Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave, our owner host of cooking issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center newsstand studios in the studio today with of course, John. John. Hello. How you doing? Doing great. Thanks, Chef of temperance. winebar very true downtown. How's everything good? Yeah, right. Yeah. Great. Awesome. Rocking the panels here. We got Joe Hasan. How you doing, man? I'm doing great, man. How are you? I'm okay. Okay, a little bit of a what's it called? A little bit of a you know, nothing compared to the rest of the country. But you know, this little bit of rain today. But here's the thing. I'm biking today. New York normally fine, right? All of a sudden a row gust Mother Nature almost took me out like it's fine biking in New York in the rain is fine. All of a sudden, wind is like no you don't boom and like blew me three feet across the road. Wow. Yeah. Like you didn't blow you into a bus. Now. Lucky for me. I'm lucky for some Yes, true. Yeah. In the California today, we have a Nastasia hammer Lopez and Jackie molecules together again. How you doing guys? Good. Yeah. Good. Yeah. What's it like? Anything? Anything interesting happened in the world of food in Los Angeles in the last week or so? I've only been here for like two days. So no.

I'm still subsiding on a diet of smoothies. Oh, what you're drinking. Oh god. Oh god. Integrated these people that make these? What are these water bottles with? crystals inside? Oh, Jesus. Ridiculous.

What kind of crystals? Like what kind of crystals poisonous maybe. got black obsidian in here, baby drinking water. Kind of tastes on vibe sitting a little bit. One thing. We may explain a little obsidian. A amorphous, it's a amorphous solid to glass. can't possibly be a crystal. That's why That's why it's so good for flintknapping my friend. Go back and tell those crunchy, like frigging Sedona loving, free gain. Crystal mongers to stay away from amorphous materials and your liquids, man.

What is it is the water raw? Right? That was a real movement, like two or three years ago.

All right. Wow. If we have time, let's bring this back. Do you remember? Like there was the other one where like, you would like chant nice things to water and Madonna, like pump that stuff. And there was that Japanese guy. The is a shaman. What and like, literally, like the dude would take the he's dead now I think but he would he would. He would take water. If I said this on the air before he would take water and he'd be like, I love you. I love you. I love you. And then he would freeze it and it'd be a pretty snow crystal. And then he would go handler, HANDLER handler and freeze it and he would take a picture of a mutated crystal. And so they would sell water that they had like chanted nice things over. I don't know, in case I guess it crystallizes in your body. Now is real, real, pretty pictures. Anyway, Quinn will not be joining us. He will be back next week when our special guests will be. Michael ISKCON is formerly of Le bernadin. Now, for the past million years been running ice as pastry, chocolate and a bunch of other stuff. If you want to call in questions about that, make sure to make fun of me bring it up and I'm gonna bring it up. But today's special guests were extremely happy. Calling in from Tennessee is Sean Brock. Who I haven't seen him in a million years probably since 2015. How are you doing, John?

Oh, wonderful. Yeah, it's been a long time. It's been a long time. I've seen anybody.

Well, can I say that? I think I have said this on the air before. I have not been to Tennessee. Other than maybe driving through it. I have not stopped in Tennessee. Since the 1980. Knoxville World's Fair.

Whoa, yeah. timed out time to read it.

I remember having a good time at the Knoxville World Fair though. It was good. Definitely. Yeah. Did you go oh, no, you're too You're too young. You're You're six or tsutsu? Yeah, yeah, I was like

nine and go. No, but that was a big deal on the cell. Yeah,

it was huge. My, my, my great uncle had a cabin up in the in the mountains and my grandparents got a dog the same time and we drove back to Florida from Tennessee. And the dog puked on my lap was a little dog called the Basenji and it puked on my lap. We counted 11 times between Tennessee and Florida. And that was the first time I ever saw kudzu as well. You ever harvest the kudzu over there and like make something with it?

Yeah, so one of my goals with my new project is to work on helping teach Ways to harvest kudzu for the starch. But also, we we make a lot of serving pieces out of it and baskets and chargers. And we certainly use the route for thickening and we've taken everything with it. Really? Is there a way to is there a minute makes amazing tea? Really?

