right now for these smash burgers it just I'm trying to make like a backyard dad burger mmm they're delicious Yeah,

00:52:24.000 no, I've heard.

00:52:26.000 You're the one who turned me on to Golden Tiger, which is one of my favorite spots in Austin. 0.97

00:52:31.000 It was one of the first spots that we found when we got here that was open late and fucking good. 0.97

00:52:38.000 And I started eating it like... 0.98

00:52:41.000 Four nights a week.

00:52:43.000 That's not good.

00:52:44.000 It's not good.

00:52:44.000 It's not good at all.

00:52:47.000 But I did.

00:52:49.000 And it was one of those things that I was telling everyone I could because it was that good.

00:52:53.000 One of the things that's cool being friends with chefs is they know the spots.

00:52:58.000 Like what other good late night spots are there in Austin?

00:53:03.000 So, our go-to late nights would be Golden Tiger, for sure.

00:53:09.000 We'd go to a place called Halal Time. 0.63

00:53:10.000 Have you been there yet?

00:53:11.000 No.

00:53:12.000 It's on 6th Street, East 6th.

00:53:15.000 It is, like, gotta be one of the best Euros ever.

00:53:21.000 Really? 0.95

00:53:21.000 It's so fucking good. 0.95

00:53:22.000 Really? 0.97

00:53:23.000 Yeah.

00:53:26.000 I'm trying to think what else we would do late night.

00:53:28.000 What about pizza?

00:53:29.000 What's the best pizza spot in this town?

00:53:32.000 I'm torn between two.

00:53:35.000 Love Supreme, which if you haven't been to, you have to go.

00:53:38.000 I have not been to.

00:53:39.000 Very, very good.

00:53:40.000 And Doughboys.

00:53:42.000 Doughboys. 1.00

00:53:42.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:53:43.000 And Love Supreme.

00:53:43.000 Yeah.

00:53:44.000 Love Supreme sounds better.

00:53:46.000 They're different.

00:53:47.000 They're different styles, but they're both really, really good.

00:53:49.000 What is Love Supreme?

00:53:52.000 I don't even know how to describe the styles.

00:53:56.000 So, Love Supreme is a little bit more like...

00:54:06.000 Are you pulling it up? 0.97

00:54:07.000 Oh boy, that looks fucking good. 0.96

00:54:11.000 Yeah, Love Supreme is like, it's more of a restaurant. 0.98

00:54:13.000 It's like a great family style place that you would go with the kids and have like just a really good like restaurant pizza.

00:54:21.000 Doughboys is a little truck.

00:54:23.000 I'm writing this down.

00:54:24.000 Yeah.

00:54:24.000 I gotta put this in the phone because I'm always looking for like a best pizza spot in town.

00:54:31.000 It's very good.

00:54:32.000 Full disclosure, the chef there, Russell, he and I go way back.

00:54:39.000 Well, I don't think you would lie.

00:54:41.000 No.

00:54:43.000 Do you have to have a full disclosure? 0.97

00:54:46.000 That looks fucking good. 0.98

00:54:48.000 Now, is Love, that's Doughboys? 0.99

00:54:50.000 Now, how important is wood fire?

00:54:54.000 To a pizza or in general?

00:54:56.000 To a pizza.

00:54:57.000 Because it's always like a thing.

00:54:58.000 I think you can... 1.00

00:54:59.000 That goddamn Doughboys, that pepperoni... 1.00

00:55:01.000 That looks really... 1.00

00:55:02.000 You get into that? 1.00

00:55:04.000 Fuck sushi, right? 1.00

00:55:05.000 You're all about that. 1.00

00:55:07.000 Jamie's all about Doughboys, pepperoni...

00:55:09.000 I've been looking for a good pizza place. 0.99

00:55:10.000 That looks fucking bomb diggity. 0.99

00:55:12.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:55:13.000 I mean, Doughboys is in the back of Meanwhile Brewery, so they've got some great beers, and that's a cool place to just go kind of hang out on a picnic bench.

00:55:21.000 I'm sorry, what's the name of the place?

00:55:22.000 Meanwhile Brewery.

00:55:24.000 Meanwhile Brewery.

00:55:25.000 Yeah.

00:55:25.000 Click on that pizza right to the left of that one, man, with the little veggies on it.

00:55:29.000 We'll drop down.

00:55:30.000 Yeah, look at that.

00:55:35.000 Yeah, I mean, I'm on this animal-based diet for all of January, so all I'm eating all January is meat and a little bit of fruit.

00:55:44.000 And so I see pizza, and it calls to me.

00:55:47.000 Yeah.

00:55:47.000 You know?

00:55:48.000 Like, that's what I'm doing February 1st. 0.97

00:55:50.000 I'm gonna fuck up a pizza. 0.98

00:55:52.000 Call me, I'll go with you. 0.99

00:55:53.000 Okay, let's do it, bro.

00:55:54.000 Yeah.

00:55:55.000 What's that, Jamie?

00:55:55.000 All pizza February?

00:55:57.000 Maybe.

00:55:58.000 All pizza February.

00:55:59.000 See how fat I get?

00:56:00.000 I will look like a beach ball. 1.00

00:56:01.000 It's a dirty ball. 0.99

00:56:03.000 My face will go like this. 0.96

00:56:06.000 My stomach will distend.

00:56:07.000 It will be a real issue.

00:56:09.000 How's that going with the...

00:56:10.000 Great!

00:56:10.000 Yeah?

00:56:10.000 Yeah.

00:56:11.000 I added fruit this year, and it changed everything.

00:56:14.000 First of all, it stopped the diarrhea in its tracks, which is...

00:56:17.000 Before when I've done nothing but meat, I don't know what it is.

00:56:22.000 It just gives you ferocious diarrhea, like oil spill diarrhea, like somebody broke a pipeline.

00:56:29.000 Not good.

00:56:30.000 Maybe that's how you lose weight.

00:56:32.000 I don't know.

00:56:34.000 No, I don't think that's wise.

00:56:37.000 I think you're just losing weight from the lack of calories.

00:56:40.000 I mean, it's a pretty simple equation, right? 0.99

00:56:42.000 But for me, one of the things that comes with eating this is I'm eliminating all the bullshit, right? 0.93

00:56:50.000 I'm eliminating a lot of the processed foods and sugar, and that's really what's wrong about most people's diet. 0.96

00:56:57.000 It's overconsumption, which I'm a massive...

00:57:02.000 I have a giant problem with eating too much.

00:57:05.000 Like, for instance, I went to Golden Tiger and I ordered three cheeseburgers and a Thai chicken sandwich.

00:57:12.000 I ate three double cheeseburgers, by the way, and a Thai chicken sandwich. 0.99

00:57:17.000 And people are like, what the fuck are you doing? 0.98

00:57:19.000 And I'm like, I'm hungry. 0.99

00:57:21.000 That's a lot.

00:57:21.000 I eat a lot of food, man.

00:57:23.000 It's a real problem.

00:57:24.000 But I work out a lot.

00:57:25.000 Yeah.

00:57:25.000 But because I work out a lot, I get really hungry.

00:57:27.000 And then by the time I get to somewhere to eat, I'm like frantic hungry.

00:57:32.000 See, I can see that because I just recently started like working out, getting in shape.

00:57:37.000 I noticed the whoop.

00:57:37.000 You got the whoop strap rocking.

00:57:39.000 I do, yeah.

00:57:40.000 It's changed my life, really.

00:57:43.000 But I've noticed that now that I'm like running a lot and exercising a lot, I get way hungrier.

00:57:48.000 Oh, yeah, for sure.

00:57:49.000 And I lose weight even though I eat more.

00:57:51.000 Yeah, well, you know, your body has requirements when you're working out.

00:57:54.000 Yeah.

00:57:54.000 You know, it's just sustenance when you're not working out.

00:57:57.000 But when you're working out, your body's like, get me some fucking protein. 0.99

00:58:00.000 Let's go. 0.99

00:58:01.000 Yeah.

00:58:01.000 Because, you know, your body recognizes you're breaking down all this tissue.

00:58:05.000 I mean, that's the process of exercise.

00:58:07.000 It's the breaking down, the building back up stronger.

00:58:10.000 And it's like this...

00:58:11.000 You got to do it right.

00:58:13.000 Too many people start off too hard.

00:58:15.000 When someone has not worked out at all before, I always say, listen, all you have to do is go walk around the block and do some push-ups and some jumping jacks and then build from there.

00:58:25.000 You don't have to go crazy.

00:58:27.000 Let your body get accustomed to this whole idea of exercise.

00:58:31.000 Don't just go bananas, because you won't be able to sustain it, and you'll get upset.

00:58:35.000 And don't work out with a friend who goes to CrossFit. 0.99

00:58:37.000 Don't have some fucking fitness fanatic friend who's like, try to do this WOD! We're gonna do a WOD today! 0.99

00:58:43.000 And you're doing burpees and throwing fucking kettlebells over your head. 0.99

00:58:48.000 You're not gonna do it. 0.99

00:58:49.000 Yeah, no, that's...

00:58:50.000 And you'll get hurt.

00:58:50.000 I've pretty much just done, been running, really.

00:58:53.000 That's great.

00:58:54.000 Yeah, I'm up to doing about five miles a day every day.

00:58:57.000 Nice! 0.94

00:58:57.000 Yeah. 0.94

00:58:58.000 That's great.

00:58:58.000 I just get on, I hit the five mile an hour button, I do one hour.

00:59:01.000 So you weren't doing anything before?

00:59:05.000 No, I work so much.

00:59:07.000 So I was doing nothing.

00:59:09.000 And I went from having such an active childhood of drumming seven days a week.

00:59:15.000 And back then I'd need three double-doubles just to keep my weight on.

00:59:19.000 And to just working so much.

00:59:22.000 I'm on my feet all day, but I'm not sweating all day.

00:59:27.000 You're not exerting a high heart rate.

00:59:29.000 And so I was having trouble sleeping and...

00:59:34.000 Actually, a buddy of mine got me onto the Whoop, and then I had a couple conversations with you about just, like, trying to feel better, and I really started, like, I started off really slow, and I sort of got into it, and then I went to the doctor just to get a physical,

00:59:53.000 and I found out that I have, like, Or I had scary high cholesterol.

00:59:59.000 They told me I'm pre-diabetic and I'm at risk of having a heart attack within the next couple of years and I need to do something.

01:00:10.000 And so I did a little bit of research on my own and one of the things was getting yourself into, I think it's 70-80% of your max heart rate for over 30 minutes.

01:00:21.000 And so I completely changed my diet.

01:00:25.000 I changed, like, just my lifestyle.

01:00:27.000 So every day I'm running and eating differently and I've lost...

01:00:32.000 About 30 pounds and I've dropped about 70 points of my cholesterol.

01:00:36.000 That's fantastic.

01:00:37.000 Yeah.

01:00:38.000 How much did you change your diet at all?

01:00:40.000 Completely.

01:00:41.000 Yeah?

01:00:41.000 Yeah.

01:00:41.000 What did you change?

01:00:42.000 What was the big thing?

01:00:43.000 Well, I've cut out entirely dairy and red meat.

01:00:48.000 No red meat?

01:00:49.000 No red meat.

01:00:49.000 Well, that's not true.

01:00:51.000 I know it's not true. 1.00

01:00:51.000 You sent me a video of you cooking a red stag, you lying son of a bitch. 1.00

01:00:56.000 No saturated fat. 1.00

01:00:57.000 No meat with high saturated fats.

01:00:59.000 So, I was eating a lot of, like, I mean, just because I have access to it, I was eating a lot of Wagyu beef.

01:01:05.000 I was eating a lot of foie gras.

01:01:06.000 I was eating a lot of, you know, ribeyes.

01:01:08.000 If I was hungry, I'd eat, you know, salamis.

01:01:12.000 And I've just sort of transitioned that out for, now if I'm hungry, I eat nuts.

01:01:18.000 Eating a lot of, like, turkey and chicken.

01:01:22.000 Turns out sushi is actually really good for battling high LDL cholesterol.

01:01:27.000 Really?

01:01:27.000 Yeah.

01:01:28.000 So I always eat a ton of sushi, but eating a lot of fish, I never really ate a lot of like, I don't eat candies, I don't eat a lot of sugars, I don't drink soda, so I didn't have to change any of that.

01:01:40.000 I don't eat a lot of breads.

01:01:43.000 How much do you attribute what the change is to your diet, and how much do you attribute it to the increase in exercise?

01:01:50.000 I think that hitting it from both ends, like when I went back for my first checkup with the doctor, she was expecting to see like maybe 20 points drop off and I dropped off 70. So I think it was hitting it from both ends.

01:02:05.000 Yeah, I got my blood work done and my doctor asked me if I'm on medication, low cholesterol medication.

01:02:12.000 I said I eat mostly meat.

01:02:14.000 Yeah.

01:02:15.000 And they were like, what?

01:02:17.000 Like, how's that?

01:02:18.000 What's going on?

01:02:19.000 Yeah, I think I was so far over that I was like, I have to just stop cold turkey.

01:02:23.000 I have to reset my body.

01:02:25.000 And then I'm like, I definitely plan on returning to eating steak.

01:02:28.000 Well, what I was going to get to is I think it's literally a matter of what, you know, we all want to think of this one-size-fits-all dietary approach.

01:02:37.000 We want to think about that with everything, really.

01:02:39.000 But it doesn't work that way.

01:02:41.000 There's people that require so much more of their body that they need a different kind of fuel source.

01:02:48.000 They need more fuel.

01:02:49.000 They need it in a different way.

01:02:52.000 And I think that a person that is on their feet all day, like you are, working as a chef, there's a requirement.

01:03:01.000 It's probably pretty high, like a caloric requirement, but there's also not an exertion.

01:03:08.000 So you have this steady, you're using up calories all day long, but you're never ramping up your heart rate, you're never pushing your body.

01:03:18.000 So it's gotta be weird for your body. 0.99

01:03:20.000 Your body's like, what is this motherfucker doing? 1.00

01:03:23.000 Why are we awake all day? 1.00

01:03:24.000 And why are we just standing up?

01:03:28.000 Yeah, it's...

01:03:29.000 I definitely have so much more energy now.

01:03:33.000 Oh, I'm sure.

01:03:34.000 Yeah, it's quite remarkable.

01:03:36.000 Now, I mean, like you pointed out the whoop, I'm legitimately obsessed.

01:03:40.000 I wake up every day and the first thing I... Check your recovery?

01:03:42.000 Every day.

01:03:43.000 And I also try as much as I can every day to get my strain exactly where...

01:03:51.000 So when I look at the little graph, my strain and my recovery match up.

01:03:56.000 Interesting.

01:03:57.000 Now, what about supplements?

01:03:58.000 Are you doing anything to supplement your diet with nutrients?

01:04:02.000 I take a bunch of vitamins and stuff in the morning, but no specific supplements because I'm still eating protein.

01:04:10.000 Every night I'm either eating fish or turkey or chicken or something.

01:04:15.000 Well, that's what I mean by vitamins.

01:04:17.000 I mean by supplements, I mean vitamins.

01:04:18.000 Just normal stuff, like multivitamins, fish oil?

01:04:23.000 Yeah, so my morning regimen is I take probably about one ounce of apple cider vinegar in a tall glass of water, and then a little shot of elderberry syrup, and then a multivitamin,

01:04:40.000 and then a...

01:04:41.000 What about food?

01:04:42.000 What about food?

01:04:43.000 Are you eating this with food?

01:04:45.000 No.

01:04:46.000 That's a problem.

01:04:47.000 You need fat and you need some sort of carbohydrate to bind with the vitamins.

01:04:53.000 When you're taking vitamins and you're not taking vitamins with any food, your body's like, what is this?

01:04:59.000 Your body has no idea what it is.

01:05:01.000 Your body's super confused and probably is going to piss most of it out.

01:05:04.000 Interesting.

01:05:05.000 If you want to get maximum absorption of your vitamins, you must take it with food.

01:05:09.000 Alright.

01:05:10.000 Yeah, because otherwise, why would you have these vitamins?

01:05:13.000 Like, your body doesn't understand that.

01:05:15.000 Your body understands vitamins in the context of something else.

