Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Keith Lee Talks Viral Food Critiques, NY Chop Cheese, Family Values + More
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club Morning.
- 0:05Speaker 2: Everybody is DJ Envy Charlamagne the Guy. We are the
- 0:08Speaker 2: Breakfast Club. We got our guess co host Lauren the
- 0:10Speaker 2: Roaster with us, and we got a special guest in
- 0:12Speaker 2: the building. Brother's name is Keith Lee.
- 0:14Speaker 3: Welcome brother, Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure to be here. How are
- 0:16Speaker 3: you doing, man, I can't complain, man, blessed ay favorite.
- 0:19Speaker 2: Yes. Absolutely for people that don't know who you are,
- 0:21Speaker 2: you've been going viral the last couple of months and
- 0:23Speaker 2: years because you're a food creek. Absolutely, but you're a
- 0:26Speaker 2: food creek the hood way, like you pull up to
- 0:29Speaker 2: the spot and you eat it in the car pause.
- 0:31Speaker 1: I wouldn't say the whoday. I just eat food.
- 0:32Speaker 3: I critique it everything, and it's not even from a
- 0:35Speaker 3: critique and standpoint, it's just I experience everything. So at
- 0:38Speaker 3: first I will go in and I will eat food,
- 0:39Speaker 3: and I will experience the whole thing, like sitting down
- 0:41Speaker 3: the restaurants. But I've always had social anxiety, so I've
- 0:44Speaker 3: never been really big on sitting down and like sitting
- 0:47Speaker 3: and talking to people. Really, so I'm getting a lot
- 0:49Speaker 3: better being around my family and being around the situations
- 0:52Speaker 3: that I'm in. But really, my family goes in and
- 0:54Speaker 3: they get the customer service experience for me now because nowadays,
- 0:57Speaker 3: if I go in, I get thirty backs to food
- 0:59Speaker 3: and get the experience that it's not authentic. And if
- 1:02Speaker 3: I go in and I say, hey, the customer service
- 1:04Speaker 3: was amazing or the food was amazing, it's only because
- 1:06Speaker 3: I have fifteen min million followers. It's not because the
- 1:09Speaker 3: food is actually amazing or the customer service. You're gonna
- 1:11Speaker 3: get the same customer service experience. So I want the
- 1:13Speaker 3: same customer service experience my mom gonna get if you
- 1:16Speaker 3: going the next day.
- 1:16Speaker 4: Oh that's interesting you said that. You know, you being
- 1:20Speaker 4: the food critic, you don't get an authentic experience.
- 1:21Speaker 1: And the absolutely it might front now, Oh it's immedia.
- 1:24Speaker 1: It ain't. No, Mike.
- 1:26Speaker 5: Might be knowing where you're going to. Like when they
- 1:28Speaker 5: say you in a city, they sit out an alert
- 1:30Speaker 5: on Twitter. They'll be like, oh, Keith Lee is.
- 1:31Speaker 1: In New York.
- 1:33Speaker 6: It's like, okay, people got tightened up.
- 1:34Speaker 3: A lot of people ask me why I do that.
- 1:36Speaker 3: So the reason I put out an alert before I
- 1:39Speaker 3: go to a city, every food I pay for everything.
- 1:42Speaker 6: He doesn't go in hisself.
- 1:43Speaker 1: He said that, okay, so.
- 1:46Speaker 3: Get a little backstory, because I know a lot of
- 1:48Speaker 3: people aren't familiar with what I'm blessed enough to do.
- 1:51Speaker 3: So I basically, I go to restaurants, and I'm a
- 1:53Speaker 3: marketing platform for absolutely free to these restaurants that don't
- 1:56Speaker 3: have marketing platforms, but they have great food and great
- 1:58Speaker 3: customer service. So I go in and I go to
- 2:00Speaker 3: small mama pop shops. I go to places who might
- 2:04Speaker 3: have just opened, or I go to places that have,
- 2:06Speaker 3: like I said, great food and gret because of services
- 2:07Speaker 3: with people don't know about them because they aren't either
- 2:09Speaker 3: on social media or they don't do a great job
- 2:11Speaker 3: of word of mouth, because a lot of these places
- 2:13Speaker 3: are either ran by older people who aren't on social media,
- 2:16Speaker 3: or people who've put they all into making the resources
- 2:19Speaker 3: that they have work and not have time to actually
- 2:23Speaker 3: go out and outsourced marketing. And a lot of people
- 2:25Speaker 3: who are on social media or are food influencers they charge.
- 2:28Speaker 3: So I don't consider myself a food influencer. I don't
- 2:30Speaker 3: consider myself an influencer, a celebrity or anybody. I'm just
- 2:33Speaker 3: a vestable of God and I just do what I
- 2:34Speaker 3: feel like i'mupposed to do and that comes with eating food.
- 2:37Speaker 7: Use an MMA fighter too?
- 2:38Speaker 1: Professional?
- 2:39Speaker 3: Yep, wow, at eight years ninety five is a professional
- 2:42Speaker 3: four no as amateur.
- 2:43Speaker 7: So how did you go from MMA fighter the food creek?
- 2:46Speaker 3: So I've always been really big into food. As MMA fighter,
- 2:50Speaker 3: food is one of the most important things because you
- 2:51Speaker 3: got to lose a lot of weight. I fought at
- 2:52Speaker 3: one thirty five, but I always waited around one to
- 2:54Speaker 3: sixty five and one to seventy, So really cutting from
- 2:57Speaker 3: one seventy to one thirty five is ninety percent in
- 3:00Speaker 3: ten percent dedication. So it's really I've always had a
- 3:03Speaker 3: passion for food and cooking and really being focused on
- 3:06Speaker 3: a food aspect.
- 3:07Speaker 1: So it just, honestly, it's God man. One thing led
- 3:10Speaker 1: into another.
- 3:11Speaker 3: I started doing TikTok just to get over my social
- 3:13Speaker 3: anxiety so I can do interviews for MMA, and then
- 3:15Speaker 3: by the time you know it, I was I'm here.
