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.

So to be the first to hear our episodes when they launched this fall, go to wherever podcasts are streaming and hit subscribe and make sure to give us a follow at the Culinary call sheet on Instagram.

This episode is presented by Henry's wine and spirit.

You're listening to heritage radio network. We're a member supported Podcast Network broadcasting over 35 weekly shows live from Bushwick, Brooklyn, this year we're celebrating 10 years of food radio. For the past decade we've been taking you behind the scenes of farms, restaurants, breweries, school cafeterias and more. It's been 10 years and we're just getting started. Find us at Heritage radio network.org

Hello lovely cooking cookies coming to you live on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from you know whatever to like one o'clock forever his tweets are in Bushwick. Not join today with Anastasia hammer Lopez because she's got a fancy meaning with a butterfly a button isn't can't make it all. But we do have Jack Schramm Wacko Jacko. Crazy Jack head bartender of existing conditions. How're you doing?

I'm doing well for those of you listening at home. Dave doing the intro is just as exciting in person as you imagined it would be.

And Matt in the booth How you doing?

Him doing an intro is like it's like staring at a blazing hot sun. You just can't look away but it's not good for

you. Oh, no, it's a horror. I have a serious condition at this point.

Every once in a while DAX has dirtbag buddies are like, can you? Can you do it? And I'm like, no,

they make you do the intro. And

I mean, we do the intro and occasional other things that because DAX has been on before so that's why he knows about it. So then occasionally they'll make me do like that. Or like he has one or two of my all of my impressions are the same.

Yeah. Oh, no, no. Yeah. One Voice I got a good one.

Yeah, so DAX somehow and he's dirtbag buddy seem to think that there are different versions of this. So they're like do this one do that one I'm like DAX. They're all the same. It's

the same guy to trick them. They

haven't caught on to the to the gag yet.

Yeah, right.

There's something about DAX make your dad yell? That's just so good.

I had someone wants to make me do it on the street. Not not like you know, someone I know. Not like a random person. Like someone I know is like, you know, he you like can you do it on the street? I'm like, No, fine.

Of course you do it because yeah,

I go back and listen to episode one. Is it like was it a fully formed idea and delivery right from the get go?

I don't know. I don't know. There's been like 8 billion episodes. That's why at that for those. I don't know how this works when you're listening on the internet's but like when we have the earphone John in here in the studio, I call it I guess you call it the container shipping container that we've been doing this out of since time immemorial. They have a pre roll on. And you know, today for instance, do you know about Henry's wines and spirits? Although that's Jack's middle name. Did you know that

it's true? I did not know that part.

I do not know Henry's wines and spirits. Where's that?

Is it Bushwick, but it's also on the internet.

All right, so listeners challenge for you, we need you to go back through every episode of Cooking issues. And we need a Dave intro Power Rankings. I want to know the at least the top 10.

So at one point, you know, we were like, well, if people are going to take a seat, oh, so the pre roll. They're like 10 years. And we're just getting started. And I was like, oh, that's depressing. Yeah, right. So just getting started. Oh, my God. 10 years and our best episodes are behind. Yeah, life is long. Okay. So the, the Not really. So then. It's real fast. Trust me people long. Wait. So at one point, you know, years and years ago, I was like, well, maybe we should, you know, in the interest of being taken more seriously. Maybe we should do you know, more of an NPR so I did a couple NPR style. You know,

I imagine Hello, only outrage. Well,

I forget. Like I can't do and I can't do like there's always a little more bounce in my voice and you get out of NPR. So it's like, you know, something leaders. Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues. You

know, everyone was like, No, that makes me wildly uncomfortable. Yeah,

they're like, no, no, no

canceled.

They're like, go back

to the weird one. Oh, when did you switch from the like the crazy punk rock song intro?

You know who you know who wrote that? Who was that was Joe Gargano from grano arso. Restaurant in Chester, Connecticut back when he used to live in New Haven that is new. There you go. Do you know and we said this in real time? Do you know that? I'm the new haven of bosses?

