The Joe Rogan Experience - #1765 - Phillip Frankland Lee

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

Phillip Frankland Lee is a restaurateur and chef. He is also the co-owner, along with his wife Margarita Kallas-Lee, of Scratch Restaurants Group: the entity behind several popular Los Angeles and Austin restaurants.

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! So, Phillip, my friend Phillip here, who's the head chef of the greatest sushi place on planet Earth. I say to young Jamie, young Jamie, have you had sushi at Sushi Bar ATX yet? And he goes, I don't like fish. Yeah. Put that microphone in front of your face.

What's wrong with that? What could you not like about fish? Well, I've eaten it. I'm not afraid to try it all the time. I've worked at restaurants, and they've made really great halibut. Okay, what about Filet-O-Fish sandwiches from McDonald'sdonald's no that's not how what the fuck those are goddamn delicious it's like a smell and taste to it that's just i mean have you have you tried fish i mean obviously you know a filet of fish sandwich is not going to be you know hundred dollar pound toro but it's still delicious

filet of fish is like the best thing mc ever figured out No Listen I know it's terrible for you Like every time I eat one There's like the brain is saying to the mouth What the fuck is wrong with you And then the body's like dude But the mouth's like shut up bitch I don't know man I'm steak and potatoes from Ohio I enjoy steak and potatoes as well though

I just I don't know. Some people just, I always wonder if people just have, like, if their tongue works different. Like, I have two, my youngest daughter, you've met my kids. Yeah. My youngest loves spicy food. I mean, she can fuck with some really spicy hot sauce. Like, I got this Senor Lechuga hot sauce.

They sent me a bunch of it. It's awesome stuff. And they sent me some with Reapers. I mean, it's got a fucking kick to it. That'll have it. And she goes, what's that hot sauce? And I go, this one might be too hot for you. She goes, let me try.

I go, you serious? And she's like dipping her finger into this Reaper sauce. I can handle it. I go, wow, she's like dipping her finger into this Reaper Sasha I Can handle it I go wow she's 11 and she's early it's gnarly my 13 year old will not fuck with it at all She's like yeah, she she barely likes crushed red pepper on pizza. She can't handle that yeah I mean everyone's a little bit different with the way that they're you know like Coffee I hate coffee That's so odd I think the flavor is disgusting.

And I, it's, you know, I've definitely had that conversation with people before and they're like, well, you haven't tried the right coffee. And I've tried everybody's who's suggested that. I just think it tastes disgusting. It tastes burnt. Do you not like caffeine or do you not like? Well, I don't do caffeine. None. My body doesn't work well with it.

What happens when you have caffeine? I just get shaky. Oh, really? I think I kind of OD'd on Red Bulls when I was younger. I used to drink like four or five a day, and then one day I just didn't work anymore. Did you see that refrigerator that we have out in the hallway that's a Black Rifle coffee refrigerator? Yeah. They have these cans of Black Rifle coffee.

It's like a cold espresso with milk and sugar. It's so fucking good. They're so delicious. But there's 300 milligrams of caffeine in every can. I mean, what is a Red Bull? A Red Bull is like,

I'm going to guess, 150? Let's guess. How many milligrams? Not even, no idea. Too many. What is it? 12 ounce can, it says 111.

Okay, that ain't shit. It's got that taurine in it. I'm just kidding. Oh, it's got that bull cum. No, it's got other stuff in it. Do you know taurine is bull cum? I do now. I don't know if Red Bull has it. I think that was the original.

Hitler was into that stuff, apparently. Yeah, I mean, that shit will give you wings, right? I think that's the whole reason why Red Bull has a bull on it, and it has taurine. I think the bull is supposed to. I don't think they get it that way. Actually, this says it has 1,000 milligrams of taurine. Oh, Jesus. I don't know if that's a lot compared to some of this stuff.

Yeah, I don't know. That might be a small amount. I have no idea. I have no reference point. But here's the thing. You gave me this. Thank you very much. Absolutely. This is, it says the Yamakaze single malt Japanese whiskey. And you said that this is... This bottle won, I can't remember which, you know, Whiskey World Awards or whatever, but it did win gold. And so this became like, I don't want to call it the Holy Grail,

but it became one of the most sought-after bottles of whiskey in modern times. And mainly not just because of how the fact that it won gold, but they only made enough to produce 5,000 bottles. And so the bottles have been gone for quite some time Here we go. Oh That smells good, I have a buddy my buddy Alex shout out to Alex is He's really into like really nice Japanese whiskey. He'll get it. He'll he knows this Give me just just just Give me just a touch.

Just a touch. That bottle's got to last. There's not many left. Come on. Nothing lasts. What, are you going to live forever? Cheers, my friend. Cheers.

Oh, wow. That's interesting. It's almost like ethereal. It's like... God, that's unique. Mm-hmm. That is very unique. That's a surprising taste because it is whiskey-like, but it's very different than any other whiskey I've ever tried. It's also like feel now.

It's almost like tingling all around your palate. So when did you know that you wanted to be a chef? How long have you been really into cooking? Because you're a young guy. By the way, congratulations on the Michelin stars. Thank you. That's giant, right? In the world of chefs, that's the fucking thing, right?

Yeah. I mean, I dedicated the last probably 15 years of my life just to trying to get a Michelin star. probably 15 years of my life just to trying to get a Michelin star. And when I found out this year, they had me on a Zoom call. They kind of lied to me. They kind of, what they did is they said, we want to, they said, first of all, I said, you're not getting a star this year, just so you know. But we want to have, send someone to the restaurant in Los Angeles. And we have some interview questions we want to ask you about, you know, how it was to operate

during COVID. And I said, Well, I'm in Austin, but I can fly back like, No, no big deal. Don't fly back. Just just zoom in. So I zoom in. And they have my wife, who's our pastry chef and my business partner. She's at the restaurant. And so is my brother, who was the chef of, uh, uh, sushi bar in Montecito, uh, and our chef at a pasta bar. And they're all three there, uh, just in the restaurant. And I'm at my house here in Austin and I'm on zoom and they start asking us some random questions about, uh, you know, how is it, you know, what's it like being open and what have the, the, the, you know, pitfalls you had to overcome. And, and uh then out of nowhere they just go oh and um i have one extra question um uh congratulations uh two of your

restaurants are getting michelin stars oh they snuck it in on you they snuck it in and i'm on and the thing is i'm on a zoom and so i was like wait what what did she say like i couldn't i couldn't hear. And I thought we had just gotten one and it turned out, they said, no, no, no. And I said, wait, which restaurant? They said, sushi bar, Montecito and pasta bar. And pasta bar is in LA? Pasta bar is in LA. And I just started crying. Wow. Yeah, so. I was just reading on the history of the Michelin star and that it was really back in the early days of travel. They had a book would show you where you can get your car repaired, where you could refuel, and then where you get something to eat.

And then people got really obsessed with the where to get something to eat part. And then it became a separate entity. It was never. I don't think they ever set out to become the world standard on cuisine. I don't think that was ever the point. The point was we have to give you a reason to buy tires. And that reason is to drive. And so here's some things to drive to.

to buy tires and that reason is to drive. And so here's some things to drive to. And so that's what the one star, two star, three star, you know, delineations have to have to do with is this one is worth, you know, a stop. This one's worth a detour and this one's worth a journey. And so that's how you get one star, two star, three star. So one star means if it's on your way, stop. That was over a hundred years ago. Now one star means, you know, fly there. But one star means if it's on your way, stop. That was over a hundred years ago. Now, one star means, you know, fly there. But three star means, like, upend your life and go find that place. What's that? Who's got three stars?

Here in America, not many people. McDonald's. McDonald's, yes. I think they have four stars, actually. Is there anywhere in America that has three? Yeah, a couple places. Like what? The French Laundry

has three stars. Oh, okay. That's that place where Gavin Newsom got in trouble, right? I watched a video on that. Not on that, but on Bourdain. I think it was the old show. I think it was No Reservations. Yeah, and he went to French Laundry. It was pretty fucking incredible. Yeah, I've only got to eat there once, but it was no reservations. Yeah, and he went to French Laundry. It was pretty fucking incredible.

Yeah, I've only got to eat there once, but it's an institution. Is that good? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, for a long time, it was the restaurant in America. The? It was the restaurant in America. And isn't it kind of a weird spot?

Like, you got to travel? Yeah, but that's part of sort of the allure of and not to say they wouldn't be a three-star restaurant without you know having that uh that part of traveling but three stars is when you're worth the journey and um so you could be in like the himalayas or some shit yeah i mean a lot of some of the three-star restaurants around the world are not in you know they're not in strip malls they're not in city centers they're you know they've bought ranches they've bought you know they have land El Bulli was on the top of a mountain where's El Bulli well that's been closed for a long

time but that was in Spain oh yeah yeah so I mean they're saying it like I know I don't know any of this listen you let me into your world I don't know what you're talking about what's El Bull? So that was Farinadria. They were named best restaurant in the world several years over. It was really the restaurant that really brought what became known as molecular gastronomy. All the food that, you know, Jamie would probably look at and say, what am I looking at? This doesn't look like food. This looks like interesting abstract art. Um, but you know, they think, you

know, today you have restaurants where, you know, you'll get literally a balloon that's brought out to the table and you eat the, suck the helium out and eat the balloon. And that's, you know, one of the courses. Oh, wow. 12 iconic dishes of El Bulli mmm so this is like fancy dining and this is like it's beyond fancy dining it's some are from Jamie's lineage would look about this and if you asked him is that like what is this and you didn't tell me what you wouldn't think that was food? Yeah. Jamie's not into this. I could tell already. Is that sea urchin?

That is sea urchin. Oh, delicious. Do you like sea urchin? No, I just tried octopus recently. And? Oh, okay. I feel bad eating octopus because they're fucking smart. I know.

That's what I thought. I was like, I'll try it so I can say I tried it. But they're, you know, they're fucking good. They're very good. But they are murderers. I mean, they murder everything. Yeah, I'd rather have macaroni and cheese and steak. Oh, my God.

Macaroni and cheese. I was just saying, I'd rather have something else. There is good macaroni and cheese out there, by the way. There's some places. I'm trying off the tip of my head. There was a place that had like a truffle macaroni and cheese with like really good cheese. God damn it. was that I'm not gonna get it I'm gonna let it go my house for Thanksgiving that's where you get the best mac and cheese make bag of cheese yeah yeah what do you do with it so it's it's a partially my grandma's recipe so

basically I make I make a cheese sauce separately with with Gruyere sharp cheddar and then I'll boil the macaroni cool it down and then I'll take a bunch of shredded cheese as well and kind of layer it almost like you would be layering a lasagna a little bit

and then cover the entire top with melted cheese as well and then kind of the secret to that is in the cheese sauce, smoked paprika. Yeah. And so when you eat it, it's got a little bit of the, you know, Kraft mac and cheese of like the, what is it, like the sauciness. But you have layers and you build it when it's cold so you have layers of just shredded cheese all through it so you still have that that pull of the cheese like

a nice pizza and then you have a crispy cheese crust lasagna like almost it's really good wow damn yeah you know i am uh addicted to watch there's so many um pages on instagram now they're just they're essentially like a one-minute cooking show Have you ever watched any of those? Maybe I'm sure I'm sure I flipped through them. It's why do people love looking at people cooking food because I fucking love it. Yeah, um, I Think it's got to be something like psychological. It's got to be something about like watching somebody nourish, like creating nourishment maybe in some sort of like, you know, abstract way that you haven't really. It's an art thing, though. It's also like there's a beauty to it.

There's a creation of like a delicious meal. Like, you know how good that's going to taste because you've had something similar. you know how good that's going to taste because you've had something similar. And so you're watching them put together some dish with skill and all the different elements of it and all the knowledge that has to be. You have to earn the ability to cook a delicious meal. It's not something very simple. To do it just right, it's an art form. It is, but like most art Like to do it just right. It's an art form.

It is, but like most art forms, it's a craft. And it's a practicable craft. Yeah. But I think back to what you were saying about like why are people attracted to that. I mean you can go on and watch, you know, people blow dry their hair or apply makeup. And that, you know, is probably attracting some people, but only people who care about, you know, makeup where it feels like even people who aren't into food, who aren't like, you know, you know, self-acclaimed foodies, they still like watching food. And I think it has to be something deeper than just a craft that is interesting to look at.

Yeah. Though that's one of the things that's fascinating about it is that it is a craft that is interesting to look at. Yeah, though that's one of the things that's fascinating about it is that it is a craft, but it's also, like you said, it's nourishment. I mean, everybody needs food. And it's also, it looks fucking amazing. It's one of the only things where the artist, if you call them an artist, or craftsman, have to take enough responsibility and have enough integrity to understand that the art they're creating is going to be ingested by the audience, not just hung on the wall or worn. Right. Yeah. Well, it took me a while to figure out that it is art. It really was Bourdain that

showed me from his first show, from No Reservations. I remember watching that show, and one of the beautiful things about No Reservations and then also Parts Unknown was that his narration was all his writing. And it was all so very specific to his writing. In fact, his voice is so specific that he got obsessed with jujitsu and started posting on a reddit jiu-jitsu sub thread and eventually people figured out that it was him just because of his voice i don't know how they figured it out and it may have been posthumously that they figured it out but there was this whole article about bourdain posting on this this subreddit and like real honest about his journey and his battles with jujitsu. But he,

he did it in a way that's very similar to the way he does the narration on his show, which was one of the more interesting things about the show because you got an insight into an art where you're, the practitioner is explaining it, but he's so articulate and passionate and yeah, shooting star. Gotcha.

Yeah. I see people like, am i tripping yeah there's shooting stars in the ceiling but there's this there's an aspect to the way he would describe it and i remember watching his show going oh it's art like it was like duh like why didn't i see it this way before i just thought oh that place is delicious but there's also an art to like changing a tire or anything. Like when you see someone who's really good at something, there's an art to it. Right. Especially if you're into that thing. Yeah. Yeah.

I always talk about that with pool, the game of pool. Because most people look at pool, it's fucking boring. You're just shooting a ball in the hole. Yeah. Who cares? But for someone like me who plays, I see someone like Earl Strickland, like a great pool player. I watch him play like, God damn it. That's amazing.

It's beautiful. Yeah. I mean, when somebody can make something look easy, but also make it look sexy at the same time. Sexy. Yeah. It's really cool that we live in a time where the entry barrier to like expressing yourself in that kind of a way is so so simple like there's a guy on instagram that i was just going back and forth with he's

got a great page it's uh cooking underscore with underscore fire and he makes a chef and he uh he's just basically dedicating all his time now to putting online content out and he's doing like a one minute cookie show he just does the whole like no matter what he makes he bangs it out cooking with fire seems to be hard to do in one minute well he does it's just a really you know well thing. He'll do the whole deal from creating the salsa to cooking the meat to creating some sort of a sauce to go on it. And every time I watch his channel, I want to fucking eat like a pig. So he's creating all these different things. And then he's making the – okay, this is just hot dogs wrapped in bacon.

You picked a terrible one, Jamie. Excuse me? Sounds delicious. I think Jamie picked the one he wants us to cook for him tonight. That is exactly what Jamie would watch. I'm going to watch him cook shrimp. But anyway, it's one of those things. That's a little nomad grill that That's a pretty badass cool grill.

You could take that sucker around with like a suitcase. It's all insulated. But the point is that there's the entry barrier to putting out content like that. It's so minimal now. It's like all you have to do is have a camera and point it at you when you cook and just have some narration. Yeah, it's something that definitely wasn't there before. But I don't know. I haven't really gotten that into watching it really myself.