- 3:17Speaker 2: How do you rate when you go to a lot
- 3:19Speaker 2: of these restaurants and spots, Because, as I was saying earlier,
- 3:21Speaker 2: a lot of times when you go to a restaurant,
- 3:23Speaker 2: it is the experience, right, It's you know, when you
- 3:26Speaker 2: go to the South, you usually get a warming feeling
- 3:28Speaker 2: from people. New York is a lot colder.
- 3:30Speaker 1: And we're very cold, very cool when you go to
- 3:32Speaker 1: those restaurants.
- 3:33Speaker 2: So how do you rate a restaurant on experience? Based
- 3:36Speaker 2: on that?
- 3:36Speaker 3: So really is based on the experience from traveling the
- 3:40Speaker 3: world and being able to do that through fighting. I've
- 3:42Speaker 3: took that experience that I've had from that into the
- 3:45Speaker 3: actual food world. So most of the time it's either
- 3:48Speaker 3: based on a customer service, the food, or the overall
- 3:51Speaker 3: experience itself. So if let's say I go into a
- 3:54Speaker 3: restaurant again, this is why I don't go in by myself,
- 3:56Speaker 3: because I go into a restaurant, I walk out with,
- 3:58Speaker 3: like I said, thirty five bags of free food. And
- 4:00Speaker 3: that's never been my My mo is to help restaurants
- 4:03Speaker 3: and to help people and to be a blessing that
- 4:05Speaker 3: I feel like I've been called to be. But in
- 4:09Speaker 3: order to rate sufficiently, I get the food in front
- 4:11Speaker 3: of me, I eat it like everybody else. I give
- 4:14Speaker 3: my opinion like everybody else, and I make sure I
- 4:16Speaker 3: pre EMPHASI it that this is my opinion. These are
- 4:18Speaker 3: my taste bloods. Yeah, I just taste food. Bro that's
- 4:21Speaker 3: really what it boils down to be. But I'm blessed
- 4:23Speaker 3: enough to where if I go in like a restaurant,
- 4:26Speaker 3: or if I actually am super fond of a dish,
- 4:29Speaker 3: it might be a four to five hour way time.
- 4:31Speaker 3: And we've been able to do it in Houston, We've
- 4:33Speaker 3: been able to do it in Detroit. We've been able
- 4:35Speaker 3: to do it in Miami. We've been able to do
- 4:37Speaker 3: it here. We've been able to do it in Vegas,
- 4:41Speaker 3: New Orleans. So we've just been blessed enough to go
- 4:43Speaker 3: to places and once we leave, we might leave a
- 4:45Speaker 3: like I said, a five hour weight time, six hour
- 4:47Speaker 3: way time. The places who haven't been blessed enough to
- 4:49Speaker 3: have that experience or that exposure.
- 4:51Speaker 6: The location called the I think it's the puttery what
- 4:54Speaker 6: you said.
- 4:55Speaker 5: They had to close down and get themselves together to
- 4:58Speaker 5: reopen because of all the business.
- 4:59Speaker 3: You absolutely within the span. So all that has really
- 5:02Speaker 3: started for me in January last year. So within the
- 5:04Speaker 3: span of a year, we've been able to raise over
- 5:07Speaker 3: forty thousand dollars for a restaurant owner who has cancer.
- 5:09Speaker 3: In less than twenty four hours, we've been able to
- 5:11Speaker 3: raise fifty thousand dollars for a food truck owner. In
- 5:14Speaker 3: less than twenty four hours, we've been able to keep
- 5:17Speaker 3: thousands of where I would say thousands hundreds of doors
- 5:20Speaker 3: open from restaurants who would email me and say, hey,
- 5:23Speaker 3: we about to close tomorrow or we're about to close
- 5:25Speaker 3: the next few days because we don't have the marketing
- 5:27Speaker 3: and nobody knows about us. And then within twenty four
- 5:29Speaker 3: hour span, Like I said, it's a line around the corner.
- 5:31Speaker 3: And I don't take anything on the back end. I
- 5:33Speaker 3: don't take any money. I don't take any endorsement deals
- 5:36Speaker 3: from these small companies. I don't take anything from them.
- 5:39Speaker 3: What I get out of it is knowing that whatever
- 5:43Speaker 3: I put in the world, I get back.
- 5:44Speaker 7: Yeah, as soon as you do that, your word is done.
- 5:46Speaker 4: As soon as people realize like oh somebody paid him,
- 5:49Speaker 4: or somebody gets or something, your word is done.
- 5:51Speaker 7: All this is over.
- 5:52Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 5:52Speaker 7: What was the first one that went really really big
- 5:54Speaker 7: for you?
- 5:55Speaker 3: It was a place called Francis's Piece of Reda in
- 5:57Speaker 3: Las Vegas. They emailed me and they basically said, hey,
- 5:59Speaker 3: we're about to close those doors because we same thing.
- 6:03Speaker 3: We don't have a marketing, No nobody knows about us.
- 6:05Speaker 3: But the food is amazing. And my dad is the
- 6:07Speaker 3: owner and his name is Frank, and he put all
- 6:09Speaker 3: his money into this business. But he's afraid that his
- 6:11Speaker 3: business is about the clothes. We just want you to come.
- 6:14Speaker 3: We don't want you to do a review or anything.
- 6:15Speaker 3: We just want you to come and eat the food.
- 6:17Speaker 3: I went. I met Frank the second I walked in.
- 6:19Speaker 3: He had no idea who I was, and he just
- 6:20Speaker 3: was one of the nicest men I've ever met. He
- 6:22Speaker 3: gave me a frigator rad. He tried to gave me
- 6:24Speaker 3: freegated I turned it down. He tried to give me
- 6:25Speaker 3: free food. I turned it out and I just took
- 6:27Speaker 3: the food.
- 6:27Speaker 1: I ate it.
