Hello, everybody, and welcome to a brand new series on heritage radio network called the culinary call sheet where we give a peek into the back kitchen of culinary media. I'm your host, April Jones,

and I'm your co host, Darren bresnitz. Part of why we started the show was to offer an unofficial mentorship for anyone who's interested in learning about all aspects of food and video, whether that's TV, social media online, or just something you want to do for fun.

Absolutely what was once niche or a little silly, as I'm sure you remember, Darren, when we started out, this man has now become such a massive playing field for so many creatives using food as the medium.

It's something that has driven us professionally and personally, for so many years. What excites me the most about this show is that we're going to sit down with some of the industry leaders to hear how they made it and what drew them into this industry.

With 20 years in the culinary production game ourselves. We're hoping we can give through these conversations an insider's view into personal stories from the field, as well as an in depth behind the scenes look into some of the most popular food programming. In today's evolving culinary media landscape.

We'll be covering everything from how to style your food, to how to license IP, to developing your own ideas, and some tips from the masters of how to host your own show.

Yeah, it's a little bit of conversation, how to and how do you do the things that you do in color media, which I'm so excited about? I love so many of the guests that are coming on this season. We have talent from Food Network from Vice media eater refinery 29,

we've met some of the best people in the world both in front of and behind the camera. And we're bringing them all together to share their stories, their delicious adventure and their unique journey into this crazy world.

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You're listening to heritage radio network. We're a member supported food Radio Network broadcasting over 35 weekly shows live from Bushwick Brooklyn, join our hosts as they lead you through the world of craft brewing behind the scenes of the restaurant industry inside the battle over school food and beyond. Find us at Heritage radio network.org

Hello and welcome to cookies this is Dave Arnold your host and cookies just coming to you pre recorded from the Manchester Hilton here in beautiful San Diego the Hyatt the Hyatt

are they giving us promotional promotional consideration being provided for by the case so we're paying straight boat we're Marriott we're stealing

the space to be honest.

I can be anywhere I am. You know like you know pimp out the place of your choice because I have no feelings one way or the other for I will say this we are at a a Grand Hyatt not at a Park Hyatt which you know if you've been at a Park Hyatt you never got to you know that's it. That's all you got it so I am not even though I am in the great state of California. I am not joined as usual by Anastasia hammer Lopez because she's in New York where she belongs I in fact, I'm out because Pernod Ricard is hosting a series of events called Bacon which stands for

What does stand for bartender advocacy convention

bartender advocacy convention so don't bother calling your questions in to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 Don't bother calling because this is pre recorded. But I am joined today with you know oftentime guest evil cocktail overlord Don Lee How you doing? Don?

I thought I was the benevolent cocktail overlord knew

now that we're partners I'm supposed to switch you to benevolent. That's what I said before. Yeah. Do you prefer to be benevolent or do you

do best evil is the secret evil not the overt evil?

So what's your like? What's your favorite? Like? What are you mean? Like who's secretly evil? Yoda the devil. The devil is not secretly evil. The Devil is

evil. Yeah, but the devil is convinced you that there is no devil which is the secret evil. What

can I say there was no devil isn't how

many people believe that there is an actual devil Charlie Daniels band. Most people don't believe this. The devil though.

Like some of the greatest stuff is all devil bait look like you have a Paradise Lost Milton. Truth devil.

I see devil devil.

Charlie Daniels band devil. What do you guys we also have in the it's not in the studio, it's in the hotel room but we also have in the hotel room with us today, Kevin den How you doing? Hello. So I knew Kevin first when he was the bartender, head bartender beverage director, I don't know what was your title over there, all those at one point or another at WD 50 restaurant. And by the way, we are kind of brothers in the having the restaurant shut down for losing the space kind of a situation slightly different because your crew got handsomely paid and they knock the building down. Whereas I was just like, you can't have space anymore. That's what they told me. They're like, yeah, I want that space back. But you know, similar kind of situation.

Yeah, I don't know how handsome it was. But they got paid.

I'm not saying you know, I'm just saying it's I think I paid something they weren't like

wow, it's over. Very large building now. It's really weird.

