Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 24 - Jonathan Waxman

Episode Date: October 20, 2020

The great Jonathan Waxman stops by to talk about his lifetime of breaking bread and The Barbuto Cookbook, that puts his California-Italian style from his West Village restaurant right into your hands. It's time to eat!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. I'm Tom Papa. Thank you so much for being here. We have an amazing show for you today. The incredible chef, Jonathan Waxman, is going to be on the program. He's the founder of Barbudo. in New York and has a new cookbook with a Barbudo cookbook, which is just released. And this is the, this is like the way you want, or the way I wanted breaking bread to go.

What other podcast goes from amazing, hilarious comedians, insane people like Joey Diaz and Duncan Truzzle, and then brings in a Jonathan Waxman to. show you and share with you the real joys of amazing wine, amazing cooking, amazing restaurants, amazing culinary history. And the one crossover I would have to say is that I'm really trying to find the people that are good souls, people that you want to hear from who are exciting, who you can just tell from their reputation out in the world, are good people. And everybody who meets them always has something good to say. They've come with great stories and great history and great passion for all things that are comedic and all things that are cooking and celebrating

our lives together. And this is a good one. Make sure that you subscribe to the podcast. That's always helpful. Tell your friends about the podcast. Leave reviews that are positive for the podcast. Subscribe on YouTube as well. It all helps. helps to keep us going and spread the word and what I hope continues to be. Just a fun mission of celebrating all good things. So let's get started. Please welcome the very talented Jonathan Waxman. Thanks for doing this, Jonathan.

This is very exciting. I like to like that. I have wine next to you. Yeah, I know. I have a sponsor Wine Access. and I just keep the bottles with me. I had this last night. Good for you.

Yeah, it was such, so nice. I also check this out. I don't know if you can see it. Can you see my painting up there? Oh, yeah. That's nice. It's the Bianco. Yeah, I love.

Chris is my... Danapoli label. I love Chris. I'm actually trying to get him. to give me some of his products so I can label it myself and just steal it. Why not? I mean, listen, if you're going to steal your mouths to steal from the best,

let's face it, right? Yeah, I have, man, I have so many, I have so many questions because, well, first of all, thanks for doing this because it's, my whole, this whole show is about sitting down and breaking bread with people and learning about each other and becoming friends through that process. And, I mean, that's your,

your whole life. And your new book, the Barbuda cookbook is so good. I went through it last night, read it. And it was one of those like weekday nights where you figure, I do most of the cooking for the family. And it was like, you know, we'll just crank something out. And by the end of going through it, I was full on wine bottles open, making my own croutons off of the sourdough and a full rigatone meal. It was on a Wednesday. You know, to me, you know, when I grew up in Berkeley, California, and my parents, my mother was some beds guy

and my father was in the Bronx. And they had that, you know, that New York sensibility about going out to eat, but also cooking at home. And, you know, when I started, you know, I was a musician for a long time. I transitioned to being a cook. You know, that, that, those, childhood memories just popped back in my head about, you know, my grandparents had a ranch,

they had a chicken ranch with a vegetable farm up in Sonoma. Wow. You know, my dad loved to cook. My mother was a really good cook. You know, it really, that's not so really sticks with you. You know, it's really, it's pretty, pretty amazing. It's powerful. You know, I, when I met my wife, she was a vegetarian, and I was like getting off meat for a little bit. So I was kind of vegetarian, too, when we first met, and she always tells this story how I duped her

because she met this vegetarian guy. And then it took one walk into an Italian deli. And with all the provolone and this stuff hanging off the thing, and just the smell of it, my whole childhood just rushed back. And I left there with just meats under all arms. But to deny that, like to deny that would be to deny my whole life.

Yeah. I mean, I think at the bottom line, everybody has to understand that we're omnivores. And we're designed that way. We're designed to really survive by be able to eat almost anything. Yeah.

So I think that's the remarkable thing about us. I mean, think about the first person that ate an artichoke. I mean, that's a crazy person, right? Yeah. Or I was the first person that ate an oyster. Or, you know, all those really crazy weird things

that we now just take for granted. You know, like, I don't know what cauliflower used to look like, you know, 100,000 years ago. They probably were pretty weird looking, you know, it's like a triple brain is down on the ground. So what do I do to know how to make, oh, just snowing the fire, fire. Go everything in the fire. Yeah, let it go. So what was the cooking going on in your house? If both your parents were cooking, were cooking.

Yeah, so it's funny, you know, I'm a, I just did a TV show with DiBiari and it was a, it was a holiday. Jewish holiday Hanukkah thing hasn't come out yet but it will come out and one of the things we talked about was Kugel and everybody in the show freaked out about Kugel

and I love Kugul growing up and I realized that all the other Kugals in the world must be terrible compared to my mother's. My mother made this Kulul that was, I have to tell you Tom, this is how she did it. And I'm just, but I'm turpulating because I don't have the real recipe

card. So he would cook egg noodles and cook them until they're all the way cooked and then chilled them. And then she would toss them with egg, egg yolks, butter, uh, sauteed onions and olive oil,

put it into a pirate's pan and bake the hell out of it. So the outside was super crusty and the inside of terry was, was creamy and delicious. I've never had, that was what I thought cuckoo was. Then people tell me they put corn flakes on top and they put all kinds of crazy sugar and fruit. And I said,

What? That's not Google, according to me. So I had a good upgrade, you know? I'll tell you one thing, Tom, so Tom, when I was about 12, my dad goes, I want to cook, it was wintertime in Berkeley. And I want to cook a steak. So he went to the market and he bought up a big chuck steak. You don't really have those anymore, but there's a big chuck steak.

