Episode 378 - Scott Conant
Guest:Are we doing this?
Marc:Really?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Marc:What's wrong with me?
Marc:It's time for WTF?
Marc:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fucking nicks?
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Enough.
Marc:You know, sometimes I think I should just get rid of that.
Marc:It's in me, man.
Marc:It's part of the show.
Marc:It's organic, bros and bras.
Marc:That's not really the feminine of bro.
Marc:All right, before I forget, because I always forget to say things that I'm doing and things that are happening...
Marc:And I want to get this stuff in because I don't know if this is going to happen again in my life.
Marc:Am I right?
Marc:This might be it.
Marc:But thank you all for pre-ordering my book, Attempting Normal.
Marc:It's going to help.
Marc:If you want the book, I just want you to pre-order it.
Marc:And you can go to WTFPod.com and get the link there.
Marc:And that'll take you to a place where you can pre-order it from your favorite seller.
Marc:And that helps.
Marc:It helps the numbers.
Marc:I don't know how, but if you're a fan and you're going to get the book, preorder it.
Marc:And thank you for doing it if you've done it already.
Marc:The other thing I want to talk about is obviously, you know, that my my IFC show Marin is premiering May 3rd.
Marc:Some people are going to see it a little earlier than that, at least one of the episodes.
Marc:If you're going to the Moon Tower Comedy Festival in Austin.
Marc:which I will be at, and that's April 24th through April 27th.
Marc:We're going to do a screening of one of the episodes, and we're going to do a Q&A.
Marc:That is going to be moderated by the lovely Matt Bearden.
Marc:So that should be fun.
Marc:I just want to make sure I say these things because, believe me,
Marc:You know, there's a lot to say, and sometimes I say things I don't necessarily have to say, but I think I should be proud of this stuff, and these are things that are happening.
Marc:There, I said it.
Marc:All right?
Marc:We good with that?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Scott Conant is on the show today.
Marc:Scott Conant.
Marc:Yeah, the chef, the chef from Chopped, one of my favorite shows, as you know.
Marc:I went over to his restaurant.
Marc:I went over to Scarpetta in Beverly Hills because I'll go drop some coin there once a month for the big feast.
Marc:But it's funny, I watch Chopped a lot.
Marc:I get very moved by Chopped.
Marc:I know that some of you know that I'm a latent chef.
Marc:I believe that I could have had the skills to be a chef, but there's no way I can compete now.
Marc:And don't think I didn't think about it.
Marc:Don't think that when my shit hit the wall and everything was crapped out before this podcast started, in that short period of time when I had nothing and I was broke, and that week before I decided to do a podcast, don't think I didn't think culinary school.
Marc:Why not?
Marc:47, 46 years old.
Marc:That's not too old to go to culinary school to compete with these artistes of the plate.
Marc:I've got an aesthetic disposition that may be able to pull off some brazing and just the knowledge.
Marc:But that's it.
Marc:It's almost chemistry.
Marc:It's almost the bedrock that you've got to set your expertise on.
Marc:as a chef is profound.
Marc:I've always been very impressed with chefs.
Marc:I've always wanted to do it.
Marc:I think there's a similarity between the chef and the comic.
Marc:I have not had a chef on since I talked to Bourdain a while back.
Marc:And Scott, the thing about Scott is, you know, he's kind of a little dickish on the show sometimes, but you get the feeling that he's sort of a sweet kind of...
Marc:dickish dude but uh but i always liked him man i always had sort of a slight kind of like yeah i wonder what that guy that guy seems cocky and full of the charm wonder what that guy's all about but the funny thing is is that they got these chopped uh i think the the professional ones i think they i think i think scott is cooking next week where the chefs that you know from the cooking channel compete on chopped usually for charity but i've watched these before and i've seen everybody cook man
Marc:I've seen Jeffrey Zakarian.
Marc:I've seen Alex Gernicelli.
Marc:Yeah, I've seen Mark Murphy cook.
Marc:I love the show.
Marc:I've seen Amanda Freytag cook on Iron Chef.
Marc:But, I mean, I like watching them cook.
Marc:You know, you get to see them as judges.
Marc:But when you see somebody cook, you really see how they work under pressure.
Marc:You see their vulnerability.
Marc:You see their creativity.
Marc:And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Conant is cooking next week.
Marc:And I'm going to be judging.
Marc:I'm going to be judging Scott.
Marc:But I do have to be honest.
Marc:It was a thrill for me because it's really something that I'm interested in, something I don't know a lot about.
Marc:There are dues to be paid as a chef.
Marc:There's a life in the restaurant business.
Marc:There's an evolution of creativity that I found fascinating that I wanted to talk to Scott about.
Marc:And so we finally made this happen.
Marc:Conan, it turns out he's a great guy.
Marc:He owns several restaurants.
Marc:He's a great chef.
Marc:And you go to any of his restaurants and he has this simple spaghetti.
Marc:It's just a spaghetti and a red sauce.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:But you don't understand why when you eat it that you're like, this is the best spaghetti I've ever had in my life.
Marc:And he knows it.
Marc:It's the best seller on most of his restaurants.
Marc:And I he we cooked it at the end of our conversation.
Marc:We went into the kitchen of Scarpetta and we cooked it.
Marc:And it's it's very simple, man.
Marc:It's just tomatoes, some red pepper, a little bit of salt, fresh pasta and a little bit of Parmesan cheese and butter.
Marc:It's butter.
Marc:The butter makes it better.
Marc:There used to be a bakery in Astoria, Queens.
Marc:I just flashed back on this.
Marc:Steinway Boulevard on the awning.
Marc:On the awning, it says butter makes it better.
Marc:It's the butter.
Marc:Butter makes it better.
Marc:So let's go now to Scarpetta in Beverly Hills and talk to Scott Conant.
Marc:Like I'm a chopped fanatic.
Marc:Seriously, man.
Marc:I watch that fucking show.
Marc:I think I learned from it.
Marc:I think I have a sense of cooking.
Marc:I think in my heart that I always wanted to be a cook.
Marc:Really?
Marc:I guess the first question is, is it too late for me to become a world-class chef if I have a knack for it?
Marc:If you have a touch.
Guest:Listen, if I could do it, any asshole can do it.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:That's not true.
Guest:No, I really believe that.
Guest:I swear to God.
Guest:I think there's certain things that when I first started cooking, I was 15.
Guest:And I went to a vocational school.
Guest:I'm from Waterbury, Connecticut.
Marc:Wait a minute.
Marc:Waterbury, Connecticut.
Marc:I spent a lot of time in New England.
Marc:So where is that?
Marc:I'm sorry to hear that.
Marc:But you grew up there.
Marc:I grew up there.
Marc:That's sort of inland a little bit?
Guest:Yes, it's exactly in the middle between New York City and Boston.
Guest:It's kind of the cutoff point between Red Sox Nation and Yankee Universe.
Guest:And I fell, unfortunately, on the good side, on the Yankee side.
Marc:Why'd you grow up there?
Marc:What does your old man do?
Guest:My father was a machinist and a toolmaker.
Guest:My mother worked at a...
Guest:and then a credit union.
Guest:I'm very, very middle class.
Marc:Very middle class.
Marc:And where's the Italian come in?
Guest:My mother's family's Italian.
Guest:So that's how you got the Italian.
Guest:So my mother's first generation Italian-American.
Guest:My grandparents are from a town called Benevento in Campania outside of Naples.
Guest:So it's the same dialect as a Neapolitan dialect.
Marc:So were they part of your life growing up?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Your grandparents?
Guest:I grew up in a traditional Italian-American family.
Marc:But your dad was an outsider.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah, but it was interesting because my father grew up on a farm in the north of Maine.
Guest:So a lot of that stuff of those old world values and traditions, which really came from my mother's side of the family, resonated a lot with my father because he grew up on a farm.
Guest:It was a tough upbringing for me.
Marc:Right, and also very sort of intimate, like you ate what you grew and at least you ate what a friend had or no.
Marc:It wasn't necessarily that romantic.
Guest:Because I've spoken to him about it before.
Guest:He grew up on a potato farm.
Guest:And I said, Ed, what kind of potatoes did you guys grow?
Guest:I used to hear him thinking like Peruvians and fingerlings and all these kind of things.
Guest:He's like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Guest:They were potatoes.
Guest:They were potatoes.
Guest:It was so local and organic, right?
Guest:Nothing like that.
Guest:I mean, there was a lot of family issues and friends with a lot of drinking problems, and they would take random people into the house to live there, to work on the farm.
Marc:It was like a halfway house?
Marc:You got a drinking problem?
Marc:Come pull potatoes?
Guest:Well, I think they had no other choice, those people.
Guest:They needed to make a living, so you might as well pick potatoes.
Guest:My grandfather would take him in.
Guest:My grandfather was saint-like, which is an awesome guy in a heart of gold.
Guest:This is your dad's dad.
Marc:My father's father.
Marc:And what part of Maine?
Marc:Because Maine's a little gnarly.
Marc:Well, it's way up.
Marc:Like Machias?
Guest:Fort Fairfield, outside of Presque Isle, Caribou, Arista County.
Guest:They call it the county.
Guest:Way the hell up.
Guest:So you had to drive up there to visit?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:We would drive.
Guest:I remember as kids.
Guest:We would get off the highway, and just when you'd think you can't go any further, literally we'd drive for five more hours.
Guest:It was on the border of Canada.
Guest:So it was like from Connecticut where we grew up, it was like 12, 14 hours.
Marc:So potatoes would be the only thing that would grow up there.
Marc:I mean, what else are you going to grow up there?
Guest:I mean, what else is going to grow up there?
Guest:It's cold.
Guest:It's hard.
Guest:People shouldn't even be up there.
Marc:No kidding, man.
Marc:When I used to do gigs up in Maine, you'd start driving, and then you'd pull off at gas stations and be like, there's something wrong up here.
