Episode 233 - Anthony Bourdain
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Marc Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuckstables?
Marc:What the fuck ups?
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:There's so many.
Marc:I should just make a master list.
Marc:I keep getting them.
Marc:I'm not asking for them, but I keep getting them.
Marc:Not unlike cupcakes, chocolate-covered things, cookies.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Hey, I'm Marc Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Thank you for tuning in.
Marc:I still have a little...
Marc:throaty, coldy thingy going on.
Marc:It didn't seem to manifest into anything awful and debilitating, but there's always time for that.
Marc:Am I right?
Marc:I just got back from DC.
Marc:I was at the Arlington draft house.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Thank you for coming out to see me there.
Marc:We sold out four shows.
Marc:They added a show.
Marc:I don't want to brag, but that's never happened to me before.
Marc:And we had a great time.
Marc:I mean, they were great shows.
Marc:I was in and out.
Marc:I didn't get time to hang out in the city.
Marc:I want to thank everybody for bringing me.
Marc:I'll just go by the short list.
Marc:Now, I'm not sure if I made it clear that perhaps it's not good for me to go back to my hotel room with a mound of baked goods.
Marc:I know it's the holiday season, and I lucked out that yesterday I made it my new cheat day after my cheat week over Thanksgiving.
Marc:It seems like the cheat days...
Marc:are getting closer together but please thank you for the oreo the homemade oreo truffles the dreidel shaped chocolate covered marshmallows the cookies the cupcakes the mint topped brownies oh my god i had to give them away at the end of the show but uh really great audiences and and i really had a good time it was a little weird uh they put me up right across from the pentagon
Marc:And I don't live in D.C., so the Pentagon to me is still, you know, holds a weird place of evil resonance in my head.
Marc:And I still have pretty peculiar, slightly whack job fears about being in D.C.
Marc:I obviously feel like I should be doing more.
Marc:I always feel like when I'm in D.C.
Marc:that I should be out there standing and yelling at something, some building somewhere.
Marc:But I could literally see the Pentagon from my hotel.
Marc:And I had a moment.
Marc:I had a flash of like, fuck, it's right there.
Marc:I better be careful what I think.
Marc:Because, you know, they got those machines now that get right in your head and they know exactly what you're thinking.
Marc:And with this new National Defense Act.
Marc:That's going down.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:They could just come right over to my hotel and pull me out of it and bring me in and pop open the top of my head with some sort of can opener like machine, take out my brain and wash out all my filthy ideas.
Marc:They could literally do that.
Marc:They could take me right out of my garage and take me to a local brain, brain cleansing station and just wash them out.
Marc:That's what's going down, man.
Marc:That's what's happening.
Marc:Yeah, they say Al Qaeda today, but tomorrow could be guys who work in their garage.
Marc:I know how this shit rolls.
Marc:You don't got to fucking tell me how to get right back into that mindset.
Marc:Now I want to know what the name of that fucking act is because I'm tired of not knowing things.
Marc:I'm tired of my brain losing chunks of things.
Marc:I'm going to go look for it right now and I'll be back in a second.
Marc:Can we play a second of music here?
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Got it.
Marc:Got it.
Marc:National Defense Authorization Act passed in Congress, you know, in the Senate.
Marc:Yeah, man, it seems like it looks like pretty soon there's not going to be any reason we won't have the U.S.
Marc:military on every street corner with the freedom and power to do anything.
Marc:Anything they're told under any president, this is my broad understanding about it.
Marc:I don't do a lot of politics, but I don't know how anybody can really be for this.
Marc:I mean, there are certain things I do in my own home that I'd like to keep in my own home.
Marc:And they may not be against the law today, but geez, all it takes is one wacko to say, that's bad now.
Marc:No more wearing hats indoors.
Marc:Corral those people up and take them to a FEMA camp.
Marc:I'm going to stay out of Alex Jones territory, but makes me a little uncomfortable if I let my brain go with it.
Marc:So now I'm back.
Marc:I'm back home.
Marc:Got to really lean into writing this book.
Marc:I don't know if you know this about me, but it's my process.
Marc:I don't know what your creative process is, but if I could talk to you about mine for a second.
Marc:Did I mention Anthony Bourdain is on the show today?
Marc:Did I mention that?
Marc:Did I mention that upon reading his book, Kitchen Confidential?
Marc:You know, I like his TV shows, one of which is on tonight.
Marc:Man, what is the name of the TV show that's his new one?
Marc:It's on tonight.
Marc:Hold on a second.
Marc:Could you play some music here?
Marc:I got to find out.
Marc:Here it is, The Layover.
Marc:That's the name of his new show.
Marc:It is on Mondays.
Marc:I'm looking forward to it.
Marc:I didn't watch it last week.
Marc:I think tonight is maybe the third one.
Marc:I like his other show.
Marc:I watch it occasionally.
Marc:But after I read Kitchen Confidential, I was like, this fucking dude.
Marc:I mean, I didn't really fully realize the similarities between comedy and cooking.
Marc:The dues that one has to pay in order to get to a higher level, the experience you have to sort of absorb in order to know how to do what you're doing.
Marc:I imagine it's the same with any craft, but there was such a weird camaraderie between kitchen people and restaurant people and the network of people that are involved in that world.
Marc:And also the gritty, grimy, drug infested weirdness that goes on in the showbiz world and the comedy world also goes on in the chef worlds, of course, because chefs are crazy.
Marc:I've worked in restaurants.
Marc:I miss working in restaurants.
Marc:There's some part of me that wants to be working in a restaurant.
Marc:The immediate gratification of working in a restaurant, of getting shit done, of being covered with grease at the end of a shift and realizing we won.
Marc:We got through those dupes.
Marc:I miss that shit.
Marc:I have chef envy.
Marc:I don't think I could have been a real chef.
Marc:I can cook okay.
Marc:Did I mention?
Marc:I didn't mention.
Marc:Why do I keep saying that as if I did, knowing that I didn't?
Marc:I've reintroduced my obsession with cast iron pans into my life.
Marc:I don't know if any of you have that, but this is the kind of thing that I really find starts happening when I have something to do.
Marc:When I have a deadline, I have a book deadline.
Marc:You know what that means?
Marc:That I'm looking forward to seasoning my cast iron pans.
Marc:The first time I bought a cast iron pan, I bought it at a yard sale.
Marc:And the woman selling it, I said, how much for the pan?
Marc:She goes, I won't sell that to you if you ever let soap or water.
Marc:If you ever let soap and water hit that pan, you have to promise you're not going to let soap and water hit that pan.
Marc:And I'm like, what are you talking about?
Marc:Soap is the death of cast iron to her.
Marc:But then it made me sort of curious about it.
Marc:I mean, what is it with cast iron?
Marc:Then I did research on cast iron where you have to season the pan with lard or oil and sort of bake on the surface.
Marc:You heat up a cast iron pan that's thinly coated in some sort of grease and that kind of becomes silicone.
Marc:It burns and it adheres and you make a nonstick surface and then you have to take care of that.
Marc:So maintaining cast iron pans and keeping them well seasoned is almost like a religion because there's a perfection in your mind that you think you can achieve with this surface.
Marc:And they get that black look, that burnt black shiny look that you can create.
Marc:But eventually they get fucked up and they get rusty and you don't know why.
Marc:And then you're like, how do I start over?
Marc:I don't fucking know.
Marc:Then I did a little research on that.
Marc:And there's some sort of electrolysis process.
Marc:This is what I almost did.
Marc:There's some sort of rig you can make with a generator or a car battery charger where you hook up two ends to something.
Marc:You hook up one into liquid that's in a tub and you put lye or something in it.
Marc:And then you hook up the other, the positive charge to the pan and dunk it in the liquid to get off the old surface.
Marc:So in the middle of writing my book,
Marc:That was one of the endeavors I was going to get to work on because God knows cast iron is important.
Marc:Now, if somebody could just tell me the appropriate way to do it that they've had success with, that would be wonderful.
Marc:So then maybe I could write my book and get past this cast iron obsession, this re-obsession.
Marc:I have three fucking cast iron pans in the house there that I take care of and that I barely use.
Marc:but they represent something perfect to me that I could only hope to achieve.
Marc:Back to Bourdain.
Marc:So it was a no-brainer for me to try to connect with him around the similarities between who we are as people, both of us having a bit of a drug past, both of us in crazy lines of work, both of us spending a lot of time not quite being where we set out to be.
Marc:And I was thrilled to talk to him, and I hope you enjoy that, this conversation with Anthony.
Marc:And also getting back to creativity and writing the book and cast iron pans.
Marc:I can't seem to do anything unless I have cornered myself into a situation where I'm consumed with panic and I have no choice but to just spit it out.
Marc:in weird, anxious spurts, whatever I'm going to create.
Marc:It's the same with my comedy.
Marc:It's the same with my writing.
Marc:It's the same with this podcast.
Marc:I don't know what the fuck I'm going to say until I get on this mic.
Marc:I don't know what I'm going to write until I'm consumed with panic and a deadline is approaching.
Marc:I'm not sure what my new material is going to be until I take one or two sentences that I've scribbled in a notebook and decide to get up on stage and try to flesh it out.
Marc:I need to corner myself
Marc:So the only way I can create is to battle out of that corner with whatever I'm creating.