What what does that mean? What the hell does that mean?

Oh, everybody hates working for me. And then when they leave me, they're like, he wasn't so bad. And it's just like living in New Haven. When you everyone who lives in New Haven wants to get out?

I thought it was because you're a full of like, high tier but truly second tier like B plus tier pizza. Oh,

because you might die.

Oh, this also is true, by the way, but just for the record, you know, Jack is you know, part of the you know, new the current guard I should say not new but the current guard of kind of food New York food and drink intelligentsia. Okay, like, you know, went to NYU in Food Studies, you know, works at what I think is one of the better blogs. Okay. And, you know, general man about town spends a, I would say,

stupid a large

chunk of your income on food and beverage. Yes. Yeah. would rather be homeless as long as he can shower enough to be allowed into the restaurants in his choice. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. So always smells clean. I will say this always smells clean at work. So I am guessing he's not actually homeless. In fact, I know his roommate who also used to work at St index. Now. No man supposed to come work with us. And no, Matt was like, We don't want you to go there. So we're just gonna

No, no bad talk about Nomad nomad. So I love the Nomad in a great place.

I'm loving the Nomad. I'm just saying like, they have the ability to offer him so much that he wouldn't come work for us. Yeah. In terms of, I guess, responsibility. I don't know. I don't know.

Oh, yeah. He's got a good thing going there. He's happy.

His name is Joe Smith. He's not related to any of the Joe Smith characters that you'd see in movies, but

I like him. Oh, yeah. Great guy. But he's limited to he a liar though.

He where he comes from near where he comes from? There is a he says carbonated spring out of the ground that is locally known to you know, in whatever high mountain town he's from Colorado, whatever the heck it is. Colorado, right? Yeah. And he's like, next time I go back, I'll get you some. And he did not he did not liar. Clearly liar. Chump liar. Get on him about Yeah, speaking of I really wish the Stasi was here because some of you may know that both Booker and DAX. My two children have the same birthday. And yesterday they both one turned 17. And one. They're not twins.

Oh, now I feel the worst because I called you and I said, Say happy birthday to Booker. Let's because I didn't say Say happy birthday to DAX. And it's only because I saw things on the social medias. Like, what the hell, Anastasia? You're just gonna blow up Booker. Well, I know that Booker worked for her, but still

well, it to be fair, so they used to have their party on the same day. So it used to be what I would do is I would have Have a I don't have a make your own pizza party and everyone make their own pizzas and you know my oven used to get up to like it's a lot I also haven't talked about it on air I had to, I had to on Hot Rod my oven. And it was, it was freaking depressing for those of you out there with regular ovens, I feel your pain. Now, you know, like, can

you fill me in very quickly on what you had done?

Oh had done what he did,

what I had did so like, what had happened was I I completely bypassed Well, first of all, also known to some people who actually, you know, listened to like the deep backlogs of here. The moron that installed, my wife did not allow me to do the plumbing in my new place. Okay, new meaning like five years old right? Now, a number of things really pissed me off. And if any of you are going to get plumbing done, quarter turn valves is the one thing I'm going to say to you. Oh, yeah, quarter turn valves. Now you don't have to have the ugly ones with the giant handles, they make small angle stops with quarter turn valves. But at some point in your life, unless you're a complete garbage person who never uses their equipment, never uses faucets. And at some point in your life, you're going to have something break. And I'm assuming that you're the kind of person that doesn't just have the stock thing out of the Home Depot that you can replace in 20 seconds that you have something decent that you have to wait a day or two to fix. Or maybe you don't have, you know 500 bucks to have someone show up and fix your Bosch dishwasher or you know, 1200 bucks to get a new one brought the next day, you know, I'm just guessing what you're going to want to do is be able to turn your water off and on now. valves, the regular old twisty ones with the crappy with the crappy plastic shaft that you would have the oval shape that you turn over and over again. I have never met one that hasn't broken. I have never met one that hasn't broken. Here's why they suck. They were invented by a holes and perpetrated on us because the person who invented them hates people and knows this one fact, they won't break year one or year two, but that's not when your other stuffs gonna break. It's the long con, it's the long con, they know they're laughing there's a group of plumbers sitting down somewhere day drinking right now laughing at the fact that the thing that they installed in your house 10 years ago is currently shafting you. Right. And this is why i Because listen to this people, quarter turn valves are on average, you ready for it? 50 cents to $1 more a piece. 50 cents to $1 more a piece. And how much now? Are you paying that plumber to put that in? Okay, that's an aside. So I don't even know how I got into this. We're talking about plumbing. Oh, yeah. So he he the guy hadn't was not used to installing commercial for those of you that know I bought a wolf oven. I shouldn't probably say this is gonna be used against me someday to court of law, but I bought a wolf. I bought a wolf oven specifically because wolf ovens make both commercial ranges and home ranges. And if someone came in and saw my range, I could plausibly say, Whoa, it's Wolf. It's a whole range. What are you? Oh my God, what do you what?