Marc:I swear to you, a guy at a service station had flippers.
Marc:Like, I mean... But...
Marc:I'll never forget it.
Marc:I was like, the gene pool's tight up here.
Marc:It's tight.
Guest:The lobster's got to get laid, too.
Guest:Maybe that's it.
Guest:He'd been around lobster for so long.
Guest:But the nicest people in the world.
Guest:No doubt.
Guest:Yeah, I have a lot of cousins up there still.
Guest:But it's interesting.
Guest:My father's family came here in 1622 and founded Salem, Massachusetts.
Guest:So if you ever go to Salem, there's a huge statue of a guy named Roger Conan.
Guest:And he's my great-great-great-whatever grandfather.
Marc:Well, someone didn't hold on to their money.
What?
Guest:No, I think it's, yeah, clearly it's been downhill ever since.
Marc:Usually those founding people, you know, you got a place.
Guest:I got none of that, man.
Marc:So when you were growing up, how big is Waterbury?
Marc:It's just a small town, like Connecticut, townie.
Guest:Yeah, 150, 200,000 people, something like that.
Marc:Yeah, and when you were a kid, you were like, what?
Marc:See, like, from watching me on Chopped, and we talked a little bit about it before at the coffee machine, you know, you're like, you know, the dick a little bit.
Guest:You know you are.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:You know what it is.
Marc:But you got a heart.
Guest:I'm not saying you don't.
Guest:You know, it's a little tough love.
Guest:Yeah, that's what it is.
Guest:I grew up in a way
Guest:where I can't stand bullshitters.
Guest:I just can't.
Guest:I can't deal with it.
Guest:I mean, we all deal with a lot of bullshit in our lives.
Marc:And you're a chef.
Marc:I watch that shop every day.
Marc:Chefs are like junkies.
Marc:I mean, I've never seen people bullshit more in my life.
Guest:I think Tony Bourdain called it the best...
Guest:He used the best analogy.
Guest:He said, chefs, cooks are like pirates.
Marc:Oh, I talked to him, by the way.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's awesome.
Guest:He's so clever.
Marc:They are like pirates.
Guest:Really.
Guest:It's a separate world back there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like a lot of sports guys, they grow up in this locker room mentality.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And women...
Guest:You guys are animals.
Guest:Women who work in the kitchen normally either they get it and they do it or at a certain point they're like, you guys are assholes.
Marc:I'm out of here.
Marc:Either you're a hardened waitress who knows how to put up with your shit.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:If I see a panel and if it's you, Alex, and Jeffrey, I'm like, oh my God.
Marc:It's going to be the hardest waitress.
Guest:Yeah, but you know what you don't see?
Marc:But you're all very sweet.
Guest:What you don't see is the amount of fun that we have on that thing.
Guest:And we really, I mean, we're serious about what we do.
Guest:The good news is that none of us take ourselves too seriously except for Jeffrey.
Marc:He takes himself very seriously.
Guest:That reads, yeah.
Guest:But Jeffrey's one of my closest friends.
Guest:Is he?
Guest:He really is.
Guest:We've known each other for years.
Guest:And we used to do a show together.
Guest:We started doing CHOP together.
Guest:And then we did another show.
Guest:I did a show called 24 Hour Restaurant Battle, which didn't necessarily resonate with people.
Guest:So after two seasons, that was gone.
Marc:What was the angle on that one?
Guest:24 Hour Restaurant Battle.
Guest:Two teams compete to open up a restaurant.
Guest:competing restaurants in 24 hours.
Guest:So it was kind of like a shit show.
Guest:That's what the name of the show should have been.
Guest:But anyway, so Jeffrey and I spent a lot of time together doing that and working on Chopped all the time.
Guest:It's just, you know, I'm so happy for his success.
Guest:He became an Iron Chef.
Marc:I saw that.
Guest:And he's just like, he's on fire right now.
Marc:Is that not something you wanted to do?
Marc:The Iron Chef thing?
Guest:I had no desire to do that stuff.
Guest:You know, the competition element is not interesting to me.
Guest:I'm a little bit different than the other chefs on Chopped.
Guest:I have restaurants.
Guest:I mean, I have one restaurant here in Beverly Hills.
Marc:We're in Scarpetta right now.
Marc:Scarpetta Beverly Hills.
Marc:In the Montage, yeah.
Guest:I have two restaurants at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas.
Guest:I have one at the Fountain Blue in Miami.
Guest:I have one at the Thompson Hotel in Toronto.
Guest:And I have an independent restaurant in New York City.
Marc:One of them in Vegas is a pizza place, right?
Guest:One is, well, there's a secret pizza place, and then there's an enoteca, which is where I sell pizza and steaks and all kinds of stuff.
Guest:And that's like a casual concept, and then I have a scarpetta next door to that as well.
Marc:Well, that's all different.
Marc:Actually, opening restaurants and competing in that world is different than playing games in the kitchen with other chefs.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:So frankly, I just don't have time to play those games, right?
Guest:I mean, you walked in.
Guest:I was on a three-hour phone call with my attorneys.
Marc:But the weird thing was, like I said before, is that when I watch people cook, like I had never seen Alex really cook, you know, until she was on Iron Chef or Amanda.
Marc:I had not seen, you know, Jeffrey I saw cook on Chopped and the other guy.
Marc:Aron.
Marc:Aron, yeah.
Marc:Beautiful.
Marc:Yeah, he's a good guy.
Marc:He's awesome.
Marc:But as hard ass as some people are, as soon as you guys start cooking, all of a sudden you're raw.
Marc:You can see who you are, you know what I mean?
Marc:You can see what you invest in it and the focus.
Guest:It's very funny because food really is the person that's cooking it.
Guest:When I go to Jeffrey's restaurants,
Guest:Jeffrey is very, he's very buttoned up.
Guest:Let's put it.
Guest:I mean, he's a little uptight.
Guest:He's from Massachusetts, by the way.
Guest:So I call him a mass all often.
Guest:But he's one of those guys who's just, and he's his food.
Guest:It's streamlined.
Guest:It's really exact.
Marc:Just like him.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah, no.
Marc:I went to the Tudor.
Marc:I went to the one in Florida.
Marc:My mother didn't know what to do with it.
Marc:My mother can't eat anywhere where she can't order off the menu.
Marc:Can you give me that without that?
Guest:Yeah, we love customers like that.
Marc:I'll bet you do.
Marc:Those are our favorite.
Marc:No garlic.
Marc:I don't like garlic.
Guest:I have this tomato sauce.
Marc:I think you've had it, right?
Marc:That's the magic tomato sauce.
Guest:I put an infusion of garlic inside of it.
Guest:I infuse oil and put the oil inside, not the garlic itself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so people will say, like, oh, I want it without garlic.
Guest:And well, actually, there is no garlic inside.
Guest:There's oil.
Guest:And oils taste like garlic.
Guest:Oh, I don't want that.
Guest:I'm like, OK, you know, I don't know what to do.
Marc:What the fuck is that spaghetti, though?
Guest:It's good, right?
Marc:I know, but it's like I've never had that experience.
Marc:I come here with my girlfriend the first time I came here.
Marc:And I think we were tweeting at each other.
Marc:And I just got this plain spaghetti.
Marc:And I don't eat pasta that much.
Marc:And it's like, why is this so fucking good?
Guest:yeah it's just we're doing um so there's five scarpettas currently i serve that that's beginning in five different uh restaurants in five different markets right and other than toronto um this that's my highest selling pasta by like by leaps and bounds my the highest selling dish it's the most basic it's the most simple but you know what it's i mean it's full extraction of flavor has great texture i think that there's something that's
Guest:that's transformative about the pasta itself because you don't necessarily get a great spaghetti with tomato basil like that.
Marc:It really is a sum of all its parts.
Marc:But what's the mathematics of that?
Marc:I mean, how do you get, we're gonna go back, but I mean, it's just simple sauce, I guess, but something has got to be different.
Guest:The only difference is I use all fresh tomatoes, not canned.
Guest:And I cook it for about 45 minutes.
Guest:I don't let it go all day.
Guest:Like my mother used to cook tomatoes, still cooks tomato sauce.
Guest:And it cooks for like 24 or 48 hours.
Marc:And I don't do that.
Guest:I mean, I don't understand.
Guest:And I say to her all the time, I don't get it.
Guest:And the tomato paste and all the other stuff that goes inside.
Guest:No tomato paste.
Guest:I can't.
Guest:No sugar, none of that stuff.
Guest:I want it to be as pure and simple as possible.
Guest:So what's in it?
Guest:Tomatoes, and then salt, extra virgin olive oil.
Guest:And I do this infusion of olive oil with crushed red pepper, basil, and garlic.
Guest:And that's the sauce.
Guest:There's no cheese factor?
Guest:Well, then when I toss the pasta, so then we cook the pasta directly in the sauce.
Guest:Right.
Guest:so what i'll do is i'll cook the pasta in the water yeah cook it about 90 of the way yeah the other 10 i'll cook it on the fire in the sauce yeah so it absorbs a lot of the flavor right tomatoes i don't know if this is even interesting of course anyone except for you well i appreciate that no no this is the important stuff so and then uh i'll finish with a little bit of butter yeah fresh basil yeah and parmesan cheese and that's just tossed we'll make one after if you want yeah
Marc:I mean, it's easy.
Marc:I'm trying to wash my weight, but I'm not going to turn that down.
Guest:No, we'll make one after.
Marc:So how do we get from, you know, to that, to, you know, because that's an interpretation that you did.
Marc:Like, I mean, that's not basic Italian cooking.
Marc:Well, you decided at some point, well, this needs butter.
Guest:No, it actually, when I was in Benevento, which is my grandparents' hometown, my grandmother and my grandfather, my mother's side, both from Benevento, that was the only place, funny enough, where I had something remotely similar to my style of spaghetti.