Marc:That's my fucking, that is my process.
Marc:That doesn't work with cooking though.
Marc:You need to have some skills in place.
Marc:You're just going to make a mess.
Marc:Let's talk to Anthony Bourdain.
Marc:come on you're a fucking rock star at this point uh i'm still thinking you know it's uh deep fryer awaits at any moment you know it'll come as an overnight thing so uh well that's uh i'm feeling pretty lucky and like it could all evaporate at any minute right well that's what's interesting man i mean because uh you know i'm familiar with your your stuff a bit and i've read your stuff and like the similarities between where you come from and where stand-up comics come from is profound
Guest:It's gotten closer and stranger because at this point, you know, I started, you know, one minute I'm standing, the next is a deep fryer cooking.
Guest:Then I write this little article for a free newspaper that ends up in The New Yorker.
Guest:A day later, I've got a book deal.
Guest:I write a book.
Guest:Somehow I end up on television.
Guest:But at the end of the day, I would say that probably the largest amount of my income comes from live performance, like a speaking gig, which are essentially work in the same rooms that you're probably very familiar with and played all over the country.
Marc:You're probably a little bigger act than me.
Guest:I know we're playing the same rooms.
Guest:It's me standing on stage for an hour,
Guest:And talking to a live ticketed audience and then doing Q&A for another hour.
Guest:But an hour up there talking one city after another.
Guest:And let's face it, you're up on a stage talking for an hour to a whole bunch of people.
Guest:There better be a dick joke every 60 seconds or 90 seconds and you better get a laugh.
Guest:So that's been a steep learning curve for me.
Marc:But are those the kind of people you're talking to?
Marc:They really expect dick jokes?
Marc:I mean, it would seem to me that you'd, I guess you attract chefs and the rabble of the cooking industry, but I would think that you're probably attracting a bit more urbane an audience, no?
Guest:The similarities between us are so, you never know.
Guest:On Mondays, it'll be, the whole room will smell of smoked fish and onions, and it's cooks and restaurant people, you'd think would be my constituency.
Guest:But the other, you know, you never know.
Guest:You pull into town and it's all golfers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I've done like Palm Springs, Palm Desert.
Guest:I've done the Shore Room at Harrah's in Reno.
Guest:Some events.
Guest:Drunk gamblers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I've really had to learn.
Marc:But, you know, the weird thing is, is like, you know, because I worked in restaurants and there was a time in my life where, you know, that's what I wanted to do.
Marc:And there was a time in my life where, I'm talking about the immediacy of it.
Marc:When you tell a joke, you know right there whether that joke's gonna work or not.
Marc:When you flip a fuckin' egg or you get a plate out, it's that same feeling of immediate gratification.
Marc:It can repeat itself over and over again.
Marc:And there's a thrill to it.
Marc:When I worked in a kitchen when I was younger, I was just a grill cook.
Marc:I didn't have the chops to do anything else.
Marc:Once they put me on a line, it was a disaster.
Marc:I was working as a waiter.
Marc:I wanted to do a line.
Marc:I wanted to try the line.
Marc:And it was a disaster because I couldn't do it.
Marc:I felt intimidated.
Marc:My onion rings clumped up.
Marc:And that was the end.
Marc:Oh, that's the end.
Marc:That was the end of my cooking career.
Marc:That was the end of my line work.
Marc:But what I really relate to when I read your stuff is...
Marc:that weird mixture like where i don't even get a sense you know from when from where you're coming from and the same with me and this just from from you know reading your books like i know i make people laugh and and i think you know on some level you make people happy but that cigarette you smoke after you've just gone through a rush and you're covered in grease doing nothing like it right but it's got nothing to do with making people happy
Guest:You really put your finger on it.
Guest:Appearing live in front of people, you know right away.
Guest:This is going well or it's not.
Guest:Cooking is all about immediate gratification.
Guest:Exactly right.
Guest:You know.
Guest:There's no argument.
Guest:It's a meritocracy.
Guest:You know right away.
Guest:Did I do well or did I not do well?
Guest:You turn to your right, you turn to your left.
Guest:You can tell the people you're working with or looking at you a certain way.
Guest:You can hear it off the floor.
Guest:Is food coming back?
Guest:I mean, you know.
Guest:There are provable and immediate stats.
Guest:And I think that explains a lot of the sort of personality types you see in stand-up comedy over the years that are attracted to any kind of performance.
Guest:adrenaline junkies, people who need that immediate gratification.
Guest:And social misfits.
Guest:But yeah, social misfits, the restaurant business for sure, cooking.
Guest:But writing and making television, that's all different.
Guest:Writing, no matter how well the book sells, okay, your mom tells you it's good, but yeah.
Guest:is it really good but you're also just sells well does that mean it's really good you don't know you don't well you're sitting by yourself yeah you're sitting by yourself in a room second guessing yourself going over paragraphs wondering whether this is good whether people give a shit or not yeah but i mean how when you started where did you grow up here uh i grew up in jersey what part of jersey uh born here grew up in bergen county like right literally right across the gw bridge
Marc:Oh, my family comes, my mother comes from Pompton Lakes, Wayne.
Guest:You know where that is, right?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So you grew up coming into the city.
Marc:You grew up, you know, but it wasn't your goal to be a cook.
Guest:Yeah, I fell into the business.
Guest:I mean, I was a misfit.
Guest:I was an angry, pissed off kid.
Guest:How old are you now?
Guest:I hated college.
Guest:I'm 55.
Marc:I'm 47.
Marc:I'm just trying.
Marc:Okay, so you're old.
Guest:No, I was 17 years old.
Guest:I was...
Guest:i got a job as a dishwasher i i quickly realized i hated college i hated myself i went to vassar so you were a smart kid i mean i mean doesn't you can't get into an ivy league school i had a good high school education and i was a smart ass i could talk a good game i had good i was good in english class the rest i sort of cruised on who were your guys in english like who were your writers who were you modeling your life after at that time what was that like 1969 70
Guest:Yeah, I read Hunter S. Thompson in Rolling Stone as it was serializing.
Guest:Burroughs?
Guest:Yes, you're reading me all too well.
Guest:I quickly, that violent hyperbolic writing.
Guest:First it was Thompson, quickly fell into Burroughs, always liked Orwell.
Guest:i like a ripping good you know a crime novel too but yeah but i mean i didn't i was not a guy who was uh looking to be a writer i talk about it i just i like a lot of people i figured well if i do what did a lot of drugs um and and sort of uh created this byronic persona i would somehow automatically then be an artist i didn't actually do any writing to
Marc:But you had it in your mind.
Marc:That's how you were geared.
Marc:You weren't going to be a math guy.
Guest:You weren't going to be a. I wanted the smoking jacket and the opium pipe and the girls.
Marc:And right then, like at that time, when you're in high school, the whole culture is crashing.
Marc:I mean, everything's changing.
Marc:Like the wave of the 60s about over.
Guest:But that line of Thompson's about this is where the wave broke and rolled back.
Guest:That was exactly when I'm headed off to college.
Guest:So, you know, boning gray slick was out.
Guest:you know, free love, all of the stuff that looked good to me when I was 14, that was already clearly a bad joke at a bunch of, like, you know, scabies-infected hippies who would want to share my yogurt, which is something I definitely didn't want to do.
Guest:So I knew by the time I arrived at college, I didn't believe in anything.
Guest:And so when I got my first dishwashing gig, this was a revelation to me.
Guest:This was the first time in my life that I wanted anybody else's respect
Guest:that I cared about anybody else's opinion.
Guest:I liked the fact that you either were good or not.
Guest:You knew it right away.
Guest:It was the first time in my life I felt proud of myself.
Guest:I went home at the end of a busy dishwashing shift and I felt good about myself.
Guest:And I looked at the way the cooks were living and, okay, they didn't have smoking jackets or opium pipes, but they were getting girls and they were living like rock stars even long before the celebrity chef and I'm, these were, you know, nobody, you know, part-time carpet or line cooks, but they were living like Motley Crue and that looked good to me.
Marc:And what kind of stuff did you grow up with?
Marc:What was the pressure like when you grew up?
Marc:What was your family like?
Guest:My parents were well-read Kennedy Democrats.
Guest:You know, my dad worked for Columbia Records.
Guest:He did?
Guest:Classical music division.
Guest:But I grew up in a house full of books and records with the Mad Men era.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Very much buying into what I think we all believed was that automatically, just by virtue of growing up in New Jersey, you know, middle class, that we were going to all live better lives than our parents lived.
Guest:And we really wouldn't have to do anything to get that either.
Guest:And I was quickly disabused of that notion.
Marc:Were they pissed off at you initially?
Guest:They were horrified.
Guest:I was a bad seed.
Guest:I was angry, self-destructive, and I defined my entire... I mean, Hunter Thompson was a great writer to want to write like, but as a role model for a 13-year-old, I probably could have done better.
Guest:I very much... My entire persona as a 14-year-old was...
Guest:built around the records I listen to and the drugs that I do.
Marc:Yeah, that was the same way.
Marc:And I always gravitated towards fucked up people.
Marc:It was always, it was Keith Richards, it was Hunter, it was Morrison, it was Lenny Bruce, anyone who was fucked up.
Marc:I was like, that's my guy.
Marc:Shelly, Byron, however.
Guest:And it was instinctive.