01:05:18.000 Fiber, fat, carbohydrates.

01:05:22.000 Your body doesn't understand, like, a fistful of vitamins and water. 1.00

01:05:25.000 It's like, what is this bullshit? 0.96

01:05:27.000 Vitamins are supposed to be bound to nutrients, or to food. 0.99

01:05:31.000 So, like...

01:05:33.000 In the future.

01:05:34.000 Alright.

01:05:34.000 Well, I'll start tomorrow.

01:05:36.000 Yeah, you gotta take it with food.

01:05:37.000 Yeah, I have not taken vitamins today at all because I haven't eaten today.

01:05:41.000 Interesting.

01:05:41.000 So I work out most of the time fasted.

01:05:44.000 And the one thing that I will have, though, is I'll have vitamins that come with liquid IV. Liquid IV is a supplement that I take.

01:05:54.000 I just pour it into a jug of water.

01:05:55.000 I've been obsessed with it for a while.

01:05:56.000 It's great stuff.

01:05:57.000 Yeah.

01:05:57.000 But it has glucose in it.

01:05:58.000 So there's some absorption of vitamins that goes along.

01:06:02.000 And they've got this down to a science, the way they do it.

01:06:04.000 But when I take actual supplements, my supplements are always with food.

01:06:09.000 And you should do that, too.

01:06:11.000 Everyone should do that.

01:06:12.000 If you're taking vitamins without food, the amount of absorption you get is very minimal.

01:06:17.000 Interesting.

01:06:17.000 Okay, cool.

01:06:19.000 Yeah.

01:06:20.000 The only way you could bypass that is IVs.

01:06:23.000 You could do IV vitamin drips.

01:06:25.000 Yeah, I don't want to do that.

01:06:26.000 But you're going, it's great.

01:06:27.000 It's really great.

01:06:28.000 It's about one of the best ways to get like, if you're sick, I highly recommend it.

01:06:33.000 If you ever get like a really bad cold, high dose vitamin C, D, zinc, glutathione, IV drips are fantastic.

01:06:42.000 Because it's going right into your bloodstream.

01:06:45.000 It bypasses your stomach, your liver, all that jazz.

01:06:48.000 It's going right into the system.

01:06:51.000 Interesting.

01:06:52.000 Yeah.

01:06:52.000 So all that vitamins you're taking, being all that healthy.

01:06:56.000 I mean, you're probably getting a little bit of carbohydrates with the elderberry syrup.

01:07:00.000 There's something there.

01:07:01.000 And then what else?

01:07:03.000 I'm taking a zinc and omega-3.

01:07:06.000 If you take a zinc, you should take a zinc with an ionophore.

01:07:10.000 Ionophores are things like quercetin.

01:07:13.000 There's some other stuff too, I think, that works in a similar way.

01:07:16.000 I think curcumin works in a similar way, which is one element of turmeric, or vice versa.

01:07:25.000 But what an ionophore is it helps the ions get directly into the cells.

01:07:31.000 So zinc is notoriously difficult for people to just take as a supplement and have it absorbed into your cells.

01:07:38.000 So they recommend taking it with quercetin.

01:07:41.000 All right.

01:07:41.000 We'll talk about this afterwards.

01:07:43.000 Yeah, I'm going to take notes on it.

01:07:44.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:07:44.000 By the way, I'm just getting this from doctors too.

01:07:47.000 It's not like, you know, I didn't know all this.

01:07:49.000 No, but I appreciate it because that's the thing is this whole little journey for me has been, you know, kind of a little bit of trial and error.

01:07:55.000 And how long has this been going on now?

01:07:59.000 I mean, finding out the cholesterol thing was really a big motivator.

01:08:05.000 So probably about three months, three and a half months.

01:08:08.000 That's amazing.

01:08:08.000 So three months, you're up to a five mile a day journey.

01:08:12.000 That's really great.

01:08:13.000 Yeah.

01:08:13.000 The thing about a treadmill, a lot of people don't go, oh, I'd rather run outside.

01:08:17.000 Me too.

01:08:18.000 Sure.

01:08:19.000 Absolutely.

01:08:20.000 When I lived in California, I always...

01:08:22.000 Oh, because it was hills.

01:08:23.000 There's not a lot of hills on here. 0.99

01:08:24.000 But the thing about a treadmill is you could do other shit. 0.99

01:08:27.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:08:27.000 Like, you watch a fucking movie. 1.00

01:08:28.000 And that's been my thing, is I'll put on a podcast, or if I get into a new series, I'll just watch a one-hour episode while I'm running. 1.00

01:08:36.000 Amazing.

01:08:37.000 And, no, it's been...

01:08:39.000 You know, I tried running outside.

01:08:41.000 That's how I started first, is, like, I was walking around.

01:08:43.000 We have this little loop by our house, so I would walk it, and then after a couple weeks, I was like, you know, I'm going to walk it twice.

01:08:49.000 And then it was like, I'm going to jog it.

01:08:50.000 And then I tried running it, and then my knees and my back and everything just hurt so bad.

01:08:57.000 And then I was like, but I really want to.

01:09:00.000 So I got a treadmill.

01:09:01.000 Do you know how to run correctly?

01:09:02.000 I do now.

01:09:05.000 Is that what was messing your knees up?

01:09:07.000 Were you heel striking?

01:09:08.000 I don't know what you call it, but the worst pain I got from running is...

01:09:12.000 Once I mastered the five mile an hour thing, I tried pushing myself one day, and I was doing...

01:09:17.000 I think I did...

01:09:18.000 I tried to do the full hour at six and a half miles, and my neck and my shoulders and my upper back were in excruciating pain, and I... Googled, you know, what that's from and it's just from literally running with like your shoulders up.

01:09:37.000 So when I was like trying to run faster, my shoulders would slowly creep up.

01:09:40.000 And what it explained is that each run is a single rep.

01:09:45.000 So you're doing thousands and thousands of reps with bad form and you're just wrecking yourself.

01:09:51.000 Oh, interesting.

01:09:52.000 So, it showed me some foam roller thing, like how to fix that, and it did, like fix my back and my neck.

01:10:00.000 And then, now I just practice, like as I'm running, I am consciously putting my shoulders back and down as I'm running.

01:10:07.000 Trying to relax in good form.

01:10:10.000 Are you landing on the ball of your feet?

01:10:17.000 Probably.

01:10:18.000 I'm doing that on the floor and I don't know.

01:10:20.000 You should be cognizant of that.

01:10:22.000 It's really a fascinating thing that happened.

01:10:25.000 But Nike, I believe it was Nike, came out with the very first running shoe with a fat heel.

01:10:31.000 And in doing so, they encouraged people to heel strike.

01:10:34.000 They encouraged people to run and land on your heel, and they offered you this big cushion.

01:10:39.000 But in doing that, they completely changed like hundreds of thousands of years of biomechanics of people walking and running.

01:10:48.000 You're not supposed to land on your heel like that.

01:10:50.000 I mean, you can a little bit, but you're not supposed to do that consistently and constantly.

01:10:54.000 I'm definitely not running like this, but I don't think my heel stays up the whole time.

01:11:01.000 Well, if you look at a pair of running shoes, the heels are always big and fat, and then it narrows down towards the front, which would encourage you to run and land on the heel, because that's where all the cushion is.

01:11:14.000 They fucked so many people's feet up and knees up and everything from doing that.

01:11:19.000 You talk to people that are experts in biomechanics and people that are experts in running. 0.99

01:11:23.000 They're like, this is the worst fucking thing you could do. 0.90

01:11:27.000 Your foot is a natural decelerator. 0.98

01:11:30.000 When you're landing on the ball of your foot...

01:11:32.000 Your foot slowly lets itself down with the muscles of your calf and your lower leg.

01:11:39.000 And that's how you're supposed to land.

01:11:40.000 Like, your foot's a built-in shock absorber.

01:11:42.000 It's a really amazing design.

01:11:44.000 And Nike's like, eh, let's use foam. 1.00

01:11:47.000 Let's just fucking land on the heel where there's no give-it-all and use foam. 0.99

01:11:51.000 And a lot of people jacked up their knees, especially people that weren't conditioned to it. 0.98

01:11:56.000 And then they said, you know, that's a thing that people do.

01:11:58.000 Like, I... Saying about someone, if you don't exercise at all and you go with a friend to CrossFit, like, no, you have to build up to something like that. 0.98

01:12:06.000 You want to do some shit like that? 0.91

01:12:07.000 You got to get your tissue prepared. 0.99

01:12:09.000 Like, slowly over time, build your tendon strength and your muscle strength and your endurance so that you don't drop a weight on your head.

01:12:16.000 Like, all that stuff is, like, you got to do it slowly.

01:12:19.000 But when someone would get, like, a pair of running shoes, like, I'm going to run a marathon. 1.00

01:12:24.000 Fuck! 1.00

01:12:24.000 Oh my god, you could hurt yourself. 1.00

01:12:25.000 Yeah. 0.88

01:12:25.000 Yeah, you could definitely hurt yourself. 0.88

01:12:27.000 Yeah, no, I got these shoes that are, you know, some sort of, you know, Scandinavian design that's supposed to, like, accelerate you or something like that, and it works.

01:12:37.000 I used to run with toe shoes, those flat ass, you know, those Vibrams. 1.00

01:12:41.000 Yeah.

01:12:42.000 There's no cushion at all.

01:12:44.000 Doing the research about what I was doing wrong, it said that you should have the most uncomfortable shoes.

01:12:49.000 The more you can pretty much replicate running on just your bare feet, the better your form will be and the better runner you'll become.

01:12:57.000 It helped me, really, running with those barefoot shoes, and I went from those to some other kind, because the problem was I was running on trails, and so there was a lot of rocks, and I would just occasionally step on a rock,

01:13:13.000 and you can actually injure your foot, because some of them, they're pokey.

01:13:17.000 And so then I switched to more of a minimalist shoe, but still a flat shoe.

01:13:22.000 You know, wide toe box shoe that allows your feet to articulate.

01:13:26.000 The way it was described, I forget who described it this way, but they said, essentially, when you look at most shoes, they are like a cast.

01:13:34.000 And that is not how your foot is supposed to behave.

01:13:36.000 And when you put your arm in a cast, what happens?

01:13:39.000 It atrophies.

01:13:39.000 That's the thing with your foot.

01:13:41.000 You put your foot in this cast, and your foot doesn't get to utilize all of the muscles that surround the bones.

01:13:49.000 And stabilize the foot.

01:13:51.000 Interesting.

01:13:52.000 Makes sense.

01:13:53.000 Yeah, it does make sense.

01:13:54.000 Well, one of the things that was shocking to me, I started doing yoga a few years ago, many, many years ago now.

01:14:00.000 But when I first started doing yoga, the first thing that would hurt was my feet.

01:14:05.000 I was like, this is crazy.

01:14:06.000 Why are my feet hurt?

01:14:07.000 Because I'm a martial artist, so I'm used to kickboxing and moving around.

01:14:11.000 But I was used to a very specific kind of movement on my feet.

01:14:14.000 But like this static holding a pose and using your foot to kind of balance and stabilize you.

01:14:21.000 I was utilizing all of these muscles in my foot that were not strong because I was just used to these explosive movements back and forth.

01:14:28.000 Whereas yoga, like if you're standing there and you got your one foot up in the air like this and your foot is balancing everything and it's like all the stabilizing muscles were very weak.

01:14:39.000 It took a while to get accustomed to that.

01:14:42.000 Yep.

01:14:42.000 My wife was into yoga for a long time.

01:14:44.000 I've tried it a few times.

01:14:45.000 I actually want to get into it now.

01:14:48.000 Well, we're putting a yoga studio, a private yoga studio, right next door.

01:14:51.000 Really?

01:14:52.000 Yeah.

01:14:52.000 We've got a gym that we're building, and one of the things we're building in the gym is a yoga room.

01:14:57.000 So, come on down, bro.

01:14:59.000 Come on down. 0.94

01:15:00.000 We're going to take you through some classes.

01:15:04.000 But my message to people that are in your sort of situation, or not your situation now, but your situation back then, they're like, how do I get started?

01:15:12.000 Please go slow.

01:15:14.000 Just go slow.

01:15:15.000 You don't have to get crazy.

01:15:16.000 When I first started, because Margarita, she's been active and she's been exercising.

01:15:22.000 She wakes up every morning at like 5, 6 o'clock in the morning for the The duration of our entire relationship, she's been getting up super early, exercising, running, doing yoga.

01:15:33.000 Do you feel guilty when you're sleeping in?

01:15:35.000 No, not at all.

01:15:36.000 You never felt guilty?

01:15:37.000 No.

01:15:37.000 She's out there running, you're like...

01:15:39.000 Not at all.

01:15:41.000 I feel great about it.

01:15:42.000 I felt great about it.

01:15:45.000 But when I first, you know, I think it was like March of last year, I was like, alright.

01:15:51.000 Because I've been talking about like, okay, I'm going to get in shape for years.

01:15:55.000 Because I was always in shape.

01:15:57.000 And then all of a sudden, I just looked down one day and I was like, I weigh 30 pounds more than I am supposed to.

01:16:04.000 And when I first started, I was like, alright, I'm gonna start today.

01:16:07.000 And I did like, I think it was like 20 jumping jacks, like three push-ups, and like 10 sit-ups.

01:16:12.000 And she's like, that's it?

01:16:13.000 And I was like, yes.

01:16:14.000 She's like, that's not a workout. 1.00

01:16:15.000 And I was like...

01:16:17.000 If I hurt myself and I go too fast, I'm going to stop.

01:16:20.000 So I'm going to do whatever is easy for me until it becomes boring easy, and then I'm just going to keep adding on a little bit.

01:16:26.000 That's smart that you had that systematic approach.

01:16:29.000 Like, how did you figure that out?

01:16:31.000 Because that's kind of the key to anything in life.

01:16:33.000 If you hurt yourself on it, then you don't want to do it again.

01:16:36.000 Yeah.

01:16:36.000 If you burn yourself on it, you don't want to keep doing it.

01:16:38.000 So it's like, and you want to do things you're good at, so do the amount that you know you can kill.

01:16:44.000 And then when that becomes just like boring easy, make it a little bit harder.

01:16:49.000 You know, it's the thing, like, everybody wants to just run at it.

01:16:54.000 Like, and just get, especially when you realize you've got an issue.

01:16:58.000 Everybody just wants to just, okay, I'm going to resolve that.

01:17:02.000 And the way I'm going to do it, I'm just going to push really hard.

01:17:04.000 But it's not sustainable.

01:17:06.000 And you won't.

01:17:07.000 I've always been that guy, but you always hurt yourself.

01:17:09.000 You always, you know, and it's just not the right way to do it.

01:17:12.000 Yeah.

01:17:13.000 It's very wise of you.

01:17:15.000 That's interesting.

01:17:17.000 Because most people don't, and most people start out, and they'll do something difficult, and then they'll be really sore the next day, and then maybe they'll take a day off, and then they'll do half-ass the day after that because they don't want to be as sore, and then they quit.

01:17:30.000 Yeah.

01:17:31.000 Or something along those lines. 0.99

01:17:33.000 And if you hurt yourself that bad, you're like, fuck, why would I ever do that? 0.99

01:17:35.000 It hurts so bad. 1.00

01:17:36.000 Yeah.

01:17:37.000 Yeah, I wish it was more common.

01:17:40.000 You know, I really do.

01:17:42.000 When I look at the obesity rates in this country and I look at the amount of people that are living these essentially constant sedentary lifestyle, like they're never doing anything physical.

01:17:54.000 That's like a giant percentage of our population.

01:17:56.000 And they're very insecure about it.

01:17:58.000 You know, and because of that, they don't want you to fat shame and they're this body positivity nonsense.

01:18:03.000 Like, that's crazy.

01:18:05.000 It's all crazy.

01:18:07.000 You're missing the point.

01:18:08.000 You're supposed to feel uncomfortable.

01:18:10.000 The whole idea about being fat and the reason why you're upset That people point out that you're fat is because you're supposed to do something about it.