Like? What does it mean? Like, like, is it like goopy? Or is it like, What's the flavor? I always think of Ali's flowers. Oh, what are the flowers tastes like? Yeah,

they're purple. And they're not. It's hard to explain. They're very, very unique. And people look at you like you're crazy when they see somebody picking cut around here.

Yeah, I guess. On the other hand, they should be like, anything you can do to anything you can do to knock it back. Right. Speaking of, well, let's do this. Let's do this in order because I have some ingredients I want to ask you about. But I don't want to miss anything. I have a bunch of people who have written in questions. And also if you're listening live on the Patreon call in your questions. 2917410 1507. That's 917-410-1507. And you want to tell them how to join the Patreon if they're not already a

patreon.com/cooking issues, a bunch of different level of memberships, a lot of great perks, and all the different memberships. And if you're listening, you should definitely join.

Let's get let's see what our kitchen arts and letters will put. Even though it's not like just out maybe do we already get Sean's book south on

bass Quinn, but I'm sure Matt would be Yeah, I'm getting Patreon people

discount there because no offense to Amazon, although crap on them. But we prefer if you buy your cookbooks through places like kitchen Arts and Letters, right, that's all that's all I'm gonna say about that. Kitchen, especially kitchen arts and letters. I mean, there's such a good place. You know what I mean? Anyway, yeah. All right. So I don't even know this, we have a lot to talk about. So I don't even know how to approach it. I remember the first time I think that you came to my attention was, I don't know, I'm gonna want to say like, like, maybe I've met you. A long time ago, when I was at the French Culinary Institute. And you had somehow gotten a hold before anyone else had of like, all of the list of varietals, that have been grown in at Monticello, and you are just single handedly going down and trying to find people who are making like growing all of those things. And we're just going ballistic on this kind of like, on this kind of like bringing these things or, like from from a taste perspective. Right. So I think it started at least you told me back in the day, it started from just kind of taste and then became more you want to talk about that whole journey, or no?

Yeah, of course. So I grew up in Appalachia, way back in the coal fields. And there everyone grows, everything that they eat, you know, the grocery stores, or, or we had one. And I, we rarely went there, we grew everything. It was so cool. And I actually ended up living with my grandmother for a few years who was a feed saver, not really out of passion, but just that, that just tradition, that's you, you travel around the South, and you start to see these little pockets everywhere, and everybody has their own beans and corn that happen to thrive there. And they hang on to those. It's kind of like a natural selection sort of thing. So I watched her seed saving my whole life, and grew up eating straight from her garden, eating those heirloom products. So I that's just all I knew. And then when I when I got my first restaurant job. I remember tasting the food. And realizing that it was it tasted nothing like what I grew up eating, and now I can link all that together and understand why was having a meeting.

That's like, I know. Were you able to save any of your grandma seats? By the way your grandma Audrey, who you named your flagship restaurant after right? Do we lose them? Yeah, hello. Yeah. So you named the restaurant after your grandma. And you saved that any? Did you save any of her seeds?

Yes, I was lucky enough to inherit a lot of her seeds. And I've been growing them ever since. One in particular that I've been since then I've become. I've always been a collector. I love collecting things. It's just part of my personality. And so I've been collecting seeds from all over the south since probably around 2006 or so. And you know, beans are a big thing here. And my grandma had these beans called I'll use them they look like they were spray painted with, like a I don't know, it's like speckled and purple and blue and so gorgeous. But I haven't seen those anywhere else. And that one is now referred to as the Audrey Morgan beat. Which was her name. Yeah, so it's so neat and yes, I think for the most part these these things are more delicious.

Suzanne is that a thick skinned being a thin skin being like kidney size Pinto like like, navy, like what's that are like are like Butterbean sighs like what are you talking about?

I'm trying to think Oh, no, these are Yeah, so in the south we eat a lot of these beans called greasy beans or half runner beans and they're enormous green beans with the sea itself is so huge. And you can eat it and all the different stages so you can eat it, you know, fresh right off the plant, you can let it get medium size candidate or you can let it totally dry and you know, cook it like pinto beans.

Right. Here's a question I asked a lot of people but I don't think I asked them on the air. In terms of New York style, right? And then I know they grow them better elsewhere but green or wax on your on your green beans now green beans or wax beans? Choose one? Yeah.