And he made a marinade. Who made marinade in 1968? Anyway, so he got the blender and he put sherry and olive oil and onions and garlic. And he buried up. this marinade. I'm like my eyes are this big and he put it on the steak and let it marinate and the fridge rate for three days and then the fireplace

in the living room he built a brick sort of kind of a little place to rest and he took an oven rack out of the oven put it over the brick, fill the fire and he grilled that thing. Honestly, can you to this day I haven't

tasted anything better in my life. Oh my God. That is amazing. This is amazing. This is another crazy thing my mother did. My mother was in love with ethnic food. And she loved going to Mexico. They used to spend lots of Mexico. One day, she comes back. She had this crazy wooden bowl and these Aztec and sort of salad utensils.

She said, you can make Caesar salad. I got taught by this guy in Tijuana how to make his called Cuba salad. So she gets a recipe out and it was the egg yolks and the Parmesan, the garlic and everything else. This, we're talking in 1961. Yeah. And, you know, she chopped Romaine let us up. I think Romaine those days was much better than this now, by the way.

Oh, really? So that's kind of what I grew up on. That's amazing. That is a totally different thing. I actually, during the, during the pandemic, I was listening to a story on maybe the daily or something. And the woman was talking about all of her grandmother's recipes.

And she's thought, well, at this time, when we've got the time, and we are all doing more cooking, I'm going to dive into those recipes, not realizing that her grandmother's recipes were like Campbell soup and some ricks crackers. Like they were just feeding people. They just needed three meals a day. So they weren't, it wasn't as thoughtful and like this, we all break it out and get the, it's a lot more in depth for your parents to be doing that.

That was ahead of their time. But I will say to my grandmother who had a chicken farm in Sonoma, there's a whole, this whole community of these Jews that moved from New York to Sonoma. in late 40s. I mean, they had chicken fun. But he used to laugh about people because I said, my grandmother killed chickens twice. Once when she bought them in the second time when she cooked it,

and she was like the worst cook in the world. My grandmother was so bad. My mother's mother, but my father's mother who live in New York, and I didn't really see very much more like we were, you know, coast apart. Every time I ate her food, it was remarkable. More remarkable.

I mean, you know, like, things like brisket with Kasha Bonichka. And, you know, I fell in love with, you know, buckwheat, buckwheat kernels and noodles. And it was done in a way that I taste it right now. Yeah, God, it's amazing. I had the same thing. I had one grandmother that was horrible cook and one who was like the classic Italian, like, dialed in.

But it's funny, even like from the grandmother that was the bad cook, she would serve me lunch, which was a horrible sandwich, like on white bread. but she would always put a pickle on the side. And I was like, and that like, it was so meaningful that somebody was thinking enough to give me a pickle with my sandwich that it's still, she still gets credit. Yeah. I think those, those, that Proustian style food memory is so important for everybody. Yeah. Good, bad, or otherwise.

I think bad memories actually are more interesting than the good ones in some ways because it prevents you from pursuing that. That avenue. Well, it's kind of interesting because the menu at Barbudo and the cookbook that people can see in the cookbook, it kind of has this Italian roots to it, but it's more than that. You definitely can tell even just from the beginning of our talking here. There's a lot of different influences. If you're coming from like Brooklyn and the Bronx and Berkeley, and then we didn't even get to where you are educated in all this stuff beyond

that like you could tell there's like this you've got this kind of a root but there's it's unique in its in its expanse thank you you know i've been very lucky because you know i went you know after i was a musician i went to cooking school in paris and i was very lucky to do that and um you know being in paris in the 70s was a remarkable place my god god i um it it it was time when you know i knew that chefs were going to be important because, you know, the Perry match in their big magazine. When I was in school there, I got a copy and there was in front of the Eiffel Tower, there was Paul Bouce getting this award from Valerie that started to staying. And all these other chefs, his buddies were behind him.

And I realized something about this. Something's going to happen with chefs. And it hadn't happened in America yet. But I kind of knew that maybe something might like, might happen like that. Right. A boom, you know, I came back to America in the late 70s and I started working in Napa Valley at Dman Chandon. And I worked at Chez Panisse. I was very lucky in my career. But, you know, all of a sudden, a lot of Americans, my age, younger, older, whatever, started

doing what I did, going to cooking schools or going to working in restaurants and learning about food. And it really was the renaissance of food in America in a lot of ways. Yeah. It was a really, it was a huge food movement. And then of course, TV just exponentially change everything. Yeah, yeah. That was, that was a big part of the whole puzzle. Oh, for sure.

I mean, then it just went to these heights that are just insane. But when you were, so when you go back, I want to, I want to lead up to you coming back in that vein meeting Alice. But when you, when you decide that I'm going to go, I'm going to go to school in Paris and learn how to cook. That's a pretty big shift from, right? I'll tell you exactly what I had. I'll tell you for the short story.

So, you know, I was a musician. I was a trombone player and trombone players in the 70s. Listen, disco had happened. Trombones weren't necessary. I had a friend who had the trombone when we were kids, like third grade. And that poor son of a bitch had to carry that to school every day. And so my dad, who's this very funny guy,

he goes, you know, son, it's time for you get a real job. What do you mean? So he said, he just writes a telephone number on a matchbook,

hence to me. So I called the guy, I said, okay, what kind of sales job? Is it insurance? Is it shoes? He says,

no, it's a sales job. Just come see me. So I ended up at age 24 becoming a Ferrari salesman. And not kidding. And the guy who owned the Ferrari dealership's wife was a big booty. This is we're talking about

1974. And she's the one that got me to go to cooking school in San Francisco. And I went to the school in San Francisco, this wonderful woman at Tombury Cooking School, Mary Risley, wonderful woman who's retired now. And she, unbeknownst to me, sign me up a cooking course in Paris because she thought that I had some talent.

And then she sort of cajoled me into finding the cash, $6,000, Tom, $6,000 for a year. That was what it caught. And so I got the $6,000 to my parents, and I went to $3,000 in Paris. And Paris at that time was amazing on every level. So how old are you? You're like 25? I turned 26 the day I arrived in Paris. And I remember the meal I had.