Yeah, you know, when I walked past so WD 50 was my brother in law while you frame now of dues donuts new donut shop out there in Williamsburg. Is that really Williamsburg? Or is it like pseudo?

It's really? Yeah, it's prime. Williams prime Williams.

How close is it to Sam Mason's ice cream shop. Fellows, a

blocks so close. Well,

it's right around the corner from Brooklyn Brewery. It's the back of Brooklyn Brewery if you know where that is.

I know a Brooklyn Brooklyn Brewery moved. I used to work at an art studio on that on the block where Brooklyn was back in the day back in the day. I think I've said this over I've said this on the on the radio show before but when I used to work out there, there was a Mr. Softee ice cream truck, which is like the ice cream truck of the of New York you know that Mr. Softee, but this one had only like two or three of the notes worked and they didn't sell any ice cream. They just went around in the street selling drugs and only like two or two or three of the music things work so it was like burned by bringing back like traveling around in Williamsburg was pretty sweet.

It's nice that packable is cannon you were just doing

no it was like I was trying to remove all the notes from btw from Turkey in the Straw. Like the classic ice cream song is Turkey in the Straw. It's anyway, so Kevin Denton was at WD 50 And also at Alder right? Sure. Well then went straight from there to your current job. And I'm gonna let you say with the title. Oh,

are you gonna meet me? Yeah, I'm the National mixologist. Right. At Pernod Ricard. Right,

so prenup. So for those of you that don't know, this actually might be interesting. I wish we could have callers in because this is kind of a fascinating job. So like bartending is, in general, in general, like a young person's kind of game in the modern world, right. So you, you know, you work kind of these, like kind of long, crazy hours, you tend to, I'm not gonna see you tend to drink a lot, but you tend to drink a lot. A lot of people burn out, go do something else. But the kind of like the viable career paths after that you can go be, you can go try to open a bar, you can be a brand ambassador, you can go kind of do your job is a little more rare, right? It doesn't come up as often. So why don't you describe kind of what you do.

So it's, I would say about 30% of the job is developing the drinks strategies for all our different brands in our portfolio. So every year they have a plan for how they want to market their spirit. And I come up with recipes or ways of drinking that product that they're gonna highlight that year. So you can follow the trends and see what people are into. You know, a couple years ago, the Moscow Mule became like the thing that everybody wanted to glom on to sorry, it's not your fault who did that? That wasn't me, but there's backlash now, you know, there's mutual backlash,

really, I just started making meals I literally just started making mules like last like last month. They're not Moscow Mules. But yeah, I started making like you know, different kinds of meals. So it was the back but the typically a poorly made drinks so for those of you that don't know, it's, it's like well, vodka would be vodka and ginger beer and what else is in lime lime, right in in a in a copper cup. If you have the money for it, right or some sort of metal cup mug? Yeah, it's some sort of a mug kind of a situation. Cocktail king would sell these mugs, then we would the original mugs are sold by the Smirnoff Corporation. Correct.

The original mugs were actually made in house by the cock and bull Tavern in Los Angeles. And so it was their house drink, and they made this mug and a lot of people stole it. And eventually a bunch of liquor companies including Spirit off, decided to use it as a promotional item.

So 60s

Do I look like Dave wonder cheer

Yeah, I think it was the 60s 60s

So then what's your favorite by the way? What's your favorite like go out in New York he like the JinJin mule like Peggy's Genji mule they've had on the menu forever like that drink. Ginger meal. I like that and has the older you know canta used to do the the two pieces of ginger with the skewer resting on the glass is his thing. Like candied ginger. I like that. But the mule often horribly made drink, right? Like how often do you have it out? And you're like, Wow, that's a well made drink.

Well, it I think the whole thing hinges on the acidity, right? Because the ginger beer is typically a little sweet. Unless you get the right one. It doesn't have that ginger bite that you're after. So unless they're putting fresh lime juice in it, you're kind of losing. What makes it exciting to drink.

structureless nightmare.