Do you, I mean, obviously you've worked with some great chefs. Do you like watching people put the food together? I used to watch like food TV religiously. I think that was, that was, you know, when I was sort of like just up and coming as like a young cook. When, you know, the thing is being a chef and being a cook are two entirely different things. Obviously being a cook is a prerequisite. What's the difference? So if, if, if I was to come over to your house tonight and I was to cook you the best meal you ever had that would not make me a great chef That would make me a great cook so you cook one thing like maybe a chef means you can cook a bunch of different things

No, the fact that I did it myself if I cook you food. I'm cooking if I brought Five or six people over to your house And I got them to work together to make you the best meal you've ever had that would make me a chef So call it calling a saying that like you know I you know my wife make you know my wife cooks great food So she's a fantastic chef Isn't correct. It's more like saying that a conductor of an orchestra. You wouldn't call the conductor a Great violinist now the conductor probably needs to not just know how to play the violin, but also you know be very good at it Okay, so a chef can cook but they really coordinate all these people that are cooking together in a restaurant

It means chief But when you have a private chef that people hire to their home to cook for them and that's an individual, what does that guy, now a private cook? Well, you can hire a private chef. That sounds a lot better than a private cook. But what is the job function of that person?

Well, I guess in that scenario, if you just have a, because there's some households that have a team, right? And some households would have a single individual who's cooking. So you can, you can be the chef who also cooks. It's not to say that if you cook, you are therefore not a chef. It's just that the difference, and we're talking more about in the, you know, in the industry, being a chef is to be someone who brings others together to cook as opposed to someone who just cooks. So you would call it like if you're working in a restaurant, a steak restaurant, the chef would be the main guy that tells everybody what to do.

That's the person who's typically writing the menu, who's handling all the ordering. That's typically the person who's dealing with the broken dishwasher. Oh. Well, that's not glamorous. No. The fuck is that? No. Don't you have a guy that handles the dishwasher?

Well, I guess maybe if you're at a famous steakhouse, maybe the chef isn't dealing with that. But in a normal, you know, restaurant. Small restaurant. Yeah. Yeah. And so the other people that are working for them, they're cooking the meals. You wouldn't consider them chefs as well. Well, that's why the person who typically runs like the line is called the sous chef, under chef.

Oh, that's what sous means. Yeah. S-O-U-S? S-O-U-S? S-O-U-S. So you have chef de parties, which are basically station cooks, and then they report to a sous chef who reports to, in some cases,

a chef de cuisine who reports to a chef. Okay, so sous vide means underwater then. Is that what it means? Under pressure. I think vide is pressure. I could be wrong. But you're cooking in water. What's the pressure?

It doesn't have to be water. So you can cook sous vide in like in any sort of, so what you're doing with sous vide is you're creating an anaerobic environment by, what is sous vide? What is sous vide? Under vacuum. Okay. Okay. So like a vacuum bag.

Yeah. So under pressure. Okay. Right. And so the idea is, you know, the picture over here on the right is what you would most associate sous vide with is one of these immersion circulators. But you also can take that bag and you can put it into a steamer, which I guess does have water, but it's not underwater. I've seen people cook sous vide in a Ziploc bag, though. So what the hell's going on there? Well, you've taken out, I mean, you didn't use a vacuum machine per se, but you could do what

we call ghetto vac. And so if you actually take, let's say, take a steak, you put it in a Ziploc bag. If you take a bowl of ice water and you submerge the steak into the ice water, it's going to push and force all the oxygen out the top. you slowly put it in there until you just have the zip at the top and then you zip lock and you pull it out and it's a ghetto vac. Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay. But I've seen people do it where they just put it in there and just zip it. None of that ghetto vac-ing.

They probably aren't at a really nice restaurant. No, they're at home. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you can do it at home. But is the results the same? nice restaurant. No, they're at home. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you can do it at home. But is the results the same? So the less of an environment that is there, the more accurate you're going to have the cook. So if you have a bunch of oxygen in that bag, then that oxygen is going to react at a different temperature or a different rate than if there's no oxygen. Now, when you first started

cooking, did you go to culinary school? Were you cooking actively before you went to culinary school? Yeah, so I went to culinary school. I had been cooking for years. And I only went for a few months and I dropped out. Really? Yeah. Look at that, kids. You can drop out of culinary school and get two Michelin stars.

Why did you drop out? I thought I was going to, like, University of Food. You know, I enrolled because I wanted to learn why. I wanted to learn. And everything I knew up until that point in my career was just what the guy next to me had taught me. And that was because he was like, all right, once you get here, okay, turn that. Okay, you see what you're looking at? And that's it. Just do this. As a line cook, you spend most of your time just doing what you're looking and that that that's it just do this as a line cook you you spend most of your time just doing what you're told and so i thought okay at this point this is what i knew what i wanted to do and so i thought to myself that i'm going to go to school and really learn

about this and then i got there and it was cooking class and i i had no desire to take cooking classes. Well, what do you mean by cooking class? It was just step-by-step basics? Yeah. They're teaching you the alphabet, essentially? Kind of. It was, I mean, it wasn't even that it was the alphabet. It was, well, there was a couple of reasons that I quit.

One was actually, we talked about the French laundry. I had the opportunity while I was in culinary school, one of my chefs had invited me to go with him and another group of chefs to the French laundry. I need a couple days off. I have been invited. And they had this really strict rule of if you miss two classes in any semester or whatever, you fail the class. And this was like a breakfast egg cookery class. And I said, well, I used to work at a restaurant called BLD in Los Angeles. And I worked both the plancha and sometimes I worked the egg station and we did 400 cover brunches. I could like I know that we're going to boil one egg at a time next week.

But like, can I you know, this is a fantastic opportunity for me as a young cook to go and have dinner with these chefs at the French Laundry. And they said, sorry, you know, if you're not here for this then you you're gonna fail and I said well then fuck that I should be getting extra credit yeah it seems like that would be a wiser choice to give you credit not yeah I'll you and I also said well look I'll take the the final quiz for this class now which is you know have to make the dish I already spent over a year working for undercover brunches at a really nice restaurant. I'm not going to learn that much more than what I've already done in real life. I've already left that part of my career to go on to the bigger and better restaurants. So did you feel like the

system was just too rigid or just the way they were teaching it? They ended up getting a huge class action lawsuit against them later on and they had to give everyone their tuition money back, I think Why I Didn't follow it. I also didn't join the class-action lawsuit, but I think it was something about over promising and under delivering Mmm, okay. Well, is it safe to say that all culinary schools are not created equal? Oh, a hundred percent. So if you went to another one, maybe?

I don't think culinary school's not worth it. I just think that, like if you were to come to me, you know, 30, 40 years ago and said, I want to be a cook, I would say, don't go to culinary school. Because if you go to culinary school, you come out with debt. And if you come out of culinary school and we hire you at one of our restaurants, we're going to end up saying to you, great, everything you just learned, okay, don't do any of that because now we want you to do it exactly how we do it. And we're going to show you how we do it. You're also going to start out at the bottom of the totem pole. So're going to start out you're going to be you know peeling onions so so cooking is it safe to say or fair to say that it's essentially it's

a craft that is best learned on the job yeah i mean think about like you've been around like tattoo shops enough sure you know what they what like the apprentices go through to be able to tattoo there yeah they tattoo on their own legs and shit Or you get their friends The thing is you take years you could imagine if if if they went to school to learn how to tattoo Yeah, and then went to the tattoo shop. They'd still have to go through that hazing They'd still have to go not that there's hazing in the kitchen, but you still have to sort of earn your stripes Yeah, you know and one of the things was when I enrolled in culinary school They had said when you graduate,

you will be eligible to be a chef de cuisine. You'll start around $75,000 a year. And I think that's where they got in trouble. I could be wrong, but when you get out of culinary school, you're going to work either for free. Well, you can't do that anymore, but you still have to work for free. Or you're just going to come in for free. Well, you can't do that anymore. Um, but you still have to work for free, uh, or you're just going to come in at the minimum, minimum wage because yes, you have a

degree from culinary school, but that doesn't mean that you're going to know anything that we need for this restaurant. Interesting. So when did you start and what, what did you do when you were your first job? Um, so my, so I my so I started well actually feel like I should answer you the very first question you asked me which is when did I know I wanted to cook yeah cuz that kind of gets us there so I guess my dad knew before I knew because he just recently sent me a video it's actually on my Instagram it's a my third birthday party and he's bought me a chef's knife. Wow.

Your third birthday party? And he can, you can clearly hear him say, it's funny because I think, I haven't gotten the full story, but I think my mom's holding the old camera and it kind of is shaking and I guess he says, oh, I think he says,

I don't know what else to get him. All he wants to do is cook. That's not a real knife, is it? Did he get you a real chef's knife? I actually haven't asked him because he said that to me and he said, look, you've always wanted to cook. So I don't know if that's a I probably, but knowing my dad, yeah, it's probably

a real knife. And did he just hide it from you? Here's your knife and then I'm going to hide it. No, I cooked growing up every day. But did you use that knife? I don't remember. But you were three? Yeah, probably not. Probably wasn't.

That seems like a lot for a three-year-old, those little tiny fingers. Let me see your fingers. They're all there. They're all there, but I'm missing some parts. Are you? Yeah. Some tips. Yeah.

Yeah. So right away, you always wanted to cook. Apparently I did. I don't remember that, but I do remember being, I'm the oldest of five. And growing up, my dad cooked every single night at home. And he never wanted to go out. So my parents divorced when I was very young. And when we were at dad's house,

he cooked and each of us had a responsibility. You know, one of my sisters was at the table. The other one would clear the table. My brother would do the dishes, whatever that it was. I was the only one who could see above the counter at a certain point. And so I was always the one who would help cook.

Interesting. That's the days before phones. Cause now you'd be like, kids get off your phones and help daddy. Yeah, probably. Just let me finish my TikTok. No, but apparently I would stop playing video games to come cook. Oh. Yeah.

No, I loved it. And I cooked all the way. That's how I started. When I was younger and I wanted to take girls out, it was a lot less expensive if you go to the store and you buy stuff and you cook at home. Plus, it's kind of romantic and impressive. Like, wow, Philip cooks. Yeah, and you already finish, you know, you finish dinner and you're at home. Yeah.

It's very cool. Yeah. When you have something that you really love to do, like, really early on, what an advantage that is. Because that's one of the things that troubles people the most when they're young. It's like, what do I want to do with my life? When you find a thing that you're passionate about early, God, it's such a huge advantage. Yeah, it's really interesting looking back because there's really only three things that I excel at. Cooking. Playing the drums and my dad bought me or my dad my parents got me a drum set when I was 18 months old uh

and uh poker I learned my grandmother taught me how to uh count using cards real so and those are to today those are the three things that I have excelled at in my life. So do you make money playing poker? Not like professionally, but I have won money. So when you go to Vegas, do you get real serious and take like nootropics and fucking sit down

and calm your mind? I took tournament poker serious for a long time, but that's something I would go to Vegas for because in L.A. we've got fantastic tournament poker there. But I would study and I would listen to podcasts and I would review hands and things like that. Yeah, my friend Ari, Ari Shafir, when he was coming up in L.A., he was making most of his money playing poker. He was making most of his money playing poker. It's a fantastic discipline that creates a very difficult...

How do you explain it? Well, I'm sure he's explained it to you. I don't listen to him. I'm here for you. It's a very difficult life. I tried playing professionally, um, when I was 18, uh, there were Indian casinos you could play at.

And I would, I would go there and spend, you know, four or five days and I play for three days straight. yeah. Get a room there and just crash. Yeah. They'll give you,

they'll give you a room. Wow. Um, and then, uh, I started at one day I woke up and I was like, you know, I was playing for a lot, I was playing for a lot

I was playing for a lot of money at the time for being 18 years old and you know, I'd sit down with a couple thousand in front of me and Then I would you know question whether or not I wanted to add extra cheese at my Taco Bell order because it was 27 cents And it was like the world just became so skewed to me that I was like, okay, I need to stop Because you were looking at money so fucked up because you were making some money So much money and playing for so much money when you're playing poker Yeah, it wasn't even that I was making it cuz I was you know I it was that I was playing with the money and so you start looking at at the world in terms of big blinds and

Blinds big but so when you're playing Hold'em, you have to the left of the dealer button you have a small blind, and to the left of him you have a big blind, which is basically your minimum bet. And so if you're playing a 2-5 game, and that's what I was playing back then. What's that mean? $2, $5. So $5 is the minimum bet

to join the hand. And so it's forced action to the left of the dealer button. You're required to put $2 in if you're the small blind, and you're required to put $5 in just to start the action. So then you look at your cards, and if you're not in one of the blinds, you can fold for free.

Or you can raise more money, or you can put in $5 just to stay. And when you start looking at the world in terms of big blinds, it's time to either make that the only thing you do forever or or do something else and Were you thinking about only playing poker at one point in time? Yeah, I was and

I was doing I had a really good job while I was playing cards I was actually selling mortgages No, yeah, so I was one of those guys that was selling the you know the stated income mortgages So you're selling mortgages playing poker, but you really wanted to be a chef Yeah, well I wasn't a hundred percent sure yet that I wanted to be a chef. Well, I wasn't 100% sure yet that I wanted to be a chef. So when I was 15, I think is when I dropped out of high school. And I did that because the band I was playing with was starting to take off. And I spent the next several years touring.

And I would, you know, we'd be on tour. You were on tour when you were 15? Yeah. That's divorced parents right there. Dad's like, go ahead, fuck it. Live your life. Don't make the mistakes dad made. Well-

Get out there. Those are the things dad did too, so- Oh, Jesus. Yeah. So- What did your parents think when you said you were going to go on tour at 15? Well, the band played in my dad's studio. My dad was a record producer.

Oh, that makes more sense. Yeah. So we would play locally back then, and then we'd start doing weekend tours. And then when it was time to like, okay, I'm gonna stop going to school, the only deal I had to make was that whenever I wasn't on tour, I had to have a job. I couldn't just like sleep in all day. So there was a Jamba Juice right by our house

and got a job there. Wow. And what led you to not keep pursuing the music? At a certain point. So, so while I was playing cards or sorry, while I was playing music, actually, I turned the studio certain nights a week into a little poker room. So I'd have like friends over and we'd play cards the house. Um, but, uh, while I was uh uh touring uh i eventually decided because when i when i decided to stop going to school i said to myself if the music that doesn't work i'm gonna go to sushi school so uh the music thing did work and uh a couple years went by and um actually my

godmother owned a catering company. And so in between tours, I didn't really want to keep working at like Jamba Juice or Starbucks or anything like that. And so I asked her if I could work for her. And so I invited her over to the house. I cooked dinner for her and she said, well, I'll introduce you to my chef. And if my chef wants to hire you, then you'll be hired.

And so I went to her catering company, met the chef. The first thing was like, okay, you're making family meal today. And so I cooked for the whole staff, and she said, I'll hire you as a dishwasher. Oh, Jesus. Was that because that was the only job they had available? Looking back at it, I was offended and angry, but I didn't care because of what she said after that, which is, um, you don't get to start being a cook. You have to start as a dishwasher so you can have

respect for, um, you know, what it is that the dishwashers do. And she said, here's how this works. The faster you clean that dish pit, the more I'll teach you. So whenever that dish pit's clean, you come and find me and I'll give you a task. But if there's ever any dishes, that's what you're doing. So it kind of gave me that bit of work ethic of like, all right, I'm going to work my way into that next position. That seems to be a theme with great restaurants. And when you talk to chefs, this work ethic theme, because it seems like when you talk to people that have worked in

restaurants, one of the things that they will almost unanimously discuss is the amount of hours and the grind and how difficult it is. And that development of work ethic almost is like kind of a bootcamp for chefs. It is. It's, I mean, it's not so much anymore. Laws have changed. Culture has changed. but it was your spending like a 16 hour day was not even a really long day. I dated a girl once who went to college for restaurant and hotel management. And then she got a job at this restaurant. and I remember I would go visit her and she was fucking miserable. I mean miserable. She couldn't believe the hours that she had to work.

But you have to love it. Yeah. That's an industry you have to love. Well, she just wanted a career. You know, she had went to school, she graduated from school and then she had this, this job that was like, and then she had this boyfriend who was a fuck up who was a comedian so it was like very very weird for her because like i had most of my day completely free and she was working you know 14 15 hours a day at least yeah i mean it's it's one of those things where

if you really want to take food seriously and cooking seriously, you're going to have to, you know, make a lot of sacrifices. Yeah. Just the time. You're not there for birthdays. You're not there for anniversaries. You're not there for Valentine's Day for sure. Because you have to work.

