Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 113 - Pig Beach BBQ

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

Let's fire up the smoker with the boys from Pig Beach BBQ - Matt Abdoo and Shane McBride have the cookbook that will save your summer.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, it's our goal. Hey, it's time for Breaking Bread with Papa. Hey, don't you know? Hey, it's also a show. Hey. Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. I'm Tom Papa. Thank you for joining us once again.

We have an amazing episode. They keep getting better. They just keep getting better. Or at least I'm just having more fun. I don't know. It's just we have great guests coming up. Today, we have Pig Beach Barbecue. Come on now. Pig Beach Barbecue. They have a new cookbook, Pig Beach Barbecue cookbook. Very easy.

Matt Abadu and Shane McBride. They are two guests today that come on and we talk all things barbecue. You're going to want this book. If you have any interest in getting your barbecue game in line, this is the book for you. Today's episode is brought to you by tompapa.com. This weekend, Saturday, the 16th of July, I will be at the Borgata in Atlantic City. Few tickets are left, but I think you can still get to the Jersey Shore and come see me, hang out at the boardwalk, get yourself some taffy, maybe some fudge, and go over to the Borgata. Last time we were there, had an amazing show. show. And that was actually the show that I thought that I was going to get COVID because I signed a

bunch of books. This was, you know, at least six months ago. And I stood in the lobby and I'm in the casino and I was like, oh, this is when I get COVID. Never got it at that point. Got it. I don't know, eight months later, six months later, whatever it is. Did not get it there. Such a great show. it was too joyful. I was just like, I'm going to the lobby. I'm signing books. This is going to be great. So this Saturday night, July 16th, we will be doing it again. So if you're in that neck of the woods or you want to go travel and do something fun for the summer, go see it. Also, I have a whole bunch of clubs coming up because I'm shooting my new Netflix special the end of September, beginning October. I'll have an announcement on that very soon.

But I lined up a bunch of clubs in Brea, Salt Lake City. Tempe, uh, someone else in there somewhere. Go to tompapa.com. Look up all of the dates. Uh, we're rocking all over the place. So as of this recording, um, I just got off the grill, uh, doing a, I have a gas grill. And I was hosting people for the 4th of July. And we were just, I loaded it up.

I had lots of good meats. I had good burgers. I had good dogs. I had good veggie of both of those. I had some Brotwurst, some steaks at the bottom of the cooler that never even got touched because people were just all about just celebrating that barbecue thing. And I, you know, look, they all came out great. I liked standing there for like two hours, just working the grill and everybody comes in and drifts in and drinks and I get to fire some stuff up.

but you read this book you read the pig beach barbecue cookbook uh look up pig beach if you're not familiar with them they've got a great joint out of uh out of Brooklyn they're opening in Palm Beach they're all over the place and they're growing and all of their sauces and things are available online and Shane and Matt are just two culinary stars just brilliant guys with a really great background and then they hook up in New York and they start winning all these bar barbecue competitions and the rest is history and Pig Beach is quickly becoming a household name in the barbecue world and they call it actually the barbecue family because all of the people and we've had several on the podcast who achieve it they all kind of run into each other see each other share each other's

secrets and keep pushing it forward and this book is kind of like a Bible. It really gets into everything that you need, anything, all the information you could possibly want. The type of smokers, the type of wood, the type of equipment, the type of meat. It's so in depth. So the entire time I'm sitting at the grill, which is a gas grill, gets fired up, it's doing a great job. I'm having the back of my head, this isn't what the pig beach guys do. There's no smoke involved. There's no mesquite involved. There's no hardwoods. There's no smoking. This hasn't been smoking this pork shoulder for 12 hours. But there are things in life, kids. You got to kind of pick where you're going to spend your time. If I were to go into this whole barbecue world, whole hog,

see what I did there. It would take the equal investment. that I have in baking and bread and Italian cooking, it would take all of the equipment, all of the time, all of the research, all of the books, all of the thing. Will this nudge me in the direction? Yes, will I go all in? I don't think so. Not where I live, not at this time.