I had confided canard and a bottle of color wine. And I was off the races. Oh, my God. Isn't that crazy story? Forget it. Forget it. That's so insane. I love the picture of you at 24, by the way, selling Ferraris to these rich guys. So, you know, Tom, you love this. So I had hair down to here and a beer down to here. And the guy, the old ship goes, you have to buy a pair of Gucci shoes. I said, what?

There were $100. I didn't have $100. I had to go out of the $100 to buy those Gucci shoes. But luckily, I sold some Ferraris and made some money, so it's okay. That's so great. Do you still love it? Ferraris. You were known for the blue Ferrari, right in New York. Yeah, I actually had two points out of blue one and a red one. But, you know, I love artisanal stuff, you know?

And, you know, those days, even then, Ferraris were still made by hand, you know? Yeah. And I think anything made by hand for me is amazing. That's why I think my love of food sort of came about was, you know, watching people do things by

hand. And, you know, I think that, you know, that's the greatest expression of humanity, I think, to be creative. You know, how you have your passion come out through your, through, you know, from your brain into something, something that you create, you know. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's amazing. There's nothing better when you meet somebody who's like really great at like one thing, like one little simple thing, like that they just are kickass at that and they're the thoughtfulness and that and that those people like,

The searching for it never stops. Never stop. You never perfect it. No. I'm in love with watchmakers, and there's a watchmaker in Switzerland that works. Now he's got a bunch of people that look at him because it's getting old now, and he realizes he's the last of those artisanal watchmakers. He does everything by hand.

But he has this glint in his eye, and he loves going to see what other people are doing. And if you watch videos of him walking around looking, looking, looking at other manufacturers, all these big companies that have all these billions of dollars to do stuff. And he's so intrigued by what they do. And he's so, he just loves watching other people. He's not intimidated by it. He's fascinated by a different approach to what he does. Amazing.

And that's why I think of my business, I'm so lucky because I had so many colleagues that do things so differently. I'm amazed by you give 10 chefs exact ham ingredients you get 10 really different dishes. Yeah, it's incredible. It is incredible. And you know it's incredible too. The success of Barbudo where the cookbook comes from, when you tell the story of it, it's very similar to the stories I hear of somebody having a hit TV show in that they were really good at what they were doing.

They were making their way. they had some misses and some, but something happens where you get all the right people, the combination of all the people that are involved in your case, the Somelier and Luis the chef and all these things kind of like, there's luck there. There's another element to it. And it's very similar. Like if a hit show when you talk to like Seinfeld, he can talk all about the practical parts of it. But then there's like this unknown. Yeah. That kind of creeps in. I think that you're so right. You know, I often say that, you know, that my world is a bubble.

It's my little bubble. And within my bubble, everything else doesn't matter. You know, that sort of time stands still outside my bubble, excuse me. But in my bubble, I control things, but I can't do it alone. You know, you know, restaurants are not, everybody says, well, did Jonathan cook my dinner night? Well, I kind of did, you know. But be truthful. I have a lot of people that work for me that either have a little bit of my DNA.

Yeah. They've learned from me and they've studied. But it's like that chicken on, I was talking about it on the chicken. And it's hard. It's like one of my greatest hits, right, Tom? Yeah. And if you get bored doing it, I said, absolutely not. Because number one, I'm, it's like chubby checker in the twist.

I don't mind here, you know, watching, you're watching Kevin Check and do the Twist. He's probably doing it for 60 years now, but it doesn't matter. He knows it's important for his career. Chicken's important for my career, but I want all my people to understand that it's important.

So they have to respect where I came from. Right. You know, and it's like Malcolm Gladwell says, you have to do something 10,000 times before you perfect it. That's a really hard thing to think about. Yeah. It's very difficult.

And I think, you know, for cooks, a lot of cooks want to go to cooking school, put it on an apron and become the chef on TV. Right. Well, that's great. It's a good aspiration. But it's toothfulness that you have to do things a lot of times. Yeah. You know? What was the biggest thing that you came out of cooking school in two parts of it?

mentally like the philosophy, but before that, the practical, the practical elements of what you learned. I'll say, there's a real poignant story. So I had this wonderful guy named Bernan Shum Brett. We've worked at Poonier in the 30s, who was my instructor. And he was just the rock at Gibraltar. One day, we were making puff pastry. And puff pastry is a difficult thing to do. And it's sort of contrarian. And it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's one of those, it's almost like alchemy. So we do it,

I rolled it out and I did all the stuff and I baked it and I had a puffed up and I'm like, oh my God. Good job. Do it one time. I try to do it four thousand times. And I said, okay.

And then one day I was, I was doing a class and Julia Child came into the school. Oh, and she wanted to come by and see what the students were. Because she had done it. the same style of thing back in the late in the i think 40s early 50s and she was going to the school and she walked over and i was cutting somebody in board she goes very nice nice skills jonathan and i was like okay julia tonylinson

you know but i'm in those kind of things stick with you and you know they're they're They're so great because they become part of you. And then when you're doing things badly and it happens all the time, you do things when you're tired or you're pissed off, you're just off the day. And you remember Julia Child saying, you know, and most things are so important. So important. And then when I was at shape and this is a terrible story, but it's true. Alice Waters asked me to make an artichoke suit.

She gave me this recipe It's an old She scoured old cookbooks And it was a recipe It was from the Medici times In the 16th century And so I made this soup And actually it was fantastic

Wow So she comes in And she tastes it She's really good She says well let me see How much you have And I shoulder around She goes

Well this is not going to last The whole night This is only not for 60 people We do 120 people a night I said well I did all the art show She goes No you didn't Did you do the ones

She pours to a shell like way up high that she stuck artichokes up there. The other ones, I said, okay, Alice. And then, of course, I had to ramble. And so, you know, and that's a good thing in a nutshell. You know, you have to be able to, number one, take criticism, right? However criticism comes about. And then you have to be able to spend on a dime and make it happen.

