The Joe Rogan Experience - #1202 - Fred Morin & David McMillan

Episode Date: November 14, 2018

Fred Morin & David McMillan are James Beard Award–nominated culinary adventurists and proprietors of the beloved restaurant, Joe Beef in Montreal. Their new cookbook/survival guide called "Joe Beef: Surviving the Apocalypse" is available on November 27.

Good? Here we go. Three, two, live? Boom, we're live. Gentlemen. David. Fred. Hey, good to be here.

Good to see you guys. What's happening? Not much. We're in sunny California. Yeah, it's too close to the sun, a little bit. Been barbecued over the last week and a half. I've been hiding in a hotel for six days. How proper that we're here to talk about surviving the apocalypse.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Your book is Joe Beef Surviving the Apocalypse. A cookbook for surviving the apocalypse? What's the purpose of the title? Just a goof? We haven't written a book in years. I don't think we really wanted to write a second book. When we started getting a bit of pressure to write a second one,

we kind of laid down the gauntlet to the editors and said, we're going to write what we want. Are you in or are you out? And they said, well, show us a little bit of the framework of what this is going to be. I said, I want to talk. Cooking doesn't define me or Fred. It's not all that we do. You see some people, they seem to eat, you know, cooking doesn't define me or Fred. It's not all that we do. Like, you know, you see some people, they seem to like eat, live, and breathe cooking.

I said, no, I'm into the outdoors. I'm into mushroom picking. I'm into fermentation of berries. I'm into, you know, canoeing. I know all about canoes. I love swimming in lakes. I want to talk about multiple subjects. I want to talk about the native Mohawks of Quebec.

So I said, let us write a book about the multiple subjects of which we're into. AJ, if we're not cooking, we're building first aid kits and survival kits for real. Really? Yeah, David goes to L.L. Bean. He has a lifetime membership there. I have an off-grid cabin up north, like north of Montreal, about an hour and a half. You can only get there by boat. It's eight kilometers from the landing, 2,000 watts of solar power, completely off-grid.

You can barely walk in because of the jagged cliffs all around it. Behind me is an old-growth forest that's protected federally. And I have a suture kit and saline in my car. Always? Oh, dude, his car is outfitted. He's got shovels on the roof and propane tanks on the roof. Two years ago, I drove to Alaska, down south, Arizona, back home. Wow.

20,000 miles. I grew up in Boston, and I did stand-up in Montreal the first time, I think, in like 1991 or something like that. And I remember thinking Boston was cold until I went to Montreal, and I went, oh, this is a different thing. This is a whole different level of cold. We had a polar vortex last year come roaring through. I think all the pipes blew in all the restaurants. I'm sure. Like January think, all the pipes blue in all the restaurants. I'm sure. Like January 2nd, you know?

But what I was going to say is, do you think that living in such an extreme environment, in a beautiful city, amazing city, but it's an incredibly harsh environment in the winter, do you think that makes you more cognizant about the need for survival? It's always in the back of my head. I have three daughters. It's always in the back of my head i have three daughters like uh it's always in the back of my head they said this is incredibly cold if the power goes out for 48 hours i have to start a plan b where am i bringing my babies what are we going to eat where are we going yeah in our city over the last couple of years i've been talking about a complete ban of fireplaces and wood burningburning stoves inside of homes, condominiums, and houses.

The laws governing wood-burning in the city of Montreal are stricter than the ones in California. And we die, man. If it's gold, we die. I go, this is irresponsible by the government to do this. I said, okay, make sure we don't use them, but let's all have them just in case. Same goes for if the grape goes down. What are they worried about it for? They're worried about the air pollution.

Particle emission. Particulates? Yeah. That's correct. Man, but it smells good. Like a nice wood-burning stove smells amazing. Yeah, this affects everybody. This affects restaurants and grilling food.

This affects barbecue. This affects traditional bagel stores. Traditional bagel stores cook with wood? Is that why you said that? Yeah, of course. Really? Of course. You go into Myland, St. Vietor Bagel, Fairmount Bagel, all the other ones, you smell it.

It's a massive part of our culture as well. You have to understand that food-wise, the province of Quebec, the city of Quebec City in Montreal, this is the first place it's populated in North America. The Europeans, to get to anywhere in North America, came through Quebec first, New York afterwards. The food culture in Quebec is over 400 years old. You can't say that about— Over 1,000 years old. Yeah, absolutely.

And wood is detrimental to that. If it wasn't for burning wood, I'm not saying we should do it for a historical purpose, but man, if we run out of gas, there's still wood. And then they're going to come and give you a ticket, two grand, because you're having a fire? A few years ago, like a decade ago, we had this crazy ice storm in Quebec.

You know, the perfect storm of rain and then cold and then rain and then cold. All the power lines went out. All the pylons crashed. Yeah, everything got thick with ice, right? Yeah, for two weeks. Yeah, two weeks. There's a baby boom right after that because people stayed home, no television and no heat and very procreated. Then there was a true baby boom nine months later there was a ton of new kids born that's hilarious but you know the the deep freeze it also like cleans the city in the winter so from your

perspective if the shit hits the fan and come and see us because it's a pretty good city to survive anything you know it's a pretty good city to survive anything, you know? It's a pretty neat place because the winter just like sanitizes everything. You start again every year, you know? Yeah, as opposed to LA where you never really get that. You can't get the full clean down, yeah.

Never. It's the long haul. Yeah, you do like a whore's bath. You know, you just get it like you're in a restroom somewhere with paper towels that you wet down and sort of get your underarms or whatever that's what la is the wet towelettes yes yes so you just wanted to write a book that kind of covers all of your interests not just with food but

one of the things that i really enjoyed about there was an episode that you guys did of Anthony Bourdain's show where you were ice fishing and you had one of those ice fishing huts and you guys cooked. Tony told you, it's notorious in the show that they never caught fish. And whenever he had a gun, he never hit anything. So we

knew that and we knew that there was not a pike and there was not a walleye that was going to bite. So we're like, okay, option A, we sit there and we like take some fake fish and we fry it up in cornflakes and shortening in a hollow cabin. Or we just went like Joe Beef crazy and we brought all the old cookbooks. We had all the spirits like Cuban cigars, all the copperware, all the stuff. And we made the menu from an old Lyonnais restaurant, Paul Bucouz, that he did a show at after. And he knew nothing about that day. And we just went from fishing after he asked us about strippers in Quebec

and just a few funny banter, and we just went in. It was magical. It was seriously a tenth of the size of this room here. Yeah, it was a tiny, tiny little shack. And he tapped out that day. Yeah? Yeah, he was having a good time. And we brought some fine wines and fine spirits and some really rare oddities, some old chartreuse and stuff like that that Fred had lying around.

And Tony was funny. There you guys are. It's up on the screen right there. He let it go a bit. He calmed down and enjoyed us and let us do our thing. I'm a bit fatter, eh? Oh, God. That was in the wine drinking days too, right?

Yeah, correct. Look at that. God, that looks good. Is that foie gras and some sort of mashed potatoes or something? Yeah, that's wild rabbit. It's a French recipe. It's called hair a la royale, where you cook the hair for a long time. And hair, and you serve it with truffles, and you keep the blood.

This hair is snared, so it's still full of blood. And you keep the blood, and at the end, you thicken the sauce with the blood. Whoa. It's very good. And I bet you, you know, it's funny. I bet you it fits all the principles of nutrition now, you know? It's like blood and all the organ meats and all that. Same with cheese.

Look, this is like pure probiotics right there. Isn't that interesting, right, that no one thought of that until recently, that that was what it was. People just thought of it as cheese. And now people think of it as there's live cultures on it and organ meat is much healthier for you and people are so much more aware look at the the cheese thing too it's like now they a lot of the probiotic makers are doing like uh lipo deliveries they coat it in fat so it resists the stomach acid right but

that's fat probiotic from cheese is covered in fat you eat it after your dinner it lives through you and and it all in a perfect world it comes from right around your house fat. You eat it after your dinner, it lives through you. And in a perfect world, it comes from right around your house, right? So you eat a cheese and the probiotics are the same one that you're going to encounter later. So you kind of get immunized in a way. Yeah. That's the benefit. That's what true local is. Right, right. Yeah. There's a benefit to eating cheese after a meal? Yeah, sure. It is. And when it's a very pungent, advanced, alive, raw cheese, it'll be seen ultimately as a non-alcoholic digestif.

What is a digestif? To help stimulate digestion. Ah, no kidding. Correct. So it's almost like an enzyme. Yeah, like a probiotic. Wow. But mostly now they're figuring this out, that the problem of the low-fat diet and, you know, like brown rice and chicken breast, you know, the bodybuilder diet, nothing triggers your fullness.

Because they realize that fat actually makes you full quite fast, right? So if you eat a bit of cheese, you're done. You tap out after. You don't eat like a full plate of cheese or layer it on a hamburger, but just a little bit of cheese after just cuts you off, and then you have spirits, and cigars are not that healthy. Yeah, I've been talking about that with a lot of nutrition experts where they say that your body, when it eats a lot of carbohydrates,

you can consume carbohydrates far past what you actually need, whereas if you're just eating a lot of fat and protein, your body tends to regulate itself much better. Satiate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, you guys, how long have you been in Montreal? I have to tell you, and I've said it before, if I had to say my all-time favorite restaurant, I think Joe Beef's my all-time favorite restaurant. I don't like to say my all-time number because there's a lot of great restaurants in this world. But damn, if I had to choose one, I think I might choose you guys. No, you're very kind. But we have to take you out to other places to change your mind.

No, I don't think you've got to, man. You guys are the first. If you're a horse lover, turn your head. Plug your ears. You guys are the first people that ever served me horse. And I was like, what? You brought over a horse tenderloin. And I was like, what the fuck?

You guys are eating horse up here? And horse tartare. But it's a stigma. It's a cow, an elk, a bison, a deer, a horse. It's a four-legged animal. And if I put a bison tenderloin and serve you a beef tenderloin and a cow tenderloin and a deer tenderloin, at the end of the day, it just has a couple of degrees of separation from the other. It's all flesh, really.

And it's very subjective that we base our nutritional choices on how pretty or how cute an animal is. It doesn't make sense. And we're lucky now we're able to choose what we eat. It wasn't like that 100 years ago. The purpose of the food guide until like 40 years ago was to make sure you had enough calories. Now we're in an age of restriction. So we say like, I don't want horse.

I prefer deer or I prefer veal or I had chicken yesterday. I can't have twice in a row. Like all this is a bit of fluff what we do in a way because we're so fortunate to have enough food to decide. My friend Remy Warren was on a backpacking horseback elk hunt. what we do in a way because we're so fortunate to have enough food to decide my friend remy warren was on a backpacking uh horseback elk hunt and uh one of the horses fell down and broke its leg and they had to make a decision they were deep in the back country and they had to shoot it and uh it was just wasn't going to get out of there and after they shot it he decided that really this is it sounds going to go to waste so they took the back straps

off and they they cooked it and ate it and anybody said it was a really weird moment where like this is the animal that was like everybody's petting it and it was you were you know you're riding it and it just it was a working animal but it was an animal that you loved and then all of a sudden it's down and you have to kill it and he's's like, well, it's going to go to waste. He said it just felt wrong to let it go to waste. So they cut the backstraps off of it. You know, the reason I think we don't eat horse culturally is really based ultimately on the battle of Wolfe

between Montcalm on the plains of Quebec City. You know, that was a decisive battle in North American history. Whereas if the French had won that battle, everybody in North America ultimately would be speaking French. They didn't win that battle. So British rule imposed. So in England, you didn't eat horse by royal decree, but the French ate horse. The Belgians eat horse. The Germans eat horse.

You see? So that's what it is. Yeah, it's very old history. You know, it was mining. It's just for a boat in an Anglophone world to eat horse. And all the mining countries, half my family is from Belgium, and it's traditional there because they bring the horse in the mine. The horse, you know, it's sad for a horse to live in the mine in the dark,

but they wouldn't bring it out when he was old. You know, they would just eat the horse. Most cultures eat Turkish, eat horse, you know. Well, it was a necessity. I mean, you couldn't pick and choose back when all this was instituted. We're very limited in the proteins that we eat, especially in North America. Quebec less so. You know, Quebec is a very open-minded dining public, very advanced dining public, very old dining public, and of course, Latin, French dining public.

The amount of proteins that are served in a Montreal restaurant are numerous compared to, let's say, even when I go to Manhattan. If me and you and Fred are in Manhattan tomorrow night, say let's go have rabbit with mustard sauce, it's going to be a tough sell. We're going to really struggle to find rabbit mustard sauce. We're going to struggle even to find, you know, let's go have a couple slices of liver tonight with onions. It's going to be very difficult. Or sweetbreads, really.

Lamb neck, you know, lamb liver. Deer is a hard, tall order, you know. Ultimately, Manhattan or America eats a limited scope of proteins, beef, chicken, so forth. Whereas French culture, Quebec, we have all the proteins. I have young dining clientele that have no problem eating kidneys medium rare, liver, lamb liver, deer neck, deer heart tartare. It's not a thing. It's not what other restaurant people are eating.

It's just part of the registry. Little girls, like your daughters, are raised eating the food that their dad hunts and the food that their parents buy. Some people of lesser means eat pork liver. They're raised on it. So when they see liver on the restaurant, cute little 19-year-old girls that are about to go out to the club later will have a slice of liver. You won't see that in New York City. Are you allowed to sell venison here that you hunt? No, not that you hunt.

You have to buy farm-raised stuff. And oddly enough, most of it's from New Zealand. Most of the stuff that we're getting here in the United States is from New Zealand. And if they call it venison, it's most likely some sort of stag or, you know, and the elk that we get if we buy elk at a restaurant. It's all from New Zealand. So you can't harvest it. When you do a kill, you can put it in your freezer. Yes.

Okay, perfect. Yeah. Well, I have two freezers back here. All of the elk that I get, I get from myself and I give it to a lot of my friends and I make sausages for my friends. But that's the only way they're going to get it unless they go out and get it themselves it's not a place in Los Angeles where you can go buy elk meat in New in Newfoundland that they're they're allowed to hunters are allowed to sell moose back to the restaurants really yeah moose were introduced onto the island of Newfoundland from Maine. And there was no natural predators on Newfoundland. And it's a perfect environment for them.

So they just propagated. And that's why they drive slow there, man. When we shot with Tony, they drove slow. Like we drove for hours, like full days to go like 300 miles because you can't drive fast because of the mooses. So you can have a restaurant like in the hotel we stayed the restaurant had a permit to buy moose so they would make like moose curry and moose sausages like a days in kind of vibe like yeah not a great restaurant like a hotel uh you

know a hotel restaurant serving wild moose burgers but it's pretty cool that they do that that is cool but if they did that everywhere else then we're just reinventing the wheel. We're going back to market hunting, which is what almost wiped out almost all of the animals in this country anyway. Some chefs in Quebec would like to bring that back. And I said, listen, we can barely manage our roads, our infrastructure. We can barely manage our… And that's the risk of foraging, too. Eventually, people go for mushrooms.

It's like you heard about the fights between the mushroom pickers in Oregon and stuff like that? No. Oh, fuck. Like, the people who harvest clams, too, eh? Like, between the communities, there's huge fights for territories, and they'd hijack, like, trucks of abalone at night. Yeah, geoduck, the giant king clam? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I've heard stories of a guy in his Econoline van with 500 pounds of gooey duck going to the Victoria airport to send them to Japan, get hijacked on the highway at night, and they steal the clams because they're worth a fortune in Japan. And same for mushroom patches.

Matsutake mushrooms are as well another, this famous white, it's called a pine mushroom. And in Japan, a Matsutake mushroom. The closer the shape of the mushroom to a penis, the more expensive it is, you know? So they'd actually hijack people on their way to the patch and undress them and make them turn around so they can never find the place again. Wow.

Yeah, it's competitive. Morel mushroom, as you look at a morel mushroom, it's, you know, how much, Fred? Very expensive. $44 a kilo in Montreal. Did you pull this a little closer to your face? Absolutely. Just try to keep it about a fist from your face.

Yeah, the morel mushrooms, I buy them online. They're very expensive. I buy them dried, but they're so delicious. I mean, people who don't like mushrooms, like one of my daughters does not like mushrooms, but she loves morels. It's my favorite. It's the number one mushroom. They're so good with salt, with garlic salt and sauteed in butter. They're sensational.