It's like a dark and stormy you know, if you just have the rum and the ginger beer, it's like, what is this missing? Oh acid.

Right, but it's also

like my wedge, right? It's like the JGL you gotta have that.

You gotta have the El

GGL

Jameson, Ginger lime.

Oh, you guys are just pushing for no products like these people. Let me tell you something about liquor people, people. For those of you that aren't actually in this business, like these are for a bunch of crazy reprobates. They are the most onMessage people like on Earth, like I have spent my whole life kind of like needling not my whole, like professional life needling like liquor people like Okay, so who used to own claim, say this, who used to own they don't make any more Nirvan who met who used to make the grammar, new grammar now on that. So like, I was mercilessly making fun of the name. I was doing a demo for them at the French Culinary Institute. And it was a French guy that actually showed up you know, rep your product this was before they reformulated this is when they first came out? Well, I'm not gonna say it tasted like poison. But like, you know, you draw your own conclusions. I want the words it tasted like poison won't come out of my mouth. But the original formulation, like I'm not going to say I was a giant fan either you guys you have it

was a vanilla cool. Yeah, I remember having it a long time ago.

And they did a pretty heavy push on it. You know, they got some pretty good people behind it. I think will Goldfarb was doing some work for him. Anyway, they did a demonstration at that French culinary. And I did it and the French guy was there. And no one knew me from Adam, anyone at that point in my life. And so I would only call it NASM. Like, I would only like in all the backstage and everything. Call it nav and nav and then he's like, it's no fun. And I was like, Come on, man. I know, it's Navin. I'm doing it. But like during the demo, I didn't mess him over. But like liquor, people don't have a sense of humor about their product. True.

I don't know about that. I think that if you're new to it, or over, everybody is overly precious about some things, you know, and they don't, they take certain things really seriously, I would say there's a there's plenty of people, particularly people that came up on the operation side that worked in bars, that then they make the jump over to work for brands that you know, have a sense of humor about what the what they do and about, you know, selling out all those other things that go along with it. And then there's, you know, brand owners and people like that that may be you know, they're sinking a lot of dough into these things. So they take it pretty seriously. Empathy, you know, we got to have a little empathy

I have, well, I'm not really no one's really accuse me of like being Mr. Empathy. Here's another thing. So let me let me just stir up a can of worms. Because Kevin, you don't mind. So Kevin is mind? That's. So here's the thing, right? You have a whole group of people coming into the liquor industry. And so hey, I apologize. A lot of we're at a liquor conference, I got liquor people here. So we're going to be talking about the liquor business a little bit. So there seems to be kind of two classes of people that kind of go into this business on the liquor side. And this is something I think that again, that hopefully, the listeners find interesting, but they're, you know, probably not, unless they're in the business are exposed to how this works. Even young bartenders, I don't think really know how this crap works. You have two major classes of people, you have the people who actually did the job, and love product, and go, you know, love the bar world and love the people and go into it. These are people like who have been doing it for a number of years, and you know, who are now moving into that world. And then you have the marketing people who just came out of school and they could be selling. They could be selling cars, they could be selling

booze, paper toothbrushes, yeah. How do you deal with those people? Honestly,

the problem isn't even necessarily that like right out of college is their first job and their background is you know, school marketing. A lot of times the executives and the higher ups. They're people who also came out of like the packaging industry as well. They're, you know, work for Johnson and Johnson of Have a company, you know, as an executive there, and now they're running the liquor business. So there is a huge disconnect, you know, from the bottom to the top, not only on the marketing side, but just on kind of a in the corporate executive side as well.

I think that's exactly right. And there's certainly a frustration that is bred out of like, because spirits, unlike almost anything else, like you don't go in and say, you know, give me this brand ice cream, you know, you don't call your ice cream brand at a place you don't call a brand. Most places, you know, maybe when you're buying a car, but that's like a big purchase. That happens infrequently. Whereas people drinking happens with relative frequency. And then the fact that you call out different brands that you have allegiances to these brands. Makes it sort of a weird, unique animal. And I think if you grew up working in a bar, and you love certain brands, and you love what sort of their about, like you like their story, like the people that are surrounding it, then you have this like affinity towards it. So then if someone is coming in and telling you whatever it could be, it's a cog, it's a whatever, you know, it's like, well, no, it's not, you know, we spent all this time really falling in love with your brand and telling that story when I was working behind the bar, like, why don't you get that this is something more than just a commodity.

