Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 37 - Binging With Babish aka Andrew Rea and Joey Diaz

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

Super Fun with Andrew Rea, the creator and host of the YouTube sensation Binging with Babish and the Babish Culinary Universe and we grab a quick bite with Joey Diaz, who is living in a New Jersey food paradise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, it's how we go. 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 so much for coming along.

We have another great show for you today. We have the great Andrew Ray from the Babish Culinary Universe. you know him from his amazing, amazing, literal universe that he's carved out for himself on YouTube. He has this great sense of humor, sense of style, sense of education. His videos are, they're just amazing. And I can't wait. I'm so excited that we got him. This is a big get for us here at Breaking Bread.

This is somebody in the food world that I've been, checking out for a long time and that he's going to be a part of our little, uh, conversation. Come on, come on. I told you this was going to be good. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you, as always, for your comments. It's much appreciated and help spread the word to all of our good friends out there in the, uh, breaking bread world. You guys kick ass and, uh, continue also sending all of your attempts at bread and your successes and failures and any kind of, uh, any kind of, uh, any kind of encouragement you're giving me also. Look, we're all learning as we go along. And this is the time. I literally was saying last week, you know, to dial back on the food and the joy and the

drinking just because the holidays are over. It's not happening this year. It's the pandemic. I can't even leave my house right now in Los Angeles. You think I'm going to stop enjoying those two things? Then why torture ourselves? So keep it. enjoying yourself. What have I been eating and drinking this week? Holy Toledo. Well, like I said, I haven't stopped. I haven't stopped the drinking and enjoying myself. I'm not going at a holiday pace, but I will say that I did this thing where I left the bottles on the island in the kitchen, where because there was, I just like seeing the label, because I wanted to tell a friend about it, if it wasn't completely done.

And in very short time, there was quite a collection of bottles on the island in my kitchen. And I realized this isn't just, this isn't ornamental. This is what has gone inside my body during this time. Mostly red wine, all red wine. one glass of white. And that's the little tale I'll tell you right now. Not a fan of white wine. I know.

Some people say you don't get it. I do get it. I've had really great white wine. Nice re-slings, different things from France and Pinocrigios from Italy. I, yeah, I know. And at the right moment with the right fish, I guess, I'll open it and be like, yes, this is nice during the middle of the day, a nice refreshing. Does it say I don't have a sophisticated palette? Maybe, maybe, maybe I'm just a rube.

But there's more soul in red wine. There, I said it. More soul. It'll take you to higher places, different places. It's, I just, I just like it. But I got a bottle of white from, uh, uh, somebody during the holidays. And it was a decent bottle, I suppose. It was in the refrigerator chilling as it should. And I was like, my wife, my wife, as much as I love red wine and she does too, he, her hangovers a little headachey. Red wine isn't great for everybody. So I threw out a sign of compromise. And I said, hey, how about this bottle of white, let's do that today. That'll be nice. Yeah, that'll be fun. And I went to get the white wine glasses out of the cabinet, which again, you know, a nice red wine glass. Nice shape,

little weight to it. Nothing too gigantic. I don't want to go to that crazy trend. But just there's something, there's a little more around this. You wanted to open up more, so it gives you a little more surface area it gives you. It's something you can hold in your big mitts. But now I've got to go through the cabinet and figure find the white wine glasses. It's not hard to find, but I found a bunch. And you can tell my disrespect for the, for the vintage, because it's just every white wine glass is a different size and a different shape. And it's, it was upsetting to me just as a person. As a grown-up, you should have your glassware in order. and with my reds I do.

I know I've got four of these and I've got four of those and two of those and the white totally neglected. And again, am I willing to learn? Sure. If you want to write in and be like, Papa, I'm telling you, you're wrong. Try this. Do this. I'll listen. I'm not closed off.

I may be ignorant, but I'm not stupid. So I made a comment that maybe we should get some more glasses if we're going to do this from time to time. It's just, my wife said, oh, who knows, who cares? I'm like, oh, our guests will. It's just, I don't know. It's just like order. I like, let's do things right. We're in an age now.

We're, you know, when you're in college and you're just breaking stuff out and breaking, you drink out of jelly glasses, out of mason jars. You don't really care. And there's a lot of part of me that doesn't at this point. But that's how you live back then. You've got so much going on in your mind as a young person about how you're going to survive, what you're going to be, where you're going to go, what your hormones are doing to you. You just wine glasses, getting them all to match? No.

I can't even yell at my kids all the time when they just, they don't even see the disaster they're creating in the kitchen. They literally don't see it. I'll be like, can you clean up? the dishes and they'll go and take the one spoon that they used and then leave everything else. And from my point of view, it's like, don't you see the rest of it? I, of course, I would see the rest of it. Bella, obviously, she would see it. She's very angry. But they don't see it. And why should they? They've got enough going on. Doesn't mean that I can't yell and scream about it. But I, I digress.

as an adult, I figure we should get the right glasses. So I pull out the two closest. They're nice. They're whatever. I pour the white wine in. And I go to sit down and within two seconds, I smashed it. I, I, this is, your subconscious sometimes goes to work. When you think you're playing along and you're being a good guy and you're pouring

this white wine and you're going to spend that moment with your wife and do the right thing. And within a second, I smashed that glass on a marble coffee table full. I didn't even take a sip. It was all on the rug, on the couch. And this glass shattered. Like it knew I was coming to kill it and it decided, well, I'm going to make the biggest mess I can just so you know that I know how much you didn't even want to take me out of the cabinet. I'm still, this is, I don't know, five days ago, and my wife was just in there and just found another piece of glass in her foot. We have vacuumed, we have swept, we have used rags, we just have gone to town.