Because people are not going to wait for you. You know, because those customers are coming to drink, to eat that artichoke soup, They don't care that I didn't see the ones up in the shelf. And all that responsibility on your shoulders, it's heavy. Yeah. Oh, God, it's got to be. I mean, especially when you're trying to become great at something. And also, it's one thing like, you know, I love to cook and I'm always learning.

But, you know, you're doing one meal at a time and you just got three or four people that are eating it. It's like, and, you know, you could ruin the night for sure. But there'll be another night. they can't go anywhere else they have to come back but to do it like with all those people that are like getting in their car and coming to your spot

that's a lot it's a big responsibility I think but I think that's what keeps you on your toes yeah that and it always makes it fresh and always makes it different and it always feels different every night even though it's the same

physical space and that's I think I try to portray that in the Barbuda cook that all ingredients are different no matter what. Even flour, which you take for granted. You know, measured out each time because, you know what? It might be moisture.

It might be older. It might be a different manufacturer. You know, fish. Fish is always different. We just taste that. But an apple's not an apples, not an apple. So you've got to taste the apples to make sure that, you know, a lot of people, a lot of people, America cook with their eyes.

And they don't cook with their other senses. I think one of the senses we really don't use a lot. our ears. Like sauteing. Like no one knows what saute means to chop. No one. Right. Saté in French means a jump.

So when things are in a pan, you're cooking something that's sauteed. You want to literally see something pop up in the air a little bit. It's imperceptible. It's a 16 inch. If it's not popping in the pan, it's not sauteing. Now cooking in the pan. Interesting. There's lots of gradations of cooking in a pan.

You cook slowly. Right. It'll poach things, cooking in butter, cooking, olive oil. You could steam it. There's a myriad of ways of doing it, but saute is a specific task. And not paying to me was one of the most difficult things to learn. I struggled with sauteing for a long time. So many things got stuck to the bottom of the fan or, you know, you got too hot. It wasn't hot enough. And the little service, you know, you're trying to do things perfectly and you've got you've got to juggle 16 different things in the same time.

Yeah. Ain't nobody helping you. Right. There's no one there to bail you out. And so to me, that's what people have to understand about. What cooks do is so difficult, but it's so much fun too. And you can hear the saute? Is that with it?

We can hear the saute in the pan. You can hear it. You can hear the pop. Yeah. Sometimes it's weird. Like I can cross the room. I can hear something on the stove. Yeah.

Please come to a boil, right? Right. Yep. Absolutely. It starts cacking a little bit, the lid. Yep. Or, you know, there's always, all these different things that happen in the kitchen. You know, obviously, you know, it's a huge part of cooking.

Your teenage buds are a huge part of cooking. But, you know, to test the temperature of food, you could take a skewer and put it in a piece of meat in the oven. So we have these little needles in the kitchen. And we stick it inside, we leave it very. section and we touch it to the bottom of our lip. Right. Not the top or the lip, the bottom of the lip. Why?

Because that's the most sensitive part. But every parent that has a kid knows about how much milk, what milk's supposed to do, how much you give it to your kid. So we all learn these things. Yeah, yeah. We have them to cooking in a different way.

And I think, yeah. That's to me is, I love that stuff. Oh, it's amazing. I was, I literally, like I said, I was, I read your book last night and just went into the kitchen and started going to work. And I've been messing around with these sauces from Marcella Hazan. You know the Italian?

I love her. So great. And when you talk about the sauteing, like the base of her tomato and vegetable sauce is onion. And then she says you put the carrot in and then diced up carrot and celery just for about a minute, just until it's lively. There you go. Yeah. Right? Now, she has a much better way of describing it.

That's better than I can. Isn't that great? See, she is, there is, she and Juliana Buziani, Buzali were by two sort of cook, Italian cookbook mentors. Ah. Realized by him, I was very lucky. I had Maldra Vincente from this restaurant called Rex in L.A.

Uh-huh. He was long passed away. He was brother, his, his, his cousin was a, uh, cinematographer, Perlini. And Piero Savagio had Valentino. Wow. And those are my two L.A. Italian mentors.

Oh, my God. Those guys were fantastic. Oh, my God. They were, so, you know, I owe so much them. Mado was one of those guys. I said, the drink espresso doing it. I said, okay. So the reason the cup is so thick, I never thought about this.

Yeah. Because your tongue can take heat, but your lip can't. So you put the thick part to your tongue, to your lip, and you drink to be a special on Italian. Amazing. The culture that is so in love with everything about food

and beverage. Yeah. It's remarkable. I spent a lot of time in Piedmont in Alba and a lot of friends. I say with a man in Pia Bufo and it's Pio Chesiree Winery. And he

introduces me to all his friends and we get to go trouble hunting and all this stuff. But what's amazing, we go to other restaurants with him and people, you know, open up their kitchens and their, you know, their menus and stuff does. You know, it's such a treat for me. Yeah. You're seeing hundreds of years of culinary history and you're learning it.

You know, I've been going to Alabama for a long time and I'm still feel like I'm just scratching the surface. Ah, it's so crazy. Crazy. I want to put him to come. It was a frito. Meesto dinner, 24 courses, start to finish, from appetizing and dessert, all feet of meat soup.

Could you imagine that? And stuff like that is, it's so great. It's so much fun, you know? It's really great. Oh, that's insane. That is so amazing. Here's a question. So, you know, I'm reading her book.

I've got your book. I bake a lot of sourdough bread. That was like my, that's when this started. to like, I really started to like sit with people and really want to meet people like yourself and because I've been just doing it for years and it's just the same thing, the repetition of it, I just, I can't get enough of it. I feel like I'm just starting and I can't get enough of it and I'm just, you know, plotting, plotting along, but just enjoying the hell out of it. And then I'll look at, I'll look at, like, your book, like with these recipes, the ingredients,

you know, it's, to look at your chicken, the JW chicken and the in the book and be like, okay, I'm going to go make this. And then I go into my supermarket. And I always feel like you're just up against it. Like the ingredients. And Tom, can I just be truthful with you? When I started cooking 45 years ago, supermarkets were pathetic. Right.