I had no idea how could I mean, I have possibly No,

it's a home range. You know what I mean? Like, that's, that's what I was, you know, in my mind singing. So I said to the plumber guy, I was like a plumber guy. I'm not doing gas anymore. Too many people have bought this is after a couple buildings have just blown up. And I said to him guy, listen, this is a commercial range, not a residential range. And what that means is and I handed him the regulator, you must install this regulator between the gas line and the range, right? Preferably one for the oven, one for the range, so that you know, so that regulates the pressure because commercial ovens need that. Right. Yeah. And he didn't. He just didn't do it. And so what that meant was, is that that I the flames coming out of my range were pot just preposterous. Preposterous. Like I used to, I have a collection of like nine toasted noodles, so it's the Greenstone bowls. Yeah, I've had them for decades. I love them. Everyone should own them. If you don't own here's what you do. Go buy one just buy if you like eating by yourself, and you're a hermit by one otherwise by two by two by four. Well you might not know you're like you need to have a gas range. Oh,

well then I'm out unfortunately. Well worst thing about my apartment.

Right but we'll figure it out although maybe they work on it. You know, I don't know if they're magnetic. I don't think they are I don't think they'll work on induction we can work on it. We'll figure out a way to do this. It's got electric we'll make we'll make an electric Tulsa hotbox when they go hot box for told sorts anyway. So the point is, you heat these suckers up and you need a good kind of a flame to heat them up to about 600 degrees is what I do. You pour a little bit of oil in the bottom right Ace smash sauce arranged the things in a circle crack eggs herbs over the top done. You would not believe how many people can't understand that simple flow. I'm like this bowl is round. You're going to put rice in Smash it as though it was mashed potatoes out sauce stuffed a round in piles. So they it looks like a nice composed Sally kind of thing. A good middle. How

what? Is there another way that you would arrange that bowl?

Egg on the bottom? Absolute inverse.

Yeah, but no, it's not. But then

you end up missing out on the top, you can't, then you end up with surprise.

Nobody would be

surprised with carbon

sad rice that's dry and not crispy.

Listen, if the people involved weren't my family, I would have choice words to say about them. But the point being that the flames were so high in this damn range that it would heat up six I hit up six stone bowls in like five minutes flat from from from room temperature to 612 on the IR thermometer on the thing I was like, I was like the thing would rip it rip so hard, Jack rip so hard that that I used to trip the thermals in my van in my hood vent. That's how hard this sucker ripped. You could stick your hand up in my kitchen and be like, ooh, that's, that's warm. Like, like, and so what I what I did was, is that now the problem with that, by the way, and the reason why it's not a good idea is safety. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. But the reason yeah, jerks, but the jerks jerks. But the reason is that because there wasn't a regulator on it, it was putting out maximum gas. So if you have something set to a certain level, and you turn on another burner, there's no more gas being supplied. And so you'll get a drop, or you'll get a flame out or at low thing, it wasn't able to be stable. No, no gas height was stable. So when you install a regulator, it supplies a constant pressure of gas to the oven, no matter what the demand is because unlike a residential stove, where I have a tiny pipe, going to all the burners, I got a big ol pipe going to all my burners, right, and you're supposed to regulate the pressure into them such that the pressure is always the same. So my range was no good for anything other than toll sets. But what I did was I was like these thermometer, the thermostats in an oven, you really shouldn't hack the thermostat in the oven, the way to deal with a thermostat in an oven is to just bypass it entirely. So what I did was, is I put Yes, I'm about to use this term, again, a quarter turn gas valve,