Maybe in the future, maybe when I run out of LA because there's no more water and I end up living in upstate New York and I have a, ton of land and have my bread baking stone ovens and then I've got my big smokers in the yard. Maybe that could be a chapter of the life. I don't know. Frank the Pug just running through the mountains. It could happen. But it is a good book to have if you really want to get into it. And if you just want to keep some tips on point while we were doing it, there was some dry rubs and

things that I got into and used just for the barbecue just to, I know it's not pure, it's not, it's not smoke, it's a gas grill, but it was, everybody was very happy. The only thing still trying to wrap my head around is grilling veggie for the people's. I'm all for it. I like it. I'm not going to question how you eat, but if you put on a couple veggie burgers, you need people to eat them immediately. I served one to my friend. Nobody else was taking yet. So they just kind of stayed.

I put them even on the cooler part of the grill. And man, to see what those become. You know how you eat nachos? And after the first 15 minutes, it starts to coagulate. And you're like, oh, geez, that's what I ate. This giant scab of chips is what I just ate. Same thing with veggie burgers and veggie dogs. let them just go for a little bit and let them cool off.

And you're like, oh, this is not really food. All right, well, let's get to the conversation. I think you're going to really love Shane and Matt. We get into a lot of it. I don't want to give away too much. Just know that they were really fun to talk to. The book is really worth it. Pig Beach Barbecue Cookbook.

And enjoy. Well, thank you so much for being here. Congratulations on the book. It is quite an effort. It is, it's so solid. I have to, you know, I've interviewed a lot of different barbecue folk and have gone down this road before, but this is the most thorough and the most inventive, I would say. Well, thank you so much for saying that. That's kind of exactly what we're hoping to do. So that really makes me just very happy to hear that that has been the way it's been portrayed and, how you took it. So thank you very much for that. Yeah, really, really well done. And I want to get into your backstory and all that good stuff, but I just, you know, I'm a bread baker. And I know when I started that journey, there is that thing of like, as soon as you crack open, a new area, and it comes with all of the tools and all of the ovens and all of the gadgets and all of the things that you need,

and you just start to accumulate and you start to take over half of your kitchen and make your wife angry. Your book totally has that. It's very contagious. You start looking at it. You're like, you know, I really have to start barbecueing some more. I'm going to need a smoker. I'm going to need some of these papers. I'm going to need tinfoil. I'm going to need saran wrap. I'm going to need industrial strength spatulas. And I literally had to stop myself last night and walk away from the book because I was like, I don't know if my marriage can handle this. Well, we certainly want to set you up for success, whatever your barbecue are doing. And you pretty much hit the nose on the head, right?

With all those tools and equipment needs, I get a job done like a professional, but just doing it at home. Yeah. Don't go to a restaurant supply store with your house, with your wife. I know. Right, exactly. You'll be in deep doo-doo if you do that. Yeah.

All right. So back to your original story. It's such a cool story because you both have, you both have this incredible culinary background, but then you also have these kind of different journeys that brings you to barbecue.

So Shane, why don't you start with the story that you tell in the book? Well, I did, I started cooking in South Florida, which Matt and I are sitting right now in my hometown, West Palm Beach, Florida. We're opening a restaurant here, so it's kind of cool,

I started cooking down here. I worked for some really great people that put me on a really great path. I went to Culinary Institute of America. We both did. Moved to New York City. My goal in life at one point was to work at a restaurant called Lesbonas, which back in the day was the kind of top of the heap in fancy fine dining. I did work there.

I worked there for five years. And it was, you know, a magic. experience very super high-end French fine dining right then I went on to work for some other you know I worked for Tom Clikio and had my own restaurant ultimately started working for Keith McNally doing the Balthazar stuff kind of all the while when I was working for Clickio one of my best friends he was Tom's corporate chef at the time Damon Wise and I started making barbecue having fun with barbecue started competing in barbecue started a team, went to Memphis and May, the bug bit us.

It became a very expensive hobby. Doing Balthazar, cooking, barbecue. And then I met our partner, Rob Schwager, who was a regular at Balthazar. I knew Matt when I worked for in the colloquial world. He was in Del Posta, which is right next door. So we knew each other back before we cooked with each other. Um, and then Rob kind of, Rob kind of brought us all together. Rob, right.