They were honestly pathetic. Yeah. Your local butcher was amazing. Your local fishmonger, your local little groats. There's a place called Monry Market in Berk who I grew up still there. It's the greatest bonus market in America. And we can get a great start there. But now supermarkets are fantastic.

They're amazing. They really are. You know, amount of stuff they're important. But, you know, Gelsons and, you know, all those different things in L.A. You've got endless. The farmers markets are tremendous. Yeah.

You're so lucky. The Santa Monica Barber's market should get a Nobel Prize. But, you know, so you go get a chicken. And number one, the first thing you do is that you try to spend most money for a chicken. That's right. That to me is sort of a misstep. Secondarily, you look at the chicken. Doesn't look healthy. Right. You know, you know, and then you eyeball them and then a chicken, if it's too big, yeah, it's too small, yeah, like three and a half to four pounds kind of is the perfect size. Right. Three and three quarters, ideal. So you get a chicken. And here's the deal. Last time was

my 25th anniversary and we went, my wife and I went to John. George for lunch. We had a wonderful lunch, but then I wanted to cook for the kids, but they're raised home last night. So I just roasted a plain Bell and Evans chicken from Whole Foods. And so what I do is, I took that little plastic bag. I rinsed it off quickly and dried it. And this is all I did to come and let it sit for a half an hour. Right. At room temperature, put the oven, my little toaster oven. I'm talking my little toast on a little toast oven. A little breadville toast oven. and I put it to 450 degrees. This is the big part of the puzzle.

Now, my book, what I want you to do is cut the chicken in half to make it easier to cook and it gets crisp in its way. But for a simple roast chicken at home, and you've got a busy day, you've got family, all the stuff to do, take that roast chicken, you get a heavy castle. Heavy. I mean, in earthenware castle, but it's got an enamel to it, or metal, but where, and you just scoge it with all,

olive oil. Cut it well with all of all of all. Throw the chicken in on its back, you know, the wipes through the backstroke, and then put the chicken in there and spritz it with olive oil as much as you can. And then salt and pepper on top, fresh seed salt, fresh fat pepper, make sure you can put it nicely. And then you shake the roasting pan, shake it. You want to make sure it's moving that there's enough oil there and just put in the oven and you wait 15 minutes, go do whatever you want to do. Don't even look at it. Don't forget about it.

And then you come back and then you take it out of the oven and you shake it to make sure it's not stuck. Okay? If it gets stuck, you get a little spatula and loosen up. But shake it. And then you tilt it and take a spoon and all that olive oil and chicken smaltz comes out of it. And you kind of just sprinkle on top of the chicken,

put it back in and go away for 10 minutes. and do repeat that four more times right you'll be shocked how perfect you'll have the best chicken and it's that easy so simple it was so and cooking really is that simple yeah you break it down it's that simple and that's what the barbuda cookbook is trying to sort of portray it's things aren't that hard to do you know something's a little boreas I'm sorry to make a boulness sauce you can't do it in two seconds. Sure. Yeah.

Carbonara, you dice up with guancholy. You cook a little bit of olive oil. You break open two egg oats into a little bowl. You grate some cheese. The pasta. You put the guantali pan aside so it does not burn anymore. The pasta gets cooked. You take a little pasta water.

You put it in with the guantiali. You can pan up with that water. and then you add the egg guilt, let them in, and then add the pasta, little cheese, boom, you're done. That's it.

That's it. I know. It's amazing. You know what? And that's what I hopefully, I say this in the book the right way. And if I don't, people lambasking it and tell me how I did it wrong.

But I want people to take those restaurant-style dishes. Yeah. You know, and be able to cook them for your family. Right. And not sweat over them. Enjoy it. Yeah, exactly.

I know. The first time you go through you, there's like this painstaking, you don't want to screw it up, but you do have to let go. You have to. Listen, if you screw it up,

who cares? You dump it out and you order people. You know? Or you pull pizza out of the freezer. Who cares? I, I watched my daughter, who went to Princeton,

perfectionist daughter. Right. Like last night, she cooked a cake for us for our anniversary. And she says, Daddy, part of a cake.

I said, Let's taste it. It was the most delicious cake of brewing in my life. I'm not kidding. But she's still mad because part of it fell a little bit. I think people are very perfectionistic about things like that. That's great. But have a glass of wine first before you said.

I was going to ask you that question, actually. If you don't drink and cook, something's wrong with you. That's fine, too. You drink tea. That's another beverage. Yeah. Did you ever meet Jim Harrison? I was such a big Jim Harrison fan.

Me too. You know, that's a person that understood food culture. Oh, completely. He was such an amazing writer, but he also understood simplicity and understood that cooking for oneself could be amazing. Exactly. I love that about him. I thought that was pretty cool. So great.

But he does say that he would always save the drinking for, he wouldn't, he couldn't drink and start cooking. He had to wait until he had a handle on it. And then he would start his drinking. Well, you know, it's funny. I'm of two minds. If it's a big elaborate dinner and I might not drink at the beginning. Yeah.

But I always find myself, when I keep going to the picture at too many times, there was a bottle of parasol rosé in there. If I started to poppy to me, I got to open it up. What's your favorite wine? You know, that's the hardest question in the world. Somebody asked about my favorite white wine. And I said, I'm going to tell you what I had said to them. And then I really regretted what I'd say because there's so many other ones.