Right. But you also I get the impression that the people who come out of the actual bar world have more of an appreciation for kind of like how to take care of people, I can't tell you how many bar people I've spoken to have either become brand ambassadors, or working on corporate side, you know, you know, other than ambassadors like in your kind of position, who just get like very violently angry at people who don't kind of understand how the flow of information or how the how the kind of job works, and it's to the detriment of what's weird, is it's to the detriment of the industry and the product, but also, so much freaking money is spent in such weird ways, loudest ways. I mean, it's just crazy, right? But

yeah, I mean, people make decisions based on surveys and studies and marketing assessments the same way like we conduct presidential polls, like you're calling someone on a landline at 10 o'clock in the morning, like, you're gonna get crazy people, you know, the responses that you're receiving for these studies are, are not necessarily skewed towards the actual consumer. And I think that maybe that is like laziness on the part of the people that are conducting the surveys and, you know, trying to get remind real data about how people use their products. Maybe it's, maybe there aren't good tools for figuring out that information. But you know, it is, I think bartenders are a wealth of information. You know, they're the ones sitting behind that invisible line every night, like eavesdropping on everybody and getting a, you know, a sense for what people like and what they don't like, you can spot the trends, you can see what you know, what the masses are drinking. And I think spirits brands try to talk to bartenders, but maybe they don't talk to enough bartenders,

right. And you also mean, like, you know, again, hopefully, you don't mind talking about this crap, but like, you deal on with both, like, kind of like the higher end cocktail bars and also like QSR restaurants, like, you know, similar in style to Applebee's, I deal directly with that, but I didn't want to call it out. I don't know whether you're allowed to say it, but it's like, you know, you're dealing with these very kind of different levels. So what's that, like, all of a sudden having because, you know, you spent the entire your, you know, for years, the years that I've known you, you know, you've dealt almost exclusively with a very, like, high end slice of the cocktail world. And then all of a sudden, you're like, boom, now you're dealing still dealing with that slice, but now you're also dealing with Applebee's. What's that? Like?

It's the most challenging and rewarding part because I think that when it's blue skies when you're creating drinks with zero restrictions, which Wiley was really great about, sort of letting me do whatever I wanted creatively. That is, you know, in some ways, limiting you know, like when you have constraints when you have you know, a certain cost that it has to come in because you know, these places sell their drinks very inexpensively. You have a set number of ingredients that you can use because if they have 1000s have locations, you know, the supply chain alone for getting stuff is difficult. So you have a lot of constraints. And then it's, you know, it's all little puzzles, right? You know, it's like I've got XY and Z, I have to create something at this price that hits, you know, these touch points that people are into, you know, what does someone in Kansas City want that, you know, someone in Atlanta wants someone, you know, you're really trying to hit a common denominator with a broad slice of different types of people. So I don't really think of it as dumbing down as much as it is like, try to be 90% comfortable, and maybe like 10% aspirational, like try to pull people that maybe don't get exposed to high end cocktail bars, like try to bring them up a little bit through quirky ingredients or different ways of doing drinks. It's not a it's not a bad thing to get out of the like ivory tower and see what the masses are into, you know, and like, I just did a big project with a large national chain that everybody all the listeners would know. And working with their bartenders like the age range was 21 to 63, like one participant in this training had three of her kids that were to the same restaurant that she did so like these multigenerational, like in smaller communities like it's pretty wild, think about that you're creating something that then gets disseminated to the four corners of the globe, and you want to make sure that it's cool. And then it's quality has to be bulletproof to them, right? Totally bulletproof. Because they're, if there's a will, there's a way to screw these things up six ways to Sunday, like they just put your stuff.