And you know what? At the end of the day, it just means white wine's stupid. Yeah, yeah. If that was red, I would have cherished. it, we've taken care of it, I wouldn't have put it on that slippery coaster, I wouldn't have, I don't even know if it was a foot or a arm. I don't even think I did it. I think I did it with my mind. And it slid right off and just smashville, not with red. That would have been just cherished. I don't think I've broken a wine glass, a red wine glass in my life. I don't think it's ever

happened, and it never will. I've broken martini glasses. That is a hard thing to find. To find a good classic, not too small like it was in the 1930s, not too big as it is in 20, from 2010 on with these giant goblets to find that sweet spot of what a proper martini should be. I'm telling you, I've gone to antique stores looking for them. If you have an idea out there, my friends, of a good martini glass, of the size I am talking, not too big, not too small, something ornate, not too heavy, not too big of a stem. If you can find that for me, I will be your friend for life. And if you sell them, I will buy all that you have.

I found something that had the top part of the glass, like where you actually put the liquid that was the right size, and it's got these big, heavy stem that kind of zigzags. You don't need that. A zigzagged stem. It's like a, it's like an 1980s. mystery thriller. If that makes sense to you, we should be friends.

We have an amazing show for you today. We have Andrew Ray, who is the creator of the Babish Culinary Universe. So incredibly, incredibly slick, cool, funny. He's such a... What he's done is what everybody on YouTube. YouTube wants to do at some point, to actually go into a space where other people have lived and you create your own thing. I just can't, I just can't say enough. I look at it and I think, oh, that's, you look at it and you think that's what I should be doing. That's how I should be.

This is how all food shows should be. He gets right to it. You learn something. It's shot in this very cool way. He thinks about every detail. You literally learn, but he's not, there's no arrogance to him. There's no, like, I'm going to, I know more than you. You always feel like he knows a little more than you, if that makes sense, which makes it so watchable. He's got, from the Babish Culinary Universe, I mean, he does not need our promos. This is purely out of fun, and I'm just doing this out of respect because he has like 8 million people that watch his videos for good reason every week. Binging with Babish, just hilarious. He takes these great meals sometimes that you've seen, sometimes that you haven't from television shows and from movies, and then he recreates them

for us. He also has Stump Sophia on his network, yeah, Sum Sophia, which is this great, She's part of the, I think she comes from the Bon Appetit universe. Then he has his basics with Babbage, which is just telling you straight up how to make stuff. I mean, look, anybody who makes the crabby paddy supreme in the real world from SpongeBob is somebody you need in your life. John Favro is a huge fan. I'm a huge fan. I can't wait to talk to him.

And then we're going to take a quick bite. as I record this, I don't know who we are going to be calling this week. But by the time it comes out, it will be posted and you'll see it. But right now, I don't even know who we're going to have a quick bite with. But we will be calling and seeing one of our friends and seeing what they're eating and what they're doing. But right now, let's spend some time with the very talented Andrew Ray. First of all, I'm going to start off the interview by complimenting your glass because I like that. I like that style glass.

I love how it kind of tapers down to the triangle. Yeah, exactly. The swered off edges, yeah. Schultz Weissel. Yeah. What's that? Schultz Weissel, the good, the German stuff. It's so good.

You're so, you're so dialed in. This is what I love about. Your whole thing. Really. You, every detail, I was just telling my producer, I said, It's so funny. I'm like literally before the interview. Like, is the light okay?

Does this blown? Is it too screwed up here? I'm like, we're doing all these like tiny little tweaks to the guy who has figured out every little detail. Is that just in you? Or is it something that just you've developed over time? Well, I went to school for film. And as much as I appreciate and take that compliment to heart, you might see a ghostly orange glow here. and that's because there's a heat lamp, right?

Because my entire heating system isn't working. So don't worry, this is a veneer. This is just a facade. But I appreciate this. Well, it's so nice to meet you, really. I'm a big fan of your whole universe now. It's gone to that level, where you are no longer just a dude with a show on YouTube. you are you've tapped into this part of the culinary world i'm not even going to say you tapped into a part

of the culinary world you've carved out a very unique space for yourself and i have to say i i'm really looking forward to this interview because i'm very very impressed that's extremely kind of you and maybe i should say this off camera but my girlfriend and i are you know i don't want to call us stand-up junkies we're stand-up sickos like we we listen to stand-up the way most people listen to music. So, like, you know, we'll be like, hey, let's open a bottle of wine and put on some pop-a tonight, darling.

And so we're very long-time fans of yours, and I almost got to see you. Oh, where was it? I think it was at the cellar, but something happened and I wasn't able to see. I missed my one shot, but I'm hoping once the world opens back up, you'll look down,

you'll see a shiny, shiny head in the ground. I can't wait. Well, thank you very much. So it's about time that we met. And this is actually, this is kind of the cool part about the pandemic as far as the media goes. It's like normally you'd have to wait

to get my ass back to New York to set this up to see you. So it's nice that we could actually hook this up. It's a very cool thing. Absolutely. What are you drinking? What are you drinking? My girlfriend.

and pick this up for me. She said it was expensive, so I'm going to trust that it was good. It's a Napa cab. It's in terms of reds, that's pretty much all I drank. I just like soft round cabs. Black stallions. How about yourself? Oh, very nice.

I have a bottle. This is a bottle of Villa Antenori. It's from Tuscany. I haven't cracked it open yet, but I got it from the Kermit Lynch. distributor up in Berkeley. And I got turned on to wines that they bring in from reading Jim Harrison, which is this great author who's very decadent. He wrote a lot of stuff for Esquire,

a really big lunch, and you'd really like him. Have you ever read him? I have not. That sounds like my cup of tea, though. So I'm going to Google that immediately after this. Oh, yeah. Oh, he's since passed. He was one of America's great writers. And one of the most decadent eaters and drinkers. And he would like hunt in Michigan and stuff and live in cabins. But he would have all of this great wine shipped to his place. And he just loved food so much. And he had this love of this wine,

the Chateanuvta Pop called Telegraph. And I was like, where do I find this? I've got to find this wine that this man is so in love with. and it was this Kermit Lynch winery distributor out of Berkeley. So now I'm like, now I've gone over the edge where I get their newsletter and I just keep sending the money. I chateaued the pop. I think I remember you mentioned that in your book when you went to a very nice steakhouse. You don't remember any vegan meals you've gotten at Whole Foods, but you remember every single medium rare steak you've gotten with every bottle of chateau.