Because you have to work. Yeah. Because someone has to cook at all those restaurants you go to. Yeah. Yeah, people listening, if you are thinking of going down this path, prepare yourself. Yeah, it's a fantastic path, but you have to understand what it's like. And I think the reason it worked for me, or the reason I loved it so much, is it really felt like being on tour. Except I got to sleep in my own bed.

How so? except I got to sleep in my own bed. How so? Well, like playing music, you spend all day getting ready for the show that night. And there's something to getting to the restaurant and prepping all day, getting ready for the show that night. And so I feel like the camaraderie of being on it,

like being in a crew is a lot like being in a a crew as much as a lot like being in a band The hours are a lot like being in a band And the shenanigans, you know after hours are a lot like being in a band the boozing. Yeah Yeah, that's the other thing that I learned from rude poor Dean. I didn't know how hard people partied Yeah, I mean when I was younger there was a lot of nights You just don't go to sleep you just get out of the restaurant at one 30 in the morning, you go to the bar, then you go somewhere else. Then you go back and open the restaurant the next day. That doesn't seem good for you. No, it's terrible. I had, I had, um,

that's where the Red Bull comes in. Well, no, I quit Red Bull earlier than that, but, um, uh, thankfully I never, I never got into drugs, so it wasn't that, but I would drink a lot, and I actually had one time where I finished service, took two steps, and just collapsed, just hit the ground. Whoa. Yeah. At the end of

the day. At the end of the day. You pulled an all-nighter? I think two or three days in a row, yeah. Oh, Jesus. But I was like 21. Two or three days of no sleep? At 21. Yeah. Maybe like an hour and a half sleep here and there. Jesus.

But yeah, I mean, my first sous chef job, I was on the schedule. It said, next to my name, all seven days said OP-CL. Open to close. We did breakfast and we did dinner service. So I would open the restaurant at about 7 a.m. And I would leave around 1.32. So when you open the restaurant at 7 a.m., what time are you actually arriving? Man, this was a long time ago.'m I probably was getting there I was

probably getting there on 7 645 7 when I say open I mean I would get to the restaurant open the door not that we were someone there that was already prepping yeah I'm trying to remember because we were at this in this sort of like the restaurant was a lunch and dinner restaurant but we served breakfast and as like a commissary to like, there was like, it was like in a building complex. Um, so I really wasn't responsible for breakfast. Um, so there would be, I think there was people there before I would get there.

Building, like an office building complex? Yeah. So they would just grab something quick? Yeah. That kind of deal? Yeah. Like I would get in there and the dishwasher would already like, he'd be making like ham and cheese sandwiches or something like that. And so you were there from 7 a.m. and then what time would you get out of there?

Usually, I mean, probably 1, 1.30. And nowadays with labor laws, you really couldn't schedule that, right? Well, I was on salary. Oh, interesting. But that salary would have to be, you know, 3X at this point. Yeah. Because now they've changed the rule a couple years ago. Salary is no longer a contract between you and I.

Salaries have to fall into a certain, you have to qualify. So you can't just be like, oh, I'm going to not give you overtime by giving you a salary to have you work when I ask you to. Right. Like, oh, I'm going to not give you overtime by giving you a salary to have you work when I ask you to. Right. Now you have to pay everybody a specific dollar amount, and they have to hold specific responsibilities in order to not accrue overtime. Yeah, I think that's good because I think there's a lot of employers that are abusive. But I also think there's something romantic about this story of you almost dying. You know what I mean?

I mean, like, I do appreciate, like, long, hard work days. There's something to that. Because, like, I hear that, and I know you got through it, and you became very successful. So I'm like, see, it works. Look, I think Margarita and my first date was at that restaurant. And it was, I mean, people ask me all the time, how did you get her? And it's food. It has to be.

That's hilarious. Well, you're a cool guy. Don't tell yourself short. Plus, you're kind of cute. Appreciate it. Jamie? I'm top three in this room for sure. Top three. I room for sure. Top three.

I would say so. But so because of that schedule, I couldn't take her on a date. And so I remember the very first date we had was at the restaurant. I told her to show up at 1230 after I sent everybody home. And I had spent all day secretly prepping a special menu, and she showed up, and I sat her in the dining room that overlooked the kitchen, and I would make a course, bring it out to her, sit down with her, have a sip of wine,

and then go back in the kitchen, make the next course. Oh, wow. Yeah. What did you think she did during the time when you were in there cooking? Well, I told her to bring a friend with her because I told her that I'm going to, you know, otherwise she's there for 20 minutes in between each course.

Well, listen, man, that's a clever move. Look, it worked. Yeah, clearly. Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, I would imagine that that's probably one of the most difficult occupations to date in. Yeah.

one of the most difficult occupations to date in. Yeah. I sacrificed a lot of relationships prior to that one. Yeah, I can only imagine. In that way, it's very similar to stand-up comedy, not in the work ethic part, because comedians are notoriously terrible at that. Yeah.

But it's hard because you date a girl and they want a normal evening life and you're like i gotta go do a set and you know i had relationships where they're like you don't have to and that was like the record skipping in the room like yes i do yeah yes i do like let's you you because i have friends who've had relationships where the the girl said you don't have to. And they listened. And I saw what happened. They eventually fell off the radar and then vanished and stopped being a comic. And then they would come to the comedy club, you know, like seven years removed.

Like, hey, I'm thinking about getting back into it. And everybody would look at you like you said, I have AIDS. Like they just backed away from you. Not even AIDS because AIDS is not like – it's like I have COVID. Sure. you like you said i have aids like they just backed away from you like not not even aids because aids is not like it's like i have covid sure like like i'm right now filled with bugs that i could spread on you like we wanted to run away from them we didn't whatever they had maybe it's contagious like you quit you quit the greatest fucking job on earth and now you want to get back in just get back in don't tell us you're thinking about

getting back in fucking get back in well i think it has to do with with communication and i think that's what a good relationship is built on and when we started our relationship it was very like i was like this is what i'm doing yeah and it hurt you know at that time in her life she's like this is what i'm doing and we made it we made an agreement that our careers would always come first and uh you know luckily our careers you know overlapped um and for the last 13 years we've worked together that's awesome yeah that's very cool and it's very cool that it works and you guys still get along so great even though you're in this like highly stressful like very strenuous sort of an environment well i think it again it's because we've we we have boundaries and we have rules for like this is this is where so like if we're

sitting at home having dinner or fred a restaurant uh you know for her birthday and there's a call from one of our restaurants or we have something like that always comes first. And so there's never been a, there's never really been an issue where it's like jealousy because one of us has to do what we have to do. Cause it's, that's what we do. How hard is it for you to go to restaurants? Cause how judgey? Really easy. Are you judgey? No, no.

You're not? Really easy. Are you judgy? No. That's what I mean. No. You're not? No.

I can appreciate, not I can't, I appreciate food. I love food. Food's like my favorite thing. That's why I got into this. But I do think that there are times when I eat something and it really comes down to only one time and it's value. Is what I'm eating worth what i'm paying for it um because here's the thing if i go and spend five hundred dollars on dinner uh it should be at a certain level right you're asking to be not judged but you're asking to be held to a standard

right yeah if we're you know if we're at you know, Jamie takes us some spot to go get some, you know, bacon-wrapped hot dogs, I can just appreciate it. It's not supposed to be life-changing. Right, right, right. No, yeah, I mean, that was always the case with, like, street food, right? Like, street food is delicious, but it's unpretentious. Food doesn't have to be pretentious. I mean, look, one of my favorite things to make is a cheeseburger yeah no I know yeah I need to try your cheeseburgers I've heard legendary status from the

people at Vulcan they're good when you set up out there yeah they're good well that's that what happened how did that happen how'd like this smash burger thing come into prominence? Because all of a sudden, in my view, within the last like five or six years, like smash burgers became a thing. I'll be honest. I wasn't really paying attention. But all of a sudden. Yeah.

I mean, it's really good. I mean, if you look at In-N-Out, right? Yeah. They're essentially making a smash burger. They're not physically smashing the burger, but they're making a really, really thin patty, right? Yeah. So the only difference, like if you're going to ask me what's the difference between an In-N-Out burger and a smash burger, an In-N-Out burger starts as a thin patty, and a smash burger ends up as a thin patty. A smash burger starts as a ball.

Which you physically smash. Yeah. up as a thin patty. A smash burger starts as a ball. Which you physically smash. Yeah. But I think just that style of like backyard pool party barbecue California I mean that's

like the burgers that we make right now for these smash burgers it just I'm trying to make like a backyard dad burger. They're delicious. Yeah, no I've heard. You're the one who turned me on to Golden Tiger, which is one of my favorite

spots in Austin. It was one of the first spots that we found when we got here that was open late and fucking good. And I started eating it like four nights a week. That's not good. It's not good. It's not good at all.

But I did. And it was one of those things that like I was telling everyone I could because it was that good. One of the things that's cool being friends with chefs is they know the spots. Like what are the good late night spots are there in Austin? So our go-to late nights would be Golden Tiger, for sure. We'd go to a place called Halal Time. Have you been there yet? No.

It's on 6th Street, E6th. It is like gotta be one of the best Euros ever. Really? It's so fucking good. Really? Yeah. I'm trying to think what else we would do late night. What about pizza? What's the best pizza spot in this town? I'm torn between two

Love supreme Which if you haven't been to you have to go I have not been to very very good and dough boys Dough boys yeah and love supreme yeah love supreme sounds better they're different they're different styles but they're both really really good what kind of what is love supreme um i don't even know how to describe the styles um so uh love supreme is a little bit more like Or like... Are you pulling it up? Oh, boy. That looks fucking good.

Yeah, Love Supreme is like... It's more of a restaurant. It's like a great family-style place that you would go with the kids and have just a really good restaurant pizza. Doughboys is a little truck. I'm writing this down. Yeah. I gotta put this down. Yeah. I got to put this

in the phone because I'm always looking for like a best pizza spot in town. It's very good. Full disclosure. The chef there, Russell, he and I go way back. Well, I don't think you would lie. No. I don't think you would lie. No. Do you have to have a full disclosure? That looks fucking good. Now, is Love's, is that Doughboys? Now, how important is wood fire?

To a pizza or in general? To a pizza. Because it's always like a thing. I think you can. That goddamn Doughboys, that pepperoni. That looks really, I'd. You get into that? I'd have to order that. Fuck sushi, right? Oh, yeah. You're all about that. Jamie's all about Doughboys, that pepperoni. That looks really good. You get into that? I have to order that next week. Fuck sushi, right?

Oh, yeah. You're all about that. Jamie's all about Doughboys, pepperoni. I've been looking for a good pizza place. That looks fucking bomb diggity. Yeah. I mean, Doughboys is in the back of Meanwhile Brewery, so they've got some great beers, and that's a cool place.

Just go kind of hang out on a picnic bench. I'm sorry. What's the name of the place? Meanwhile Brewery. Meanwhile Brewery. Meanwhile Brewery. Yeah. Click on that pizza right to the left of that one, man, with the little veggies on it. We'll drop down.

Yeah, look at that. Oh, that looks good. That looks fucking good. Yeah, I mean, I'm on this animal-based diet for all of January, so all I'm eating all January is meat and a little bit of fruit. And so I see pizza, and it calls to me. Yeah. You know? Like, that's what I'm eating all January is meat and a little bit of fruit and so I see pizza and it calls to me. Yeah. You know? Like that's what I'm doing February

1st. I'm gonna fuck up a pizza. Call me. I'll go with you. Okay let's do it bro. Yeah. What's that Jamie? All pizza February? Maybe. All pizza February. See how fat I get. I will look like a beach ball. My face will go like this. My stomach will distend. It will be a real ball. My face will- Dirty ball. My face will go like this. My stomach will distend.

It will be a real issue. How's that going with the- Great. Yeah? Yeah. I added fruit this year, and it changed everything. First of all, it stopped the diarrhea in its tracks, which is- Before when I've done nothing but meat, it's-

I don't know what it is. It just gives you ferocious diarrhea, like spill diarrhea like somebody broke a pipeline not good man maybe that's how you lose weight I don't know yeah um no I don't think that's wise I think you're just losing weight from the lack of calories I mean it's pretty simple equation right but for me one of the things that comes with eating this is I'm eliminating all the bullshit, right? I'm eliminating a lot of the processed foods and sugar. And that's really what's wrong about most people's diet. It's overconsumption, which I'm a massive – I have a giant problem with eating too much. Like for instance, I went to Golden Tiger

and I ordered three cheeseburgers and a Thai chicken sandwich. I ate three double cheeseburgers, by the way, and a Thai chicken sandwich. And people are like, what the fuck are you doing? And I'm like, I'm hungry. That's a lot. I eat a lot of food, man. It's a real problem, but I work out a lot. But because I work out a lot, I eat a lot of food, man. It's a real problem. But I work out a lot. Yeah. But because I work out a lot, I get really hungry. And then by the time I get to somewhere to eat, I'm like frantic hungry. See, I can see that because I just recently started like working out and getting in shape.

I noticed the whoop. You got the whoop strap rocking. I do. Yeah. It's changed my life, really. But I've noticed that now that I'm like running a lot and exercising a lot, I get way hungrier. Oh, yeah, for sure. And I lose weight even though I eat more.

Yeah. Well, your body has requirements when you're working out. It's just sustenance when you're not working out. But when you're working out, your body's like, get me some fucking protein. Let's go. Because your body recognizes you're breaking down all this tissue. I mean, that's the process of exercise. It's the breaking down, the building back up stronger. And it's like this, you got to do it right. Too many people start off too hard. You know, like when someone has not worked out at all before, I always say, listen,

all you have to do is go walk around the block and do some pushups and some jumping jacks and then build from there. You don't have to go crazy. Yeah around the block and do some pushups and some jumping jacks and then build from there. You don't have to go crazy. Yeah. Let your body get accustomed to this whole idea of exercise. Don't just go bananas because you won't be able to sustain it and you'll get upset. And don't work out with a friend who goes to CrossFit. Don't have some fucking fitness fanatic friend who's like, try to do this WOD.

We're going to do a WOD today. And you're doing burpees and throwing fucking kettlebells over your head. You're not going to do this wad we're gonna do a wad today and you're you're doing burpees and throwing fucking kettlebells over your head you're not gonna do it yeah no that's i don't get hurt i've pretty much just done been running really that's great yeah i'm up to doing about five miles a day every day nice yeah that's great i just get on i hit the five mile an hour button i do one hour so you weren't doing anything before no i work so much so um i was doing nothing and i went from having such an active like childhood of like drumming seven days a week um and back then i would i'd need three double doubles you know just to keep my weight on and um to just working so much i'm on my feet all day, but I'm not sweating all day.

You're not exerting high heart rate. And so I was having trouble sleeping and actually a buddy of mine got me onto the whoop. And then I had a couple conversations with you about just like trying to feel better. And I really started like i started off really slow and i sort of got into it and then i went to um uh the doctor just

to get a physical and i found out that i have like or i had scary high cholesterol they were like you're you know you're they told me i'm pre-diabetic and I'm at risk of having a heart attack within the next couple of years. And I need to do something. And so I did a little bit of research on my own. And one of the things was like getting yourself into, I think it's 70 to 80% of your max heart rate for over 30 minutes. And so I completely changed my diet. I changed like just my lifestyle. So every day I'm running and eating differently and I've lost about 30 pounds and I've dropped about 70 points of my cholesterol. That's fantastic. Yeah. Did you change, how much did you change your diet at all?