Well see, I need to know the exact varietals difference, you're saying you're saying like 200, I probably have 200 varieties of green beans in my collection. It's pretty stupid.

When you talk to Sean Brock do not say garden variety as an insult definitely do not say garden variety. And then sell to Shawn for sure. I have never had a green bean I like is as much as the best wax beans. But I am now embarrassed that I don't have the green bean. You know, I don't have the green bean palette. Because I don't have access to the dang gravies not feeling

neat about it. Well, we can fix it, you just got to come visit. We've never been tastings have been party. But what's neat if you look through this pile of feeds, and they're all named after people or places. And I think that's so neat, because now that's a link in this chain. That is living history, living history of the food of this this region. And every time I cook one of those and serve it. Let's say it's Henry Barnett, half runner. His story is told and those stories, you know, they we can learn a lot. But it's also nice to remember people.

So switching gears a little bit most people you know, you got your most of your fame doing in low country, South Carolina Charleston, right. And now you're doing Appalachian stuff. But I kind of my question to you is it's such a like, it's such a giant region. Do you really feel that there's something that ties together the like the entire string of the Appalachians are no. Culinary?

Yeah. Yeah. For me, well, if you're talking about plants, you're looking at three sisters, corn bean squash, is everywhere you go, there's going to be a different varieties of each. And those varietals can be traced back to where they came from. So you'll start to learn about the different cultures who have have come to different places and left their mark.

And also speaking of avalanches, I saw that you, you did a foreword for a new edition of the Foxfire cookbook. What's What are your feelings on Foxfire because when I was a kid, I collected them with those of you that don't know, Foxfire was a series of books that were written by high school students as a high school project where they went back to their families, people who were old people who you know, whose stories hadn't been told and tried to record a little bit of their history and not just culinary, but culinary is there it's also like crafts like lifestyle moonshining, whole whole nine yards. And I always thought it was kind of an amazing document. But since I'm not from there, like what's your relationship to that whole, that whole concept, and so crazy that this? This kind of document was written by high school students, you know what I mean in the 70s. So give me your thoughts on it.

It's so neat. It's one of the biggest inspirations for me. And it has been I remember when I first discovered Foxfire, I was just moved to Charleston, and that theories became a way for me to show the other people in the kitchen where I came from and what I ate and what it was like to live there and grow up there. It's just wonderful. I just think it's so cool that it's so going Yeah, and writing the foreword for that book was, was a surreal moment. For me. That's been such a big influence on the way I see things and a point of communal pride. So neat to see it all documented. And that project had an enormous inspiration over the restaurant. And I will continue that work. You know, I started a little project that I will pick back up after the restaurant openings settle down a little bit. But yeah, I want to continue that work. And luckily, they've been nice enough to offer anything that I need or explore their archives,

whereas the Foxfire Institute, they have a museum I've never been, you know what I mean? Like, yeah,

it's an it's in Georgia.

Someday. Do you know that they tried to do one in New England? Like also in the 70s? I think they only did one volume of it called salt. I don't know. Not as good. Not as good considering I can't remember whether it was mass I think it was made I think was made based and considering how cantankerous Maine folk can be think they could have like, Don, like, a whole bunch of stuff on it, you know what I mean? You know, but, ya know, yeah, I bought, I was like, oh, there's a, there's a northeaster there's like salt from like, where I am. And then I mean, sorry, like, a Foxfire, from where I am. And, like, none, I'm really you know, they're not teaching you how to, like, you know, you know, make a banjo out of a cigar box or anything like that. I mean, that set of books is nuts. How many are there? There's like, 10, right? I forget how many I have I have like,

a little more than there's a little more than 10. I think there's around 12 to 14, they the original series was around 10. And then they put three or four out later,

right. Now. Let's get let's see, I'm gonna ask you try going green questions first or non greeting questions. First. I'm gonna go with a greeting questions, cooking questions or non cooking questions. First. Cooking questions. Okay. All right. Cooking. All right. You have on your menu I looked at your some of your sample menus from the restaurant. All right. And salt risen bread appears and what a baller moved to try to do salt risen bread because it can fail. Right? Do you have a foolproof way? In fact, I was going to put a recipe for it in a if I ever finished my book, I was gonna put a recipe for it in the book. And then I was like, You know what? I'm not because I just don't want to hear it from people. It didn't rise. It was too fun. You know? I mean, like, what do you do to not have a go? Go south Anya,