I think that's what you mentioned. Yeah, that's it. Very good. Thank you very much. That's a nice little nugget that you pulled out for sure. Now, that was, that leads me to my first question to you. Were you, were you, did you start out, you went to film school? So you had this artistic bent to put, tell stories and put stuff out. But did you start with a love of food or of cooking or has that developed as you've gone along? Because that, because one of the really cool parts of the many cool, elements of what you do is that you don't come off as a know-it-all. It's actually the opposite. You're like, hey, I'm learning this. I'm not good at this yet. Check out this guy's recipe. But there had to be some kind of food-cooking bug in you at some point. It was really funny that as you said that, that I don't come across as a know-it-all, I was aerating my wine in my mouth like an asshole. Just like, no, Tom. No, Tom. Just like all of you.

No, I'm sorry. I have a common man. I've always had a love of food. My mom instilled that in me when I was very young. She would always make all of our meals and would like try to teach me how to make the more basic stuff. She died when I was very young. So it was a bit, you know, the simple stuff, chocolate chip cookies.

And she would go outside and scoop up snow and pour maple syrup on it like we were Canadians. And she had. So she always like instilled that love of food. And then I thought it was like a really good cook all through high school. I was a terrible cook. I would, you know, stuffed chicken breasts with like cream cheese and chives and stuff. And they would be undercooked on the outside and overcooked on the outside.

It was a nightmare for my girlfriend at the time to have gone through. And, you know, I actually had a choice to make when I graduated high school. I was like, okay, am I going culinary or am I going film? And I decided to choose the much more stable career path. I went film. And my dad's a photographer. So he, you know, that kind of felt like following in his footsteps. I mean, he's a professor at Rochester.

It was a professor at Rochester Institute. He retired. So I always had that kind of thing in my. It's all kind of familial, you know, you being a father. I'm sure you understand that. Both your daughters are stand-up comedians, right? Very close. One is a lot funnier than I am.

How old were you in your mom passed? So I was 11. She died of her third bout with breast cancer. She beat it twice, and then third time around, it was too much. Sort of, I don't know how deep you like to go on these things,

but one of the most important things for me was back in high school. We had a hospice class where it was, This is in high school. We had a class where the first semester we'd study the spiritual or chemical or just societal aspects of death and dying and what we interpreted it as and what actually happens chemically and physically. And then the latter half spent volunteering at hospices. I had been repressing all this pain for eight years. And then finally I was able to just like actually confront it. And now that program is spreading to other high school.

schools. It's an experience I wish everybody in high school could have. Yeah, God. It sounds like something everybody at every level should have. Yeah, it's a rough, but very humanizing, important experience. I think it was a very important experience for me and everybody who I've ever spoken to has gone through it. It's, anyway, we're going to talk about food. I don't know. no but that's but it's fair but it's i mean that is i think the most important elements i think of what of what turns us on about food and sends us down these pathways is very much from where we came from and who was who was feeding you for the first time all of that stuff is i mean that that informs us in ways that we don't even really recognize i think until you get old and pontiff

with scotch at the end of the night when you're kind of looking back, but that's important stuff. And it's your father having an eye that that's got a, you must have, you've obviously caught that bug. Well, thank you. He was a photojournalist, so I initially wanted to be on a documentary filmmaking and there's no money in that. But I, I, I said, I went to film school and I graduated, interned like crazy, you know, just working three different jobs and trying to make it in New York City before I landed a full-time job in visual effects, and I worked in post-production for commercials. And it just wasn't scratching the edge. So I started working on documentaries on the side, and then I got into food photography, and then I set up a camera in my kitchen and was watching Parks of Rec, and they were doing a burger cook-off. And I was like, what would that actually taste like?

And now here we are talking about it. So that's the YouTube way. God. It, yeah, man. It is so great. I mean, the thing that's so impressive to me is the distillation down to this basic idea, like that thing, that simple, fun, million dollar idea, really. That, I mean, because to, and then it, of course, opens up all these other paths.

But the simplicity of it is so great. rate. And this is a compliment which I'll get some times in comedy, which is so obnoxious, but I totally get it. So I'm going to give it to you is that you make it look so easy that everybody thinks they can do it. You know what I mean? It really, like you watch your stuff. And you're like, oh man, no idea the hours and the thought that goes into each of these videos. well i i mean you're very flattering saying that first off very kind thing to say but

you know you know what you're doing i've watched your cooking videos you make sourdough you can make sourdough in circles around me man so i know i know but my my like youtube videos of how to make it they're just like long and i just start talking and babbling about other things and your thing is so clean

that i think is such a turn on to me too is like my daughter loves you loves to cook and she's like 15 years old and baking. She's really good. But when she gets out of there, it's like a tsunami just came through and we're cleaning up for days after making chocolate chip cookies. Your thing of like this ingredient and there's no trace of it. And it's just so clean. It's the aesthetic, the aesthetic of it all. That is a facade. I'm going to go ahead and I'm to turn my camera in each direction. You can see the fucking mess that is just everything else. So, you know, everything looks nice and clean over here. Over here, we have, you know,

just the stuff pile over in the back there. Yeah. And then over here we have the test kitchen, which is just like, just a smattering of stuff. But sorry, I can't see it very well, but it's, you know, I very much appreciate that, but it is an illusion to. try and make cooking look a little easier. Sorry, I'm now, I've got a rack focus for myself here again. I know, but that, but that's what's, that's what, that's what, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, there's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, how many, how many, what percentage do you think of the people watching your videos are making the food?

And how many are just watching it to just, you go through that experience of just being a viewer and a listener. You'll have to excuse me for adjusting my camera while I talk here. Sorry. Back in film school. A surprising amount of people, I would say, are trying out what they see on the show. Yeah. I actually got this tattoo. This is the pasta from the movie chef, pasta Iolo Leo, that he twists up for Scarlett Johansson. Yes. Well, sorry, I don't know if you get that up. There's chaos with cats upstairs. That's the fork, the fork.