01:18:21.000 You're supposed to feel bad. 1.00

01:18:22.000 When someone points something out about you being fat, if it's true, it's supposed to feel like shit. 1.00

01:18:28.000 And it sucks that it feels like shit. 1.00

01:18:30.000 But that, in turn, is supposed to motivate you to do something about it. 0.99

01:18:36.000 You know, I think whatever it takes to motivate yourself, I mean, it's interesting because you also could fall victim of not living a sedentary lifestyle and being on your feet 15 hours a day and still being incredibly out of shape.

01:18:49.000 Especially if your diet's bad.

01:18:50.000 Yeah.

01:18:51.000 Well, when it's full of booze and, you know, cheeseburgers at 2 o'clock in the morning.

01:18:55.000 Oh, yeah.

01:18:56.000 Yeah.

01:18:57.000 The comedian lifestyle and the chef lifestyle in that sense.

01:19:00.000 Probably very similar.

01:19:01.000 Now, when you did this change, did you just immediately cut all that stuff out of your diet or did you like sort of slowly do that as well as the diet or as the exercise thing?

01:19:13.000 I'm a cold turkey guy, and I know that about myself, and I haven't even had a slice of steak.

01:19:21.000 I can't.

01:19:23.000 I'm like an alcoholic with food.

01:19:24.000 If I take that one bite, I'll start eating it again.

01:19:29.000 Where did that term cold turkey come from?

01:19:31.000 I don't know.

01:19:33.000 We all know what it is, but we don't think of it as turkey.

01:19:36.000 No, I have no idea where it came from.

01:19:38.000 What is that?

01:19:40.000 We'll find out shortly.

01:19:43.000 It's a weird term, right?

01:19:44.000 It's not cold spinach.

01:19:46.000 No, I wonder if it's like...

01:19:48.000 Do vegans use the term cold turkey?

01:19:51.000 Doesn't hurt anybody.

01:19:52.000 I quit meat, cold turkey.

01:19:53.000 That sounds weird.

01:19:55.000 Could be.

01:19:56.000 You know?

01:19:56.000 Well, it depends what the origination is.

01:19:58.000 Right, but if you're like, how do I get into veganism?

01:20:00.000 Well, I quit meat, cold turkey.

01:20:01.000 You could just say, I quit cold turkey.

01:20:03.000 Yeah, but if you say, I quit cold turkey...

01:20:06.000 Then you stopped eating cold turkey.

01:20:07.000 Yes.

01:20:08.000 Merriam-Webster doesn't even have a real answer.

01:20:10.000 They just have theories.

01:20:11.000 What's their theories?

01:20:13.000 Eh. 1.00

01:20:13.000 They suck? 1.00

01:20:15.000 Okay. 1.00

01:20:15.000 You can check out. 1.00

01:20:16.000 But why turkey?

01:20:17.000 And why cold?

01:20:18.000 But why turkey?

01:20:19.000 And why cold?

01:20:20.000 The most popular theory was repeated in the San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Cain, C-A-E-N, C-A-E-N, in 1978. It derives from the hideous combination of goose pimples and what William Burroughs calls the cold burn that addicts suffer when they kick the habit.

01:20:38.000 Oh, interesting.

01:20:38.000 So it'd be like, for example, if you just cut out doing drugs and you got, like, and something happened to your skin?

01:20:46.000 Yeah, but here's the thing.

01:20:47.000 It says, the problem with both these theories is that they ignore the use of cold turkey before its application to drug addiction.

01:20:52.000 In a cartoon that appeared in newspapers in November 12th of 1920, Ace slang man Thomas Tad Dorgan used cold turkey this way.

01:21:02.000 Now tell me on the square.

01:21:04.000 Can I get by this for the wedding?

01:21:08.000 Don't string me.

01:21:09.000 Tell me cold turkey.

01:21:11.000 Wow.

01:21:12.000 Boy, do people talk weird in the 20s. 1.00

01:21:14.000 What the fuck is wrong with these people? 0.96

01:21:16.000 The editors of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang have found an earlier usage, 1910 usage, where the speaker lost $5,000 cold turkey in the sense of losing it outright. 0.99

01:21:27.000 Huh.

01:21:29.000 Huh.

01:21:30.000 Cold being straightforward or matter of fact and the earlier talk turkey.

01:21:34.000 Oh, right.

01:21:35.000 Like, talk turkey.

01:21:36.000 Like, you jive turkey.

01:21:37.000 That was a thing.

01:21:38.000 Like, people would call people a jive turkey.

01:21:40.000 Right?

01:21:41.000 Isn't that weird?

01:21:42.000 You jive-ass turkey.

01:21:44.000 I'm gonna start bringing that back.

01:21:46.000 You jive-ass turkey, Jamie. 0.99

01:21:47.000 Fucking jive-ass turkey. 1.00

01:21:49.000 I'll bury you. 1.00

01:21:51.000 What a strange thing to call someone a jive turkey.

01:21:54.000 What is jive even?

01:21:56.000 What does that even mean?

01:21:58.000 Let's Google jive, right?

01:21:59.000 Jive-ass turkey.

01:22:01.000 Yeah, I've never thought about that.

01:22:03.000 I don't know.

01:22:04.000 I don't know what that means.

01:22:06.000 Unreliable.

01:22:06.000 Oh, unreliable.

01:22:07.000 Exaggerations or empty promises.

01:22:09.000 Oh, you empty promise in Turkey. 1.00

01:22:11.000 Unreliable Turkey. 1.00

01:22:15.000 Turkey's a strange food because it's not that good.

01:22:19.000 It can be good.

01:22:20.000 It's okay.

01:22:21.000 It can be good.

01:22:22.000 It's all right.

01:22:23.000 It's not like venison.

01:22:25.000 It's not like a ribeye.

01:22:27.000 It's not.

01:22:28.000 No, but you can make it really good.

01:22:30.000 You can make it pretty good.

01:22:31.000 It can be pretty good.

01:22:32.000 Let's be honest.

01:22:33.000 There's a reason why it's not on most menus.

01:22:36.000 Yeah, it's not as easy to make as good as a ribeye.

01:22:40.000 You can't.

01:22:41.000 It's not possible. 0.99

01:22:42.000 Well, a ribeye you have to just not fuck up. 0.95

01:22:44.000 A turkey you have to actually cook with finesse. 0.90

01:22:48.000 What do you do?

01:22:49.000 Like, if you're doing a Thanksgiving turkey, are you a boil and peanut oil guy?

01:22:52.000 No, no, no.

01:22:53.000 So I did Thanksgiving turkey this year.

01:22:56.000 Ah.

01:22:57.000 And so what I did is it's similar to what I do for my whole pigs.

01:23:02.000 And I took, just did it in a big trash bag overnight the day before.

01:23:08.000 I take lemons, limes, oranges, both the zest and the juices.

01:23:16.000 Melted butter.

01:23:17.000 When you say the zest and the juices, you mean like you grate the outside, the skin?

01:23:25.000 A bunch of chopped onions, a bunch of herbs, and I basically rub it all on inside, outside, everything, tie it up, put it in a cooler, leave it out at room temperature overnight.

01:23:38.000 Room temperature?

01:23:39.000 Yeah.

01:23:40.000 Why?

01:23:41.000 Because, so, when you cook something, you want the internal temperature to cook at the same rate as the external temperature.

01:23:49.000 That's why people cook sous vide, right?

01:23:51.000 Sure.

01:23:52.000 And if you just take a turkey out of the fridge and you put it in the oven, or you leave it out for an hour and put it in the oven, it's still ice cold in the interior.

01:24:01.000 How long does it take for a turkey to get to room temperature?

01:24:04.000 I'm gonna...

01:24:04.000 I mean, it...

01:24:08.000 Probably overnight.

01:24:09.000 I mean, it's not even completely...

01:24:11.000 And here's the thing.

01:24:11.000 Once it gets to room temperature, even according to the health department, you have four hours.

01:24:16.000 But you have a lot longer than that.

01:24:18.000 So what you're doing is just taking into account the fact that it's been refrigerated.

01:24:24.000 Yeah, so I'm removing the refrigeration from it so that when I put it in the oven, it immediately starts cooking from the inside out, not from the outside in.

01:24:34.000 Everyone's seen that quintessential steak where it's the slice and it's like well done, medium well, medium, medium rare, and then rare right in the center.

01:24:43.000 And I'm like, that's a terrible steak.

01:24:45.000 If you order a medium rare, you don't want 10% of it to be medium rare.

01:24:48.000 It should be medium rare top to bottom.

01:24:50.000 Some people like that, though.

01:24:52.000 I've talked to people that like a nice, crispy crust on the outside.

01:24:57.000 But you can get a crust on the outside and still retain what we call a gradient, a very low gradient.

01:25:02.000 What I was going to say is some people like the rare on the inside, but like the combination of those two textures.

01:25:08.000 Like the sear on the outside, but a rare on the inside.

01:25:12.000 No, and that's not what I'm saying.

01:25:14.000 You can achieve that.

01:25:15.000 But if you want it to be that rare, then...

01:25:18.000 So if you've got a piece of meat like this, right?

01:25:20.000 Visually, for people that are listening, rather.

01:25:22.000 Yeah, so top to bottom, right?

01:25:24.000 You're going to have your crust on the top and the bottom.

01:25:26.000 And when you cut it, the very center is what would be the least cooked, right?

01:25:30.000 Because the ambient temperature is coming from the exterior.

01:25:33.000 Unless you sous vide it.

01:25:34.000 Unless you sous vide it.

01:25:35.000 But there are ways to cook it so that the internal temperature from center to, call it sear or crust, is the same temperature.

01:25:45.000 So if you want a rare steak, you can still get a nice crust on the outside, the exterior, and still have a properly cooked interior.

01:25:54.000 Do you think that a steak that's cooked like sous vide style, like say if you wanted it to an internal of say 130, 135 degrees, what do you like for an internal of a steak?

01:26:05.000 Temperature-wise?

01:26:05.000 Yeah, temperature-wise.

01:26:06.000 I don't go off temperature.

01:26:07.000 You don't?

01:26:08.000 If you had a guess, like what do you think it would be?

01:26:11.000 If you're going to sous vide a steak, what would you put it at?

01:26:15.000 I wouldn't.

01:26:16.000 Okay.

01:26:17.000 But if you were going to.

01:26:17.000 But if you had to?

01:26:20.000 A ribeye?

01:26:21.000 Yeah.

01:26:24.000 Well, let me ask you this.

01:26:26.000 When it comes out of the sous vide, am I slicing it, kneading it?

01:26:28.000 Am I resting it and then grilling it?

01:26:30.000 What am I doing with it?

01:26:30.000 I don't know.

01:26:32.000 I mean, that's what I was going to get to.

01:26:33.000 Some people like to blow torch the outside of it.

01:26:35.000 They like to get it to an internal.

01:26:38.000 I'm not saying this is correct, obviously.

01:26:41.000 But they like to get it to an internal of like 125 or 130, whatever they like, and then they blow towards the outside of it.

01:26:48.000 I have seen chefs do this before.

01:26:50.000 What is wrong with that process?

01:26:53.000 There's nothing wrong with it.

01:26:54.000 It's just different.

01:26:55.000 Why do you not like it that way?

01:26:57.000 Well, I mean, so...

01:27:01.000 Scratch Bar and Kitchen, which is the first restaurant Marguerite and I opened in 2013, we have a, I think it's 11 foot wide, big fireplace hearth.

01:27:13.000 And that's where we cook everything. 0.94

01:27:15.000 And so for the past, you know, almost decade, we've just cooked with fire.

01:27:21.000 And I do use blowtorches for specific things, but typically...

01:27:31.000 If you're going to ask me what's the best way to cook a steak, is it in a sous vide and finished with a blowtorch?

01:27:36.000 The answer is absolutely not.

01:27:39.000 Is it a comparable way?

01:27:41.000 Sure, especially if you're in an apartment kitchen.

01:27:43.000 It all depends on what you have at your disposal.

01:27:45.000 If you don't have a big fireplace to cook it in, then that's going to be too difficult.

01:27:50.000 But I think to try to answer your question, at least, I'd probably go for something around $127,000.

01:27:57.000 With the intent to rest it properly and then finish it on some sort of fire.

01:28:03.000 So if I have an actual live fire, then I would finish it in the flames.

01:28:07.000 And if you have no other way to sear it, then a blowtorch, I guess, would do.

01:28:11.000 What about cast iron, like cast iron frying pan to sear it at the end?

01:28:15.000 Yeah, I mean, I personally don't like sous vide steaks.

01:28:20.000 I don't like the texture that it achieves.

01:28:22.000 What is different about it?

01:28:27.000 It gives it...

01:28:29.000 Again, it can be done properly.

01:28:31.000 But typically, like, when you order...

01:28:33.000 If I order steak at a restaurant and it is sous vide, I'm going to go, oh.

01:28:37.000 They sous vide this.

01:28:40.000 It just has a bit of, like...

01:28:45.000 Almost like rubberization that happens.

01:28:48.000 To me, like, you need to get the actual proteins to a certain temperature to coagulate to actually, like, when everyone was like, oh, bring me a ribeye, like, you know, bloody.

01:29:00.000 That's not very good.

01:29:02.000 You either need to eat it raw or you need to cook it enough where the proteins have coagulated enough that when you chew through it, it snaps and you can chew through it.

01:29:10.000 You know, if you've ever had like a really undercooked ribeye, it just becomes stringy.

01:29:14.000 You have an overcooked ribeye, it's tough.

01:29:16.000 You have a properly cooked ribeye, it's melt in your mouth.

01:29:19.000 And it's all about finding the correct temperature.

01:29:21.000 So each steak is going to, each cut is going to have a different temperature that you're trying to achieve.

01:29:26.000 No, are there any meats that are superior when you cook them in sous-vay?

01:29:31.000 A short rib.

01:29:32.000 I think a short rib.

01:29:33.000 Why is that?

01:29:34.000 Because it's got all the collagen and all the other stuff?

01:29:37.000 Yeah, so typically, I mean, the most classic way to cook a short rib is going to be braised, right?

01:29:44.000 And when you're cooking it in the braise, it's releasing the fat into the braising liquids, which you're going to turn into your sauce later.

01:29:51.000 But you're basically...

01:29:55.000 Not bringing it to a boil, but you're cooking it inside of liquid.

01:30:00.000 You also can only cook it to a certain, you know, you cook it for a couple of hours.

01:30:04.000 But when you sous vide it, we had actually one on the menu for quite a while, and we would cook it for three days.

01:30:12.000 And we'd cook it at a low enough temperature that when you sliced into it, it was still pink.

01:30:18.000 So it was medium rare.

01:30:19.000 But all of that fat had completely not just broken down, but then it had been redistributed throughout the entire thing.

01:30:26.000 So when you sliced into it, it had the texture of almost like a ribeye in the sense that it held together.

01:30:35.000 It wasn't like a fall apart stew.

01:30:38.000 And what temperature were you cooking at it for three days?

01:30:41.000 I can't remember.

01:30:43.000 That's written down somewhere.

01:30:44.000 I don't know.

01:30:45.000 How do you prefer to cook meat?

01:30:47.000 And you prefer fire?

01:30:49.000 Yeah, so the best way that I have found—and again, everything is different.

01:30:54.000 At Scratch Bar, we just do a tasting menu.

01:30:57.000 That's your only option, a 25-course tasting menu.

01:31:00.000 And what we would do is we use Japanese Wagyu.

01:31:04.000 And when guests would arrive, and you'd arrive actually into another room where you'd have welcome cocktails and canapes before you come into the kitchen for dinner— We would be notified when you came in and immediately we would take your portion of meat out of the fridge and we would put it above the hearth where it was about 90 degrees ambient temperature roughly.

01:31:26.000 It was getting a little bit of smoke.

01:31:28.000 And then about four or five courses before your steak course, which is probably about 45 minutes later, 45 minutes an hour later, we would bring the piece out and present it to you so you could see it, and it would be completely malleable.

01:31:42.000 It was shiny, the fats had already started to render, and we would explain that what we're going to do now, it's been sitting up here for the last hour, now we're going to put it closer to the flames, where it's about 115 degrees ambient temperature, but we're not going to cook it yet.

01:31:55.000 That'll be for the next two courses, it'll sit there.

01:31:58.000 And then, right before that course, we would actually take the steak and put it into the flame.