- 6:28Speaker 3: I recorded it, and then within less than twelve hours
- 6:31Speaker 3: they went from having two customers a day to being
- 6:33Speaker 3: around the corner. And to this day they have a
- 6:35Speaker 3: section for luggage to where you come straight off the
- 6:37Speaker 3: plane you put your luggage because so many people come straight.
- 6:40Speaker 1: Off the plane.
- 6:41Speaker 2: And where are you from.
- 6:42Speaker 1: I'm originally from Detroit, but I live in Vegas.
- 6:44Speaker 2: From Detroit with So you've been in all these different places, right,
- 6:47Speaker 2: So you said New York is cold. So when you
- 6:50Speaker 2: say New York is cold, explain to people when you
- 6:52Speaker 2: get service in New York and compared to service in Detroit,
- 6:55Speaker 2: compared to service in the South.
- 6:57Speaker 3: Culture is different. Culture is different, the people are different.
- 7:00Speaker 3: When I walked in, you asked me or you said
- 7:02Speaker 3: that I'm a ghetto food critic. So it's like that
- 7:04Speaker 3: alone New York. So it's like New York is cold.
- 7:13Speaker 3: They play with you a lot, but I got I
- 7:15Speaker 3: got thick skin. So it's like what you say to me,
- 7:17Speaker 3: don't bother me. I just don't like when places or
- 7:20Speaker 3: people go to these smart restaurants and they get that
- 7:23Speaker 3: that energy that.
- 7:25Speaker 2: But your food creek the hood way, like you pull
- 7:27Speaker 2: up to the spot and you eat it in the car. Pause.
- 7:29Speaker 3: It's the same thing, that energy that you gave me
- 7:31Speaker 3: when they give it to smart restaurants.
- 7:33Speaker 1: That's what I don't like when you get it to me.
- 7:34Speaker 2: I don't mind it's not the same because I'm from
- 7:36Speaker 2: the hood, but I'm not ghetto. I'm from Quities, but
- 7:38Speaker 2: I call it the hood, but it's nigga.
- 7:39Speaker 7: You are so ghettle I'm not.
- 7:40Speaker 1: You think you not gettle.
- 7:42Speaker 7: You're one of the most ghetto is niggas.
- 7:47Speaker 3: You got to you gotta he got a white beeter,
- 7:51Speaker 3: but he said twenty degrees outside and his rainer.
- 7:56Speaker 7: Jack.
- 7:56Speaker 1: Okay, now that you also wear video got no strings
- 7:59Speaker 1: on it from TikTok.
- 8:03Speaker 6: I don't know if I would pick up on like
- 8:04Speaker 6: your actual personality, but you' not like that in person.
- 8:08Speaker 1: I'm the same.
- 8:09Speaker 3: I feel like I feel like I am who I
- 8:11Speaker 3: say I am. Is just that when I'm in front
- 8:13Speaker 3: of the camera and I can just chill in this myself,
- 8:15Speaker 3: then you just get me eating food. But that's that's
- 8:18Speaker 3: one thing about the Internet. I'm always me, but you
- 8:20Speaker 3: don't really know me because I don't really talk much.
- 8:23Speaker 3: And I only did this because I wanted to do this.
- 8:26Speaker 3: I don't have the traditional way of marketing or going
- 8:30Speaker 3: out and pushing myself because my goal isn't to push myself.
- 8:33Speaker 3: My goal is to push these smart restaurants and do
- 8:36Speaker 3: what I feel like I'm called to do. I only
- 8:38Speaker 3: did this as a scratch off the buckets because I've
- 8:40Speaker 3: always wanted to do this.
- 8:41Speaker 4: What you said earlier about you know, not going into
- 8:43Speaker 4: the stassment yourself, that's why you didn't go into candy restaurant, right,
- 8:47Speaker 4: because why they want to give you perferctial treatment.
- 8:49Speaker 3: So they personally invited me. So when we were at
- 8:51Speaker 3: the music fest, the one music fest, one of her
- 8:54Speaker 3: team members or somebody who was associated or walked into
- 8:57Speaker 3: me and was like, Hey, we've been inviting you for
- 8:58Speaker 3: the last week. We've ben DMU, we've been emailing you.
- 9:02Speaker 3: Can you please just come get a food to try?
- 9:04Speaker 3: And I knew if I was to walk in again
- 9:07Speaker 3: the same experience that somebody with less followers than me
- 9:10Speaker 3: or somebody with no followers wouldn't get the same experience.
- 9:14Speaker 3: And I'm a person at the D day. I'm a
- 9:15Speaker 3: normal person. I'm not like again, I'm not a celebrity.
- 9:18Speaker 3: And the way I think about it, if we were
- 9:20Speaker 3: ready to get dropped off in a foreign country or
- 9:21Speaker 3: a random country and they had no idea who anybody was,
- 9:25Speaker 3: we'd all be picking the same or doing the same things.
- 9:28Speaker 3: We all we we would all be the same on
- 9:30Speaker 3: the same plane field. So that's how I live my life.
- 9:32Speaker 3: So they literally asked me I went, and I knew
- 9:35Speaker 3: if I walked in it would be completely different. So
- 9:37Speaker 3: I sent my family in as always, and they immediately
- 9:40Speaker 3: told them like, hey, it's a two hour to two
- 9:43Speaker 3: and a half hour away time. So I was like, okay,
- 9:45Speaker 3: if we're gonna wait, we're gonna just sit and wait
- 9:48Speaker 3: like everybody else. That's one thing. I never skipped lines. Again,
- 9:51Speaker 3: I'm a normal person. But we I sat in the car,
- 9:54Speaker 3: I waited fit them to go in. They came back
- 9:56Speaker 3: and it was like a two hour way time. I
- 9:57Speaker 3: was like, okay, let me go in and see if
- 9:59Speaker 3: it's gonna be different if I go in, because my
- 10:01Speaker 3: experience to why Atlanta that whole time was if I
- 10:04Speaker 3: go in, I get literally five minute wait times, two
- 10:07Speaker 3: minute wait times, and it's like in Atlanta, I think
- 10:10Speaker 3: it's different because it really takes status to be able
- 10:13Speaker 3: to eat or to be able to do anything out there.