Yes. Oh, I swear to you. I have the fork. Hang on. Oh, man, oh, man. Got it somewhere. This is so great. Uh-oh, this is like the one time I can't find it.

Yeah, sure, you got it. Uh-oh. You're going to have to edit around this, fellas. Yeah, we can do it. This is a very prized position. possession of mine that I can't find at the moment. Oh, here we go, here we go, here we go. It's in

the silverware drawer where it belongs. Oh, good. So you're a fan of the movie? I'm a fan of the movie. I re-watched the movie over Christmas break because my kids hadn't seen it. And I've been making

a lot of, I've been going down this Italian sauce, different variations of stuff, Carbonara and Caccio Pepe and the big finale of the Caccio Pepe, which is basically a cheese-based, a fancy mac and cheese for Italians. And then you twist it and put it on the plate in that nice little thing. And I'm doing it with a weird spatula with my just regular fork. And then we rewatch chef.

And I see him doing it with the carbon fork. And I'm like, holy cow, that's what I need. I got to get one of those. And you have it. Yeah. You haven't. Oh, man, oh, man. The one time I got to meet, or actually a couple of times now, I guess I've been able to hang out with John.

I call him by his first name, like I know him very well. It's my one bragging thing, like me and John. But he was kind enough to, when I showed him, I had the tattoo. He was kind enough to literally go into his home kitchen and grab this and be like, here, this is the one from the movie. take it. And I was like, I started crying. It was mind-blowing. Oh, my God. So this is the one from the movie. It's a calphalon. And it says fork on the button. It says fork. That's so great. I can't believe you got it. What way did you get the tattoo in the first place? Well, just, I'm sorry. I went totally off the rails with your question. Because so many people

had made the Pasa I-Iolia when I made an episode on it, hundreds of if not thousands of people have tagged me on Instagram saying, you know, I tried making it. And usually it's their first time cooking, which is like really special that, you know, they saw this video. They're like, this is easy. If this doofus can do it. Surely I can do it. And dofus being me, not John.

And it's got so many people cooking, even if it was just once. It's like a very, very special part of my career. So that's why I got that probably about a year before I got to meet him. And then, yeah, a year later. He's tweeting at me and we're we're making We're making lava cakes together Oh my God, that's so great I saw the one episode that you had done about the Mandalorian cookies

When a little baby Yoda's eating those blue cookies And and I saw that he he zoomed in I guess Yeah, we did it at his home or something It was so great He is such he really is an ambassador, isn't he? He reached out to me about my bread at one point. And I was like, oh, we're going to be friends. And then I never heard from him again.

He's a busy guy. He's, you know, busy saving the Star Wars universe from, from, I won't say the corporate overlords, but he's out there busy saving the Star Wars universe at the MCU. And he's got like a very manic energy when he gets excited about something. So when I saw the Mandalorian cookies, I just decided to send him an email on a whim. I was like, hey, do you have any information on those cookies? And not a few minutes later, my phone rings. And it says, John Favreau, which we hadn't spoken in like two years.

And he called me and he was like, yeah, no. So they were macarons, half macarones. We wanted them to be like milk. And he just started waxing about. these cookies. And he was so excited. I was like, hey, maybe just jump on a Zoom call with me real quickly. I'll get dressed. And we knocked it out that night. And so, yeah, he's, when he gets excited about something, he'll jump on it. And he's a bread fiend. So I'm not surprised that he hits you up because you make a solid loaf, my friend. Oh, thank you. Yeah, when I saw him,

I saw him go into the bread episode of his cooking show, there was a different level of excitement. Like, he was really like, you could tell the passion was just a little bit higher, but that was so great about him. And I just watched a little off topic, but I just watched the documentary about the making of elf, and which was like, you know, his real big breakout one as, you know, at that level. And just his joy, he really does have an enviable, still sweet spot in him. You can tell just the way he went about making that movie. And he was his excitement for the little elements of it. And the same thing with all of the cooking. It's such a, it's such a cool thing. For coming along. And now, it's time for a quick bite. Who's it with? You'll find out.

Joey, I'm doing okay. Just wanted to check in with you and see, you know, I've been so jealous that you went back to New Jersey and are in the land of all great food. If you're an Italian American or a Cuban that loves Italian food. And I wanted to see, what have you been eating lately? You have no idea. Well, I had surgery done, so I've been, I slowed down. But I'm in an area, I'm in an area that everything you order is fucking good from this area. Because all the Italians from Staten Island moved out, and they moved to my area of New Jersey.

So up and down to nine, any of those Italian places you stop at are tremendous. I got a place right behind my house here. Everything in there is like a six, but their fucking meatballs are tremendous. Okay, three meatballs with a piece of bread, and a slap with a glass of sangria. I don't bother nobody.

I got my little mask on. It's fresh one. You know, for me and he was good. I'm too young. Are you fucking kidding me? This is shit you can't order in California. It's really true. You know, when I grew up in New Jersey,

whenever we got Chinese food, it was always Mooshu pork. And I have to say, out here, I don't think I've had it once. The pizza, like everybody has a good slice. You know, I'm sorry,

for you to survive here, you need to put your heart into your slice, but it's not going to work. It's really true. It's not like, you know, LA, so everybody has good pizza. I go to take it a cake box. The other day I was hungry with it,

and I go, let's just go in and get a lot. slice. I left there like, oh my God, let me get another spice and shrimp palm. Oh my God. I need a shrimp parmesan yesterday. Shrimp parmesan. I don't think I've ever had shrimp parmesan.

Shrimpamazon and a hard fucking Italian roll. Let me tell you something. It was like a 12-inch. I ate half a bit of lunch and the other half a dinner. I'm really watching myself. I got a cool school cargown, like two fat white chicks. that don't play games, they've owned it for 30 years, they make me a fucking vanilla ice cream salad

and my little pubic head is going to jump up in the pocket air. I could feel my little asshole hammer who is fucking rubbing. It's so delicious. Ice cream cakes, I brought one with my wife because that's the tradition in the Diaz house. Probably, even from Rouse. You've got to taste my daughter's like, it don't taste like chemicals. I go, no, it tastes like popcorn.