Great mushroom. It's a strange flavor. One of our favorite, there's a great recipe for that in the book, is like you poach chicken legs, right, until they're ready. And then in the broth, very little broth, you know. You strain the broth. You add cream and sauteed morel mushrooms in there, and a little bit of sherry wine, any oxidized wine,

and you just add the legs in there and you let that simmer. Man, that's good. We have a picture in the book of some morel mushrooms of the size of these water bottles. We've had morel mushrooms that are about the size of my hand. You can stuff like half a chicken leg inside of them and serve one stuffed morel mushroom in broth for one customer. It's brilliant. Aren't they – they're a strange mushroom, right, where they pop up after burns.

Yeah. And they're also a spring mushroom, which is weird because most of the other mushrooms are later on fall damp, right? And morel is like literally quite quick after the snow. That's the first mushroom that appears in the forest. So it's very different than all the others. Are they commercially cultivated? They could be, but not. I've never seen it in my career.

I tried growing mushrooms. We tried everything at the restaurant. I tried growing mushrooms and like you get everything but the mushroom you inoculate. You know, it's very difficult to keep the proper conditions and stuff. That's why I'm not against the fact that they're expensive. It's a good way to regulate a market price. It's like, yeah, bluefin tuna is going extinct, but just make it three times the price.

It's going to regulate the market. I guess. I wish there was a way to reintroduce bluefin to the wild. It just seems like the appetite that people have for those things is just untenable. Give you a look at any given night in a city like Manhattan, how much red tuna is sold on the Island of Manhattan, any given night of the year. It's,

it's, it's scary. I almost feel like it's like killing the last giraffe in a herd, you know, like, like fishing a giant tuna like that. It's, it's, and and again you know

they're big they're feisty they're majestic so that shouldn't guide my choice my decision and to protect them but like i that's heartbreaking well the problem is this complete lack of regulation in the open waters when these guys have these enormous ships filled with huge nets, and they just drag them across the ocean floor and capture everything. Or bycatch. Yeah. That's the biggest joke. What is that?

It's like, they call it bycatch. So you didn't set off to fish for tuna, but that's with kind of bit, you know? Like, yeah, come on. You know, you go fishing for what? To catch a bluefin tuna in the first place, you know? Place. Oh, so they're pretending they're not fishing for it. Is that what you're saying?

Allegedly. Yeah. Well, you know that whole thing with Japanese whalers. They found a way to work around it and the way they work around it. Research boats. The science research boats. So the science research where we're going to do research on these whales that we kill and then they chop them up and sell them.

And Sea Shepherd has been tracking that down and they, chop them up and sell them and sea shepherd has been tracking that down and they they you know hover over them take photographs of it and report them and you know it's ugly business yeah wild protein is ugly business yeah we've worked hard at the restaurant to ultimately avoid it to be more seafood sustainable seafood focused you know the oyster is a great thing to eat we should eat eat more oysters. Right. We should eat more clams. Florida, oddly, is an amazing sustainable seafood scene. You know, just the work that they do with the Florida stone crab, right? You know that every year they just harvest like the left arm?

Really? And they put the crab back. And the next year it's the right arm. And they put the crab back. Really? Yeah, it's a brilliant fishing industry, you know? That is. They don't kill the animal. The claw grows back. Right. And it's the right arm and they put the crab back really yeah it's a brilliant fishing industry you know they don't kill the animal the claw grows back right and it's uh and they all fit nicely on the plate all side by side i don't like that you're telling me something good about florida

they have a great shrimping scene a great they're they're actually leaders in sustainable seafood well their seafood and fishing is such a gigantic part of their economy. It makes sense that they would do that. That's a smart thing. Yeah. Grouper fishing down there is a giant, giant part of their industry. There's a good book that was published a few years ago, The Big Oyster, I think, Mark Kolansky.

He wrote a book about cod. The History of the Oyster. Yeah. The New York and the History of the Oyster. That's incredible. It's super interesting because his thing was like, you know, we try to portray our history as like glorious and we herded bisons before for protein and that's how we started like modern farming. But in fact, we probably farmed oysters and snails and clams because they don't move and they're the most prolific and the most abundant source of protein. In that book, Kurlansky brings up a premise, and I'm loosely

interpreting it now because I read this book a few years ago, but think of this for a second, right? The island of Manhattan is a perfect, all the rivers around it, all the water systems around it, is actually one of the greater oyster situations on the Atlantic East Coast, right? The reason that the population exploded in Manhattan in the early days was that any person could literally get off a boat, walk onto the island of Manhattan, homeless, broke, and sleep in an alley and walk down to the river and pick five oysters. A small oyster is five grams of protein, right? A medium oyster has got 10 grams of protein.

So a completely destitute person could just eat six oysters a day, you know, three oysters, and live again another day to find a job. you know, three oysters and live again another day to find a job. So the population ultimately, you know, New York City and its population was based on this readily, this huge supply of oysters. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. There was a free available source of protein that will make you live another 24 hours. So if it takes you three days to find a job, four days to find a job, 20 days to find a

job, you're not going to die because there's oysters. Look at this. And yeah, and they found oysters. What is this from? What is this from? Harlem River. Oysters. Oh, this is incredible.

Yeah. There's actual islands that they thought were like geological formation that are made of oyster shells. Layers and layers of oyster shells. The article that Jamie put up is from Thrillist. Is that what it's from? Pull up to the top so I can tell people what the name is. Why oysters are ridiculously important to the history of New York City.

And it's just showing all these ancient photos of mounds of oyster shells. There's an amazing program today. You know some of the areas, they take these giant cages. One oyster, if I'm correct, one oyster filters four metric tons of water per day. From what I understand, I might be wrong with my math. So take this, for instance, you know, a cage, a caged box of thousands of oysters. There it is. There's the math. A single oyster can filter about 30 to 50 gallons of water every day. A little off.

And in case you haven't noticed, New York's waterways aren't exactly clean. The folks behind the Billion Oyster Project are trying to change that by recycling shells from the partnering restaurants and getting them back in the water to build oyster reefs. The goal is to add a billion oysters to the water by 2035. So far, they've restored 1.5 acres of reefs. Don't say 1.05. Bitch, you got an acre. You're just adding those extra two numbers. 1.05 acres of reefs and count 11.5 million newly grown oysters.

But the oyster will clarify the water. It'll make a murky river clear again. Wow. But does that affect the taste of the oyster? They don't eat those oysters. I think those are pulled back into landfill after or mulched into gardens. Or for the shells again to repot for more reefs. But the oyster is interesting.

It doesn't move, right? It opens its shells to feed. Showing how they do it this is incredible and the oyster you know that the oyster has a it will change gender according to the density of the population so it'll go from male to female in order to balance the population that's incredible we're watching a video where the what is it the oyster recovery what does it say it was a time lapse of it oh sorry so it's a time lapse but it. What does it say? It was a time lapse of it. Oh, sorry. So it's a time lapse, but it said, what does it say it was from? Oyster filtration. Right.

But there was a watermark on the video there in the corner. It was showing. Oyster recovery partnership. Oyster recovery partnership. Yeah. So the watermark is, so what they do is they have this horrible green water. They chuck these oysters in and it turns it completely clear. That's amazing.

I did not know that. I did know that they used to eat lobsters and they thought of lobsters as poor people food because you just get them out of the river. The rich kids eat bologna. Isn't that crazy? In New Brunswick, they used to harvest the lobsters to feed to the prisoners and keep

the shells as fertilizer. Jefferson was one of the first presidents to bring the lobster into the White House because it was seen as a servant's food. When did it switch? Jefferson. So when he started doing that, that's when people realized it was so delicious? No, that's when the lobster spaghetti at Joe Beef, we changed the whole thing. The lobster spaghetti at Joe Beef is insane.

That lobster spaghetti, that's off the charts you know also the child labor laws were instored primarily because of the kids that used to work in oyster shucking plants really yeah we had one of our best friends

if not our best friend passed away like six months ago John Bill he was a great shucker he helped us at the bar but he was like deep into sustainability and history of oysters

and everything and he was like the source for oysters for everything. He wrote a beautiful book. Yeah. We'll send you a copy. It's an incredible book. They're a good food for vegans to consider too, because they're more primitive than most

plants. Yeah. Most mollusks. John used to call them ocean cupcakes. Well, they're delicious. It's a great source of protein, but it's also they don't have any nerve endings. They're not feeling anything. It's a sea vegetable.

Yeah, it basically is. We have an issue, or some people, not myself, but some people have an issue with things that are capable of moving. Yeah. Like for whatever reason, we just decide that don't eat that. But if you want to talk about something sustainable, like mollusks and seafood, I mean, they can be commercially farmed. They actually do have a positive impact, as you're describing, on the environment. Incredible source of protein as well. Yeah, and really a complete source of protein, not like a very bioavailable source, unlike a lot of vegetable proteins.

So maybe we should do a protein powder out of dried oysters. Just yeast oysters. Clam protein. How would you do that? How would you get so ripped? Clam protein, bro. A lot of people are eating cricket protein. Have you guys ever served any insect dishes? Not knowingly.

I got a letter last week that someone found a bug in their salad. You know, sometimes the people are a bit they want the cake and they want to eat it too because they people want organic right and we support that we love that but um occasionally get an ant in there yeah organic is no pesticide right that's okay bugs aren't bad it's like the idea of bugs being like roaches are bad okay most other bugs are not that big of a deal yeah it's like quite you know if we're serving we're serving 100 people a day and maybe you know that arguably being 40 salads you know it's

some kind of crazy work to really look at both sides of each leaf we try our best right you know but you know one one will get past us every year i think you're better off the people that that they're freaking out about bugs you don't want them coming in there. Just give them their money back and get the fuck out of here. Yeah, I agree with that. Stay out. That's my policy. But when I was in Mexico, we checked into this resort, and they had a bowl of fried crickets in the hotel.

They had some sort of flavor to them. They added some flavor to them. Yeah, Rene Redzepi in Noma, arguably one of the world's best restaurants, is obsessed with serving ants. Really? Loves them. They added some flavor to them. Yeah. Rene Redzepi in Noma, arguably one of the world's best restaurants, is obsessed with serving ants. Really? Loves them. Lemony fresh. I don't know. I think they're crunchy. They're delicious. He thinks they're fine.

Of course, and he's doing this wonderful Nordic cuisine and there's ants. And when they forage vegetables and they forage mushrooms and there's also ants. So why not forage vegetables and they forage mushrooms, there's also ants, so why not forage those too? And it's a homework they do for the rest of us. They're doing the right thing.

People pay a lot of money, fly there to go eat there, but he's doing some good legwork on how to prepare them, how to raise them. I'm not saying his food is based on that, but I'm happy that somebody did that part of the research. And he'll bring the point up and they'll, you know, ultimately by osmosis, other younger chefs will try to do that. And they'll normalize it a little bit more.

So, you know, expect ants at Nordic restaurants. Interesting. So this is the new trend. Get ahead of it, folks. You heard him, Los Angeles. I know you trendy fucks are out there thinking about what's coming. Crickets are a weird one. Crickets seem to be universally accepted, like cricket protein.

You see a lot of cricket protein bars. You don't see too many other insects being commercially harvested. David and I were in New York for Anthony's memory thing, memorial thing. And we walked in the Bowery. And, you know, middle of the afternoon, hot sun. Oh, this is a good one. And there's like a little store. No refrigeration.

And there's buckets of clams. And, you know, like mesh bags, like you put onions in. There's a big mesh bag in a bin. And it's full of giant bullfrogs. Like looking up at us. Like a hundred little bullfrogs. Like looking up at us. Like a hundred little bullfrogs. But like lined up in a box like oranges in a box. Like one,

two, three, four, five. And they're alive. And their little eyes just looking up like this. And I was like, sure, we have frogs in the book, but that was... So hang on. Fred and I have been cooking for years. 25 years arguably, if not more. I've processed every animal in French cooking.

So, of course, we just look at the frogs. We don't say anything to each other. We keep on walking. And I go, hang on a sec, Fred. Walk me through this. He goes, how exactly does this work? I know how to do a rabbit. I know how to do a hare.

I know how to do a duck. I know how to do any fish, any seafood. Lobster, no problem. So you get a case of frog in the kitchen. What's your first move? Right now, what's our first move? So we take the live frog. Do I put it on the cutting board?

Do I hack its legs off? And what do I do with the 60% remaining of the frog? That's what I'm worried about. Yeah. Is it ground? Does it end up in dumplings? Where is that other part of the frog going? Is it soup?

Is it broth? You know, that's an amphibian. Right. It was fascinating. Did you experiment? No. No, no, no. I'm mortified.

And after that, we went to Tony's Memorial. It was in a Chinese restaurant. And I was just like, I couldn't eat. Because by default, everything had like frog in it, in my head. So you were freaking out just because they were alive, staring up at you? No, because I know that the legs are delicious. I know that, you know, if I chop the legs off and I peel the skin and I dredge them in flour and I fry them and I serve them with garlic cream, that they're delicious. They're as delicious as chicken wings.

What I'm worried about is the frog is so big and you know the discarded part of the frog is the size of a softball it's like eating the stem of the apple and leaving the apple in cooking we don't throw stuff out so I want to

know what happens to that part in Chinese cookery or French cookery. Well, the place that you guys were at was a Chinese market? Yeah, it was one of those hole-in-the-door kind of like supplier. And it was like we got it. There were clams. There were periwinkles.

There were like all like gooey ducks. I've never processed frogs in my career really. When I've gotten fresh frogs I was working in France and it was just the frog's legs in a basket. But even then I would wonder in France where does that other part go? I know. This is a very disturbing.

It seems like there's got to be an answer to this. Maybe. I don't know. You would be the people that I would call. That's the problem. Wonton stuffing. Right. Some sort of boiled and ground. I'm hoping they're discarded. I just Googled it

and the video is a graphic. Let it go. Let's do it. Let it roll. I'm not going to put it up on YouTube. Okay, well put it up

for us. Put it up for us so we can see it. Here we go. Okay. Oh no. They don't even bother killing them first. They just do it on the fly so far

so far that's exactly how i presume okay so they squeeze it out once they cut the head off they they squeeze it out like a what would you describe that like they're peeling it now right so then they squeeze the they squeeze the innards out. Like through the neck cavity. Like the last of toothpaste. Yes. That's a good way to describe it. Yeah. Okay.

So then they take it. Now it looks like a man because it's headless. It's like a headless man. It's like one of those mannequin that you use to draw bodies there. Yeah. At what point do you put the batteries to the hind legs? Batteries? No, in like high school.

Oh, right. You put the little battery in the back legs. We used to put cigarettes in them. In their mouths. He's chopping them up. It seems like he's leaving the bones on. Is that what he's doing? Yeah.

Okay. So you know what? It's really great that we're watching this because I'm a lot less horrified by the whole prospect of it. So you know what? It's really great that we're watching this because I'm a lot less horrified by the whole prospect of it. So he's just hacking it up, bones intact, and chucking it into a basket. So it doesn't look like they're missing much other than the guts. So it seems like the innards. And then they seem to be boiling all that stuff.

And, okay, so they put it in a soup with the bones intact, and you just sort of – I need that. I need that. Yeah. It's funny. If I had to make a dish with that, I'd make the soup with lilies inside the water lilies i mean right lily pad soup with frog yeah what is have you ever tried anything with no that's your leaves look like lily pads right and those are hot right now in cooking do you guys try to do that like add some of the ingredients

of the native environments of the animals one of the best tricks to cooking one of the ingredients of the native environments of the animals. What are the best tricks to cooking? What are the best tricks to cooking? Chef told me this a long time ago in France. He goes, well, chef, what should I cook the lamb with? He goes, it's easy. What would it eat? If you had a lamb, what would be growing around it? And automatically, you just scroll down. If I had a lamb and an acre of land, what would be around it?

There would be turnips. There would be carrots. There would be onions. There would be apples. There would be pears. There would be turnips. There would be carrots. There would be onions. There would be apples. There would be pears. There would be thyme. There would be basil. There would be garlic.

There would be, so just, there you go. You just answer no question. Traditional, more idyllic environment, yeah. The problem is, is when you have lobster and you cook it with mangoes, right, where lobster is, where it comes from, there's no mangoes. So the recipe doesn't make sense.

It might be delicious, but it's dumb. But butter, lobster and butter, they go sense. It might be delicious, but it's dumb. But butter. Lobster and butter. They go together. Lobster, butter, potatoes. What else grows there? Onions. Yeah, you go to Prince Edward Island.

Okay, small island in the Gulf. One of the provinces of Canada. You have cows, potatoes, and lobster. The region. The three resources. Not the actual environment. If you have a rabbit in your backyard. In the line of sight.

What can you see there? Rabbit with apples and carrots makes sense. That does make sense. But what if lobster and mango is fucking delicious? It's for other people to do. We have our principles. It's academically incorrect. Academically incorrect. That's fascinating. One of my favorite pizzas. It's for other people to do. We have our principles. It's academically incorrect. Academically incorrect.