Guest:So I think it's, you know, even if I didn't necessarily grow up with that, I think it's something that's clearly in my DNA somewhere.
Guest:It's genetic.
Marc:It's genetic.
Marc:It's in my bones.
Marc:You knew it needed butter, and then, like, at some point, you're in Italy, and you said, like, I knew it.
Marc:No one had to tell me.
Marc:That this was necessary.
Guest:Like charm.
Guest:It's just kind of in my DNA.
Marc:Yeah, you do have that.
Marc:But I'm curious about the...
Marc:Because I'm a comedian.
Marc:I talk to comedians.
Marc:I talk to actors.
Marc:I talk to musicians.
Marc:Comedians are a sordid bunch, aren't they?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I mean, they're like chefs.
Marc:We're lone wolves, and you just sort of show them.
Marc:Some of them.
Marc:Some of them.
Guest:I've known a few that have been crazy.
Guest:I mean, no one important, just over the years, guys.
Guest:I probably know them.
Guest:No, I mean, like literally guys who tried and failed miserably.
Guest:And they quit?
Guest:Yeah, and they became waiters, which is how I knew them.
Yeah.
Marc:But I think that the journey is similar because it's a solo journey.
Marc:There's some part of you that's possessed by this need to do this.
Marc:I think that the sense of gratification is similar where you cook something and you present it and that, you know, like when you flip an egg and it doesn't break, you won somehow.
Guest:You know, I think you're right.
Guest:And I think there's this inherent sense of insecurity that all of us in one way or another have, right?
Guest:And we need to fill that void with, I've thought about this a lot over the years.
Guest:I think we need to fill that void with that instant gratification, whether it be flipping the egg or seeing the customer's face and them walking up and shaking your hand.
Guest:Because it's, you know, the old...
Guest:The old story of the chef who freaks out because someone sends back a veal chop.
Guest:What that really is about is how much heart, how much soul, how much of yourself goes into that plate.
Guest:And when it's rejected by the customer, I mean, it's frankly hurtful.
Guest:It really just hurts.
Guest:It really hurts.
Guest:It hurts like hell.
Guest:Fuck that guy.
Guest:This is perfect.
Guest:This is perfect.
Guest:And you know deep in your heart is really not perfect, and you know the person's right 90% of the time.
Guest:But it hurts so bad because you know what?
Guest:I fucked up, and I made a mistake, and I hate that I made that mistake.
Marc:But what if you didn't make the mistake?
Guest:This is years of therapy, by the way.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Years.
Guest:So you've been that guy.
Marc:Oh, 100%.
Guest:Someone sends back a veal chop and you're like, that's bullshit.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:It doesn't happen anymore because now I try to see the, what's the expression?
Guest:The forest through the trees or whatever.
Guest:Because now I'm looking at things from a very different angle.
Guest:I look at things from, much like a chess board.
Guest:I'm not one of the pieces anymore.
Guest:Now I'm overseeing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But let's go back to that insecurity thing.
Marc:I mean, so...
Marc:So you grow up, you started cooking when you were 15, you said?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But what drove you there?
Marc:What kind of kid were you?
Guest:I was a really good kid.
Guest:I was one of those kids who never wanted anything.
Guest:I never wanted a radio.
Guest:I played baseball.
Guest:I'm a huge baseball fan.
Guest:You played in high school, you were a jock or what?
Guest:I didn't play in high school because I started working at 15 and I stopped playing baseball in order to work in a kitchen.
Guest:But once I walked into a kitchen for the first time, I'll never forget it.
Guest:I was in Waterbury, Connecticut, a restaurant called The Sea Loft.
Guest:It was a seafood restaurant.
Guest:It was a real shithole, this place.
Guest:I mean, it was disgusting.
Guest:And this is your first job?
Guest:This is my first job.
Guest:I started as a dishwasher.
Guest:A few weeks later, they bumped me up to be a prep cook.
Guest:And then I started working the fryalators, frying clam strips and stuff like that.
Guest:But I'll never forget walking in for the first time and seeing these guys and this camaraderie that I felt, which was the same as being on a team.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And everybody's out for the same thing.
Guest:And there's, of course, people taking the piss out of each other and getting on each other's backs.
Guest:It's, again, that locker room mentality to a certain extent.
Guest:But never really even considering the customer because we're in this grind.
Marc:It was just crazy.
Marc:And you're just pushing it out.
Marc:It's a great feeling.
Guest:But these guys that I worked with were insane.
Guest:Those guys were like crazy.
Guest:They were, I'll never forget it.
Guest:I was 15.
Guest:Unfortunately, I never got into the drug scene, which was good.
Guest:My parents, like I did that.
Guest:I did, however, learn about vaginas, which kind of fucked me up.
Guest:But it's a different thing.
Guest:Very powerful.
Guest:But these guys were like on the line, literally with a stake here.
Guest:Two inches away, they're doing blow.
Guest:They're doing blow.
Guest:and they're smoking weed at the same time, and they're drinking like animals.
Guest:And I'm like, holy shit, these guys are out of their minds.
Guest:It was great to observe.
Guest:That's how it's different than a baseball team.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But not different than a comedian.
Marc:No, that's absolutely right.
Marc:Because I like the whole locker room idea of the team analogy, but it seems like not unlike comedy, a lot of guys got into kitchen work just to stay under the radar a little bit and have their own life and not be fucked with too much.
Marc:Pay for their habits.
Marc:Sure, exactly.
Guest:Exactly, I get it.
Marc:But you knew at that time, though, when you're doing that, when you're throwing clam shirts and stuff, as far as enjoying the pace and the intensity of it, do you knew you were making garbage food or no?
Marc:Oh, you know what?
Guest:I knew there was another level.
Guest:That was the other thing.
Guest:But this is the thing.
Guest:I mean, this was years ago.
Guest:So there was no food network.
Guest:I had no opportunity to see other than what my mother did.
Guest:I saw this.
Guest:And she always cooked.
Guest:My mother always cooked.
Guest:And, you know, family dinners on Sunday with my grandparents and my father, my grandfather.
Guest:You know, things like that.
Guest:But it wasn't until – so as I went to this vocational school where I would go three weeks of academics and then three weeks of culinary arts.
Guest:And my teachers really saw my passion.
Marc:This was a high school.
Guest:This was in high school.
Guest:So they pushed me into a better direction in a hotel.
Guest:It was a Sheridan Hotel, which at the time in Waterbury was one of the better places.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:And the chefs there all are Culinary Institute of America graduates, and they kind of took me under their wing and pushed me in a direction.
Guest:So eventually, when I graduated high school, I went right to CIA.
Guest:I mean, I knew at a very young age, fortunately, what I wanted to do.
Guest:But again, that was way before the Food Network happened, way before this appreciation for food existed.
Guest:This was in the mid-80s.
Marc:Well, the Food Network for, I think, five years was just Emeril, for most practical purposes.
Guest:Yeah, and to a lot of it, now it's just Bobby.
Marc:Yeah, right, right.
Marc:Yeah, it was Emerald with the bam, and now Bobby with whatever he does.
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:He was part of it, too, though.
Marc:Because I remember doing a show as a comic where he was cooking in his backyard or something.
Marc:Bobby, grilling, or I don't remember what the hell it was.
Guest:Grilling and chilling.
Marc:But yeah, that was it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So we hung out and you had to like Bobby for a half hour.
Marc:So he's a good guy.
Marc:He's an awesome guy.
Guest:He's a very good cook.
Guest:He's given me career advice at different points when I really needed it.
Guest:And it's just been like that moment of clarity.
Guest:Bobby's such an interesting guy because he knows right away if it's something he wants to do or doesn't want to do, he'll tell you to your face, fuck you, or he'll be friendly to you.
Guest:He's just that guy.
Guest:And I have to tell you, I really respect him.
Guest:I really respect him.
Guest:What was the advice?
Guest:It's really not important.
Guest:It has to do with old business partners, which I've signed affidavits that I wouldn't speak about.
Marc:So it's restaurant business.
Guest:It's a restaurant business.
Guest:Yeah, but it's greater than that.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, it's life advice.
Marc:No, I get you.
Marc:I get you.
Marc:So you're in this vocational school, and when you were working at the Sheraton,
Marc:What were your jobs?
Marc:I mean, what changed?
Marc:Obviously, we're not throwing clam strips, but there's still characters in the kitchen, I'm sure.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But people are wearing hats now.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And the place was clean.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Literally at the sea loft.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I opened the refrigerator door.
Guest:And it's one thing to have mice or rats in the kitchen, which is disgusting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This place, actually, a fucking squirrel ran out of it.
Guest:I was like, what the hell is going on in this place?
Guest:There was a squirrel there.
Guest:I've never seen that since, fortunately.
Guest:So I went to the Sheridan.
Guest:It was a very professional environment.
Guest:The guys were great.
Guest:And I started in banquets, and I just learned how to do volume.
Guest:I learned how to organize myself properly.
Guest:And that's a skill set that I still have taken with me.
Guest:And then I eventually went to the a la carte restaurants and there was a fine dining restaurant and a casual restaurant.
Guest:And I can't remember a lot of what we did, but I do remember the guys that I worked with were really instrumental in trying to get me.
Guest:You know, like I was the kid who had an Escoffier and a LaRousse Gastronomique in my backpack because I just love this stuff.
Guest:And I was like reading about it all the time.
Guest:And at 18 years old, if you ask me a traditional recipe from Escoffier, I could tell you.
Marc:What is an Escoffier?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:Escoffier, it was Augustus Escoffier.
Guest:It was kind of the godfather of modern au cuisine.
Guest:And he was from France.
Guest:And he really created the brigade system for kitchens.
Marc:essentially.
Marc:So you, at 15, were fascinated with this stuff.
Marc:This was poetry to you.
Guest:I loved it, man.
Marc:And it was classical French initially?