I said Shibli. Wonderful Shibli, like Davi So, Rabia, are some of the greatest. You know, even less than ones like Michelle and things like that. It's the greatest expression of Chardonnay in the world. Right. Yeah, but there's so many other great white wines out there. And then you start talking about red wines. You know, I always say, you know, and then I say, well, maybe there's a Shetnipa,

white that I really think is really special. And then also I realize it's what my mood is and what I'm eating and what time of here it is. And if I'm in a good mood, I'm a bad mood, if I feel cheap, I feel expensive, you know, Like for instance, red wine, I've rediscovered Bojolay. Oh, yeah. I'm in Ligal again, you know. Really? But Sagritino might be my favorite red wine to ever drink, you know?

Which one? Sagritino. Palobeo. It's fromumbria. Palobea might be one of the greatest winemakers that. And those wines are now getting trouble because I always say that I love Barolo. from Alba as well. Yeah.

But an old burgundy from, you know, a great producer. Then I started really screwing myself up. And then I said, from California, then I really like, you know, Zimphindels from certain producers. And I love cabernets that have just been third to the right degree. You know, so. Yeah.

Are there any minds you haven't mentioned? Then I thought, okay, a magnum of Chateau-Margot in 195, done. Perfect. You know. Yeah. A lot of it's to your memories.

Like the, if you have visited a place or if somebody shared it with you or if you know the story with it, it's just like that gives more meaning to it. 100%. You're so much. I'm actually starting a podcast with Marcus Samuelson. And we're going to,

we're going to delve into that from a cook's point of view. Right. You get to that subject. That would be great. inspiration, what are the passion, where do, where do all these things do your restaurant come from? Yeah. But as you go along, how does it, how does it evolve? Right.

What are your emphasis? You know, how do people, what happens with it? And I think that's the fascination to me about any, like what you do is, it's, you know, it's so hard. You know, what, you know, I'd love to, you know, ask you a million questions about how you get to, you know, the point where you're comfortable with doing what you do. Yeah. It's hard, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

It's so difficult. You know, it's like a shoemaker. Like, I always, like, how do you make a shoe? That's right. Yeah. I'll tell you, sorry, I got my hair cut yesterday. But my guys who've got to me forever? It's a real genius in her cutting hair.

He goes, who the hell cut your hair last time? Because it was cold, but I couldn't go to him. And he was angry because somebody cut my hair the wrong way. That's cool, right? That's the cool. That's the best. That is the best. you know here's something here's something in that vein uh in your book you talk surprisingly to me i don't know

if it's surprising other people but you really you really uh talk about how important soup is that you can really judge a place by the soup and that i always thought of soup as like something extra something thrown in something you but you were like no that kind of really shows the heart and soul of the place and and the people creating it so i'll tell you a story so when i was willing my wife much younger than I am in L.A. We had a date, and she calls me up to say, I can't make the date, I don't feel well. I really am sick.

I said, you know what, when I come over and I'll put you dinner. So, and she really had the blue, she wasn't feeling well. So I got a whole chicken, and I got a bunch of root vegetables from, I think from Gelson's actually. And I got ginger and carrots and root of vega and turn out. and onions and everything else, whatever house. And I made a little fast chicken sock

from the neck and the moon and all the little bits and pieces inside of chicken. And I trust the chicken up and I poached in this chicken stock with the vegetables about an hour and a half. Uh-huh.

And that's what I served for dinner. And now you're married 25 years later. So that soup sealed the deal. That's amazing. Well, talk about memories. Talk about your growing up. I mean, you know, if somebody fed you chicken soup when you were a kid, forget it. Yeah. I, you know, it's funny, I'm doing a project now with a company, and one of the things that I put on the menu was chicken soup. And they said, and all the chefs are going, yeah, yeah, it's like boring. I said, no.

Yeah. Perfect chicken soup is everything. Yeah. It's Jewish penicillin, you know? And, you know, The carrots have to cook perfectly. The peas have to cook. I put corn in because I'm from California. The chicken has to eat the right way. But the most important thing on the noodles, you can't put crappy noodles in chicken soup. They have to be beautiful and perfect.

And you've got to be able to slurp them. Right. They've got to be slurpable. You got to be slurpable. Yeah. And your muscles, like the one picture of this beautiful artwork in the book, too, that one picture of the muscles. and Mike, I grew up in New Jersey

and we'd be down to Jersey Shore and my father always was making muscles marinera and muscles muscles muscles. So as soon as I saw that, I was like, oh, I've got to make that one. You know, it's funny, when I grew up in California, there were mussels everywhere, we never ate them. It wasn't until I started working in restaurants

and started, I mean, actually, with the parents, actually, and started, you know, Muslims from Brittany, I'm sorry. Might be the greatest thing in the world, except there's these muscles from Washington, and state from Nova Scotia that parallel those

I mean, but I've had the Nova Scotia ones But you know, I didn't grow up with that style of cooking, you know, cooking seed food and red sauce, which you do in the East Coast. Yeah, yeah. I grew up more of a Genovese style in San Francisco.

And Genevazi is really you know, northern Italian cooking. And when I first got to New York and started going to restaurants that cook things to me, I just loved it. It was so Is that more lemon butter? Yeah, more lemon butter. Butter was a big part of the, you know,

blotless emphasis on canned tomatoes but fresh tomatoes. That's still, it was the king. And there's a great Laguerrean dish, which is you take tomatoes, Jersey tomatoes in the season, cut up a half, season them with salt and pepper, a little garlic and olive oil,

blast the crap out of them until they're just almost wilted, but not, but a whole in their, shape and you take pesto and you take those tomatoes and you mix them together. With pesto? With pesto and that's the sauce. And then you put cream beans and fingering potatoes

toss all that together and then you use this possible tropeier. It's a pasta. I don't know if you ever seen it. It's about that long and it's twisted. Oh yeah, I know what you mean. A little fliced it and it holds a sauce like no one's business. Oh my God. That sounds so good.