you're the first person that that's actually known how many we serve it every night. And yeah, it. I've wanted to, I wanted it on the original husk menu back in 2010. And I couldn't figure it out. And I gave up. And so when I started this project, because you, you have to have it every day. If it doesn't, what are you going to do not serve bread or don't buy it? It's terrifying First, think about those things. And I hired these two extraordinary pastry chefs who moved from New York City to work here. And I explained it to them. And they nailed it on the first day. Really? After a decade of failure. They nailed it on the first try. Maybe because they wasn't they weren't scared or I don't know what that yeah, they haven't figured out it is extraordinary. It smells like chi love it. And it blows people's mind warm it over the embers a little bit. Oh, my God love it. So

it's got a different crush texture, people need to wrap their head around like that. It's not the same as but it's amazing. It's great stuff. You know, what your your your, your crew? I can't remember I didn't look up whether it's in the is it in the new book a recipe for it? Or no? Is it in? Is it in? The new one? Yeah. You know what, no, they do something. There's these, there's these two folks that have I think, salt raisin bread.org or something like this. And you know, they've done a lot of the history work on it. And there's a, there was a paper out of Cornell in, I want to say in the 1920s where they did a bunch of tests on it. And you know, trying to debunk some of the myths some of the hydration some of the some of the temperatures, but the, you know, these two people who have salt risen bread.org Like, I think they want to have kind of like the cultural lock on it. But I feel like there's there's and they had a bakery. I don't know if they still do. But I feel if if you're, if your team can nail it every time and tell people how to nail it every time. You know what I'm saying? Or is it like something where you need to have a certain amount of feeling in order to be able to nail it. Like I'll give you an example like shoe potties, right? Recipes intensely simple. And yet yours are going to suck for like the first 5060 times you make them they're not going to puff up, they're going to roll wrong. You know what I mean? Is there something about like that to it or could they tell the world how to make this stuff reliably?

Oh, they're 100% success rate. We're almost about to hit a year of 100% success rate. They use a circulator.

Ah, okay. All right then. Yeah. Well, you know if they ever, ever want to come talk about salt rates, you know what? If you want to come back, we'll get you them. Harold McGee. I don't know how we'll call all the people in on and we can get one of the microbiologists and we'll just do like a salt raisin bread. Athan, because I think it's Yeah, he did a created a cool little essay on it. Yeah, but the salt raisin bread people were mad at him about it. Because he really Yeah, well, because there's there's a famous article from the from the 20s, where a guy had saved Clostridium perfringens from gangrene wound from a world war one trench victim and use it to make salt risen bread and then also like then like re cultured the bacteria and got like a rat sick with it was like, Look, you can still get it you can still get the disease awesome. But the bread doesn't make anyone sick. So these people were like, your bad mouthing our bread when he's like, No, man. He's like, That's good science story, man. You know, he doesn't talk like that. Yeah, exactly. You know, he doesn't talk.

Clostridium fascinating.

Yeah. All right. So let's talk about the the restaurant here because there's a couple things that we're going to talk we're gonna talk about, like the health of the team and kind of the thing you know, all the stuff behind it. But what about these I read about these like crazy art collection? You bought Nakashima chairs for that? What the heck, man. What the heck?

I had to, but we only we don't have a full dining room. So there's the hard to find. We have about a dozen or so. And, and I love them so much. I'm so obsessed with his work. The whole restaurants inspired by George Nakashima, entire restaurant, everything. Everywhere you turn, there's his info.

You want to talk about him as a carpenter. You want to talk about him a little bit. Because I think maybe some people in this podcast don't know.

George machine that came into America in the 50s. He moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania, and was part of this program. And long story short, he was the first person when we're talking mid 1955 1956. He's really one of the first people to look at a tree almost the way a chef looks at ingredients, especially whole animal butchery. Like let's not waste them thing. Let's not look at just what the industry norm is with what a piece of wood should look like. Let's let the natural edge show let's let the the cracks be mended. You know wabi sabi Kintsugi ideas of, of seeing the beauty no matter the value. And he did that in a very contemporary and modern way on top of so it was this very beautiful moment that has now inspired so countless, countless countless people. The family still carrying it on.