Right. I had a competitive team. He and Matt had started the competitive barbecue team and he had the opportunity to take over a parking lot in Brooklyn and the rest of history. Here we are talking to you. Yeah. Crazy. Crazy. Now there's so many, there's so many little, uh, little side shoots in that. You, when you say in the book that you started, there was just a couple of barbecue

joins in Palm Beach, which people don't really think of Palm Beach as a barbecue mecca. Well, it's not. Still isn't. And that's kind of the cool thing about this just in general terms is, you know, when you guys team up and you go to these competitions and you start, you take second at first and then you start winning. And it's like these, you know, two guys coming from the fancy schmancy, Balthazar del Posto, New York, world and some Italian heritage and all the rest of it. And you just roll in. That's kind of the cool thing about food right now is that if it doesn't really, as long as you have skills and passion and you really dive into it, I mean, I don't know. They may have taken you to the parking lot

and wanted to talk with you city boys after you won. Yeah. It was like a record screeching when they announced the team from New York City getting up on stage for first place and, you know, second place or whatever having. Yeah. Yeah. What amazing about the barbecue world is that in our culinary journeys, we've never really come across a more loving, hospitable group of people.

Yeah. Then the family that we call the barbecue family. And we say that word a lot within our book. We say that word a lot in our every days because it's just, we meet these people. They're just some most incredible people on the planet. They're there for you at a moment's notice if you need them. They're always there to encourage to help to support. And we've been very blessed to become very close to many of these great legends in the barbecue world,

like the Tuffy Stones and the Chris Lillies and the John Wheeler's and the list goes on and on. All their names are in the book. Amazing people that really took us in and kind of gave us a little bit of their barbecue tutelage of tips and tricks and ideas. Can't forget, Skip Steele and Kelly Dallas as well. Yeah. I mean, to have those guys be a part of our journey. It is what's very appealing. I mean, because that's really what the barbecue culture is, just hanging for hours.

People roll in and out of the yard and you crack open a beer and you just kind of, and family comes by. And it just has that thing that is so distinct and so, it's so joyful. I mean, it just, it really just pulls people in in a way that other parts of restaurants and food don't really do. I mean, they do, but not, this is a different, this is a different thing. There's something special about barbecue, right? And one of the reasons why I've always taken such a great draw towards it is because I always saw these crazy correlations within the Italian culture and the barbecue culture, right? Grandma would spend all day Sunday from waking up at 5 o'clock in the morning to get her big pot of Sunday sauce working to bring the entire family to the table around 4 to have a big early dinner, drinking wine, having snacks throughout the day. And she made a big feast to bring a lot of people together.

Barbecue is the same thing. You're cooking for hours and hours and hours long, low and slow cooking. and most items that you cook in barbecue are by design, they cook for a lot of people. Yeah. So what do you want to do? You're going to have people over, break some bread, have some drinks, a beer, a cocktail, whatever have you while you're cooking this big feast.

And then the culmination of an ending brings family, friends, and loved ones together. And what's better than that? Yeah. It really is, it really is so great. And you have the Italian side to you, right? I do. I'm half Italian, half Lebanese. So I was very blessed with my growing up of having some amazing food culture.

of what I was being told, Amja or Saqtain. Basically, I was just been a happy fat kid. I just loved eating and loved food. Oh, my God. I'm Italian and I married. My wife is Lebanese. All right.

Yeah. And so we've kind of created what you grew up with. I am. Yeah. I love it. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah.

It really, yeah, it's just insane. I literally just before I got on with you guys, I was like, had to put some bread into the fridge. And I was like, oh, shit, I had these meatballs from Sunday. I was like, I'm going to eat these a little later. Man, I wish I had the meatballs from Sunday, next. I'm going to destroy those right now.

I know. It's so insane. All right. So let me, I'm going to make this a little, a little personal. Oh, I was going to make it personal just in barbecue, and I'm going to have you guide me kind of through what I could possibly do around my house. But, Shane, I have to say, Del Posto is one of my favorite places. earth. Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. You were Del Posto. I was so. Okay, I'm sorry. And you were next

door. That's okay. Right, right. I was at Calicchio next door. Click on the cross. Clikio. Gotcha, gotcha, got you. My apologies. Uh, del Posto, holy cow, we had some great, great nights at Del Posto. Yeah, it's quite, it was quite the spectacular place where, uh, our goal when we were there through Mark Ladner's vision was create dinner if you're having it at grandma's house but if grandma just happened to be a time royalty so we wanted you to walk in those doors and have that big warm hug of grandma with all the love and all no that yeah that was that that was our jam yeah oh have all that love and warm and affection of coming to at grandma's house to have this big glorious feast but if grandma just happened to be a italian royalty and had the

most elegant china silverware and linens and napkins and curtains and carpets and chairs and tables and the whole gamut of stuff that made that place truly special in what it was. Oh, my God. It was so amazing. And one of my great nights in comedy was I opened for Jerry Seinfeld

in Long Island when he was returning to stand-up comedy. Get out, really? Yeah. It's awesome. And then we drove in through a snowstorm back into Manhattan with Jerry and his manager,