That's fascinating. One of my favorite pizzas, don't get disgusted at me, don't hate me, pineapple and anchovy. Pineapple and anchovy? That's right. Pineapple and ham is out there. Pineapple and anchovy. It's goddamn delicious. I fucking love it.

I don't care what you say. Who does that, though? You'd invented that. I might have. That's good. No, I want to try frog soup with lily pads and pineapple and anchovy pizza. I go hard with both. Hard with the pineapple and hard with the anchovy.

Do you want to write a book three with us? No. Cooking with Joe? I'm good at elk steaks, and I know how to order pineapple and anchovy pizza. I have to say that when I see the picture you post of your meat cooking, it's always on point. Thank you very much. Because there's a lot of hunters that post up pictures of their dinner,

and it's not because you can take pictures and they'll look beautiful of anything. It's not the quality of the picture, but the food is a little bit. Yeah, some hunters don't know how to cook. We have a lot of hunters in Quebec, and sometimes, you know, the hunter will bring by the... Because I shot this beautiful moose, David. It was 2,000 pounds or 1,500 pounds, and he shows me a picture on his phone, and then he brings me a jar of the spaghetti sauce he made out of the moose. I'm like, really?

That's what you, like you shot a majestic moose in the forest and you made spaghetti sauce with it? And I put kiwi in it because it tenderizes the meat. Well, listen, spaghetti sauce with ground moose is delicious. I'll give you a tip. You gotta have, you gotta have a, I eat everything. I eat the whole thing, right? I mean, I know how to make the roast. I'll give you a tip. You've really got to read up on how to cook wild game as opposed to how to cook anything else. There's a very low fat content.

It's a tricky kind of meat to cook. There's a tool. It's called a lardoir in French. It's like a big needle with a swivel tip. And what you do is you cut long strips of fat and you poke them through the meat. Oh, and you inject it? Yeah. You don't inject.

You put like long. You're like threading it. You're threading your piece of meat like the the loins or the fat of the back straps it's it tends to be leaner so you put long strips of pork fat inside and you cook it slowly enough that the pork fat will melt inside so in every bite you'll have a little bit of fat it's a neat thing it's an old french cooking trick yeah that sounds sensational or what we do, actually, like for the

wild rabbit, which is extremely dry, we'll put a veal foot with the skin, so that'll give off the collagen, and we'll put a slice of pork belly with it. That'll give off the

fat. When are you guys going back to Montreal? Tomorrow. Tomorrow? Yeah. I can't give you meat right it wouldn't

no we couldn't get through the border wouldn't work not this way the other way works yes it works if you hunt it and bring it through i've brought it i've brought meat back but uh damn i'd like to give you guys something see what you do with it yeah it's a lot of things. It's our favorite meat, but, you know, it would be sooner be caught with bricks of hashish than venison as restaurant owners, you know? Like, you cannot have any wild game in your restaurant. Even if it's just for your own personal consumption? No.

Really? Yeah, sturgeon, too, is a problem in Quebec. Caviar, you know, we have a lot of sturgeon in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The laws are like lights out ridiculous. If you get caught with like a gram of caviar in your boat, you don't have a license. They'll freeze your bank accounts and seize your house kind of thing. It would go south quick. What is the concern?

Is it such a commercial market for sturgeon caviar? Is that what it is? Yeah, exactly, yeah. Wow, so people just go that far out of their way to get caviar that they had to just make these. It's like a fish right now is worthless if you can't use the caviar, right? Right. We're allowed that. There's a fishery for them.

They fish the sturgeon. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, when they catch them, they have to gut them. They have to remove every egg and dump the eggs into the water. That's crazy. They have to bring the meat back to smoke it and salt it and to sell it. There is a commercial wild fishery for sturgeon meat. But the – so ultimately, you just put a price tag on the fish. Let's say it's worth $200.

But all of a sudden, if you're allowed to harvest the eggs and the fish – 15 grand. Yeah, it and the fish... 15 grand. Yeah, it would just be... 15 grand. Yeah, because they produce a monolithic amount of eggs. Well, what's crazy is now you're making it useless because you're throwing it away, something that's incredibly valuable and delicious. The quotas are very small, though. Let's say if you had a sturgeon license, I imagine you'd

be allowed five or six or something like that. And the First Nations, like Mohawks, the Iroquois, have the right to fish. You know, we've been on boats where a guy was fishing. You know, he showed us the traditional technique. And it's not sports fishing. Like, they eat soup.

They eat this. They love it. It's great fish. And themselves, they eat the eggs. They make soup. They put the eggs in it. Oh, they catch sturgeon 20 minutes from Joe Beef. Wow. Yeah, right there, it. They like... Oh, they catch sturgeon 20 minutes from Joe Beef. Wow.

Yeah, right there, downtown. It's a dinosaur. Yeah, with a spear. Wow. Yeah. It's a crazy animal when you see them in the water. Oh, yeah.

Do you see the scales on them? It's so bizarre. I mean, how... They're from, what, 100 million years ago or something crazy like that? They're prehistoric animals. They look like dinosaurs.

They really do. Yeah. And the guys that we know that fished them, it's quite the characters. And interesting guy dinosaurs. They really do. Yeah. And the guys that we know that fished them, he's quite the character. He's an interesting guy. He's a mohawk. And he told us that the biologists put underwater cameras there to keep track of the fish. And they said they see like 16 layers of sturgeon swimming, one on top of the other.

He said, I could walk on the fish. Wow. You know? There's that many? Yeah. There's a ton. Wow. That's incredible. But again, you know, the people don't really, we even struggle with it at the fish. Wow. You know? There's that many? Yeah. There's a ton. Wow. That's incredible.

But again, you know, the people don't really, we even struggle with it at the restaurant. For me to sell a plate of smoked sturgeon, tough sell, you know? I'll sooner sell other things than that, you know? Because people aren't interested? I think it's a tough sell as a fish, let's say, as a 200 gram or a four ounce piece of fish. Look at that thing. That is so crazy. Is that the same river?

That's probably Columbia River sturgeon. That looks like from what I see. Fraser and BC. Look at the size of that thing. That is so ancient looking. It looks like

it shouldn't be here. Yeah. It's a fish that's a bit muddy sometimes, depending on where it's caught and everything. How do you handle it? Like if you were going to cook one of those?

We make Jamaican patties with it. In this book, we did. In old French cookery, one of the ways to cook sturgeon is ultimately you apply cooking a piece of sturgeon loin as you would a piece of veal loin or pork loin. Meat juice even is acceptable. You know, roasted carrots, roasted onions, roasted celery, roast the sturgeon and serve it with meat juice. Bacon, mushroom, red wine. Bacon, mushroom, red wine, like Fred said. So you treat the sturgeon as you would meat is possibly the best way. To treat it as you would fish is not the best you know people got to

expect we we were overly fortunate to have you know 300 gram you know like a pound of fish seared in a pan and served with a little sauce was common thing right but it's not the right thing to do if we want to keep things in the water, you know, for our kids or whatever. So people got used to this, like, a piece of fish that tastes like nothing that you can eat for, like, an hour and a half because you have so much of it. And that's the standard. But a fish like sturgeon is great if you have a little bit in a sauce like David May talks about over, like, buttery mashed potatoes or, like, with like with like egg noodles or something like that. It's a great way to do it. And it's a great way to look at fish where like you need actually 75 grams of protein, not like 500, you know.

What is the, is there a comparison that you can make in terms of what it tastes like? Yeah. Veal loin a little bit, I guess. Really? Somewhat, you know. Really? Somewhat. Wow. You know, braised veal collar. What do you say?

Blanquette. Veal stew. A larger piece of stew. Like not a small, you know, two-inch block of stew, but let's say a bigger piece of stew. With a chunk of seaweed in it, you know. Yeah. It's neat. Wow.

It's neat. It sounds, now I'm hungry for it. We do, like, Fred got the McNuggets molds, you know, because, you know, the McNuggets have this, like, there's, like, four or five different sizes. Fred made the mold in the first book, precisely exactly like the McDonald's McNuggets. And we used to do Sturgeon McNuggets.

Or Eel. Or Eel McNuggets. Same fishery, right? We have Eels where we get Sturgeon McNuggets. Or eel. Or eel McNuggets. Same fishery, right? We have eels where we get sturgeon. That's another weird fish. It was kind of cool. We sold a ton of them at the restaurant. It would literally, you'd be at Joe Beef and you'd get on your plate what looked to be like six McNuggets with a sauce and a little paper cup on the side.

People are like, what the hell is this? I say, sturgeon nuggets. Eel is a weird one. When I used to go fishing a lot people would catch eels they'd be upset like and then

they would go to buy sushi later on in life and there'd be eel sushi and I'd be like what the fuck is going on it's a different wolf

is that wolf eel it's a different fish it's not a true eel in sushi yeah correct even like the real eel I can eat bits of it but if we were to like take a kneel a eel and and just like first you have to put a nail in its head and a nail in

its tail and like skin it and then you can cut its head off and peel it and put it in a cast iron pan with butter and it's still moving like a snake and the smell of it while it creeps it's still moving like a snake. And the smell of it while it cooks, it makes you choke. You know, we had a little trout pond at Joe Beef that I built. Really? Yeah. And it was a bad experience because we had a refrigerator thing to make the water cold, you know, a cooler, and we had a pump. Every time it rained, it would turn the breaker off,

and now the fish like drown. Drown. No oxygen. Martin Picard gave us some eels. And we found them the next day in the parking lot.

Like all the they found Dude on the other side of the parking lot in the baseball field where the bleachers were. Look at that shit. They're cooking it

and it's swimming at a rapid pace. It's had no head and no skin at this point. This is a grill. What does it say? It says shocking clip of cooking an eel alive in soul.

No, but it's got, that eel is beheaded and skinned. Beheaded, skinned. And it's still, nervous system is still very intact. What is, what are those things in the bottom? Those, it's legs? What is? That's probably its guts. Oh, God.

Look at that thing bucking and kicking. Oh, man, that's like, That's real stir-frying. I caught one once in Nova Scotia on a hook and line. And when I caught it, the fisherman next to me said, oh, don't reel it in. So I just held my fishing rod. I wasn't reeling in. And the eel reeled itself up my line to the tip of my fishing rod and started reeling down my fishing rod towards me i was a kid i was horrified ever since then i've had an issue it's like i worked in a restaurant in france

in dijon and in the fridge right near the cook of the hotline the cooking line there was a wooden box with a cinder block on it it's's the first day I worked there. I was helping out on the fish station. And I hear in French, une eel commande, one eel ordered up. And then the fish chef says, go in the fridge. There's a wooden box.

You take the cinder block off it. You just lift the lid a little bit, plunge your hand in there, grab an eel and bring it back to me. I was like, you're kidding, right? So I literally do that. I go into the walk-in fridge, I pull the wooden box out, I take the cinder block

off the top, I lift the... It was just literally 50 eels writhing together in a box. That's like Indiana Jones. No, they live out of water, no problem. Martin Picard at Pierre de Cochon,

in his restaurant right now, I was there last week, he has a lobster tank right in a doorway. I think they hang your coats right above it. And in it, there's like eight massive eels. They have to chase them when they come at work in the morning. They reopen the restaurant,

they'll find them in the cash register, in the coat check, in the lettuce bins. They have like cinder blocks down now on the top. They got a plexiglass top with holes in it so it oxygenates. And they're literally pinned down in that tank. But even as you're eating and you just see those giant eels in a tank the size of your flag here, it's just horrific. You know what's the best thing about eels? Talking about it. That's the best thing.

Now, what about the flavor? I like it super smoked, super salted down with a good sugary, salty brine. So you have to cover it. Yeah, like in nuggets like we did. But even like in that restaurant David was talking about, if you take a fresh piece of eel and put it in a cast iron pan, the smoke it does, it's like mustard gas. Oh, yeah.

Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's super allergenic. I'm a little bit allergic to, I guess, not all fish, but some fish. And when I used to work at that restaurant, we would literally put a knife through its head into the cutting board and then another knife through its tail so it would be straight on the cutting board. So we'd pin down the left side and the right side of the eel. Then we'd lift the fillets, skin them,

score them, and then pan sear them with artichoke and country ham. And as I was pan-searing them, I was breathing in the vapors of searing the eel and my lungs would seize. You know, I'd have like kind of like it would give me an asthma attack somewhat. It was wild. Now, is this a popular dish in France because of necessity, because of a lack of food choices? A lot of old French cooking would be based on what you had in your neighborhood. You know, French cooking was very different pre-Federal Express, pre-Roads, you know. So eels in French cooking would come from the Bordeaux region ultimately and, you know, would be like la matelote d'anguille. So it would be an eel stew in red wine, of course, carrot, onion, celery,

exactly like a beef stew. And I think also the thing about it is it's a dish that you wouldn't make at home. So people would go, allez, on va manger de l'anguille, let's go and eat eel because... That's what there was. You don't want to have the cinder block

plexiglass case in your house. Imagine your house with your kids or my kids. They eat lampreys. In Bordeaux there's some of the famous iconic dishes of Bordeaux is lampreys. This is like an animal from Dune. It's like a big hole with teeth.

They're the ones that cling to the bottom of sharks. Correct. No, that's a remora. Lamprey is a problem actually now even in America. They're coming up in some rivers, and they attach themselves to fish with their suction cup head. They're just horrific animals. Toothed suction cup head. Yeah, it's tooth.

It's like dune. It's like that animal in dune. It does look like that, yeah. What do they taste like? Probably crappy, like eel. Like a shitty eel. We did a dinner. Like a shittier eel.

We did a dinner for Tony, andittier eel. We did a dinner for Tony and he did his second book, I think, at Liverpool House. And we were much younger and I was like, oh, let's buy some daring food. It was Tony Bourdain.

Let's buy something fucked up. So I ordered two of those eel and I tried to make soup with it. I tried to make everything. And again, my classic joke, the best thing to do with it it. I try to make everything. And again, you know, my classic joke, the best thing to do with it is to put it in the garbage. Like that was the, you make stock, you reduce it,

then you throw it away. I'm sure there's a recipe that's good. And I'm sure in case of apocalypse, after the winter subsides, we'll fish for that and we'll eat it. But until then, I'm okay with like cutting my Big Macs in half so they last for two days. There's a cool company that I've been following a company online. I think on Twitter, Instagram.

It's called American Unagi. They're up in the Atlantic Northeast. I think in Maine or Massachusetts somewhere. They have some really – they're raising eels, I think, releasing them into the nature and they're selling eels commercially. It looks again like horrific work. Raising them and releasing them into the nature. Is there like some sort of an environmental benefit of having the eels? Is that like sting about the lobster and put it away in a freshwater river?

They're a weird animal, right? Again, loosely based. My facts are old reading. But from what I recall, eels are cool because all the eels every year go back to the Sargasso Sea. Is it true that? That's what I remember. Is that folklore, you think? I think so. Is this an old fact in my mind? The oyster filtration volume? Yeah, yeah I remember. Is that folklore, you think? I think so, because I'm thinking about the oyster filtration volume. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oysters filter eels. So they all go back to this one area? Yeah, supposedly. There's a breeding area for them called the Sargasso Sea. Great place for swimming. And where's the Sargasso Sea? It's kind of a southern middle Atlantic from what I recall. That's pretty safe bet.

Right where the mythical plastic patch is. Oh, the plastic. That's a Pacific. You think that's mythical? I don't know. I've never seen really a real true picture of it. There's a Sargasso Sea. Eels.

Yeah, the eels. In our last. Making their way. Wow. That's so creepy. Look at that fucker. Making his way. Beautiful video, too, man.

What is this? Pretty cool. Wow. There's a guy named Boyan Slat. Is that his name? Who is a young fellow that figured out a way to filter out the garbage patch. And he's been... He developed this device,

and they recently started implementing it. But he's been on the podcast before and went into great detail about it. The garbage patch is real. See, that's the American Unagi site. Whoa. Look at those fuckers just flopping around. Yeah, so they're in Maine.

American Unagi's Instagram page we're on right now. They're in Maine? Yeah. Our aquaculture. That's cool. American Unagi's Instagram page we're on right now. They're in Maine? Yeah. Our aquaculture. That's cool. The Amaraskata has great oysters there too. Yeah, amazing.

What about, have you guys ever cooked or eaten blueberry bear? No, we don't. Martin in Montreal. Martin is eating bear. He's hunting bear.

He goes and baits every weekend and then he goes and shacks. What's a blueberry bear, though? My friend Steve Rinella has described this to me. Apparently, when bears eat blueberries, when they find, like it's towards the fall in particular, when they're trying to fatten up before they go into the den, they'll find these massive fields of blueberries.