right? Is that how you control the temperature of your oven? Well, so

what I did was is that in my last apartment, which I had for over a decade, my oven was incredibly uncomplicated, a complicated it was completely electronically controlled with three different with three different elements one gas to electric run off of a multi point Watlow PID controller, like completely hardcore with a gas thermo, you know, a gas valve, solenoid valve, click click Like it was like hard core. And every time people come over your oven, so high the use, I don't understand your oven, why can't you have a normal either? And I was like, Why can't you learn to use a portable PID controller? Jerk?

And why not just have you help them set the oven to whatever, and just do

whatever they want. We hear of it. People

complain all the time people come to your house, with potlucks whenever they're like, I just want to heat this casserole. How do I do it your oven? I'm like, God,

you touch my oven.

I was like, well, that's the thing, right? And so I just got sick of it. And you know, and also Jen was like, even my wife was like, this oven is ridiculous. Can't you just have like a normal person oven? So and then new one came around, I'm like, You know what? Fine, fine, fine. Here's what's gonna happen. There's gonna be the thermostat. I'm not going to bypass the the gas safety Right? So there's a gas safety in the bottom in case your pilot blows out, it turns off the oven whatever. Leaving that as is it seems like a good one to leave. Good one. Right so that but then what I'm what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put a like a shunt a bypass valve. So you know like people that bypass their mufflers they have like a Yeah, so it's like that but for your guests, who are

Will Ferrell's character from old school?

Wow, I don't even long time so so what happened is I just had this quarter turn valve and and then I could either use the thermostat like a normal person, or I could be like, ALL Yay, and just go and then like my oven if I wanted it to I throttled it with that with that valve. Yeah. Whatever you want 100

Oh, yeah.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Lined with stones. And like because there's so much gas dumping into that thing. See, if you have a small amount of gas in your in your oven, and you put too much rock into your oven, it just doesn't have the ability to heat that kind of thermal mass up to the temperature you want in a reasonable amount of time. Yeah,

I mean, take hours. I did

not have that problem. You know, I mean, but like, you know, like in Raiders of the Lost Ark when when the when the Ark is on the Nazi ship, and the swastika burns out because God like like, you know, wood burns the side of the crate. Yeah, that kind of started happening to the cabinets that were near the oven. So Jan was like now and we got in trouble when the gas got shut down. So I enhanced router to put it back on normal thermostat. And I added the proper regulator to it. So now it's a normal stock commercial oven. So it does get up to like 500 degrees, but 500 degrees. And to do that, well, Monday, we're in pizza land, what am I going to do with 500 degrees? Nothing. Do you know what I had to do? First of all, what I'm used to is, I cheat. By the way. I've said this before, when I make a pizzas I cheat so and what do I mean by a cheat? Like, I don't want to sit there. And if you're a talented, what do you call them? What's the word pizza? pizzaiolo pizzelle if you're talented, one of these weasels, right? You can you can make a pizza, and like leave it there for a while then pick it up on appeal and put it into your oven. Right, but I'm not that guy. I don't do it that often. So I used to have the problem. I don't like a boat ton of crap on the bottom of my pizza. Yeah. Right. And I like to use a fairly wet dough. And so I would always run into if I let a pizza stay there too long. It's

staying there forever.