And I can taste some marshmallows, Daddy. the little crumbles in it oh my god it's so fucking good it's not even cold yet papa it's 4850 the sun's out you're not going to go out there without a t-shirt skateboard

but it's not what it used to be when I was a kid oh yeah January 18th your fucking ears with water really has I know I mean how many how many days of snow have you had since you've got

that's so crazy it really is true that. But look, I got out here August night. It's kind of like you're basically living with L.A. weather,

close to L.A. weather, but surrounded by the best pizza in the world. Think of you live next. Everybody who lives next door to me is Tom Popper. They knock on your door with Italian cookies.

Oh, man. If you want to come over, the kids are playing. Oh, my God. You're a different world, Tom. Yeah. Yeah. My wife has friends.

There's people that don't even know I've done a movie. I have no idea. Like, I've done the movie and they don't give a fuck. It's kind of depressing, actually. Yeah, you know, we came from society where, you know, I made for Instagram. I mean, somebody told me one time. That's all the John. You know, I left for us Lauren teams.

The fucking blamers around the corner. Man, it sounds like you're living in my childhood. It's kind of sort of, it's not as many kids, but you know what, man. for the last seven years. Like I had a grass out of them in the bathroom. This is all the suck that really take advantage of it. I know, I know. It still sucks.

Atlantic City still sucks. Yeah, the traffic going to the city sucks, but still, there's just so much, yeah, it's hard to explain to people because it's fine for so many people, but if you grew up there and you really know it and you know the beaches and going out west out on 80 out to the country part of it and the people are just, you're fine. all hilarious. Favorite places. I'm one of the foods that I have

rediscovered. This is my Jewish side. I've got a place around the corner like going there for an egg salad and I'll pop you some days. I get the white Jews in the neighborhood. The Voss comes over and we go over there. One that does. Oh my God. My manager's coming to Marlon.

He just comes for that. He goes, I want to go to that belly. Oh, Ben. You're killing me. This phone call is officially a mistake. But I haven't seen any weight. So that's good. weights like a madman and I was the initial shock. I'm right.

I decided that I got to get people. So anywhere I go. Billian and a French light on Weight Watch. You don't even have to cook. It's just all there for you around every corner. They even have chicken. All you got to do is put them in the fucking oven. That's the whole reason I cook so much because the only place I can get it is in my own kitchen.

Yeah, you're not going to get anywhere else. I'll be grilled. They're doing good. They're doing good. They're getting itchy. They want to get out of here. They want this thing to be over so they can run around and be kids again and head to the Jersey Shore for the 4th of July. Do you travel? No, not recently. I did up until like November. Now I'm going to probably won't be out again until maybe April. That's what I'm waiting on. April. There's going to be none but outdoor stuff here. Yeah.

Now that I really have it down to a sign. Yeah, yeah. All right, man. Well, it's so good to talk to you. I miss you. I love you. Thank you. I love you, too.

You love you, too. I love you, too. All right, buddy. You got it. There's something very great about your, what you do, too, in that you have the sneaky way of teaching me, but you're not, like I say, like, okay, I know all this stuff, so let me throw it on you. You're like, I'm figuring this out. I'm trying to figure this. Here's a link to somebody else's YouTube video

that will show you how to do this better than I can. But you can't short yourself because even the simplest things like making an omelet, I think about every time I go to make the omelet, like those little things. Are you aware of that? Or was that just something that kind of happened naturally? I wish that it was some kind of strategy

that I was just a very good teacher or something, but really it's because genuinely when you're seeing me cook on the show I'm probably trying it for the first time. I have very good luck and I have some technical knowledge but if I screw up I'm going to show it. I want people to see when I screw up

because that's what's great about YouTube cooking shows. Most YouTube cooking shows is that people are excited to show their screw ups because that's what YouTube's for. Television, everything has to be perfect on the first try. Everything has to be beautifully. lit and your, you know, husband or wife has to be in full makeup when they come out to try it.

But YouTube, it's quick, it's dirty. You're screwing up. Like it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, yeah. Um, so, so it's just something that sort of naturally came with the territory, both YouTube and just my not knowing what I'm doing generally. Right. It's really, uh, it's, it's funny when I was, when I was, knew I was going to talk to you, there were so many things because I just love the finished product so much. It really made me think of Steve. Martin's book when he was talking about his becoming a comedian and finding his way. And it was that thing about the mistakes. It was like, I wondered, because he calls it out and I was wondering about it with you,

like how many elements of these shows that became mainstays were mistakes and how many were thought out? Like, did you think I'm just going to show my torso most of the time? Or was that just something you fell into? I absolutely fell into. I can show you the test video that led to the first episode of Benjian with Babish, which is the exact same angle. And if you watch it from front to front end, the camera moves about 60 degrees because the tripod was off kilter and it was on this stabilizing head. So the camera's just drifting away from me. And, but other than that,

it's exactly the same. And I, I, uh, yeah, yeah, I wanted to make a show that was like primarily about the food. That's why I did the torso because I wanted the focus to be on the food. I felt like cooking shows were getting a little bit too blog-oriented. I watched some show about a ramen burger and the guy didn't start cooking for like nine minutes. And it was like a 30-minute video. I was like, this isn't about the food anymore. And those videos have their place.