01:32:07.000 And what would happen is it would actually start to fry itself from the inside out.

01:32:12.000 Why from the inside out?

01:32:13.000 So the internal, the entire piece of meat had become about 118 degrees.

01:32:19.000 Just from sitting?

01:32:20.000 Just from being that close, just being in that environment.

01:32:24.000 And because of the fat content of the Japanese Wagyu, it had so much fat all over it and inside of it that when it went into the flame and it heated up at such a high rate, it would actually cause all that fat to start to fry.

01:32:40.000 But isn't the outside still hotter than the inside because you're...

01:32:45.000 Yeah, but the fat would conduct the heat and it would...

01:32:48.000 I mean, technically, probably the outside.

01:32:50.000 I mean, yes, the exterior would also get a bit of a crust where the interior wouldn't because it actually touched the flame.

01:32:56.000 So how's it doing it from the inside out then?

01:33:01.000 If it's...

01:33:02.000 So, if you've got the piece of meat, right, and you've got a flame here, and you go into that flame, that flame is going to touch the exterior, right?

01:33:10.000 It's going to heat up.

01:33:12.000 It's going to touch the...

01:33:14.000 That heat is going to transfer to the fat, and that fat is going all the way through the piece of meat.

01:33:18.000 Hmm.

01:33:18.000 So it's actually like the interior fat is going to be up to a certain temperature that will cause it to fry.

01:33:25.000 So when we pull it out of the flame, the entire thing is going to be sizzling as if it looks like it's been fried.

01:33:31.000 So is this a strategy that you would use only for Wagyu because it has that high fat content?

01:33:37.000 That specific thing, yeah.

01:33:39.000 But it also, I did a very, the thing I sent you with the venison, did a very similar thing, even though it doesn't have that fat content.

01:33:46.000 And that was Red Stag.

01:33:47.000 Did you get that from Texas?

01:33:49.000 Yeah, from, I think they're called Hudson Meat Market.

01:33:55.000 I basically called around for trying to find who has local venison.

01:34:01.000 It's one of the best things about Texas is that you can get specifically exotics.

01:34:05.000 You can buy them commercially.

01:34:07.000 Like Neil Guy is very popular out here, which is an Indian animal. 1.00

01:34:11.000 It's a large elk-sized...

01:34:13.000 They're weird looking.

01:34:14.000 Have you ever seen one on the hoof?

01:34:16.000 Not in person.

01:34:17.000 I've seen a picture.

01:34:18.000 Yeah, I haven't either.

01:34:19.000 Well, no, no, I did once.

01:34:20.000 Yeah, no, I saw one at a ranch in Texas.

01:34:22.000 But I saw him briefly.

01:34:24.000 He ran through this trail that we were on. 1.00

01:34:29.000 And I was like, look at that fucking thing. 0.99

01:34:30.000 He was kind of blue. 1.00

01:34:32.000 They're weird looking.

01:34:33.000 Yeah.

01:34:33.000 You can pull up a needle guy so people can get up.

01:34:35.000 Don't they have tiny little heads or tiny little something? 0.98

01:34:38.000 Tiny horns.

01:34:38.000 Tiny antlers.

01:34:39.000 But look, they're kind of blue.

01:34:41.000 Look how weird that thing looks.

01:34:43.000 Yeah.

01:34:44.000 It's so strange looking.

01:34:45.000 It's almost like a fake animal, you know?

01:34:49.000 And the males in particular, I think all of them have antlers.

01:34:54.000 It looks like some sort of crossbreed between like a zebra and I don't even know what else.

01:34:59.000 Well, it's a very unusual animal and really delicious.

01:35:03.000 Have you eaten a Dai Due yet?

01:35:05.000 Yeah.

01:35:05.000 Did you like it?

01:35:06.000 I loved it.

01:35:07.000 It's great.

01:35:07.000 Have you met Jesse?

01:35:09.000 I haven't.

01:35:10.000 Jesse Griffiths, who's been on the podcast before too, is fantastic.

01:35:13.000 I might have met.

01:35:14.000 So I ate there 2013, 14, something like that.

01:35:19.000 Jesse has a school where he teaches people how to hunt, how to butcher, and how to cook, and takes people with zero experience.

01:35:29.000 And one of the things that he really loves is hogs. 1.00

01:35:32.000 He takes people to hunt wild hogs, first of all, because they're A plentiful resource in Texas in particular, you must kill them because they're invasive and they're overpopulated.

01:35:43.000 There's so many of them, they destroy agriculture.

01:35:46.000 And so it's an easy animal to gain access to hunt.

01:35:49.000 It's very prevalent.

01:35:51.000 It's an easy hunt.

01:35:52.000 And especially when you're shooting rifles, your success rate is very high.

01:35:57.000 And then on top of that, Jesse will show them how to break it down.

01:36:01.000 What is his, can you see what, it's old school cookery, I forget the name of his school, but he takes you through the entire process and it's a very small amount of people that are allowed to attend because...

01:36:16.000 Here it is.

01:36:17.000 The New School of Traditional Cookery.

01:36:19.000 That's it.

01:36:20.000 The New School of Traditional Cookery was founded in 2006 concurrently with Dai Due Supper Club to provide an educational aspect of our business that promotes responsible use of our wild resources.

01:36:31.000 Jesse's awesome.

01:36:32.000 I'm such a huge fan of that guy.

01:36:34.000 And his whole strategy, like here, click on that to show Jesse cooking a full bore.

01:36:41.000 Go full screen.

01:36:42.000 Let's see this.

01:36:43.000 It's what the region has to offer.

01:36:47.000 He's also a giant fan of cooking over fire.

01:36:51.000 Everything he does is over...

01:36:53.000 I think he uses post oak for the most part.

01:36:56.000 Once you start doing that, you fall in love with it and you kind of can't go back.

01:37:00.000 It's a real issue for me. 0.99

01:37:01.000 It's become a problem, because it takes so much fucking time. 0.99

01:37:05.000 Cooking over fire is whatever the fuck it is in your caveman brain that gets excited about grilling gets excited 10% more. 0.99

01:37:18.000 Oh, yeah. 0.99

01:37:19.000 Or more than that, maybe, by cooking over actual hardwood.

01:37:23.000 And I don't know why that is.

01:37:25.000 When we first opened...

01:37:26.000 When we moved...

01:37:27.000 When we...

01:37:28.000 When we opened Scratch Bar in its current location where we got the hearth, the reason I decided to go completely wood fire only, I mean there's no other cooking apparatus in the kitchen, was because I wanted young cooks to have to learn how to control their environment.

01:37:50.000 I felt like there was a lot of, you know, when you're learning to cook or you're working a station as a young cook, it's like, alright, go to high heat and then go down to medium heat.

01:38:00.000 You know, go here for this long and then do that and then do this. 0.99

01:38:03.000 And I felt like it would be really interesting to just have, like, them have to learn how to, you know, if you let your fire die down, you're fucked. 1.00

01:38:13.000 You're completely fucked. 0.99

01:38:14.000 When we opened the restaurant, we had a pasta on the menu, and you have to boil water on an open fire. 1.00

01:38:21.000 And you can't just crank it by turning it up.

01:38:24.000 You have to keep your fire going.

01:38:27.000 So that was kind of the idea.

01:38:28.000 And once you really start cooking with it, you almost can't recreate the flavors and the feeling that you get from that.

01:38:36.000 Yeah, the feeling is a part of it.

01:38:37.000 It really is, especially when you're the one who's actually doing the cooking.

01:38:40.000 I don't know how much that feeling is for someone who is completely removed from the process, who just gets it served to them.

01:38:48.000 The flavor is definitely different, but the feeling when you're actually cooking the meat, there's something about it that's very enticing.

01:38:56.000 Well, at the restaurant, I mean, if this was the hearth right here, you're sitting as close to it as you would be.

01:39:04.000 So you're getting all the aromas.

01:39:05.000 There's no seat in the restaurant that isn't within 20 feet of the hearth.

01:39:10.000 Oh, that's wild.

01:39:11.000 Yeah.

01:39:12.000 And what do you, is this your spot?

01:39:14.000 Yeah, that's scratch bar.

01:39:15.000 Okay, and so when you're cooking, do you have, okay, so you have wheels and you crank up and down like Argentine style?

01:39:23.000 So when we first opened, yeah, we were doing wheels.

01:39:27.000 You can already see there I've removed everything.

01:39:29.000 So what we actually ended up going with is just bricks.

01:39:33.000 They're just bricks and like roasting racks and we just create our own little apparatuses.

01:39:39.000 I also got some just some rolled steel to create little planchas.

01:39:43.000 So what was wrong with the wheels?

01:39:47.000 It was two one-size-fits-all.

01:39:49.000 You could see there, that's about, I'm going to say, roughly four feet and four feet.

01:39:53.000 So we had two four-foot wheels.

01:39:55.000 One of them was just a big grill, and one of them was a big plancha.

01:40:00.000 And because we're doing tasting menus, and you've got so many different things happening, that's great if you're at a restaurant where it's like, all right, you're going to fire 50 steaks in the next hour and a half or whatever.

01:40:12.000 But this was like, you've got like seven or eight different courses coming off this, and each one needs to be, you know, treated a little bit differently with the fire.

01:40:20.000 So we would create all these different sort of like, sort of apparatuses and little areas to cook.

01:40:27.000 That's fascinating.

01:40:28.000 So what kind of foods are you cooking in this fire other than just meat?

01:40:33.000 Everything.

01:40:34.000 Like, how are you doing it?

01:40:35.000 Fish, vegetables.

01:40:36.000 Basically, at some point, everything is going through the fire.

01:40:42.000 And so you're using frying pans?

01:40:45.000 You're using just a plancha?

01:40:47.000 Sometimes you're going into the coals with a pan.

01:40:51.000 Sometimes you're going with the meat or fish directly into the coals.

01:40:55.000 Sometimes you're just warming something.

01:40:59.000 You may have a raw fish course that just sits by the fire for a few minutes just to get warm and get a little bit of smoky flavor to it and that's it.

01:41:08.000 I've seen people cook on coals, like they lay a steak down flat on the coals.

01:41:14.000 But I was always under the impression that coals were not the best conductor of heat and that you really are better served with a hot metal.

01:41:24.000 Depends really what you're going for.

01:41:26.000 What is the difference in the flavor that you can achieve from putting it on coals versus putting it on like a grate above the coals?

01:41:33.000 I mean, right there it explains it.

01:41:35.000 Either you're going directly into it, either you're touching the grate and you're getting the smoke that the coals create, or you're getting the flavor of the coals.

01:41:42.000 Now, sometimes that might be a bit harsh, but for example, you know, the Santa Maria style tri-tip in California, which is California's answer to barbecue, which I thought was something until I came here.

01:41:57.000 Ranchers.

01:41:57.000 Well, it's not really, it's grilling more than it is barbecue, right?

01:42:01.000 Completely.

01:42:03.000 But it is manipulation of the protein with the temperature.

01:42:08.000 So, I mean, there is some barbecue aspect to it.

01:42:11.000 But, like, that one, like, if I'm doing a tri-tip, and I actually competed in the, I think, two years in a row, I competed in the 805 state championship or whatever.

01:42:25.000 And what I did is after you cooked it and I would rest the meat, I would then dip it in a barbecue sauce, get my pit really roaring, make a little hole, and then put it in and bury it in the coals.

01:42:39.000 And that would sort of give it a really interesting exterior, just like texture and flavor.

01:42:45.000 So explain that again.

01:42:47.000 So you would take the tri-tip, you would dunk it in a barbecue sauce, and then throw it right into the fire?

01:42:52.000 And then bury it in more coals.

01:42:54.000 Did you cook it to a certain temperature before that?

01:42:58.000 Yeah, so I would take the whole tri-tip with the rub, and I would start it really low so it gets a little bit of sear, and then you go all the way up, and you just let it kind of like an hour and a half Just let it sort of slowly get the smoke and obviously there's no lid on it in the Santa Maria style until you're at about 127 or so and then take it out and I put it in an igloo cooler and I would close the top for about

01:43:28.000 an hour hour, hour and a half and then when it was time to serve open up the cooler, dip it completely submerged in barbecue sauce and then I would basically char the barbecue sauce in the coals Oh, wow.

01:43:43.000 How was that?

01:43:44.000 It was really good. 0.98

01:43:44.000 Sounds fucking amazing. 0.98

01:43:46.000 I'm hungry now, dude. 0.98

01:43:48.000 Well, tri-tip is an interesting cut, right?

01:43:50.000 Because it's very lean.

01:43:51.000 It's delicious, though.

01:43:53.000 Yeah, it's very good. 0.99

01:43:54.000 It seems like one you could fuck up, though. 1.00

01:43:56.000 It's so easy to fuck up. 0.99

01:43:58.000 The thing is, if you cook tri-tip like a steak, it's not very good. 0.99

01:44:02.000 And I think the average person...

01:44:04.000 Tri-tip's in every market in LA. But if you just go and grab a tri-tip and you try to cook it like a ribeye, it's not very good.

01:44:12.000 What do you have to do differently?

01:44:14.000 Slow.

01:44:15.000 We gotta slow it down.

01:44:16.000 So you gotta treat it like you would treat like a game meat because it's so devoid of fat.

01:44:23.000 Yes and I mean you can cook game meat faster.

01:44:26.000 But in a thin slice.

01:44:28.000 Tri-tip is kind of a fat roast.

01:44:30.000 I mean, it depends, though.

01:44:31.000 Like, that venison saddle that I showed you, I mean, it was a two-pound saddle.

01:44:36.000 It was about this big, right?

01:44:37.000 And I cooked that right in the fire.

01:44:39.000 But it seemed long and not very thick.

01:44:41.000 Like, I'm looking at the image that you sent me, and it seems like it just doesn't have the same kind of thickness.

01:44:50.000 Like, that doesn't seem very thick.

01:44:54.000 Maybe not.

01:44:56.000 I mean, that makes sense to me that you would cook something like that at high heat over fire. 0.96

01:45:01.000 Goddamn, that looks good. 0.75

01:45:02.000 I'll send this to Jamie so he can... 0.75

01:45:04.000 It's kind of interesting how you did it, too, because you have made in your... 0.99

01:45:10.000 I mean, obviously you have access to whatever the fuck you want when it comes to cooking. 0.96

01:45:15.000 And you made, like, the most primitive sort of setup. 0.99

01:45:19.000 You just used, like, concrete and cinder blocks and shit. 0.77

01:45:22.000 Yeah, that was, like, $250 from HomeDepot.com. 0.98

01:45:24.000 They just brought it all on a truck and dropped it, you know.

01:45:27.000 I mean, it's probably about an inch and a half thick, maybe two inches thick.

01:45:32.000 And you built this whole situation.

01:45:33.000 What is this?

01:45:34.000 Why are we looking at Jim Gaffigan?

01:45:39.000 So you made this, like, completely on your own.

01:45:44.000 Yeah, so they're literally cinder blocks on the bottom and then just bricks on top.

01:45:52.000 And I basically recreated what we have at Scratch Bar just in my backyard here.

01:45:56.000 And where are you getting the grate from?

01:45:59.000 That little grill rack?

01:46:00.000 Yeah.

01:46:01.000 I mean, you could probably buy it at HEB, but I don't even remember where I got that from.

01:46:05.000 Probably one of the local restaurant supply stores.

01:46:09.000 And when you cook, do you use specific wood?

01:46:12.000 What kind of wood do you like to cook off of?

01:46:14.000 I prefer almond.

01:46:16.000 Almond?

01:46:16.000 Yeah, but you can't really find that here, so this is mesquite.

01:46:21.000 Why do you like almond?

01:46:23.000 It burns really clean.

01:46:25.000 So, like, for example, I explained at Scratch Bar, you're sitting really close to the fire.

01:46:29.000 If I was to use, you know, some of this post oak, everybody who left the restaurant would just smell like they came from a smoke shop.

01:46:36.000 Oh, I see.

01:46:38.000 Almond tends to taste, it gives you more of a foresty flavor and less of a barnyardy flavor, if that makes sense.

01:46:46.000 It sounds like you're selling almond wood because barnyardy flavor is not sounding like anything I want in my food.