He shot one in Alaska. And this bear had eaten so many blueberries that when they opened it up, it smelled of blueberries. He shot one in Alaska. And this bear had eaten so many blueberries that when they opened it up, it smelled like blueberries. The actual fat had a purple hue to it. And it's supposed to be a spectacularly delicious meat. That totally makes sense. But you know, it's funny you say that because I was thinking about that with venison before.

We have some friends who had a venison farm. This is it right here. This is Steve cooking it on the show. The show's called Meat Eater. Steve will actually be a guest on the show here Friday. But see how the fat has like a hue to it? Amazing. But he said it all smells like blueberry. So he rendered

down the bear fat and then, because this was all in the field, and then cooked the bear meat, this blueberry bear meat chunks of it in the fat well if the pigment is a liposoluble then it would make sense that you find it in the fat but they made uh they made experiments our friends with the deer farm and what they did they wanted to know if the um the taste of venison was owed to the fact that the diet of the animal or the way that hunters traditionally break down the meat in the field,

the field dressing of the meat, you know. So what they did is they put a beef, like a steer, and they shot him and they prepared him. They dressed him the way you would a deer or a moose. And then they, at the same time, did the same thing with the deer. And then they did the slaughterhouse treatment, like a commercial treatment for both animals. And they realized that once you wait a little bit,

even on the beef, before you gut it, before you skin it and everything, that funky or that like gamey taste will come even to beef. So you picture that's what, yeast in nature? It's probably also they think that you might lack the skills to properly extract the guts.

You might perforate the guts. Sometimes you might perforate the bile pouch there. Parts of the innards might come in contact. That makes sense. The skin will be on too long. It's not bled properly as well. Yeah, it's not bled properly. And then, you know, it's not chilled super rapidly.

You kill in the morning, the whole sun is out. You know, you don't have a fridge with you. You have no water. But on the other hand, when we have the wild rabbits, they taste like a juniper, like very, very,

very strongly like juniper. And that's, that's in fact, the challenge is to get rid of some of that juniper taste. Yeah. It's like the partridge that we shoot at the lake. And in fact, it's like spruce,

spruce tips. And instead of when we cook, sometimes we'll cook meat and then we'll, we'll even. And instead of when we cook sometimes, we'll cook meat, and then we'll even add partridge, or at home I'll add a partridge or a wild rabbit just as seasoning to the rest of the pot. If you look at all the traditional French-Canadian dishes of hunters, they're all like all the games are mixed up. So you never have have this is a modern

cuisinier like culinary fancy thing to have a breast of partridge seared on a bed of cabbage you know those things are always treated with like i said earlier with fat with like all the spices with wine with cognac with layers of like you know even like organ meats in there and you put a crust over it and cabbage you know it's like that's like we said it needs a lot of skills to eat like good games yeah i've never had gamey venison i've been very very fortunate that i've first of all i've learned to hunt from people that really know what they're doing so we didn't let anything sit out in the heat and made sure we opened it up and cooled it out quickly. But one of the things that they do do when guys are deep into the backcountry and they have an animal and they kill it, and even in the summer when it's warm out, what they do is they hang it and give it a lot of air circulation.

It develops a crust on the outside. And then they cut that crust back, and then the meat underneath it is sort of tenderized in a lot of ways. And a lot of hunters say that it's even more delicious that way. Yeah, it's protected by the crust the heiress created. And of course, it probably starts the bacteriological work, starts to work inside of that crust. There's two processes, right, by which the meat gets tender. The first one is the rigor mortis. The meat rests, and the rigor mortis,

I guess all the cortisol and everything that stiffens the meat at death, well, the meat will rest. And then it's an enzymatic reaction where the enzymes work and break down some of the meat fibers and the tougher muscles and stuff. In French, the word for resting meat is called faisander. And faisan is a pheasant, you know? Because they used to hang the pheasants by the neck. By the beak? Yeah, until they fell. So when the beak falls off the skull, then they're ready to eat.

Yeah, I've seen that before. That is so strange. It's hard to eat. I've had it a couple of times. What does it taste like? It tastes like death warmed over. What the fuck is wrong with these people? Why are they eating it like that? Because it's, you know, a lot of people love strong flavors like blue cheese, like monster cheese in Germany, you know. So this is, because ultimately if you just eat it fresh, it's chicken of the woods, really.

But it's good. Yeah. By letting it go a little bit, letting it rot a little bit, they get these secondary, tertiary, intense flavors. Maybe, too, we were talking about probiotics. You know, you don't, those traditional ways, you don't always know why you do them. Right. But maybe initially they're like you incubate, you immunize yourself a little bit. incubate, you know, you immunize yourself a little bit, you know, it's like, the taste is,

you got to love it after you're used to it. But initially, it might be a way to have some of the bacterias. I think you talked about soil based probiotics. Before I read about that, like, we're realizing that like, okay, yogurt probiotics are not the whole thing, you know, so maybe there's soil-based probiotic, animal-based probiotic. Maybe we're completely wrong about what flora we're ingesting. And maybe that was like a good way to get your flora. Yeah. Makes sense. I guess there would be some strategies for taking that stuff in.

But I would think flavor-wise it would, I mean, because pheasant, if you just eat it fresh, it's delicious. It's light. It's very nice. Like, I would think that unless there was no other way to store it and they didn't have refrigeration, which, of course, they didn't when they first started doing this. Refrigeration is a super modern invention if you look back. Like, I worked for chefs in my apprenticeship that told me stories about their apprenticeship, and it's like night and day. They said, when we woke up in the morning, we used to have to fill the ovens with coal, you know, and go down to the ice locker and drag an ice block through the, what's that stuff called? Sawdust.

Through the sawdust shed. I was like, what? Wow. You know, a lot of these old French restaurants that are famous had coal-fired ovens and ice block fridges. And the apprentices would live above and they'd take shift. You know, one night it'd be you that would make sure it doesn't die because otherwise it'd be hard to start again, you know? Like real coal. Wow. Anticide coal.

Yeah, the stoves would burn every day all that all the time the restaurant stove was ultimately was also heating the whole building as well the hotel was heated by the restaurant wow yeah well it makes sense i mean it really does but there's not a lot of animals that they would let get that funky other than… Shark. Shark. Oh, that thing they do in Iceland, the pickled shark. There's a Korean dish that I'm actually curious to try, a scape wing that is fermented. But until it gets that ammonia flavor, you know, like you smell a camembert and a poise and you smell it, it smells good.

Funky cheese. Then you go a bit deeper, you know, bigger width. And and you smell it, it smells good, funky cheese. Then you go a bit deeper, bigger width, and then you're like, wow, Windex. You got the ammonia and some people look for that. Different cultures are into different flavors. A friend of mine, Andy, went to Calcutta three weeks ago and came back with the number one candy in Calcutta or in India. It's this weird candy called Pulse. If the number one candy in Calcutta or in India, it's this weird candy called Pulse. If we had one right now, all three of us, it's a repulsive candy that tastes incredibly of sulfur and fecal rot.

But in India, that's the candy. Like, people love it. What? In American winemaking and French winemaking, there's things in winemaking called flaws. You know, the flaws of wine in France and in natural winemaking, organic winemaking, will always be volatile acidity and bertanomyces. Volatile acidity smells in the wine vastly of vinegar. And bertanomyces smells vastly of fecal matter barnyard fecal matter you know these in in in north american wine and even in french wine are considered as flaws you know in japan they love natural wines from france that have high volatile acidity and bretonomyces smells. What would be ultimately

considered a flawed wine in France in natural wine world is considered a delicacy in Japan in the natural wine world. Wow. So do they purposely take ones that have that funky smell and ship them off to Japan? Some winemakers, you know, the wine agent will come and visit the cellar and usually the winemaker will point him in the direction and say, maybe this might be for... And then he goes, yes, yes, this is what we like. Do they cultivate it on purpose in that direction?

I figure nobody right now will come up and say it outright, but I believe so. There are Japanese winemakers now all through France that work in a very funky way and are more or less pushing those wines into the Japanese market. Okay. I have to try this just because it's disgusting.

So tell me what the name of the candy is again. Pulse. Spell that P-U-L-S-E. It's a green mango candy. Yeah. Originally, it's a classic snack, right? They used a sulfur salt. It's called green mango candy. Yeah, originally it's a classic snack, right? They used a sulfur salt. It's called black salt.

And they put a bit of chili and sulfur salt on mango. And I have to admit that when I had the real green mango with the sulfur salt, it's not that bad. That candy was like pushed. It's like the mega warheads, you know, that we had as kids. I wonder, too, sometimes, like, the gamey flavor of the pheasant, the cheese, the this, the eel, the that. I see it sometimes as a bit of a, like, you know, the ghost pepper. It's a bit of a pissing contest between, you know, like.

Right. No one could possibly enjoy the taste of ghost pepper, right? No, no. I mean, does it even have a taste? I mean, are you even responding to that taste? I won't even try it. Have you at all? You know who loves that?

You know Olivier? Yes. Those guys, they have like, well, they watch like Game of Thrones. They get together. And they eat ghost peppers? Oh, yeah. And they have like. We're talking about Olivier Aubon-Mercier, who's a fighter in the UFC.

Yeah. And they'll have like ghost pepper parties, you know. And then the next day, they'll go to Comic Con and dress up as superheroes and then play some online poker and then eat more ghost peppers. Well, he's also a UFC fighter. I mean, you gotta think, he's a very extreme human being. He's a funny

kid, man. He's a very, very, very nice guy. Yeah. Yeah, he's brilliant. I mean, if you didn't know that he was a trained killer, you would have no idea if you talked to him. He just seems like a gentleman. Yeah, he's a sweetie. Yeah, he's a good kid. And it's a good... For us, it's interesting.

You know, we actually have a bit of a chapter in the book where we talk loosely about those guys and that relationship. Were you guys sponsored him or something? Before the Reebok thing.

Right, yeah. Because I remember one of the fights that we did in Montreal, we went to your restaurant afterwards and Olivier showed up after his fight. And you guys were congratulating him, and I thought that was really cool. Yeah, his fiancée, his wife works, his girlfriend works with us at the restaurant. Yeah, for a long time now.

And, you know, we met because these guys, it's interesting, eh? They're super into food. And they're open to a lot of things. And they're curious. And a lot of them get aimed in the wrong direction, you know, like the brown rice and chicken direction. And you're responsible for, in big part, for the awakening, the nutritional awakening of these guys. You know, a lot of them go for their gun license now just to be able to hunt. They go fishing on the weekend.

They go for like two hours hike in the wood and like little fishing rod. They come back with trouts and we get a phone call. He's like, hey, Fred, I go fish for trouts. You know, what do I do with that? You know, it's a great thing. And yeah, we did sponsor them after. But then what we do now is we cook for them post weigh-in. Ah.

Yeah. Marco did GSP at the last fight at Madison Square Gardens. The boys were there for a week. We've done... Tim Kennedy after... So they came for a week and just hung out and cooked meals for them? We send the kids, Marco and Fred goes and Gab goes, Gabrielle Drepaux, they go, they rent a suite

and they prepare all of the meals up to weight cut and afterwards. And do they have nutritional requirements for the weight cut? And like the week of? They do. They have a nutritionist there with them. So it gives guidelines. They have the plan. They have a nutritionist there with them, but then they have the plan.

But I have a take on that is if the nutritionist writes a plan and the food's not good and you don't eat it, then it doesn't work, right? It can be even right on paper, but if you don't take the pill, then you don't do the job. You can say chicken and kale, this much grams, this much. A professional cook will make the kale delicious. Or Brussels sprouts instead. And cook the chicken properly because the kale could be bad and the chicken could be dry. And the thing, too, that works. The guys are already suffering. The thing that works the best in that case is that all of a sudden you have in the room, we set up a little table.

It's not like PlayStation dirty underwears, like pre-fight vibe. It's dining with friends. It's dining with friends. And whether it's Marco, Gab, me, we know. We don't talk. If you don't want to talk, if you want to talk, we're here, you know, and we'll hang out. But then you feel like your egg's in that tortilla. You feel like your egg's with potatoes.

It's mellow, and it helps a lot with just the context of not being like ordering pizza from room service. George used to tell us horror stories, you know, before some of his biggest wins years ago, George said eating like room service rigatoni and pizza before like a major fight, you know,

so now it's different. And it's fun because, and pizza before like a major fight, you know? So now it's different. And it's fun because like David said earlier, we have many interests and it's great to be able to explore them like that, you know? Because we couldn't do this job if it was for like 12 stoves in the kitchen, a bunch of pans, cooking pieces of meat, writing books about the seasons

and tomatoes and starting again. Like I couldn't do it. Like we love. Yeah, being a chef is like one dimensional really, you know. And that whether it's like Olivier, whether it's like going to visit a Neal farm and you know, like it makes it worthwhile up to this point.

Well, you guys have a great philosophy about that. And that's one of the things that really came through with the Bourdain show when you guys were in the ice shack. Is that you enjoy living well. Yeah. Everybody has to live better. Take care of yourself, man. You know, turn your phone off. Sit with your kids.

Listen to them think brilliant things, man. Turn your phone off. Sit with your kids. Listen to them think brilliant things, man. Turn your phone off and come with stories. I had friends. I have all my children now. I love to sit at the table, and I'm quiet. I just let them talk and ask me questions and watch them. It's just the best. It's better than my relationship with my kids.

It's better than any relationship I have with any of my best friends. My kids are more interesting. My family's more interesting and it's work to stay and contact with your family and even the staff. I enjoy very much working in the restaurants

that we've built. I work five days a week with people that I've been working with for 15 years. These are important relationships. It's not employee-employer. It's if you quit and you tell me you're leaving, I'm going to go in my car and cry. I've been working with you for 15 years. My relationship that I have with many people i work with is intimate i've seen their children born i've seen them go through breakups i've seen

them their parents die i've seen you know like we go to war every night at six o'clock 150 people are coming to eat in the next three hours in four restaurants we know... It's a job that's so different. We're in a very high-stress environment for five minutes. For two hours, we got to walk properly. We got to... We're knowledgeable of each other's space.

There's a ballet, you know, when you're washing the glasses and the food's coming out behind you. You know, you have a sixth sense to know to move, not to get the plate to burn your elbow. And, you know, there's this sixth sense to know to move, not to get the plate to burn your elbow. And, you know, this is ballet. We dance every night with these people.

And for us to think that, like, and most people still think that we're behind the stove cooking. I've got more phone calls to get help finding a doctor, therapist, whatever, you know, nutritionist for the staff. Then I got calls about recipes or food. You know, our job is I'm an expert in drain pipes. Artisanal plumbing? Artisanal electricity? Artisanal refrigeration?

I know about concrete pouring now, you know? Why? Because you've done it yourself? Yeah, we have these restaurants. They're very decrepit old buildings. And you can't, you know, we're running restaurants with employees and a constant burden

of payroll. And we can't just call everybody all the time. So, you know, by default, any good cooking school today, what Fred is saying, and Fred is the example of what a great chef should be. Be a very good cook, a very good person

with people skills, but should also have a minor in electricity, plumbing, and refrigeration technology. First aid, you know, even now, like we both,

we both don't drink. We both, I wouldn't say a health kick, but just like, we want to be there, you know, of mind and body. We want to be like present. And that's. We built something cool.

I want to appreciate it and not be clouded. That's overlooked. That's like people don't think about that when they get into this job, you know. They think it's this warrior thing. We're savage. We're going to drink. We're going to party. We're going to do this.

No. It's this warrior thing. We're savage. We're going to drink. We're going to party. We're going to do this. No. If you want to do that until you're 60 and then get a little cottage and write, paint, watercolor, buy a sailboat, you have to think about it.

You know, it's like you can't live that life of drinking. Why do you think that life is synonymous with chefs? We've been promoted and taught ultimately that you will get paid, you will make money, you will persevere if you understand how to promote excessive eating and excessive drinking. You will be recompensed if you build a place where people come and eat too much and drink too much and then spend too much, then you will be able to have a life, a car, a house, and raise children. Okay, so it's all good. First you have to learn how to cook. Then you have to learn how to have a life, a car, a house, and raise children. Okay, so it's all good.

First, you have to learn how to cook. Then you have to learn how to run a restaurant. Then you have to learn what a restaurant looks like and how to run and, you know, how to host. How to host. What the playlist should be like. How to fix a plumbing disaster. How to fix an electricity disaster. How to fix a staff situation disaster.

How to run a clean house where people are working together with all their different idiosyncrasies. But for my whole apprenticeship, alcohol was a reward. You know, you did a good job tonight, drink, you know. And then it went from reward to, oh, shit, there was like a bloodbath in the restaurant. You know, we had to pick up this guy at the hospital. Okay, it's not a reward. Let's forget about it. Let's drink, you know.