George Shapiro, the late great George Shapiro. And this is like, I can't believe I just worked with Jerry. and then I followed him in my car, followed him in his Porsche back into Manhattan, and no one was around because a storm was coming, and we got into Balthazar. And we sat at Balthazar. We were the only people there.

People were just kind of leaving, but they just let Jerry stay at the table, and my wife and I, and Jerry and George, and the snow is falling. And after just running around New York like a little rat doing stand-up for so long, and now I'm sitting at Balthazar with Jerry and. Jerry and George and those beautiful picturesque things. I mean, Balthazar is just a jewel box in its own. The lighting there makes everybody look good. Oh, my God.

That was heaven. Yeah, I mean, holy cow. So, I mean, both of those spots meant so much to me. And not just in a tourist way, just a living in New York kind of grinding it out. And you get these little rewards at moments. So I want to thank both. of you for that. They're going to have magical places. Yeah, so magical. All right, so I am sitting here in Los Angeles, California. I have a yard, and I've got a kitchen that's pretty well stocked,

and I have a gas grill outback. So first question, for those of us that have these gas grills that are put in, should we just get a side smoker, a side grill? A side grill? A side grill? If we're going to crack open your book and start making some pork shoulder. Well, here's the great thing about our book is that there's recipes that can be done with a gas grill. There's recipes that can be done with a Weber kettle. There's recipes that can be done with a smoker. And then, Shane, I talk a lot about smokers and how you can go from burning a Weber kettle

into that sort of smoker pit and gradually working your way up a proverbial chain of how much money or time you want to invest into these amazing devices and machines. Yeah. If you just have a gas grill, there's a whole chapter on grilling in the cookbook, which is really great and focused on the people that have just a gas grill at home. But if you're if you have that barbecue bug, we would both encourage anybody to start looking in because you can now get some pretty affordable home smokers where you can have a lot of fun and and, you know, only spend like a couple hundred bucks and you don't have to have a huge, huge financial commitment to it as sort of an

entry level way of working yourself into that barbecue universe. Right. Yeah. I mean, you can really just buy a Weber kettle like a regular old school yeah weber drum like a hundred nineteen dollars yeah you get an ace hardware and buy one of those yeah and you can do what I do I go buy them at the end of summer when they're on sale yeah good for the next year right but that's that's all you need if you have a gas grill and you have that Weber kettle thing you can cook barbecue it just takes a practice it's time and practice that's what I tell people Biggest commitment to making great barbecue is your time. Right.

There's no shortcut around it. There's no speeding up a 12-hour cook. It is what it is, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Just when I was reading the recipe for the pork shoulder, and you're like, all right, so you're starting off, the first step is four hours. And then you're wrapping it up. That actually is the most mind-blowing thing for me.

I know it's so stupid, but that you could put saran wrap. You can wrap the pork shoulder or wrap anything in the saran wrap and put in the, I guess, the butcher paper and put it back and it's not going to melt. Yeah, that was one of the best tricks that was first taught to me from the legendary Skip Steel of Pappy's Smokehouse in St. Louis. And the cool thing is, is that we were doing that for a very long time in our fancy restaurants. We just weren't putting in a smoke. It would be like you take a hotel pan that might have a lasagna.

you put plastic wrap over the top and foil over the top of that. And as long as the temperature of the oven never exceeded 275 degrees, the plastic would never melt. And yet it created this perfect like almost suave effect of like the plastic shrink wrapping to the to the meat, keeping all those juices in. It's a really spectacular trick that really helps keep your pork shoulders super juicy. Yeah. Which is pretty awesome. Yeah. I know. I was just like, wait, that's going to melt, isn't it? And then you called out that's that I was like, oh man, I'd love. I, love this book already. Just from that, it was like, I just got to just learn one stupid thing.