Yeah, his books are still widely read. You know, philosophy all of a tree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And then work still being carried on by his family. Right. Good old new home pa. Alright, so there's more ingredients. This is nuts. Hickory nut oil. What the hell, man? How do you even get that? Who the hell makes that? Do you like on a press? Do you want to not press? Can you press the hickory nuts with the shell on him and get the oil out? What's the story with hickory nut oil?

Man So hickory nuts in general. That has been a big focus for us.

God's not Yes, God's not.

Man. It's really really really special. And every varietals of hickory tastes completely different and produces a different oil or a different theory course here in Tennessee, our barbecue our country hands our bacon which is a whole nother episode of discussing how you can pinpoint where barbecues from in the south by nailing what treaty was used, because it's also micro regional. But we ran across the sky to is obsessed with foraging the things like acorns and hickory nuts and black walnut. Because in Appalachia, because no one is it's so much work. And so there's this one person who collects these forests and compresses them. We do have a press as well. Yes, you you can't. You cannot get the meat. Even the squirrels can't do it. Like we you know, I thought about like hiring a bunch of squirrels was once you taste it, it gets You can't get out of your mind.

Yeah, there there used to be a guy he died. But he when he went to assisted living, all he ever wanted to do is crack hickory nuts. And so his daughter would sell them.

Yeah, so it's their, it's the meat that's as luxurious as a black truffle. Yum. And he hands me, you know, a big huge bag of freshly shelled hickory nuts. That's the biggest gift you can give someone that's so much time you really got to like somebody that can do that. Now that hickory nut oil is, I mean, mind blowing, extraordinary, you know, I've never tasted anything like it. It's the flavor of this place. And those are things that I you know, become obsessed with. But I will say the syrup. My is my syrup we just got this year. It is in my top five favorite ingredients of all time.

That's a sap they syrup or bark because I make bark based hickory syrup, but I've never had a sap based hickory syrup.

Yes, this is a sapling and it cooked over hickory fire and it's like you almost hallucinate. Like your brain just just goes nuts. No, we were only able to get three gallons each year. So you know we're gonna be Shagbark shagbark hickory.

That's the one shag so Okay, so while we're on hickory first of all, is the syrup from the sap acidic like birch syrup or not acidic like maple?

No. It's just like maple. Can you make a pecan syrup

from SAP since they're related very closely related berries.

Yeah, I'm sure you can. Some friends of mine at Blackberry farm did. Black black walnut that way and that's one of the craziest things I've ever tasted in my life.

Now on hickory nuts, anyone who anyone who like picks up hickory nuts, right. The main ones we get here are we get pig nuts? mocker nuts. Bitter nuts. Shag barks, right. The mocker nuts are impossible to crack. So I don't even know what they taste like. Like, like, do they make good oil? I wonder what about the bitter nuts in the pig nuts? Do they make good oil? Even though the nut meat is too tannic? Do they still have a good oil or what?

So this guy has gone through every he's become the expert on this. And he'd gone through every species and Shagbark as he keeps going back to that. That's the magic tree.

Yeah, that's good and easy. It's like one of the few things where like, I could teach a four year old to find a shagbark hickory in the forest. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Yeah, that's that's been Leo, my three year olds, or favorite thing. Now we have. We just tried to ID every tree

has a good good school one. My kids don't care. Unfortunately, now they're too old. Now. They don't maybe someday they'll care when it's too late. When I'm dead, they'll care. Poke. So first of all, pokeweed is one of those things that I regret very highly, because it was super invasive, where I grew up outside of New York City. And it's really only eaten in certain areas of the US even though it grows everywhere. And there's all these different kind of harvesting tricks on it. Because it's, it's, you know, it's poison. It's poison, which is you have to harvest at the right time. Boil it a bunch of times, why don't you talk about I've never had it, I've chopped it down. I've thrown the seeds at people when I was a kid, but I've never eaten it you want to talk about poke

pokeweed is what a lot of people would consider a roadside, or a roadside plant. And my mother, it's one of her it's in her top five favorite things to eat and on the planet. I she gets excited about fried pokeweed as I've ever seen them to really get excited about any piece of food. So when I was a kid, we were driving back when we'd be driving back from Little League practice. And she would see a patch and stop the car and make us all get out and pick this Oakley while all our other friends drove by we're gathering our dinner on the side of the road. I grew up eating it I mean a lot a couple times a week.