And it was always there, you know. It's great service. Let's have a drink. Shitty service. You're in the food industry, but you're also in the wine industry. Because 50% of what you're doing is selling food to people, and industry because 50% of what you're doing is selling food to people and the other 50% of what you're doing is selling alcohol to people. So by default, you're part of the people that sell a liquid drug. And you're in that world every day.

You go to wine tastings. You talk with people that sell alcohol at bartenders. You talk to people that sell wine. You partake in eating in your colleagues' restaurants and drinking wine. Next thing you know, you have a little bit of celebrity. You've been open that sell wine. You partake in eating in other – your colleagues' restaurants and drinking wine. Next thing you know, you have a little bit of celebrity. You've been open for 15 years. And you look back and you go, there's seven days in a week. And I drank six of them.

I don't feel good on Sunday. I'm just kind of recovering. And then what happens is one week turns into two to four, and then you kind of look back and you realize in 2017 that you may have drank 48 weeks out of 52. And then it goes quick. Then it's 10 years. You're a 10-year restaurant,

and you've been drinking five days out of the week for 10 years. And then all of a sudden you kind of have a problem. You realize that like my day-to-day is based on food and wine. Right? Now, I don't want my – it's not making me happy. I've had all the wines. I've had all the foods. Am I better for it?

Not really. What am I better for? Restriction. Eating less. Eating clean. Drinking only on very special occasions. Do you still drink on special occasions? I don't.

I'm completely sober. No. Did you make that decision based on the idea that you weren't able to control it? Or just that the best decision would be to just completely eliminate it textbook case of a person who couldn't drink yeah i tried several times to stop i googled it i read about it it didn't work i was intervention by fred and my managers of the restaurants in january 12th around their 16th i think we figured um and of this year yeah i'm eight months sober or something congratulations thank you and you look really Around there, 16th, I think we figured. Of this year? Yeah.

I'm eight months sober or something. Congratulations. Thank you. You look really good. Thank you. Thank you so much. You do. You look healthy. I'm happy, man.

It changes the skin, everything. Isn't it amazing when that happens? Conversation, remembering. I was angry for a long time. It's not only alcoholism. I think all alcoholics are codependent somewhat. It had been part of my whole apprenticeship, not being sober for so many years. It was all under control and funny for a very, very long time.

It was always a big part of my life, drinking wine, eating food. Until it wasn't. Then one day, I was 45. My relationship with alcohol changed. I became dark. I became unhappy. I had success. I had beautiful children.

I was not happy. You know, I tried many different things. Nothing worked. I was intervention by people that I work with that are dear to me, that I love very much. I guess that love me. They're tired of watching me make bad decisions. And I just went to a great rehab called Chatsworth that educated me. I was sitting in a classroom with a pad and paper for six hours a day

learning about a disease called alcoholism, learning about a disease that 30% of the population has, you know, and how and why I was an addict, you know, first I was an addict with food, then at a young age after a traumatic event, then I was an addict about with beer, then I was an addict with marijuana, like, you know, all drugs.

And then I was an addict with wine, follow up a couple more traumatic events in my, you know my horrendous apprenticeship. And the stress of leadership in these restaurants. And, you know, one thing led to another. My relationship with alcohol became not positive. With help, I understood. Through education, I understood.

And now everything's great. It's funny, too, because I saw it as an example. You know, I don't like to tell them, but maybe it's a little bit of mentoring, you know. I was the canary in the coal mine for Fred. You know, and I decided, I was like, fuck. You know, after Tony passed, I was like, you know, I remember I was working on a new project doing tilings. And I was like, oh, I heard the news in the morning. I went to tile all day.

And then I couldn't wait to get home and have like two bottles of wine. And I was like, oh, I heard the news in the morning. I went to tile all day. And then I couldn't wait to get home and have like two bottles of wine. And I was like, why? And we were the same about that. It didn't matter what we loved at a point. Look, for example, we loved MMA, right? We loved going to the fights. We were so fortunate. We'd go and see.

We met the Fertitta brothers. We discussed. We sat with them at dinner table we met you we met all those guys uh David loves winemaking met all the winemakers we met the best people in the field that we loved charmed life not happy not happy like ungrateful fucking little pricks well you know I think part of the problem is that alcohol is a depressant correct to you just you you get down it just depressant. Correct. To you, it's a problem. You get down. It brings you down.

It brings your energy level down. It brings your vitality down. Alcohol is a solvent, and it destroys your soft brain tissue. I was taught that in rehab. Would you drink acetone? I don't know. Well, if it was made by a lovely French vineyard. With barnyard.

Aroma. But do you miss anything about the flavor of wine with a meal or anything? Have you ever tried non-alcoholic wines? I don't even know. Non-alcoholic beers? I go to wine tastings. I was just at Raw Wine in Los Angeles. I went to taste all the natural wines.

Beautiful natural wine festival. And you can taste them still? I taste them. I don't swallow. I rinse my mouth out. I'm very much involved in natural wine and viticulture, reading, and all that stuff. That's got to be so weird to have a mouthful of delicious wine just spit into a bucket. No, it's the same.

Really? Yeah. Because that's why did I drink wine? Olfactory, the nose, the flavor, understanding the winemaker, his philosophy, the geography of where the wine comes from, his work with, you know, with using organic and biodynamic viticulture, not using sulfur, just making this amazing organic beverage with very little intervention, natural wine. Without side effects. I don't have to swallow it because the drug is the same drug that it's in, that's in all the other ones. Right. That they can't change.

The flavors what's different. Yes. You know, and what I like is more of the story, the guy, the vineyard, the varietals, this,

you know, would you eat at a fine restaurant and have a delicious steak and a wine accompaniment and then just spit it into a bucket? I've done it. Goes to the bathroom. How do you do it? I was really worried. He shuts his mouth and he goes to the bathroom.

I was worried, too. With a mouthful of wine. Ryan Gray, our friend from Elena that worked with us for years, Ryan goes to a restaurant and asks for a bucket. That's a good reason. People in the wine business and they all drink wine and he tastes the wine and he has discussions about wine and he tastes it and spits it. And he's an alcoholic.

Yeah. He's a recovered alcoholic. Three years. But he's a wine buyer and he's very much involved. He was my mentor when I got out of rehab because in rehab they were telling me, you may never be able to go back to the restaurant. What? Yeah.

High risk of re-offending. Yeah. And I was like, I can't. I go, I don't know anything else. I have no education. I've been in kitchen since I'm 17. It's way too late for med school and we don't do well in Adderall. I really don't want a clean iceberg lettuce

at the fruits and vegetables store and try to make a go of that. It's funny too. Even like de-alkalized beer, non-alcoholic beer, it's better than alcoholic beer. What are you talking about? Heineken 00, man. Crisp. Outstanding.

Heineken 00? Outstanding. It's really good? It's fine. I've only had like O'Doul's. No. It's really good? It's fine. Well, I've only had like O'Doul's. No, it's not good. Okay, so Heineken does it correctly. The order of non-alcoholic beer, okay, in my head is Heineken Zero Zero, Carlsberg Zero,

Grolsch Zero, Grolsch? Becks Zero, and then everything else is not good after that. But let me add to that because I'm also celiac, right? And there's a glutenberg they make in Montreal that's no gluten and no alcohol. And now you can insert any joke you want. People are signing off the podcast right now. I thought these guys were going to talk about heroin, getting fucked up, and eating meat.

No, we eat meat. Yes, I'm sure. I'm sure. That's fascinating, though, that you actually still taste it. It's almost like if you're a heroin addict just scratching the skin with the needle. We don't penetrate anymore. Yeah, I don't recommend that. My therapist and the people at rehab do not recommend that I taste wine and spit it. I'm sure they don't penetrate anymore. Yeah, you know, I don't recommend that. No. My therapist and the people at rehab do not recommend that I taste wine and spit it.

I'm sure they don't. But I have friends, again, I know a lot of sommeliers and even I know winemakers, some of the most famous winemakers in the world I've met in Burgundy at an AA meeting that are completely sober. Wow. Because they wanted to break this cycle of my great-grandfather was an alcoholic, abusive person. My grandfather was an alcoholic, abusive person. My father was an alcoholic, abusive person.

And I didn't want to take over this thousand-year-old winery, the legacy of my family. I didn't want to work here. And I'm sure, like, you know, with all the epigenetic stuff, if you don't drink when your kids are young, like there might be a thing where you can stop the passing of the gene, you know? But you did Sober October. How'd you do? Fine. Yeah.

Yeah? Well, I did. You didn't love it. No. How was the relapse? Sobriety wasn't – this was a very crazy Sober October because we added this insane fitness challenge. So I was literally working out between three and a half to five and a half, one day six and a half hours in a day.

Yeah, it was insane. One day I did five and a half hours and I did another hour at night. Six and a half hours in a day. We were trying to kill each other to see who could get the most points. We had a fitness tracker. We wore this heart rate monitor. Oh, yeah, I heard that. The application would score up the amount of points you would get.

Who won? I won. That's the belt right there. Awesome. If you get 70% of your max heart rate, you get three points per minute. This is how crazy it got. 70% of your max heart rate is three points per minute. 80% and above your max heart rate is four points per minute.

One day, I got 1,000 points. So just think about that. Think about how many minutes you have to exercise at 80 of your max heart rate to get a thousand fucking points so you think sober help you with performance or recuperation i think i was on drugs the entire time this is what i think i think i was on the endorphins that come from long range cardio there's there's there's a what i was calling the don't i don't give a fuck drug. You get this feeling when you do cardio. Everybody always talked about runner's high, and I never really experienced it,

even though I had worked out really hard my whole life. I'd never been into long-range cardio. I'd never done hours and hours of the same activity, just droning on either on a bike or running. I'd never really done that. I'd run hills for the most part. And I'm sure it benefited me and it made me relaxed. But it's at a totally different level when you're doing it for three and a half hours,

four hours a day. It's true survival mechanism that kicks in. It's that, but it's also you feel wonderful. You have zero anxiety. And you're still benefiting from that? No, no. That's what's interesting. Like I've been out of the house for a week now because of the fires.

So we've been running around and the kids aren't in school. So they're here hanging out with me. And we haven't had a chance to get our stuff together. It's been very stressful. So I haven't really been working out much. I've only worked out like once or twice this week. So I have more stress. I feel a little bit more tense, a little bit more take a deep breath, calm down. During October, I had none of that. None of that. I felt great. I felt like I was like, if you could take how I feel and put in a pill form and give it

to people, everyone would be hooked on it because you feel fantastic. And I never understood that. I would see these people running every day and I thought they were just exercise fanatics. Like they just want to be leaner or they want to just keep – maybe they're obsessed. Body obsessed, yeah. Yeah, maybe that's what it was. But I think they're drug addicts. They're natural drug addicts but in a very positive way. I shouldn't call it drug addicts.

Endorphin junkies. That's what they are. It makes sense too that you would every cycle in nature is like feast and famine. It's like running and resting. If you follow, if you're a hunter-gatherer you don't hunt

every day. You follow a cycle. For a month, you'll hunt, you'll drag back the meat home, you'll eat a lot. And then after the next month, you'll be quiet, you'll eat less. And then the next month. So there's very little exercise program out there that look at it like that. But if you were to look at it over a year, maybe you'd see it like, I see October is more quiet. I'll do my month in October.

November will be quiet, busy with other things. After that, I'll go back to it in Decemberober november will be quiet busy with other things after that i'll go back to it in december it's better for the soul too you don't have this obsession looming over you that you have to do it tomorrow morning and at night and like you know well my take on it was a little bit different my take on is that everyone's anxiety levels and all the different stress and all the things we deal with a lot of it is because your body has capabilities and you're not using even a small percentage of those capabilities. So it's always like, what are we doing? Are we going?

We're going to go? We're going to go? Okay. And we're in traffic. You're moving quickly. So you're constantly aware of all these cars around you and there's all this stress and there's very little physical release that the body takes part in. And for most people, I mean, the great percentage of our population lives a sedentary lifestyle.

They sit in their cars until they get to the office. They sit in their office until they get home. They sit in front of the TV until they go to sleep. This is a giant percentage of our population. That's the norm. Whatever the number is. It's very normal. And occasionally they work out.

And when they do, it's a struggle. When you force the body into rigorous exercise on a constant basis, your body's all the needs of this capacity, the capabilities that it has, all those needs are satisfied. So what I found is incredibly low anxiety levels. And I didn't think I had anxiety. I'm not an anxious person to the point where I thought about taking medication for anxiety like I'm nervous or but I didn't I didn't know how anxiety free I could be until I did this exercise program for a month see I found that in sobriety the anxiety I was I suffered and Fred suffered from anxiety our whole careers every day 200 300 people are coming for dinner at my you know know, it's always there in my head.

Crippling. Yes. Is there staff? There's 300 people coming. It's never goes away. There's always people coming for dinner. It's, I'm throwing 400 people every night. But you know, when I was drinking, that would just keep the stress going.

Now I'm fine. It's gone. You know, there's this magic number. I kept on hearing in rehab and I kept on hearing through therapy 16 weeks man 16 weeks I was like yeah shut up

fuck you know what's this fucking guy always telling me what this 16 weeks like 16 weeks man watch 16 weeks the morning

16 weeks that morning I woke up that morning and my phone said oh 16 weeks and I had this peace

and this joy and this childhood innocence that I hadn't had in years on the day 16 weeks not because I'd been premeditating in my head and I was looking forward to the 16 weeks

I didn't believe in it but it was literally 16 weeks of sobriety that brought this. I was clear. The drain is clogged. No problem. I'll be there in half an hour. Yeah. As it should be.

The fridges don't work. The lights are out in the restaurant and five tables are unhappy. I'm coming down. Do you think that some of the anxiety was just your body responding to the fact that you were poisoning unhappy. I'm coming down. Do you think that some of the anxiety was just your body responding to the fact that you were poisoning it all the time? Absolutely. I also think it's the psyche

creating reasons for you to drink. Your mind is telling you, you're stressed. I have a quick remedy for it. Why don't you try drinking? That makes sense. When you feel this way, usually what's your go-to?

I'd be like, I could taste sometimes when I'd fall into stressful situations at the restaurant, three tables I don't like, couple of criminal elements behaving badly at one table, you know,

maybe on the border of lacking respect to their waitress, I might have to get involved and I could almost taste Chardonnay in my salivary glands. Yeah, your brain still plays the trick on you. My brain was making me high before the high. I was like, why do I taste Chablis in my mouth?

I think it's the same with sugar addiction, too, you know, where people eat sugar, lots of carbs, mostly carbs. Then you're like, oh, man, I have to go for three hours without eating. I have to bring something sweet with me because i'm gonna get shaky and then you have it's it's like you're feeding basically i don't know if it's your gut biome that like changes but you're like feeding a monster inside of you you're not feeding fred or david you're like feeding something else you know like you're planning a weekend at the cottage you're like the kids are gonna be loud i'm gonna have to bring like two more bottles of wine you know and i have to make sure

that the wine is cold and have to make sure we have that or like you have to you know have friends like that have to make sure i have like four granola bars because i have to eat all the time and you know that yeah if you don't have breakfast you have like a quick coffee you can go till like four or five in the afternoon and not shaking and getting cold and sweaty yeah you know well especially if you have a good healthy diet if your body's not like sugar sugar dependent i think it's funny eh every time you know sometimes we fall off the wagon and stuff now it's pretty solid for a few years i think that two weeks of drinking more water, having walks, and not eating ice cream and fries, and two weeks of home-cooked meals and water, cutting down on coffee,

because that, too, will fuck with your anxiety, you know? Sure. We know this, too, like both of us. All of disease, like so many diseases are based simply on overconsumption. Yeah. Just period. Overconsumption of cigarettes, overconsumption of alcohol, overconsumption of sugar, overconsumption of meat, carbs. Like restriction brings clarity.

Yes. And restriction diets are one of the best remedies for people with autoimmune diseases. Oh, really? Yeah. They cut down almost everything out of you. One of the things that people are doing today that's very popular, but I keep talking about this, unfortunately, is the carnivore diet. Because Jordan Peterson made it very popular when he was on the podcast. It's really fascinating.

There's a spike. If you look at the Google search results for carnivore diets, July of 2018, it goes like this. Takes off because that's the day that Jordan was on the podcast. So he's on the podcast. Fucking whatever amount of millions of people listen and watch it. Steak, salt, and water. And because of his ranting and raving about the positive benefits that he's experienced.