I'm all excited. But the smoker thing, too, very exciting. I mean, you start listing out the different types of smokers. I mean, it's pretty extensive. It really is, uh, yeah. That was a little tiny bit too of what's about. For real. Oh, yeah.

Oh, there's some, the market right now. I mean, barbecuing, smoking meats, fish. I mean, it's a really infat thing right now. I mean, any, you go to any hardware store and they have. have their complete gambit array of whether they're stick burners or pellet smokers or electrical smokers like almost every place you go has a version of a barbecue pit. Yeah. Which is cool because it makes it really accessible for everybody.

If they want to get into this game, you now can do it. This is, you know, 10 years ago, maybe there was some gas girls in Weber Kettles. Yeah. But there was nearly the amount of smokers that are on the market as it were today. With the, are the pedal, are the, um, uh, the, uh, the pellet ones any good? I know I do Rogan's podcast a lot. And I know Trager's always talking. Traylor's a very big brand.

And one of the great things about pellet smokers that I personally love is that they make it very, very easy to do a cook. So pallet smokers, you plug them in. They have an electrical thermostat and a fear that basically feeds a fire with those pellets as necessary. And a fan that blows it really, really high when the heat needs to go. up and turns a fan off or puts it on low and the heat needs to maintain or go down. So what's great about pellet smokers is that you're basically cooking with a thermostat and you can more or less set it and forget it and have a lot more time like enjoying yourself, entertaining or you can even put a pork shoulder in at night and wake up the following morning

and have it be ready for you. Now, the inverse thing of a pellet smoker is one would argue that you're not necessarily getting as great of a smoke flavor from pellets, which are essentially compressed sawdust, versus if you're burning chunks or logs or like nice fresh wood. Right. But you're still going to get incredibly delicious barbecue. So it's really one of the things that Shan and I talk a lot about in the book and in a lot of these interviews. It's really what you want to commit to.

If you want to commit to doing barbecue where you don't have to work all that harder, stay up all night. Pellet smokers are fabulous. If you want to have more of an authentic experience, you can get an offset stick burner smoker and get something like a laying where you're fueling it in like charcoal and sticks. or chunks of wood throughout the night, but that requires consistent continual maintenance. So it's kind of whatever's within your budget and whatever sort of experience you want to have when cooking

to make it whatever is best for you. Right, right. When you say like using a web or are you going coal with that or would you use wood in that? No, you would start off with charcoal. One of the biggest things that Shane is definitely a huge proponent of is if you are going to use charcoal, make sure you go and buy yourself a chimney basket

to light the charcoal with first. They're like 20 bucks. You can get them. There's no better way of starting charcoal than using one of those. No lighter fluid. Yeah. Never ever. No lighter fluid.

Yeah. Never ever, ever. That that imposes on the food is horrific. Does you want to burn down your neighbor's house? Then you go buy some lighter food. Pour the purpose of the back. And have a couple beers before you light it up. That's right.

And also don't ever buy charcoal briquettes that have like the pre-lighter fluid stuff. on them, when that burns, it gives a very, very harsh aroma and flavor that's not pleasant for the food. So basically the best and easiest way of setting up a Weber kettle is you do what's called offset cooking, where you would stack your charcoal after it's slid on one side of the smoker. Above that, you would put some form of water pan to help diffuse the heat and create moisture in

the chamber. And then you'd put the meat or whatever it is your cooking, not over the coals, but on the other side where there are no coals. and then you adjust the vents in the cooker to create sort of like a convection style airflow. Right. It gives the smoke and the heat, but it's not direct over the coals. It's offset. So it's not getting that direct heat.

We've created sort of a smoking chamber in a Weber kettle. And then while those charcoal is burning, you're adding chips or chunks to it to create that smoke, that beautiful cherry or hickory or oak smoke to the meats or whatever it is that you want to do. Got it. Got it. There's some reason why those Weber grills come with all those different racks. right everybody's like what do i do with all these tracks that's what's for it's for setting up to do barbecue like that got it got it this is very exciting how is uh how's pig beach going big beach is great i mean the Brooklyn and Queens are you know thankfully

queens is finally open after the pandemic nice Brooklyn is running back at almost pre-pandemic numbers, which is amazing. You know, we had our struggle, just like everybody else. We went from 100 employees to six. Wow. You're looking at two of the six right here. It was a struggle, but we're back. The restaurants are doing great.