Spring term for you guys like that's a good question because people different people are different. Are you a zero purple on the plant at all? Like zero flowers kind of person? Are you a leaf only person? Are you a young shoot person because not having had it I've looked at all these people who have different ways of dealing with it. What's your what's your family's way of going with it?

You're taught as a kid to be terrified of it here in the south. You're just taught to be just absolutely careful. I think that might be because the it was like a thing created to keep kids from playing with it because once they get 22 If it's impossible to get I was used for war paint, you know, by the by indigenous. And it's the I love taking the berries and making eliminate with them. So, so good. And it's good for you. The days in which you harvest the leaves, it's all personal. I like the young shoots a tender one that they have more flavor and I love the texture of the shoots. But you can I'm not, I don't have any. To me I harvest flavor. Because I'm worried about poison. You should see the local farmers faces when I tell them I'll buy the Poke if they brew grows everywhere. But I mean, it I remember I took pokeweed to France once and did a demo. And it just blew. There were chefs from all over the world they demo and there's no flavor like it on Earth. It's such a unique flavor. And I just think it's really really wonderful the way my mom cooks that is really neat. She'll she'll take the young shoots, and read them in cornmeal and pan fry them and a cast iron skillet. But then she'll take all of the tilbake the breading station, combine it all together, chop up some more and make little fritters as well. It's it's so so so good. It's so aromatic. That's the thing, like very herbaceous,

you know, it's killing me, dude. I know exactly where that crap is growing at my mom's house. Like in Westchester like in the spring. I could go get that but they won't. They won't get it for me. They will get it for me. I can. I know. I know exactly where it is out by the woodpile. You know how like, there's a whole bunch of it growing out by the woodpile, and I have some grilling in my backyard right now. And that's exactly I had no idea that's what it was. Yeah, it's literally hanging over my gate. And now I'm thinking about Polk salad, Annie. Great song. Well, wait till the that's the song first of all. Don't

that was my that was my mom's nickname on the on the on the truck driver seat. CB station. Wow. That's how hardcore she is about that.

Dang. All right. And down there. It's salad with a tea right when it's when it's poke. Not salad. Yeah, salad. Right. Yeah.

And yeah, and then you see written pol K and P O Ke. Throughout history, but you can't pokeweed

Yeah, yeah. Stars. You'll be happy to know they have sunchokes on the menu. Maybe if you go he'll undercook it for you so that you can so you can have all sorts of gastrointestinal distress. That's one of his tasks. His favorite things to do is to serve undercooked sunchokes to people. That's her. That's one of her favorites. Yeah. One last ingredient I saw because what started you guys I saw that you have a ham first of all in your in your new in your new book from 2019. You have a section on country ham, obviously. And you had some hams I haven't had How's Bob Woods ham from the hammary I've not had this one. I see he bones it out. And then like cold presses it back. So it's like, you know, is that a good ham? You like that ham?

That one? Definitely one of my favorites of all time, maybe top three? Really? I remember. I remember the first time I tasted it. I was opening husk in Nashville. And he dropped a sample by I tasted it called them ask them how many hands yet he said at about 200. I say cool. I'll take him

even though it was so unique and so special. And the way he actually about to retire, unfortunately. But he he built the smokehouse is business in an old house that used to be a vet clinic. So it's been converted anyway, since it's in like a neighborhood and he had to put a sign out front that said we're smoking hands please don't call the fire department. Yeah, that house is not on fire.

I love it. There's a smoke there's still an extent smoke house in Queens that from blocks away smells like like awesome. Awesome. Smells like Eastern European smoke house. We'll call her. Alright, caller you're on the air. Hey, Oh, it's great. Yeah, hey, when you made it good, good. Good. All right. Better late than never my friend Better late than never. Alright. So Shawn, let's get to some listener questions that tie in with, with some of the some of the things that we need to talk about. Anyway, this is from Dilip Rao on Twitter. Let's get right into it. Here's a question for Shawn. There seems to be a deep sense in some parts of southern white nationalism that African Americans contributions to our culture should be discounted in a way assessment of our history. Shawn is a student of southern food history. How do we understand and how does he understand in his study and cooking in southern cuisine, the contributions of African Americans? And how do we preserve our history, our history whole while this process of erasure and extra patient is ongoing, extra patient of African American contributions?