Completely. Yeah. What did you change? What was the big thing? Well, I've cut out entirely dairy and red meat. No red meat? No red meat. Well, that's not true. I know it's not true. You sent me a video of you cooking a red stag, you lying son of a bitch. No saturated fat. No meat with high saturated fats. So I was eating a lot of, like, I mean, just because I have access to it. I was eating a lot of Wagyu beef. I was eating a lot of, just because I have access to it, I was eating a lot of wagyu beef. I was eating a lot of foie gras. I was eating a lot of ribeyes. If I was hungry, I'd eat salamis. I've just sort of transitioned that out for now if I'm hungry, I eat nuts.

I'm eating a lot of turkey and chicken. Turns out sushi is actually really good for battling high LDL cholesterol really yeah so I've eaten I always eat a ton of sushi but eating a lot of fish I never really ate a lot of like I don't eat I don't eat candies I don't eat a lot of sugars I don't drink soda so I didn't have to change any of that I don't eat a lot of breads how much you attribute what the changes to your diet and how much do you attribute it to the increase in exercise? I think that hitting it from both ends, like when I went back for my first checkup with the doctor, she was expecting to see like maybe 20 points drop off and I dropped off 70.

Oh wow. So I think it was hitting it from both ends. Drop off and I dropped off 70. Oh, so I think it was hitting it from both ends You know, I got my blood Work done and my doctor asked me if I'm on medication low cholesterol medication I said I eat mostly meat. Yeah, and they were like what? Like how's that what's going on? Yeah? I think I was so far over that I was like I have to just stop cold turkey have to reset my body And then I'm like I I have to just stop cold turkey. I have to reset my body. And then I'm like, I definitely plan on returning to eating steaks. Well, what I was going to get to is I think it's literally a matter of what, you know,

we all want to think of this one size fits all dietary approach. We want to think about that with everything, really. But it doesn't work that way. There's people that require so much more of their body that they need a different kind of fuel source. They need more fuel. They need it in a different way. And I think that a person that is on their feet all day like you are working as a chef, there's a requirement. It's probably pretty high, like a caloric requirement, but there's also not an exertion.

Yeah. So you have this steady, you're using up calories all day long, but you're never ramping up your heart rate. You're never pushing your body. So it's got to be weird for your body. Your body's like, what is this motherfucker doing? Why are we awake all day? And why are we just all day? And why are we like, just standing up?

Yeah, it's, um, I definitely, I have so much more energy now. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, it's quite remarkable. Now, I mean, like you pointed out the whoop, I'm legitimately obsessed. I wake up every day and the first thing I do Check your recovery? Every day. And I

I also try as much as I can every day to get my strain exactly where... So when I look at the little graph, my strain and my recovery match up. Interesting. Now, what about supplements? Are you doing anything to supplement your diet with nutrients? I take a bunch of vitamins and stuff in the morning, but no specific supplements because I am, you know, I'm still eating protein. Like every night I'm either eating, you know, I'm either eating fish or turkey or chicken or something.

Well, that's what I mean by vitamins. I mean by supplements. I mean vitamins. Yeah. Like just normal stuff, like multivitamins, fish oil? Like what do you take in? Just normal stuff like multivitamins, fish oil? Like what are you taking?

Yeah, so my morning regimen is I take like probably about one ounce of apple cider vinegar in a tall glass of water and then a little shot of elderberry syrup and then a multivitamin and then a— What about food? What about food? Are you eating this with food? No. That's a problem. You need fat and you need some sort of carbohydrate to bind with the vitamins. When you're taking vitamins and you're not taking vitamins with any food, your body's

like, what is this? Your body has no idea what it is. Your body's super confused and probably is going to piss most of it out. Interesting. If you want to get maximum absorption of your vitamins you must take it with food. Alright. Yeah because otherwise why would you

have these vitamins? Like your body doesn't understand that. Your body understands vitamins in the context of something else. Fiber, fat, carbohydrates. Your body doesn't understand like a fistful of vitamins and water. It's like, what is this bullshit?

Vitamins are supposed to be bound to nutrients or to food. So like- In the future. All right. Well, I'll start tomorrow. Yeah, you got to take it with food. Yeah, I have not taken vitamins today at all because I haven't eaten today. Interesting.

I work out. Most of the time, fasted. because I haven't eaten today. Interesting. So I work out, most of the time fasted. And the one thing that I will have, though, is I'll have vitamins that come with liquid IV. Liquid IV is a supplement that I take.

I just pour it into a jug of water. I've been obsessed with it for a while. It's great stuff. Yeah. But it has glucose in it. So there's some absorption of vitamins that goes along with it. And they've got this down to a science, the way they do it. But when I take actual supplements, my supplements are always with food. And you should do that too.

Everyone should do that. If you're taking vitamins without food, the amount of absorption you get is very minimal. Interesting. Okay. Cool. Yeah. The only way you could bypass that is IVs. You could do IV vitamin drips.

Yeah, I don't want to do that. But you're going – it's great. It's really great. It's one of the best ways to get like – if you're sick, I highly recommend it. If you ever get like a really bad cold, high-dose vitamin C, D, zinc, glutathione, IV drips are fantastic. Because it'll go – it's going right into your bloodstream. It bypasses your stomach, your liver, all that jazz. It's going right into the system.

Interesting. Yeah. So all that vitamins you're taking, being all that healthy. I mean, you're probably getting a little bit of carbohydrates with the elderberry syrup. There's something there. And then what else? I'm taking a zinc and omega-3. If you take a zinc, you should take a zinc with an ionophore.

Ionophores are things like quercetin. There's some other stuff, too, I think, that works in a similar way. I think curcumin works in a similar way, which is one element of turmeric, or vice versa, but what you're going to, what an ionophore is, it helps the ions get directly into the cells. So zinc is notoriously difficult for people to just take as a supplement and have it absorbed into your cells. So they recommend taking it with quercetin. All right. Well, we're going to have to talk about this afterwards. Yeah. By the way, I'm just getting this from doctors too.

It's not like, you know, I didn't know all this. No, but I appreciate it because that's the thing is this whole little journey for me has been, you know, kind of a little bit of trial and error. And how long has this been going on now? Since I found, since I, I mean, finding out the cholesterol thing was like really a big motivator. So probably about three months, three and a half months. That's amazing. So three months, you're up to a five mile a day journey. That's really great.

Yeah. The thing about a treadmill, a lot of people don't, oh, I'd rather run outside. Me too. Sure. Absolutely. When I lived in California, I always, oh, cause it was hills. There's not a lot of hills on here. But the thing about a treadmill is you could do other shit. You watch a fucking movie.

And that's, that's been my thing is I'll put on a podcast or if I'm, if I get into a new series, I'll just watch a one hour episode while I'm running. Amazing. And no, it's been, you know, I tried running outside. That's how I started first is like, I was walking around, we have this little loop by our house. So I would, I would walk it. And then after a couple of weeks, I was like, you know, I'm running outside. That's how I started first is like I was walking around. We have this little loop by our house. So I would walk it. And then after a couple of weeks, I was like, you know, I'm going to walk it twice. And then it was like, I'm going to jog it. And then I tried running it. And then my knees and my back and everything just hurt so bad.

And then I was like, but I really want to. So I got a treadmill. Do you know how to run correctly? I do now. Is that what was messing your knees up? Were you heel striking? I don't know. I don't know what you call it, but the worst pain I got from running is, so once I like mastered the five mile an hour thing, I tried pushing myself one day and I was doing, I think I did, I tried to do the full hour at six and a half miles and my neck my my shoulders and my like upper back were in

like excruciating pain and i googled you know what that's from and it's just from literally running with like your shoulders up so when i was like trying to run faster my shoulders would would slowly creep up and what it explained is that each run is a single rep so you're doing thousands and thousands of reps with bad form and you're just wrecking yourself so um it showed me some like foam roller thing like how to like you know fix that and it did um like fix my my back and my neck and then now i just practice like as I'm running, I'm consciously putting my shoulders back and down as I'm running. Trying to relax in good form. Are you landing on the ball with your feet?

Probably. I'm doing that on the floor and I don't know. You should be cognizant of that. It's really a fascinating thing that happened. But Nike, I believe it was Nike, came out with the very first running shoe with a fat heel. And in doing so, they encouraged people to heel strike. They encouraged people to run and land on your heel, and they offered you this big cushion. But in doing that, they completely changed hundreds of thousands of years of biomechanics

of people walking and running. Because you're not supposed to land on your heel like that. I mean, you can a little bit, but you're not supposed to do that consistently and constantly. Yeah, I'm definitely not running like this. Yeah. But I don't think my heel stays up the whole time. Well, if you look at a pair of running shoes yeah the heels are always big and fat and then it narrows down towards the front which would encourage you to run and land on the heel because that's where all the cushion is and they fucked so many people's

feet up and knees up and everything from doing that it's really like you talk to like people that are experts in biomechanics and people that are experts in running they're like this is the worst fucking thing you could do like you're supposed to your foot is a natural decelerator like when you're landing on the the ball of your foot your your foot slowly lets itself down with the muscles of your calf and your lower leg and that's how you're supposed to land like your foot's a built-in shock absorber it's really amazing design and nike's like yeah let's use foam let's just fucking land on the heel where there's no give at all and use foam and a lot of people jacked up their knees running especially people that weren't conditioned to it

and then they said you know that's a thing that people do like i'm saying about someone if you don't exercise at all and you go with a friend to CrossFit like no you have to build up to something Like that you want to do some shit like that you got to get your tissue prepared like slowly over time build your Tendon strength and your muscle strength and your endurance so that you don't drop a weight on your head like all that stuff Yeah, you got to do it slowly, but when someone would get like a pair of running shoes like I'm gonna run a marathon You watch yourself. Oh my god. You could hurt you could hurt yourself yeah yeah you could definitely hurt yourself yeah no i got i got these shoes that are you know there's some sort of you know scandinavian design that's supposed to like uh accelerate you or something like that and works i used to run with toe shoes those flat ass

you know those vibrams yeah there's no cushion. It's, and doing the research about how to, like what I was doing wrong, it said that you should have the most uncomfortable shoes. Like the more you can pretty much replicate running on just your bare feet is the better your form will be and the better runner you'll become. It helped me. It really, running with those barefoot shoes.

And I went from those to some other kind because what the problem was, I was running on trails, and so there was a lot of rocks. And I would just occasionally step on a rock, and you can actually injure your foot because some of them, they're pokey. And so then I switched to more of a minimalist shoe but still a flat, wide toe box shoe that allows your feet to articulate. The way it was described, I forget who described it this way, but they said essentially when you look at most shoes, they are like a cast. And that is not how your foot is supposed to behave.

And when you put your arm in a cast, what happens? It atrophies. That's the thing with your foot. You put your foot in this cast, and your foot doesn't get to utilize all of the muscles that surround the bones and stabilize the foot. Interesting. Yeah. Makes sense.

Yeah, it does make sense. Well, one of the things that was shocking to me, I started doing yoga a few years ago, many, many years ago now. But when I first started doing yoga, the first thing that would hurt was my feet. I was like, this is crazy. Why are my feet hurt? Because I'm a martial artist, so I'm used to kickboxing and moving around. But I was used to a very specific kind of movement on my feet. But this static holding a pose and using your foot to kind of balance and stabilize you,

I was utilizing all of these muscles in my foot that were not strong because I was just using these explosive movements back and forth. Whereas yoga, like if you're standing there and you got your one foot up in the air like this and your foot is balancing everything and it's like all the stabilizing muscles were very weak. It took a while to get accustomed to that. Yeah. My wife was into yoga for a long time.

I've tried it a few times. I actually want to get accustomed to that. Yeah. My wife was into yoga for a long time. I've tried it a few times. I actually want to get into it now. Well, we're putting a yoga studio, a private yoga studio, right next door. Really? Yeah. Yeah. We've got a gym that we're building, and one of the things we're building in the gym is a yoga room. So come on down, bro.

Come on down. We're going to take you through some classes. Come on down. We're going to take you through some classes. But my message to people that are in your sort of situation, or not your situation now, but your situation back then, they're like, how do I get started? Please go slow.

Just go slow. You don't have to get crazy. When I first started, because Margarita, she's been active and she's been exercising. She wakes up every morning at like 5, 6 o'clock in the morning. The duration of our entire relationship, she's been getting up super early, exercising, running, doing yoga. Do you feel guilty when you're sleeping in? No, not at all. You never felt guilty?

She's out there running, you're like. Not at all. I feel great about it. I felt great about it. at all. I feel great about it. I felt great. I felt great about it. Um, but, uh, uh, when I first, you know, I think it was like March of last year. I was like, all right. Cause I've been talking about like, okay, I'm going to get in shape for years. Um, cause I used, I was always in shape. And then all of a sudden I just looked down one day and I was like, I weighed 30 pounds more than I am supposed to. And, um, when I first started, I was like, all right, I'm going to start today.

And I did like, I think it was like 20 jumping jacks, like three pushups and like 10 sit-ups. And she's like, that's it? And I was like, yes. She's like, that's not a workout. And I was like, if I hurt myself and I go too fast, I'm going to stop. So I'm going to do whatever is easy for me until it becomes boring easy. And then I'm just going to keep adding on a little little bit that's smart that you had that systematic approach like how did you figure that out because that's kind of the key to anything in life if you hurt yourself

on it then you don't want to do it again yeah if you burn yourself on it you don't want to keep doing it so it's like and you want to do things you're good at so do the amount that you know you can kill and then when that becomes just like boring easy, make it a little bit harder. You know, it's the thing like everybody wants to just run at it. Like and just get, especially when you realize you've got an issue. Everybody just wants to just, okay, I'm going to resolve that. And the way I'm going to do it, I'm just going to push really hard. I'm going to, but it's not sustainable.

And you won't. I've always been that guy, but you always hurt yourself. You always, you know, and it's just not the right way to do it. Yeah. It's very wise of you. That's interesting. Because most people don't and most people start out and they'll do

something difficult and they'll be really sore the next day and then maybe they'll take a day off and then they'll do half ass the day after that because they don't want to be a sore and then they quit. Yeah. Or something along those lines. And if you hurt yourself that bad, you're like, fuck, why would I ever do that? It hurts so bad. Yeah. I wish it was more common. I really do. When I look at the obesity rates in this country and I look at the amount of people that are living these but essentially constant sedentary lifestyle like this they're never doing anything physical that's a giant percentage of our population and they're very insecure about it you know and because of that they don't want you to fat shame and they're this body body

positivity nonsense like that's crazy it's crazy. It's all crazy. It's all, it's you're, you're missing the point. You're supposed to feel uncomfortable. The whole idea about being fat and the reason why you're upset that people point out that you're fat is because you're supposed to do something about it. You're supposed to feel bad. When someone points something out about you being fat, if it's true, it's supposed to feel bad when someone points something out about you being fat if it's true it's supposed to feel like shit and it sucks that it feels like shit but that in turn is supposed to motivate you to do something about it you know I think whatever it takes to motivate yourself I mean it's interesting because you also could fall victim of not living a

sedentary lifestyle and being on your feet 15 hours a day and still being incredibly out of shape especially if your diet's bad yeah yeah well when it's full of booze and you know cheeseburgers at two o'clock in the morning oh yeah yeah the comedian lifestyle and the chef lifestyle yeah in that sense probably very similar now when when you um did this change did you just immediately cut all that stuff out of your diet or did you like sort of slowly do that as well as the diet or is the exercise thing I'm a cold turkey guy and I know that about myself and I'm you know I haven't even had a slice of steak

I can't I'm like I'm like an alcoholic with food. If I take that one bite, I'll start eating it again. Where did that term cold turkey come from? I don't know. We all know what it is. Yeah. But we don't think of it as turkey. No, I have no idea where it came from. Yeah, what is that? We'll find out shortly. It's a weird term, right? It's not cold spinach. No, I wonder if it's like... Do vegans use the term cold turkey? Doesn't hurt anybody. I quit meat cold turkey.

That sounds weird. Could be. You know? Well, it depends what the origination is. Right, but if you're like, how do I get into veganism? Well, I quit meat cold turkey. You could just say, I quit cold turkey. Yeah, but if you say, I quit cold turkey... Then you stopped, cold turkey. You could just say I quit cold turkey. Yeah, but if you say I quit cold turkey, what is it?