It would Yeah, it would stick or the worst is getting it off the peel and you go should go into the oven and and you're like, Ah, right. It's garbage. It's garbage. So my cheat my cheap. I think I said it somewhere before is I by the by the parchment paper. And I just throw it right on the parchment paper with no release. Here's the secret, though. If you're using a high temperature oven, ready for the secret? Yes. What she's got to do is he got to trim, like, within like, like, you know, an eighth to a quarter around the crust was sheer. So they just like cut off the paper. If you leave the paper flapping in the breeze, it will catch on fire, it'll catch on fire. If you don't, it'll Charlo around the edges, but it's not a big deal. And if if your ovens really ripping hot, which mine used to be, what I would do is like you know, 40 seconds into the cook, I would I would just pull the fuel and pull the paper and everything's good. Okay. And so, you know, I wasn't doing you know, DLP style because frankly, that's not the style I do. I like it kind of more cooked all the way through. Yeah, a little bit more crispy ish. You know what I mean? I mean, not like, you know, cracker Chris, not. Not Grupo style, you know what I'm saying? Like anyway, so but I know a pizza shouldn't take more than two minutes. You know, three minutes to cook. Yeah, these pizzas were taking forever, Jack, so much so that I so much so that I have a Breville oven, bread and toaster oven. So I would do the pre Cook, zip them out and then toss them into the toaster oven on toast to finish while I was throwing the next one in because who has that kind of time to wait, who's going to wait seven minutes for a pie? No one. And so the next thing I'm going to have to do is I'm gonna have to start making them giant and get a big peel. You know right now my peel is maybe only 14 inches across or something like this, but I'm going to need to make pizzas the size of the house. You know the size of a full sheet tray. If everyone's got to wait like 10 minutes to do like

a thicker like a sheet tray style like cook it like a pan pizza. I guess it could could I mean, I guess that's a valid style,

I guess. Anyway, so that's what I used to do for their birthday parties was they and then every time Jen would be like don't make too much smoke this time. Like the smoke is what the smoke is.

Yeah, it is what it is not just become Prince Street pizza in your home. Yeah,

well with the Giant Cup with the cup cup of cup of Roni. I hadn't once you need to reheat that sucker when it's getting dough in.

That's why you just eat it standing outside in front of the

shop. Yeah, but what are your thoughts on foods don't mean, pizza should be a food that I think stays good over. I understand that certain things have a window. Yes, right. But certain things the window is so small that I think it impugns the entire variety of food. Tempura for instance. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I liked him. Pora I say this and I've gotten people yelled at me many times. But I'm not like that's not to me like the be all end all the frame.

No, it's good. It's fine. But it has to be handed to you from the fryer and you need to eat it and

you burn your mouth. You hit it and the hot juice hits your mouth and you're burnt and you're like,

Well, you gotta be like myself, and I'm assuming you were you've never waited for food to cool for your entire life. So you just have a layer of just horror fIying mangled skin in your mouth so you just aren't affected by temperature.

I know but it is unpleasant my hands can still tolerate more than my mouth.

That's funny because I'm the opposite. It's gotten so bad that my mouth can tolerate more than my head.

This is because you've taken ramen eating too seriously. And you've consistently burned your mouth on ramen.

It's not just ramen. It's actually mostly pizza because I'd get the full cheese glue to the roots

at worst, the flap doodle that yeah, the second uvula of skin hanging down from the top of your mouth. Oh, back to pizza. I will say this. This is how we got into this as one of the, you know, older generation of pizza eaters. Back in the in the early 90s. In the 80s and early 90s. New Haven pizza was better than anything else you could get. Yeah. In other words, and what do I mean by that? It was New York style but better. It was a better not like New York dollar slice because nobody was doing it down here. Right it what happened is, is that the world grew around them and they did not

steal a very high quality pie like Frank Pepe. It was great when we went it's fine. Yeah.