- 10:16Speaker 3: So me walking in immediately, she was like, oh yeah,
- 10:20Speaker 3: you can come sit down. And I was like, well,
- 10:22Speaker 3: you just told my family it's too our way time,
- 10:23Speaker 3: and she was like, oh, well, I called a bunch
- 10:26Speaker 3: of people and they didn't come and pick up the reservations.
- 10:29Speaker 3: So that's why we're on a first come, first basis now.
- 10:32Speaker 3: But a few minutes ago you went on the first
- 10:34Speaker 3: first her basis. So it was just things like that
- 10:36Speaker 3: that made me highlighted and made me turn around and
- 10:41Speaker 3: go sit in the car.
- 10:41Speaker 7: How many people in your family? Though? How many people is?
- 10:44Speaker 1: I can't tell you all of that because sometimes it's
- 10:47Speaker 1: a lot of us.
- 10:47Speaker 7: So that's what I mean.
- 10:48Speaker 3: I don't want to blow the cover nobody because it
- 10:49Speaker 3: only works if nobody knows who we are.
- 10:51Speaker 4: Because just to be fair, if eight people walk in,
- 10:54Speaker 4: I might not be able to come.
- 10:55Speaker 3: Oh of course not no, actually walk We actually a
- 10:58Speaker 3: five person tape when my family asked for a five
- 11:00Speaker 3: persona but I came and asked for a seven person
- 11:02Speaker 3: table and they gave it to me in two minutes.
- 11:05Speaker 2: But you know, when most restaurants have celebrities, most they
- 11:08Speaker 2: give them you know, you know, they feel like a
- 11:12Speaker 2: celebrity is gonna post.
- 11:12Speaker 1: It, which I want to see celebrities.
- 11:14Speaker 2: And they'll want to come to the restaurant even more.
- 11:16Speaker 3: But that's why I only go to places that I'm
- 11:17Speaker 3: invited to, because if you invite me, you invite me
- 11:20Speaker 3: on the pretenses that you know what it is. You
- 11:22Speaker 3: know what it is that I do. So if I
- 11:24Speaker 3: go into a spot and you automatically know that I
- 11:27Speaker 3: don't want preferential treatment because I want to get the
- 11:29Speaker 3: same experience that everybody else kids. Then once you give
- 11:32Speaker 3: it to me, it shows that you didn't invite me
- 11:34Speaker 3: for me. You invited me for the opportunity. You didn't
- 11:36Speaker 3: look at me as a person, You only looked at
- 11:37Speaker 3: me as an opportunity.
- 11:38Speaker 2: So you only go where you're invited. You only go
- 11:40Speaker 2: to the restaurant. So like if you're in New York,
- 11:42Speaker 2: and then let's say Lauren or all myself say, yo,
- 11:44Speaker 2: this restaurant is dope. You don't go to those. You
- 11:45Speaker 2: only go where.
- 11:46Speaker 3: New York is different because I feel like a lot
- 11:48Speaker 3: of restaurant owners out here have an ego.
- 11:51Speaker 1: I'll here.
- 11:51Speaker 3: Nobody invites anybody. So it's like everything out here is
- 11:55Speaker 3: word of off. So the way I've been planning out
- 11:57Speaker 3: here is I only go to places that I've been
- 11:59Speaker 3: recommended to over thirty times.
- 12:01Speaker 1: So if got recommended to you a thousand.
- 12:04Speaker 3: Times, yeah, So it's like if I can have a
- 12:07Speaker 3: backbone to because what I don't want is I go
- 12:09Speaker 3: and get my opinion in the restaurant immediate, like, oh,
- 12:12Speaker 3: we didn't ask him to come here, he just gave
- 12:13Speaker 3: his unsolicitate opinion, or we didn't Nobody asks for.
- 12:16Speaker 2: That isn't that the best thing? Like, because I think
- 12:18Speaker 2: a lot of people look at you as when I
- 12:19Speaker 2: come to a city, let me see what Keith Lee
- 12:21Speaker 2: says is good, and I'm gonna go there, you know
- 12:22Speaker 2: what I mean, because I can trust in his opinion.
- 12:24Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
- 12:24Speaker 3: But if I don't personally like it, then the human
- 12:28Speaker 3: reaction is to be deflective, or the human reaction is
- 12:33Speaker 3: to immediately be like, don'tbody asks him to come here.
- 12:36Speaker 3: But if you ask me to come here and I
- 12:37Speaker 3: give you my opinion, once you do something like when
- 12:40Speaker 3: we was in Atlanta, the real mc honey, they asked
- 12:42Speaker 3: me to come or I got tagged a thousand times
- 12:44Speaker 3: to come, and then the second I made the video,
- 12:47Speaker 3: the owner went online. It was like, who is Keith
- 12:49Speaker 3: Lee but the one of the main I don't know
- 12:53Speaker 3: exactly what they rolled that the company was, but one
- 12:55Speaker 3: of the main people in the restaurant. Once I walked
- 12:57Speaker 3: in and they told me it was a five minute wait,
- 12:59Speaker 3: I walked back out. They chased me to my car
- 13:01Speaker 3: and tried to get me service. So it's like, how
- 13:02Speaker 3: you don't know, but either way.
- 13:04Speaker 5: Your review stands harder than that deflection because people still.
- 13:07Speaker 3: I'm a person at the end of the day. I'm
- 13:08Speaker 3: a customer at the end of the day. That's why
- 13:09Speaker 3: when you say I get free food, I made sure
- 13:12Speaker 3: I made it clear I pay for everything. So it's like,
- 13:14Speaker 3: I'm a customer at end of the day. Regardless if
- 13:16Speaker 3: you think that I'm somebody or if you think I
- 13:18Speaker 3: have a status, I'm a customer and I pay my
- 13:20Speaker 3: money and I want to experience everybody else.