Then you stopped eating cold turkey. Yes. Merriam-Webster doesn't even have a real answer. They just have theories. Oh, what's their theories? Eh. They suck? Okay.

You can check out a couple of them. But why turkey? And why cold? But why turkey? And why cold? The most popular theory was repeated in the San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Cain, C-A-E-N, C-A-I-N, in 1978. It derives from the hideous combination of goose pimples and what William Burroughs calls the cold burn that addicts suffer when they kick the habit. Oh, interesting.

So it would be like, for example, if you just cut out doing drugs and you got like in something happened to your skin. Yeah, but here's the thing. It says the problem with both these theories that they ignore the use of cold turkey before its application to drug addiction. In a cartoon that appeared in newspapers in November 12th of 1920, ace slang man Thomas Tad Dorgan used cold turkey this way. Now tell me on the square, can i get by this for the wedding don't string me tell me cold turkey wow boy people talk weird in the 20s the fuck is wrong

with these people the editors of the historical dictionary of american slang have found an earlier usage 1910 usage where the speaker lost $5,000 cold turkey in the sense of losing it outright huh huh cold being straightforward a matter of fact and the earlier talk turkey oh right like talk turkey

like you jive turkey that was a thing like people would call people a jive turkey right isn't that weird you jive ass turkey I'm gonna start bringing that back jive ass turkey? You jive ass turkey I'm going to start bringing that back Jive ass turkey Jamie Fucking jive ass turkey I'll bury you

What a strange thing to call someone a jive turkey What is jive even? What does that even mean? Google jive right? Jive ass turkey Yeah I've never thought about that I don't know what that means. Unreliable. Oh, unreliable.

Or empty promises. Oh, you empty promise in turkey. Unreliable turkey. Turkey's a strange food because it's not that good. It can be good. It's okay. It can be good. It's alright. It's not like venison. It's not like a ribeye

it's not no but you can make it really you can make it pretty good it could be pretty good let's be honest there's a reason why it's not on most menus yeah it's not as easy to to make as good as a ribeye you can't it's not possible well a ribeye you have to just not fuck up a turkey you have to actually cook with finesse what do you do like if you're doing a Thanksgiving turkey are you a boil and peanut oil guy no no no so I did Thanksgiving turkey this year

and so what I did is it's similar to what I do for my whole pigs and I took just did it in a big trash bag overnight the day before. I take lemons, limes, oranges, both the zest and the juices, melted butter. And when you say the zest and the juices, you mean like you- Take like a microplane and yeah, you grate just-

You grate the outside, the skin. Take a microplane and you grate the outside, the skin. A bunch of chopped onions, a bunch of herbs. And I basically rub it all inside, outside everything, tie it up, put it in a cooler, leave it out at room temperature overnight. Room temperature? Yeah. Why? Because when you cook something, you want the internal temperature to cook at the same rate as the external temperature.

That's why people cook sous vide, right? Sure. And if you just take a turkey out of the fridge and you put it in the oven, or you leave it out for an hour and put it in the oven, it's still ice cold in the interior. How long does it take for a turkey to get to room temperature? I'm going to... I mean, probably overnight. I mean, it's not even completely... And here's the thing. Once it gets to room temperature, even according to the health

department, you have four hours. But you have a lot longer than that. So, what you're doing is just making... taking into account the fact that it's been refrigerated. Yeah, so I'm i'm i'm removing the refrigeration from it so that when i put it in the oven it immediately starts cooking from from the inside out not from the outside in right it's like you you know everyone's seen that

like the quintessential steak where it's this it's the slice and it's like well done medium well medium medium rare and then rare right in the center and i'm like that's a terrible steak if you order a medium rare you don't want 10 of it to be medium rare it medium, medium rare, and then rare right in the center. And I'm like, that's a terrible steak. If you order a medium rare, you don't want 10% of it to be medium rare. It should be medium rare top to bottom. Some people like that, though. I've talked to people that like a nice, crispy sort of a crust on the outside. But you can get a crust on the outside and still retain what we call a gradient,

a very low gradient. What I was going to say is some people like the rare on the inside, but like the combination of those two textures, like the sear on the outside but a rare on the inside. No, and that's not what I'm saying. You can achieve that. But if you want it to be that rare, then, so if you've got a piece of meat like this, right? Visually, for people that are listening, rather.

Yeah, so top to bottom, right? You're going to have your crust on the top and the bottom and when you cut it the very center is what would be the least cooked right because the temp the the ambient temperature is coming from the exterior unless you sous vide it but there are ways to cook it so that the internal temperature from center to call it sear or crust, is the same temperature. So if you want a rare steak, you can still get a nice crust on the outside, the exterior, and still have a properly cooked interior.

Do you think that a steak that's cooked like sous vide style, like say if you wanted it to an internal of, say, 130, 135 degrees, what do you like for an internal of a steak? Temperature-wise? Yeah, temperature-wise. I don't go off temperature. You don't? Mm-mm.

If you had a guess, like what do you think would be, if you're going to sous vide a steak, what would you put it at? I wouldn't. Okay. But if you were going to. But if you had to, a ribeye?

Yeah. Well, let me ask you this. When it comes out of the sous vide, am I slicing it, kneading it? Am I resting it and then grilling it? What am I doing with it? I don't know. I mean, that's what I was going to get to. Some people like to blow torch the outside of it.

They like to get it to an internal. I'm not saying this is correct, obviously. But they like to get it to an internal of like 125 or 130 whatever they like and then they blow towards the outside of it I have seen chefs do this before you what is wrong with that process there's nothing wrong with it it's just different why do you not like it that way well I mean so scratch bar and kitchen which is the first restaurant Margie and I opened, um, in 2013, uh, we have a, I think it's 11 foot wide, big fireplace hearth, and that's where we cook

everything. Um, and so for the past, you know, almost decade, uh, we've just cooked with fire. And I do use blowtorches for specific things. But typically, if I was going, like, if you're gonna ask me what's the best way to cook a steak, is it in a sous vide and finished with a blowtorch? The answer is absolutely not. Is it a comparable way? Sure, especially if you're an apartment kitchen, right? It all depends on what you have at your disposal. If you don't have a big fireplace to cook it in, then that's going to be too difficult. Um, but I think to, to try to answer your question, at least, uh, I'd probably go for something around 127, uh, with, with the intent to rest it properly and then finish it on, on some sort of fire. So if I have an actual live fire, then I would finish it in the flames.

And if you have no other way to sear it, then a blowtorch, I guess, would do. What about cast iron, like cast iron frying pan to sear it at the end? Yeah, I mean, I personally don't like sous vide steaks. I don't like the texture that it achieves. What is different about it? It gives it, again, it can be done properly,

but typically, like, when you order, if I order steak at a restaurant and it is sous vide, I'm going to go, oh, they sous vide this. It just has a bit of, like, almost like rubberization that happens. To me, like you need to get the actual proteins to a certain temperature to coagulate to actually, like when everyone was like,

oh, bring me a ribeye, like, you know, bloody. That's not very good. You need like, you either need to eat it raw or you need to cook it enough where the proteins have coagulated enough that when you Chew through it it snaps and you can chew through it, you know If you ever have like a really undercooked ribeye, it's become stringy. You have an overcooked ribeye It's tough. You have a properly cooked ribeye. It's melt in your mouth and it's all about finding the correct temperature

So each steak is gonna each cut is gonna have a different temperature that you're trying to achieve. Now, are there any meats that are superior when you cook them in sous vide? A short rib. I think a short rib. Why is that? Because it's got all the collagen and all the other stuff. So typically, I mean, the most classic way to cook a short rib is going to be braised, right? And when you're cooking it in the braise,

it's releasing the fat into the braising liquids, which you're going to turn into your sauce later. But you're basically not bringing it to a boil, but you're cooking it inside of liquid. You also can only cook it to a certain, you know, you cook it for a couple of hours. But when you sous vide it, we had actually one on the menu for quite a while, and we would cook it for three days. Three days?

Yeah, so we'd cook it at a low enough temperature that when you sliced into it, it was still pink. So it was medium rare. But all of that fat had completely not just broken down, but then it had been redistributed throughout the entire thing. So when you sliced into it, it had the texture of almost like a ribeye in the sense that it held together. It wasn't like a fall apart stew. And what temperature were you cooking at it for three days? I can't remember. That's written down somewhere.

I don't know how do you prefer to cook meat you prefer fire the best way that I have found and again everything is different at Scratch Bar we just do a tasting menu your only option is a 25 course tasting menu

and what we would do we use Japanese Wagyu and when guests would arrive um and you'd arrive actually uh into another room where you'd have like welcome cocktails and canapes before you come into the kitchen for dinner we would be notified when you came in and immediately we would take your portion of meat out of uh the fridge and we would put it above the hearth where it was about 90 degrees ambient temperature roughly. And it was getting a little bit of smoke. And then about four or five courses before your

steak course, which is probably about 45 minutes later, 45 minutes, an hour later, we would bring the piece out that was and present it to you so you could see it. And it would be completely malleable that it was like, it was shiny. The fats had already started to render render and we would explain that what we're going to do now we you know it's been sitting up here for the last hour now we're going to put it closer to the flames where it's about 115 degrees ambient temperature but we're not going to cook it yet that'll be for the next two courses it'll sit there and then uh right before that course we would actually take the steak and put it into the flame. And what would happen is it would actually start to fry itself from the inside out. Why from the inside out?

So the entire piece of meat had become about 118 degrees. Just from sitting? Just from being that close to the, just being in that environment. And because of the fat content of the Japanese Wagyu, it had so much fat all over it and inside of it that when it went into the flame and it heated up at such a high rate, it would actually cause all that fat to start to fry. But isn't the outside still hotter than the inside? wasn't isn't the outside still hotter than the inside because you're yeah but but the fat would the fat would conduct the heat and it would i mean technically probably the outside i mean yes that the exterior would also get a bit of a crust where the interior wouldn't because it actually touched the flame so how's it doing it from the inside out then so if it's so if you've got the piece of meat, right? And you've got a,

there's just a flame here and you go into that flame, that flame is going to touch the exterior, right? It's going to heat up. It's going to touch the, the, that heat is going to transfer to the fat and that fat is going all the way through the piece of meat. So it's actually like the interior fat is going to be up to a certain

temperature that will cause it to fry. So when we pull it out of the flame, the entire thing is going to be sizzling as if it looks like it's been fried. So is this a strategy that you would use only for Wagyu because it has that high fat content? That specific thing, yeah. But the thing I sent you with the venison did a very similar thing, even though it doesn't have that fat content. And that was Red Stag.

Did you get that from Texas? Yeah, from, I think they're called Hudson Meat Market. I basically called around for trying to find who has local venison. It's one of the best things about Texas is that you can get specifically exotics. You can buy them commercially. Like Neil guy is very popular out here, which is an Indian animal. It's an, a large elk sized. They're weird looking. Have you ever seen one on the hoof? Not in person. I've seen a picture. Yeah. I haven't either. Well, no, no, I did once. Yeah. No, I saw one at a ranch in Texas, I saw him briefly like he like ran through this uh this trail that we were on and I was like look at that fucking thing it was kind of blue

they're weird looking yeah you can pull up a needle guy so people don't have tiny little heads or tiny little something yeah antlers but look they're kind of like blue like look how weird that thing looks it's so strange looking it's almost like a like a fake animal you know like and they the males in particular i think all of them have antlers it looks like some sort of crossbreed between like a like a zebra and i don't even know what else well it's a very unusual animal and really delicious. Have you eaten a Dai Due yet? Yeah. Did you like it? I loved it. It's great. Have you met Jesse? I haven't. Jesse Griffiths, who's been on the podcast before too, is fantastic. I might've met. So I ate there 2013, 14, something like that.

Jesse has a school where he teaches people how to hunt, how to butcher, and how to cook, and takes people with zero experience. And one of the things that he really loves is hogs. He takes people to hunt wild hogs. First of all, because they're a plentiful resource in Texas in particular, you must kill them because they're invasive and they're overpopulated. There's so many of them, they destroy agriculture. And so it's an easy animal to gain access to hunt. It's very prevalent. It's an easy hunt. And especially when you're shooting rifles, your success rate is very high.

And then on top of that, Jesse will show them how to break it down. What is his, can you see what, it's Old School Cookery, I forget the name of his school, but he takes you through the entire process, and it's a very small amount of people that are allowed to attend because here it is. The New School of Traditional Cookery, that's it. The New School of Traditional Cookery was founded in 2006, concurrently with Dai Dua

Supper Club to provide an educational aspect of our business that promotes responsible use of our wild resources. Jesse's awesome. I'm such a huge fan of that guy and his whole strategy. Like here, click on that to show Jesse cooking a full board. Go full screen. I see this. It's very meat focused, but it's what the region has to

offer and it changes he's also a giant fan of cooking over fire like everything he does is over I think he uses post oak for the most part well once you start doing that you kind of you fall in love with it you kind of can't go back it's a real issue for me it's become a problem because it takes so much fucking time, you know, like cooking over Like fire is whatever the fuck it is in your caveman brain that gets excited about grilling Gets excited 10% more. Oh, yeah it more more than that maybe by cooking over actual hardwood And I don't know why that is when we first opened when we moved well when we when we opened scratch bar in its current location where we got the hearth the reason I decided to go

completely wood fire only I mean there's no other cooking apparatus in the kitchen was because I wanted young cooks to have to learn how to control their environment. I felt like there was a lot of, you know, when you're learning to cook or you're working a station as a young cook, it's like, all right, go to high heat and then go down to medium heat, you know, go here for this long and then do that and then do this. And I felt like it would be really interesting to just have like them have to learn how to, you know, if you let your, your fire die down, you're, you're fucked. You're completely fucked. You know, when we opened the rest, the restaurant, we had a, we had a pasta on the menu and you have to boil water and on an open fire and you can't just like crank it by turning it up.

You have to keep your fire going. And so that was kind of the idea. And once you really start cooking with it, you just, you almost can't recreate the flavors and the feeling that you get from that. Yeah. The feeling is a part of it. It really is. Especially when you're the one who's actually doing the cooking. I don't know how much that feeling is for someone who is completely removed from the process, who just gets it served to them. The flavor is definitely different, but the feeling when you're actually cooking the meat, there's something about it that's very enticing. Well, at the restaurant, I mean, if this was the hearth right here,

you're sitting as close to it as you would you would be so you're getting all the aroma there's no there's no seat in the restaurant that isn't within 20 feet of the hearth oh that's wild yeah and what do you is this your spot yeah that's scratch bar okay and so when you're cooking do you have okay so you have wheels and you crank up and down like Argentine style so when we first opened yeah we were doing wheels. You can already see there I've removed everything. So what we actually ended up going with is just bricks. They're just bricks and like roasting racks.

And we just create our own little apparatuses. I also got just some rolled steel to create little planchas. So what was wrong with the wheels? It was two one-size-fits-all. Like you could see there, that's about a, I'm going to say roughly four feet and four feet. So we had two four-foot wheels. One of them was just a big grill,

and one of them was a big plancha. And because we're doing tasting menus, and you've got so many different things happening, like that's great if you're at a restaurant where it's like, all right, you're gonna fire 50 steaks in the next hour and a half or whatever. But this was like,

you've got like seven or eight different courses coming off this and each one needs to be treated a little bit differently with the fire. So we would create all these different sort of like sort of apparatuses and little areas to cook. That's fascinating. So what kind of foods are you cooking in this fire other than just meat? Everything. Like how are you doing that? Like fish, vegetables,

basically at some point, everything is going through the fire. And so you're using frying pans, you're using just the plancha, like what do you... Sometimes you're going into the coals with a pan. Sometimes you're going with the meat or fish directly into the coals. Sometimes you're just warming something, you know, you may have like a raw fish course that just sits by the fire for a few minutes just to get warm and get a little bit of smoky you know flavor to it and that's it i've seen people cook on coals like they lay a steak down flat on the coals but i was always under the impression that coals were not the best conductor of heat and that you really are better served with a hot metal? Depends really what you're going for. What is the difference in the flavor that you can achieve from putting it on coals versus putting it

on like a grate above the coals? Well, I mean, I mean, right there, it explains either you're going directly into it, either you're touching the grate and you're getting the smoke that the coals create, or you're getting the flavor of the coals. Now, sometimes that might be a bit harsh. But for example, the Santa Maria style tri-tip in California, which is California's answer to barbecue, which I thought was something until I came here. Ranchers. Well, it's not really.