Right, my answer to that is let the ingredient be the thing that allows the stories to be told whether they're pleasant or unpleasant. That's the power of food. That's what food can do. And we need to tell those stories, we need to learn those lessons. That's That's wisdom that was hard fought.

Right. So it's basically just talking about the actual history of bringing it out whether or not whether or not was comfortable, right. That's what you're that's what you're saying.

Yes, and food can can soften that a little bit, you know, people feel more comfortable when they're eating or when they're being fed, or I think that's a it's a great example of how how food can can teach us things in a little more gentle way.

Well, in on a kind of piggybacking on that, because, you know, what are what are your thoughts? There's so much. I mean, I guess it can be gentle. But there's also so much animosity nowadays. There's so much animosity that you would hope. I mean, like you look for the museum of food and drink standpoint, which, you know, John worked at, you know, I'm at, you know, we hope that food can help, right teach about the past in a way that's not putting blinds, blinders on. And also, in a way that helps everybody. But on the other hand, there's so much animosity, it's hard. That's just a comment. Well, more difficult questions, maybe from spirits journal. What is Shawn's relationship with bourbon today? You don't have to talk about,

oh, man, I haven't drank bourbon in almost six years. And I certainly I certainly miss it. And I don't miss the addiction phase of it. But the history of bourbon is fascinating in the south, and it is a flavor of our place. So I cook with it. I don't don't hate it.

Well, yeah, I mean, the product. Super regular from Super regular for many New York restaurants, including, you know, my places back when I had places Jaipur squab wants to know, and I'll chime in with him. What's the thinking behind the cocktail program? He enjoyed the concept very much. And that's Jonathan Howard. It's three ingredient drinks, which I love a three ingredient drink, right? Because they're not the easiest ingredients. Right? Do you want to talk about that at all? Or?

Well, I was in Japan, probably probably my third trip to Japan. And I ordered a bloody mare at this bar, in person grabbed a tomato and muddled it, and made this bloody mary have ever had in my entire life. And I realized, like, Whoa, how I look at cooking, I'm chasing the vibrancy of garden that I grew up in my grandmother's house, that moment of vibrancy only exists for two minutes, you know, what's just just been cut or pulled from the planet, or processed in any way. And then I was telling somebody about that, you have to go to this bar, getting Yamamoto. That's all he does. He just goes to the market, picks out the produce, and then creates these drinks. And so I've been there several times. Now, one of the coolest experiences, but I just I felt this immediate connection to how we cook. And when I traded the bar here, I don't, I don't drink and I don't hang out in bars anymore. So out of the game. So how can I how can I create something unique here that mirrors the way we cook and that started to make total sense to me. And the three ingredient thing that's to me I just had love how discipline in push us to create new things that we may not have. If we weren't if we just stayed in their comfort zone but our our creative process for the restaurant, we call the pie theory, products ideas execution. So we first start we meet once a week and we go we say here these are the 15 products that are The absolute best from all the markets and all the farmers right now. Let's create some dishes. And so they do the same thing with the drinks, they they're going to the walk in or they're they're asking us to get certain things from farmers. And they create the same way we create a dish. It's been so fun to watch, and I get to participate. And I get to feel like I'm able to contribute a little bit. Pretty fun. So the rule is the rule is another another discipline is no machines. No machine can't plug anything. You mean, everything has to be juiced all a minute with no machines, no producing. Everything has to start with the product and its raw state.

I think any sort of any sort of boundaries you put on yourself are a catalyst for creativity, for sure. Just set a boundary. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, well, he looks if I ever if I ever get my butt to Tennessee, I mean, I'm interested, I want to I want to you're making me like embarrassed that I haven't tasted a lot of these things. And so it's just I feel bad. Thanks for that.

I think you would think you would, you would flip out over our research and development lab. It is pretty wild.