Guest:It was classical French.
Guest:Because that's the Bible, right?
Guest:Well, depending on what you're, from a European perspective, that's where it starts.
Guest:You need to understand Escoffier before you can move on elsewhere.
Guest:And a lot of people say, well, if it's an Italian food, it should be Pellegrini or one of these places.
Guest:But at the end of the day, it's always Escoffier.
Guest:and what what is in there so um he's like he's the guy who did all the aspic and the crazy that you're never going to eat anymore the gel but yeah but there's flavor combinations you know you get stuck like anything i'll get stuck if i'm thinking about menu items like i just can't put something together i'm looking for a flavor profile that that i'm just not capturing
Guest:I'll open up Escoffier, and I mean, this guy, he's amazing still.
Guest:I mean, he's unbelievable.
Marc:How is it broken down?
Marc:I know I can go look at the book, but I mean, what's the flavor profile?
Guest:Well, it's broken down.
Guest:The book itself is broken down by courses.
Guest:So appetizers, hot hors d'oeuvres, all that kind of stuff.
Guest:Veal, chicken, fish, all the different fish.
Guest:And then it'll have lobster, American, right?
Guest:I don't speak French, so whatever.
Guest:No problem.
Guest:It'll be traditionally a lobster with an American sauce is this, this, this, and this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So those are the components of the sauce.
Guest:It doesn't give you amounts, but it gives you, this is the largest, like the largest amount is the first thing listed.
Guest:And then it varies.
Guest:And you're supposed to wing it from there?
Guest:Well, traditionally, you're meant to be trained in these things.
Guest:If you go to a restaurant like Bocuse in Leon, you'll have that style of food still.
Guest:But not a lot of those places exist anymore.
Guest:I don't think I've ever eaten it.
Marc:have you oh yeah oh yeah i mean you can't eat that stuff anymore i mean i like it's so heavy half butter and half pig fat like forget about it but like because you guys talk about that a lot on chopped and stuff about flavor profiles and you know it started to be revealed to me that even if i can cook something or i have a sense of cooking i worked in restaurants when i was a kid that
Marc:that there's a wisdom to it and there's a science to it that you can't really defeat.
Marc:You can't just throw a bunch of cumin in something and then kind of balance that shit out.
Marc:I mean, certain things work, certain things don't.
Guest:Certain things work, certain things don't.
Guest:And the funny thing about it is with being on that show and speaking to people, number one, they never get to eat what they cook.
Guest:They don't have time.
Guest:So as we try to help them, my whole intention is, the opportunity for me is two things.
Guest:I said to myself, I promised myself, because I'm a real chef.
Guest:Rachel Ray is wonderful and I get it, but she's not a chef.
Guest:There's cooks and chefs.
Guest:My thing was, I'm a real chef and I've had success as a chef and I have awards and shit like that, which matter to people.
Guest:I always want to take the Waylon Jennings approach to everything, where nothing matters.
Guest:Fuck everybody.
Guest:But unfortunately, it's too insecure.
Marc:That battle with insecurity again.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But so I said to myself, if I'm going to do this, if I'm going to put myself on television, if I'm going to be that person, I have to be honest.
Guest:That way, there's a level of integrity that even if people don't get it, because there's always haters,
Guest:at least I have integrity.
Guest:I have to be honest with people.
Guest:But I think there's a difference between being honest and being hurtful.
Guest:So I never want to be hurtful.
Marc:How long in therapy did you learn before you learned that one?
Guest:That was probably year five.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's that thing where you're sort of like, I'm just being honest.
Marc:Why are you crying?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I had a girlfriend like that.
Guest:She was an asshole.
Guest:So...
Guest:So at this point, what I always tell these chefs is, listen, I have no skin in your game.
Guest:I'm fine.
Guest:I have my businesses.
Guest:I have all the things that I want to do, the things that I love.
Guest:I have a family.
Guest:I'm good.
Guest:I'm trying to help you.
Guest:I'm trying to help you get better.
Guest:There's a skill set that maybe you need to learn.
Guest:Or maybe I can gain perspective as well, so it's a conversation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:the challenge becomes when people get really sensitive about the things you're trying to teach them or tell them right or help them with right and that's um that's uh well that's that's where right that's where the fun starts and the fireworks right go off right but you guys are all you know fragile you know what i mean and there's like like i can tell like you know you get those guys that's sort of like they're in their 60s and they're
Marc:They're no longer drinking, but they're wearing the hat, and they're full of bravado.
Marc:You just know they're not going to hear you.
Marc:They're going to walk out of there going, fuck that guy.
Marc:Fuck that guy.
Marc:I'm going back to the seafood restaurant in Westbury.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:But again, the only thing I want to do is make...
Guest:If in my own little way, and I know it's such a small piece of it all, if they can become better cooks a little bit, be a little bit more thoughtful about what they do on the other side, then that's all I can really ask for.
Marc:So take me through the steps of like, because you've got to put your time in, you've got to pay your dues.
Marc:So you go to the vocational school, and then you know you want to do this, and you're reading your French stuff, and you're like, you're in.
Marc:Escoffier.
Marc:Escoffier.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That's important.
Marc:Do you have a copy here at the restaurant?
Guest:No, I have it on my...
Guest:on your ipod on my ipad on your on your phone yeah on my ipad yeah yeah i have all kinds of stuff i have all kinds of stuff on there some things i download some things i look at some things i don't but yeah but like what are your biggest resources outside of him oh i mean he's not my biggest resource no i'll just he's just it's a nice backup plan i'll walk around a market or i'll look you know what i love to do is i look to love to look at food photos right and not for any reason of knowing what the food is i don't care do you like to eat i unfortunately
Guest:yes look at I mean look at this I have a photo shoot in a couple weeks and I looked at myself in the mirror tonight I was like Jesus I gotta like I don't have time to hit the gym I really do yeah that's one thing I can tell on Chuck well it looks like Scott's been on vacation
Guest:But, you know, I could look at that spaghetti with tomato basil and put five pounds on.
Guest:Easy.
Marc:Yeah, it's unbelievable.
Marc:But what's interesting to me, like, okay, so explain to me, like, the issue you would go to Escoffier for, like, a flavor profile.
Marc:Like, you're sitting there with a piece of meat and a vegetable.
Marc:What's that?
Guest:Well, you know, I...
Guest:The good thing about being a cook is you could taste things in your mind.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, I know that if I have a certain flavor profile, a certain spice and a certain vegetable with a certain meat, I can taste how that's going to come together.
Guest:Right.
Guest:With the searing on the meat, depending on, you know, that extraction point of flavor.
Guest:Because you could take a zucchini and have 12 different flavors come out of it just using oil.
Guest:Because it depends on how much you roast it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or don't.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right?
Guest:So...
Guest:The good news about being a chef is that all of us, I think, can do it.
Guest:I think all of us can.
Guest:We talk about it all the time.
Guest:Imagine that flavor.
Guest:Imagine that coming together.
Guest:And when you lose that sometimes, you're like, I have this beautiful piece of veal.
Guest:What do I want to eat with it?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you just can't, zucchini just isn't enough.
Guest:Let's think about some things.
Guest:How do we achieve?
Guest:Because you just want your customers to be happy.
Marc:It's a pretty basic instinct.
Marc:But you also want to create something amazing.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Is it really about the customer?
Guest:I think that there's a couple things there.
Guest:I mean, yes, it is ultimately because they provide you the opportunity.
Guest:They're the audience.
Guest:I always say jokingly to my staff, like the customer is such an unfortunate part of this business.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the joke is that if you didn't have them, I mean, you know, nothing's going to happen.
Guest:Anyone can open up a restaurant and be a fantastic chef and run food costs that are astronomical and not give a shit about the business part.
Guest:Anyone can do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I watch Robert Irvine's
Guest:Anyone does do that.
Guest:A lot of people do it.
Guest:And a lot of people surprisingly make a living.
Guest:But we're not creating potency schemes.
Guest:I mean, what we're creating is we're trying to make a living.
Guest:We're trying to provide not just for me as a business owner, but also for the staff and their families.
Guest:So I try to be conscious and aware of all the other things, but ultimately, yes, we're filling a very selfish void.
Marc:Right, sure.
Marc:Yeah, because it's like, I made this.
Marc:I mean, it's got to be amazing.
Marc:It's got to be beautiful.
Marc:Even when I eat here, I eat fast.
Marc:And your food is like, you don't even know why you're filled up after an appetizer because it's so intense and it's rich and it's great.
Marc:But sometimes, I can spend two hours cooking something and eat it in five fucking minutes.
Marc:And then I'm sort of like, well, what the hell?
Marc:How does a chef feel?
Marc:You ever walk through the dining room and go, dude, slow down, slow down.
Marc:It's a veal chop.
Marc:Take your time.
Guest:There comes a point, and I learned this a long time ago.
Guest:After it goes up in the window, you feel like I've done my job.
Guest:It's the little Lao Tzu thing.
Guest:I've done my part, and it's not up to me anymore.
Guest:Because some fucking Yahoo is going to get it sometimes.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And they're going to not understand.
Guest:Put fucking black pepper and raw onions all over it.
Marc:Raw onions.
Marc:What is that problem you have?
Marc:What is the raw onions problem?
Marc:I mean, literally, I'm watching Chopped and I see someone with raw onions.
Marc:If you're on the panel, I'm like, ah, that's bullshit.
Marc:That's not going to fly.
Guest:Well, you know, I get so much grief for this.
Guest:You have no idea.
Guest:People walk up to me in airports like, hey, raw onion guy, fuck you.
Guest:Fuck you.
Guest:Don't be such an asshole, red onion guy.
Marc:Anyway.
Marc:You just think it's hacky or you think that it's just some convention that needs to be done away with?
Guest:I think that we're not talking about a deli, right?
Guest:So if I go to a deli and I order a salad, I expect a raw red onion.