01:46:52.000 Of course you do. 1.00

01:46:53.000 Well, sort of, but barnyard-y sounds like horse shit. 0.99

01:46:56.000 Yeah, that's not what I meant, though. 1.00

01:46:57.000 When I hear barnyard, I smell poo.

01:46:59.000 Sure.

01:47:00.000 Well, what's the forest smell like?

01:47:02.000 It doesn't smell like poo.

01:47:03.000 The forest smells like trees.

01:47:06.000 When I think of oak, I don't think of barnyard-y.

01:47:08.000 When I think of cooking over oak, I think of this sort of robust aroma that's imparted on the meat from the burning of this hardwood.

01:47:16.000 Sure.

01:47:18.000 You know, tomato-tomato.

01:47:19.000 Okay.

01:47:20.000 But you obviously have access to whatever kind of cooking utensils and equipment that you want.

01:47:27.000 Why do you choose to do it this way?

01:47:31.000 I did it the other ways.

01:47:33.000 I still do it the other ways.

01:47:34.000 But that's the one that I connected with the most.

01:47:39.000 It's just, I mean, it's the way I want to cook at home.

01:47:41.000 It's the way I want to cook at the restaurant.

01:47:42.000 And it's also, you know, I really thought that I could do something for the cooks who got to learn.

01:47:51.000 I felt like if you could hold down that station at Scratch Bar, you could work anywhere.

01:47:55.000 Yeah.

01:47:56.000 And the way you're doing it, you're not even getting it down to the coals.

01:48:00.000 You're doing it just over the fire.

01:48:02.000 Like, I'm looking at those logs, and they were not fully submerged in the fire.

01:48:06.000 Yeah, so there's lots of different schools of thought, and I'm not going to debate which ones are correct, and I'm not even sure there is a correct one.

01:48:14.000 I personally like to cook in the flame.

01:48:16.000 In the flame?

01:48:17.000 Yeah.

01:48:18.000 As opposed to over the heat of the burning coals?

01:48:21.000 Correct.

01:48:21.000 Why is that?

01:48:24.000 I've just found that if you go down to just Kohl's, right?

01:48:31.000 And actually when we first opened I was doing charcoal and I switched to hardwood.

01:48:35.000 When you're just doing Kohl's, you're just at radiant heat.

01:48:39.000 At that point, it's almost as if you could just have a grill That's like an infrared grill.

01:48:46.000 You've created an infrared grill out of wood or charcoal.

01:48:50.000 But there's still a lot of smoke flavor that's imparted from the coals.

01:48:53.000 There is.

01:48:55.000 However, when you're dealing with a piece of wood that's on fire, you're going to have a different...

01:49:10.000 I see.

01:49:25.000 Now, when it comes to something like a tri-tip that you have to do slower, how are you doing that over fire?

01:49:33.000 Same thing.

01:49:34.000 I mean, look, it's not that I don't cook with Kohl's.

01:49:37.000 It's just for specific things.

01:49:39.000 So you're saying, but you wouldn't do it in the fire, like you wouldn't have the fire touch the meat.

01:49:45.000 You'd be above it.

01:49:46.000 Sometimes.

01:49:47.000 Sometimes, yeah.

01:49:48.000 But sometimes, like in that video there, I actually want the fire, I want the flame to actually start to sear the meat.

01:49:55.000 And that's similar in the fact that they're both very lean to a tri-tip.

01:50:02.000 With the venison.

01:50:03.000 Yeah.

01:50:03.000 And what are you putting on the outside of a piece of meat like that?

01:50:06.000 Are you using a rub before you're cooking it there?

01:50:10.000 Are you seasoning it with anything?

01:50:13.000 Typically, I'm just putting, you know, salt and pepper.

01:50:17.000 Like, at the restaurant, it's just salt and pepper. 0.81

01:50:21.000 Recently, though, a buddy of mine gave me his, he has his own, like, spice rub called NADC, and it's fucking awesome. 0.88

01:50:29.000 NADC, what does it stand for? 0.98

01:50:31.000 Not a damn chance. 0.98

01:50:33.000 Not a damn chance of what? 0.99

01:50:35.000 Just not a damn chance. 0.98

01:50:38.000 And what's in not a damn chance? 0.99

01:50:40.000 I don't know, but it's fucking really good. 0.96

01:50:42.000 What's the name of his company so people can buy it? 0.96

01:50:46.000 NADCco.com, I think.

01:50:48.000 I'm not sure.

01:50:48.000 Oh, so that's the name of his company.

01:50:50.000 That's the name of the company.

01:50:50.000 And he only has one rub?

01:50:52.000 No, he's got a bunch, but OG Steak is...

01:50:54.000 Oh, OG Steak.

01:50:55.000 Look at this.

01:50:56.000 Oh, Mango Habanero. 0.97

01:50:58.000 He's a man after me own heart.

01:51:00.000 Yeah.

01:51:01.000 Ooh...

01:51:03.000 Interesting.

01:51:04.000 So, Neen's a professional skateboarder.

01:51:06.000 Oh, he's a professional skateboarder who makes his own rubs?

01:51:09.000 Yep.

01:51:09.000 He actually built a similar...

01:51:12.000 We became friends.

01:51:13.000 He came to Sushi Bar.

01:51:15.000 That's how we became friends.

01:51:16.000 But he...

01:51:16.000 We kind of bonded over skateboarding.

01:51:19.000 But then he's like, oh, I built this hearth in my backyard.

01:51:22.000 And he's cooking all over wood fire.

01:51:25.000 And he just moved here to Texas, too.

01:51:26.000 Wow.

01:51:27.000 Yeah.

01:51:28.000 He's actually, he and I, he's my, I don't know if we call a partner because it's not a real thing, but we do the burgers together.

01:51:36.000 Oh, interesting.

01:51:37.000 Yeah.

01:51:38.000 So this is obviously...

01:51:40.000 That's not actually our burger, but if you go to NADC Burger, that's our burger.

01:51:47.000 And how often are you guys doing this a lot, this burger thing?

01:51:51.000 We've done it three times.

01:51:52.000 We did it at...

01:51:54.000 Look at that, there's Yoni.

01:51:55.000 Yep.

01:51:55.000 Ugh.

01:51:58.000 So that's at the Vulcan after one of the shows.

01:52:04.000 And then we did one at the Barracks, which is this legendary professional-only skate park in LA. And then we just did one for CM Smokehouse's one-year anniversary.

01:52:13.000 We would just give them away every time.

01:52:15.000 We don't even charge.

01:52:15.000 We just do it for fun.

01:52:16.000 Oh, well that's very nice of you.

01:52:18.000 Yeah.

01:52:18.000 Just to perfect the process and have fun, enjoy it?

01:52:22.000 We're just enjoying it and actually we do our burger with his seasoning.

01:52:26.000 Oh, nice.

01:52:27.000 Yeah, it's good.

01:52:29.000 So when you're cooking like that piece of venison and using the OG steak?

01:52:35.000 Sometimes, yeah.

01:52:37.000 I don't think I did in that video, but I can't remember.

01:52:40.000 Now, do you ever use like an offset grill? 0.97

01:52:43.000 Have you fucked around at all? 0.99

01:52:45.000 Because now we're in Texas. 0.99

01:52:46.000 Have you tried their style of barbecuing out here, like the way they do a brisket?

01:52:50.000 I have.

01:52:51.000 I've had two Traegers. 0.89

01:52:53.000 I gave them both away, though.

01:52:55.000 You're not a fan.

01:52:56.000 I'm not a fan.

01:52:58.000 Well, I like building a fire.

01:53:02.000 And so, actually, the barbecue championship I was telling you about...

01:53:08.000 I got a...

01:53:09.000 I won a Traeger both years.

01:53:11.000 They gave me a Traeger, and then I just gave them to my cooks who did the event with me.

01:53:16.000 But, yeah, there's something about...

01:53:19.000 I like building a fire.

01:53:20.000 You want to do it the old school way.

01:53:22.000 Yeah, I mean, but then, like, the...

01:53:25.000 The typical offset here, you know, you are doing with fire.

01:53:29.000 So, I haven't played with it that much, but I do enjoy it.

01:53:34.000 Yeah, when you talk to the guys at Terry Black's, I put something up on my Instagram the other day.

01:53:38.000 I guess it's gone because it was in my stories.

01:53:40.000 But they gave me a tour.

01:53:43.000 They always do.

01:53:44.000 I always asked to give me a tour of the pits and see how they have it down to a science where they have like notebooks saying what was in where and they're 12 plus hours for each brisket and they have this whole thing that they're doing from start to finish like ramping up the temperature towards the end,

01:54:05.000 wrapping it, all these different steps that they take but they do not I speak highly about pellet drills. 0.98

01:54:13.000 Pellet grills are for the person who doesn't know what the fuck they're doing. 0.97

01:54:17.000 It's very convenient. 0.94

01:54:18.000 I love Traeger's because they're very convenient.

01:54:20.000 It's great for wild game because you could keep a temperature probe in there.

01:54:25.000 It tells my phone exactly where it's at.

01:54:28.000 I wonder if that's similar to my feelings on, like, sous-vide.

01:54:32.000 I'm sure.

01:54:33.000 I'm sure.

01:54:33.000 But these guys are so old-school.

01:54:35.000 And they use oak, by the way.

01:54:37.000 They have these...

01:54:38.000 I mean, everything is made out of propane tanks. 0.97

01:54:40.000 So they have somebody who welds these crazy, gigantic fucking pits out of propane tanks, and this massive insulated firebox, there it is. 0.99

01:54:50.000 First of all, goddamn, that looks good. 0.99

01:54:52.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:54:53.000 Oh my god. 1.00

01:54:55.000 And their fucking sausages are insane, too. 1.00

01:54:58.000 I'm a Terry Black's fanatic. 1.00

01:55:00.000 I'm a very, very big fan of theirs.

01:55:03.000 I was so glad when you liked them. 0.98

01:55:05.000 I was like, goddammit, if Philip shits on Terry Black's, we're gonna have a real problem in our friendship. 0.97

01:55:10.000 Mark Black actually sort of threw me a surprise birthday party last year. 1.00

01:55:16.000 Oh, no shit. 0.94

01:55:17.000 Yeah, so as a surprise, Margarita was going to take me to, well, she took me to Houston, but on the way to Houston, she's like, oh... 0.99

01:55:26.000 We're going to stop by and pick up Terry Black's on the way.

01:55:29.000 And, you know, you have to get out and go in.

01:55:31.000 And when we did, everybody from Sushi Bar was there.

01:55:34.000 And Mark, who we had just met at Sushi Bar two weeks prior, he'd come to the restaurant and he loved it, was there.

01:55:43.000 And he's like, nope, come over here.

01:55:45.000 You don't have to wait in line.

01:55:46.000 He's like, I personally cooked this one.

01:55:50.000 And he cut it and it was like... 0.99

01:55:53.000 Fucking unbelievable. 0.99

01:55:54.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:55:55.000 Brisket's an art form.

01:55:57.000 It's one of those things that, like, it's achieved ultimate...

01:56:02.000 I don't know how it gets better than what it is right now.

01:56:06.000 It's a little different at different places.

01:56:08.000 It is.

01:56:08.000 And still amazing.

01:56:09.000 Like, Franklin has a slightly different taste, but still fucking insanely good. 0.81

01:56:14.000 It's all about texture for me.

01:56:15.000 And so, there's a few places in town that just, like...

01:56:20.000 They're on a completely another level.

01:56:24.000 Or at least, I haven't tried everywhere in town, but the ones that I have tried, you know, Franklin's, La Barbecue, Terry Black's.

01:56:34.000 I don't know, have you tried CM Smokehouse?

01:56:36.000 No.

01:56:36.000 Yoni speaks very highly of it, though.

01:56:38.000 Yoni's the man when it comes to...

01:56:39.000 Oh, I know.

01:56:40.000 Yeah.

01:56:40.000 But CM's Smokehouse is the sleeper in that.

01:56:45.000 When I tried his brisket, I looked at him, because, you know, you meet someone who's a friend of someone else's, and you're like, oh, he does stuff.

01:56:52.000 And then when that friend of a friend actually is super legit, you're like, wait a second.

01:56:57.000 You made this?

01:56:58.000 This is good. 0.99

01:57:00.000 This is really fucking good. 0.98

01:57:01.000 Interesting. 0.98

01:57:02.000 Yeah.

01:57:03.000 Did you talk to him about methods?

01:57:05.000 I haven't talked to him about methods, but I did say, I did tell him that I'm like, this is, and I don't know if, I said it just without thinking, I think I was drinking too, but I was like, this is as good as any of those other three.

01:57:16.000 And I meant it to be a compliment, not like, you know, hey, you know what, yours is actually as good as other people's.

01:57:22.000 Right.

01:57:22.000 Did he get offended?

01:57:23.000 No, not at all.

01:57:24.000 Because, I mean, I think there's an understanding that that's the pinnacle.

01:57:28.000 Right.

01:57:28.000 So if you were to say, Philip, your restaurant's as good as the French Laundry, I wouldn't be offended.

01:57:34.000 I don't even think you're correct.

01:57:35.000 Right.

01:57:36.000 It is amazing how many great barbecue restaurants are in this city.

01:57:40.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:57:40.000 It's fucking incredible. 0.99

01:57:42.000 Well, it's crazy how many good restaurants are in this city. 0.99

01:57:44.000 Yeah.

01:57:46.000 There doesn't appear to be bad restaurants in Austin.

01:57:50.000 It's very hard to survive.

01:57:52.000 Well, I haven't been to a bad restaurant yet. 0.99

01:57:55.000 I could tell you a few places that suck. 0.97

01:57:58.000 It's okay. 0.98

01:58:00.000 I'm sure there's some mediocrity.

01:58:02.000 I'm sure there's terrible stuff, because there's terrible stuff everywhere.

01:58:04.000 Especially if you get further out of town.

01:58:05.000 But you go to LA, and if you were just to throw a dart at a random restaurant, it's hit or miss that that thing's even edible.

01:58:15.000 There's tons of bad food, but there's so many people.

01:58:18.000 But then here, I think the peaks and valleys are higher in a place like LA, but here, everywhere you eat is just solid.

01:58:26.000 That was one of the things that really stuck out to us.

01:58:30.000 We still haven't had a bad meal here.

01:58:32.000 Well, it's also a town that celebrates independent businesses, independent stores, independent restaurants.

01:58:41.000 It's like...

01:58:42.000 It would be very hard to be like a Ruth's Chris here, you know?

01:58:47.000 There is one, isn't there?

01:58:48.000 I'm sure there is.

01:58:49.000 Yeah.

01:58:49.000 But I mean, in comparison to some of the Eddie V's type places that have this feel that you go to, there's a feel of like, hey, this is a business that's created by humans.

01:59:00.000 And actually, this is not like, we're going to show you how to make a restaurant the way we make a restaurant.

01:59:05.000 You follow our guidelines.

01:59:07.000 We're going to do it this way because...

01:59:09.000 When you go to a place, not shitting on Ruth's Chris, they make a great steak, but you go to a place that's like a place that's been doing it forever and with the owners and the chefs and all the people that have been cooking and serving it there,

01:59:24.000 there's a feel to that place.

01:59:26.000 It's like a part of the experience.

01:59:29.000 You know you're going to someone's place.

01:59:32.000 Yeah, and that's the thing.

01:59:33.000 So I fell in love with this city in 2013. We came out here and we did South by Southwest.

01:59:42.000 I brought Scratch Bar out here.

01:59:43.000 And we spent two weeks.

01:59:45.000 And we actually opened on the corner of 6th and Red River.

01:59:50.000 Not on the corner, but actually down an alleyway.

01:59:53.000 We got a truck, we set up some picnic tables, and we were doing tasting menus, you know, just all day.

01:59:58.000 You could just walk up and have like a $50 tasting menu on the side of the, you know, South By.

02:00:03.000 Nice.

02:00:04.000 And while I was out here, I just fell in love with, like, the ingenuity and the community of chefs and just the style.

02:00:14.000 It felt like a place where you could just have an idea and go and do something.

02:00:19.000 Coming from L.A., that's not so much the case.