Obviously, we talked, we're down in West Palm Beach, Florida, opening up our third location, and then hopefully by the end of the year, we'll have one in Louisville, Kentucky as well. Wow. That's amazing. That really is amazing. How much of your success is your sauces? How much of your success is your rubs, your sauces?

I mean, that part was very extensive and it was like, holy shit, this is like, I really, like you could experiment, if you're on your own looking at this cookbook, it could give you a lifetime of stuff that you could make, really. I mean, just from that chapter, you're like, this is going to, this would take some time to get through. Yeah. Well, that's another big fun thing about barbecue is that you can really, like, in our book, there's so many different recipes and things that we encourage everyone to cook and to try.

Yeah. But just like Italian grandma, you know, everyone has specific taste profiles and things that they love and enjoy. So we hope that the book in that particular section is sort of like a groundwork foundation to say, these are our versions of making a Carolina-style vinegar sauce or a Carolina mustard sauce or a Kansas City-style sweet, sticky sauce. But have fun with it. If you want a little bit more molasses and a little less brown sugar and just like tweak levels here or there and make it your own, that's what we're super and strongly encourage people to do. The sauce program for us has been something that's been really great for the restaurants personally. We've been working for many years trying to get our stuff packaged up in retail bottles.

Yeah. Retail and we get it done in five gallon jugs for restaurant use, which helps to keep our consistency across the restaurant locations of having our rugs and our sauces being bulk made commercially. So every location is getting the exact same stuff. just helps to make the ease of opening and cross-training and getting these restaurants up and running to be the same. Right. Would I be considered a cheater if I just bought all your sauces and then just concentrated on smoking it? You'd be an incredible human if you wanted to do all that. I think it's fabulous.

You go to pbh-Myc.com, click the shop button and you'll see all of our sauces available and rub is available on our website there. Or you can pop in any one of the locations and we have it there as well. What's the most popular sauce? I think probably our two-time world. champion Big Beach Barbecue Mustard sauce is probably the one we sell the most of. Yeah. But we also get a lot of people get excited about the Rob's Righteous Red, which is a little bit more of a non-conventional sauce.

It's got some really interesting flavor profiles and flavor notes to it while still being that sort of sweet, sticky Kansas City kind of red sauce, but with a little bit more sort of pizzazz behind it. Right. We also do a great sauce that was a play on one of Shane's favorite barbecue joints, really the one only barbecue joint that was down here growing up, an ode to blue cheese. front barbecue, but I'll let Shane share that story. Yeah, so it was a place in West Palm Beach where it was kind of the only barbecue.

And the story goes way back in the day, the guy used to cook in his front yard. And if you brought up an empty Coke bottle, he would fill up your Coke bottle of barbecue sauce. And then it turned into a very busy restaurant that unfortunately closed and had a fire and family arguments and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that was where my, I tried to replicate that barbecue sauce for years. Even in fine dining, I used it in fine dining. Wow. So, I like your story. I like the, I like the, I like the, I like the, I like the, um, hangover element to, uh, to the story. Really, because they really brought me back to when you're just, you're, you're having fun and you're getting a drunk. Trunk. And then that next morning,

You just need, what did you say? You just need a lot of meat, a lot of barbecue meat. Protein and caffeine. Yeah, just sodas. That was sunny's barbecue, Gainesville, Florida. Yeah, so great. It really, there are those moments when everybody has those things that they latch on to. A good piece of idea.

Protein and caffeine. Yeah, that's got to be on a menu somewhere. Definitely in the Florida location. Are you making fun of Florida? Florida people. I love Florida people. They know how to if nothing else they know how to have a good time. For sure.

That is 100% for sure. Yeah. Is it after Culinary Institute and going into barbecue do you feel like if you had just slid

straight into barbecue it would have been a different experience? like you bring so many, so much knowledge to this world. I guess my question is, did it improve everything? Like, is that why you were able to start scoring at these competitions really early? Because you had a little bit more of a working knowledge of what needed to be done. I would say, yes. I think there's two paths within the barbecue world right now in the day and age.

it's either a generational thing where my dad's dad's dad barbecued and passed down we might have a barbecue restaurant in the town that we grew up in that's just been there for the last hundred years and it's just part of that culture and the lifestyle which is beautiful and romantic and amazing and these are some of the guys that we've had a chance to learn from that arguably make some of the best barbecue on the planet yeah or there's the path where you go and you're you become a classically trained chef or if you're not going to culinary school you're working your way through a hard-knock school of just restaurant to restaurant and you one day say, hey, I got this bug like so many of us get. And having that culinary knowledge, I think certainly helped me personally. Yeah. Understand the whole processee behind like what low temperature cooking involves and how meat reacts and proteins react to all that kind of stuff. Right.