Guest:It felt natural.
Guest:And my friends, the friends I chose for most of my adult life, were the people who did the same drugs that I did or wanted to do.
Guest:And so for better or worse, if that's something I'm proud of or ashamed of in particular, it worked out in the end after some bumps.
Guest:But I mean, I was a guy who very much wanted to be a heroin addict eventually.
Guest:I mean, my whole life was pointed towards that.
Guest:Yeah, I felt that, yeah.
Guest:You know, I was the guy who did more than anybody else.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if I was going to get laid, it was by being, you know, badder and more badly behaved and more reckless and self-destructive than the next guy.
Guest:It was a very successful strategy for the early 70s.
Guest:And, you know, I stuck with it for a couple of decades.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:naturally as these stories usually do it ended you know badly you know but but that's an interesting sort of trajectory i mean because like it seems to me that where you're at now and and what you're providing people and what you're providing yourself it came out of nowhere in a way it was it was a surprising manifestation for your life i wrote a short piece right for
Guest:Fellow line cooks and misfits.
Guest:And that was my highest aspiration was to entertain a few fellow line cooks and restaurant people in New York.
Marc:But at what point did you, were you ever gunning to be the best chef in the world?
Marc:I mean, at what point did that dream ever exist?
Guest:At a point early in the 80s, having rolled out of Culinary Institute, I went through a brief period on the basis of very little food.
Guest:reality, I certainly had convinced myself that I was much more talented and creative and important as a chef than I was.
Guest:But in fact, I was, you know, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Guest:And I had just a little knowledge and I never really worked with any great chefs.
Guest:I never put in the work.
Guest:I never held myself to the high standards.
Guest:I was getting, I had it very easy.
Guest:I rolled out of Culinary Institute at a time and not a lot of other cooks and chefs had
Guest:and I was instantly a chef, and I was getting paid, and I was getting allayed, and life was easy.
Marc:Well, if you had any originality at that time, I would imagine, or had any flair to yourself, you were probably somewhat of a rock star in your small circles anyways, right?
Guest:No one cared about chefs back then, and the fact is, at the end of the day, people didn't want to eat my food because it wasn't that good.
Guest:I bankrupted many owners who bought my line of shit.
Guest:What was your line of shit?
Guest:I'm a fucking genius.
Guest:I mean, I can read the La Rousse gastronomique and I know what these words mean.
Guest:Right, right, yeah.
Guest:So I just make them feel like idiots by saying, oh, well, this clearly calls for a matignon of vegetables.
Guest:They had no idea what I was talking about, but using a few French terms and being able to make a pâté en croute, that went a long way back then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not enough, but…
Marc:Because there weren't that many people who were coming out of culinary school that knew that shit, that were operating at that level, so you could really sort of dazzle them.
Guest:I was a smart ass who could talk a good game, and my friends who I'd come up with were like me.
Guest:But at the end of the day, it was not food that people wanted to eat, and to be honest with myself looking back,
Guest:It wasn't very good.
Guest:I mean, there were, even then, back in the 70s and 80s, there were people out there who had been to France and worked hard in great kitchens and learned their craft.
Guest:They were really good at it.
Guest:I never was.
Marc:Was that because the lifestyle was more of a priority?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That the brotherhood of pirates that is the kitchen and drugs was just more of a priority?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I changed jobs every couple of years.
Guest:I bounced from place to place.
Guest:I could always get a gig.
Guest:And I was your guy.
Guest:If you wanted someone who could crank out 300 brunches competently, I was your guy.
Guest:But if you want a...
Guest:you know, an exciting new restaurant that, you know, rich people are going to go to on a regular basis?
Guest:Probably not.
Marc:That wasn't you?
Marc:Well, I mean, it's sort of mind-blowing to me that, like, I watched...
Marc:I don't know when you did the episode, but I saw it recently and I thought it was very touching.
Marc:And it was odd because it wasn't an adventure episode.
Marc:It was just you and the guy from the magazine go to that small French restaurant.
Marc:And there was just some sort of emotional connection you had to this basic French food.
Guest:Well, I like food.
Guest:I mean, and I am a sentimental guy and I have reached a point in my life where I actually do have respect for my elders and people who did put in their time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I, you know, now that I'm older, you know, I am sentimental about stuff that I took for granted as a kid, you know, eating French food for the first time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah, I'm a softie about a lot of that.
Guest:And I also know that I'm lucky.
Guest:I found myself in a position to make television anywhere I want, about anything I want, any way I want.
Guest:And I'm essentially doing what I always did.
Guest:What I used to do in the kitchen was tell stories or at the bar tell stories.
Guest:And then I told them in books.
Guest:And now I can tell them on television.
Guest:But I'm basically...
Guest:It's all part of the same thing.
Guest:You're telling a story.
Guest:And just when you're making television, you have a whole bunch of other tools that you can use to get people to feel the way you want them to feel.
Marc:But it seems to me that your education, you know, coming through what you came through, which was really kind of hellish in a way.
Marc:I mean, it's a glorious hell because when I...
Marc:I had a friend who I used to work at a grill with.
Marc:I worked in college.
Marc:I was just a grill guy making pancakes and eggs and was very excited when I got through 20 dupes.
Marc:But doing the line stuff, I couldn't handle.
Marc:But the guy who I brought in, my roommate, went on to culinary school and is now an industrial chef of some kind.
Marc:But it seems that from your cooking and from what you had to learn there, that the way you talk about cooking
Marc:the kitchen and the way you talk about what you went through.
Marc:I mean, the education about ethics, morality, politics, relationships, loyalty, and then working in this weird gray area where you're almost a subculture in between the man and the rabble, that it was almost like its own universe, and that seems to have informed your entire life.
Guest:Well, a lot of things that I think that grownups learn, other people maybe learn in different ways, I learn
Guest:And for me, the most important thing I learned about anything really was as a dishwasher.
Guest:I learned to show up on time, to show respect for the people I work with.
Guest:I learned to become a guy who if I say I'm going to meet you tomorrow at 8 o'clock to see a movie, I will be there at 8 o'clock.
Guest:Simple lesson.
Guest:But I really took that to heart.
Guest:Doing, working hard and enjoying the respect and the camaraderie of the people I work with.
Guest:That was a big transformation for me as a wasteful kid.
Guest:Every other part of my life was a mess.
Guest:But I did have good work habits.
Guest:I did work hard.
Guest:I was competent.
Guest:You could rely on me to work at grill station.
Guest:So that was really the only constant in a life that was...
Guest:You know, headed to the usual sort of sad conclusion for people who think cocaine is a good idea that, you know, you know, heroin is always going to feel good.
Guest:How strung out did you get?
Guest:I got really strung out.
Guest:Were you banging it or just?
Guest:Yeah, you know, eight years on methadone to get out.
Marc:um it's not it's interesting to me that they like when in some parts of uh some of your stories where that like even when i was driving over here because you know i got 12 years sober and i you know i wasn't a dope dude but i was definitely a coke dude and a booze dude but like even when i was driving over here and i was queasy in the car because i was typing and shit and i didn't thought i was going to make it i had this fucking nauseousness but there's something in my brain that says you know getting through queasy is easy
Marc:That there are things you learn that only come from being a drug warrior of some kind.
Guest:Well, it's useful actually for me, especially with television, knowing what kind of really disgusting behavior you're capable of prevents you from starting to talk about yourself in the third person at any point in your life when you know how low you could go.
Guest:Well, when you've hurt and disappointed people and humiliated yourself for many years, you're not going to start complaining about the wrong bottled water.
Guest:The smell of the griddle is still pretty fresh in my memory.
Guest:And I still remember what it's like to... All the whiny bullshit stories you use to get by as a junkie.
Guest:It wasn't the...
Guest:It was the humiliation that got me out.
Guest:I think vanity was my, vanity saved me from drugs.
Guest:I was just really embarrassed and humiliated by what I'd see in the mirror every day.
Marc:And how much did you, like what years are we talking here?
Marc:Were you like persona non grata?
Marc:I mean, and the New York restaurant scene?
Guest:I burned a lot of bridges for sure.
Guest:No, there's always a job for somebody who can cook brunch.
Guest:This is a sad, this is why the smell of French toast is to this day something I can bear, or a hollandaise sauce.
Guest:I can't, because those are the bad times for me.
Guest:I'd go back to cooking brunch because people are always desperate for somebody, anybody, to at least work the two days a week doing a busy brunch.
Marc:So what your bottom looks like is Eggs Benedict.
Guest:yeah that's the bottom yeah with a little strawberry fan and a and a little orange twist that is the smell and feel of of utter defeat for me um but you know i burned there weren't a lot of people left who were going to lend me money anytime soon uh how'd you kick it how'd you finally get off a dope and coke
Guest:uh dope methadone uh and then again you know i was just tired of seeing junkies every day at the clinic and peeing in a in a you know a cup and then coke crack cocaine saved my life actually because i after a lifetime well after a lifetime of of of snorting coke suddenly you know you bought them out so quick on crack i mean i don't know how guys like george clinton you know it's like how how can you read about these guys who like smoking crack for 20 how can you
Marc:Do it.
Marc:You can feel your heart exploding and your brain exploding every time you take a hit.
Guest:After eight months, you're smoking the paint chips out of the carpet.
Guest:It's like, oh, it might be a rock.