So I got on the carnivore diet, people really got into it. So I got into it as well. Like, what is it about this? So I started consulting a lot of actual nutrition experts and scientists. And what they believe is what's going on is calorie restriction. experts and scientists and what they believe is what's going on is calorie restriction that because of the fact that you're only jordan is only eating steak with salt and drinking water that is all he's consuming and he feels fantastic because it's not lean steak real steak yes fatty so then you can't eat too much because you have the fat yes you're feeling full yeah yeah yeah

that fat is important yeah and because of this quite a few autoimmune issues that he had went away. He was having receding gums. That went away. He was having severe depression and anxiety and all these different issues. That went away. Lost a tremendous amount of weight. His body leaned up. leaned up and the scientists that I've talked about, you know, this is a very new thing for people to embark on this and do it on a mass scale because quite a few people are

doing it. What they're attributing it to is the calorie restriction. Is that because of the fact that you really can't eat that much steak, if you eat a steak, you know, it might be a thousand calories. Whereas if you mean a full, big, thick steak, a lot of fat. A thousand calories of steakaks a lot of steak right yeah but i mean he might be eating two of those in a day whereas if you're eating french fries and soda empty calories you're you're getting a shape here like way more than that

like what do you think uh an 18 ounce ribeye is if you had a guess calorically 11 18 600 800 800 depends if you have like the end of the rack you know okay so let's let's just get crazy and let's call it 700 it's probably like 1700 calories a day yeah because he's not putting cream in the coffee he's not having a seven nothing that's what water and steak When I started eating no gluten, right? It's fully diagnosed, right? I'm not making this up. I stopped eating gluten. He gets flack every day. What does that mean?

Everybody gets crazy about the gluten thing. No, he is. They don't want to hear it. People don't want to hear it. We don't want to hear it. I said. But what does it mean? I don't eat gluten.

Smoking cigarettes. Smoking cigarettes. Like, come on. No, but what does it mean, no gluten? It means that you don't go to, no drive-thru, no slip. Right. There's no options out there in the fast food world. There's no, so I have to plan my day.

So I eat, like, I'll eat a piece of meat for breakfast or eggs or whatever. And then I won't eat until I show up at work or at home later and eat. So it's what you've excluded that counts. Yes. It's not that the steak is so good for you. Right. It's that you're not eating all this processed food anymore because you can't eat it anymore. That's what the scientists are saying.

But the people that are pro-meat, it's really fascinating because they're just as culty as the vegans are. just as culty as the vegans are. The people that are the real pro-carnivore diets, they want you to think that it's the meat that's healing them, the meat that's helping them, the meat that's making them lean. Well, it's not hurting you. I mean, it's nutritious. I mean, there's a lot of real nutrients in red meat. And this is also a problem with a lot of studies that people have, that a lot of vegans love to cite about heart attacks strokes cancer in relationship to meat these epidemiology studies that would they're essentially is they're saying look when you look at people that eat meat five days a week these are the people that have higher instances of cancer higher instances of diabetes all these different things what they're

not taking into consideration is they're not just eating meat. They're usually eating a cheeseburger with fries and a soda and there's all this sugar and processed... Two gimlets before dinner. All this bullshit that's involved with the meat. There's not any studies that show that people who eat a grass-fed... Only meat and water. Yeah, a 12-ounce grass-fed steak with a good

plate of sautéed spinach and olive oil and garlic that these people are getting cancer. I'm sure there's no doubt on that. There's nothing. You can't make a nutritional study. It's impossible. People fundamentally lie. So you cannot have people, you cannot say like, this is cocoa fat and beef tenderloin.

I'm going to give you a weak portion. You go home. Then you come to report. We do blood tests. You get anecdotal evidence from people that talk about their own personal diet. But, yeah, it's very difficult. And it's also very ideologically based. I mean, whether it's on one side with the vegans or the other side with the carnivore diet people, I find the same psychological characteristics in both groups.

They want to convert people. They want to proselytize. They want people to think that their way is the right way. And they are not honest about health issues that they're having. You should make like a conference on a deserted island, you know, in a rich man's castle like a Bruce Lee movie. And you invite the vegans on one side and you don't tell them you're also inviting the other, you know. And then both groups, you just have like a kumite. Well, both groups think the other group is going to drop dead any second now.

The proof is in the pudding. If somebody is on your podcast to talk about eating meat, he's alive and he's not dead. So it works. You know, like why look any further? Well, who knows how long they're going to last? Well, none of us are getting out of this alive. No, that's for sure. When it comes to meat, do you guys prefer a grass-fed beef or do you like corn-fed?

Because I had this discussion with Tony, and he was telling me that he actually liked corn-fed beef. He's like, it's a fattier. There's two schools of thought, and then there's two schools of what is quality beef. Right. What is quality beef? Right. So one school will say, yeah, quality beef is organic animal, pasture-raised, eating grass, flavor is different,

it's not as tender, but it is high-quality beef. Okay. Then the other, of course, is a cow usda prime corn fed incredible marbling ridiculous fat content restricted motion uh i'd say a lesser quality beef okay than than the other but they all start eating eating wise They're all pastured at first. Eating-wise, you know, gram for pound, pound for pound, the corn-fed steak will be more delicious, okay, for some people.

And then for some people, the other one will be. In my mind, the grass-fed, organic, pasture beef with its different flavor for me as a higher quality animal i i prefer that taste correct i feel it's a richer taste it's a denser darker meat more the iron taste yeah i just like it better and i do like a corn-fed steak i do like but there is but in the general public-eating public that come to restaurants and counter more corn-fed beef, and their first judge of character to the quality of that meat is its tenderness.

Marbling. Tendering. It's tenderness. It's marbling. It's not tender. It's not tender. That's a reoccurring thing that we fight with

every day at Joe Beef juicy and tender just eat a 16 ounce foie gras I know if they just want tender I know I mean what are they

looking for tender it's not tender don't your teeth work when we get a steak sent back it'll be because it's too tough

yeah exactly it's not I would usually go to this steakhouse and it's more tender. Because you're serving a grass-fed steak. Serving a grass-fed steak that's not as marbled as it's non-organic. Well, it's an animal that's healthy. But you can also have.

It's an upgrade foul. It's like the natural wine versus conventional wine fight that we're having. Yeah, but it's also, we're calling it binary now. It's like, it's only corn or it's only grass. No, I think the solution is maybe a little bit of corn, a little bit of barley, but mostly grass-fed. A brief finish and quality grains. Why not? And then there's a whole other point.

I'd like to raise- Not giant feedlot. I like to sell beef in my restaurant that comes from very close to my restaurant. You know. Yeah. When we opened Joe Beef at the beginning, when that first book, the first book was written, beef was a problem back then. You know, local beef was kind of difficult.

And, you know, we were buying beef from larger wholesalers. of difficult and you know we were buying beef from larger wholesalers and we if we didn't know how to read the barcodes on the boxes they would say it was canadian beef but it might not be canadian beef it might be north you know northern usa beef but we didn't know because only a professional could read the barcode but they were saying it was canadian but one day i had a professional come into the restaurant and he said no actually this beef is yeah from a company with investitures in canada but this is from western australia and i said i don't want to serve anything in my restaurant from western australia that's super far like i'd like yeah you know this like remove beef from the menu or seek alternatives. But it's a business that's complex because there's pastures and feedlots, slaughterhouse and packers.

Right. And it's not like we have lambs. Get a baby lamb that come from the parents lamb. And then they farm, they raise the lamb and they bring it to the slaughterhouse themselves, and then we get a lamb. Beef is like, you can get, it's like tracing bourbons, you know? It's like trading and brokerage and stuff, and we're not. It's the most sketchy item on a restaurant menu. Like, I know that I bought lamb from you, and I know I bought rabbit from, you know, Beatrice, and I know I got goat cheese from this family.

And all of the products in my restaurant, I know exactly. The farm, the farmer, beef is always dicey because beef always goes to the packer. Beef always goes to the distributor. And the general public only really eats two cuts of beef in restaurants, three cuts, the tenderloin, the, what do you call it in English, the entrecote? Yeah, the loins. The loins and the rib, right? That's what people eat. And the hamburgers.

Beefs are not that. There's two big humps and there's two big shoulders and there's a lot of braids. So it's difficult. Did you guys see that documentary on steak? Yeah, we were in it. We were in it. That's right. That's right.

You were in it, right? Yeah. What did you think of that? Their conclusions? What was the conclusion? Well, just basically we're saying that Peter Luger's Steakhouse in Brooklyn is the greatest steak in the world. That was the thing.

That was USDA prime, corn fed. For taste, maybe. It's a good restaurant. Good story, good history, great restaurant. I ate there just a few months ago. It was very good. Yeah, very good. Yeah.

But again, it's a subjective thing, right? Correct. The flavor in terms of what you actually look for. And as they were talking about, like your customer was saying, they're accustomed to a certain type of meat. Like they were saying that their customers are accustomed to this. They're not interested in grass-fed anything. But I understand that.

They've been doing that for a long time and grading that beef that way, and I don't think they should change ever, not based on anything. Well, it's a great place where you get consistency. I mean, you go there, you get this fantastic steak. I mean, it's so old-worldy, too, when you get in there. I mean, how long has Peter Luger been around for?

God, forever. Forever, yeah. 120 years? Something insane like that. Moishe's is like that in Montreal. It's a very old steak restaurant. Moishe's is a famous restaurant in Montreal,

and they do have their beef program, and they should not change because there's new conversations happening. He knows what he's doing, Lenny lighter, and he should do, you know, keep on doing that in a small restaurant.

Let's say that Fred marginal characters like Fred and I own, I always see it like it's not a, those restaurants maybe are public places. Uh, my restaurant is my restaurant of which I want to do what I want in right it's not we don't listen so much to the public

you know I serve at my pleasure it's not the customer is always right it's the customer is often wrong and I'm always right you know because we can do salmon I play the music I want to we serve the food we want to, and I serve the wines we want to,

and if you don't like it, you don't have to come. But this restaurant is for us. Well, that's one of the things that I learned from watching Bourdain's original show, the No Reservation show, that it changed my opinion on things. Because I didn't have a strong opinion on food before that, other than that I really liked it.

I didn't think of it as an art form and watching his show and seeing the passion uh his his appreciation for food and for the way it's the way it's grown and brought to table and the production of it and and then ultimately the flavor of it and the taste and and admiration for chefs and you guys as well. His admiration for it and his appreciation for the way everything's put together made me realize, oh, this is an art form. It's a craft. And, you know, Tony did something.

Tony was the most faithful, most like we were so lucky to be on that ship with him, you know, that he took us aboard. And you could see he had the same apprenticeship we did, you know, like suffering and like big bistro kitchens and stuff. And you think about it, the guy, he didn't make the promise to himself that when he'd get rich and famous, he was going to buy a big house and not talk to people. famous he was going to buy a big house and not talk to people he helped every cook not walk out of the kitchen and get famous but get a voice you know even outside of the television show the work he did in private is and not look like a dirty guy that makes the pasta in the back you know all of a sudden it's like yeah the manager in the suit and the owners but who's the guy in the back

yeah you know no he had appreciation for everybody and he had a real passion for the process. Yeah, and the marginal character is, you know, there's lots of commercial restaurants in the city of Montreal and any given city that he went to and he's able to isolate, let's say, the marginal characters in every city that, you know, we're historically bound.

Fred and I practice a weird faction of French cooking called Cuisine Bourgeois. And only kind of Tony and a handful of other guys could look at what we do and go, those fuckers, they're up to that. No one's up to that. He curated his crew. You guys are into that, really. He goes, you guys are the only people,

like the last of the Mohicans that do this kind of food and we know yeah no we can't stop we gotta keep on we're a great guy to get it yeah

cause nobody does right nobody understands like you know the rabbit hole we're down Tony did yeah the cognoscenti

yeah he I mean he really did deeply influence my appreciation for food in the way I think about it. And again, treating it as an art form, which I just thought it was just delicious. I didn't think of it as like, oh, these guys are making temporary art. They're making art that you're going to enjoy now. You can't put it on film.

I mean, you can, but you're not going to get it all you're just going to want to go out and experience it yeah ultimately food is you can't we go and do like we were asked to do like demonstrations you know you can go on a big stage just 5 000 people to talk about food or make like little crackers with smoked salmon on stage food is not fit for a stage no food is for a table for us to enjoy. With a fork, a knife, we talk about it. We go hunting. That's what food is. People offer us food shows all the time. And I can't. It doesn't work.

It's like, what's the concept? Well, you guys can be in a pickup truck and you go and visit your suppliers and maybe have a bottle of wine with them after. I was like, dude. We worked hard not to copy our fellow culinarians yeah you look at our food it's like it's ours tv producers are out there just like blatantly proposing the previous show

to you again you know yes well that's one of the things right after anthony died uh there was some talk about uh vacuum ramssey doing some very similar show and the outcry against it was enormous I mean he was just getting assaulted online it was crazy everybody that I was talking to our agent who

represents us for our book and she was saying like all the big production companies like are being and she was saying like that it was the same all the big production companies like are being berated by people

pitching who's gonna be the next Tony right you know I don't wanna say that but one of the character and you guys

you could take over yeah you could do it because you guys Trent you know the way he went in West Virginia and it wasn't like Republican, Democrat.

Like, he went to places and he's like, yeah, sure, I have my views, but let's break bread. You know? And I always said that, that like, all our countries are divided on issues, but there's nobody that overlaps them with a coherent vision. Everybody loves each other when there's delicious food on the table, man. Yeah. You know? And guys like you with like a clear view

and a rational and science-based and evidence-based view on things and like Tony just have such a voice now in our countries

that it's I could see you doing a food show I love food but I don't I'll never do a food show. I just can't but I'll never do a food show. I just can't imagine. No, because you ask good questions.

I like doing shows. I mean, I love having guys like you on and talking about food, but it takes a special type of person to want to travel 300 days a year. And that's essentially what Tony was doing. And I think that has a massive toll. It takes a massive toll on your body it takes a massive toll on your psyche i i don't family everything yes it's not healthy there's not enough melatonin or like cbd or like cleanses to help you with that i travel more than enough already and i've cut my traveling way back i'm down to only 10 ufcs a year now and i do you know comedy around that and stand-up comedy but i i consciously make the effort to travel much less uh because i just don't think it's good i just

don't think it's good for you and um and also that road life you know the the drinking and all that other stuff that comes with it that accentuates all the problems that you have with travel. And I think that's also one of the things that was dragging Tony down when he would talk about the sadness and the loneliness of being on the road. I can't help but, from knowing him and partying with him, I can't help but have thought that a lot of that was probably accentuated by the alcohol consumption. And you guys could speak to that now that you're clean and you're not experiencing those rugged hangovers every morning. I was always worried for Tony that way, just that hotel living, planes, trains, and automobiles constantly.

And it wasn't like for a year. It was like 12 years. It's a sad life to watch river monsters at 11 in the morning burping Jameson. And I'm referring to many occasions in our lives where you're traveling in a hotel room and you're in a beautiful place, but you just...

You feel weird. Yeah. Yeah. I've taken steps to mitigate some of that one of the big ones is i travel with friends um i bring really good comics to work with me on the road so that when i'm in these cities i'm in these cities with friends and we just go it's like they're family so we we go we'll go we eat together we'll go work out together you know and try to keep the unhealthy shit to a minimum plus i'm more of a marijuana enthusiast than I am a drinker anyway.

It's legal in Quebec now. We have stores. Yes, the entire country. Canada is way ahead of America there. Quebec, as usual, we got a little bit of special treatment. Yeah. Does it have to be in French? On top of it, yeah.

You can't grow. What do you call it? Cannabis. Cannabis. You can't grow? What do you call it? Cannabis. Cannabis. You can't grow. Can't grow. No. And you have to only consume the government's stash.

People are going to grow anyway. I'm not worried about that. The government's stash. So you know what they did, right? Yeah. It's like we have a monopoly liquor board. So we have like stores. Liquor commission.

Liquor commission. Yes. Now we have the cannabis commission. So what they did, it got legal on October 17th at midnight. The stores were opening October 17th at 10 in the morning. The cops were giving tickets to people smoking weed during that little layover time because they knew that it was impossible. They bought it legally. So some people got ticketed for smoking illegal weed.

In the lineup waiting for legal weed oh god what a bunch of assholes yeah we just drank the kool-aid on that one i think you know that's good we'll put more money into medicare yeah well i think it'll ultimately lead to relaxing of people's opinions and ideas about marijuana and what it is but i also think that marijuana just like alcohol can be used as a crutch and it could eventually overcome your life. I like it, but I like it every now and again. And one of the things that came out of last year's Sober October was taking a whole month

off of it, realizing that, A, I don't need it. I can function fine without it. But it made me more apprehensive about regular use. Like instead of using it every day, I'll use it a day a week or two days a week or something like that. And I appreciate it more when it does happen. When I do get high with my friends, you know, on Friday night or something like that, it's like it means something.