But it felt like every cooking video is getting like that. And I wanted to add to the conversation in a very food-focused way. So anything else that I bring to it in my voiceover is just ancillary. Yeah, yeah. That's so funny. The one that really stands out to me was because it was one of those like, no, he can't do this. Like, this is stupid. I wonder how he's going to get out of it was, I forget the name of it, but it was the SpongeBob, like,

triple patty deep fried double fried thing on a stick and it was such a cartoon madness that you're like all right so he's funny you know you're funny i love all your comments is a comic thing i'm like how's he going to exit out of this and be like now we're not doing this and it ends up with you eating it and it's like holy shit he really pulled it off he made it and it actually looks pretty good works out. Really gross, fun fact about that is that you might notice that when I cut it in half, I take some of the dowels with me, the supportive rods that I inserted in it. All the sticks. Yeah, there were some wood shavings in what I ate. I didn't let onto that. Yeah, I definitely felt something in there that wasn't meant to be in a burger. It was not,

it didn't have the natural place in a burger. But sometimes you end up. up in a good place. A more recent episode, I did like the overnight salad from S&L. You end up in a bad place. It's not going to work no matter what. So you just have to try to reinvent it from the ground up. So funny. So that thing of like seeing stuff in film and TV, which was such a great hook and it's such a fun thing to do. But now you have, you've kind of like, you're doing like these basics where you're basically showing people like the basics of, of cooking and doing stuff. Is there any, is there any one of these that's turning you on more than another at this moment? I guess basics because it's a little easier. Binging is getting very tough because

I've done a lot of the classic foods that you think of when you think of foods from movies, the sauce from Goodfellas, you know, the pasta from elf. And now it's getting into some very conceptual territory like the overnight salad. I have one coming up where I literally spent half the day today just banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how am I going to make this appetizing, which is the Bachelor Chow from Futurama. I don't know if you ever watched Futurama. I don't know that one.

I know the show, but yeah. It's kibble for adult bachelors. It's dog food for men. And that's the way it's portrayed is this like, dry the kibble that it makes its own gravy and you put it under water and you eat it without your shirt on while you watch TV. And so I was like, how am I going to make this edible? And where we've ended up is I'm going to make a very nice stew, like a buff bergen-on or something like that. And I'm going to separate the meat from the sauce and cut the meat into little cubes, almost like kibble.

And I'm going to freeze dry using the freeze dryer that I have downstairs, which is this very dumb, expensive piece of equipment for like doomsday preppers with too much money. I don't know why it's like a $5,000 thing for people who have bunkers. It's weird. It removes all the liquid from the food. It removes like 99.9% of moisture from the food. So it's going to turn, I'm going to separate the beef in the sauce and I'm going to spread out the sauce. And it'll turn the beef into these little cubes like kibble and I'm going to take the sauce and pulverize it and mix it up with the beef. So that way when I add hot water, it should rehydrate everything and it should make its own gravy and just turn back into Borgignon, but it will look like dog food. So

that's amazing. That's amazing. It's amazing. But yes, it's a lot of work. That is a lot of work. I mean, it is a lot easier just to be like, no, we're going to make we're going to make tacos tonight. But talking about a lot of work, the one, it was for some anniversary of, I think, subscribers when you did the, you went down to New Orleans and did the Homer, New Orleans, Decadent Eatathon of him, which is so great in animation, you could be like, I went to this restaurant and just rattle them all out and just draw a picture of it. But then you actually went out to recreate it. That was very cool.

Was that, that, was that a year? anniversary? Was that a subscriber? I forget. That was that was a subscriber anniversary. I can remember which one. I think it was five million. And we, we, we, that was one of the harder things we've done for the show. I appreciate you watching that.

So hard. We learned from a Simpsons fanatic that most of the shots in that 54 shot montage of just different foods and restaurants were based on real restaurants and real foods. And so we were like, okay, well, we need to, we got to figure this out.

And we went down there, we flew down there, me and the crew of four. And, well, two of my friends and whatever. And we started filming. And the day that we started filming, we found out that some, I believe they were Icelandic girls, two women from Iceland or Finland, one of the ones, had just put out a video, just put it out. Sorry, hold on a second. Doing exactly what you were going out to do.

Interference. Sorry, can you hear me? I had a problem there. Okay. Yeah, you sound good. Sorry, we'd edit that. So we just found on the first day that we got there, that two women from either Finland or Iceland

had just done it and just posted a video with perfect recreations, exactly what we were trying to do. The only shot that we could get that they couldn't get was the king cake because it wasn't in season when they had visited. And that was disheartening to say the least that we had just spent thousands of dollars and we were like already a day deep in shooting. And we were like, somebody just did this as good,

if not better than we could imagine doing it. Let's keep going. It took four days. Did it happen? Did it happen truly that way that you literally, like in the video, you find out that she put out the video while you're there doing the video? We literally found out as we hit the restaurants. We made it seen. I think we edited it so it felt like it was after the first day.

But it really was after the second day. And we just didn't feel like, you know, making a whole thing out of it. So we did find out after the second day that we were there that's, that's, they had just put it out. And then it was starting to get like traction on BuzzFeed and Eater and all these outlets. And we were just, damn it. It's so crazy. Yeah, it's so funny. But you still had it at the end, which was cool.

You still got to see it. Yeah. I loved how the beginning of that video too was like, last time we were here, we worked, but now we're just going for fun. It's like this is the most work I've ever done in my career. I don't think I've ever shot anything that extensive. That was a four-day-long shoot of relentless. Not only was it, you know, like 95 degrees and 150% humidity or whatever, being New Orleans in July. But the restaurants were very far apart and scattered.

And every single shot was in a unique location. We couldn't reuse any locations. Couldn't reuse any foods. And some of these places were out of business. Like we had to come up with these different workarounds. Like, okay, we need to get duck. I don't know. We need to get duck sausage from this place down the street from where this place burned down. And the oyster prelines, they're not a thing anymore. So we need to fake that.

And it was a million different things. You're like, get me back to the studio. This road stuff is for the birds. How many, do you know how many videos you've made at this point? I don't know exactly how many. There have been. I think, ooh, oh boy, there's either been 200 or 300 binging. I cannot remember how many. It can't be 300. Well, wait, it's been five years, and I've been doing it almost every week.