Guest:It's like, how can you do that for 20 years?
Guest:That's something out here.
Guest:Genetics.
Marc:I guess.
Marc:So you've actually had those moments where you're like hearing voices and crawling around on the floor and like, you know, thinking about like, like who's listening to you through the wall.
Guest:Oh, you know, you know, putting tinfoil in the windows.
Guest:And here's something I really recommend against doing.
Guest:If you are still smoking crack, don't start buying like, you know, surveillance equipment out of catalogs.
Guest:You know, instead of I buy like parabolic microphones and listening devices from some little, you know, rinky security outfit.
Guest:So, you know, not only am I pretty convinced that the FBI are going to come tunneling through the wall at any minute, but I'm I'm ready for him.
Guest:You know, I'm stripped naked in a squatting position with my ear against the wall with an ear plug in listening.
Marc:And what were you prepared to say to them when they came in?
Marc:I knew it.
Marc:I just wanted advance warning.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:Like, drug stories are as good as restaurant stories.
Guest:They hurt, though.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Restaurant stories are good stories.
Guest:I mean, I'm sentimental about those.
Guest:I'm happy about those.
Guest:You know, I don't know that if I could go back in time and talk to myself at 14 or 15 that I would do things differently or listen to myself.
Guest:But I don't, you know, I wouldn't want to do that again.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, no.
Marc:I mean, when you were a kid, though, I mean, like, once you got to New York, like 1970, 1971, or whenever you ended up here after culinary school, I mean, punk rock must have been exploding.
Marc:The city must have just been on fire with fucking decadence.
Marc:I mean, were you part of that scene?
Marc:Were you able to see, like, the New York Dolls?
Guest:Yeah, I saw all the great bands.
Guest:And, of course...
Guest:You know, all the punk bands, you know, it's worth remembering.
Guest:They were all broke.
Guest:Nobody listened to that music, you know, it seemed.
Guest:And everybody was high on dope.
Guest:You know, that was a dope era for me.
Guest:You know, yeah, I was listening to a lot of great music.
Guest:But I was also, you know, vomiting publicly.
Guest:You know, regularly and happy about it.
Marc:that's see that's that weird drug warrior spirit is that like because when when i when i when i read your book in the first book just because i relate to that fucking moment and i can never understand what it is is that here you are fucking strung out you're high and the only and you're just happy that you didn't fall asleep doing your job i don't know how i did it honestly i mean i guess it's a young you know you're you're superman for a while but you know it it
Guest:It comes home eventually.
Guest:And now I'm at the point, I can't even round people on Coke.
Guest:I look at them and I'm like, in England, if you go to England, it's like 1986 there.
Guest:Everybody's doing Charlie.
Guest:And it's like,
Guest:Jeez, I hope I never spoke like that.
Guest:I probably did.
Guest:It's like every other word out of your mouth is a stream of bullshit.
Guest:You know, yammering, half-drunk fucking maniacs, and I can't even, you know, I feel like, you know, I start to pick up this sort of contact paranoia.
Guest:You know, I'm tweaking, and I feel like I've just done a big load of mannitol just looking at them.
Guest:Yeah, you got to shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:Talking to you, I got to give a shit right now.
Marc:Got a drip in the back.
Marc:I don't understand why I got that drip in my throat.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:But was there something about the continuity of food that, like, through your life... I mean, like, I don't know chefs.
Marc:I know a few, you know, but, like, even when... Like, I watch Chopped compulsively.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Only because...
Marc:The way the brain works in organizing food and the philosophy of food and the basic lessons of food and bringing stuff together.
Marc:I don't even know the judges' names.
Marc:But when I watch these people put shit together and see what they can create just out of the food intelligence.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You look at the guys on Top Chef, for instance.
Guest:I mean, these are really talented people.
Guest:At no point in my life as a professional could I have...
Guest:won Top Chef or even made it into the finals.
Guest:These are really, really talented, hard-working people who've made a lot of sacrifices to be that good.
Guest:You have the luxury of feeling that way about food.
Guest:To me, I fell into the business because I fell in love with the lifestyle.
Guest:I liked the people.
Guest:I liked that I was part of a cult.
Guest:I liked that I was making something with my hands that you were either rewarded or punished for immediately.
Guest:Now I guess I'm privileged to be able to travel a world of my stomach and really think about food and I guess all of my previous life in the life, 28 years, I guess allows me a perspective where I'm always thinking about who cooked this food.
Guest:It's not just what am I eating, it's who cooked it and why.
Guest:What drove them to cook this way?
Guest:Where does this food tradition come from?
Guest:There's always a story, and so it's a really interesting one.
Marc:And also you can tell, like I have found, and I think you'll validate this, is that when, like even if it's a good restaurant, if you go and there's no heart there, you can taste it.
Marc:Like there are restaurants, because I never quite understood that, where you go to a good restaurant and either the chef is gone or no one gives a fuck about the food anymore, and it's just shit.
Guest:Cynical food doesn't taste good.
Guest:And irony is something that's dangerous in food.
Guest:If it's sort of an ironic riff on something.
Guest:You have to be a romantic to cook well.
Guest:You have to actually like food yourself and appreciate a lot of different types of food to cook well.
Guest:You use the word heart.
Guest:Yeah, essentially, if you're a chef, a good chef.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or even a good cook.
Guest:You're in the pleasure business.
Guest:You have to have an understanding of what makes people happy and push those buttons.
Guest:You're right, yeah.
Guest:You'll notice, I mean...
Guest:There are some cooks really very technically accomplished, but eat their food.
Guest:It's like, I don't know whether this guy's ever been laid in his life.
Guest:He understands pleasure or making anybody else happy.
Guest:It's too cerebral.
Guest:It's an emotional thing.
Guest:And if you look at how chefs like to eat after work when they're not on the job, even really fine dining chefs,
Guest:They want somebody's mom's meatloaf.
Guest:They want a meatball hero, a good one.
Marc:It's amazing to me the similarities between basic good music, rock and roll, comedy, cooking, that there's something very immediate.
Marc:It's something anyone can do with a little bit of training to some degree.
Marc:Like if you know how to play guitar basically,
Marc:If you've got some heart, you're going to be able to pull something out of that.
Guest:It's interesting to see who musicians musicians are, who people in various industries choose as their sort of favorites, comedians, comedians.
Guest:They're usually the guys toiling in obscurity.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There are chefs chefs for sure.
Guest:Who are they?
Guest:Who are yours?
Guest:Guys like, I don't know, Wiley Dufresne for sure.
Guest:That's a guy who doesn't, I don't know to what extent he cooks for the public as much as he's cooking for himself.
Guest:He's cooking for other chefs.
Guest:He's asking himself hard questions.
Guest:He's working the line himself.
Guest:He hasn't made that transition as so many of his peers have to sort of
Guest:celebrity chef um he can't help himself he's he's got to cook as well as he can he's he's got to ask he's he's he's really trying to be as good as he can fergus henderson a guy in england who who's cooking basically simple traditional english food uh various people generally chefs who do very have focused on a particular area and and
Guest:are just doing that over and over again and trying to get it better and better and better.
Guest:There's a sushi chef in Japan who's made maybe the same 40 cuts of sushi for 70 years, and he's still trying to get it right.
Guest:There's a guy in Spain who does nothing but grill stuff.
Guest:That's where all the chefs want to eat.
Guest:Very straightforward, very soulful food that's devoid of bullshit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No tricks.
Guest:There's a lot of bullshit around, is there?
Guest:As with anything.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In terms of when you travel and stuff, I had this weird moment when I was at the diner over there, the Neptune Diner, right off of the whatever, by the Triborough Bridge when I lived in Queens, where I'd gone there late night just to get some pie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I saw two dudes in the back of the room that, I swear to you, having seen enough mafia movies, I was like, they just dumped a body.
Marc:And they were just sitting there.
Marc:Let's go for some pie.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I'm sitting there eating my pie with my fucking dumb notebook of jokes and maybe a William Burroughs book.
Marc:And they're there.
Marc:They probably just washed their hands of blood.
Marc:But the one thing that rises beyond good and evil is fucking pie.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That there's some part, there's something about food, and I know you must sense this when you travel around the world.
Marc:Because I always had this thing about when Pakistan got the nuclear bomb and India and Pakistan, there was tension.
Marc:That in my mind, having not been to the countries, but having loved the food, I thought, how can they be so upset they both have such great bread?
Marc:And you must sense that the human element, and I think it's part of your show and part of the spirit of it, that this food and what food represents culturally transcends almost anything.
Guest:Well, you know, it may not be to sit down with people and eat with them and express a little interest in their food and what makes them happy.
Guest:It may not be the answer to world peace, but it's a start.
Guest:I've been treated so well in places that I never thought I'd be treated well.
Guest:I've felt kinship with people with whom I have almost nothing in common.
Guest:I'm constantly sort of proven wrong about my preconceptions.
Guest:A place like Saudi Arabia, you know, I mean, I've...
Guest:There's this tremendous tradition chances are of hospitality built around food everywhere people respond Positively to someone a stranger who shows up and says listen.
Guest:I don't want to talk politics.
Guest:I don't really give a shit I'm sure we have some differences.
Guest:What do you eat?
Guest:What did your mom make you?
Guest:What do you eat around here?