Here's here's here's another thing I will say. And I don't think I mentioned this last week, but I have a line on the cheese steamer. Ooh, crazy that don't know Connecticut Connecticut. is the land of the steam to cheese. Forget to steam cheese burger. I have no use for it but steamed cheese makes Hello me look like a joke cheese. Like you like hello me Jack is good. Matt you like alumi? Yes sir. Hello me good cheese. Right? That's like the motto Hello me cheese. Do you like caso para free air? Yeah, yeah. either with or without a Natella though, mostly without? I like cheeses that are good. Yeah, yeah. But those are good fried. But steamed cheese. See? People like why don't you serve Hulu me? And I'm like, well, because I don't frankly, trust the people I'm serving it to. Right.

They're not gonna eat it fast. They're

not gonna eat it fast. And when halimi cools down, I get real sad. Yeah, you know, so I have a pile of rubber in front of me. Yeah, hello me for those of you that don't know who me get to know Hello, me. Yeah, that means or you know, if you want to stay you know, on this side of the water, get yourself some case. So part of free air. And these are, you know, salted cheeses that have the benefit that they get soft and have a great texture but they don't melt out completely. Now we're not talking like fried mozzarella, which melts and you're using a breading casing to keep it together we're talking about the cheese itself can be grilled or pan fried. And it gets like a crispy brown outside slightly sweet awesome, like texture on the inside. little oil on top. And I didn't necessarily needs it, but I like a little salt. Little some stuff. Good. Good. Great. Good. Love it. Yeah, great. But, but when you cool it down? I hate it. Now it gets squeaky but not in the good cheese curd squeak way. You're like, Man, I wish I'd eaten this when it was hot. Yep. So if you are doing this, and you can control how fast you eat, because presumably you can then I'm all for it. But people at the at the bar didn't someone say why don't we serve alumi and I looked at them. I was like, I do not trust our guests to eat alumi and I don't trust them not to blame us

for all this product isn't good. It's like, well, you waited 10 minutes to take the first bite. Right?

Jerk. Yeah, but there are many things that I don't serve for that for that reason. It's just a lack of trust I have. And the same thing goes for like, same thing goes from like a MultiFit. We've gotten to this argument for many ways. But the point being that the steamed cheese that they make in Connecticut is made with a mild I hate to use the word cheddar because not really mean whatever. Maybe the curd was shattered in a technical sense, but you know what I mean? Because there's a technical term people. But, you know, they they steam it and it gets puffy and then when it cools down, it just turns back into cheese again, it doesn't turn into an abomination. So yeah, Connecticut. Steamed cheese is I think, fantastic. And I have a line on the cheese steamer.

Is there a restaurant in Connecticut that's doing the steam cheese but a grilled burger? Or do they only steam the burgers? And the cheese?

People who live in South Central Connecticut because that's the answer that that you know what, Jack? You are 100% Correct.

Yeah, steam the cheese. And then a flattop burger.

I think Kenji Lopez Lopez might have mentioned this once, although I got in a huge argument with him yesterday regarding MSG, but I mean, not personally, it was over Twitter. Nothing's real over Twitter. Yeah, but he might have mentioned that once but that is the answer. Yeah. Steam cheese is the shiznit

It's delicious. It's great. Perfect texture for a burger.

Yeah. Fantastic. Oh, so I used to do the pizza party to make your own pizza thing kids liked making in their own pizzas, you can make a reasonable size blah, blah, blah. It's good. But Booker doesn't like homemade pizza because I would add stuff to the sauce like, you know, I always grind anchovies or Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Oh my god. I mean, I tell you about the pizza I made, which was okay.

Yes, you did. But did you just

oh my god. Oh my god, people. For those of you that don't know, this is the best name of any product

ever knew you're not

Neil Nutter which means newborn newborn. It's like a. It's like a Calabrian fish paste. But it's not a paste of large fish. It's tiny fish in oil and red pepper. They're Calabrian chilies. Yeah. So it's Calabrian chilies. And Tiny, like small like smaller than whitebait. Like tiny, tiny fish. I would say. New newborn. There you go. Neo Nazis. And neo Nazi is

their condiments, and then there's Neo nada.