I certainly think it helped me a lot to learn it much quicker than most, but still it's one of those things where the best way to get better is just to practice and continue to do over and over and over again, regardless of how much experience you might have prior, because there are some things that are very unique to barbecue that require you actually just get yourself in the pits. Right. Like what? What do you mean? Just the feel of it. Like in order, like the best way to tell when a rack of ribs is done is by feeling it. Like to know that if those bones are starting to wiggle or if the rack meat starts to pull apart and give it gentle pressure, you know it's cooked. I mean, You can train somebody and give them a very sort of specific idea of having a digital instrument thermometer is probably the number one most tip that I give to give people the most, you know, best way of knowing when their barbecue is cooked or when it's ready to be wrapped or when it's still raw kind of thing.

But just being in there and, you know, it's that famous quote from the Matrix, I think it was. There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. Sometimes you actually have to be within that area to really. wrap your arms around it completely to just do it exceptionally. Right. To know if it's ridiculous. No, if it's ridiculous for sure. I like that. Good. So tell me about your head right now.

I mean, you have, your restaurants are back up. You've got this amazing cookbook that's going to help spread the word. I mean, really, this is going to be successful because it's just, it's like a Bible. It really is. It's not just, you know, there's, there's times where you get stuff and you're like, oh, there's a couple of recipes in this. This is one that's going to have like lots of sauce marks on it and stuff and stick around for people. So we want.

Yeah, it really. It's going to be like, it's going to be like that. But where is your head right now? I mean, this is a stressful business. You've got, you've survived the pandemic. You're poking in and opening up this spot. When does this spot open? It's open.

Oh, it's open. Yeah, tomorrow night it's our grand opening. Holy cow. Okay. So Matt and I were arguing about that. that before we got on the, don't open it. Discussing. Discussing.

Discussing if you were going to open or not? No, just find our importance of what we're doing. Yeah. It's a new system here for us, what we're doing. So yeah. There's a little bit of experimentation going on, if you will. Okay, that's a good way to put it. But we're, you know, it's trying to get it all squared up.

Yeah. How do you both, how do you manage the stress of this business? This thing that you're doing right now, and this is, this is a very, this is a big moment if you're having your grand opening tomorrow. And you got all these other things going on and you got your online business. And how do you not kill each other? And how do you manage the stress? Because there's the joy of cooking that got you into it in the whole beginning. And now it's running this giant monster.

How do you keep the joy while you've got all of these zillion decisions to make on a daily basis? The first and foremost is we love, we love doing what we do. We love, we love cooking. We love putting smiles on people's faces. I genuinely love this human being sitting next to me. He's one of the most talented chefs I've ever had the pleasure of working with and knowing. And I'm always learning something new from him every single day. So that always keeps it fun.

Yeah. But you're right. I mean, the restaurant industry is filled with stress. It's filled with anxiety. It's filled with uncertainty. It's filled with lots of things that could go wrong. But at the end of the day, if you're able to sit on the one foundation of we're doing this, because we love to do it and we're doing it to put smiles on people's faces and make them happy through our art and our craft of what we're really proud of and what we do.

I think the rest of the stuff sorts of fades away and ends up falling into place through good leadership and the good programming and the good experience of the team that we have behind us. Yeah. But for me personally, I manage my stress probably similar to most where I like eating junk food like cookies and Swedish fish and just like hugging my kids. makes, my wife makes me a bad sort of stress melt away. So I'll go home tonight. I'll get home probably around 11 o'clock at night, maybe a little later. And if my kids are sleeping and my wife should sleep, I'll probably sit on the couch, have a couple cookies, glass of milk, and just think about what I'm doing tomorrow. Oh, that's awesome. Good perspective. I like other things. Yeah, what do you do? He has a brown drinker. I like that brown wine. I like, I like whiskey, a bourbon nerd. Oh, yeah.

I'm like red wine. I'm a red wine nerd. I'm a wine nerd, period. Yeah. What reds are you drinking now? I had a really good burly, cabernet souvenir last night. That was fantastic.