- 13:23Speaker 2: If you give a negative review on a restaurant, do
- 13:25Speaker 2: you ever go back and be like, because you know,
- 13:26Speaker 2: sometimes the chef might have a bad day or staff
- 13:28Speaker 2: might have a bad day. People I always say that,
- 13:30Speaker 2: do you ever go back and say, you know what,
- 13:31Speaker 2: we'll try this again or once it's a wrap.
- 13:34Speaker 3: It depends on the circumstance, and it also depends on
- 13:37Speaker 3: Now we're on tour, so we're on tour, we're going
- 13:39Speaker 3: around to different cities. I'm only here for a certain
- 13:42Speaker 3: amount of day, so it's almost impossible to go and
- 13:44Speaker 3: track back. But when I was back in Vegas, I
- 13:47Speaker 3: will go back because I would have time to go back.
- 13:48Speaker 3: And eventually I plan on going back to different cities
- 13:52Speaker 3: or going back to different spots and then some spots.
- 13:54Speaker 7: I won't go back to it's cut and slices. Not amazing.
- 13:57Speaker 1: It is absolutely amazing. Yeah, you had it? What have
- 14:00Speaker 1: you had it?
- 14:01Speaker 2: Not yet?
- 14:02Speaker 6: I have had it yet. I've heard of it, though
- 14:05Speaker 6: I've heard of it a lot.
- 14:06Speaker 4: It's I've had it personally. I've had it catered. When
- 14:08Speaker 4: I did the Daily Show, I had it catered because
- 14:10Speaker 4: it's really just that good. Which slightly did you have?
- 14:12Speaker 3: I had the curry oxtail, I had the chicken and waffles,
- 14:16Speaker 3: and then the I had a bunch of them. I
- 14:18Speaker 3: think I had six of them, but the curry oxet
- 14:20Speaker 3: was the one that stood out to me the most,
- 14:22Speaker 3: the chili oxel.
- 14:23Speaker 1: I think it was single.
- 14:25Speaker 7: He said that here we go. He said that you
- 14:27Speaker 7: that you hurt are people's business with your reviews. Have
- 14:32Speaker 7: you all spoken?
- 14:34Speaker 3: I made a response video, but we haven't spoke directly.
- 14:38Speaker 3: I saw his response to my response and I appreciated it.
- 14:41Speaker 3: But I also think a lot of it was based
- 14:43Speaker 3: on uh misinformation, and a lot of it was based
- 14:46Speaker 3: on I said, when I walked in, you had no
- 14:49Speaker 3: idea what I do. So I get that, and people
- 14:51Speaker 3: make opinions based on that, and they only see like
- 14:53Speaker 3: one or two headlines and say, oh, he gave a
- 14:56Speaker 3: negative review the Candies restaurant. He must be doing bad
- 14:59Speaker 3: for busines. But they haven't seen the amazing things we've
- 15:03Speaker 3: been blessed enough to do. And I think that just
- 15:05Speaker 3: was the case with ch Ad, And once I broke
- 15:06Speaker 3: it down, I think he was a understand whre I
- 15:08Speaker 3: was coming from.
- 15:08Speaker 4: I mean, because the reality is, you know, the reason
- 15:11Speaker 4: you have the following you do is because you are
- 15:14Speaker 4: clearly impactful for people's business, whether it's positive or negative.
- 15:18Speaker 7: You know, so you have to that's that's being a critic.
- 15:21Speaker 1: Is I think that? Yeah, I think that gets long.
- 15:25Speaker 2: I think I think it's dope because a lot of
- 15:26Speaker 2: times we go to these places and we don't know
- 15:28Speaker 2: where to go to eat right, and we because we
- 15:30Speaker 2: haven't tried the food or we just heard it, you know,
- 15:32Speaker 2: and reviews online or most of them are fake a
- 15:34Speaker 2: lot of times because these people do it themselves. So
- 15:36Speaker 2: the fact that you got somebody that can go to
- 15:38Speaker 2: the restaurant, the only thing that ever bothers me is
- 15:40Speaker 2: is some people don't like a ribbean food. Some people
- 15:42Speaker 2: don't like spicy food. Some people don't like this. So
- 15:44Speaker 2: if you're not into that, and I am that that
- 15:46Speaker 2: can you know, skew you a different way. But I
- 15:48Speaker 2: think it's dope because you get to you get in
- 15:50Speaker 2: effective people from the real right. And and that's that's
- 15:53Speaker 2: my point. You don't really have too many people that
- 15:55Speaker 2: do it that you can really say. Now, he's like me,
- 15:57Speaker 2: I'm gonna try that food.
- 15:58Speaker 3: You know. See, I always prett emphasis I want everybody
- 16:00Speaker 3: that wants to go try it to go try it,
- 16:02Speaker 3: no matter what the food is, Like, I want everybody.
- 16:05Speaker 3: I don't want anybody's taste budds to be the end
- 16:06Speaker 3: all be all. And I think that's what we lost
- 16:08Speaker 3: on social media is that when people put their opinions out,
- 16:10Speaker 3: it's like, this is my opinion and you gotta take
- 16:13Speaker 3: it for the end all be all. And I feel
- 16:15Speaker 3: like I always try to preemphasis that this is my opinion,
- 16:18Speaker 3: this is the way I taste, and if you want
- 16:20Speaker 3: to go try it, or if you think different than me,
- 16:21Speaker 3: absolutely go try it.
- 16:22Speaker 7: Question you said you walked out after a five minute waytime.
- 16:25Speaker 1: Yeah that's too.
- 16:26Speaker 4: Much for you.
- 16:26Speaker 3: No, no, no, it wasn't the way time. It was
- 16:28Speaker 3: the fact that my family had just got a different results.