So every minute in my life, I learned how easy it is to have someone else screw up your idea. Yeah, every second of my life, I learned a little bit more how easy it is to have someone screw up your idea. So correct me if I'm wrong. This is how it works. Right? So let's just say Applebee's, because it's coming to my head Applebee's. Right? They have X number of slots on their menu for drinks, right? So you're there. You're on Pernod Ricard side. Let's say Pernod. Ricard is like they own beef eater. For those of you right, they'll be feeder that's like the agenda that they own. And so you're going in there with your beef eater thing, someone from Biagio Diageo owns Tanqueray. So the audio is coming in and you're coming in and you're each trying to sell this new recipe to Applebee's so that they'll be like their you sell them on the recipe right for so I'm assuming someone like Applebee's, you're selling them on a recipe idea, right on a concept and a story that they can push out on their menus and very easy way to execute. So when someone pulls the trigger on the Beefeater drink, instead of on the Tanqueray drank for something like that, like, how much quantity Am I talking here? Like, how many cases is that?

I mean, it all depends on how popular the drink is. But if you have to keep something in stock, because it's on your menu, and if you have a, say there's 1000 locations, you know, there's 1000 bottles that you have to purchase right there, and no one's buying a single bottle at a chain. So there's 1000 cases. So without really even selling a drink, that's already 1000 cases. So they work the deal. It's, it's a big deal. And if you get something if you get a drink on the menu that's popular, like, I remember when I was an older and I had a drink named after Dr. Dave, who is the infamous Lower East Side medic that would take care of people in food and beverage. When when I tally that we had sold 10,000 Dr. Dave script pads, I thought that was a huge deal. And then I got a drink on a menu at a big national chain. And that happened in like a month, you know, so that sort of stuff. Scale is pretty crazy. Once you start digging into it.

That's gotta be rewarding, super rewarding. And here's another one is the tough side. So and again, you've been on both sides, obviously, because you started in the bar world. There's the way that that bar the way that the liquor business works is the liquor business hires like nice, friendly people that other people like right, so that you will have you been you one of these people will hang out with the people who are purchasing liquor. We then because we like you when we're coming up with another spec or if we've done an event with you, you force us to come up with a spec for the events and now we have a spec with that product. We use that product that seeps down. And it's all done in this kind of friendship basis. But it ends up actually being a big monetary benefit for the company, not that the bartenders are using the product or losing. And I always kind of think, like, is this kind of okay, or is this weird? Do you know what I mean?

I know what you mean, I didn't really do much with brands. When I was a bartender, I kind of wanted to be agnostic, so I could do whatever I wanted and not be beholden to anybody. That said, I think that business has generally been run off of relationships. And just because it's a liquor company that's, you know, hiring you to do events and coming into your bar and spending money. Like, I don't know that that's any different than the way businesses run generally. It's certainly not quid pro quo. But if you could, I would, I would venture to guess that if you like the people that work for a company, you're more likely to utilize their stuff, be it shampoo, or vodka or toilet paper, whatever. Like getting personable people.

The paper I buy strictly based on the product has nothing to do with the people. It's like, it's just between me to paper and my bond.

That's it. That yeah, does it? Does it take care of the cheeks? That's why,

although as you know, that's actually freaking ly. My my wife's grandpa used to work for the Scott paper Corporation. By freaking Scott.

Wow. How about a seventh generation? You know, you're thinking seven generations ahead. You're not thinking of the people you're buying from but the future? Come on. You want anyone? Listen, it's gonna be good to the environment.

Okay. Okay. But what's your thoughts on paper? Do you know that every time you save a tree, you hurt a farmer?

It's not like, it's not like your toilet paper is being produced from the Amazonian rainforest. You don't I mean, like, there's some dude, in or dudette there's some woman in Oregon, with like growing like hair, plug trees, you know, like in those use you driven past them, right? And they're coming up, and then they poke those suckers and they make papers. So as long as the toilet papers produced in a way that doesn't have a paper used to be an environmental nightmare from a waste stream perspective, right? But if this person is, you know, she wants to have a farm and she wants to grow trees, so that I may wipe my butt, like, you know, and I have the money to buy the tree product to wipe my butt. Like, what's so bad about that?