Guest:If I order a bagel with tuna, I expect raw red onions because that's what I'm going for.
Guest:But I think when you're talking about food,
Guest:cooking and fine dining and cuisine and doing this for a living in order to make a mark.
Guest:No one can tell me that people are going to go on national television on one of the most successful shows in Food Network history.
Guest:We just filmed our 200th episode of that show, which is crazy.
Guest:Google it.
Guest:Andy Griffith's show was 200 episodes.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:I didn't see that coming.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You were like, I'll do this for a few episodes.
Guest:See how it goes.
Guest:See what happens.
Guest:I'm not busy on Tuesday.
Guest:But you can't tell me that those chefs are going to go on that television to make a spectacle of themselves and not want to be better.
Marc:right i mean why do you do it if you don't want to be better some of them have such egos i mean it's like and that's a chef thing too like oh yeah and some guys are kind of surprising i like the guys that sort of surprise you even though it looks like they don't know what the fuck they're doing and they make something you're like well he's got his own thing here this is awesome yeah yeah it's the best those are the best thing i don't understand is 200 episodes if someone gets on there and you're on the panel and they're about to cook pasta how do they not go what the fuck and why would i even do that i have a theory on that or the raw onion thing it's like why you even don't you watch
Guest:I'm going to teach him how it could be good.
Guest:It's the ego thing.
Guest:It goes back to the same.
Guest:Like, why would you do that?
Guest:I'll never forget the guy where I really lost my shit.
Guest:I had dinner with him a couple weeks ago in Miami.
Guest:He's actually the chef at Bazaar.
Guest:He's a fantastic chef.
Guest:He was on Chopped.
Guest:He was on Chopped.
Guest:He gave me two courses of raw red onions.
Guest:And I was like, what the fuck, man?
Guest:Like, why would you do this?
Guest:Like, you're talking about, you're a fantastic cook.
Guest:Why would you, I mean, this was off camera.
Guest:This is the shit that they didn't show or was edited out.
Guest:But it's like, why would you give me raw red onions on this plate to completely overwhelm, I'm like stuttering, I get so upset about it.
Guest:Like, you're completely overwhelming all of the other flavors on the plate, like the raw red onions.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And the guy's like, oh, okay, if I make it to the dessert round, I'll make sure not to give it to you.
Guest:Fuck you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He wants to shake my hand and laugh about it.
Guest:This isn't funny.
Guest:But you had dinner with him.
Guest:But I had dinner with him.
Guest:This was two years ago.
Guest:I think he's still trying to figure out what my problem is.
Guest:Because literally he looked at me.
Guest:I was sitting down.
Guest:We have a mutual friend.
Guest:I sit down for dinner and I go, fortunately, there'll be no raw red onions at this dinner.
Guest:And he just looked at me like...
Guest:what the fuck is your fucking asshole he was like listen I was broke and listen I've been there many times more than at least three times in my life I've been completely broke and I completely get it but he did this for the money yeah and I'm like okay like that's that's cool but I'm not like we all have some kind of terrible story
Guest:doesn't mean that you automatically deserve $10,000.
Guest:And if you screw up, he didn't lose because of the red onions.
Guest:He lost because the other guy created much better flavors.
Guest:And the guy wasn't as good of a chef as him also.
Guest:So he's just one of those things.
Guest:The baskets are tough.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:But I said, you know, he was like, you know, I needed the money and you really fucked me.
Guest:I didn't fuck you.
Guest:You fucked you.
Guest:By the way, there's two other judges there.
Guest:I don't act independently.
Guest:I've tried.
Guest:They won't let me.
Guest:I have no agenda.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, anyway.
Marc:Did he take it?
Guest:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:He still thinks I'm an asshole.
Marc:So after, okay, vocational high school, you're doing the Sheraton thing.
Guest:No, so I was still in high school as I was working at the Sheraton, and I was working 60 hours a week plus going to high school.
Guest:I mean, I really love this stuff.
Guest:And then eventually I graduated high school, and I went to CIA.
Marc:Right away?
Guest:Right away, yeah, right away.
Marc:And what happens there?
Marc:So the first year is what, basics?
Guest:You know, you ease into things.
Marc:So like medical school, you specialize eventually?
Yeah.
Guest:No, nothing like that, actually.
Guest:So every three weeks, there's a new class that comes in.
Guest:They really churn out students there.
Guest:But it's a good school.
Guest:It's a great school.
Guest:Paul Bacuse, one of the greatest chefs in history, said it was the best school in the world, which is great.
Guest:How long is the program?
Guest:At the time, it was two years, so it's an associate's degree.
Guest:And now they have a four-year option.
Guest:And they've done something.
Guest:I believe they've done something in conjunction with Cornell.
Guest:the hospitality school.
Marc:So it's a great school.
Marc:So you go in, and then what happens?
Guest:So I went in there.
Marc:Were you cocky?
Guest:I was a little cocky, admittedly.
Guest:Young, punk.
Guest:So I could really relate to a lot of these kids on CHOP, by the way.
Guest:So I could completely get it.
Guest:And I went to the first six months.
Guest:I went to an externship in New York City.
Guest:I worked at a restaurant called San Domenico.
Guest:And I was there for five months, I believe.
Guest:And that was Northern Italian?
Guest:that was well that was my first taste of proper italian food and i'll never forget the chef was cooking something and i saw this piece of halibut come up onto the pass yeah and it was like halibut was zucchini and zucchini flowers it's just really simple yeah like parsley and white wine sauce yeah and i'll never forget the simplicity and the beauty of that and it really like it changed my life really because i wanted that food that plate
Guest:And I hate to say it because the chef is just not really nice to me these days.
Guest:But he really, I mean, I really have to give him credit for cooking something that really changed my perspective on food.
Guest:Because you were going the French direction.
Guest:Yeah, I wanted to cook French food because it was fancy.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I wanted to cook fancy food, but I saw that thing and I was like, oh my God, look at that.
Guest:That's just like, I had no idea that Italian food could be like that.
Marc:And that's why I was just blown away.
Guest:don't think anybody did right there i mean food you know and how and how food is uh deconstructed and and and understood now is different than it was then i imagine exactly well and he probably didn't even know it well yes he has a very high opinion of self yeah so maybe he did yeah i think he did um but it was one of those situations where um you know that restaurant at the time was one of the top restaurants in the country probably top five and
Guest:in the country, San Domenico.
Guest:And Valentino and Santa Monica at the time, they were kind of competing for best Italian restaurant in the country.
Guest:And Valentino, also a great restaurant.
Guest:But, you know, there was just such a simplicity and such a straightforwardness with those flavor profiles.
Guest:It's still, like I still think about
Guest:um, those, those dishes back then.
Guest:I mean, we were doing, we were doing at any point in time, he'd walk into the dining room.
Guest:It was like the Italian consulate.
Guest:I mean, Pavarotti was there almost every night.
Guest:If he did a show at Lincoln center, he was having dinner at San Francisco afterwards.
Guest:Sophia Loren was there.
Guest:Um, I mean, from Al Pacino to Dustin Hoffman, it was the place.
Marc:It was the spot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:And that's where you, and you were just, what was your position there?
Guest:I was 19 and I was, I was a cook and I was the only American in the kitchen.
Marc:What does that mean, a cook?
Marc:Because I know there's different stations here.
Guest:So you were just a prep guy or what?
Guest:I was working on the fish station as a comie underneath the chef of the station.
Guest:So every kitchen has a chef, chef de partie, and I was a comie de cuisine.
Guest:So I was working under him to kind of learn my craft.
Guest:And that was a fish craft?
Guest:That was a fish.
Guest:And then there was a lot of craziness going on in that kitchen.
Guest:So I eventually moved over to the meat station.
Guest:I became the chef of the meat station and kind of...
Guest:Then I went to Europe for a little while.
Marc:Okay, so you started out under the fish guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then like whatever politics, you ended up in the meat and you were the main guy in the meat.
Guest:I became, I worked my way up.
Guest:I always did that whenever I, because I just work.
Guest:That's all I do.
Marc:So you learned how to butcher and everything else?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:But I did that beforehand.
Guest:yeah you did that cia or even we learned that through cia we learned a lot of this i did it before cia as well i mean i worked with these good guys who really took me under their wing and taught me a lot of stuff you're so young too and broke my balls i mean they like they would break my balls so that so that's where you get some of that attitude where it's sort of like who the fuck are you like i was 19 i was yeah i was making my bones when you were banging cheerleaders
Guest:There's something to that, though, right?
Guest:Yeah, there's a lot of that.
Marc:There's a lot of that.
Marc:So, okay, so you do all this time with these guys in New York, and then you go, what happens then?
Guest:So I was approached by a group that was opening a restaurant in New Orleans.
Guest:So I went down to New Orleans for a few months, and I opened up a restaurant there, which was great.
Guest:I was 19.
Guest:I turned 20 while I was down there.
Marc:You opened it, meaning you were the chef.
Marc:It was my first sous chef job.
Guest:What's a sous chef?
Guest:The second chef.
Guest:So when the chef wasn't around, I was running the job.
Marc:Okay, so the way you come up is you start as a cook or a guy under the guy and then you become the guy and then you become a sous chef and then you become an executive chef.
Guest:And then you become the executive chef.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or the chef de cuisine and then the executive chef.
Guest:So you go to New Orleans.
Guest:So yeah, I opened up this restaurant.
Guest:It was New Orleans.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:1990.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:91 maybe.
Guest:And I mean, it's a dangerous place.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:For a kid.
Marc:It's chaos, man.
Guest:Fuck.
Guest:A lot of things going on.
Marc:I mean, forget about it.
Marc:Things you don't understand.
Guest:I had so much fun.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I had so much fun down there.
Guest:Literally, the owner of the restaurant sat me down on Easter Day.
Guest:He's like, call your mother.
Guest:Call your mother.