02:00:22.000 Well, LA is such a complicated city and so much more complicated now because of the pandemic and then the aftermath of the poor management of the city. 0.99

02:00:33.000 It's such a fucked up place now. 0.85

02:00:35.000 But it's always had this weird sort of like non-community community aspect to it, you know? 0.98

02:00:43.000 Well, I grew up in the Valley, and so it definitely, there was like, there's neighborhoods and communities, and it's like, when we first opened Scratch Bar in Encino, you would, it was every night, this person knew this person, this person knew that,

02:00:58.000 you know, it was a lot of that, and it was, you know, I wanted to open there because it's where I grew up, and because it was, you know, it's, you know, where my parents lived and my friend's parents lived, and just sort of that Sense of community,

02:01:13.000 which you don't find all over LA. Right.

02:01:16.000 Yeah, there's more of that in Encino and more of that even so when you go to like Orange County and there's places down there.

02:01:25.000 LA is just so polluted by the entertainment industry.

02:01:29.000 The disingenuous aspect of the entertainment, particularly acting, and the pursuit of acting success.

02:01:36.000 And then, on top of that, if we didn't think that that was disingenuous enough, it was reality stars. 0.98

02:01:43.000 And then, well, that's not stupid enough, TikTok stars. 1.00

02:01:46.000 It's like they keep coming up with new levels of stupidity. 1.00

02:01:50.000 And the pinnacle is the online content creator star. 1.00

02:01:57.000 You know, I guess whatever makes people happy, whatever works for them.

02:02:01.000 Okay.

02:02:04.000 I guess that's my political response to that.

02:02:07.000 Yeah, I mean, it's just the problem is there's too many people, too.

02:02:10.000 And one of the things about a city like Austin is that it's only a million people and then another million in the surrounding areas.

02:02:16.000 That's not a lot.

02:02:17.000 It's very small in comparison to Los Angeles.

02:02:20.000 Also, everybody's nice here.

02:02:22.000 And I have a theory on why that is.

02:02:25.000 And not just the people from here.

02:02:27.000 Well, the people from here are nice. 0.99

02:02:28.000 But people go to LA, and I feel like there's this perceived persona that's like, I need to be an asshole to fit in. 0.97

02:02:39.000 And so, yeah, I think so. 0.98

02:02:41.000 I think a lot of people moved to LA and they like, they wanted, especially in the entertainment industry, they moved to LA and like, okay, I'm going to be this sort of, you know, this sort of like, you know, douchebag mentality style.

02:02:53.000 I mean, if you grew up in LA, you can always tell who's from LA because they don't honk and they put on their blinkers and they wave to you.

02:03:03.000 Here, everyone moved here recently and they're like, oh, if I'm going to fit in, I got to be really nice to everybody.

02:03:09.000 That's funny.

02:03:10.000 Yeah, go to New York.

02:03:12.000 Do you think that douchebaggishness is prevalent in LA? In New York, they really adopt it. 1.00

02:03:18.000 You know, I was talking to a buddy of mine about that, about what's happening in comedy clubs in New York, that people get angry if you bring up certain premises and they're like the woke...

02:03:28.000 Aspect of it.

02:03:29.000 And he's like, but guess what, bro?

02:03:31.000 None of them are from here. 1.00

02:03:32.000 They're, like, fucking Maine people. 0.99

02:03:34.000 They're, like, from somewhere else where they thought they were going to adopt this persona by coming to New York and being, like, real aggressive about, like, being, like, this left-wing, progressive, angry city dweller. 1.00

02:03:46.000 And they're, like, it's a persona they adopt.

02:03:48.000 It's, like, this makes them happy to try to pretend that they're this person.

02:03:53.000 It's just an interesting idea that, like, I'm gonna go somewhere and I'm gonna reinvent myself to fit in.

02:03:58.000 That's a lot of it, though.

02:04:00.000 Yeah.

02:04:00.000 A lot of people do that, man.

02:04:02.000 I mean, people do move to places to reinvent themselves.

02:04:05.000 There's a lot of people that don't know why they are the way they are and they don't like it.

02:04:08.000 They don't like how they fit in where they are, especially if you grew up in a place.

02:04:12.000 So they've known you since you were five. 1.00

02:04:14.000 That's a fucking problem. 1.00

02:04:15.000 Because now that you're 18 and you want to have pink hair, they're like, fuck you. 1.00

02:04:19.000 Like, but I like pink hair! 1.00

02:04:21.000 No, no, no.

02:04:21.000 You gotta move to a place and they go, oh, Mike has pink hair.

02:04:25.000 He's always had pink hair.

02:04:26.000 And they just accept you.

02:04:27.000 Yeah, I moved to Chicago when I was like, I don't even know how old.

02:04:32.000 But it was interesting to just be in a new place where you could...

02:04:36.000 I mean, I didn't reinvent myself because I just moved there to cook and I kept cooking.

02:04:40.000 But it's interesting to, like, make new friends and meet new people and have the opportunity to have zero baggage or zero preconceived notion.

02:04:48.000 And you can, I mean...

02:04:48.000 It's kind of when Margaret and I moved here.

02:04:50.000 It was like no one knew us and they were only introduced to us with the success of Sushi Bar, which was so interesting because like in LA, we've been hustlers.

02:05:02.000 We're known as like the young kids who have been hustling forever and, you know, have made it.

02:05:08.000 And here we walk in and everyone's like, oh, you're from Sushi Bar.

02:05:11.000 And it's like, that's weird because we're not used to people like...

02:05:16.000 Approaching us that way.

02:05:17.000 Right.

02:05:18.000 Well, again, there's not that many people here.

02:05:22.000 Yeah.

02:05:22.000 It's different.

02:05:23.000 It's essentially a small town.

02:05:24.000 And part of that could be a problem.

02:05:28.000 There's definitely people that are super into talking to certain people because They are famous or because they, you know, run a famous restaurant or something and they'll weasel their way into your life. 0.58

02:05:40.000 And I have a lot of uncomfortable conversations where people are trying to get on the podcast for no fucking reason whatsoever.

02:05:46.000 I'm like, what is this conversation we're having?

02:05:50.000 Yeah, I haven't...

02:05:52.000 I mean, luckily I haven't...

02:05:53.000 Either I haven't noticed it or I'm too naive.

02:05:57.000 But...

02:05:57.000 Or busy.

02:05:58.000 Or busy.

02:05:59.000 Yeah, I know this is...

02:06:00.000 This has become the busiest I've ever been this last year.

02:06:05.000 And now with getting out of Sushi Bar ATX and what we've got coming is going to get even busier.

02:06:13.000 So Sushi Bar ATX, though, you sold it to someone?

02:06:16.000 What did you do?

02:06:18.000 So...

02:06:21.000 So does the McDonald's?

02:06:25.000 Basically, I'm no longer involved.

02:06:30.000 I'm not an owner.

02:06:32.000 I am no longer the chef there.

02:06:35.000 You cashed out.

02:06:38.000 Something happened, and I am no longer involved.

02:06:41.000 Oh, so something negative.

02:06:43.000 No, no, no, nothing negative.

02:06:44.000 We're not really talking about the inter-workings of...

02:06:50.000 I was involved.

02:06:51.000 I'm no longer involved.

02:06:52.000 This is cryptic.

02:06:53.000 I want to pause the show and decipher this.

02:06:55.000 Jamie, how are you feeling about this?

02:06:58.000 I think I understand what he's saying.

02:07:00.000 I feel like it's very cryptic.

02:07:02.000 But also, I maybe understand the cryptosity.

02:07:05.000 Well, I'll give you some more context to the story.

02:07:10.000 Okay.

02:07:11.000 You don't have to if you feel uncomfortable about it. 0.99

02:07:13.000 I don't give a fuck. 0.99

02:07:14.000 I'm just riding you. 1.00

02:07:15.000 No, no, no.

02:07:15.000 Well, there's other stuff to talk about.

02:07:17.000 Yeah.

02:07:18.000 So, Margaret and I started...

02:07:22.000 Scratch Bar, actually, 2013, and it operated in a coffee shop.

02:07:30.000 And we moved it from our coffee shop to our one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood.

02:07:35.000 From there, somebody who ate at our apartment offered us- You served food at your apartment?

02:07:44.000 Yeah, we were doing about- Commercially?

02:07:46.000 Yeah, we charged for it. 0.98

02:07:48.000 How the fuck did you manage to do that? 0.97

02:07:50.000 So we were operating at this coffee shop, and the deal was, they were open from like, it was breakfast through like 4pm, they closed, and they hired me to be like, to redo their menu. 0.98

02:08:03.000 And so when they hired me to do that, they asked me, what do you want to charge?

02:08:06.000 And I said, you close at 4pm, so instead of paying me, what if I just get to use your space at night?

02:08:12.000 And I'm going to open a restaurant at night here.

02:08:14.000 And that was the deal.

02:08:15.000 I worked there for free all day during the day.

02:08:17.000 And then at night, I would turn it into Scratch Bar.

02:08:20.000 Oh, that's a great deal.

02:08:22.000 For them.

02:08:23.000 Yeah, and I thought so.

02:08:25.000 And then after a few weeks, the guy comes over and says, Well, I'd rather you start putting a little more focus into my menu.

02:08:35.000 And I said, Well, our deal was I would change it X amount.

02:08:38.000 I used to be a big hothead. 1.00

02:08:40.000 We ended that conversation with, Fuck you, I'm out. 1.00

02:08:46.000 It happened on, I think, on a Saturday and we were closed Sunday and Monday. 1.00

02:08:50.000 We were sold out next week and I was like, fuck, what are we going to do? 0.97

02:08:53.000 So we gutted our apartment and we called all of our reservations and told them to come to our apartment. 0.99

02:09:02.000 Wow!

02:09:02.000 How many people could you see at a time?

02:09:05.000 I want to say we sat close to like 20-something.

02:09:07.000 That is wild! 1.00

02:09:09.000 What do your fucking neighbors think? 1.00

02:09:11.000 I mean, it only lasts... 1.00

02:09:12.000 This guy's partying every night!

02:09:14.000 Yeah, I mean, we were in West Hollywood.

02:09:16.000 It's not like, you know, we were in a quiet area.

02:09:18.000 We were on, like, Crescent Heights and Sunset.

02:09:20.000 Right.

02:09:21.000 So, we did that for a couple of weeks, and during that time, one of our guests was like, you know, he came in and basically said, this is incredible.

02:09:30.000 I own an empty restaurant space on Restaurant Row next door to Matsuhisa.

02:09:35.000 Ah.

02:09:35.000 And if you want to go 50-50, you can move the restaurant into my space.

02:09:41.000 Oh, that's amazing.

02:09:41.000 We opened up on Restaurant Row, La Cienega, the next week.

02:09:48.000 Fast forward from 2013, we've opened multiple restaurants.

02:09:53.000 Now, today, I'm not involved in Austin anymore, but Murray and I now own 100% of our restaurant.

02:10:03.000 So you were not 100% an owner of Sushi Bar?

02:10:08.000 I've had partners since 2013. So now in Scratch Restaurants, which operates Scratch Bar& Kitchen, both Sushi Bars and Pasta Bar, we don't have partners there anymore.

02:10:21.000 We should probably tell everybody how we met and what happened, because you guys weren't planning on living in Austin.

02:10:30.000 No, it's kind of your fault, a little bit.

02:10:31.000 It's my wife's fault. 1.00

02:10:33.000 Because my wife's friend who's a sushi fiends like there's gonna be a pop-up in Austin Sushi bar is like her favorite spot in LA and she's like they're coming to Austin because they can't work in Los Angeles because the draconian measures by this goofy fucking government And so you guys set up shop here. 0.93

02:10:52.000 My wife drags me out because basically I always want to eat meat. 1.00

02:10:56.000 And she's like, come out for sushi. 0.74

02:10:59.000 It's supposed to be really good.

02:11:00.000 Okay, okay, okay. 0.98

02:11:01.000 I go, it's fucking phenomenal. 0.97

02:11:03.000 And I put it on my Instagram. 0.63

02:11:06.000 Yeah, so in December of 2021, 2020, yeah.

02:11:13.000 December of 2020, LA said it's too dangerous to serve on the patio.

02:11:19.000 And so they said shut everything down.

02:11:21.000 You can't serve indoors, you can't serve outdoors.

02:11:24.000 Earlier in the year when they said you can't serve indoors, we literally just built a sushi bar on our patio.

02:11:28.000 So patio business was fine.

02:11:30.000 We had built tents and everything, but now it was too dangerous to be on the patio either.

02:11:35.000 So we were going to have to lay everyone off right before Christmas.

02:11:39.000 And so Mari and I decided that we didn't want to do that.

02:11:44.000 Instead, we said if anyone's willing to work, we will find another state that will let us work.

02:11:49.000 Because at that point it wasn't LA anymore, it was California.

02:11:51.000 We were going to go up north and do a sushi bar in Big Sur and then they closed all of California.

02:11:59.000 So I had some friends out here and we came out and we found a space and we did this pop-up that was supposed to last five weeks.

02:12:07.000 We got here at the end of December, we were supposed to go back at the beginning of February.

02:12:13.000 And when we tried to come out here, you know, we have a publicist in LA, and they were talking to all of the different writers here in town, and they all said, we're not going to promote them.

02:12:23.000 You know, with COVID, we're just not promoting anything right now. 0.95

02:12:27.000 So we were like, fuck, we're going out to a city that we don't know, that doesn't know us, and we have no reservations. 0.96

02:12:32.000 And so we sent out a newsletter to our following, and I guess that's where your wife's friend saw it. 0.97

02:12:38.000 We basically said, if you know anyone who's in Austin, please tell them to come support us.

02:12:44.000 And after probably about two weeks of being open, we had sold out the entire stint.

02:12:53.000 Yeah, so we came.

02:12:55.000 There it is.

02:12:56.000 Look at you.

02:12:57.000 Best sushi I've ever had in my life.

02:12:59.000 So this is when?

02:13:00.000 53 weeks ago.

02:13:01.000 Basically a year.

02:13:02.000 Yeah.

02:13:03.000 Wild.

02:13:04.000 And so, yeah, you convinced me to keep it at least one...

02:13:09.000 I think you said to me, you gotta keep this.

02:13:13.000 We gotta stay.

02:13:14.000 And I said, I can't.

02:13:15.000 I have to go back.

02:13:16.000 And you said, well, if you stay through February, I'll post about it.

02:13:21.000 And I said, okay.

02:13:24.000 And that's what happened.

02:13:25.000 And you did.

02:13:27.000 And, you know, I didn't know.

02:13:30.000 I mean, I had no idea what to expect.

02:13:32.000 But that night, you posted about it.

02:13:34.000 And we sold out February within four minutes that night.

02:13:38.000 And then the next morning, we woke up and there was like 20,000 people on the wait list.

02:13:41.000 Yeah.

02:13:44.000 And we just kept extending and extending and extending, and then eventually we signed a lease, and it's been phenomenal.

02:13:53.000 We haven't had a...

02:13:54.000 I'm saying we like I'm still there.

02:13:56.000 I'm not there anymore, but the restaurant never had a day that wasn't at capacity, and now that Marguerite and I have...

02:14:07.000 You know, control of scratch restaurants.

02:14:10.000 And we live here now.

02:14:12.000 We're bringing two new sushi concepts this year.

02:14:16.000 And Pasta Bar will be here shortly as well.

02:14:18.000 And Pasta Bar you're going to put in on 6th, which is very close from my super secret comedy club project that will probably open in a similar time frame.

02:14:30.000 Yeah, we...

02:14:31.000 Pasta Bar will open in March.

02:14:35.000 The goal right now is March 11th, which is the first day of South By.

02:14:39.000 Oh, that's awesome.

02:14:40.000 Yeah, and so as of right now, we actually...

02:14:44.000 We don't know the exact date yet.

02:14:45.000 We haven't released it, but you can go on pastabaraustin.com and actually get on the waitlist for when we open reservations.

02:14:53.000 So the comedy club will be open just for anybody listening.

02:14:55.000 It'll be longer than that.

02:14:56.000 It'll take a little longer than that.

02:14:57.000 But...

02:14:58.000 You're doing something else, too, though, right?

02:15:01.000 You're gonna do a sushi place that's out, like, a little further outside of town?