Well, if you if you really like that woman that's got that farm. You're gonna go with her stuff, right? If I knew who it was, yeah, I mean, there's not a lot of transparency in the toilet paper industry.

No pulp is pretty much commodified. It's like you know you don't care what now now you do buy you do buy so you know Miley carpenter runs the Food Network magazine badass my my sister in law my wife's sister, she is like she is a has very specific paper towels that she likes. She don't pay her anything, but she only uses what's the brand name? Viva Yeah, interesting. She's Aviva woman with her paper towels finds them to be superior quality paper

towel. They're really good paper towel. Yeah, I like a brownie.

You're counting paper towel person? Yeah, it's very absorbent. It what's their motto? The quicker picker upper. It is new believe that.

I don't know how quick it is, but it definitely picks it up.

I don't know that I need my paper towels to be luxurious. Although I do detest, for instance, on the TV when they're marketing a paper towel. They're like, look, I can use Windex and then I can I can wipe it up. I can wring it out and use it again. Nobody does this. Nobody does this. Now. It's like if

I clearly did not grow up in an immigrant household, because, yes, totally wring out paper towel and reuse paper towels all the time.

If you're going to reuse the towel, then you use a cloth towel, use a bar towel

that depends on the job. But paper towels definitely reused all the time growing up.

For real, yeah, for real. In California

in California. And to this day, like I don't always reuse paper towels, but depending on what I'm what I'm washing if I'm using a paper towel, I will often like rinse it, wring it out and then like continue to clean with it.

That's fair. I mean, I I cook a ton and I just keep it a paper towel around us that like my side towel. And it'll be dirty and then it gets multiple uses. I wouldn't wash it and hang it up

or out and dry it no clearly no look,

if it's a quick wipe, I'm using like I'm using a bar towel kitchen towel. And like that stays with me like the entire time which is why like when my kids go to wave something off the floor was one of the kitchen and then they tried to put it back up on the counter. Oh yeah. And I'm like girl Oh my gosh. Oh god, you know what I mean? Yeah. Do you hate that? Like wants to tell it's the floor? It's on the floor. I don't give a five second rule to those suckers.

You don't you're a little red bucket in your kitchen. You put it in.

I don't do the sanitizer. You do send everybody

No. I would venture to guess a lot of

while he doesn't even do sanitizer bucket at home, and he's a freak. But anyway, my point being that if I if there's a possibility, there's something that I'm not going to mind. Like, I bust out the paper towels when something horrible has happened. You know what I mean? Like I'm picking up glass.

There's a spill of blue liquid. Yeah. Which is always the case. And yeah,

like, like, what I do is someone brings me Blue Curacao as as like, you know, here. Thank you for inviting me to your house. I smack it onto the floor. I do like the candidate matumbo Not in my house fan. I smash on the floor and then all that glass and blue liquid is being soaked up in my paper towel. That's how it goes.

And you want the quicker picker upper for that. Yeah,

I don't know. You don't do the cat litter like for like oil spills and then your cat litter in your house. The garage. You know the shop like you know in a shop, you got oil spills. You gotta you gotta go cat litter.

Um, for the cat litter so you you'd like that as opposed to like the more expensive like spill absorbing things cat litter works. And then where do you dispose of it? Do you take it to the dump? Like a real person or you throw in the trash like a butthead?

No, you clearly put it with the oily rags which didn't go like you know, separate hazardous pickup. Come on.

We don't have hazards. Everything's hazardous.

Gotta shop are you running here?

We have like where I am in Connecticut. When I'm in Connecticut. We have our own special dump. You have to drive your hazardous waste out to it. And there's a guy who yells at you if you do it wrong. Yeah,

this is we take your batteries you know you're not throwing your batteries in the fire are you?

Well, we just talked about that today. Like we're like you're not allowed to put batteries in followed now I have a extreme desire to dispose of all my batteries and fire. Anyway. Alright, so Kevin, I was told that you had some interesting questions about how cocktails work with milk. What do you got?