It's grilling more than it is barbecue, right? Completely. But it is manipulation of the protein with the temperature. So, I mean, there is some barbecue aspect to it. But like that one, like if I'm doing a tri-tip and I actually competed in the, I think two years in a row, I competed in the 805 state championship or whatever. two years in a row, I competed in the 805 state championship or whatever. Um, and what I did is, is after you cook it and, and I would, I would, uh, rest the meat. I would then dip it in a barbecue sauce, get my, my pit really, really roaring, make a little hole and then put it in and bury it in the coals. Um, and that would sort of, uh, give it a really interesting exterior,

just like a texture and flavor. So explain that again. So you would take the tri-tip, you would dunk it in a barbecue sauce, and then throw it right into the fire? And then bury it in more coals. Did you cook it to a certain temperature before that? Yeah. So I would take the whole tri-tip with a rub, and I would start it really low so it gets a little bit sear and then you go all the way up and you just let it kind of like an hour and a half. Just let it sort of slowly get the smoke and obviously there's no lid on it in the Santa Maria style until you're at about 127 or so. Until you're at about 127 or so.

And then I'd take it out and I'd put it in an igloo cooler and I would close the top for about an hour, hour, hour and a half. And then when it was time to serve, open up the cooler, dip it completely submerged in barbecue sauce. And then I would basically char the barbecue sauce in the coals. Oh, wow. How was that? It was really good. Sounds fucking amazing. I'm. Oh, wow. How was that? It was really good. Sounds fucking amazing. I'm hungry now, dude.

Well, tri-tip is an interesting cut, right? Because it's very lean. It's delicious, though. Yeah, it's very good. It seems like one you could fuck up, though. It's so easy to fuck up. The thing is, if you cook tri-tip like a steak, it's not very good. And I think the average person,

like if tri-tips in every market in LA, but if you just go and grab a tri-tip and you try to cook it like a ribeye, it's not very good. What do you have to do differently? Slow. Slow. We gotta slow it down. So you gotta treat it like you would treat, like, a game

meat, because it's so devoid of fat. Yes, and I mean you can cook game meat faster, but in a thin slice, tri-tip is kind of a fat roast. I mean, it depends though, like that, that venison saddle that I showed you. I mean, it was two pound saddles about this big, right. And I cooked that right in the fire, but it seemed long and not very thick. Like I'm looking at the, the image that you sent me and it seems like it just doesn't have the same kind of thickness.

Like that doesn't seem very thick. Maybe not. I mean, that makes sense to me that you would cook something like that at high heat over fire. God damn, that looks good. I'll send this to Jamie so he can. It's kind of interesting how you did it too because you you have made in your i mean obviously you have access

to whatever the fuck you want when it comes to cooking and you made like like the most primitive sort of setup you just use like concrete and yeah that was like 250 bucks from homedepot.com they just brought it on a truck and dropped it you know so you i mean it's probably about an inch and a half thick maybe two inches thick and you built this whole situation what is this why are we looking at jim gaffigan so you made this like completely on your own yeah Yeah. So they're just, they're literally cinder blocks on the, um, on the bottom and then, uh, just bricks on top. And I basically recreated, um, what we have at scratch bar just in my backyard here.

And where are you getting the grate from? That little grill rack? Yeah. I mean, you could probably buy it at HEB, but I don't even remember where I got that from. Probably one of the local restaurant supply stores. And when you cook, do you use specific wood? What kind of wood do you like to cook off of? I prefer almond. Almond. Yeah. But you can't really find that here. So this is mesquite. Why do you like almond? It burns really clean. So, like, for example, I explained at Scratch Bar, you're sitting really close to the fire.

If I was to use, you know, some of this post oak, everybody who left the restaurant would just smell like they came from a smoke shop. Oh, I see. And so almond tends to taste, it gives you more of a foresty flavor and less of a barnyard-y flavor, if that makes sense. It sounds like you're selling almond wood because barnyard-y flavor is not sounding like anything I want in my food. Of course you do. Well, sort of, but barnyard-y sounds like horse shit. Yeah, that's not what I meant, though. When I hear barnyard, I smell poo. Sure.

You know? Well, what's the forest smell like? It doesn't smell like poo. Forest smells like trees, you know? When I think of oak, I don't think of barnyardy. When I think of, like, cooking over oak, I think of, like, this sort of robust aroma that's imparted on the meat from the burning of this hardwood. Sure. You know, tomato, tomato.

Okay. But you obviously have access to whatever kind of cooking utensils and equipment that you want. Why do you choose to do it this way? I did it the other ways. I still do it the other ways. But that's the one that I connected with the most. It's just, I mean, it's the way I want to cook at home. It's the way I want to cook at the restaurant. I mean, it's the way I want to cook at home.

It's the way I want to cook at the restaurant. And it's also, you know, I really thought that I could do something for the cooks who got to learn. I felt like if you could hold down that station at Scratch Bar, you could work anywhere. And the way you're doing it, you're not even getting it down to the coals. You're doing it just over the fire. Like I'm looking at those logs. They were not fully submerged in fire. Yeah, so there's lots of different schools of thought,

and I'm not going to debate which ones are correct, and I'm not even sure there is a correct one. I personally like to cook in the flame. In the flame? Yeah. As opposed to over the heat of the burning coals. Correct. Why is that? I've just found that

if you go down to just coals, right? And I actually, when we first opened, I was doing charcoal and I switched to hardwood. When you're just doing coals, you're just at radiant heat. At that point, it's almost as if you could just have

a grill that's like an infrared grill. You've created an infrared grill out of wood or charcoal. But there's still a lot of smoke flavor that's imparted from the coals. There is. However, when you're dealing with a piece of wood that's on fire, you're going to have a different flavor, aroma of the smoke itself. Because once it's all broken down into coals, it's going to smoke. When you have a big flame, you have no smoke. And when you're just trying to start a flame, you have a lot of smoke. So as you're burning wood, you're creating different levels of smoke, different amounts of smoke, different levels of heat versus just one

large infrared area. I see. Now, when it comes to something like a tri-tip that you have to do slower, how are you doing that over fire? Same thing. I mean, look, it's not that I don't cook with coals. It's just for specific things. So you're saying, but you wouldn't do it in the fire. Like you wouldn't have the fire touch the meat.

You'd be above it. Sometimes. Sometimes, yeah. But sometimes, like in that video there, I actually want the fire, I want the flame to actually start to sear the meat. And that's similar in the fact that they're both very lean to a tri-tip. With the venison. Yeah. Yeah.

And what are you putting on the outside of a piece of meat like that? Are you using a rub before you're, you're cooking it there? Are you seasoning it with anything? Uh, typically I'm just putting, you know, salt and pepper. Like at the restaurant,

it's just salt and pepper. Um, uh, recently though, a buddy of mine gave me this, he has, uh, his own

like spice rub called NADC and it's fucking awesome NADC what does it stand for not a damn chance not a damn chance of what just not a damn chance what's in not a damn chance I don't know but it's fucking really good

what's the name of his company so people can buy it NADC co.com I think I'm not sure chance. I don't know, but it's fucking really good. What's the name of his company so people can buy it? NADCco.com, I think. I'm not sure. Oh, so that's the name of his company. That's the name of the company. And he only has one rub? No, he's got a bunch, but OG Steak is Oh, OG Steak. Look at this. Oh, Mango Habanero. He's a man after me own

heart. Yeah. Interesting. So, Neen's a professional skateboarder. Oh, he's a professional skateboarder who makes his own rubs? Yep. He actually built a similar we became friends. He came to Sushi Bar. I said we became friends.

But he we kind of bonded over skateboarding, but then he's like oh, I built this hearth in my backyard and he's cooking all over wood fire and he just moved here to Texas too, so. Wow. Yeah. He's actually, oh, I built this hearth in my backyard and he's cooking all over wood fire and he just moved here to Texas too. Wow. Yeah.

He's actually, he and I are the, he's my, I don't know if we call it partner because it's not a real thing, but we do the burgers together. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So this is obviously. That's not actually our burger, but if you go to NADC Burger, that's our burger. And how often are you guys doing this a lot, this burger thing? We've done it three times.

We did it at... Look at that. There's Yoni. Yep. So that's at the Vulcan after one of the shows. Right. And then we did one at the Barracks, which is this legendary professional-only skate park in LA.

And then we just did one for CM Smokehouse's one-year anniversary. We just give them away every time. We don't even charge. We just do it for fun. Oh, well, that's very nice of you. Yeah. Just to perfect the process and have fun and enjoy it?

We're just enjoying it, and actually we do our burger with his seasoning. Oh, nice. Yeah, it's good. So when you're cooking that piece of venison and using the OG steak? Sometimes, yeah. I don't think I did in that video,

but I can't remember. Now, do you ever use an offset grill? Have you fucked around at all? Because now we're in Texas. Have you tried their style of barbecuing out here, like the way they do a brisket? I have. I actually had two Traegers. I gave them both away, though.

You're not a fan. I'm not not a fan. Well, I like building a fire. Right. And so actually that, that, um, the barbecue championship I was telling you about, I got, I got a, I want a Traeger both, both years.

They gave me a Traeger and then I just gave him to my, my cooks who did the event with me. Um, but, uh, yeah, I, there's something about,

I like building a fire now. You want to do it the old school way. Yeah. I mean, but then like the, you know, the typical then like the you know the typical offset here you know you are doing with with with fire so um i haven't played with it that much but i do enjoy it yeah when you talk to the guys at terry blacks i put something up on

my instagram the other day i guess it's gone because it was in my stories but um we they gave me a tour they always do i always asked yeah give me give me a tour of the pits and see how they have it down to a science where they have like notebooks yeah saying no it's what was in where and you know they're 12 plus hours for each brisket and they you know they have this whole thing that they're doing from start to finish, like ramping up the temperature towards the end, wrapping it, all these different steps that they take, but they do not speak highly about pellet drills. Pellet grills are for the person who doesn't know what the fuck they're doing.

It's very convenient. I love Traegers because they're very convenient. It's great for wild game, you know, because you could, you know, keep a temperature probe in there. It tells my phone exactly where it's at. I wonder if that's similar to my feelings on like sous vide. I'm sure. I'm sure.

But these guys are so old school, and they use oak, by the way. They have these – I mean, everything is made out of propane tanks. So they have somebody who welds these crazy gigantic fucking pits out of propane tanks. So they have somebody who welds these crazy gigantic fucking pits out of propane tanks and this massive insulated firebox. There it is. First of all, goddamn, that looks good. Yeah. Oh my God. And their fucking sausages are insane too. I'm a Terry Blacks fanatic. I'm a very, very big fan of theirs. I was so glad when you liked them

I was like god damn it if Phillip shits on Terry Blacks we're gonna have a real problem in our friendship Mark Black actually sort of threw me a surprise birthday party last year oh no shit yeah so as a surprise

Margarita was gonna take me to well she took me to Houston but on the way to Houston she's like oh we're gonna stop by and pick up Terry Blacks on the way. And, you know, you have to get out and go in. And when we did, everybody from Sushi Bar was, was there. And, uh, Mark, who we had just, uh, met at Sushi Bar two weeks prior, he had come to the restaurant and he loved it, um, uh, was there. And he's like, nope, nope come over here you don't have

to wait in line he's like he's like i you know personally cooked this one and like he cut it and it was like fucking unbelievable yeah brisket's an art form it's one of those things that like it's achieved ultimate like like i don't know how it gets better Then it's a little different at different places it is and still amazed like Franklin has a slightly different taste But still fucking insanely good. It's all about texture for me and so there's a few places in town that just like They're at they're on a completely another level and or at least, I know I haven't tried everywhere in town, but the ones that I have tried, you know, Franklin's, La Barbecue,

Terry Black's. I don't know. Have you tried CM Smokehouse? No. Yoni speaks very highly of it, though. Yoni's the man when it comes to... Oh, I know. Yeah. But CM Smokehouse is the sleeper in that. When I tried his his brisket

I looked at him because you know you meet someone who's a friend of someone else's you're like Oh that you know he does stuff and then when you when that friend of a friend actually is super legit You're like wait a second like you made this this is fucking this is good. This is really fucking good interesting. Yeah Did you talk to him about methods? This is really fucking good. Interesting. Yeah, but talk to him about methods I haven't talked to him about methods But I did say I did tell them that I'm like this is and I don't know if I said it just without thinking I think I was drinking too, but I was like this is as good as Any of those are those other three and I meant it to be a compliment not like

You know, hey, you know what yours is actually as good as other people's right? Did he get offended? No, not at all because I mean, I mean, I think there's an understanding that that's the pinnacle. Right. So if you were to say, Philip, your restaurant's as good as the French Laundry, I wouldn't be offended. I would be, I don't even think you're correct. Right. It is amazing how many great barbecue restaurants are in this city. Yeah.

It's fucking incredible. Well, it's crazy how many good restaurants are in this city. Yeah. There doesn't appear to be bad restaurants in Austin. Yeah, it's fucking incredible. Well, it's crazy how many good restaurants are in this city. Yeah, it's There doesn't appear to be bad restaurants in Austin. It's very hard to survive Well, I just I haven't had it. I haven't been to a bad restaurant yet. I could tell you a few places that suck. It's okay I'm sure this place is this a me. I'm sure there's terrible stuff because there's terrible stuff everywhere. Especially if you get further out of town. But like you go to LA and if you were just to throw a dart at a random restaurant, it's hit or miss that that thing's even edible.

There's tons of bad food, but there's so many people. But then here it's like, I think like the peaks and valleys are higher in a place like, a place like L.A., but here, everywhere you eat is just solid. That was one of the things that really stuck out to us, that, like, we didn't have, you know, we still haven't had a bad meal here. Well, it's also a town that celebrates independent businesses, independent stores, independent restaurants. It's like, it would be very hard to be, like, a Ruth's Chris here there is one isn't there I'm sure there is yeah but I mean in comparison to like some like the Eddie V's type places yeah like this feel that you go to there's a feel of like hey this is a business is created by humans and actually it's this is not like we're to show you how to make a restaurant the way we make a restaurant you follow our guidelines we're going to do it this way because when you go to a place not shitting on ruse chris they make a great steak but you go to a place that's uh

like a place has been doing it forever and with the owners and the chefs and all the people that have been cooking and serving it there's like there's a feel to that place. It's like a part of the experience is the feel. Like, you know, you're going to someone's place. Yeah. And that's the thing is like I so I fell in love with this city in 2013. We came out here and we did South by Southwest. I brought Scratch Bar out here and we spent two weeks. And we actually

opened on the corner of 6th and Red River, not on the corner, but we actually down an alleyway. We got a truck, we set up some picnic tables and we were doing tasting menus, you know, just all day. You can just walk up and have like a $50 tasting menu on the side of the South by. Nice. And while I was out here, I just fell in love with the ingenuity and the community of chefs and just the style. It felt like a place where you could just have an idea and go and do something. Coming from LA, that's not so much the case. Well, LA is just such a complicated city and so much more complicated now because the pandemic and then the aftermath of the poor management of the city it's just it's such a

fucked up place now that it's but it's always had this weird sort of like non-community community aspect to it you know well i grew up in the valley and so it definitely there was like there's Neighborhoods and communities and it's like when we first opened scratch bar and Encino You would it was every night this person knew this person this person knew that you know It was a it was a lot of that and it was you know I wanted to open there cuz it's where I grew up and it because it was you know It's you know where my my parents lived and my friends parents lived and and just sort of that Sense of community which you don't find all over LA right?