Guest:Yeah, you like what makes you happy, right?
Guest:It's the beginning of a conversation It's something that I actually bring up a lot when I would talk about the tea party because
Guest:As a lefty Democrat, it's really easy for me to see all of the things that I find scary and offensive about the Tea Party.
Guest:But as I realized, I guess because I filmed in places like Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, mainland China, Bangladesh,
Guest:I've got dictatorships, I've got broken bread with ex-KGB officers, ex-Viet Cong cadre, with people from very fundamentalist Muslim sects.
Guest:I started when traveling around my own country to say, listen,
Guest:You know, why can't I be friends with Ted Nugent?
Guest:You know, why can't I find some common ground here?
Guest:I mean, they're angry, they're scared, they feel disenfranchised from, they feel the government has let them down.
Guest:I don't like how they're manifesting it.
Guest:I don't agree with what they say, anything.
Guest:But I definitely understand anger, disenfranchisement.
Guest:I mean, if they were Egyptian, we'd kind of be rooting for them.
Guest:We don't even know what they want in Egypt.
Guest:We know they were unhappy with their government.
Marc:And Ted Nugent will go out and kill an animal with you.
Guest:He's a buddy.
Guest:Is he?
Guest:Largely built around food and...
Guest:We don't have much else in common, but we both – I guess I would say this.
Guest:What do I have in common with a tea party?
Guest:I'm guessing we both like beer and we both like barbecue.
Guest:That's something.
Guest:And hopefully it could be the beginning of some kind of conversation.
Guest:To sneer at each other relentlessly seems –
Guest:counterproductive.
Guest:And I don't know that we could have a discussion about the issue, a sensible discussion about the issues.
Guest:But I'm guessing, in fact, I know, because I spent a lot of time in gun country, in hunt country, in red state America.
Guest:Can have a good time with those people who you know of course I can and I there and and I and I even like them and I and I respect them I don't necessarily agree with them, but I can I've sat down at many tables with people whose political views and view of the world and evolution is completely Insanely over the top of with some you're talking head on Fox saying it I would be you know bleeding from my ears I
Guest:But you sit down at somebody's table and, you know, there they are with their kids and they're feeding you biscuits.
Guest:It's hard not to find something to love.
Marc:No, absolutely.
Marc:I mean, I can make those people laugh.
Marc:I can entertain those people.
Marc:But what's interesting is a lot of times when you're sitting across the table enjoying barbecue or biscuits with those people, in their brain, they're like, we'll get him.
Marc:He'll come around to the way we think.
Marc:They're still on a basic level.
Guest:Well, that's better than the alternative would just fuck that guy.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:No, I agree with you.
Guest:you know, I, I, I don't know.
Guest:I guess by traveling around the world, I just, how come I'm giving all these people a pass?
Guest:You know, there are a lot of countries that I love where they have, have refined, um, you know, in Southeast Asia, they've really, their attitudes are towards race and skin color.
Uh,
Guest:more extreme and unforgiving than, you know, your most, you know, you know, Ku Klux Klan do.
Guest:How come it's, how come they get a pass?
Guest:Well, it's just, you know, this moral cultural relativism that I practice around the world, what I've been foreign cultures.
Guest:You know, how come I got to bend everybody to my way of thinking here in order to have dinner with them?
Marc:I just I'm Well, I know I'm trying to you know I'm trying to cut my own country a break a little bit in spite of the fact that you know where I come from in the way I I think that what you're saying is is is something I deal with a lot in in in dealing with with people in general is that
Marc:you can see the heart of people you know and and a lot of times people who are wrong-minded are not necessarily bad-hearted people they may be misguided and they may have a belief system that is is malignant and horrible but it's one of those things where you just sit down and you and you eat with somebody you talk to somebody you walk away going he's not such a bad guy granted you know he exterminated the heart of what he
Guest:I mean, the best example is I cannot tell you how many times I've heard it in Iraq.
Guest:I've heard it in Turkey.
Guest:I've heard it in Saudi Arabia.
Guest:You're sitting around.
Guest:You're having a good time.
Guest:People are going out of their way to feed you.
Guest:Your host will, with his hand, pick out the best pieces of lamb and a little bit of this, a little bit of that, constantly making sure you're getting the best.
Guest:having a great time, you're telling jokes, chances are they watch American television, wherever you are, they like Seinfeld, they like Friends, they've seen all those shows, they grew up with them, they've got that TV, American English, but then casually over dessert, it's like, so, is it true?
Guest:World Trade Center, inside job, yes.
Guest:The Jews did it, of course, didn't they?
Guest:And it's like, oh, God, oh, no, oh, God, again.
Marc:But what about that moment?
Marc:I mean, because I've dealt with that moment, too.
Marc:And how do you deal with it?
Guest:With a straight face, say, no, of course not.
Guest:That's ridiculous.
Guest:But what are you going to do?
Guest:I mean, a lot of the world,
Guest:A lot of the world that I visit cannot imagine that any occurrence, anything, it's the CIA and the Mossad working together, all powerful, they control everything, nothing.
Guest:It couldn't have happened without their saying so.
Guest:Because in their view...
Guest:This is who runs the world.
Guest:I'm not apologizing.
Guest:It's a deeply discouraging moment to hear again.
Guest:This sort of sweet-faced, goofy guy has been literally hugging you all night and feeding you totally guilelessly.
Guest:Look you in the face and say something like that.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:The Jews.
Marc:They run everything.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:There's no one's that organized number one and you know, well, you know What's the greatest argument against any conspiracy is of course in this country?
Guest:One of the great things about it is we're really bad at that You know if four people know about something that's too many already because one of them will we know I get yeah one of them will go on to write a memoir the other one will end up indicted and ratting everybody else out so I just I have a very low tolerance for jumbo conspiracies to start with but that one in particular is
Guest:If I heard it from a colleague at work, I would get completely berserko and get up in their face.
Guest:What the fuck is the matter, you sick, twisted freak?
Guest:Un-fuck yourself right now and maybe read a book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I guess that's exactly the point.
Guest:Why do I sit there and smile and say, okay, I disagree with you.
Guest:You're wrong when I'm sitting as a guest at somebody's home in Saudi Arabia or Uzbekistan or Kurdish Turkey.
Guest:How come I'm not as angry?
Marc:Yeah, it's because you're sitting face to face with somebody that, you know, on some level has been wired that way.
Marc:Either they've been told that they've been misinformed that.
Marc:And I think that I guess, do you walk away humiliated or still hopeful for human beings in the future?
Yeah.
Guest:You know, I think, well, you know, they were nice and, you know, they they like, you know, they like me.
Guest:They like me and they think Seinfeld's funny.
Guest:I mean, it's hope for the world.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Africa gets troubling, too.
Guest:You see, you know, you know, genital mutilation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:How bad could anything be?
Guest:But I don't walk around Africa saying, okay, I have a zero tolerance.
Guest:You've got to stop that right now, young man.
Guest:And I totally reject all of your many other practices that I find abhorrent.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:How do you be a good person and travel?
Guest:The best I can do is to be a good guest.
Guest:I talk about the grandma rule a lot.
Guest:I try to behave when traveling like I'm at my grandmother's house.
Guest:I hate her food, and she may be a right-wing crackpot, but I'm going to have seconds.
Guest:I'm going to smile and say, thank you, grandma.
Guest:I really appreciate it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, it's like even today, like I drove up, I've never stayed at this hotel before.
Marc:We're in the middle of Shtetl Williamsburg here.
Marc:You know, I'm a third generation Jew, you know, brought up, you know, relatively conservative, but not much pressure.
Marc:I never was taught how to use God.
Marc:And when I drive through this neighborhood, I'm driving, I was nervous because I'm like, oh, my God, these clowns.
Marc:I mean, what are you kidding me?
Marc:And these are people that I'm supposed to be my people, but I couldn't feel more different than them.
Marc:But I imagine if I sat down with them and ate their, you know, strange Polish Ukrainian, you know, weird traditional food that I would.
Marc:Yeah, I'd be OK.
Marc:Yeah, I'd feel warm about it.
Marc:But I think that you don't want to start talking about the West Bank or about it.
Marc:Yeah, that's going to happen.
Marc:You know, Israel is really hard on the Palestinian.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I guess instinctively I.
Guest:I'm against certainty more than anything else.
Guest:I just got this tattoo, actually.
Guest:It basically says in ancient Greek, I suspend judgment.
Guest:It comes from this whole notion of the early skeptics who talked about their belief was, I know nothing.
Guest:In fact, I know nothing for sure, and in fact, I'm not even sure about that.
Guest:I like doubt, and I abhor certainty.
Guest:So whether it's a religious thing or political, anybody who's absolutely sure of anything, I'm already...
Guest:very wary of.
Marc:And when I see doubt... Yeah, even just confidence bothers me.
Guest:You know, at a meal, you see people get their guard down.
Guest:And maybe I take that for uncertainty.
Guest:I'm looking for cracks in whatever their belief system is.
Guest:It's just the fact that you sit down with someone, eat, maybe drink.
Guest:There's a vulnerability to it.
Guest:Vulnerability is good.
Marc:Yeah, definitely.
Marc:And I think that's what's interesting about coming from a kitchen is that
Marc:In the way you portray it, a lot of them are misfits.