- 16:30Speaker 3: It was two hours that was the issue. It wasn't
- 16:33Speaker 3: the I was willing to wait in the two hours.
- 16:36Speaker 3: So that's that's one thing I want to make very clear.
- 16:38Speaker 3: I'm willing to wait in a three hour way time
- 16:39Speaker 3: to four hour way times. I just want the same
- 16:41Speaker 3: surface to everybody else.
- 16:42Speaker 2: kIPS. Have you ever got threatened? I'm sure I own
- 16:44Speaker 2: I had the threaten if.
- 16:45Speaker 1: You get in Atlanta.
- 16:46Speaker 3: They supposedly gave us step threats once we left Atlanta,
- 16:50Speaker 3: But I'm covered by God.
- 16:51Speaker 5: Man.
- 16:52Speaker 2: I ain't worried about nobody excited, So you can have
- 16:55Speaker 2: somebody right up, I ain't worthy nobody.
- 16:57Speaker 4: Do you post like if you hate everything about the restaurant,
- 17:00Speaker 4: food service, everything, Do you post those type.
- 17:03Speaker 1: Of reviews constructively? Yeah?
- 17:05Speaker 3: But I've been blessed enough to where I haven't really
- 17:07Speaker 3: granted to that many spots like that. But yeah, absolutely constructively,
- 17:10Speaker 3: because again, if I only gave positive reviews, if only
- 17:13Speaker 3: gave out the good, then it wouldn't hold any weight.
- 17:17Speaker 3: It only holds weight if you know I'm being honest,
- 17:19Speaker 3: regardless if you agree with my taste buzz, if you
- 17:21Speaker 3: don't agree with them, it only holds weight if you know,
- 17:23Speaker 3: I'm authentically being myself and I can only look at
- 17:25Speaker 3: myself in the mirror knowing I'm authentically be me.
- 17:27Speaker 2: What food don't you do? Is there any food that
- 17:28Speaker 2: you don't do? I don't like charlomage.
- 17:30Speaker 3: I only alergs of shellfish. Everything else, I'm I'm open book. Yeah,
- 17:34Speaker 3: my wife does when I want. When I can't have shellfish,
- 17:38Speaker 3: my wife does the reviews for me. So like crab legs,
- 17:41Speaker 3: shrimp and all of that.
- 17:42Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, So you've never had that.
- 17:43Speaker 1: You've always been, always been since since birth.
- 17:46Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm so sorry to.
- 17:49Speaker 1: Be honest with you. Chelfers don't look that good either. No,
- 17:51Speaker 1: it is my review.
- 17:53Speaker 6: It's amazing.
- 17:54Speaker 1: Understand. Understand.
- 17:56Speaker 2: Now let's talk about this. You went and got some
- 17:57Speaker 2: chop cheese.
- 17:58Speaker 1: Yeah, they was mad as would mad at you. What
- 18:00Speaker 1: made you go to people?
- 18:02Speaker 2: Was like he went to Queens to get a chop cheese?
- 18:04Speaker 5: And how do you even pick that when you go
- 18:05Speaker 5: into places like New York because each borough is its.
- 18:07Speaker 6: Own like place.
- 18:09Speaker 3: So I didn't pick anything I got it suggested. So
- 18:12Speaker 3: any any place that I go to again, if it's
- 18:14Speaker 3: not directly by the owner themselves. It's suggested a thousand times.
- 18:18Speaker 3: So I always show the d MS or the emails
- 18:20Speaker 3: that I get directly from whoever tells me to go.
- 18:24Speaker 3: I get New York is a very hard market to
- 18:26Speaker 3: do anything new.
- 18:27Speaker 2: Yep.
- 18:28Speaker 1: The second you try to break any tradition out here,
- 18:30Speaker 1: it's a rap you try to break. I didn't try
- 18:34Speaker 1: to break it. I didn't try to break it.
- 18:35Speaker 3: They tried to break it because it's a black owned
- 18:37Speaker 3: business that just opened not too long ago and they
- 18:41Speaker 3: have a salmon chop cheese that they were trying to
- 18:43Speaker 3: break into the market. But instead of it being opened
- 18:46Speaker 3: or welcome with like oh they trying something new, is
- 18:48Speaker 3: immediately like we don't do that over here, what you're doing,
- 18:51Speaker 3: And it got towards turned towards me, which again I
- 18:54Speaker 3: don't mind. I just didn't want that restaurant to be
- 18:57Speaker 3: tore down, which unfortunately is being tore down as they
- 19:00Speaker 3: trying to do something different. It was decent, but again
- 19:04Speaker 3: I don't really I don't really like chop cheese like that.
- 19:07Speaker 3: It's cool, but I don't get the it's I think
- 19:09Speaker 3: it's based nostalgia. I think it's wrapped nostalgia. I think
- 19:12Speaker 3: it's wrapped in the fact that you ate it growing up,
- 19:14Speaker 3: or you ate it in places where you had memories
- 19:18Speaker 3: tied to it, like leaving the club, leaving leaving places,
- 19:22Speaker 3: like all of that has to be tied to in
- 19:24Speaker 3: order it to hit.
- 19:26Speaker 2: When you leave, you just need something.
- 19:31Speaker 3: I believe it's attached to memories, and I feel like,
- 19:33Speaker 3: since I don't have those memories, I don't get the
- 19:36Speaker 3: same experience, which again I understand, but I feel like
- 19:38Speaker 3: it's just one of those things. Again, it is wrapped
- 19:41Speaker 3: in nostalgia, and people won't get out of that nostalgia.
- 19:44Speaker 3: They just immediately see an outsider. And then New York
- 19:47Speaker 3: is one of those places that have like real strong
- 19:49Speaker 3: patriotism to they city. So it's like, if you're from
- 19:52Speaker 3: New York, you're from New York and you don't want
- 19:53Speaker 3: nobody outside in New York come in and given the opinion.