Weekend, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Lewis just writes in what is your recommendation for someone that wants to learn, find and and look for any old South heritage Florida recipes, we're gonna find information and have a follow up on this for you. Where can I find information on how the country used to eat heritage grains, flowers, fruits, wildlife, etc? Fish? I did not. I do know the type of corn they cultivate here called zellwood. But only a small portion of old timers still grow it not enough to supply restaurants in this state. Thanks for your thoughts. And I'm going to ask whether you've ever had Florida cracker cattle like those like weird like thin Florida cattle that like grow there with whether they taste any good. So you have any thoughts on Florida? Yeah, I've never heard of that. Yeah, me either. I got a, I got a cow whip once made by a guy who that's where he grew up doing, like Florida cattle. But But yeah, I've never eaten one. So

to answer that question, I've had the best look. And I think what is a missing link? And a lot of the research is just connecting with university, especially agriculture, ag their agricultural programs. Yeah, because what I found is they are full of people who are just as nerdy and just as obsessed and just as passionate about these things. That seem you know, once something's not on Google, we kind of give up. And not everything's on Google, especially when we started getting into the history of food. And these tiny little pockets that each little region how they show their, their uniqueness. So fascinating. But what you'll usually find is someone who's very proud of where they come from, and very proud of the food and they want to they want to contribute to that. And I've had some amazing relationships over the past decade or so from from just reaching out. Seaweeds a good example. I'm, I know that there's delicious seaweed in the American South. No one's harvesting it. We the first person we reached out to send us went scuba diving Arvest of it, dried it and sent us a box of 15 different kinds of edible seaweed from North Carolina. They're out there

any standouts on the seaweed? Because I'm like we are we're always raised, you know, coldwater seaweed, cold water seaweed. So what's a warmer water seaweed like

their I don't think it's that much different because we mostly use we use Monterey Bay, but also we use mostly stuff from Japan. But now the local the it's, it's wonderful and there's so many there's so much more to discover. And that's the exciting thing about being a chef in the south is I'll be making these discoveries for the rest of my life. And I built this this restaurant with that in mind you know, I'm gonna be working in this restaurant forever and I get plenty to keep me busy thankfully.

I want to recently found a whole bunch of like a bunch of fresh kelp washed up in Maine. I started eating it and my family's like what's wrong with you? I'm like, I don't know what's what's wrong with you. Anyway, me means got good kelp. You know? Western means wants it has to quit. machines, which you can modify to your heart's content. What's your latest noteworthy fermentation project one? And then what was the tastiest thing you picked for your garden this year? And since you probably don't want to pick tastiest, how about like just like either? Small surprising?

Well, I can combine those two because the tastiest thing I had this year that really captured my attention the most was a tomato that I grew up eating. The child called Mr. stripy and the yellow and red striped. Nino, extremely dense, it's very complex, and flavor. It's the perfect tomato. And yeah, it is the best, it

is the best, what size?

Oh, it doesn't matter doesn't matter. They get enormous though. They get enormous. They're delicious, and all different ages. But one of the things that has come out of the fermentation lab that has changed so much for us. Eliot Silber, our lab manager, he had this idea. We think part of the lab is for us to figure out how to be as responsible and no waste as possible. So we we run experiments on a lot of things that normally go into the trash, such as we're making tomato water with the mystery strikes, well, you're left with all that pulp, after you drain it through your cheesecloth or whatever, he took that or anything from any juicing project, you'd use butternut squash, you have all that pulp, any of those things normally would go into the trash, because they they they have a lot of the flavor aroma has been extracted from them, but there's still plenty in there. So we're always looking for ways to concentrate that down and and find these hidden flavors. So he took out that tomato, tomato scraps and 2% salt in a bag, two weeks, put it up. I like in a bag because it holds all the compounds in and we've done tests that get taste, even taste the fresh tomato when you do it that way. It's really neat. But anyway, old school apples, apple cider press, put it all in like a nut bag like a nut milk bag. crank it down, crank it down, crank it down. Now you have this delicious liquid that is salty, and sour and acidic. And then we put it in a dehydrator or a combi oven and evaporate it down to a syrup. And it looks just like honey. But when you it's, I will say with great confidence is the best thing I've ever tasted in my whole life.