Marc:A lot of them are borderline criminals, and they all have this juice to be in this.
Marc:There's something almost like life is on the line in the kitchen, that there's a camaraderie to it.
Marc:But you also get all these cats that are just fucking loose screws, and they can't help...
Marc:But they can't hide their vulnerability.
Guest:Well, you know, chefs have this, particularly chefs, have this image of megalomania and certainty, and they're autocratic.
Guest:During the shift, you know, you're yelling, you're screaming, it's lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Guest:But the reason most people became chefs in the first place, I think, or many, is they sensed very early on this either inadequacy or awkwardness with communicating or, you know...
Guest:working in a normal workplace where you'd have to relate with the outside world and interact in a way that most people who work in banks or traditional businesses can easily.
Guest:So I think actually most people in the restaurant business, most cooks and certainly most chefs, you know, like me, at root, pretty insecure.
Guest:And they found a safe place where there are other damaged people or refugees or uncertain people who you can band together into a pretty rigid system.
Guest:There are absolutes.
Guest:There are certain things you must do, you have to do.
Guest:There is good and evil at all times.
Guest:They're nice and cleanly drawn.
Guest:This is good, this is bad.
Guest:But on the other hand, all of their other...
Guest:foibles are tolerated.
Guest:It's a very forgiving business.
Guest:It's very open to people from anywhere in the world.
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Marc:And at the end of the day, you're still saying, like, here, have some cake.
Marc:Look, here's this beautiful piece of lamb.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, that's a fucking amazing thing.
Guest:And you're surrounded by people who understand you.
Guest:They get this weird...
Guest:You're working when everybody else is playing.
Guest:You're playing when everybody else is asleep.
Marc:I like this whole no-one-knows-anything idea because I've had to come to that.
Marc:Were you always at that?
Guest:I think I certainly went through a period where I was much more hard-line ideological.
Guest:I came out of the American left, and I absolutely...
Marc:you know these were the bad guys and these were the good guys uh and where are you with that after you know sharing apple pie with ted nugent and maybe hunting a pig and you know having biscuits with with people who were who were angry and somewhat dangerous um have you become disillusioned no um
Marc:I thought what you said in the edition of your first book that I read about the class situation in kitchens and behind celebrities, specifically chefs, was pretty powerful.
Guest:Well, it used to be a class thing.
Guest:I mean, the chef's profession used to be a thing for the underclass.
Guest:It is now not.
Guest:I mean, it's a glamour profession now.
Guest:But what are your points?
Guest:One of the joys of my life is getting Ted Nugent to agree with me on something.
Guest:We agree.
Guest:He agrees with me reluctantly on the Michelle Obama school lunch initiative.
Guest:Now, he's a guy who thinks that the Obamas are basically Mr. Mrs. Satan, at least.
Guest:And he said as inflammatory shit as anyone ever has.
Guest:He despises them and sees them as the enemy.
Guest:But as I put it to him, how could you be against...
Guest:what she's saying.
Guest:You're a patriot.
Guest:This is a military readiness issue.
Guest:How can we... He's also an environmentalist.
Guest:So getting him to agree on this one area or at least see merit to an argument, okay, maybe I'm overstating the case, but we've actually appeared on TV and I've gotten him to come down on the side that...
Guest:you know he agrees with her and thinks that what she's doing is good i think that's quite for me it's a tiny victory plus i got him to drink a beer and i think it was like the second of his life so you know i don't know whether i'm going to bring him around any further than that but you know it it it feels good right you're not going to stop him from going to the militia meetings i don't think we're going to be you know you know
Guest:Hugging it out at the Democratic National Convention anytime soon.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But like in terms of how you see, like what you said there is essentially that the real people that run, in all of your experience I see this to be true, that the people that really run the restaurant business or make the food happen is not the chefs.
Right.
Guest:Well, they can't do it.
Guest:I mean, a chef is a cook who leads.
Guest:And so the qualities that make a chef a good chef are not just talent with food and creativity and good standards and technical skills.
Guest:It's the ability to lead a lot of people from very different backgrounds.
Guest:And the fact is that the backbone of the restaurant business, a very large and steady part of that,
Guest:uh that the business as a whole cannot do without are latinos principally mexicans and central americans i mean in 25 years or 20 years as an employer as a chef employer um never never once in that entire time did an american-born kid ever walk into my restaurant and ask for a dishwasher job a night cleanup job or even a prep job
Guest:those jobs are filled.
Guest:I started as a seasonal help, but in New York City, never.
Guest:So my feeling is, I had this conversation with Nugent.
Guest:There's plenty of room for honest disagreement over who we're gonna let in and how many but who's here now and what they're doing I don't think there's any question about that the restaurant business in America cannot survive the backbone that the real workers the people who were there year after year who are training you know overeducated white boys like me who rolled out of the Culinary Institute when I arrived at a kitchen in New York
Guest:The guy who's taking me under his wing and showing me my job is a Mexican guy who worked his way up from dishwasher and has been there steady, doing it year after year.
Guest:That's just the way it is, and it's something of an issue with me as far as let's at least recognize and cut a break, at very least, for the people who've been doing it all these years.
Marc:How's your spite factor?
Marc:I mean, I mean, now that you're comfortable and you seem to have found a way for yourself.
Marc:I mean, like I know, you know, as a comic and I feel like we're kindred spirits in some ways that, you know, I was driven by a certain sense of entitlement in that, you know, in that I, you know, I felt like certain people didn't deserve the recognition that they have.
Marc:And I have to assume that because do you feel like you're still an outsider, you know, in the world of chefs?
Guest:No, honestly, when Kitchen Confidential hit, and it was an overnight success, all the chefs, it was nothing but love and free food from that point on.
Guest:And all the chefs I've spoken to were like, well, it's nice to see one of us
Guest:kind of make it out telling the truth and it was you know it helped that you know the book was funny yeah it was you know true a lot of chefs who had very little in common with my particularly undistinguished career at least had worked at some you know they they knew that life you know even the old guard french guys were really really good to me so i didn't get any of that i got no spite out of out of chefs um and and i because success came so late to me
Guest:I was not sort of spoiling.
Guest:I didn't feel that way.
Guest:I mean, I was shocked to still be alive and gainfully employed in a restaurant at 44.
Guest:I felt like I was on my second life.
Guest:So to suddenly get a third one, especially a third one this good, I feel pretty damn good about that.
Marc:But like along with politics, I mean, do you ever watch the Food Network and go, fucking come on.
Guest:Well, yeah, I still, I look at that, I mean, I like food, and I respect food, and I respect people who make food well.
Guest:And I even respect people who make food do the best they can to make it badly.
Guest:But to deliberately make bad food, to make it your shtick, to just sort of wallow in...
Guest:you know really horrendous food uh and portray it as a as a as a i just yeah it makes me angry it i i do i do yell at my tv a lot it's like oh my god don't i can't believe you're doing that you know that is a lie you know you do not have to buy a pre-chopped onion it takes a another second and a half you know
Guest:You know, don't tell me that that is down home cooking.
Guest:You know, putting a fucking double cheeseburger, bacon, two eggs beneath a, you know, between two Krispy Kreme donuts, that is just no kind of southern cooking.
Guest:And that's no kind of responsible.
Guest:That's just bad.
Guest:You know, it's going to get you a lot of attention, but it's morally indefensible.
Guest:I mean, I'm a guy who likes butter.
Guest:Feel free to kill yourself with food.
Guest:I'm hardly a role model for healthy eating or even an advocate for one.
Guest:But, you know, if you give me a half, you know, if you offered me $100,000 to be a spokesman for, you know, Cargill or Smithfield, you know,
Guest:Or told me that I could make a lot more money if I encourage people to eat, you know, a cheeseburger between Krispy Kreme donuts.
Guest:I wouldn't.
Guest:I don't know whether it's integrity that keeps me from doing that or just vanity.
Guest:You know, I would feel bad about myself if I did that.
Marc:Well, you know, what's interesting is that that we don't get good food a lot of times.
Marc:And it's like I went to I was in Denver.
Marc:I'm not a big pizza guy.
Marc:I eat kind of the same thing all the time, but I like good food, but there's so little of it that I come and count.
Marc:That's why when I tweeted you about Cleveland and you sent me over to Simon's restaurant and his old sous chef, Jonathan, who runs that greenhouse tavern, they're like right there.
Marc:And they're the only vital.
Marc:I mean, I went to both of them and the food was fucking mind blowing.
Guest:There's a lot of good food in Cleveland, actually.
Guest:This notion that you've got to be wealthy or live in a major city to eat well, it's nonsense.
Guest:It is, completely.
Guest:So where I get angry is that if people are working just as hard or even harder to make bad food, when it's easier and often cheaper to make something decent, I get cranky about that.
Marc:It just requires attention and a little more thoughtfulness and maybe buying something that's a little better.
Guest:Or just is that attitude of, you know, I know what I know.
Guest:I don't care.
Guest:You know, spaghetti and red sauce.
Guest:It's like 20 minutes, man.
Guest:You can make it like an Italian.
Marc:So I go to this place in Denver.
Marc:I think it's called Asteria Marco or something.
Marc:And apparently, I didn't know this going in, but I'm not a huge burrata guy.
Marc:But I got it, and it was like, when I put it in my mouth, I felt like a rush.
Marc:I'm like, what's the magic in this?