So five times five. Okay, so it's like 200-something binging. And then there's, we're about to say 100 basics. And so I'm writing the cookbook for basics. So all told around 325, 350 videos, something like that. that. Wow, that's so great. How was the experience with your first book? Did you like putting that out there? Well, the first book, I'll tell you about the first book. It was no fault to the publishers. There was no fault to anybody. But basically at the time, they found me when I had 20,000 subscribers. Like, I really had a very small user base. And they were trying to make a book about pop culture, food. And they offered me, I guess enough time is past that I can talk about this. They offered

me a $10,000 flat fee to write the book. And I was not allowed any author's rights to the book. I was just being hired as a contractor, effectively in name only or however that works. Initially, my name was not even supposed to be on the book. This was meant to be one of those coffee table books that you get at Urban Outfitters is a joke. and over the course of writing the book about the nine-month process, the channel exploded. By the time we were done writing, I had over a million subscribers.

So they radically changed their sort of marketing strategy. Oh, my God. And vastly underprinted the first round by like 5,000 copy. Basically, I think of the 8,000 pre-orders, I think 2,500 people got their books. Like, it was a disaster. Oh, my God. What a disaster.

That was a wreck. And I only said yes to it because, again, the channel was very small. And I was going through a divorce at the time. I was broke. So 10 grand, I was like, yes, this roll. I'll write two books for time. Oh, my God. That's so funny.

Did they go on to reprint it and use your name and make a lot of money on your behalf? Yep. By the time the book came out, they were putting the name on it. And I think they've stopped printing it, actually. They've shifted more towards housewares or whatever. But whatever, we had a good time. The early days. It's the early days.

Yeah, the blunder years. So this, so, you know, it's a hard thing to shoot food and make it look good. I remember I remember working for a small ad agency and shooting food was like to make food look decent. I mean, you can tell just from any menu you get or you see online and people are just shooting it on Yelp and you're trying to figure out, should I eat here and then you see pictures of the food? You're like, oh, that looks like garbage. There's a lot of like trickery to make food look good, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, the worst part is on Yelp, it's all just dudes with their phones.

So like that's really, you're never going to eat there now because of some guy. took a really shitty picture of his carbunara. Right, exactly. I mean, food photography is absolutely nuts. When we shot the photography for the second book, we did it all in my house. We set up a studio just in my home, and we had three food stylists to prep, prep cooks that were like, you know, just making every dish because we had to shoot the entire cookbook, which was 80 photos in five days.

and so they were just like banging them out of the kitchen. And not only the tricks that they utilize in food photography, you know, just like using glue and using all the kinds of rods to support things and all the stuff that you could never eat. And after like each one, I had to ask, can I eat this? Is this edible or is this glue? So it's a blurring curve. But also like any other.

any real cooking show is making any given dish twice. There's the host making it and then somebody else makes it and they can, so they can get steaming closeups. And I've never once done that. And every time I've had to do it, I've been like, seriously, I have to make this again right now? I can't. It's amazing. It's amazing.

This is exhausting work. Is there a food? is there a food that or a type of food Italian food, French food, American food that really has a special place in your heart? And follow up question, at any point do you get sick of food? I'd be in trouble if I get sick of food. But I get sick of cooking for sure sometimes, which nobody's ever

going to want to hear me say. But I cook I'm sorry, the Zoom lag. Sorry, we keep staying. No, it's all yours. It's all yours. I can only imagine as somebody who hosts an interview podcast, how much you've had to get used to the Zoom lag, like that, just constant built in.

Okay, I got to wait one second before he responds. I'm still getting used to it. But I cook for myself and those around me a shockingly low amount, probably once or twice a week. everybody who meets me thinks like, you know, oh, so you cook every meal you've ever eaten. Like, you're constantly. I'm like, no, I'm cooking all day. Like when I'm done, I'm not going upstairs and like, okay, time to kick off the shoes and get back to work. And I was like.

Yeah. What do you want? Yeah, I'm trying to get some takeout right now and smoke a joint. But my, I don't really ever get sick of food itself. And if there's, I guess if there's. There's two different cuisines that really hold a special place in my heart. One is French because it's just kind of the backdrop of the training that I gave myself. It's just most of the dishes that I learned how to teach myself to cook and just the foundation for most things we as we as Americans love so much French and Italian.

And the other one that I hold in such high regard is Vietnamese food because it's so on an Italian. unattainable to me, not only because I have such a little grasp of how to make it, but also because every single dish has cilantro in it. And I'm one of those people who just cannot do cilantro. So it just feels like this unattainable. If I ever go to Southeast Asia, I'm screwed because I'm not, I'm going to have to learn. I was saying no cilantro in every language in every area that I visit. That is such a weird thing, the cilantro thing.

The cilantro thing is either, yeah, right? There's like a real thing. Like some people, if you hate it and you don't have the palate for it, you literally loathe it. It's a genetic marker. It's something that like you literally cannot shake. You're genetically made so it tastes like so. That's why I got a tattoo of it. I have a tattoo of cilantro right here.

Oh, that's amazing. It's the one thing I can't ever shake. Like it's the one thing I can't ever teach myself to like. It's your kryptonite. Yeah, exactly. that's funny so when you said the when you

when you said that you were finding your way and with the French cooking is that being the basis did you spend a lot of time with cookbooks did you spend a lot of time just researching

did you was it self-taught did you take classes I mean I spent a lot time watching YouTube videos that's I am regurgitated knowledge

in a lot of days in that I just absorbed a whole bunch of YouTube information and then I'm just putting my own YouTube information out there. Recycled information. But I yeah, I've

read my fair share cookbooks and watch my fair share of videos. But I didn't even, you know, I say I love French food. I didn't ever visit France for the first time until last year. and loved it, of course, but I had this affection for this thing that I didn't really have a true understanding of. I just had this translated version of it. That's what's so great also about your thing.

And I know I'm repeating myself a little bit from the beginning, but it's that you are, there's a hint that like you know more than I do and you're leading me and you're teaching me. But you're also humble enough and open enough like, I don't know everything. And there is another YouTube link. I'll put it up there that will show you this better than I'm going to show you. And it's kind of that you're that cool results. You taking in other YouTube and doing all this.