02:15:06.000 Yeah, so we are an escrow on a ranch out in Dripping.

02:15:12.000 So in Dripping Springs, right off of FitzU, we got a 1.2-acre ranch, and it's gonna be really fucking cool.

02:15:21.000 Nice.

02:15:21.000 It's an old, like, cowboy-style log cabin, which is gonna be a Japanese whiskey bar.

02:15:27.000 Oh, wow.

02:15:28.000 And then you're going to go onto this property and have your welcome cocktail in there, canapes.

02:15:35.000 This is not going to be the sushi bar concept.

02:15:38.000 So all of our sushi bars up until now, which, by the way, we're changing the name of sushi bar.

02:15:52.000 For our ones in LA and Montecito and another one that's coming here.

02:15:56.000 So it's going to be called Sushi by Scratch Restaurants.

02:16:00.000 And so all of those are what was the sushi bar concept.

02:16:05.000 This is going to be a completely different concept.

02:16:07.000 So you're going to go onto the property.

02:16:08.000 The property, you're going to have your drink and your snacks in this little log cabin.

02:16:16.000 And then you're going to be taken through the grounds of the property to another cabin where we're going to have...

02:16:24.000 A pretty exciting concept.

02:16:26.000 Where sushi bar was a one star concept, we're gonna attempt at like a two or three star sushi concept here.

02:16:33.000 And what's the difference?

02:16:34.000 Like what are you gonna do?

02:16:35.000 So this sushi bar was always designed to be appealing to everybody in terms of like the types of fish that we were getting.

02:16:45.000 Although we were getting like the highest quality salmon you could get, we had salmon on the menu.

02:16:49.000 We had albacore on the menu.

02:16:50.000 We had a lot of things that were, you know, think of us almost as like a gateway restaurant.

02:16:56.000 Where we weren't, you go to some sushi restaurants and you don't recognize a single fish that's on the menu.

02:17:01.000 So, this is going to be a little bit more...

02:17:05.000 Higher-end fish.

02:17:06.000 It's also going to be...

02:17:07.000 We're going to have a tank with live king crabs and live lobsters and things like that. 0.95

02:17:16.000 I haven't quite finished the full concept, but it's going to also not be 100% sushi.

02:17:21.000 It's going to be like 80% sushi.

02:17:23.000 And when you say exotic fish, what are you talking about?

02:17:28.000 What kind of fish...

02:17:29.000 So, one of my favorite fish is called akamutsu.

02:17:34.000 And it's a...

02:17:35.000 That's Jamie's favorite.

02:17:36.000 Yeah.

02:17:37.000 Right?

02:17:39.000 It's actually from Ohio.

02:17:40.000 Yeah.

02:17:41.000 It's from Ohio.

02:17:43.000 What the hell is an akamutsu?

02:17:45.000 Google that.

02:17:46.000 How do you spell that?

02:17:48.000 A.K.A. What were you starting with?

02:17:52.000 No.

02:17:53.000 A-K-A-M-U-T-S-O. Is it German? 1.00

02:17:58.000 Yeah, it's German fish, yeah.

02:17:59.000 From Ohio.

02:18:02.000 That sounds super Japanese.

02:18:05.000 Oh, wow.

02:18:06.000 Okay, so it looks like a snapper.

02:18:08.000 Black-throat sea perch.

02:18:09.000 Yeah, so it's a perch, but it's in very, very deep waters.

02:18:15.000 Oh, that makes me hungry.

02:18:16.000 Yeah, it's also incredibly difficult to source and very expensive.

02:18:22.000 But, you know, where we have very, you know, the type of fish selection for a sushi bar is very, I don't want to say average, because it's not average, but it's very approachable for someone who's not necessarily like a sushi connoisseur.

02:18:40.000 So this is going to be just sort of like the next level.

02:18:43.000 Yeah.

02:18:44.000 And now, that kind of fish, is there a difference in the type of flavor that you're going to get from a fish like that?

02:18:50.000 Is there a way to describe that?

02:18:52.000 So that one, you serve it with the skin on.

02:18:54.000 The skin's so soft that when you take the scales off, I'll usually just use my hands.

02:18:59.000 I won't use a scaler.

02:19:02.000 Really?

02:19:02.000 You'll take the scales off with your hands?

02:19:04.000 Yeah, because you'll rip the skin. 0.90

02:19:05.000 It's so soft.

02:19:06.000 Wow.

02:19:07.000 And so the oil content is just, like, the single fish sells for $736,000.

02:19:14.000 What?!

02:19:16.000 What did you say?

02:19:17.000 That's what it says.

02:19:18.000 But yeah, that's a lot.

02:19:19.000 Is that real?

02:19:20.000 You're gonna spend three quarters of a million dollars on fish?

02:19:26.000 Well, I mean, some of the bluefin tunas are selling for millions of dollars.

02:19:29.000 But isn't that like a dick-waving contest when they do that with the bluefin tuna?

02:19:33.000 It could be.

02:19:34.000 It's been explained to me is that that's like a restaurant wants to establish that they're like the big kahuna, so they'll outbid everyone else.

02:19:46.000 But the actual market price of a single tuna is never that high.

02:19:50.000 Yeah, I mean, I carry probably the most expensive tuna that you could get, like, regularly in America, and I'm not paying a million dollars for a fish.

02:20:00.000 Right, that's what I'm saying.

02:20:01.000 This video actually says it's an akamutsu, but the, like, caption says it's a bluefin tuna caught off northeastern Japan, fetched $736,000.

02:20:10.000 Got it, yeah, so tuna.

02:20:11.000 I mean, Akamutsu's not huge.

02:20:15.000 The thing is, a lot of those guys who do buy those tunas, they can cut it up and freeze it and send it to 10 of their restaurants and sell it for a lot of money as this is the most expensive prized tuna of the year.

02:20:27.000 Right.

02:20:27.000 And when you're dealing with sushi, you think of the size of the portion, and if you're going to a sushi place like Soto or somewhere in town that's a nice sushi place, what would a two-piece of sushi Toro go for,

02:20:44.000 roughly?

02:20:46.000 I'm gonna guess...

02:20:47.000 $29?

02:20:48.000 No, I would guess less, but I don't know.

02:20:50.000 $17?

02:20:51.000 Let's just call it $20.

02:20:52.000 Yeah.

02:20:53.000 So it's $20 and it's two small pieces.

02:20:55.000 Oh, for two pieces?

02:20:56.000 Yeah, it might be more.

02:20:57.000 Okay.

02:20:57.000 Oh, you're thinking individual pieces.

02:21:00.000 So let's just say it's $30.

02:21:01.000 And think of $30 and then look at the entire tuna, how many $30 portions are in there.

02:21:07.000 It's hundreds and hundreds.

02:21:08.000 And when you're saying this is the most prized tuna of the year, that $30 piece is $300 and people are paying for it.

02:21:14.000 Right, I get it.

02:21:15.000 I don't think anyone's losing money on those tunas they spend that money on.

02:21:19.000 Of course.

02:21:20.000 They wouldn't do it, right?

02:21:21.000 Well, it might be worth a little bit of money just for the marketing and PR or whatever.

02:21:25.000 But I think when they...

02:21:26.000 The thing that someone was explaining to me...

02:21:28.000 Honestly, now that I'm thinking about it, I think I heard it on a podcast.

02:21:33.000 I think it was on Meat Eater.

02:21:35.000 And I think they were saying that it's not that they would normally spend that much money on a tuna.

02:21:42.000 It's that there's like a sort of a ceremonial aspect of this bidding to see if that's true.

02:21:50.000 I don't know how you'd even Google that.

02:21:51.000 Well, there definitely is a...

02:21:53.000 They do bid on it, but how it gets to be millions of dollars...

02:21:57.000 That's what's confusing.

02:21:59.000 And that's what he was trying to...

02:22:01.000 Yeah, I mean, that's not in the...

02:22:02.000 I mean, like I'm saying, the normal market.

02:22:05.000 But what I'm...

02:22:05.000 Because what I'm getting is from Toyose.

02:22:08.000 It is from what used to be Tsukiji.

02:22:11.000 So it is coming from the same market where that bidding is happening.

02:22:15.000 But when I'm getting...

02:22:17.000 We don't get whole tunas.

02:22:19.000 We get them halved.

02:22:20.000 But they're...

02:22:22.000 Almost as big as like the length of this table.

02:22:24.000 So you get them in the full form and then you piece it up yourself?

02:22:28.000 So remember when you came the first time to Sushi Bar, the size of that table, it was almost reached end to end.

02:22:36.000 And I think that was, yeah, so it was maybe like probably six feet. 0.98

02:22:42.000 That's a big ass piece of tuna. 1.00

02:22:44.000 Yeah. 0.97

02:22:45.000 And so that's, how many pounds is that?

02:22:49.000 Hundred and something, 180 probably.

02:22:51.000 And what does something like that cost?

02:22:55.000 A couple thousand.

02:22:56.000 Jesus.

02:22:57.000 So when you're doing like inventory for a sushi place, like it seems like that would require a lot of skill and clever planning.

02:23:12.000 Yes, except that, you know, we've been lucky enough at all of our locations to have, we have 10 seats, we do 30 people a night, they do the menu that we choose for them, and we do it seven days a week.

02:23:23.000 Right, so you can plan it better.

02:23:25.000 We know roughly exactly what we're doing.

02:23:28.000 And that's typically also part of the reason why we push, if you want extras, that you get something, try something new.

02:23:34.000 Because we'll bring in four or five extra fish, one or two of each, just to have extras.

02:23:39.000 So that we know that, alright, we're getting 30 of these, 30 of these, 30 of these.

02:23:43.000 Maybe you want an extra, you know, Toro or Yellowtail or something.

02:23:47.000 And that's fine.

02:23:48.000 We always have a little bit extra.

02:23:50.000 But it just keeps it in a constant, you know...

02:23:53.000 Right, so you can manage it much easier.

02:23:55.000 Now, sushi bar is now no longer you, but this pasta bar that you're doing, I'm not familiar with the one that you have in LA, so what is going to be different about that?

02:24:09.000 Is it the same sort of a thing, like a tasting menu?

02:24:12.000 Yeah, so everything that we do in our group is all tasting menus.

02:24:16.000 And so, similar to Sushi Bar, you're going to sit right up to the counter.

02:24:22.000 The stoves are going to be...

02:24:23.000 Like, if you're sitting there, the stoves are where this wall is right here.

02:24:27.000 And we're doing...

02:24:29.000 I think we're doing about a 13-course tasting menu.

02:24:32.000 In that 13 courses, unlike sushi, you're not going to have 13 bowls of pasta because that would...

02:24:37.000 Be difficult to have.

02:24:39.000 There's about five courses that is pasta, and then all the other courses are something that kind of help tell the story of an upscale pasta dinner.

02:24:48.000 What kind of stuff is that?

02:24:51.000 Well, so you start off always with your own loaf of margarita sourdough, which is the best sourdough you've ever had.

02:25:00.000 Like, hands down.

02:25:01.000 Have you ever had Tom Papa's sourdough?

02:25:02.000 I haven't, but I can't... 1.00

02:25:04.000 Well, until you do, you might want to shut your fucking mouth. 1.00

02:25:08.000 Well, I'm still going to say my wife's is better. 1.00

02:25:11.000 I'm sure it's amazing.

02:25:12.000 The Tom Papa's is really good.

02:25:13.000 We should try it.

02:25:14.000 You should have a sourdough off.

02:25:16.000 We should.

02:25:17.000 I am a giant fan of the Tom Papa sourdough.

02:25:21.000 Look at that.

02:25:22.000 Come on.

02:25:23.000 So that's Margarita's sourdough, and then she makes butter. 0.99

02:25:27.000 God damn, that looks good. 0.96

02:25:28.000 Why does bread look so good? 0.99

02:25:30.000 The thing about hers is it's so crunchy, but the crust is very thin, but it's so crusty.

02:25:36.000 And then the inside is just like a pillow, and it's super sour.

02:25:40.000 And then she makes butter that it goes with... 0.99

02:25:43.000 She makes her own butter? 1.00

02:25:44.000 Yeah.

02:25:45.000 Does she churn, do the whole deal? 0.99

02:25:46.000 Of course.

02:25:47.000 I mean, not by hand.

02:25:49.000 And then, you know, our whole group, Scratch Restaurants, is the fact that we don't serve anything we don't make from scratch.

02:25:56.000 So, like, the fact that we make the soy sauce and the bread, the butter, the ice creams, the cheeses, whatever.

02:26:02.000 So, I mean, here you go.

02:26:05.000 This is what's looking like it's on the menu. 0.98

02:26:07.000 Damn, that looks good. 0.99

02:26:09.000 So when you make your pasta, now one of the things that I noticed, and many people have remarked on this, talked about this, when they go to Italy and they have pasta in Italy, you don't feel like shit. 0.99

02:26:20.000 Like there's something about the wheat that they use that has a different reaction in people's bodies.

02:26:27.000 And it's been explained to me that it's like, was it double zero flour or something like that?

02:26:32.000 Yeah.

02:26:32.000 Yeah, so there's different flour.

02:26:34.000 I mean, if you just go and get what they call AP flour, that's what is going to give you that kind of really thick, pasty, kind of like sit in your stomach.

02:26:46.000 And that's regular flour that you buy from a grocery store?

02:26:49.000 Yeah.

02:26:49.000 But there are specific flowers that we use and that you can get that are much different.

02:26:58.000 Durham, 00, all these different types of flowers.

02:27:01.000 What is this 00 stuff that everybody says is the best?

02:27:05.000 I shouldn't say everybody, because I've really talked to everybody about it.

02:27:09.000 No, but everybody does say it's the best.

02:27:12.000 It's become very, very popular in pizzas, in breads, and it really is...

02:27:19.000 The best way I would sort of describe it is it's much lighter.

02:27:24.000 It's much cleaner.

02:27:24.000 Is it easier to digest?

02:27:26.000 I mean, it feels easier to digest.

02:27:28.000 I don't know from like a...

02:27:31.000 Compound makeup, whether, you know, what it is that makes it different, but it feels much better.

02:27:36.000 That's when people describe pasta and pizza in Italy, that they don't use the kind of flour that we have over here.

02:27:42.000 And, you know, Maynard Keenan from Tool?

02:27:46.000 He has a bunch of restaurants in Arizona.

02:27:49.000 Really?

02:27:50.000 Yeah, he's a vineyard.

02:27:51.000 Yeah.

02:27:52.000 Do you know about?

02:27:53.000 No.

02:27:53.000 I knew he had a vineyard.

02:27:55.000 I didn't know he had restaurants.

02:27:55.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:27:56.000 His Osterias.

02:27:57.000 Very cool.

02:27:58.000 Yeah.

02:27:58.000 I think...

02:27:59.000 Is it Merkin Vineyards Osterias?

02:28:02.000 Is that what he calls them?

02:28:03.000 He named his... 1.00

02:28:05.000 He's such a fucking freak. 1.00

02:28:07.000 He named his restaurant after a fake vagina toupee. 1.00

02:28:12.000 That's what a Merkin is. 0.99

02:28:15.000 American Vineyards Tasting Room in Austria.

02:28:17.000 I don't know him, but I've listened to enough Tool to know he's an interesting dude.

02:28:21.000 Oh, he's super interesting. 0.98

02:28:22.000 Super fucking smart guy. 0.95

02:28:23.000 And a very cool guy. 0.99

02:28:23.000 I love him to death. 0.99

02:28:26.000 By the way, if you ever get a chance to eat there, the pizza is insane.

02:28:29.000 My sister lives in Arizona, so I'll have to check it out sometime.

02:28:31.000 It's in Scottsdale.

02:28:32.000 It's an old town in Scottsdale.

02:28:33.000 Yeah, that's where she lives. 0.65

02:28:34.000 We had a UFC in Phoenix, and we drove all the way out to Scottsdale to eat there.

02:28:38.000 It was that good.

02:28:40.000 But I went to visit him anyway.

02:28:42.000 But anyway, his explanation was that when they changed wheat or they started adjusting and manipulating wheat to develop higher yields, that the problem is that that wheat has more complex glutens in it.

02:28:56.000 And you definitely get higher yield per acre, but it's more difficult for people to digest.