So it's popping up a lot and something that I do is filled a lot of media requests and I see like way popping up in cocktails a lot. Like how are people using it?

How people are using are they literally buying whey powder and adding whey powder? I think they're splitting milk

and using it you know as a you know, something to froth it up. I've seen way tonic out here in California. What do

you tonic? What's that

way and tonic?

as just a straight tonic? In California,

I think in LA first of all, are you

making fun of La

if you mix way and tonic it will foam like an egg cream because the way has a lot of foaming properties and tonic has bubbles in it. This seems to me to be a nightmare. But does it taste creams? I don't Okay, I want to I've tried so hard to like I even liked the fact that it contains neither egg nor cream. Like everything about it. Like seems right up you're totally right up my alley. Like foxes you bet syrup. I don't actually like it but I like the idea of it. I mean it's it's garbage. It's not a good product but like I love the idea of it I love like Laurie side New York like Jewish history seltzer based, all of that. Awesome. A creams blow. There is not good.

I'm not gonna argue with you. On that point. I think you know, it's, it's not what I want. But

damn, what about you? Are you in a cream fan or now?

You know, I didn't grow up in an egg cream. It's interesting. It's not really something ever pined for I'll take a root beer float but any root beer float. That is even a coke float delicious.

Coke flew out you know who I was. I was that kid who had would have the Diet Coke float. I used to literally order Diet Coke floats. That's strange to me. Because I liked I liked Diet Coke because I only I grew up as people it's probably indicative who I am as a person but I grew up drinking diet coke as my water. So like you know how you might know you might come in and have water. I would come in have Diet Coke.

See, I ended up loving Diet Coke when I was an RA in college because that was the one thing no one drank. And that meant that as the RA I just had a lot of it and I end up drinking it.

I don't drink Diet Coke.

I don't know. I was an RA I was actually John dewberries Ra.

Wow. John Newbery was a bartender at PDT and then now is a What's his title at Momofuku?

Had mixologist. I don't know. Wow, it's a true bar director me Our director was just poking fun at why the

hell do people not drink Diet Coke? What's that all about? Well,

you know, your metabolism is how you can just drink the uncut stuff.

Why would you do that? You know, they went to the mountain dew wanted to live the extreme lifestyle.

Well, everybody who knows me knows that when I was in college, when I want to stay up, all I would drink is diet do I would have cases and cases of Diet Mountain Dew, and if I was in a car trip, I would just load the back of the car up with Diet Mountain Dew. Then pretzels because I like pretzels, just like box after box of pretzels. And then believe this or not, this works because it's just the right amount of fruits, this boxes. Fiber like prunes, pretzels, and diet do and you would just load that into the car. And you'd only have to stop for gas. So I would drive from like Connecticut down to like deep Florida like Sarasota in one shot. 24 hour straight. Boom. Don't do this really stupid. Like any young people out there driving for 24 hours straight is really stupid.

It's dangerous to think of other people, not just yourself. It's really really dumb.

I remember one time.

And if you're having that many prunes. Like you're gonna need to stop.

No, it's like if the thing is if you're not eating right, and you're sitting, your body kind of shuts down. So you're just like, you need something to even keep you like relatively human. And so you're just pounding this stuff. And you know, going down the highway, but yeah, it's just really stupid. I can remember being so tired as I was driving, that I was like, I remember this is the worst. I shouldn't even say it's so horrible. I was I nodded off and as I nodded, I woke up and there was I was like, like, like kind of drifting into a cop car. Pull over pull over now I used say that because he didn't see it. I was like, I need to pull over down and sleep. But it's really stupid. Why do young people always want to do that?