Right. And we serve it at the bar, but you can buy it in Brooklyn by the case which I did. So I bought a case for the bar, a case for myself and a case for my stepfather for Christmas. And we use it you have to come by our you know, our pay, they're gone. They're gone are delicious fried mashed potato fritters, which are great, by the way, and they come from Belgium, but these idiots in Belgium that tell the story, Matt, have you heard this yet? No. So these idiots in Belgium did it. It's just morons. There's culturally idiots jerks. So they made these potato croquettes, which is really what they are potato on. It's like mashed potato and onion. piped and fried. So what is that? Delicious? Yeah, but Right. But yeah. So it has ridges in the in the tube shape, right? So they're little, they're little, they're narrower than a tatertot. And in long are not long, longer than a tatertot. Actually not that much longer than tatertot. They're just narrower.

You're looking at like, a two inch tube. Like three eighths of an inch wide.

Ish. Okay, so you guys get into picture. Yeah. So point is that there's ridges in the side of the tube. So these Belgians, these Belgians who make it and by the way, the reason we sell these is because we didn't want to invest the labor to do the french fries. And I couldn't find a frozen fry that I thought was acceptable. And not only that, but my partner Don and I don't even agree on what a good French fry is. So much so that, like I had second thoughts about opening the bar with Don because it got bad. Yeah, I mean, and we're gonna have the French fry wars, if any one out there is a potato farmer. Right? The plan is this. Don believes that a thin french fry, like almost a shoe string fry is what a good fry is. And I'm like at that point, just by like Andy kept sack of fake fries. It's like, shoestring fries out of right out of the fryer, like doused in some sort of like, you know, what, Jack, what's your favorite agrodolce

Heinz tomato ketchup, there you go great. stacker don't

do or, or like in mayonnaise or something like this is good. But when they cool off, they kind of suck. Right. And he accuses me therefore, because I think that those are not the good fry of wanting giant steak fries, which I also think are bad.

Yeah, I mean, I enjoy all fried potato products. But to me,

the ultimate french fry is is between, in between and including so greater than or equal to three eighths of an inch and less than or equal to half of an inch and cross section. That is where I am. And for those of you that do millimeters, you know multiply, multiply by 25.4. But the point is that, you know, to me those French fries can exhibit a nice inner texture of cooked potato. Right and can I appreciate right and can have a crispy exterior. Right? And you get everything not just like crunch crunch or get a potato chip or the aforementioned Andy cap fries. Yeah, which I eat them but they're garbage could eat them. Yeah, good. Yeah. Anyway. So we could not agree even on the style of fries. So what we're going to do this, I say, we're going to do this, we want to do this, but you know, we get like a minute, you know, free. We want to find a potato farmer. Maybe in Idaho. I don't know. We want to buy this farmer's entire field of potatoes. Right for the year or a field. Yeah, like we go to this person. We're like, Hey, yo, how about we buy like, I don't know, like four acres? I don't know. I don't even know how many. We don't know what yields on I don't know how many pounds per but I do know that with my french fry techniques, the yield of French fry off of potatoes is roughly 50% Because you get a lot of moisture loss on the process anyways, so buy them and then we hire one of the two big firms to process it the way we want and then the end but we do them two ways, Don style and Dave style and then we just see who's fry reigns supreme for those of you who you know were What's it What was that call?

That was extremely limited, shall I? Oh, yeah, sorry. That

was the original. Original. Yeah, anyways, yeah. So that's the plan. So in the meantime, Josh shorty, our chef found us because he knows these Belgian weasels that did the potatoes for Joel Robuchon, back when Joel Robuchon was alive and still doing his bondage. s&m stuff. Great Chef. Never had his food though. Maybe they never went to one of those restaurants where he was working. I know the people that work for him anyway, it doesn't matter. We're dude though, right?

I don't honestly don't know.

Anyway, usually. They say it's a good guy. He had a good name though. Right. I

appreciate anyone who's mashed potatoes are equal parts potatoes and butter.