Marc:And apparently this guy had gotten into a little trouble, I don't know if he's still doing it, from buying unpasteurized milk from one of the farmers.
Marc:So that was the first time as an American I'd ever experienced the way it's supposed to taste because of regulations.
Guest:Oh, if you're lucky enough to get like...
Guest:Farm fresh eggs when you never had one.
Guest:This is something poor people all over the South have been having for years.
Guest:They know.
Guest:We don't know.
Guest:In the city, it was, wow, this is the way it's supposed to be.
Guest:It's easy for me.
Guest:I instinctively, when I see something like a chicken Caesar, I get cranky.
Guest:Or like a pasta, like Olive Garden.
Guest:It's like...
Guest:I am a snob about some things.
Guest:Why would people settle for that?
Marc:A lot of times they don't have access to other things, but you might as well cook at home.
Marc:But the only reason people don't cook at home is they don't want to do fucking dishes.
Guest:I try not to be a snob.
Guest:It's something I'm at war with myself.
Guest:I try not to, but there are some things I see that just make me really, really cry.
Guest:It's easy for me to be condescending.
Marc:No, but condescending corporate food is not snobbery.
Guest:Yeah, but if I go to a restaurant and they're making...
Guest:Like I'm a sushi purist.
Guest:If you're putting barbecue pork inside a nori roll, it's snobby of me, but I get cranky.
Guest:And I probably will make a rude remark.
Guest:It's an ugly side of me, but there it is.
Marc:And the foundation of that is what?
Guest:I've just, I've had good sushi and it's a simple three or four ingredients.
Guest:So don't clutter it.
Guest:It's like when you've had a properly cooked spaghetti and fresh tomato sauce.
Guest:It doesn't even have to be fresh tomatoes, just canned plum tomatoes, a sliver of garlic, a leaf of basil, properly cooked pasta, 20 minutes, thank you very much.
Guest:And then you go to some place where it took them 45 minutes and 12 ingredients to completely fuck up a bowl of pasta.
Guest:Yeah, I get really cranky about it.
Marc:But you know exactly how that happens, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, or when you've been lucky enough to have somebody's Mexican mom make you a taco and then you eat one of these cheese whiz varieties.
Guest:Yeah, I just feel angry for all humanity.
Marc:So what do you think is, what is that missing piece?
Marc:If these people know the basic idea of what good food is and there's so much bad food out there, is it just that it becomes heartless?
Guest:Well, there's a heartless, cynical thing.
Guest:It's like, this has worked for us so far.
Guest:So let's just reproduce that.
Guest:I mean, it's the same with television or the record business.
Guest:It's something I fight about or think about a lot of my show.
Guest:If I just did a show last week that's sort of a heartwarming family show, as happens –
Guest:And it's a huge rating success.
Guest:And critically, everybody loves it.
Guest:I'm going to make damn sure not to do that again this week.
Guest:I'm going to do everything I can to subvert that.
Guest:I just to try it.
Guest:Well, gee, clearly they like this.
Guest:Let's reproduce that again and again and again.
Guest:I'm just not wired to be able to do that.
Guest:But you have done it.
Guest:I'm not wired to be... No, I will not... But like when you're working in a kitchen, you got to do 300 brunches.
Guest:Oh, well, that's your... Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And listen, I mean, a lot of people don't have the luxury of doing what they want.
Guest:No, right.
Guest:But I'm instinctively...
Guest:against you know if you're doing something cynically meaning i know this is crap but people i know it's crap right people like it i mean i've worked in restaurants for most of much of my career where i was cooking food i didn't like for for people i didn't care about for bosses i hated i was as big a whore as a person could be um maybe that's why i i i look at you know what i look at an outfit that could do better but chooses not to yeah i'm
Guest:Maybe it's a professional in me.
Guest:Maybe it's the snob in me.
Guest:Maybe it's a bit of both.
Guest:But yeah, I'm just saying...
Guest:I'm cranky.
Guest:I'm evangelical about it.
Guest:I wish I could grab everybody the ear and say, listen, this is how easy it is to do this dish.
Guest:It's not as hard as they'd have you believe.
Guest:They're not doing you any favor giving you this.
Guest:Anybody's mom 50 years ago could do better than this.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And how has the industry changed for the better?
Marc:I mean, are you nostalgic for the camaraderie of all the insanity that you went through?
Guest:I miss being able to scratch your balls in a kitchen.
Guest:Back in the day, they didn't have open kitchens because somebody gave a shit what went on in there.
Guest:The last person they wanted to see or hear from was the chef.
Guest:Sure, I miss the hijinks now, a lot of that activity, but the fact is...
Guest:I had my time.
Guest:I had my 28 years.
Guest:I don't miss snorting coke through penne because I don't miss snorting coke.
Guest:I miss, like anything, you look back on your younger, stupider years and I miss that.
Guest:But I'm happy for the industry and I'm happy for the people working in it because now people care about what the chef thinks.
Guest:You know, there are real chances, real opportunities for a limited number of people to actually make some kind of a success and maybe even have a life someday, you know, outside of the restaurant business.
Guest:You know, chefs have power.
Guest:You know, in the old days, no one, you know, you go in, you tell the chef what you want.
Guest:You know, I like this and I like it this way, my good man.
Guest:And stop to it.
Guest:They're Chef Boyardee.
Guest:Now people are more likely than ever to go and say, what does a chef think is good?
Guest:Really?
Guest:I haven't had that before.
Guest:I'll try that.
Guest:So you see people like Mario Batali who create their own markets and create an appetite for dishes that no one, everyone had forgotten how to eat.
Guest:You know, no one knew how to eat.
Guest:You know, all those oily little fishes and bone marrow and like lardos and schnauz and cheeks.
Guest:You know, that's the people like me.
Guest:Most chefs, they know that to be the good stuff.
Guest:So when you get somebody like Mario who uses their new power and celebrity to coerce and seduce people into eating these things or showing interest in them, that's surely good for the world.
Marc:I'll eat just about anything.
Marc:I'll try just about anything.
Marc:But in terms of everywhere you've traveled, what is the one stream?
Marc:You've eaten shit that you probably didn't like.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's made properly.
Guest:Well, I've eaten a lot of bad food that's cooked badly, too.
Guest:But I've eaten a lot of poor people food that's using basically hooves and snouts and scraps.
Guest:There are food traditions that grew up around poverty, deprivation, interrupted supply trains, tough seasons, military situations.
Guest:And a lot of people in this world, all of the great cooking cultures, developed the great cuisines and the enduring dishes because they had to.
Guest:And I think this is something that kind of gets lost.
Guest:We're at this weird point now.
Guest:Because chefs are more empowered, they're convincing their public to eat all of these peasant dishes that they love.
Guest:So the working poor are saving up to eat at Red Lobster or to get a steak.
Guest:Whereas in the fine dining restaurants, people are paying top dollar for stuff that the poor used to have to eat.
Guest:You know, what are the hot menu items now?
Guest:You know, pork belly, cheeks, you know, organ meat, you know, pig head.
Guest:You know, you see that everywhere now in one form or another.
Guest:This is all the stuff of dirt poor.
Marc:But the French would look down on it.
Guest:That's the heart and soul of French cooking and of Italian cooking and of Chinese cooking and Brazilian and Spanish.
Guest:It's the heart and soul of it.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:You go to those countries, you talk to any of the chefs, that's the stuff that they grew up eating more often than not.
Guest:And the stuff they're eating more than ever now, the difference is now they're putting it on their menus.
Marc:I spent a little time in China.
Marc:I've been to Australia.
Marc:I haven't been to a lot of the Asian countries.
Marc:But the one thing that fascinates me about watching cooking is that there's a philosophy behind it and a logic behind all these different cuisines.
Marc:Can you explain how Chinese food works to me?
Guest:Well, I mean, it depends.
Guest:You're using, well, they had an, remember they had, like the French in some respects, they had the food of the poor, meaning whatever we had, you know, we better find out how to, it may not be so good now, but we're going to figure out a way to cook it to make it good because we don't have the luxury.
Guest:So you had hunger as a driving engine for that cuisine.
Guest:And you also had this huge imperial centralized aristocracy where a lot of people were working 24-7 trying to figure out new ways to impress and delight and amuse the super rich.
Guest:So there are two engines at work.
Guest:One, it's, okay, this chicken leg, it sucks.
Guest:I've got to figure out how to make it good.
Guest:The other one would be this chicken leg.
Guest:I have to figure out.
Guest:Maybe there's something really great in there that I just haven't figured it out yet.
Guest:Give me a couple hundred years and I will figure it out.
Guest:So those are two really principal engines of gastronomy.
Guest:And the old joke that the Chinese will eat anything is kind of true.
Guest:But that's why they were also, you know, that is the mother cuisine of the world and probably the greatest and most diverse and amazing.
Marc:And the French sort of defined modern cooking.
Guest:Well, certainly they ran with, they took a lot of traditions from all over Europe and, you know, they developed a lot of dishes like farm people do or did all over Europe and they refined it.
Guest:And again, for an aristocracy, they had a working class cuisine that was pretty cool.
Guest:And they developed it and refined it for, you know, their cruel overlords.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And what was your problem with Italian cuisine?
Guest:I love Italian cuisine.
Guest:I'm married to an Italian.