Guest:It's Easter.
Guest:I was like, all right.
Guest:There's certain things you got to remember.
Guest:Holy shit.
Marc:Yeah, it was fun.
Guest:It was a good time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a good time.
Guest:And then what happened?
Guest:That restaurant was sold.
Guest:Emeril Lagasse took it over.
Marc:He took over the entire state, didn't he?
Guest:I think he did.
Marc:Yeah, actually.
Guest:Definitely New Orleans proper.
Guest:And it's a restaurant that's still in business now called NOLA.
Guest:And I actually, if you walk into that space, it's a beautiful space.
Guest:Open kitchen.
Guest:There's an elevator that's encased in this brick wall.
Guest:and I painted that wall.
Guest:I literally was on a ladder because we were running late on the opening, and I painted the wall.
Guest:And I'll never forget those days because you learn how to open up a restaurant.
Guest:We were so far behind, and the kitchen was so screwed, and we were just completely over our skis.
Guest:I had no business being a sous chef.
Guest:I was a good cook.
Guest:I wasn't a sous chef.
Guest:I shouldn't have been a manager.
Guest:But after that, I went back to school.
Guest:I finished school, finished CIA, graduated, and I moved to Europe.
Guest:I moved to Germany for a while.
Guest:Germany?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Why Germany?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I have no idea.
Guest:I still can't figure it out.
Guest:I figured it would be easier to get a job in Italy from Germany than from New York.
Guest:What'd you do in Germany?
Guest:I worked at a hotel.
Guest:That was the most... So this was 1991.
Guest:This is two years after the wall...
Guest:Two years after the wall came down, a bunch of East Germans are coming to Germany, to West Germany, which is now Germany.
Guest:And a lot of these people didn't.
Guest:I mean, I've never seen stuff like this before.
Guest:I mean, I grew up with all kinds of people and never thought about... Communism or people free.
Guest:Communism or Jews and all this kind of stuff.
Guest:I mean, these were some of the most...
Guest:anti-Semitic people I've ever met in my life.
Guest:I said to, as a joke one day to a guy, I grew up a nice Catholic boy.
Guest:I said, as a joke one day, he came up to me, I was getting a coffee, he said, today is Hitler's birthday.
Guest:And I was like, that's a bad thing, right?
Guest:And I go, you like that guy?
Guest:Like, I didn't know what to say.
Guest:And he kind of looked at me like, who would ask a question like that?
Guest:And I said, you know, I'm Jewish.
Guest:And the guy never spoke to me again.
Guest:Really?
Guest:He never spoke to me.
Guest:And I used to wear a cross around my neck.
Guest:And I took the cross out.
Guest:I said, no, I'm not.
Guest:I'm just kidding.
Guest:And he didn't buy it.
Guest:There was one guy.
Guest:We had a kosher party.
Guest:And this isn't even funny stuff.
Guest:I shouldn't talk about it.
Guest:Because it's really disturbing.
Guest:It was really disturbing then.
Guest:We had a kosher party, and they brought a rabbi and a chef from Israel.
Guest:And it was a party, and I don't know why.
Guest:It's in Germany.
Guest:This is in Munich.
Guest:In Munich.
Guest:Where, you know, the whole Nazi thing started.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Apparently.
Marc:But we're led to believe that that's over now, and they all feel bad about it.
Marc:Yeah, that's all bullshit.
Guest:Well, this was 20 years ago as well.
Marc:This was 92.
Guest:So this was 20 years.
Guest:I can't believe it was 20 years ago.
Guest:But...
Guest:They put the rabbi and the chef in the butcher shop to do their party.
Guest:There was 600 acidic Jews.
Guest:600 acidic Jews.
Guest:I mean, first of all, it's like walking into the lion's den, number one.
Guest:But how do you put them... What are Germans known for?
Guest:Pork.
Guest:How do you put them in the butcher shop?
Guest:That's the most offensive thing in the world.
Guest:And literally, they would have pots going up to the dishwasher, and these East German dishwashers were so offended to...
Guest:I'll never forget this one guy who we thought was a nice guy.
Guest:I didn't speak German at the time, but I'm like hearing all this stuff like shocked because I pick up a little bit.
Guest:The guy refused to wash the pot of a Jew.
Guest:I will not.
Guest:And he looked at the kitchen chef and said, how could you, what kind of German are you that you would ask me to wash the pot of a Jew?
Guest:Really?
Guest:And he walked off the job.
Guest:Walked off the job.
Guest:I was like,
Guest:You gotta be kidding me.
Marc:This is 1991.
Marc:This is nuts.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's unbelievable.
Guest:It was 92.
Marc:Was the rabbi there to bless the meat?
Guest:He was just overseeing to make sure that everything was as they do with kosher parties.
Guest:But anyway, it was kind of one of those crazy situations where I was like, I gotta get the fuck out of here.
Marc:I can't stand this country.
Marc:What were you doing there?
Guest:I was cooking, and I was working...
Guest:It turned out to be a great experience in hindsight.
Guest:While I was going through it, I hated it.
Guest:But I was in Munich, and if you know anything about the geography of Europe, it's a two-hour trip to an hour and a half trip to Italy, to the north of Italy.
Guest:It's an hour to Switzerland.
Guest:It's an hour and a half to deep inside France through the Black Forest.
Guest:I mean, it's a beautiful... Centrally located.
Marc:Centrally located.
Guest:We used to take beer runs.
Guest:I wasn't crazy about the beer in Munich at the time.
Guest:So we'd make beer runs to the Czech Republic.
Guest:Aren't they known for that?
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:I just didn't like it.
Guest:So we'd go to the Czech Republic and get Pilsner.
Guest:Pilsner or Kells before it was opened up into this market.
Guest:And the original Budweiser was there.
Guest:We'd take a trip, just pick up a few cases of beer, throw it in the car.
Guest:Is the original Budweiser any better than the Budweiser...
Guest:It actually was much better.
Marc:You would hope.
Guest:I don't drink that.
Guest:I can't drink that stuff.
Marc:No, I don't know who drinks that.
Marc:A lot of people, apparently.
Marc:I mean, in college, I think.
Guest:It's the king of beers.
Marc:It's easy.
Guest:They've convinced us all.
Guest:Well, Coors Light is a big thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is it really?
Guest:You don't have sponsors, do you?
Marc:I do.
Marc:I do.
Marc:Oh, you do.
Marc:Not liquor sponsors.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:No.
Marc:Sex toys, stamps, things like that.
Marc:Sex toys.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:So you spent all that time in Germany.
Marc:Did you learn anything specific?
Guest:You know, I learned.
Guest:So I would try to get out of Germany as much as possible, and I would take trips to the north of Italy, which was part of Austria before World War II.
Guest:So Suntirol is that Alto Adice, that region.
Guest:And I fell in love with it.
Guest:I just fell in love with the food there.
Guest:I fell in love with the majestic views, things like that.
Guest:So it had a big impact on my cuisine still.
Marc:yeah yeah did you like now can you do anything can you like make a cake if i have a recipe yeah i could you can't just wing a cake no even pastry chefs don't ring wing cakes they don't know it's very specific who's that genius on top chef that woman from san francisco who's now in somewhere else i don't watch those shows not top chef i mean iron chef you know the
Guest:Oh, Elizabeth Faulkner.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:She's badass.
Guest:She's the real deal.
Guest:Right?
Guest:She's the real deal.
Guest:Were you surprised?
Guest:I was surprised that she didn't take it all.
Guest:I think even Alex was surprised that she didn't take it all.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even Jeffrey and I were talking about it, and we're like, you know, Elizabeth,
Guest:We thought she was going to win on the episode against, it was Michael Chiarello against Elizabeth.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we figured that Jeffrey was going to go down.
Guest:She was taking prison.
Guest:She just got an awesome review in the New York Times, by the way.
Guest:She opened a place in Brooklyn.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she's killing it.
Marc:Is she?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She's awesome.
Guest:She's awesome.
Marc:So when you were a kid or when you were doing the vocational school and working in the Sheraton, I have to assume that the idea was you just wanted to be a chef.
Marc:You didn't want to be like a restaurateur necessarily.
Guest:No, I remember my goals when I got out of CIA.
Guest:I said, okay, I'm going to work.
Guest:The good news about being a cook is you're never necessarily going to go hungry.
Guest:And you could go anywhere in the world and work.
Guest:That's the good, so I wanted- If you have the basic skills.
Guest:I wanted to be able to travel.
Guest:I wanted to be able to spend time in different places.
Guest:And I said, by the time I'm 35, if I can become an executive chef of a place, maybe, I always saw in my mind's eye, maybe a place on the Upper East Side in Manhattan.
Guest:by the time I'm 35.
Marc:Like Delmonico place?
Marc:What was the name of the place you went to?
Guest:Not that fancy, but something that was bistro-esque, and something that was just comfortable, and maybe it had a piano bar as well.
Guest:There was a restaurant years ago in New York City called La Camellia, and I used to love that place.
Guest:It was a little Italian spot with a piano bar, and at midnight every night, like a bunch of people would be sitting there and drinking, and the piano would be playing and singing.
Guest:It was a fun spot.
Guest:not dissimilar to the sea loft in Waterbury, Connecticut.
Marc:It all comes back to the sea loft.
Guest:But the food was really good.
Guest:And at midnight, they would send out this pasta, this spaghettato mezzanotte, and they would just send this out and people would just have like a pasta at midnight because it was like convivial and fun and awesome.
Guest:And I always loved that sense of, you know, there was just that sense of neighborhood where, you know, we're not doing this to make money.
Guest:We're doing this because you're in our home, essentially.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I love that.
Marc:And how many restaurants did you open before you nailed it?
Marc:I mean, were you one of those guys where you'd get a job and people would be like, oh, Scott's cooking over at that place now?
Guest:No, you know what?
Guest:I'll never forget my first real chef job.