Yeah, there's more of that in Encino and and and more that even so when you go to like Orange County and there's a place there. But LA is just so polluted by the entertainment industry. The disingenuous aspect of the entertainment, particularly acting and the pursuit of acting success. And then on top of that, if we didn't think that that was disingenuous enough, it was reality stars. And then like, well, that's not stupid enough. TikTok stars. It's like, they keep coming up with new levels of stupidity. And that's the pinnacle is the, you know, the online like content creator star. You know, I guess whatever makes people happy, whatever works for them. Okay. I guess that's my political uh response to that yeah i mean it's just the problem is like there's too many people too and one of the things about a city like austin

is that it's only a million people and then another million in the surrounding area that's not a lot it's very small in comparison to los angeles well every also everybody's nice here yeah and i and i have a i I have a theory on why that is. And not just the people from here. The people from here are nice. But, like, you come, people go to L.A. And I feel like there's this perceived persona that's like, I need to be an asshole to fit in. And so, yeah, I think so.

I think a lot of people move to L. they like, they wanted, especially in the entertainment industry, they moved to LA and they're like, okay, I'm going to be this sort of, you know, this, this sort of like, you know, douchebag mentality style. I mean, if you grew up in LA, you can always tell who's from, from LA because they don't honk and they put on their blinkers and they wave and they wave to you. Here, everyone moved here recently and they're like oh if i'm gonna fit in i gotta be really nice to everybody oh that's funny yeah go to new york that's do you think that douchebaggishness is uh prevalent in la in new york they really adopt it

you know i was talking to a buddy of mine about that about what's happening in comedy clubs in new york that uh people get angry if you bring up certain premises and they're like the woke aspect of it and he's like but guess what bro none of them are from here they're like fucking main people they're like from somewhere else where they thought they were going to adopt this persona by coming to New York and being like real aggressive about like being like this left-wing progressive angry city dweller. Yeah. And they're like, it's a persona they adopt.

It's like this makes them happy to try to pretend that they're this person. It's just an interesting idea that like I'm going to go somewhere and I'm going to reinvent myself to fit in. That's a lot of it though. Yeah. It's a lot. A lot of people do that, man. I mean people do move to places to reinvent themselves. Yeah. There's a lot of people that don't know why they are the way they are and they don't like it

They don't like how they fit in where they are, especially if you grew up in a place So they've known you since you're five. That's a fucking problem because now that you're 18 you want to have pink hair They're like fuck you like but I like pink hair, you know, no, no, no, you got to move to a place and they go oh mike has pink hair he's always had pink hair and they just accept you yeah i moved to chicago when i was like uh i don't even know how old um but it was it was interesting to just be in a new place where you could i mean i didn't reinvent myself because i just moved there to cook and i kept cooking but it's interesting to like make new friends and meet new people and have the opportunity to have zero baggage or zero preconceived notion and you can i mean it's kind of when margaret and i moved here it was like no one knew us and they were only introduced to us

with the success of sushi bar um which was so interesting because like in la we've been hustlers we're known as like the the young kids who have been hustling forever and have made it. And here we walk in and everyone's like, oh, you're from Sushi Barn. That's weird because we're not used to people approaching us that way.

Right. Again, there's not that many people here. It's different. It's essentially a small town. And part of that could be a problem. You know, there's definitely people that are like super into talking to certain people because they are famous or because they, you know, run a famous restaurant or something and they'll weasel their way into your life. And I have a lot of uncomfortable conversations where people are trying to get on the podcast for no fucking reason whatsoever I'm like what do you what is this conversation we're

having like yeah I haven't luck I mean luckily I haven't either I haven't noticed it or I'm too naive um but uh busy or busy yeah I know this is um this has become the busiest I've ever been this last year and now with getting out of Sushi Bar ATX and what we've got coming is going to get even busier So Sushi Bar ATX though, you sold it to someone? What did you do?

So So does the McDonald's? Basically I'm no longer involved. I'm not an owner. I am no longer the chef there. You cashed out. Something happened, and I am no longer involved. Oh, so something negative.

No, no, no, nothing negative. I'm just not supposed to, we're not really talking about the interworkings of, I was involved, I'm no longer involved. This is cryptic. I want to like pause the show and decipher this. Jamie, how are you feeling about this? I think I understand what he's saying. I feel like it's very cryptic. But also, I maybe understand the cryptos, cryptocity. Well, I'll give you some more.

Cryptocity. I'll give you more context to the story. Okay. So. You don't have to if you feel uncomfortable about it. I don't give a fuck. I'm just riding you. No, no, no.

Well, there's other stuff to talk about. Yeah. So, Margie and I started Scratch Bar, actually, 2013. And we operated in a coffee shop. And we moved it from our coffee shop to our one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood. From there, somebody who ate at our apartment offered us... You served food at your apartment? Yeah, we were doing about...

Commercially? Yeah, we charged for it. our apartment offered us you served food at your apartment yeah we were doing about commercially yeah we charged for it how the fuck did you manage to do that so we were we were operating at this coffee shop and the deal was um they were open from like it was breakfast through like 4 p.m they closed and they hired me to be like to redo their menu and so when they hired me me to do that, they asked me, what do you want to charge? And I said, you close at 4 p.m. So instead of paying me, what if I just get to use your space at night? And I'm going to open a restaurant at night here. And that was the deal.

I worked there for free all day during the day. And then at night I would turn into scratch bar. Oh, that's a great deal for them. Yeah. And I thought so. And then after a few weeks, the guy comes over and says, well, I'd rather you start putting a little more focus into my menu. And I said, well, our deal was I would change it X amount. I used to be a big hothead.

We ended that conversation with, fuck you, I'm out. It happened on, I think, on a Saturday and we were closed Sunday, Monday. We had, we were sold out next week and I was like, fuck, what are we going to do? So we gutted our apartment and we called all of our reservations and told them to come to our apartment. Wow. How many people could you see at a time? I want to say we sat close to like 20 something. That is wild.

Yeah. What do your fucking neighbors think? I mean, it only lasts... This guy's partying every night. Yeah, I mean, we were in West Hollywood. It's not like, you know, we were in a quiet area. We were on like Crescent Heights and Sunset. Right.

So we did that for a couple of weeks. And during that time time one of our guests was like you know he came in basically said this is incredible i have an m i own an empty restaurant space on restaurant row next door to matsuhisa and um if you want to go 50 50 you can move the restaurant into my space oh that's amazing We opened up on restaurant row La Cienega the next week Fast forward from 2013 we've opened multiple restaurants now today

I'm not involved in Austin anymore, but Murray and I now Own a hundred percent of our restaurant. So you were not 100% an owner of Sushi Bar? I've had partners since 2013. So now in Scratch Restaurants, which operates Scratch Bar and Kitchen, both sushi bars and pasta bar, we don't have partners there anymore. We should probably tell everybody how we met and what happened,

because you guys weren't planning on living in Austin. No, it's kind of your fault a little bit. It's my wife's fault because my wife's friend, who's a sushi fiend, is like, there's going to be a pop-up in Austin. Sushi bar is like her favorite spot in L.A. And she's like, they're coming to Austin because they can't work in Los Angeles because they're draconian measures by this goofy fucking government. So you guys set up shop here. My wife drags me out because basically I always want to eat meat. And she's like, come out for sushi.

It's supposed to be really good. Okay, okay, okay. I go, it's fucking phenomenal. And I put it on my Instagram yeah so um in December of 2020 2020 yeah December of 2020 LA said it's too dangerous to serve on the patio um and so they said shut everything down you can't serve indoors you can't serve outdoors earlier in the year when they said you can't serve indoors, we literally just built a sushi bar on our patio. So patio business was fine. We had built tents and everything, but now it was

too dangerous to be on the patio either. So we were going to have to lay everyone off right before Christmas. And so Margie and I decided that we didn't want to do that. Instead, we said, if anyone's willing to work, we will find another state that will let us work. Because at that point, it wasn't L.A. anymore. It was California. We were going to go up north and do a sushi bar in Big Sur. And then they closed all of California. So I had some friends out here.

And we came out and we found a space. And we did this pop-up that was supposed to last five weeks. We got here at the end of December. We were supposed to go back at the beginning of February. And when we tried to come out here, you know, we have a publicist in LA and they were talking to all of the different writers here in town and they all said, we're not going to promote them. You know, with COVID, we're just not promoting anything right now. So we were like, fuck, we're going out to a city that we don't know that doesn't know us and we have no reservations. And so we sent out a newsletter to our following. And I guess that's where, uh, your wife's friend saw it. And we basically said, uh, if you know anyone who's in Austin, please tell them to come support us.

you know anyone who's in Austin, please tell them to come support us. And, uh, after probably about two weeks of being open, we had sold out the, um, the entire stint. Yeah. So we came, um, there it is. Look at you. Best sushi ever had in my life. So this is when 53 weeks ago, basically a year. Yeah. Wild. And so, uh, yeah, you, um, you convinced me to keep it at least one. I think you said to me, uh, you got it, you got to keep this. I got it. We got to, you got to stay. And I said, I can't, I have to go back. And you said, well, uh, if you stay through February, I'll post about it. And I said, okay. you or I'll post about it. And I said, okay. And that's what happened. And you, you did. And, uh, we, you know, I didn't know. I mean, I had no idea what to expect, but that night you posted about it and we sold out February within four minutes that night. And then the next morning

we woke up and there was like 20,000 people on the wait list. And we just kept extending and extending and extending. And then eventually we signed a lease and it's been phenomenal. We haven't had a, I'm saying we, like I'm still there. I'm not there anymore, but the restaurant never had a day that wasn't at capacity. And now we are, now that Marguerite and I have control of Scratch restaurants, and we live here now, we're bringing two new sushi concepts this year.

And Pasta Bar will be here shortly as well. put in on 6th, which is very close from my super secret comedy club project that will probably open in a similar timeframe. Yeah, we, um, uh, Pasta Bar will open in March. The goal right now is March 11th, which is the first day of South by. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. And so as of right now, um, we actually, we don't know the exact date yet. We haven't released it, but you can go on pastabaraustin.com and actually get on the wait list for when we open reservations. So the club, comedy club will be open just for anybody listening.

It'll be longer than that. It'll take a little longer than that. But you're doing something else too, though, right? You're going to do a sushi place that's out like a little further outside of town yeah so um we are an escrow on a ranch out uh in dripping so in dripping springs uh right off of fits you um we got a 1.2 acre ranch and um it's gonna be really fucking cool nice it's an old uh like cowboy style log cabin which is going to be a Japanese whiskey bar. Oh, wow.

And then you're going to go onto this property and have your welcome cocktail in there, canapes. This is not going to be the sushi bar concept. So all of our sushi bars up until now, which, by the way, we're changing the name of Sushi Bar for our ones in LA and Montecito and another one that's coming here. So it's going to be called Sushi by Scratch Restaurants. And so all of those are what was the sushi bar concept. This is going to be a completely different concept. So you're going to go onto the property. The property, you're going to have your drink and your snacks in this little log cabin.

And then you're going to be taken through the grounds of the property to another cabin where we're going to have a pretty exciting concept where sushi bar was a one-star concept we're gonna attempt at like a two or three star sushi concept here and what's the difference like what are you gonna do so this sushi bar was is was always designed to be appealing to everybody in terms of like the the types of fish that we were getting. Although we were getting like the highest quality salmon you could get, we had salmon on the menu. We had, you know, we had albacore on the menu. We had a lot of things that were, you know, think of us almost as like a gateway restaurant where we weren't, you go to some sushi restaurants and you don't recognize

a single fish that's on the menu. So this is going to be a little bit more higher end fish. It's also going to be, we're going to have a tank with like live king crabs and live lobsters and things like that. I haven't quite finished the full concept, but it's going to also not be 100% sushi. It's going to be like 80% sushi. And when you say like exotic fish, what are you talking about? What kind of fish? So one of my favorite fish is called akamutsu. And it's a... That's Jamie's

favorite. Yeah. Right? It's actually from Ohio. It's from Ohio. What the hell is an akamutsu? Google that. How do you spell that? A-K...

What were you starting with? No. A-K-A-M-U-T-S-O. Akamutsu. Is it German? Yeah, it's German fish. Yeah. From Ohio.

It sounds super Japanese. Oh, wow. Okay, so it looks like a snapper. Black sounds super Japanese. Oh, wow. Okay. So it looks like a snapper. Black throat sea perch. Yeah. So it's a perch, but it's in very, very deep waters. Oh, that makes me hungry.

Yeah. It's also incredibly difficult to source and very expensive. expensive but you know where where we have very you know the type of fish selection for a sushi bar is very I don't want to say average because it's not average but it's it's very approachable for someone who's not necessarily like a sushi connoisseur mmm so this is gonna be just sort of like the next level mmm and know that kind of fish, is there a difference in the type of flavor that you're going to get from a fish like that? Yeah. Is there a way to describe that?

So that one you serve it with the skin on. The skin is so soft that when you take the scales off, I'll usually just use my hands. I won't use a scaler. Really? You'll take the scales off with your hands? Yeah, because you'll rip the skin. It's so soft. Wow. The oil content is just

like a single fish sells for $736,000. What? What did you say? That's what it says. But yeah, that's a lot. Is that real? You're going to spend three quarters of a million? Of course. You're going to spend three quarters of a million dollars on fish?

Well, I mean some of the bluefin tunas are selling for millions of dollars. But isn't that like a dick waving contest when they do that with the bluefin tuna? It could be. The way it's been explained to me is that that's like a restaurant wants to establish that they're like the big kahuna, they'll they'll outbid everyone else but the actual market price of a single tuna is never that high yeah I mean I carry probably the most expensive tuna that you could get like regularly in America and I'm not paying a million dollars for a fish

right that's what I'm saying this video actually says it's an akamutsu, but the caption says it's a bluefin tuna caught off northeast in Japan, fetched $736,000. Got it. Yeah, so tuna would also I mean, akamutsu's not, I mean, it's not huge. Where tuna, you the thing is, a lot of those guys who do buy those tunas, they can

cut it up and freeze it and send it to 10 of their restaurants and sell it for a lot of money as this is the most expensive prize tuna of the year. Right. And when you're dealing with sushi, you think of the size of the portion. And if you're going to a sushi place like Soto or somewhere in town that's a nice sushi place, what would a two-piece of sushi like a Toro go for roughly i'm gonna guess $29 no i would guess less but i don't know $17 let's just let's just call it 20 bucks yeah so it's 20 bucks and it's

two small pieces oh for two pieces yeah it might be more okay yeah oh you're thinking individual single pieces so let's just say it's $30 and think of $30 and then look at the entire tuna how many $30 portions are in there? It's hundreds and hundreds. And when you're saying this is the most prized tuna of the year, that $30 piece is $300 and people are paying for it. Right. I get it. I don't think anyone's losing money on those tunas they spend that money on. Of course. They wouldn't do it, right?

Well, it might be worth a little bit of money just for the marketing and pr or whatever but i think when they the thing that someone was explaining to me and honestly now that i'm thinking about it i think i heard it on a podcast um i think it was on meat eater and i think they were saying that it's not that they would normally spend that much money on a tuna it's that there's like a sort of a ceremonial aspect of this bidding to see if that's true. I don't know how you'd even Google that. Well, it definitely is. They do bid on it, but how it gets to be millions of dollars. That's what's confusing.

And that's what he was trying to. Yeah. I mean, that's not in the, I mean mean, like I'm saying, the normal market. But what I'm, you know, because what I'm getting is from Toyosa. It is from what used to be Tsukiji. So it is coming from the same market where that bidding is happening. But when I'm getting, you know, we don't get whole tunas. We get them halved.