It's almost like a sacrament. Like we're experiencing a little moment together and just having fun. That's the proof, though, what you just said is the proof that you don't have addiction issues. I couldn't be able to prove that I smoked marijuana responsibly once in my life, that I drank alcohol once in my life, that I did drugs responsibly. I'm fascinated. I brought some of our cooks that were here in LA with us to a restaurant, and we had a beautiful dinner, and I ordered them a bottle of wine, and they barely finished it, and I didn't understand.

The first and only bottle of wine. I was like, do you guys want more? I was like, I would have paid for nine. Right. And they had one, and I was just sitting there. I told Fred, I would have paid for nine. Right. And they had one. And I was just sitting there. I told Fred, I go, I don't really. What is it like to be in that environment and watching people glass over?

Like see the booze hit them. They don't get drunk. We say that all the time. We used to think that everybody was smashed. No. It was only me. It was like the beer goggles. Right.

You were in it with everybody else. I realize now that everybody at the restaurants, generally, like nine out of ten times, drink quite responsibly. Well, they must. Otherwise, it would be just accidents everywhere and violence everywhere you turn. Right, yeah.

And I realize a lot of the people that I'm friends with drink responsibly. They can have a lot of the people that I'm friends with drink responsibly. They can have a glass of wine with lunch. Me and Fred opened a bottle of wine at lunch. We'd go till 10.30 till we couldn't anymore and then that was it. Look what we did. Last time we came to LA,

we did Hell's Kitchen. We're judged for showing ostriches. It was disgusting. Ostriches? Yeah, because you know they cook like... I've had ostrich burger before. Yeah, we're judged for a show on ostriches. It was disgusting. Ostriches? Yeah, because you know they cook like... I've had ostrich burger before. Yeah, but Fuddruckers serves ostrich burger.

It's actually delicious. It's really bloody, right? Yeah. And there's that thing for cooking shows like that. It's regulated by the Gaming Commission.

So they have to keep the camera rolling and they're not allowed to touch the dishes because they're the object of the competition. So you take your break, you go to the green room, you wait, they're to keep the camera rolling and they're not allowed to touch the dishes because they're the object of the competition. So you take your break. You go to the green room.

You wait. They're cleaning up the kitchen. Now the food sits on the pass there like for two hours. And you come back. You sit at a table and there's like rare ostrich tenderloin. That's been sitting for two hours? Yeah. Two hours post-cook?

Yeah. That's ridiculous. And you have to like judge like wait a minute you you're judging food that was cooked two hours ago tv that's so fucking and and i felt like again that's a that's insulting for you for guys like you no but the thing is like if i felt so bad because there's people who put like a job on hold they left their kids at home they just like yeah i made it. I'm in the casting. I was selected,

you know, to be part of Hell Kitchen. And then we say something and then we watch. No, Gord's gonna hate us right now, right? No, the show's great. But I felt like,

I felt sad. Yeah. But all that to say that whenever we came, we stayed by the airport, you know, we stayed at the... Just so you can get

out of there quick? Yeah. Frozen margaritas at the hotel bar, man stayed by the airport. You know, we stayed at the... Just so you can get out of there quick? Yeah. Frozen margaritas at the hotel bar, man. Fuck, man. 11 o'clock, we're in the whirlpool at the Radisson Hotel. It's sad, man. Having cocktails at the encounters. That hotel life can be fucking sad, man.

I know. I get it. And now we're completely not drinking. They got us a room. We're staying at the Chateau and I never did. I never thought I'd stay there. I would really love to get drunk at the Chateau Marmont though. You did once,

but not this time. Yeah. That's like a spot. You know, I've been here forever. I've never even gone in that building. It's beautiful. Maybe I did once.

I might have, I think it was there once for like a TV thing that I had to do, like a, one of those party things in like the 90s i think i went once but it's funny because there's like really like you know like b-list hollywood stars like hanging out at the pool drinking champagne cocktails trying to be cool smoking blunts and trying to pick up girls tony used to stay he used to get a bill there when he was writing he used to stay there he told me he it. He just loved everything about the feel of it, the whole dirtiness.

We stayed at the Raleigh Hotel with him in Miami. He loved that place too. He likes dirty spots. The Raleigh was fun. That's how Tony was. He's like, guys, I like old food like you do. What if we do a dinner based on old transatlantic ship, like boats, like dining room? So we say, yeah, sure. He gets Eric repaired and he'll blue a bunch of guys. based on like old transatlantic ship, like boats, like dining room, you know?

So we say, oh, yeah, sure. We get Eric repaired and he'll blue a bunch of guys. He's like, I'll put you up at the Raleigh. We're just going to do that one dinner, but we're just going to hang out for a week after, you know, and we're in the pool and sneaking cigarettes. Otavia was like there with the kid in a rash guard all the time. We went to Cyborg. Roberto Abreu.

We went to school there, and I was just starting. Killer. He's a monster. How long have you been doing jiu-jitsu now? I did it for a year solid, and I stopped because I had a back surgery. Oh, discs? Yeah. What's going on?

It's totally fixed, but I keep surgery. What did you have wrong? It was stenosis. Stenosis, so shortening of the disc. Yeah, and then compression, and then they went in and chipped some parts out. In retrospect, I spoke to some rheumatologists, and it's interesting you're talking about like Jordan Peterson because the autoimmune thing can be everywhere, right? And now my doctor says like maybe celiac caused inflammation in so many places. That's what I would say. And all that like maybe the drinking too, like this inclination towards abuse, you know, this inclination towards depression this you know back problem this it's

all related to that and again the proof is in the pudding i don't eat bread i don't eat sweets very little i eat mostly meat and i feel 100 times better so i don't give a fuck if it's in my head friends also sober now four months five months five, yeah. Five months. So it works. I don't think that it's in your head. It's definitely been proven that all those foods cause inflammation. But I do think that jujitsu in particular is ruthless on your back. Because of the torsions. Well, it's just big people on top of you.

You're yanking them around. You're moving your back. And very few people strengthen their back. That's a big issue. And after we're done here, I'm going to take you into my gym, and I'm going to show you some machines that I bought specifically to strengthen my back. I've had some disc issues too, and the doctors are pretty adamant about putting me under the knife. And I just didn't like the idea of it.

I've had many surgeries. I've had both my knees reconstructed. I know when you need surgery and when you don't. And the more I looked into it, the more I realized that there's doctors that they have a hammer, so everything is a nail. Like, oh, that's a nail. Let me just fucking whack that thing. They're not like, oh, you're going to have to change your diet. You're going to have to lose some weight.

You're going to have to strengthen all those muscles around your back. You're going to have to change your diet. You're going to have to lose some weight. You're going to have to strengthen all those muscles around your back. And if you do do that, I find that the results are superior in many cases. Yeah, it's a combination. Like yoga works wonderfully for that. Yoga.

Decompression of the spine is critical because you're always compressing. You're always like, well, these chairs we're sitting in, these are chairs from a company called Fully, and they're called Kapiskos, and these are ergonomic chairs. You notice we've been sitting in this place. It's two and a half hours into the podcast now. Our backs aren't hurting. Comfortable, beautiful chair. Yes. They feel good, too. They're comfortable. I knew there was a solution. Had to find the solution. Luckily, this company

contacted me and sent us these chairs. This is what we needed. I tried a fucking shitload of chairs before that. But it was the same thing with exercises. I knew there was a solution. I had. This is what we needed. I tried a fucking shitload of chairs before that. But it was the same thing with exercises. I knew there was a solution. I had to figure out what it was. I tried decompression. I tried a bunch of different forms of decompression.

I figured out the best ones. I have those things where you hang by your ankles. What the fuck is the name of that company? Hooks? No. The Upside Down thing? Yeah. God damn it. They're a sponsor of the podcast.

Sex Swings? Teeter. Teeter. Teeter makes those, like, just relaxing in those. We have one back there. You clamp your ankles in, just let that back just stretch out again. And then there's a bunch of different exercises that I do with yoga that stretch your back out as well. We're in a constant state of compression, right?

Constant gravity, constant pushing you down. And a guy like me, I'm always lifting weights too. So I've got these heavy kettlebells and everything is compression and I'm pushing up. And you've got to spend as much time lengthening as you do pushing down. And you also have to stretch everything out because the more your hamstrings are tight, it's going to pull down on your back. A lot of people that have back pains, it's connected to having tight hamstrings. I have a theory, too, that a lot of things start in school.

Because you look at kids. I have two boys and one daughter, Henry, Ivan, and Eleanor. They're 5, 7, 9. They can do monkey bars, pull-ups, muscle-ups, you know, like they do judo, they play hockey, they're very active. But school, the way that physically a classroom is designed is wrong. It's like putting them in a cast for the next 15 years. And then they're going to come out of high school like I was, unable to climb a rope, unable to do monkey bars, unable to do anything. And then they're going to go to more school and sit down for more times. They don't get enough physical activity.

Not even close. No. And not even the education towards it, not even the education in nutrition. Right. And they get graded and evaluated on how well they listen in gym class, which is completely insane. Yeah, it really is. I mean, it's just making them sit down for all that time during the day.

We're just preparing them for some job that's going to be unnatural in the first place. Making good little taxpayers. And look at it, too. There's a model of school that was based on religious schools, and old Catholicolic schools let's say in quebec how did you keep them from like being distracted you know the ruler and the fingers you

go to the corner the leather strap now we haven't changed the classroom the schedule and the curriculum barely but there's no more straps so okay, we haven't changed anything. Like it's normal that particularly little boys don't listen in school that well. We have to find a way. We have to redesign school from like the schedule, the design of the classroom, the hallways, the introduction. You know, like we have to bring restaurants back into school. Like cafeteria and all that. No, but like cafeterias. And I don't know if it's you that

talk with jeff bridges about that because he's in the like school lunches thing and the problem with school lunches is that if you subsidize half the kids then you have a kid with like a a badge here that says like poor you know yeah so the only way to do that and i know some people are a bit anti-socialist but you have to feed all the kids. I agree. It's like crucial. I mean, the idea that that's a problem. I mean, Jesus Christ, we're talking about food and also the sense of community that's established when everybody eats together.

You're going to create this rift between students where you establish that one student is poorer than the other one. So it's going to fuck them up already. It's going to already make them insecure. Unless you have the labor force with the kids. Yeah. Like, not to say that we're going to make the kids work, but it's going to be a learning experience and people can take their turns preparing family meals inside of the school system.

It's a valuable tool. And if it was done and handled with respect and appreciation, if they had classes, perhaps, that showed how important food is. I mean maybe even show an episode of No Reservations or Parts Unknown and show how people can appreciate food and what food really is and then how great it would be. I mean – and also it would open their eyes to the possibility of food as a career, of getting into the same position that you guys are in. I mean, this is something that's never discussed. I mean, when was the last time a kid was encouraged to become a chef? No.

It's like a stand-up comedian. You never get encouraged to become a stand-up comedian. They just call you a fuck-up and try to put you on drugs. It never comes out when they do the survey. You know, 90% of our labor force inside the restaurants is – anybody who cooks inside the restaurants is someone who didn't work inside the traditional school system. You know, we employ dropouts. Yeah. Yeah. But brilliant.

You know, there's brilliant people on the team. They just – the school system did not work for them well that's the same thing with both of my jobs whether it's the ufc or whether it's stand-up comedy everyone that i'm close with is a fuck-up in the traditional sense like we didn't none of us fit in there's very few people that get into stand-up comedy that were thriving in some other career most of us were extremely frustrated with traditional environments and most of us didn't do well in school because we felt confined

and just couldn't wait to get... I used to have nightmares about going back to school. Did you have ADD as a child? I'm sure I got it all. Whatever the fuck it is. Whatever it is that gives you energy, that makes you better at stuff, I got that. They'll call it a bad thing and say, like, you can't concentrate.

Well, I'm fucking bored. You have to harness it and not treat it. Give me something that I can concentrate on. Give me something that I actually enjoy. I got a lot of energy. It's not that there's something wrong with me. It's that I have no interest in what they're selling. And it's being sold by some underpaid, undermotivated person who really is just following some sort of a curriculum and they have to do that because they want to keep their job.

This is what kids are being subjected to all across the world in the most fertile time of their life in terms of their imagination, their creativity, and their free time. Frontal cortex is a sponge. They're ready to take everything. Yeah. I mean, it's just, and no one would ever say to some kid who's cracking jokes in class and running around being a fool, no one would ever say, hey, you ever thought about being a comedian? Like, no one says that. It just never comes up. But meanwhile, everybody loves comedians.

People love to go see comedy, but nobody ever says to some fuck-up kid, hey, man, you might be a comic. You know, it just doesn't come up. They'll do the test. And like David was supposed to be a travel agent. I was. I was supposed to be a golf pro. Is this something in Canada? Yeah.

You're supposed to be a golf pro? You really good at golf? No. And then according to the questionnaire, and one of my friends who flies planes, was supposed, I think, to be a folly artist, make sounds of horses with coconuts and stuff. For movies? Yeah, yeah.

That's what they told him after the questionnaire. What the fuck kind of questionnaire do you guys have in Canada? The success of Restaurant, though, you have to think, though, is due to a lot of very sad people that have gone through the academic process. due to a lot of very sad people that have gone through the academic process, I have a disproportionate amount of lawyers and professionals and people who wear suits that love to come to the restaurant and drink wine and let the dogs stop barking inside their heads because they're really fucking miserable.

Yeah. You know, when you spent your whole day in the 72nd floor of the IBM tower downtown, in your cubicle, punching data into graphs and taking a licking from your boss, who's also a suit. Just a constant state. You can't wait to get to Joe Beef and, you know, relax.

It's like the Michael Douglas movie there. Enough? Oh, what was that called? Falling Down. Falling Down, yeah you know, relax. It's like the Michael Douglas movie there. Enough? Oh, what was that called? Falling Down. Falling Down, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, Enough is with J-Lo. What is Enough? What does she do?

Jiggly, you mean, no? No, no, no, no, no. Enough is the movie with J-Lo where she avenges some ex-boyfriend that traumatizes her. It's great. I love those movies. What? Okay, there's something about airplanes. I don't know if the altitude in the plane.

Stupid movies are great when you're in the sky. The last two days I discovered he's quite the movie buff. Yeah, he loves Notting Hill. He was like, that's a beautiful movie. I was like, what? I don't even know what that's about. What's Notting Hill about? That's a movie with Hugh Grant.

Oh, Christ. I can't remember what it's about, but you know what I love, dude? What? I love the night at the Roxbury. Start drinking again, man. Something's happening to you. Notting Hill, Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. It sucks.

We were just, you know, the Chateau is right by the Roxbury where it was. And I couldn't wait to just get out of the car go walk there take a picture of it and just like try to show like i sent a picture to everyone nobody reacted dude it's the roxbury you see you saw that movie night at the roxbury yeah yeah i saw the movie and for me to travel there is like... Did you like that movie? Did you like that movie? Yeah, I loved it. Really?

Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Hmm. Interesting. Same reaction.

Yeah. What else is your favorite movie? Alone in the Wilderness, Dick Pranicki. That's great. You saw that movie? The guy that whittles hinges for his house in Alaska? No. So that's a must view.

Is it really it's like once a year you watch really yeah alone in the wilderness dick preneke can you bring that up on the thing what is that do you know what this jamie the guy runs away like this canadian thing no no no no no i say alaska a guy who just moves and lives in the woods for the rest of his life is it like how the french love jerry lewis no they play they play it on Vermont PBS as a fundraiser every year. Wow. This is it. So the guy put a tripod and films himself

and he carves everything you need, hunts everything. Oh, okay, okay, okay. I did not know this guy's name. See, I thought you were talking about a movie. This is like a documentary almost. Well, self-made. He literally gets dropped off there with an axe

and then he builds a house and then he kills a goat and then you know. Yeah, I do remember this guy in interviews that I think I probably saw on YouTube but yeah, he builds his own house and log cabins and shit. Yeah, yeah, this guy. Yeah.

That's like such a beautiful like Did you guys ever see that Vice piece about the guy who lives in the Arctic? Heinmo? Heinmo's Arctic Adventure? No. Fucking amazing, man. It's a Vice guided travel piece where this guy got a very small cabin in the Arctic in, like, the 1970s.