It's part of this community, really, that you've grown. And it's a very cool thing. I was thinking about that the other night. There's not one human problem that you can have that if you go on YouTube, you won't find some other human being has dealt with it. Everything. From clogging a pipe to something stuck in your ear, someone has done it, someone's been hurt by it, and they're going to help you get out of it.

And that's what's so cool about your thing, more than a Food Network show or any of that other stuff, this really feels, and I'm interested to see if you got a sense of that, that you've actually been a part of a community, but also have grown your own community. It's like your own kind of like universe, Babish universe. B.C.U. I absolutely feel that not only because 90% of my ideas for the show come from people yelling out in the comments what they want to see next. Like that's where I get most of my ideas from. So there's a small facet of the community there.

Then there's like the subreddit, the binging with Babish subreddit where it's a community of, I'd say most of the posts, the vast majority of the posts are people who are posting pictures of what they've recreated for my show. And... Right. Yeah, YouTube represents an incredible democratization of knowledge. It was always there.

But, you know, with the dawn of the internet, it was almost like all the... It was like libraries, basically. Like, all the information was there, but you had to go there and read all of it. But now with YouTube, you can just sit there and watch somebody who's like very mildly, entertaining tell you how to do something that you're interested in doing. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, the most

effective way to disseminate knowledge. Jess, my girlfriend and I just spent, uh, the weekend in this beautiful cabin upstate New York. And, um, there was a, at the end, we read in this card, like, this is a, this is a hundred year old cabin we bought two years ago. And we restored it by hand with no prior knowledge. We just watched YouTube videos. And I was like, geez. Yeah. Like, I was standing in tangible evidence of how you can just watch videos and just make something spectacular. Yeah, it's amazing. It really is amazing. And I always catch myself. I'll have like this, boomer alert when I'm like sitting there with a manual or doing something like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's no manuals. Go to YouTube. They'll show you so much easier.

I don't know about you, but when I'm reading a manual, I constantly try to think, where's the find command F how do I find a specific word or phrase that I'm looking for in the oh it's paper you can't do that right that's right exactly oh man well this is so great I really appreciate you spending time this is really really a treat and as soon as this uh vaccine is in my body I will come back to New York and uh and we'll go we'll go out and we'll dine and we'll drink and we'll do something that neither of us neither of us will have to work you won't have to cook I won't have to tell jokes and we'll just have a great night. I really hope you take me up on that invite. I was already looking forward to the virus being over with, but now I'm really looking forward

to it. So thank you. That sounds amazing. Before we go, I'll just geek out in you for a second. I think that you thread this incredible needle with your comedy, that you tell this incredible line of having the cynicism that you need to be a comedian in the modern era but through a positive lens. I hate to cut off, I hate to cut off,

I hate to cut off an amazing compliment but you're, there's some kind of crackly, crackly going through you. Oh, oh. How we doing? Sorry. Still a little crackly. Crackly, interesting.

It's like a, I'm gonna, I'm gonna restart my mic, mic pack real quick. Hang on one second. Sorry about that. Okay. It's all right, but it was such a beautiful compliment. I couldn't let it go. I'm like, I ain't cutting this. Oh yeah, there you go. How are we doing any better? Test, test, test, test, test. No. Test, test, test. Just came back. Test, test, test, test. How are we doing? Can you hear me?

What's that show? Test, test, test. This is very odd. Nothing's changed. Yeah. That's weird. It's like a wing, wing, wing. Okay, I'm very sorry about this guy. Give me one second. I think I've had this problem before. I can fix it.

Okay. This really is all ego-driven. We could just wrap. Still there? Yeah, it's weird. What the hell? Very sorry, guys. It's kind of, yeah, it might be just something in the area.

Someone flew in. test test test um there are still yeah um it's weird it's it doesn't seem like it's something you're doing it seems like so i just switched

to my earpiece i know it's not going to be as good but does that what do we think that's good better better better okay it's not yeah it's just a little earpiece so it's not to be that nice, you know, mic quality. I apologize about that. It sounds okay. It sounds all right. This was purely an ego-driven edit. I was like, we could rap. But something about geeking out. Yeah. I just, I promised myself I'd tell you this before I lost you. So I had precious few minutes to do so. I love your comedy so much. I remember when we, thank God you put out, um,

you're doing great this year. Thank God. Because as my girlfriend put it, it was the TED talk that we all really needed. It was this, thank you. Your comedy, I feel like, is rooted in the

sort of the cynical outlook that you have to have as a comedian in the modern age, but through a positive lens that sort of reframes negative things as positive things, and helps you see the silver lining to the cloud. And that's my very pedestrian way of putting it. You have such a command over the craft that I'm completely in awe of it.

And I also just want to point out real quick that you have a joke in live from New York that has aged like fine wine, where you were talking about, you said, because it came out in 2011, and you said Facebook, they toppled a regime on Facebook. No one saw that coming. And the entire crowd exploded with laughter because it was such a ridiculous situation. Oh, my God. I totally forget.

Yeah, my God. I almost forgot about that joke. Well, yeah. Well, I do tend to live on the sunnier side of the street, not naively. I think, you know, if you could deal with, you know, your share of tragedy and stuff,

it kind of, you're left with a choice. of what are you going to do? Are you going to live on the dark side of the street or the sunny side? I'm always trying to push over there because the other way seems, frankly, like a waste of time. And I think that's really why I'm drawn to your work, too. It's a nice little positive respite from all the stuff and even within the food universe. It's a brighter spot than most. even in, you know, a lot of people are pushing into that space. And yours, you've really nailed it on so many levels,

on a humor level, on a teaching level. It's just so refreshing and so great. And we'll raise a glass and we'll continue these compliments. Hopefully, hopefully by the song. I got a million more. Thank you so much for making us laugh, man. Thank you so much for having me. All right, buddy.

Take care of yourself. That's it, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. As always, like and subscribe, and one day we will be as big as one corner of the Babish universe. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next week.