Guest:I was 26.
Guest:I was at a restaurant.
Guest:This was 97.
Guest:I was at a restaurant called Chianti on the east side, Midtown East, 55th and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan.
Guest:and i you know i was cooking some good food but i changed it was a really a neighborhood restaurant and i changed the menu a lot and the customers were not happy about it they wanted the same stuff that this place always served um and the owners and i would fight i remember one night that this this this owner um he he like like broke my balls so bad i just i sat down with a friend of mine
Guest:I drank two bottles of wine.
Guest:He was just watching me.
Guest:And I was so distraught.
Guest:And I'm like, dude, I'm doing good food.
Guest:I don't understand what the problem is.
Guest:And it's that stuff.
Guest:I mean, it's what we spoke about before.
Guest:This is so personal to me.
Guest:This means so much to me.
Guest:I'm doing nothing else.
Guest:I'm working 14 hours, 16 hours a day.
Guest:It meant so much, and this guy was just breaking my balls because customers weren't happy, but we weren't appealing to the customer base that was gonna really understand this stuff.
Guest:But it was a neighborhood restaurant.
Guest:So I understand his point now.
Guest:I mean, then I was like, why would you hire me
Guest:if you don't want me to do what I do.
Guest:I'm an artist, you fuck.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I always tell my staff as well, listen, the creative process is extremely important, but we need to understand that we need to live in the confines of who we are.
Guest:Once we start stepping outside of that frame, then there's going to be issues.
Guest:What would that look like?
Marc:What does that mean, stepping outside of that frame?
Guest:Well, the frame of who we are.
Guest:This is, you know, here's Scarpetta is meant to, in the name and the word Scarpetta, it means little shoe, but it's really that act of when something's so good, you grab a piece of bread and sop up what's on the plate.
Guest:So if you look at the logo, that logo looks like bread after it's being swiped from the plate.
Marc:See it in the window?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:so the the intention is meant to be something that's honest and soulful right and deep um and that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be executed properly uh but it needs to have that balance of rusticity and elegance right and if you look at the design of the restaurants as well they're they have this balance of rustic and elegant uh because i mean hopefully that's that's just part of my
Guest:my thing, it's what I do.
Guest:But I love giving opportunities to young chefs, or any chef, I mean, older, younger, it doesn't matter, but being able to execute at that level.
Guest:And that's the thing, from a branding and marketing perspective, we can't lose sight of what people expect when they walk in the door of these restaurants.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:Let me ask you a question about that because there are certain restaurants like like as a guy who's not really a full foodie and not really a great cook per se but when it seems that once People in the kitchen stop giving a shit even if they're making the same menu it stinks and
Guest:How do restaurants die like that?
Guest:If you're not putting love into it, then people get that.
Guest:I feel like customers get that.
Marc:It's true, right?
Marc:There are restaurants in New York that used to be great, and all of a sudden, they're just no good anymore.
Marc:It's the same shit.
Guest:I'll tell you, about two years ago, I had a chef in New York and he just didn't give a shit.
Guest:I mean, it was one of those situations where I was like every day pulling him aside, like, let's get in there, trying to motivate the guy, trying to get the guy to where I thought he should live.
Guest:And it actually turned out that customers were feeling it in the food.
Guest:And I didn't necessarily see it because I'm not sitting in a dining room.
Guest:But to your point, people know it.
Guest:You know it when you taste it.
Guest:It's like great sushi.
Guest:You know great sushi when you taste it.
Guest:It's hard to describe it any other way.
Marc:But that's the amazing thing about food is that some people, if you watch the shows, like...
Marc:Like I watch Irvine show, you know, the restaurant.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's awesome.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's a character.
Marc:He's, he's, he rides the edge of awesome and irritating, but he's, but you say that.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, yeah, I know he could kick my ass clearly.
Marc:His arms are like, yeah, I just see like he shoots the show and then he goes to the gym and that's, that's his life.
Marc:But there are people that they open these restaurants and they don't fucking know anything.
Marc:And then there are people that just get broken and they're consumed by panic and they can no longer even focus on the food.
Guest:Yeah, it's true.
Marc:But here, how do you manage when you're not here...
Marc:How do you know everything's going to work out?
Guest:Well, I mean, I don't.
Guest:But I think that, let's say, I mean, I needed to come to terms with this a long time ago when I decided to do more than one restaurant.
Guest:That if I'm not here, there's going to be a certain percentage of slippage.
Guest:I mean, it's just going to happen.
Guest:And how do I tighten that gap?
Guest:So if it's 2% instead of 5%, what can I live with?
Guest:What can I say, okay, I'm willing to let that go to a certain extent
Guest:But customers aren't going to feel that.
Guest:I mean, that's just a business decision.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Guest:I think that you have to make.
Marc:And the whole like the way that the trend of food is going now, this whole these buzzwords like local, organic.
Marc:What's another one?
Marc:Sustainable.
Marc:Sustainable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Once restaurants like McDonald's start using those words, it's time to move on.
Marc:to new words.
Marc:We're back to the bad shit.
Marc:We're not a sponsor.
Guest:But you know what I mean?
Guest:It's like, okay, McDonald's is starting to do a sustainable program.
Guest:Are you fucking kidding me?
Guest:Come on.
Guest:I am a capitalist.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:Okay, do your thing.
Guest:It's all good.
Guest:But these buzzwords
Guest:But they mean something, and they mean a lot to certain people.
Guest:If you speak to a chef like Dan Barber in New York and start to talk to him about local and organic farming and sustainability of product, this guy is like a fucking wizard.
Guest:It's like you're speaking to the Buddha.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:This guy's unbelievable.
Guest:And so to see what he does, I mean, I guess it's like anything, you know, to see what he does and then hear a company like McDonald's try to use that same verbiage, you know, there's just something that's lost there.
Guest:There's something that's just, you know, what he does and what they do have nothing to do with each other.
Guest:It's like great acting.
Marc:Yeah, they're just trying to get people to eat their garbage.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And then, like, well, what does this stuff mean to you?
Marc:Because you use local organic, or not organic necessarily.
Marc:Well, we use organic.
Marc:And also, my girlfriend's a vegetarian, and she loves this place because you put an option on there.
Marc:You've got a vegetarian menu.
Marc:We have a vegetarian menu.
Marc:It's fucking life-changing.
Guest:Yeah, it's a business decision, but it needs to make sense, and it has to be authentic.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It needs to be heartfelt and authentic.
Guest:I eat vegetarian quite a bit.
Guest:I mean, if I'm home, if I don't go to work, I'll probably eat like a vegetarian every day of the week because I'm a fat bastard, and I need to lose weight.
Guest:That's why.
Guest:So I'll eat vegetables all the time.
Guest:And whenever I've done these diets where I need to focus on what I'm doing or need to cut certain things out of my diet, I go to restaurants and that offering doesn't exist.
Guest:So I figure from a business, just forget about being thoughtful for your customer.
Guest:Just from that thoughtfulness translates to a business decision.
Guest:And it's just good business, you know?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:and with with words like with local and how how do you guys like is like i don't know like i know new york you can go down to union square and do that market thing but how does that work here i mean in la oh my god today it's today's wednesday right today the santa monica market have you ever been there no forget about it yeah if you show up at like 8 a.m you'll see every chef in the city there really it's unbelievable really unbelievable and you guys just like like when you walk around and see like you've been doing this long enough that you you know you can just feel vegetables
Guest:You look at things and you know what's good and what's not.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, there's things where, I mean, that makes chefs hard.
Guest:I mean, we see like a zucchini and you're like, holy shit, look at that fucking zucchini.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it's very funny.
Guest:We're kind of losers in a lot of ways.
Guest:But it's what, I mean, it's like, I'm sure as a comedian, like you hear someone tell a joke, you're like, holy shit.
Guest:Sam Kinison was like, I mean, I always think about him and everybody was like, he's a comedian's comedian.
Marc:Yeah, no, I spent a lot of time, did my graduate work chopping lines for Sam.
Marc:Did you really?
Marc:Oh, sure, yeah.
Marc:I was a doorman at the comedy store.
Marc:I spent about a year losing my mind.
Guest:I thought chopping lines meant like, you know, working on his writing.
Marc:No, literally.
Marc:No, literally.
Marc:Yeah, chopping lines, yeah.
Marc:That's awesome.
Marc:That's hysterical.
Marc:A lot of hours listening to Sam talk about Sam.
Marc:Yeah, you know, all night long.
Marc:That's hysterical.
Marc:That was my Munich.
Marc:But, you know, and then you look at a guy like Rodney Dangerfield, and I know Rodney Dangerfield and Sam were, like, really close, right?
Marc:Yeah, because Rodney was very sad for a while.
Marc:Yeah, Rodney, was he?
Guest:Was Sam that bad, really?
Guest:Was he a douche?
Marc:Well, yeah, of course.
Marc:But I mean, a douche in the same way that you or I are a douche.
Marc:You know, he was, you know, he was a bit of a bully.
Marc:And, you know, I mean, watch his act.
Marc:Is that a guy you're like, I want to hang out with that guy.
Guest:I mean, that's some of the funniest shit.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I still hit that first album.
Marc:I say it's hard to find it.
Marc:You can't even get on CD.
Marc:I still listen to that first album.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:He was something else.
Guest:He was beautiful.
Marc:But once you get to know somebody, the ego thing, it's the same in any business.
Marc:Once you get big, the trick is to have some humility and to not just be a dick.
Marc:Not say, now I'm big, you're all fucking going down.
Marc:I hate that shit.
Guest:I hate that shit.
Guest:Listen, we've all been through it.
Guest:No matter what success is... Success is just a matter of perception for other people.
Guest:You have to be honest enough with yourself to know where you stand on shit.
Guest:It's hard, right?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Fucking A, man.
Guest:Nobody...