And he's been there since. The only thing he's ever seen from 9-11 is some photographs. He had no idea what's happening when it happened um he does he still love michael jackson i don't know but this is it um this this guy lives alone uh in alaska with his wife in the arctic national refuge and uh you have to get in with a float plane and he just hunts caribou and uh lives with his family his uh wife is uh inuit and um they they have children together and children leave and eventually went on to college i mean it's fucking crazy one of their kids was two years old died in a uh canoe accident the canoe fell

over and the kid fell into the river and they revisit the spot at the time of her birthday. And it's really intense. But this guy really believes that people are happier and healthier when they live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Caloric restriction. Look at that. Yeah, I mean, all he does is eat caribou. I mean, the guy is out there eating caribou. All he does is eat caribou.

The guy is out there eating caribou, and during the time where they're filming this, his cabin and his caribou stash gets attacked by a grizzly bear, and he shoots the grizzly bear on film. He chases it down in the night and blasts it. One of the grizzly bears had eaten one of his dogs. I mean, this motherfucker's out there living. But he's a very smart guy. He's not what you would think.

When you think of someone like this, you think of someone who is some weird kind of inbred half-wit who's living up there. No, he's very intelligent, very introspective. Slightly introvert. Maybe introverted, but he doesn't seem to have a hard time talking to people, so I don't know if he's introverted. But, I mean, he's definitely restricted his access to dialogue. I mean, he's out there alone in the forest by himself. But he makes a very compelling point that there's a natural feeling that he gets from doing this where everything falls into place. He's constantly getting exercise because he's hiking and chasing after these caribou, but that there's natural human reward systems that are in place in his DNA

for hunting and gathering and cooking this food over an open fire. And the way he lives, he just thinks it's the way people really are designed to live. We're absolutely not meant to live piled on top of each other within 10 million of us in a square mile on the island of Manhattan. Yeah. It's absolutely – do you remember when there was the floods in Manhattan? Yes. All the money in the world couldn't get you out.

Right. You had to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to leave Manhattan with everybody else. Yeah. You know? Yeah, and there was a real worry because of climate change that was going to be happening every year now people are like is this the new normal i remember shane smith had some piece on shane has to walk out yeah yeah yeah yeah shane had to walk out but he had some piece on vice where they were detailing the inside of his uh apartment building like the

fucking thing was completely flooded like six feet high in water you know and people were worried worried like this is going to be what's happening on a regular basis now like this climate change thing has changed i have a heightened sense of you know since three kids i it's something that i think about it's something that i have ready you know i bought a generator i have yeah i check the batteries the rechargeable batteries for all of the equipment that I have. I own solar panels. I own a duffel bag full of everything that I need to throw in the back of my pickup truck, grab my kids, and I know which way to drive away from the city to go to the cabin. It's something I've planned just because I'm the ward of these small humans whom I love. It's funny.

You talked about, like, restriction again. And the thing, just, I'm thinking of preparing, you know. And the most common thing that people prepare is food, you know. And they prepare cans and cans and cans of food. But still, they eat so much of that food that the best way to prepare, the best way to prepare would be to start to eat less and and learn how to live at 1700 calories you know and learn how to live with the people around you because if you're going to spend like two months in a bunker or in a bug out location

or whatever you're not some like asshole to your kids and your friends and the family and people with you. One of the things that happens to people, this is really fascinating, when disasters do strike is everyone gets a lot friendlier. You know, and this is one thing that I've experienced myself this week. Because when we got evacuated, it was 2.30 in the morning on Thursday, and there was fire, rocks throw from my house. And I'm not talking a little bit of fire. I'm talking just hundreds of acres of fire. I mean, it was just roaring over. We started to see houses, started seeing the gas lines explode, houses burst into flames, and it was right down the street. So we're seeing this and, you know, we got outside,

we're in the driveway, the neighbors come over, Everyone's talking. What are you going to do? I go, we're getting the fuck out of here. And he's like, have they given the evacuation orders? I said, no, we haven't. But I go, it's right there, man. I go, we got to go. I go, if we're wrong and we come back and the house is still here, that's okay. But you want to get out of these things quickly because they can turn south quickly. But there was a sense of camaraderie and community that that happens and then quite a few of us all

went to the same hotel including my friend Tom Segura and his wife and his family went to this hotel too with some of my friends from this neighborhood who were all there huddled in together and but there was there was an people were a little extra friendly there was a and this is like there was the same kind of feeling after 9-11 when I was in New York City there was a and this is like a there was the same kind of feeling after 9-11 when i was in new york city there was people a little bit more friendly we felt that during the ice storm back in the day people were like assessing the street that we live on and then they go well who's got a wood burning stove and they go oh roger does come over and then people would go to roger's house and all

of a sudden all these neighbors that just wave at each other were all at Roger's house by the wood-burning stove, going back to the houses to get blankets, planning sleeping arrangements, planning food arrangements, and assessing each other, giving each other their personal space, and learning how to speak to each other in a respective manner that we might have to do this for several days. Do the best out of it. Through tragedy, a sense of community was built somewhat or reinforced for a brief moment in time, which made going back to our regular lives on that street better.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever read Sebastian Sebastian Younger's tribe no it's a great book and he kind of talks about that about how in part situations of extreme stress and when people are really pushed those people bond together and they find that these are the happiest times of their life people that

even go to war they find that they miss the camaraderie of the bunker. They miss the camaraderie of being in the trenches. They miss the camaraderie of being together, huddled up, not knowing what's going to happen in the future, but counting and depending upon each other for their very lives. That's a thing that happens in very, very busy kitchens. Yeah.

You know, a bunch of no-education guys out of cooking school working a difficult restaurant line. You know, we're working six guys on six four-burner stoves. Struggle. Every night, a difficult menu with a difficult chef in a very busy restaurant. with a difficult chef in a very busy restaurant, those hours, you know, from 6 p.m. till 10 p.m. at night. Like it's intimate. It's intimate.

Like, you know, my nose, you're bending over to get into the stove to get a chicken out. I'm grabbing something out of the fridge. My nose is in your butt. Your nose is in my butt. You know, I need your knife. You need my knife. It's very very very close quarters often like some of my strongest relationships some of his strongest relationships are you know the bond that i've built with guys that i've cooked on lines whether in europe or here are unbreakable you know these guys got your back tony talked a lot about that you know yeah i think people are better off when they're struggling yeah I really do

I mean I think they're better off when they're there they're you know when life creates challenges and there's there's things to overcome and there's difficulties to get through and there's real pressure involved these and there's physical activity involved in these pressures as well that's rowing on the galley yeah centurion and the cat of nine tails looming over you well all the years you guys have been in business now what what do you look forward to now like what what keeps you going now you have this established restaurant this amazing menu and you know you have fans of your restaurant like myself.

What keeps you going? Tiny restaurant where David and I cook. You saw the movie The French Connection? Yes. You see when Gene Ackman's on the other side of the road, it's freezing in New York. He's in a deli with a piece of pizza and a shitty coffee. He has little leather shoes on the icy pavement. And then the French gangsters are in the bistro and they're eating snails and eclairs

and all the food that comes in the little crockpots on the cart at the table. If we could open a place like that for 16 customers that we have the key only, we decide to open whenever we want and we don't lose money. That's all. I want to build with Fred

a tiny little French restaurant that we do what we want at 16 seats yeah an art project

or I can take a 4 or 8 or close it or just a toy to just practice this skill that we've learned

all of these years to do this very very weird old forgotten food that's not cool but that i adore you know what what are you like what is in the back of your head that you don't bring to joe beef oh you know one that everybody would know but to do a proper lamb wellington served for two people and a little trolley to still bring out the 12 cheeses on the little trolley.

To have a trolley just of digestif. You know, after dinner, alcohol. To do crepes table side. To do a duck for two with orange sauce table side for two. You saw with Tony, we went to the Flambe place in Quebec City in the first show. And the first part's unknown. And it was wonderful. Like little langousse Flambe place in Quebec City in the first show, in the first Parts Unknown. And it was wonderful. Like little langousse flambe.

And like there were skills. Like we want to be able to like this morning we'll do tartare and it'll be mixed table side and that's it. Or Dover souls. To really practice hospitality at the level that it used to be back in the day. To bring out the very old porcelain, very beautiful silver, not ostentatious way, just almost in like a kitschy romantic kind of...

Nostalgic. Nostalgic sense. What, you know, to build a restaurant from the 20s, you know, do that food. Handwritten menu, flowers on it, you know, like. Yeah, the appreciation that you guys have for it is very contagious. It really is. Dining is great.

Like, you know, candlelit dining, you know, it's, you know, heavy velvet, woodwork, silver trays, copper. There's a Hemingway-esque. Who's the other big guy? Orson Welles. Did you ever see those Orson Welles interviews at the Hotel Pierre in Paris? Those are just brilliant. You want to just eat yourself to death at Hotel Pierre. That's kind of what he did, though.

Yeah, exactly. It's the only way we could build a time travel machine, right? Like, you read about it. It's fun. And you go to a museum when you see, like, silverware from a sunken ship. Yeah, it's nice. But you'll never travel back in time, nor do I want to get polio, you know? There's great, great benefits to living now and then now and here you know the art of it

yeah and and the the beauty of it it's like we've grown up watching like this old house victory garden all those shows on pbs right we're huge fans and the beauty of this is we can build a restaurant like that with our hands so we it's just a matter of is it this year, is it next year, you know? Well, yeah, we're doing it now, by the way. Yeah. Are you? Yeah, I bought a farm and he's going to read. I bought Fred a farm for me. That's what the gag is.

Where are you guys going to do it? I think down in St. Armand there. I bought a little farm right on the Vermont border. I bought a little farm and a zinc bar. And I don't know. He's been cracking out. He's talking about going down there in January and starting to build it. This is the polar opposite of the theme restaurant in Vegas.

TGIF. Well, not just that, but like the celebrity chef as you're going down the escalator at the airport, there's a giant billboard of this latest chef. Did you ever hear this story about the Fertitta brothers? No. So they called Fred one day and they said, we're coming to Montreal. We'd love to meet you guys. I'm like, yeah, okay. What's going

on? We're not open for lunch. What year was this? Last year. After they sold, I think they bought the Palms. They had all that cash. It's burning a hole in their pocket. They're great guys, man. I love those guys. It's best.

Wonderful. They get a hold of you? They get a hold. Fly in privately to the airport, Montreal. Three Escalades roll into Joe Beef at noon on a Tuesday. All the boys get out, plus help and the crew that surrounds them. Assassins. Yeah, we make a table at 10.

We all sit down. Lorenzo starts off, first I'd like to let you guys know that Joe Beef is my favorite restaurant. And I'm like, what? This dump? You're Lorenzo Fertitta. You're all over the world. You live in Las Vegas. Everything is at your beck and call.

Like you live in the, you know. So that was flattering, you know. And we prepared a little dinner for them, a little lunch. And we talked and they pitched us to take over one of the rooms in the Palms upstairs. And of course it was flattering. We had a wonderful meeting. But we knew right away as we were having the meeting that that was not for us and it was never going to happen.

We have young children. We're in a bad place too at the time. It was tough in our life, you know, still drinking. Yeah, it was pretty dark, but it was nice and flattering.

And I think Fred moved them on to Mark Vetri, who eventually did the project from philadelphia and in retrospect uh yeah it was nice flattering but we wouldn't do that right there's no way we couldn't do joe beef anywhere else you know people don't eat the dining public doesn't exist unless unless it's on my street so montreal is just such a different place the idea is like, before they offered any room there, I said,

is there like a decommissioned laundromat in the back that's for employees only? We said all the wrong things, man. 800 square feet that we can make

a five table French restaurant. They're pitching us the top floor of the pubs and we're asking for the door next to the garbage container in the alley with no windows and they were looking at us like we were insane you wanted a five table french restaurant yeah yeah and lorenzo was looking at his brother and

his brother was looking at lorenzo like why the fuck did you bring me here you know we sent them some books now well i'm sure they're happy. It's such a funny way of responding to that. We want to give you the top floor of the Palms in Vegas. Do you have a fucking 800 square foot room? In the back alley that nobody can access? I want to make it so expensive that basketball

players think it's too much money? Yeah. Well, that would be a very interesting spot, and I'm sure if you did create something like that or someone did, an unbelievably exclusive spot that literally has 20 seats available in a night and they only open for one sitting. Right. And we want to build the – what's the movie?

The Roxbury? No. We want to build the French Connection restaurant. No, the other one with J-Lo. What's that one? Jiggly. Jiggly. Enough.

Enough. Ishtar. Made in Manhattan. Yeah, I mean, I guarantee if someone did do something like that, particularly because of Vegas, it's all about who you know and who you are. I mean, if you can get in, you know, you can get into Joe Lamb. Oh, it's Joe Lamb is in Vegas. Right behind the garbage container, the leaky one next to the grease trap.

Yeah, girls and their Jimmy Choos have to step in these puddles of grease. La boutique. Yeah, on their way to the back. It would, ironically enough, it would be probably the hot spot in Vegas. I know, Joe. Lorenzo didn't get it. Probably wouldn't be very profitable, though. Right, it's not over.

Obviously. Well, when they took over the Palms, I was excited. I know that Nine Steakhouse there was excellent. I haven't been there in years, but that used to be a great place. But Mark, who's there, Mark Vetri, is an excellent cook. Yeah, great. He's really involved in solid charity things. I think he's also brown or

black belt in jujitsu really philly yeah yeah yeah yeah he's a mark vetri resourceful dude wow so did he so he's is the restaurant open uh i think this week it was opening or yeah oh wow oh that's fantastic that's awesome yeah wow and his food is delicious. I'll try it out. Yeah. Yeah, Vetri's in Philadelphia. It's like an institution. We opened, like, it was one thing when we, what was the story? The lobster spaghetti. You know, we took the kind of like, there was a story in Bon Appetit magazine about Mark Vetri doing lobster spaghetti and fighting with his dad about removing a table to put a meat slicer in. I think they had 24 seats and table to put a meat slicer in.

I think they had 24 seats, and he bought a nice red slicer, and he said, we're taking out four seats, and now we're down to 20 seats. His dad thought he was insane, but he insisted that they have 20 seats instead of 24. That story was endearing to Fred and I. And he was doing a lobster spaghetti at his Philadelphia restaurant at the time. So when we opened Joe Beef, one of the first items on the menu was our version of the lobster spaghetti that Mark Vetri was doing. And just a simple homage to that story. That's great. Years later, we met him and we told him the story and became friends.

That's amazing. So why did it take four seats? What did this thing look like? Well, you know, have you seen those big Italian red Burkle meat slicers? No. They're amazing. They're not electric.

So did he do it just because it would add to the ambiance to have this cool thing? Yeah, in Italy, this is a pretty standard piece of equipment that you'd have on the bars and savernas. It turns slow. It's a big blade that rotates slowly.

It's very, very sharp. So it doesn't... It's like a pinwheel. Yeah, it doesn't melt the fat of the ham, right? So you don't get this white film. So it makes like perfectly thin, cool slices of perfect ham. And they're gorgeous objects. Like we have a couple now.

We have a blue one and we have a red one. They're gorgeous. You got one for me, Jamie? Yeah, I was trying to find one like cutting meat. Oh, that one's nice. Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, you know, I saw one of these in Italy.

Yeah, sure. They're all over the place. Yeah. When I was in Italy, I saw one of these. They were making sandwiches with it. Yeah. Oh, wow. That's like a $10,000, $15,000 machine.

Wow. It's beautiful. So when you remove four seats from your restaurant to put one of those in, you're on the wrong side of business. But you're in Joby Point? You're on the right side of business. You guys have something going on tonight, right? No, no, no. No?

No. We did last night. We cooked an animal last night in Las Vegas. How was that? That was cool. Yeah, those guys are great. Awesome. And the people were- I've never been. Yeah, John and Vinny, man. Amazing things. Yeah. we did last night we cooked at Animal last night Las Vegas how was that yeah those guys are great awesome and the people

I've never been yeah John and Vinny amazing things yeah they're good boys they have John and Vinny's across the street Animal is a restaurant

that kind of opened around the same time Joe Beef we were friends back then they came up to Montreal a bunch of times I brought them to

all like the weird we're all kindred spirits it's like the same yeah same thing they practice the restaurant business like we practice the restaurant business like we practice the restaurant business the restaurant's so similar to ours in weird ways and their relationship john and vinnie is like very dave and fred it's strange like

it's a l.a joe beef you have these sort of connections with these fellow like-minded chefs all the pirates on tony's captain t Tony's pirate ship, man. Yeah, well, he was the one who introduced me to you guys. He told me about you guys. Listen, Joe Beef, Surviving the Apocalypse. Is it out now? Yes, sir. In a week.

24th. I have it already, you fucks. Sorry, but you're going to have to wait. Please, go out, go buy it, support, and if you're in Montreal, go visit my best restaurant, Joe Beef. You guys are the shit. Thank you, Joe. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Thank you.