Guest:I'm really big into, you know, I'm happiest eating a bowl of a bowl of some, you know, stripes or.
Marc:But early on, you had a problem with it?
Marc:Because in the book, I thought that you sort of were like, you know, I couldn't cook it.
Marc:I wasn't going to do it.
Marc:And that you went through a transition.
Guest:Well, you know, my dad was French.
Guest:And that was what I knew.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, born there.
Guest:But an American guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that's, you know, I came up in a French system.
Guest:And when you went to culinary school back in the day, I mean, that was the system.
Guest:You learn French first.
Guest:So, I mean, I'm just a product of that.
Guest:But these days I'm happiest eating basically cheap Italian wine and a sloppy bowl of pasta just about anywhere in Italy.
Guest:Yeah, is that your favorite cuisine?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know if it's my favorite cuisine, but I'm just generally happiest with a big crust of bread, a bowl of pasta, or some sausage, and drinking some rough local wine.
Guest:One of these places where you ask the owner, gee, this wine is good.
Guest:Who made this wine?
Guest:And he points at some old guy at the bar and says, he made it.
Guest:I like that.
Guest:How about Eastern European food?
Guest:You know, communism, not good for food.
Guest:And the Soviets really just, they didn't kill the chefs.
Guest:They just, they had a very, they saw enjoying yourself at the table as bourgeois and possibly treacherous, you know, just bad for the revolution.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And they managed to suffocate it.
Guest:So a lot of Eastern Europe, they really obliterated what cuisine was there.
Guest:And there were a lot of places where it really hasn't come back.
Guest:It's tough.
Yeah.
Marc:Now, in terms of your past and how you live now, well, you're not smoking now, but you did for a long time.
Marc:Yeah, 38 years.
Marc:Yeah, I'm taking these nicotine lozenges.
Guest:Well, I was at Chantix.
Guest:I was taking the that makes some people stabby or suicidal.
Guest:It works for me.
Guest:If I start cheating, I go back on.
Marc:Yeah, I haven't smoked in like 10 years.
Marc:But how do you reconcile, you're able to manage booze and mild shit?
Marc:I mean, obviously, when you come through Coke and dope, I mean.
Guest:I'm a freak in that regard.
Guest:I never stopped drinking.
Guest:I was a guy like, you know, and I drink a lot on the show.
Guest:If I go into a restaurant, I drink.
Guest:But I've just, I've never had liquor at home or I've never, you know, I've never sat in front of a TV with a beer.
Marc:It's not the thing that's going to kill you.
Guest:It was just not, it was never my thing.
Guest:I like it.
Guest:It's part of my life.
Guest:But for whatever reason, I've had, I've drank too much of my life.
Guest:I mean, if I was in a work situation, you know, I'd come home drunk every night.
Guest:But once I'm out of the work situation and left my own devices, I'm not going to be, not going to have a problem with alcohol.
Right.
Guest:I don't know what to say about that, because generally, you know, if you've had a problem with cocaine and heroin, as I did, they tell you, you know, that's it for you, pal.
Guest:You know, you're... No, I know.
Marc:Yeah, I know what to do to that.
Guest:You take the pledge, and that's the only way that... Basically, I don't know anyone else like me.
Guest:I know a lot of ex-dopers that do alcohol.
Guest:I know a lot of them.
Guest:Everybody I know who's in a coke and heroin, they don't drink at all now.
Guest:You know, they had to completely stop...
Guest:I was a pothead for my whole life, but I'm a dad now.
Guest:The way I see it, I might need my brain at any moment.
Guest:My daughter skins her knee or splits her lip.
Guest:I'm not going to be like, oh, wow, what am I going to do?
Guest:I can't handle this, man.
Guest:You got to show up.
Guest:I got to show up.
Guest:Maybe if I'm on the road, if I'm in the empty quarter of the desert someplace with my crew and we finish shooting, I'll climb up on a dune and smoke to the local.
Guest:But again, we just shot in Amsterdam.
Guest:you know of course we go to the coffee house we're shooting a dope scene and you know they're bringing out all these brands and i'm not allowed to smoke on you can't see me take a huff on camera you can certainly see me talk about it you can see the smoke coming it's clear what i'm doing yeah but of course i'm getting high and you know how you know when you when you smoke and weed suddenly you start feeling like wow i'm like everyone's looking at me yeah yeah well everyone was you know there's like i look up i'm like i'm having a hard time handling this
Guest:It's like everyone's looking at me and there are people, three cameras looking at me, waiting for me to say something.
Guest:And I'm just kind of crawling inside myself.
Guest:I just want to slither away.
Guest:Not comfortable.
Marc:That's a good episode to look forward to.
Marc:What's the most layered cuisine that you've come in contact with?
Marc:Where the history... Deep, yeah.
Guest:Wow, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, Brazil's pretty interesting because you've got the African, the indigenous, the Portuguese, you know, all of these influences.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like Singapore, Malaysia, China, Straits, really interesting area because you've got Indian, Malay, and many different types of Chinese and Western, all who've been living together and intermarrying and cooking together for, you know,
Marc:centuries see that's really really layered and deep and and and uh people grow up cooking all three of those cuisines in those areas and if you know about cooking what you do and and and if you like some people are freaks for food history and and for you know where things are sourced from that you can really appreciate that the depth of a single dish of food can you know run centuries and multi-cultures
Guest:Well, look at all these dishes like, you know, cocco vin or, you know, a lot of these dishes that you look at, like slow-cooked dishes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Man, I taste those and I look at those and I think about, man, it took a lot of time for them to figure out how to make this good.
Yeah.
Guest:A lot of people suffered to get to this point.
Guest:You know, a lot of these dishes were created by working people, farmers mostly, who really, they didn't have time to cook.
Guest:And they didn't, maybe they'd have a tough rooster, and that was about it.
Guest:If they had a chicken, they'd sell the chicken.
Guest:All they had was a tough rooster.
Guest:So a dish like coccovain sounds fancy, but really it was a means to throw a pot on the leftovers, the coals,
Guest:You know, throw a tough bird in there with some cheap wine or some water, some onions and some starch from the farm.
Guest:They'd go out, work the fields all day, and you come back and you got something that hopefully is delicious.
Guest:It's about as simple as it gets and it's answering some really tough problems.
Guest:So a lot of times when I'm eating things, I'm thinking, what were the problems that they solved with this dish?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, that's interesting, huh?
Marc:So Coco Van's one thing, but I mean, you must be able to experience that in any culture.
Guest:Well, Escargot, another one.
Guest:I mean, you really think it was a gourmet who invented, you know, the first guy to eat a snail.
Guest:Desperation.
Guest:What a hungry motherfucker, right?
Guest:Problem.
Guest:All I've got is snails.
Guest:Solution.
Guest:Maybe if I put enough garlic butter on that thing, you know, I could eat it.
Marc:What other places haven't you gone?
Guest:Haven't been to Israel yet.
Guest:Want to go.
Guest:Myanmar, Burma, but kind of waiting for the government to change there.
Guest:Iran, again, I'd like the government situation to change a little before I go there.
Guest:You don't want to be doing your show as a hostage?
Guest:I don't want to give money to people who are, you know, possibly, you know, building IEDs.
Guest:You know, I feel, you know, there's an arbitrary.
Guest:I go to a lot of countries where they do bad things, arguably, but you got to draw a line somewhere.
Guest:And for me, I've heard nothing but wonderful things about.
Guest:If you go to Iran, apparently the people are great.
Guest:The food is supposed to be spectacular.
Guest:It's an amazing history, beautiful country, but it's not an attractive government.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so you've gone to most of the Asian countries.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I haven't been to Burma, Myanmar.
Guest:And, I mean, China's big.
Guest:I could make TV in China for the rest of my life and still die pig ignorant.
Guest:I would know nothing.
Guest:That's part of the fun, actually, is...
Guest:you know you you you know how when you when you go someplace he goes holy you know i will never i will never know anything about this country i mean so even just when you teach yourself to order breakfast alone in a new country it's deeply satisfying uh but the sense that i will die ignorant uh never really fully understanding china or chinese cuisine or even one province of china that's both discouraging and thrilling yeah i i get well that's i think that's what life is huh
Guest:I like being wrong about stuff.
Guest:I like being surprised.
Guest:I don't mind looking.
Guest:I really don't mind looking like an idiot on my show or just going and thinking something's really going to suck and then having it turn out the other.
Marc:way i think that vulnerability that takes some uh you know that's a that's some serious maturity to be to make i wouldn't go that far i'm just but to be open to it i mean i'm not a humble guy but uh i've gotten used to because i'm lucky enough to travel and go to all these places i'm used to being humbled well it was great talking to you man and uh have safe travels thank you
Marc:Okay, that's it.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:That was my conversation with Anthony Bourdain that took place in a relatively very uncomfortable Brooklyn hotel in the middle of the Hasidic area.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:As always, I appreciate you listening to WTF.
Marc:And hold on a minute just for, you know, for the thing.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:Wow, I think I just shit my pants.
Marc:JustCoffee.coop, available at WTFPod.com, along with a shitload of new merchandise for Christmas, and also those posters, those Coop posters from the Seattle show, the signed Coop posters are available in the merch area at WTFPod.com.
Marc:We've got some new swag bags.
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Marc:Is that it?
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