- 19:56Speaker 3: But again, I'm covered by God. I go everywhere I'm
- 19:58Speaker 3: supposed to go.
- 19:59Speaker 2: What about Detroit? What was your favorite spot?
- 20:00Speaker 3: Detroit Cony is number one, obviously, but it's a food
- 20:03Speaker 3: haul that just opened. It's a black On food Haul
- 20:05Speaker 3: and they have over twenty different black On restaurants in there,
- 20:09Speaker 3: and we went and it.
- 20:10Speaker 1: Was amazing Atlanta.
- 20:11Speaker 7: Every spot in there.
- 20:12Speaker 1: Every spot wasn't amazing, but it was a lot of
- 20:14Speaker 1: spots where do.
- 20:15Speaker 6: You actually cook yourself like I just at home.
- 20:18Speaker 1: So that's how it started. That's how it originally started.
- 20:19Speaker 3: Like I said, to get over my social anxiety, I
- 20:21Speaker 3: would just turn the cameron and I would talk like
- 20:23Speaker 3: it was three hundred people in front of me. But
- 20:25Speaker 3: my wife was pregnant at the time, so at first
- 20:26Speaker 3: it started with me going to get her pregnancy cravens.
- 20:29Speaker 3: And then it turned into me cooking because again fighting,
- 20:31Speaker 3: you would have to fighting and cooking goals is synonymous.
- 20:35Speaker 3: So I literally would cook for myself four times a
- 20:37Speaker 3: day and I would cook my wife four times a day.
- 20:39Speaker 3: And that's how it started. And I did that for
- 20:41Speaker 3: like a year straight, and within that year or two years,
- 20:44Speaker 3: it took me to get to a million. It took
- 20:46Speaker 3: me less than nine months to get to fifteen million.
- 20:49Speaker 2: Wow, do you step outside the box? Like I know
- 20:51Speaker 2: Charlomagne's talking about eating deer before or raccoon or things
- 20:54Speaker 2: like that, or bear? Do you go today say.
- 20:58Speaker 1: You like I know you from.
- 21:01Speaker 4: I then be showed I ain't no red, I ain't.
- 21:04Speaker 2: Never have you have you stepped out the box to eat?
- 21:08Speaker 1: I haven't.
- 21:09Speaker 3: I would I would, Yeah, I wouldn't eat bear shoulder?
- 21:12Speaker 3: What bear shoulder tastes like?
- 21:13Speaker 6: Oh?
- 21:13Speaker 7: That shit was great. It tasts like beef. I had
- 21:17Speaker 7: it in West Virginia.
- 21:18Speaker 4: Actually, when I went to West Virginia, everything I ate
- 21:20Speaker 4: they either hunted or grew themselves.
- 21:22Speaker 7: So we had bed shoulder, deer hash and squirrel dumplings.
- 21:26Speaker 1: Understand, Yeah, you ever try? I would? Would? I say,
- 21:30Speaker 1: I would like it? I don't know.
- 21:31Speaker 6: Do you ever get sick from eating food?
- 21:33Speaker 7: Like?
- 21:34Speaker 3: I don't get sick, but so much. I don't get sick,
- 21:37Speaker 3: but sometimes my stomach do be a little.
- 21:39Speaker 1: But again, it comes with the job. It comes with
- 21:41Speaker 1: the job.
- 21:41Speaker 3: I'm blessed to be here, and I'm thankful that I'm
- 21:44Speaker 3: not getting punched in the face for a living and
- 21:45Speaker 3: trying to make ends meet.
- 21:47Speaker 4: Uh.
- 21:47Speaker 3: This time last year I was literally on food stamps,
- 21:49Speaker 3: trying to figure out where my next meal was gonna
- 21:51Speaker 3: come from. So from to be here now? Again, I
- 21:54Speaker 3: don't do many media interviews. I don't do many like
- 21:58Speaker 3: speaking engagements to boost who I am because I truly
- 22:02Speaker 3: believe whatever's meant for me, it's gonna be for me.
- 22:04Speaker 3: I just do things like this because again, it's a
- 22:06Speaker 3: check off the bucket and I just want to show
- 22:08Speaker 3: my kids later like, whatever you put your mind to,
- 22:10Speaker 3: you can absolutely do it.
- 22:11Speaker 4: So you've just been in a food critic for like the
- 22:13Speaker 4: past year nine nine much Okay, okay, wow, just last year.
- 22:16Speaker 7: He was going fu SAMs. That's crazy.
- 22:18Speaker 4: Absolutely, That's another thing you could do, showing people who
- 22:21Speaker 4: are on food stamps, you know, what meals they could
- 22:24Speaker 4: be eating out.
- 22:25Speaker 7: Like my homegirl Colleen Witch.
- 22:26Speaker 4: She has a podcast called Eating While Broke and basically
- 22:29Speaker 4: she brings people on to talk about, you know, affordable meals,
- 22:33Speaker 4: meals that you can create on a budget.
- 22:36Speaker 3: I just do what I feel like I'm supposed to do.
- 22:37Speaker 3: I don't I didn't write this out. I didn't plan
- 22:39Speaker 3: this out. I didn't write this out. If you would
- 22:40Speaker 3: have asked me at the beginning of the year when
- 22:43Speaker 3: i'd be here, I look at you and laugh. So,
- 22:45Speaker 3: so what's the future, Like, whatever it's supposed to be,
- 22:47Speaker 3: I'm gonna be everywhere I'm supposed to be. I believe
- 22:50Speaker 3: I'm gonna walk in every room I'm supposed to be
- 22:52Speaker 3: in and I So the reason we went on tour
- 22:54Speaker 3: directly is because a lot of TV companies, every TV
- 22:58Speaker 3: producer you can think of, each to us in March
- 23:01Speaker 3: and they were planning our shows and they were putting
- 23:02Speaker 3: our shows, but it was very cookie cutter. It was
- 23:05Speaker 3: really like, we already had to show plan, but we
- 23:06Speaker 3: just want to make you the host of it. And
- 23:08Speaker 3: they kept reversing diners driving and dash at my saying
- 23:12Speaker 3: that right, yeah. They kept referencing that, and they were
- 23:15Speaker 3: basically like, we just want to make you the host
- 23:16Speaker 3: of this show that's already created.