Guest:I mean, you know, I try not to be that person who who who looks at other people like I want to be like him.
Guest:Yeah, I'm trying to walk my own path here.
Guest:But if I'm honest with myself, I have a lot of shitty days.
Marc:Resent resentment and jealousy are such a fucking bitch.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, it's just the worst.
Marc:And like, you know, because you can feel it in your heart.
Marc:And as you get older, you know, like, you know what?
Marc:Maybe you shouldn't open your mouth.
Marc:When you're feeling that, you just kind of get that gratitude going.
Marc:Like, who are you jealous of?
Marc:And for what reason?
Guest:No, I mean, it's not jealousy.
Guest:But I look at, let's say the success of someone like Jean-Georges von Crichton.
Guest:It's not jealousy.
Guest:I just look at the decisions that he's made.
Guest:And the tough thing in my career has always been, I'm a victim of my own decisions.
Guest:And I have nobody else to blame except myself.
Guest:So that sense of freedom, I look at JG and it's like, fuck, that guy can do anything.
Guest:And his culinary vocabulary is is probably more extensive than anyone that I know.
Guest:I mean, he's a master.
Guest:If you've ever been to Jean-Georges in New York City specifically for lunch, you'll know exactly what I mean.
Guest:It's just mind blowing.
Guest:And then he could do something like Spice Market, which is just great.
Guest:And he could do something like Jojo or he could do something like ABC Kitchen in New York City, which is also fantastic.
Guest:I mean, this guy has
Guest:i i don't know another way to say it but his culinary vocabulary is just so damn extensive it's yeah you do asian and french he's a wizard and in american better than anybody it's really unbelievable so i wouldn't say that it's jealousy or envy that i feel for him it's just like i look at him wide-eyed like this guy and he's awesome yeah like you meet him and he's just like happy and like of course he's happy he's fucking john george yeah his wife is hot he's good you know what i mean of course he's everything he's got everything like that guy's awesome yeah
Guest:He has a French accent, which, you know, I'm stuck with this one.
Guest:So, you know, like the guy has it all going on.
Guest:I look at a guy like Wolfgang Puck, not without.
Guest:And I was fortunate to have a conversation with Wolfgang a couple months ago.
Guest:And he was like, no, man, you know, I made a lot of mistakes.
Guest:And he was like, I had business people in my life that told me I could do this, this, and this.
Guest:And they created great spreadsheets.
Guest:And I could be worth $300 million in two years.
Guest:He said a year later, I was declaring bankruptcy almost.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's like, holy shit.
Guest:So this is a guy also a victim of his decisions that he's made.
Guest:However, he's been able to roll that into a tremendous amount of success.
Marc:Well, that's tricky, I guess, as a chef because you guys are creative and you have this amazing skill.
Marc:But I imagine that you could be suckered in the sense that you need guys with money.
Marc:to back you.
Marc:Or you need a guy with a restaurant to say, you're my guy, and you don't know when you're going to be left holding the bag or thrown under the bus for whatever bullshit or taken advantage of.
Guest:You can't speak to that one, huh?
Guest:Fuck, man.
Guest:You have no idea.
Guest:That's all I'm saying.
Guest:You have no idea.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Let's just say yes.
Guest:It's happened in the past.
Guest:It's happened to everybody to a certain extent.
Guest:You know, the old...
Guest:uh you know you remember the the godfather when johnny fontaine is stuck with that that contract yeah i don't know what do i do what am i gonna do so i mean those are the things that you wish you had the godfather in your life every once in a while to like give somebody a smack around if it was a different time you could have
Marc:I know.
Marc:I should have stayed closer with some of my cousins on my mother's side of the family.
Marc:No, you probably shouldn't have because then they would have burned down your restaurant.
Marc:That's a good point.
Marc:That's a good point.
Marc:Are we going to make spaghetti?
Marc:You want to make a spaghetti?
Marc:Let's do it.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:All right.
Guest:So I start with a top pan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:About eight ounces of tomato sauce, right?
Guest:Give or take.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I put that on the fire to reduce.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, I do it like this, individual portions for one reason.
Guest:And that's the infused olive oil?
Guest:No, the infused oil is already in there.
Guest:This is additional extra virgin olive oil.
Guest:But basically...
Guest:Because of the surface area in this pan, I reduce it down like this individually so that if I reduced it in a large pot, it would start to take on that weight and that heaviness like my mother's tomato sauce.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Which is perfectly fine, don't get me wrong.
Guest:I'm not trying to disparage my mother, but I want this to remain really fresh.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Okay, so just a pinch of crushed red pepper.
Guest:Now, this spaghetti we make in-house.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Spaghetti is semolina and double zero flour.
Guest:So it has to be fine.
Guest:It has to be very fine, yeah.
Guest:And if you try to use AP, like all-purpose flour, or another kind of flour, you'll feel the texture difference.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It'll look different.
Guest:So, like, when you buy cheeses, you got your guy that's, like, the best of what...
Guest:Yeah, I mean, we have great purveyors that we buy amazing products from.
Guest:I mean, the thing you learn over time is you're only as good as the product that you're putting in the food.
Guest:You can't transform bad product into good.
Guest:You can be a good cook, but you can't create good products.
Guest:So you need to start with really good stuff.
Guest:So you see we're just boiling the pasta.
Guest:There's enough salt in this water that it tastes like...
Guest:You can stick your finger in there if you want.
Guest:That tastes like broth.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's the important thing.
Marc:That doesn't seem like it's boiling.
Marc:I just stuck my finger in.
Marc:It is boiling.
Marc:You see it boiling.
Marc:I still got restaurant here.
Marc:Still got it.
Marc:And you do this with every order?
Marc:Because I noticed when I was here and I was sitting in the kitchen, it's like very precious in the window.
Marc:It's like one dish at a time.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So it has to be.
Marc:You cooked it 90%, now we're cooking the rest in the sauce.
Marc:Cook it the rest of the way here.
Marc:And I'll adjust it with that pasta cooking liquid if needed.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So now you've got the fresh basil.
Guest:Fresh basil added inside.
Okay.
Guest:And it's just cooking away.
Guest:Now, a couple things are happening here.
Guest:There's the release of the starch into the sauce, which helps thicken it.
Guest:There's the absorption of the liquid into the pasta, which helps flavor the pasta itself.
Guest:And then there's the addition of fat with the starch and the sauce with the olive oil, which creates an emulsion, which really makes it look like...
Guest:that sheen yeah look at that sheen that's on there right a little less than a tablespoon of butter right and once you add that butter yeah it sees no more heat so i won't add any more not gonna put it on the i'm gonna put it back on the burner anymore see how it's getting nice and creamy yeah yeah yeah that's the trick right that's the trick and then grated parmesan cheese
Guest:If I put this back on the fire right now, you'd start to see it creating a coating of the cheese on the bottom of the pan, which you want to stay away from.
Guest:It's just nice.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:See the texture of that stuff?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And this is your best-selling dish?
Guest:This is in every restaurant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:He's going to give me a bowl right now.
Marc:Are you going to eat any?
Marc:I don't eat this stuff.
Guest:I told you, I'm on a diet.
Marc:I was on a diet this morning.
Marc:That's good.
Guest:When we plate this up, we put a little ring, so it always has that beautiful presentation.
Guest:Yeah, I noticed that when I eat it here.
Guest:It should have a beautiful presentation.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:That's it, man.
Guest:Simple.
Marc:But like anything, it takes a lot to get to that simplicity.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I can see that.
Marc:Oh, shit.
Marc:Look at that.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Am I going to eat that?
Marc:Yeah, this is for you.
Marc:Well, it's great talking to you, Scott.
Marc:You want to eat it here?
Marc:You want to eat it in the room?
Marc:I'll eat it wherever.
Marc:You got things to do now, right?
Marc:You're all set now.
Marc:Awesome.
Marc:Well, I'll eat this.
Marc:You go do what you got to do.
Marc:Thanks for talking.
Marc:Thank you, man.
Marc:This is fun.
Marc:It was fun, man.
Marc:All right, so I should just sit and eat this.
Marc:Chill.
Marc:You're going to do business?
Guest:I would give you a glass of wine if I had to.
Marc:I don't do it anymore, so it's good.
Marc:Oh, you don't drink anymore?
Marc:Not anymore.
Marc:I guess so.
Guest:You save a lot of money.
Marc:You save a lot of money, and I'm probably going to save my life at some point.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:All right, man.
Marc:Thanks.
Guest:Go do what you got to do.
Cheers.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:I hope you got that recipe.
Marc:And I've done it at home, and it's fucking spectacular.
Marc:That's the secret.
Marc:And Scott gave it to you, so I ain't, you know, I'm not, you know, it's not a magician thing.
Marc:You know, you can know the trick.
Marc:There's the trick.
Marc:I appreciate that.
Marc:I appreciate Scott hanging out.
Marc:All right, look, go to WTF Pod for all your WTF Pod needs.
Marc:I, of course, taped this earlier.
Marc:I'm taping my hour special tonight.
Marc:I do have shows coming up in Milwaukee and in Bethlehem, PA.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Get on the calendar.
Marc:You'll find I'll be at the Moon Tower Comedy Festival in Austin, Texas, the 24th through the 27th of April.
Marc:So if any of those appeal to you, come on down.
Marc:I will be premiering my new show, Marin.
Marc:at the Moon Tower Comedy Fest.
Marc:We're going to run an episode and do a Q&A over there.
Marc:Pre-order my book, Attempting Normal, if you will.
Marc:You can go to wtfpod.com and do that as well.
Marc:Do all the stuff you need to do.
Marc:Kick in a few shekels, buy some merch, do some posters, get some posters, leave a comment.
Marc:All right, get some justcoffee.coop.
Marc:How's that?
Marc:At WTFPod.com.
Marc:Get the WTF one and I get a little bit on the back end there.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I'm punchy.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Boomer lives!