You know, the brain is not fully formed yet. It's a dangerous time.

really dangerous. But still to this day like today to do anyway, we're gonna come to we're gonna do a quick break. I actually because we're pre recording, I don't know who sponsored me perhaps it will be modernist pantry.com Go to modernist pantry.com For all of your modernist needs. In fact, we actually went to monitors pantry.com For some of our modernist seminar I did today, we get back maybe we'll talk a little bit about the seminar. Maybe I'll be brought to you by jewel immersion circulator from ChefSteps. Perhaps this show will be brought to you by Bob's Red nail, which by the way is not there is an actual Do you know this? You know about throwing all right, Kevin? No, you know, but no, you don't notice. So if you go to the supermarket, they have like this, like, now a lot of supermarkets have an entire section with all these little bags, these little like one pound bags of like every random grain. Pseudo grain. Oh, sure. Sure. Yeah. Bob's written Xanthan this week. It's been awesome. Anyway, so there's like, there's a picture of this guy, Bob on it. And you know, for years, I was like, That's horse crap. There's no freaking Bob. Bob's not a real freaking guy. This is like a marketing gimmick. There's actually a Bob, who knew? Well, I didn't know that I found there's actually Bob. But here's the weird thing. They're real sticklers about this is that it is not like the few if like when they were first doing the promos, and they made us do the promos for talking. Right? They said, just make sure you don't say Bob's Red Mill. Like what do you? What do you mean, when you're talking about like, they hate it, when you say Red Mill as though the red and the mill are separate? Like they might have some other kind of mill some other color of mill? Or perhaps like there's Bob's Red Mill and also Bob's Red Truck? You know what I mean? It's not like that, you know what I mean? So

I thought you're going with like a communist angle that this was like the people's mill mill? Well,

they probably also hate that, but it's like Bob's Red Mill, Red Mill, Red Mill, Red Mill.

Now, is that a kind of mill?

No, it's a thing. It's Red Mill. Okay. It's Red Mill. Bob's Red Mill. So Bob's Red Mill might actually be but here's the other problem with Bob's Red Mill. Very, I use their products actually, occasionally. But they're they made me say a bunch of stuff about nutrition. And as you know, I'm anti nutrition. Like I am vehemently opposed to almost every form of saying that x, y or z is a healthy thing. You don't I mean, I find it's almost entirely horse crap. You don't I mean, to me like health, and this might only make sense to liquor people but that the healthspan that's put on things in the food world is akin exactly akin to me the marketing spin that, you know, different companies put out about their liquor, which, what percentage, not of what Pernod Ricard says, which is all gold dripping from the from the mouths of angels, but like other liquor companies, what percentage what they say source crap?

I mean, everybody bends the truth a little right. So I think I think we might be over obsessed with the authenticity origin story. Like sometimes the product is just made somewhere and it's made the factory and like, you can be straight with that.

Yeah, well, that's my point. My point is, is that is that every everybody, like, wants there to be kind of something bigger? Right? And

sure, well, stories. We, we as a people want to hear stories. Right?

Right. That's the same thing with nutrition, and food. It's like these horse hockey stories that like have that make no freakin sense. Anyway, so perhaps they're sponsoring us today? I don't know. They probably if they played this, if this doesn't get cut out, they will probably never sponsor me again. But my my point is, is that let other people make their false nutrition claims. And you know, it's fine. You know what I mean? As for me, like I focus on taste, and I think that they have some, I think that the good thing about them is you can get some interesting products you couldn't otherwise get. That's all you need to know. You don't need to have. You don't need to say oh, good source of thymine. Do you need to say that? No, you don't. You know, Kevin, when was the last time do you go to doctors on a regular basis? Do you do your yearly checkup once a year? Yeah. You ever had your doctor and then every couple of years they do bloodwork upon you right? Yeah, yeah. You ever have that doctor say You know what, you need more thymine.

Well, it's because I have so much of Bob's Red Mill that time and levels are off the charts nice and just like through the free years so much nice and

all right. All right. All right. So we're gonna do a quick commercial break. We don't know who's gonna bring it to you but we'll be right back.

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And we're back. Okay, so listen, Kevin, you were talking about wave? We never actually Oh, Kevin's fixing himself a Ducati. Well, how exactly are you doing that ticket day? I want to know how a true Professor now prepares their Takata a beer. First of all, he's using a bar spoon to open it which is an approved method to open. What do you think about people Kevin? Who can't open a bottle without a without a real bottle of beer? Just low quality?