- 23:18Speaker 1: And I don't like that.
- 23:19Speaker 3: My family moves with me everywhere, so I want to
- 23:21Speaker 3: make sure my family has involved in anything that I do.
- 23:23Speaker 3: So I took it upon me and my family and
- 23:26Speaker 3: we just hit the role on our own, and we
- 23:28Speaker 3: went out to show these TV producers and these TV
- 23:31Speaker 3: companies and everybody else that we're blessed enough for this
- 23:33Speaker 3: to work and it can work in every market. So
- 23:36Speaker 3: we just going and we're doing it on our own.
- 23:37Speaker 3: So by the time we go back to these companies,
- 23:40Speaker 3: we already have concrete evidence and concrete facts of how
- 23:42Speaker 3: many businesses we've been blessed enough to help with the
- 23:45Speaker 3: system that we have. So by the time we get there,
- 23:47Speaker 3: ain't no changing up.
- 23:48Speaker 6: And are you feeling right now?
- 23:50Speaker 4: I would love to see that, because I when you
- 23:51Speaker 4: think about it, I can think of guy Guy Fi
- 23:54Speaker 4: pronounce this last name right, Anthony Boardin.
- 23:57Speaker 1: We ain't got many that looked like me, not at all. Everywhere.
- 24:01Speaker 1: I got dred, I got locks.
- 24:04Speaker 3: I'm a black man, I got a black wife, I
- 24:06Speaker 3: got black children. So it's like, it's very important.
- 24:08Speaker 7: What do you think of Darius Cooks?
- 24:10Speaker 1: You know, I don't think of nobody.
- 24:12Speaker 7: Okay, I.
- 24:16Speaker 2: Don't think nobody we got we gotta run to the rumors.
- 24:18Speaker 2: But we appreciate you for joining us. And and again,
- 24:20Speaker 2: I don't want you to feel like I was belittling
- 24:22Speaker 2: you by saying hood whatever, No, No, What I was
- 24:24Speaker 2: saying was.
- 24:25Speaker 7: He's not gonna grab you after Mary. Relax.
- 24:28Speaker 2: What I'm saying because I want to eplain it because
- 24:30Speaker 2: I don't I don't ever want somebody to do I'm
- 24:31Speaker 2: belittling him. What I wanted to What I was saying
- 24:34Speaker 2: was I was doing it to saying no, I don't
- 24:39Speaker 2: have a restaurant coming. But I was saying, is I
- 24:41Speaker 2: love the fact that you go to restaurants that we
- 24:42Speaker 2: go to. I don't see a lot of people critiquing
- 24:44Speaker 2: the restaurants.
- 24:45Speaker 1: That we go to, and the restaurants we go to
- 24:46Speaker 1: ain ghetto.
- 24:47Speaker 2: No, they said that what ghetto? He stopped saying. I
- 24:48Speaker 2: said that. The reason I said that, I did not
- 24:50Speaker 2: say yetto ghetto didn't come in my word. I said,
- 24:53Speaker 2: you said, hood I loved the restaurant. No, I said hood.
- 24:56Speaker 2: I said the restaurants that we come in my hood.
- 24:58Speaker 2: When I talked about Queens, that's my hood. When I
- 25:00Speaker 2: talk about Brooklyn, it was of my hoods. I don't
- 25:02Speaker 2: mean ghetto. But the fact that is, you see somebody
- 25:04Speaker 2: do a critique of taal, you'll see critique somebody do
- 25:07Speaker 2: a critique of carbones. When it comes to a taste
- 25:10Speaker 2: of seafood, or when it comes to cuts and slices,
- 25:14Speaker 2: you never see that. And I love to see my
- 25:16Speaker 2: own people doing it. That's what I meant by it.
- 25:17Speaker 2: And I didn't mean to belive you if you felt
- 25:19Speaker 2: that way, I apologized, but that.
- 25:20Speaker 1: Was he didn't mean.
- 25:25Speaker 6: Charlotte didn't mean to be on.
- 25:26Speaker 3: His phone, you know, because I love it. I love
- 25:37Speaker 3: that for you, of course, and I think you capreciate you. Also,
- 25:42Speaker 3: media platforms keep un the scuorely. We just dropped merch
- 25:45Speaker 3: uh and this is one thing that's really big for me.
- 25:48Speaker 3: We just dropped merch and my family and myself created it.
- 25:51Speaker 3: My cousin created it for us and a bunch of companies.
- 25:53Speaker 3: We was going back and forth because they really wanted
- 25:55Speaker 3: us to charge the highest because it's a really high quality.
- 25:58Speaker 3: They wanted me to charge one hundred and eighty to
- 25:59Speaker 3: one hundred nine jollas for our hoodies. We charged seventy five.
- 26:02Speaker 3: They want us to charge one hundred and twenty one
- 26:03Speaker 3: hundred and thirty for our t shirts. We charged in
- 26:05Speaker 3: forty five. Because the profit isn't the mango for me.
- 26:08Speaker 3: The mang goal is to have people who follow me
- 26:10Speaker 3: and people who support me to be and stuff that
- 26:12Speaker 3: I am proud of and stuff that I will wear,
- 26:14Speaker 3: and I just walk on my purpose and I'm just
- 26:16Speaker 3: apprecia to be here.
- 26:17Speaker 7: You can give me one for free so I can
- 26:18Speaker 7: critique it and see if the fabrics.
- 26:19Speaker 6: You don't get nothing for free, so you need to
- 26:21Speaker 6: buy it.
- 26:21Speaker 1: God bless y'all, appreciate you'a having.
- 26:24Speaker 2: It's the Breakfast Coming love for y'all.
- 26:26Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club