But they're almost as big as, like, the length of this table. So you get them in the full form and then you piece it up yourself so remember when you came the first time to sushi bar the that the size of that table it was almost reached end to end and i think that was yeah so maybe like probably six feet that's a big ass piece of tuna. Yeah. And so that's how many pounds is that? A hundred and something, 180 probably. And what does something like that cost? A couple thousand. Jesus. So when you're doing like inventory for a sushi place, like inventory for a sushi place. Like, it seems like that would require a lot of skill and clever planning. Yes, except that, you know, we've been lucky enough at all of our locations to have, we

have 10 seats, we do 30 people a night, they do the menu that we choose for them, and we do it seven days a week. Right, so you can plan it better. We know roughly exactly what we're doing. And that's typically also part of the reason why we push, if you want extras, that you try something new because we'll bring in four or five extra fish, one or two of each just to have extras

so that we know that, all right, we're getting 30 of these, 30 of these, 30 of these. Maybe you want an extra, you know, toro or yellow tail or something. And that's fine. We always have a little bit extra, um, but it just keeps it in a constant, you know? Right. So you can manage it much easier. Now, sushi bar, um, is now no longer you, but this pasta bar that you're doing, like what, I'm not familiar with the one that you have in LA. So what is, what is going to be different about that? Like what's, is it the same sort of a thing, like a tasting menu? Yeah. So everything that we do in our group is all tasting menus. Um, and so,

uh, similar to sushi bar, you're going to sit right up to the counter. The stoves are going to be like, if you're sitting there, the stoves are where this wall is right here and we're doing I think we're doing about 13 course tasting menu in that 13 courses unlike sushi you're not going to have 13 bowls of pasta because that would be difficult to have

there's about 5 courses that is pasta and then all the other courses are something that kind of help tell the story of an upscale pasta dinner. What kind of stuff is that? Well, so you start off always with your own loaf of margarita sourdough, which is the best sourdough you've ever had, like hands down. Have you ever had Tom Papa's sourdough? I haven't, but I can't imagine.

You do. You might want to shut your fucking mouth Well, I'm still gonna say my wife's is better I'm sure it's amazing the Tom Papa's is really good We should we should have a sourdough off. We should I am a giant fan of the Tom Papa sourdough Look at that Yes, so you get so that's margarita sourdough, and then that. Yeah, so you get, so that's Margarita's sourdough, and then she makes butter. God damn, that looks good. Yeah, so the thing about... Why does bread look so good?

The thing about hers is it's so crunchy, but like it's, the crust is very thin, but it's so crusty. And then the inside is just like a pillow, and it's super sour. And then she makes butter that it goes with... She makes her own butter? Yeah.

Does she churn, do the whole deal? Of course. I mean, not by hand. And then our whole group, Scratch Restaurants, is the fact that we don't serve anything we don't make from scratch. So the fact that we make the soy sauce and the bread, the butter, the ice creams, the cheeses, whatever. So, I mean, here here you go this is what's

on this is what's looking like it's on the menu damn that looks good so when you make your pasta now one of the things that i noticed and many people have remarked on this talked about this when they go to italy and they have pasta in italy you don't feel like shit like there's something about the wheat that they use that has a different reaction in people's bodies and it's been been explained to me that it's like was it double zero flour or something like that like yeah so there's there's different flour i mean if you just go and get what they call ap flour that's like that's what you're is going to give you like that kind of really thick pasty kind of like sit in your stomach and that's it's regular flour give you that kind of really thick, pasty, kind of like sit in your stomach.

And that's regular flour that you buy from a grocery store? Yeah. But there are specific flours that we use and that you can get that are much different. Durham, Double Zero, all these different types of flours. What is this Double Zero stuff that everybody says is the best? I shouldn't say everybody because I haven't really talked to everybody about it. No, but everybody does say it's the best.

It's become very, very popular in pizzas, in breads. And it really is, it's like I kind of, the best way I would sort of describe it is it's much lighter. It's much cleaner. Is it easier to digest? I mean, it feels easier to digest. I don't know from like a compound makeup whether, you know, what it is that makes it different.

But it feels much better. That's when people describe pasta and pizza in Italy. That they don't use the kind of flour that we have over here. Yeah. And, you know, Maynard Keenan from Tool, he has a bunch of restaurants in Arizona. Really? Yeah, he has a vineyard.

Do you know about him? No. I knew he had a vineyard. I didn't know he had restaurants. Yeah, yeah, yeah. His Osterias. Very cool. Yeah.

I think, is it Merkin Vineyards Osterias? Is that what he calls them? He named his, he's such a fucking freak. He named his restaurant after a fake vagina toupee. That's what a Merkin is. Merkin Vineyards Tasting Room in Osterias. I don't know him, but I've listened to enough Tool to know he's, you know, an interesting dude. Oh, he's super interesting. Super fucking smart guy and very cool guy. I love him to death. But his food, by the way, if you ever get a chance to eat there, the pizza's insane.

It's so good. My sister lives in Arizona, so I'll have to check it out sometime. It's in Scottsdale. It's an old town in Scottsdale. Yeah, well, we had a UFC in Phoenix, and we drove all the way out to Scottsdale to eat there. It was that good. But I went to visit him anyway. But anyway, his explanation was that when they changed wheat or they started adjusting and manipulating wheat to develop higher yields, that the problem is that that wheat has more complex glutens in it. And you definitely get higher yield per acre, but it's more difficult for people to digest.

Yeah. I don't know if that's true, but it makes sense. I mean, that's what they say is true. Here it is. Double zero flour, also known as doppio zero, or zero zero flour, is a finely ground Italian flour commonly used to make pasta and pizza dough. In Italy and other parts of Europe,

grind sizes vary from double zero to two. Oh, so it's the size of the grind. Double zero is the finest grind and two is the coarsest. Huh. Is it from different wheat? Well, you would imagine, just think about... Their wheat is just different, period, right? Like their food is different. Their steaks are different.

They're all grass-fed cows over there. But you would imagine if you have something finer rather than more coarse, if you're going to dilute that in water, right or or with whatever you're going to make you know use to make your pasta the finer it is the like the more it's going to spread out and become and become fine for a better well it just seems like it'd be easier for your body to break it down yeah because it's not it's not as thick and as coarse right so are you using um a specific combination of flours do you do is there a way do you like it so so different

pastas are going to have different you know different flours and different combinations just just for the flavor aspect or the texture yeah so i mean depending on what you're if you, depending on what you're, if you're looking for a chewier noodle, if you're looking for something that's softer and more pillowy, um, and then, you know, how the, the amount of hydration and, and, and there's certain things that go into it to make it specific to what it is you're trying to achieve. And did you do this by trial and error? This is something that you learned from, you know, is that like from? So I worked with, I mean, I've worked in a lot of restaurants that made fantastic pasta. I've never worked in a pasta restaurant. So what we're doing at the restaurant right now is sort of a conglomeration of, you know, really what everybody, you know, the way that I sort of run the restaurants

is it really is like a conglomeration of the entire team. So anyone who has anything, you know, the way that I sort of run the restaurants is it really is like a conglomeration of the entire team. So anyone who has anything, you know, a value to add, it gets added. So, you know, there may be that, you know, this cook has this recipe and this cook has this recipe and we've worked together to kind of develop just like the best recipes that we can do. Because I've never been a fan of, of not being as good as we can because it was only my idea. That's interesting. So you pick people that you work with that you can collaborate with. And so like sometimes will someone come to you with an idea of a dish and you guys like talk it through? Yeah. So we actually at, at scratch bar back in

2017, we used to change the entire menu every single month. So 20 new dishes. Oh, wow. And for the long time, it was just me. Just solely me, just with a notebook, just coming up with new dishes. And then eventually I was like, I need to keep the team engaged. And also the team would come to me and be like, hey, we were thinking we want to cook rabbit next month. So we started implementing every Friday during family meal. It wasn't mandatory. You could either

stay, eat with the team, and we can talk about what you guys want to cook next month, or you can go and call your girlfriend or whatever. And we started really, you know, working together to kind of put these menus together. And at this one point, one of our younger cooks had the idea to do a, he said, well, what if we do something like a bagel and cream cheese? And everybody laughed at him. And I was like, no, there's no such thing as a bad idea. We have to like, what? Okay. So obviously we can't do bagel and cream cheese. So what is like, I see where you're coming from now, how do we get there? And we worked together over probably about a month and a half and where we got to, um, you know, and I worked with him on how, how to actually think, what are we thinking about? Right. So first of all, we have

to make everything ourselves. We're not making bagels. That's not an option. So, okay. Um, and how do you do that at a world-class level? So instead of making, oh, well, bagel chip. Well, I'd have to make a bagel to make a bagel chip, so no. How about a cracker? Well, if we put caraway in that cracker, then we're going to have the flavor of rye bread, which is going to be reminiscent of a deli experience. Okay, so we have a caraway cracker.

Okay, we can make our own cream cheese. We've done that before. But I love Lakshmir. So instead of Lakshmir, maybe we're going to fold in right at the last second fresh salmon roe, smoked salmon roe. So you're going to put a layer of this homemade cream cheese that's really light and airy because what we do is we would strain off the whey and then reincorporate just the amount that we would want so it would be the right texture. And then we thought, okay, instead of, we've already got the salmon aspect,

so what if we do, what if we smoke sea urchin? And we put that on top. And then we dehydrated small little red onions, which gave you the flavor of an onion bagel. And then you eat this little thing, it was this big, and it was like, okay, we figured out how to take this idea, which everyone laughed at, and turn it into something at a world-class level. Wow. Now, why would you not?

You said, like, almost matter-of-factly, we're not making bagels. Like, why would you not make bagels? I mean, it's a very difficult thing to do. And we're not, I mean, scratch bars bars you saw a picture of it we're not set up to be a bagel factory they're kind of boiled right they are um but the thing is it what's really difficult about being a restaurant where you have to make everything yourself is like if we're going to make something that everyone's used to we have to make it better than that and I've never made bagels and I that's a huge undertaking to like put a bagel program on the main on the team just so we can have this one dish

so we're not making bagels because there's a like a lot of variation in like the level of bagel yeah you know it's really interesting and we want to we want to whatever we put out like if we cook a steak It's gonna be like fuck. That's the best steak. I've ever had right that was the best whatever now when we put out this final product That was this big people would take a bite and they go fuck That's kind of like a bagel and cream cheese But fucking good and if I gave him a bagel that wasn't as good and the guy from New York's like this isn't as good As the bagel I grew up with then I'm you know, I'm fucked Yeah, just don't let people in New York in.

The New York people are very particular about their pizza and very particular about their bagels, but I think they're right, unfortunately. They may be. We had good bagels in L.A. I haven't found a good bagel here yet. I've heard it explained to me that there's something about the water in New York. I realized, I hired a chef who was working at the restaurant.

I was really excited for him to try my favorite bagels in LA. And he tried it and he's like, this isn't very good. And I was like, I don't understand. It's really good. And I realized that the bagels he grew up with are different than the bagels I grew up with. He's like, this is really soft with like a crispy exterior. And I was like, yeah. He's like, this is really soft with like a crispy exterior. And I was like, yeah.

He's like, no, it's supposed to be chewy. It's supposed to hurt your jaw. And I was like, why would I want to do that? Interesting. But he was explaining to me like the culture of bagels and why you want this. And I was like, yeah, I like this one. Yeah. It's a flavor profile, though.

The difference in the flavor of bread from... Bread is probably the best example because Italian bread from New York or New Jersey has a very particular flavor profile that's unavailable from when you get bread in California for the most part. Yeah. To be honest, I've not spent enough time in New York. available from when you get bread in California for the most part. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, to be honest, I've not spent enough time in New York.

I've probably been there two or three times for like weekends. Really? Yeah. I haven't spent a lot of time there. Oh wow. That's kind of crazy because that's like one of the culinary capitals of the world. Wouldn't you imagine,

right? I would imagine, but I haven't. That's funny. Yeah. When, you know, when you create these restaurants,

do you have any desire of doing something that is not a tasting menu or is that just you prefer being in complete control of the experience? I prefer tasting menus, especially now post pandemic and the way the world is going. It's, you know, you asked the perfect question, how do you inventory? It's not difficult to inventory when you know exactly what you're selling. And if I have 30 people coming in in a 20-item menu, what if everybody eyes the ribeye,

I have to throw away all the chicken? Or I have to sell the chicken when it's past its prime and not very good, and then people won't come back because it wasn't very good. Right. So beyond that, I just we've found our success in these sort of experientially driven sort of fine dining tasting menus. It's also what I enjoy the most. I'm someone who like when I look at a menu at a restaurant, I get a little bit of anxiety. I don't I'm like I get upset because I'm like, I don't know what to order. There's, there's 30 things on here. And I, you know, this is, I would much rather go to a restaurant where like, Hey, we're really good at this. So

we're going to cook you this. Well, it works. And I love that. You know, you could just think, you don't have to think about anything, just waiting for the next piece of food. That's all you have to do. Well, it's, I mean. Well, I mean, you don't go to a movie and then tell it what you want it to do for you. It's like you go to a restaurant because they serve the food you want or you like the chef and what they've done in the past, and then you say, okay, I would enjoy whatever you cook for me

or I would like to enjoy it. Well, one of the things that I loved about the sushi bar experience is that it's a communal experience. Like, everybody's experiencing the exact same piece of sushi at the exact same time. Yeah. So we're all sitting around this bar together, and you say, please enjoy. Yeah. And then people eat it,

and they go, oh, and everybody looks around like, ooh, I love it. And you hear the noises, and it's such a small room. What do you guys have, 10 people? 10 seats, yeah. 10 seats. I mean, that's... Yeah, so that's what... So in March, we're opening another sushi restaurant here in Austin. The ranch won't open until probably August, September,

because we have a lot of infrastructure work to do. But March, we're opening a new sushi spot here. And where's that going to be? Can you tell? It's going to be... I can't say exactly yet, but it's going to be a little bit outside of town. It's going to be about 10 minutes past the airport. And that will be Omakase as well. It'll be the, so it's going to be called Sushi by Scratch Restaurants, which is what the LA and Montecito sushi bars are, they're becoming as well.

or at the LA and Montecito sushi bars they're becoming as well. And it'll essentially be the same. Well, I don't want to say the same like we've just phoned in another one, but it's going to be another of the same concept. And by the way, your brother catered Andrew Schultz's wedding. Yeah, I broke his balls about that a little bit.

He, I mean, it turns out Andrew's wife, her parents, I've known them for years. Oh, that's crazy. Um, up in Montecito. Um, and so I've, I've actually met his wife a couple of times, not knowing, you know, uh, but, uh, Lennon didn't know that, um, didn't know who, uh, like who wasn't told, just told, Hey, can you cater my daughter's wedding? And that was it. So funny. Yeah. It was a a fun party though and the sushi was off the hook yeah i'm sure it was tell your brother he nailed it yeah i just well you're telling him that right now you nailed it i was posted up there i ate a fucking he told me a couple of pounds of sushi yeah he told me

well listen man please let us know when as soon as your new place is up, I'll post about that too. And I'll fuck up your waiting list there too. Yeah. Well, we're, we are, by the time this goes up, we'll, sushibuyscratchrestaurants.com will be up and running. Nice. And people can go on and join the wait list. And we'll actually release the reservations probably in the next week or so. All right.

Beautiful. Well, thank you, brother. It's been great becoming your friend and what you do when it comes to your food is fucking sensational. I didn't think sushi could be that good. I really didn't. It was a new eye

opening experience so thank you for that. Thank you. And thank you for this awesome whiskey. Yeah, that stuff's special. Be careful with that though because by the time you finish it, there may not be another bottle. You live. You live. You consume. Keep moving. Keep moving,

Phillip. Thank you very much. Absolutely. People want to follow you on Instagram. Yeah, Phillip Franklin Lee is mine, and then we have Sushi by Scratch Restaurants, which is all of our sushi bars. Pasta Bar Austin and Pasta Bar

LA this is all Instagram everything else yeah Facebook I don't think we're on we might be on Facebook

I don't know eh figure it out yeah figure it out folks follow me and you'll find it I'll post about it for sure alright

thanks brother appreciate you thank you bye everybody Appreciate you. Thank you. Bye, everybody.