Yeah, and Bruno. Bruno good. So the the suevey the father of of us get some low temperature cooking as he calls it sushi. He, he used to work. One of the first projects he did with high end food was for usually a hobo shown for the SNCF train. Anyway, I digress as usual. So this potato company out of Belgium made the potatoes for Joe Robu Shawn when he wasn't you know, making them himself I guess. And they make this potato to now here's back. There's a long and around to two things. I still just like what the pizza I made. And secondly, they're just so used just so you know, I keep in my head somewhat what we're talking about these potatoes, they call them churros. Now. They are not churros. They're that shape. Well, kind of they are the shape of that in the sense that stuff that you put out of a playdough fuzzy pumper barber beauty shops are actual dreadlocks. They're not they're small extrusions of things. You know what I mean? Or like, you don't I mean, it's like they are eight they are not the right size for a churro and they are not made of dough. They're not made of a flour based

dough. It's a fried item extruded from a star tip.

That's right. Is icing a churro

it's icing fried.

I don't know it has some of the criteria that you're the only criteria doesn't have is that there's actually more starch was actually there's potato starch but there's corn starch in a in the I don't know, you're right on the fry. I could make a Friday sing isn't that a churro?

If you if there's some cinnamon and yes.

Are if if if I pipe if if a hotdog has ridges Is it a churro

Okay, how many things can we cero

nothing let's do they're not sure I was it my point. Like they shouldn't be called churros. And so don calls them palmed Aragon, which is a nod to our friend John Aragon who has who is a churro aficionado, Licious leave it as true aficionado. So anyway, so we make Neo not back to the pizza. We make a NEO nada sauce that we serve with these at the bar so you can taste it or not if you don't want to bother sourcing it because it's it's pretty hard to source right now unless you go to this one store collegial brothers in in Brooklyn. Don't buy it all. If you buy it all and I can't buy it anymore. I will ask them who bought it. I will find you and kill you. Veritas. Yeah, but this sauce. I put like half of a jar on it on the pizza in lieu of sauce. That

is an intense amount of Neo nada. I mean, not for Yeah, non GMO folks, but it's very GMO. And then

and then I know, I know, I don't want to hear about it. You know, cheese and fish. You know what? I mean? I grew up with Catholics. I'm not Catholic, and I don't believe in these little law things. So I put a little Parmesan on top. Yeah, cooked it off. And then Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday. Oh my god. Oh my that was the money pizza. Even DAX was like that. That's the money. That's the money pizza. That's the money pizza. So I think we actually made it back to where we needed to to discuss it. I should get to some of the questions that were on the air. Oh, and then for Booker, though. He doesn't like pizza as I said, so I had to do a sushi party for him. And the Stasiuk came over to the party which is how you heard about it. Yeah, long and around. And so I wanted to have her on today. By the way last night, you know that she did a vegan dinner at I saw that she did a vegan dinner at your house. So for those of you that have always wondered what Anastasia Lopez is vegan face looks like she had to do a vegan dinner and she posted on her Instagram account, a picture of her with what she calls is her vegan face and I have to say A there is a Su Song of vegan face in this in this picture. However, there is also a healthy dose of hate. Yeah and rage. Yeah, because vegan face is usually just disgust you don't see vegan face plus inner rage and hate at the same picture. So if you want to see what that face with Anastasia Lopez looks like just check out her Instagram and I realized that you might have to know her a little while before you even understood. like kind of like what was going on behind the literal facade. Yeah, that's a so it sounds like hey. She was like, So what do we know? How's the sushi? She's like, cuz I made the rice right? You know? I was she was like, not good. I was like, why? Too much vinegar tastes like Giro jerk. And I was like, well, it's like Giro

is an insult. Oh, I

was like so straw. It did not taste like Gerald people. It maybe had more vinegar than cheese used to. But it wasn't like HardKernel center like sucking on a sucking on a warhead. Anyway Oh, look

at this Giro hatred.

Oh my god. Her JIRA hatred was so strong. I loved it. Loved it. But you know what? I think also she was this bet that she felt that like Jiro and I both rushed her at that meal. And you know, Mark was having such gastrointestinal distress because of because he had just gotten back from getting food poisoned Oof.

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