02:29:01.000 Yeah.

02:29:02.000 I don't know if that's true.

02:29:04.000 But it makes sense to me.

02:29:05.000 I mean, that's what they say is true.

02:29:07.000 Here it is.

02:29:08.000 Double zero flour, also known as doppio zero or zero zero flour, is a finely ground Italian flour commonly used to make pasta and pizza dough in Italy and other parts of Europe.

02:29:20.000 Grind sizes vary from double zero to two.

02:29:23.000 Oh, so it's the size of the grind.

02:29:25.000 Double zero is the finest grind and two is the coarsest.

02:29:28.000 Huh.

02:29:30.000 Is it from different wheat?

02:29:32.000 Well, you would imagine, just think about...

02:29:34.000 Their wheat is just different, period, right?

02:29:35.000 Like, their food is different.

02:29:37.000 Well, of course, yeah.

02:29:37.000 Their steaks are different.

02:29:38.000 They're all grass-fed cows over there.

02:29:40.000 But you would imagine if you have something finer rather than more coarse, if you're going to dilute that in water...

02:29:46.000 Yes.

02:29:47.000 Right?

02:29:47.000 Or with whatever you're going to use to make your pasta, the finer it is, the more it's going to spread out and become fine for a better...

02:29:58.000 Well, it just seems like it'd be easier for your body to break it down.

02:30:01.000 Yeah, because it's not as thick and as coarse.

02:30:03.000 Right.

02:30:03.000 So are you using a specific combination of flours?

02:30:09.000 Is there a way?

02:30:11.000 Do you like it?

02:30:12.000 So different pastas are going to have different flours and different combinations.

02:30:18.000 Just for the flavor aspect or the texture?

02:30:22.000 Yeah, so, I mean, depending on if you're looking for a chewier noodle, if you're looking for something that's softer, more pillowy, and then, you know, the amount of hydration, and there's certain things that go into it to make it specific to what it is you're trying to achieve.

02:30:38.000 And did you do this by trial and error?

02:30:41.000 Is this something that you learned from, you know, is that like from...

02:30:45.000 So, I worked with, I mean, I've worked in a lot of restaurants that made fantastic pasta.

02:30:51.000 I've never worked in a pasta restaurant.

02:30:53.000 So, what we're doing at the restaurant right now is sort of a conglomeration of, you know, really what everybody, you know...

02:31:01.000 The way that I sort of run the restaurants is it really is like a conglomeration of the entire team.

02:31:07.000 So anyone who has anything, you know, of value to add, it gets added.

02:31:12.000 So, you know, there may be that, you know, this cook has this recipe and this cook has this recipe and we've worked together to kind of develop just like the best recipes that we can do.

02:31:22.000 Because I've never been a fan of not being as good as we can because it was only my idea.

02:31:28.000 That's interesting.

02:31:29.000 So you pick people that you work with that you can collaborate with.

02:31:33.000 Yeah.

02:31:34.000 So like sometimes will someone come to you with an idea of a dish and you guys like talk it through?

02:31:40.000 Yeah, so we actually, at Scratch Bar back in 2017, we used to change the entire menu every single month.

02:31:45.000 So 20 new dishes.

02:31:47.000 Oh, wow.

02:31:47.000 And for a long time, it was just me.

02:31:51.000 Just solely me, just with a notebook, just coming up with new dishes.

02:31:54.000 And then eventually I was like, I need to keep the team engaged.

02:31:58.000 And also the team would come to me and be like, hey...

02:32:03.000 We were thinking we want to cook rabbit next month.

02:32:05.000 So we started implementing every Friday during family meal.

02:32:08.000 It wasn't mandatory.

02:32:09.000 You could either stay, eat with the team, and we can talk about what you guys want to cook next month, or you can go and call your girlfriend or whatever.

02:32:16.000 And we started really working together to kind of put these menus together.

02:32:20.000 And at this one point, one of our younger cooks had the idea to do a...

02:32:27.000 He said, well, what if we do something like a bagel and cream cheese?

02:32:31.000 And everybody laughed at him.

02:32:33.000 And I was like, no.

02:32:34.000 There's no such thing as a bad idea.

02:32:36.000 We have to, like, what?

02:32:37.000 Okay.

02:32:37.000 So, obviously, we can't do bagel and cream cheese.

02:32:41.000 So, what is, like, I see where you're coming from.

02:32:43.000 Now, how do we get there?

02:32:44.000 And we worked together over probably about a month and a half.

02:32:47.000 And where we got to...

02:32:50.000 You know, and I worked with him on how to actually think, what are we thinking about, right?

02:32:54.000 So, first of all, we have to make everything ourselves.

02:32:56.000 We're not making bagels.

02:32:57.000 That's not an option.

02:32:58.000 So, okay.

02:33:00.000 And how do you do that at a world-class level?

02:33:02.000 So, instead of making, oh, well, bagel chip.

02:33:05.000 Well, I'd have to make a bagel to make a bagel chip, so no.

02:33:08.000 How about a cracker?

02:33:09.000 Well, if we put caraway in that cracker, then we're going to have the flavor of rye bread, which is going to be reminiscent of a deli experience.

02:33:18.000 Okay, so we have a caraway cracker.

02:33:20.000 Okay, we can make our own cream cheese.

02:33:24.000 We've done that before.

02:33:25.000 But I love Lakshmir.

02:33:26.000 So instead of Lakshmir, maybe we're going to fold in right at the last second fresh salmon roe, you know, smoked salmon roe.

02:33:33.000 So you have like, you're going to put a layer of this homemade cream cheese that's really light and airy because what we do is we would strain off the whey and then reincorporate just the amount that we would want so it would be the right texture.

02:33:47.000 And then we thought, okay, instead of, we've already got the salmon aspect, so what if we do, what if we smoke sea urchin?

02:33:54.000 And we put that on top.

02:33:56.000 And then we dehydrated small little red onions, which gave you the flavor of an onion bagel.

02:34:01.000 And then you eat this little thing.

02:34:03.000 It was this big.

02:34:04.000 And it was like, okay, we figured out how to take this idea, which everyone laughed at, and turn it into something at a world-class level.

02:34:11.000 Wow.

02:34:12.000 Now, why would you...

02:34:13.000 You said, like, almost matter-of-factly, we're not making bagels.

02:34:16.000 Like, why would you not make bagels?

02:34:18.000 Yeah.

02:34:19.000 I mean, it's a very difficult thing to do, and we're not, I mean, Scratch Bar, as you saw a picture of it, we're not set up to be a bagel factory.

02:34:27.000 Bagels, they're kind of boiled, right?

02:34:29.000 They are.

02:34:30.000 But the thing is, what's really difficult about Being a restaurant where you have to make everything yourself is like, if we're going to make something that everyone's used to, we have to make it better than that.

02:34:43.000 And I've never made bagels and that's a huge undertaking to put a bagel program on the team just so we can have this one dish.

02:34:54.000 So we're not making bagels.

02:34:55.000 Because there's a lot of variation in the level of bagel.

02:35:00.000 Yeah.

02:35:00.000 You know, it's really interesting.

02:35:02.000 And we want to, whatever we put out, like if we cook a steak, it's gotta be like, fuck, that's the best steak I've ever had. 0.99

02:35:07.000 Fuck, that was the best, whatever. 1.00

02:35:08.000 Now when we put out this final product that was this big, people would take a bite and they'd go, fuck, that's kind of like a bagel and cream cheese, but fucking good. 1.00

02:35:16.000 And if I gave them a bagel that wasn't as good and the guy from New York's like, this isn't as good as the bagel I grew up with, then I'm, you know, I'm fucked. 0.99

02:35:23.000 Yeah, just don't let people in New York in. 0.92

02:35:25.000 The New York people are very particular about their pizza and very particular about their bagels, but I think they're right, unfortunately.

02:35:31.000 They may be.

02:35:32.000 They may be.

02:35:33.000 We had good bagels in LA. I haven't found a good bagel here yet.

02:35:37.000 I've heard it explained to me that there's something about the water in New York.

02:35:43.000 I realized, I hired a chef.

02:35:46.000 Who was working at the restaurant.

02:35:47.000 I was really excited for him to try my favorite bagels in LA. And he tried it and he's like, this isn't very good.

02:35:56.000 And I was like, I don't understand.

02:35:57.000 It's really good.

02:35:58.000 And I realized that the bagels he grew up with are different than the bagels I grew up with.

02:36:02.000 He's like, this is really soft with like a crispy exterior.

02:36:05.000 And I was like, yeah.

02:36:06.000 He's like, no, it's supposed to be chewy.

02:36:07.000 It's supposed to hurt your jaw.

02:36:08.000 And I was like, why would I want to do that?

02:36:11.000 Interesting.

02:36:12.000 But he was explaining to me the culture of bagels and why you want this, and I was like, Yeah, I like this one.

02:36:23.000 Yeah, it's a flavor profile though.

02:36:26.000 The difference in the flavor of bread.

02:36:29.000 Bread is probably the best example because Italian bread from New York or New Jersey has a very particular flavor profile that's unavailable when you get bread in California for the most part.

02:36:44.000 Yeah.

02:36:45.000 To be honest, I've not spent enough time in New York.

02:36:48.000 I've probably been there two or three times for like weekends.

02:36:51.000 Really?

02:36:51.000 Yeah, I haven't spent a lot of time there.

02:36:53.000 Oh wow, that's kind of crazy because that's like one of the culinary capitals of the world.

02:36:56.000 Yeah.

02:36:57.000 Wouldn't you imagine, right?

02:36:58.000 I would imagine, but I haven't.

02:36:59.000 That's funny.

02:37:00.000 Yeah.

02:37:00.000 When you create these restaurants, do you have any desire of doing something that is not a tasting menu, or is that just you prefer being in complete control of the experience?

02:37:16.000 I prefer tasting menus, especially now post-pandemic and the way the world is going.

02:37:23.000 You asked the perfect question, how do you inventory?

02:37:27.000 It's not difficult to inventory when you know exactly what you're selling.

02:37:31.000 And if I have 30 people coming in and a 20-item menu...

02:37:37.000 What if everybody buys the ribeye, I have to throw away all the chicken?

02:37:40.000 Or, I have to sell the chicken when it's past its prime and not very good, and then people won't come back because it wasn't very good.

02:37:46.000 So, beyond that, we've found our success in these sort of experientially driven, sort of fine dining tasting menus.

02:37:56.000 It's also what I enjoy the most.

02:37:58.000 I'm someone who, like, when I look at a menu at a restaurant, I get a little bit of anxiety.

02:38:02.000 I don't I'm like, I get upset because I'm like, I don't know what to order.

02:38:05.000 There's 30 things on here and I, you know, this is, I would much rather go to a restaurant and be like, hey, we're really good at this so we're going to cook you this.

02:38:14.000 Well, it works.

02:38:15.000 And I love that, you know, you don't have to think about anything just waiting for the next piece of food.

02:38:21.000 That's all you have to do.

02:38:22.000 Well, I mean, you don't go to a movie and then tell it what you want it to do for you, you know?

02:38:29.000 It's like you go to a restaurant because they serve the food you want or you like the chef and what they've done in the past, and then you say, okay, I would enjoy whatever you cook for me, or I would like to enjoy it.

02:38:40.000 Well, one of the things that I loved about the sushi bar experience is that it's a communal experience.

02:38:45.000 Everybody's experiencing the exact same piece of sushi at the exact same time.

02:38:50.000 So we're all sitting around this bar together, and you say, please enjoy.

02:38:54.000 And then people eat it, and they go, oh!

02:38:57.000 And everybody looks around like, oh, I love it.

02:38:58.000 And you hear the noises.

02:39:00.000 And it's such a small room.

02:39:02.000 What do you guys have, 10 people?

02:39:03.000 10 seats, yeah.

02:39:04.000 10 seats.

02:39:05.000 I mean, that's...

02:39:05.000 Yeah, so in March, we're opening another sushi restaurant here in Austin.

02:39:10.000 The ranch won't open until probably August, September, because we have a lot of infrastructure work to do.

02:39:19.000 But March, we're opening a new sushi spot here.

02:39:22.000 And where's that going to be?

02:39:23.000 Beachside?

02:39:24.000 It's going to be, I can't say exactly yet, but it's going to be a little bit outside of town.

02:39:29.000 It's going to be about 10 minutes past the airport.

02:39:32.000 And that will be Omikase as well.

02:39:35.000 So it's going to be called Sushi by Scratch Restaurants, which is what the LA Montecito sushi bars are becoming as well.

02:39:44.000 And it'll essentially be the same, well, I don't want to say the same like we've just phoned in another one, but it's going to be another of the same concept.

02:39:54.000 And by the way, your brother catered Andrew Schultz's wedding. 0.94

02:39:58.000 Yeah, I broke his balls about that a little bit. 0.90

02:40:00.000 He, I mean, it turns out Andrew's wife, her parents, I've known them for years. 0.98

02:40:07.000 Oh, that's crazy.

02:40:08.000 Up in Montecito.

02:40:09.000 And so I've actually met his wife a couple times, not knowing, you know.

02:40:14.000 But Lennon didn't know that, didn't know who, like, who, wasn't told, just told, hey, can you cater my daughter's wedding?

02:40:24.000 And that was it.

02:40:25.000 Oh, that's funny.

02:40:26.000 Yeah.

02:40:27.000 It was a fun party, though.

02:40:28.000 And the sushi was off the hook.

02:40:29.000 Yeah, I'm sure it was.

02:40:30.000 Tell your brother he nailed it.

02:40:31.000 Yeah.

02:40:32.000 Well, you're telling him that right now.

02:40:33.000 You nailed it.

02:40:34.000 I was posted up there. 0.99

02:40:36.000 I ate a fucking couple of pounds of sushi. 0.99

02:40:38.000 Yeah, he told me. 0.97

02:40:41.000 Well, listen, man, please let us know as soon as your new place is up.

02:40:45.000 I'll post about that, too, and I'll fuck up your waiting list there, too. 0.54

02:40:48.000 Yeah.

02:40:48.000 Well, by the time this goes up, SushiBuyScratchRestaurants.com will be up and running.

02:40:55.000 Nice.

02:40:55.000 And people can go on and join the wait list, and we'll actually release the reservations probably in the next week or so.

02:41:02.000 Alright.

02:41:03.000 Beautiful.

02:41:04.000 Well, thank you, brother.

02:41:04.000 It's been great becoming your friend.

02:41:06.000 And what you do when it comes to your food is fucking sensational. 0.95

02:41:11.000 I didn't think sushi could be that good. 0.98

02:41:13.000 I really didn't.

02:41:14.000 It was a new eye-opening experience, so thank you for that.

02:41:18.000 Thank you.

02:41:18.000 And thank you for this awesome whiskey.

02:41:20.000 Yeah.

02:41:21.000 That stuff's special.

02:41:22.000 Be careful with that, though, because by the time you finish it, there may not be another bottle.

02:41:26.000 You live.

02:41:28.000 Sure, sure.

02:41:28.000 You consume.

02:41:30.000 Keep moving.

02:41:31.000 Keep moving, Philip.

02:41:32.000 Thank you very much.

02:41:34.000 Absolutely.

02:41:34.000 People want to follow you on Instagram.

02:41:37.000 Yeah.

02:41:39.000 Phillip Franklin Lee is mine.

02:41:40.000 And then we have Sushi by Scratch Restaurants, which is all of our sushi bars.

02:41:45.000 Pasta Bar Austin and Pasta Bar LA. This is all Instagram, everything else.

02:41:51.000 Yeah.

02:41:51.000 Facebook?

02:41:52.000 I don't think we're on.

02:41:53.000 We might be on Facebook.

02:41:54.000 I don't know.

02:41:54.000 Eh, figure it out.

02:41:55.000 Yeah.

02:41:56.000 Figure it out, folks.

02:41:56.000 Follow me and you'll find it.

02:41:57.000 I'll post about it for sure.

02:41:59.000 All right.

02:41:59.000 Thanks, brother.

02:42:00.000 Appreciate you.

02:42:00.000 Thank you.

02:42:01.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - January 18, 2022

Joe Rogan Experience #1765 - Philip Frankland Lee

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