Nice. And we had, they had the liquor store when we were kind of getting stuff to test for the restaurant, had Ingle Nook on sale, which I was like, whoa. The good Ingle Nock, not the cheap end.

Yeah. I bought some of those. I like, I like Callie Caps. I like bigger wines. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, those are good. And you can dip cookies in them. Yes, you can.

Yeah. Not a lot of those are doing that either. Loven Santo and Biscotti. Time me up. I would, or Cantucci, however you are in Italy. One thing that, you know, it's a funny story. It just happened the other day.

The way that Matt and I worked together is there is definitely a really great chemistry. We both have been doing what we've been doing for a very long time. That makes it easier to work with people. But we had to go do a cooking demo in Washington, D.C. We tried to switch some flights around to come home early. And we got to Atlanta and our flight got canceled. And I was magically able to book a rental car. And we drove home from Atlanta to West Palm Beach.

So we were awake for 30-some hours. hours each. We didn't kill each other. We bought a we bought a hundred dollars worth of snacks. Nice. And we got in a car, drove for nine hours. That is true. The cashier at the cookie market looked at us like what? How many people can do that, right? There's like husband and wives that can't do that. Oh, man. Absolutely. There's mountain deep, Diet Coke's talkies. What else will we get? A hundred dollars worth of crap gets you home. Derrick. That's amazing.

I got my Twizzlers. I was happy with those. I always say that. That's always a great way to know whether or not this is a relationship that can go the distance. Just travel. Just travel with that person. This is not the first time that kind of stuff is happening. Yeah.

Yeah. Much better driver than me too. So he always likes to drive. Which is great for me because I'm happy to top with me and play my candy crush. Yeah. My brain for a moment. We're actually like two old, like an old. couple. Yeah. Just kind of picking at each other, you know exactly what each other's shortcomings are.

I'm like, what are you doing? Oh, my God. Well, this is very exciting. I thank you so much for being here. The book, also, the photography in it, a shout out to the photographer. Shoutouts to Ken Goodman, who is our photographer and our food stylist Katie Seleo and Anthony Contrino and our writer, our writer, Judy Choate. Yeah. Just putting together this really special book that we're, I mean, look at that. How cool is that picture? God, that picture of the fire and the smoke and the wood.

Oh, my God. Yeah. That's our good friend John Morgan sounds too. Yeah. He gets to use his collection of smokers. Oh, really? He's got a collection of smokers. A collection of them, like 40 plus smokers.

Oh, my God. See, this is it. This is the problem with this whole thing. Yeah, you get the blog. And then the next thing you know, you end up having 40 smokers. He also created a television show around Bartakue. Yeah. He gets first looks at a lot of those things.

Yeah, he can write it off. Well, this is very inspiring. I think as I'm rolling into the weekend, you've given me a lot of little baby steps, which, again, I do hesitantly because I know this is going to be very addicting. I wish you all the luck in the world, the new spot. Thank you so much.

Get back to it. I hope everything goes well. Enjoy your big cabernets and your big cookies. I shall. We shall indeed. And thank you. I hope you survive. And maybe we can run into each other in New York sometime.

That would be... I love that. Please let us know if you're ever around. We'd love to show you the spots. All right. That would be great. Good luck. All right.

Thanks so much for probably. Have a great day. All right. You too. We'll see you again. Bye bye. All right, everybody. There you go.

That's perfect timing for the summertime, right? get yourself some mesquite chips, build up something in the yard, get a smoker, get your little Weber. It's funny, after I, after that we did have the interview and I was in, where was I, I was in like a supermarket kind of an area. Oh yeah, just like a pavilions, which is a, I don't know if it's nationwide, but out here, just a regular supermarket. And they had tiny webbers. And I was like, oh, they're on to it. They know. I could just get that. and put that on the side and that. So I hope you do it.

I hope you participate. Get the book. Look it up. Just get it. Just keep it handy. And when the inspiration hits you, you'll get it. And also go to their website at Pig Beach Barbecue and pick up their sauces and stuff. Because, you know, like I said, sometimes you just buy stuff that other people made.

Sometimes you make it yourself. Either way, enjoy your summer. Keep listening. Keep passing on and liking and doing. all that stuff that you're supposed to do to support the podcast. You guys are the best. We'll see you next week.