I've been on this. Oh, God, this is good. I'm going to be cooking again tonight. Oh, my God. You know, we have a, we have a mutual friend, Anthony, Anthony Giglio. Oh, Anthony is the best. And I said to, he was a really good friend of my cousins. Really?

We were, we would hang in New York, like in the 90s a little bit. And then lost touch with him. Every once in a while, like Facebook, we would just, and I was reading your book. And you mentioned him and his mother is to say. mother-in-law. Yeah. Because I've been on this, I've been on this, this is like kismate because I was on this, I'm on this tomato experimental hunt.

That's why I've got the Bianco tomatoes. I'm using Sento. I'm trying to figure out what's the difference between like the whole tomatoes and the crushed tomatoes. I'm just trying to dial in my knowledge of tomatoes. And then Anthony's mother-in-law is, who's big to me. You know, so one day, out of the blue, I think it comes by the restaurant. and he leaves me a package.

What is? It's his mother-in-law's canned, jarred tomatoes, both whole and chop. Uh-huh. Now I got so mad at my wife because I took it home and I

was saving it. And she, I come home and I said, where's the jarred tomatoes? She go, I made pasta today for lunch. I said, what about me? Luckily, she saved the whole tomato. So I was able to to taste of. They had a concentration to them

that no more jarring tomatoes is a real art, but picking them from the market at the right time as a real art, but growing them and then cooking them and then jarring them, that's the ultimate thing to do. And apparently she does bushels of them at harvest time.

So, you know, listen, you're lucky in California because you're going to get the best tomatoes. I'm sorry, you just are. You will. In California. Yeah, California tomatoes. There's something about the climate.

You know, when Italians came to California in the 19th century, they go, this is home. Because it looks so much like the coastal room in, you know, along the Mediterranean. Right. You think about it. And a lot of the things in California has, we had wild fennel. We've got wild onions. We've got, you know, our. chugs grow really well. Some of the best broccoli rob in the world grows in California.

So, you know, for it was paradise because all the things that they were used to at home, they brought cuttings with them, they brought seeds with them. They brought, I mean, all those guys, they brought those guys from like Madovi's ancestors brought, you know, grapes to them so they could, you know, scrape seeds so they could plant new vines. And that's right. had all those Italian varietals in Napa Valley in Sonoma. That's why when I was a kid, there was this restaurant, it was a restaurant you go to in Sonoma, where you go in, and the first thing you have,

you'd have a bowl of a burrito. And that's, everybody got it. And that was how you started the meal. And the six-course meal with, you know, salumi and, you know, the pickles and the cheese and the breadsticks and the, in the breadsticks and the pecacha, and then you go into your first course, which was some kind of, you know,

warm salad with stuff. And then you had the preemie with three kinds of pasta, and then they bring out the lasagna. And then, meat. Then you have a little drop of sorbet to clear your palate. And then you go into the main course, and then bring out these roasts and both together.

That's crazy. You know, but that was what the. time that's style restaurant was in in in in when I was a kid in up in nap in Sonoma and in San Francisco the other time style of restaurant was these Joe's restaurants I don't remember and you go and sit at the counter and a guy would take the water and then he cook your food right in front of you oh wow and the thing I remember there's little place little Joe's on Columbus in San Francisco and you said the counter I remember seeing the olive oil cans he got the gallon olive oil cans and they were squeaked by hand and they had a dent in

them, but the guy would hold them and dump them out. Oh, the coolest. Those kind of things are, I mean, there was a restaurant called, there's a restaurant called Vanessa that was on Broadway, the Al Swars and I used to go to. It's long gone now, sadly. And the guy would take your order and he'd grow your lamb chops and cook your pasta carbonara. Oh, God, the best.

Yeah, I never really connected the California and Italian thing. Of course. I mean, that's the same climate in a lot of ways. You've got the sea, you've got the mountains. Yeah. Well, I actually, my sister runs a nonprofit in New Jersey where she's converting. It's called City Green and she converting all of these abandoned farms and bringing them back to life and growing food for the inner cities in like Patterson and Passaic and all these kind of places. And my nephew is working.

He's the head farmer there. And he brought a huge thing of tomatoes down to the beach. And we were like, we were like the old country. We took the tomatoes. We had a big pot. We blanched them all. We canned them at the end. It was like a 12-hour process.

But it really was, I haven't even tasted them yet, but the process was so satisfying. Yeah, it's okay. You know, when I was a kid, smelling a tomato that you freshly picked. Oh. And the dust on it. Yeah. You know, it's hard to describe. It's hard to describe.

So, my, that's the thing like when you talk about the supermarkets, I mean, they're like, you say like Americans cook with their eyes. Like you walk in and you like see these things that look beautiful. But when then you smell them or taste them. Yeah. You know, they're not really as, they're not that thing like you get from your garden. No. And that, but it's tricky, you know.

Well, I don't, I think grocers are the unsungedom heroes of life. Because I don't see how they can possibly operate so many, with so many skews on. Oh, God. Yeah, for sure. So I have to hand them. It's remarkable. Yeah.

But I guess I only say because I get confused. No, it is confusing. And you bring up someone the most important thing about chefs and what discern good chefs from great chefs is editing. How you walk into a supermarket and you pick things and you try not to get too many things. Uh-huh.

You know, that was kind of the other people. The top chef, when I was on top chef, is how to limit yourself and not try to cook the kitchen sink. Right. You choose exactly the right ingredients to make the right. And don't let your brain go too far down that road of perdition and try to add things in that are going to get you up. And that's what happens. That's so smart.

You know, sometimes it's just about a tomato, garlic, olive oil. and you're done. Right. Sometimes if you go to the full Monty and you go like, you know, I want to do everything, you know. So, you know, it's really, I think cooking is such a lifetime fair. Right. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

But I mean, it's amazing how when you were describing making the chicken, when I hear people describing like making the best steak, it all is the same thing. It comes down to salt and pepper and the meat. all the people that are really passionate about it's good quality whatever it is here's my one question uh that's in your book that's there's a lot of different ways to do caccia pepe right and i've been messing with that for like the last two years and there's and there's a lot of different ways of doing it the way that i've been doing it is you have the pan and this is like a grown-up mac and cheese basically for uh for those who don't know and

you take the pan and you put it out and you put the crushed pepper in it with butter. Right. And you get that going. And then you add the cheese to it and a little pasta water. And you get that going in the separate pan. And then eventually you start bringing the pasta in and mixing it and getting down into that place where it's coated but not too clumpy and all the rest of it. But in your book, you basically take a bowl with all those ingredients, take the pasta, put it in there and just mix it up. So Moutaventente taught me how to make Caccio Pepe.

Because he goes, that's, if you learn how to becaccio Pepe, you're an unofficial Roman. Right. That's the litmus test. He said it's all about the pasta being cooked right. It's all about how much pepper and how much cheese. Right. So what he said, you have to, everything has to be ready to go. you have to crack the pepper.

Don't wait for the last moment because you'll screw up the pasta. You have to have the cheese right there, the butter, the pepper, and the pasta water. So you're thinking about you've got like five different items that all have to go together. So if you have different things, what's going to happen to the possible cool down too much? Right. You know what I mean? Got it. The possible pooled down too much.

And you're making life too difficult for yourself because you've got, you've got, you've got, Your, your provision is going to get, you know, you're going to, you start getting anxiety. You know what's going on around. So you put everything, and I do like things very simple. Yeah. I'm too dumb to like, get, get, get, but you're talking about those five ingredients. Right. Pasta, pasta water, black pepper, butter, pecorina.

Five ingredients. How do you merge them together? in the best way possible. And I think the way I described in the book, gets you the right thing, and heating the bowl up first. So if you heat the bowl up, so what I like doing is I like putting a little boiling water

in the bowl and let it sit. So when you cook your pasta, you have your, you have little ramekins and everything, right? You have your butter and ramekin, you got your cheese ramekine, your pepper, you're cooking your pasta.

You have a ladle for the pasta water, which is super important, right? Yeah. But your bowl is full of hot water that you can serve it in. And you got to make sure people have a table, too. They're not messing out of the pee-pee or some other, you know. The worst. Yelling for my daughter to come up 10 minutes later.

You know, with the time, say pasta weights for no man. So as soon as you know, you pull the pasta out and it's just about there, you dump the water out of the bowl, you dump all the ingredients in, you add your pasta water, then you pass it and pass it all together. And guess what happens? It becomes homogenous, that everything blends together perfectly.

And you control your environment. So much more simple. The way I was doing was like this obstacle course. Yeah, exactly. And I like solving problems like that. I think that's, to me, I'm pretty good at that stuff. Yeah. I watch cooks sometimes, you know, get muddled up, I think,

with all that stuff. And I think I want people to have fun cooking. I don't want it to be in store. Right. Exactly. No one wants to do it. Yeah. I know.

It's like when I was a musician, playing scales is a damn chore. And so one person taught me how to make fun of it. You know, yeah. They make them, make them, you know,

don't just play scales. You know, play them fast, play the staccato, play them up and off. You know, So have good. Don't, you know, mix it up.

Right. Yeah. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. Have a good time with it. Have that class. Have that class of Alperian. You know?

Yeah, right. Exactly. In the beginning of it all. Well, the book is so great. Congratulations on it. It's a nice thing. Now, before you go, everybody's got to get the book. It's just so, it's filled with so much great stuff.

And it's just a great read, too. I mean, just to see the history. you with Alice Waters and just, and my friend Anthony, by the way, who did not know he was in the book until I told him.

Oh, really? Yeah, he was very excited to hear it. But you, so what's the deal in New York? What's up with the restaurant? How are you feeling? This is probably in most insane year.

That's a whole podcast, how I feel about it. I'll make it sort of short and sweet. Okay. Trying to get Barbuda back to open. Okay. My biggest concern with my employees and safety, you know, I have to think about how I'm going to, you know, deal with all that. Yeah.

I think there's a consumer confidence issue with everybody in America, and I can't blame anybody. You know? Yeah. No. You know, we don't have a, we don't have leadership that has good answers. I'm sorry, that's the truth. No, it's the truth. And, you know,

confused. Somebody said to me one of my fellow restaurateur, and she goes, Jonathan, they should just make masks wearing a long and stop it already. You know? So simple. That's a simple. That's a simple thing that the COVID's not going to go away. So I'm hoping that we can open and do it the right way. Yeah.

And that'd be great. You know, it would be, I'm so, I'm ready to go to work. You know. Yeah, I can imagine. I know. It's the same as me. It's like our whole lives. I hate myself.

I don't want to see myself anymore. You know? I see much of myself. And I know. So I have a lot of people that I think, now the cookbooks out, I think people are, I got, they're on great barbuta's on the radar again. So. Yeah.

It's great. Yeah. It's a nice little thing. Like I'm in the same boat, you know, with live performing. And it's, we're all doing these other little things. And you, you miss it. What's that? You miss it.

Oh, immensely. It's your soul, right? A hundred percent. It's like, I didn't take more than a week off until March for 20 years. Yeah. Crazy, right? Crazy. So these things, and I think the cookbook is kind of like that, it's a little reminder that we're going to get through this and get out of it, and we'll be going full bore as soon as we're able to. I think human beings are number one adaptable. that time does cure all ills. And I think people, there's a lot of smart people out there, Tom. There's a lot of smart people.

And if we listen to smart people, we follow their direction. The smart people are very calm. They're not freaking out. So they're not freaking out. Why should we? That's a great point. Great point. Well, look, I got to say this is so amazing.

And I'm going to. I'm going to find you and I'm going to sit down and we're going to drink a real bottle of wine together and continue the conversation. All right, Jonathan. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Appreciate it. All right. Take care of yourself.