Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Joshua Weissman: The Future of Food Media, Michelin, and Building a Brand (Ep. 140)

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Joshua Weissman: The Future of Food Media, Michelin, and Building a Brand (Ep. 140) · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs. This is Chef's PSA podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm your host, Andre Natera. On today's episode, we have
• 0:05
  Joshua Weisman. He's one of the most successful
• 0:07
  chef entrepreneurs, and he's taken over almost all of social
• 0:11
  media. In this conversation, we're
• 0:12
  going to talk about content creators, one of the best dining
• 0:16
  experiences he's ever had, robots, and a whole lot more.
• 0:19
  I think you'll enjoy this one. Stay tuned.
• 0:33
  This episode of Chefs PSA is brought to you by Foods in
• 0:36
  Season. Hey chefs, using the best
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  ingredients is one of the most important things you can do.
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  delivery. You could order wild salmon
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  today and have it at your restaurant tomorrow.
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  Visit foodsinseason.com and let me get you the hook up.
• 1:11
  Mention Chef's PSA for a free sample box with your first
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  order. Trust me, it's worth it.
• 1:16
  I do AQ and A every every Sunday.
• 1:19
  OK, so I'll put it like Chef's PSA Q&A.
• 1:21
  It gives me an opportunity to smoke a cigar and connect with
• 1:24
  my audience. I get lots of random questions.
• 1:27
  A lot of them are repetitive. But this week I got an
• 1:30
  interesting question. Someone asked me what do you
• 1:33
  think about TikTok chefs? This was my question.
• 1:37
  I'll tell you what my answer was and I'm curious for your
• 1:39
  perspective. My answer to them was I don't
• 1:42
  think that they're trying to be chefs.
• 1:44
  I think they're trying to create content for social media.
• 1:46
  I don't think they're doing that so they could run restaurants
• 1:48
  and and be chef where other people are trying to educate.
• 1:51
  And I also understand that that's their profession.
• 1:54
  I can't knock the hustle. I think there's some people, in
• 1:56
  my opinion as a chef that do it extremely well.
• 1:59
  And you can tell they know how to cook.
• 2:00
  Yeah, there's some people that can cook really well but can't
• 2:03
  entertain. And there's some people that
• 2:05
  can't cook for shit but can entertain.
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  And then there's the Unicorn that could do both, that could
• 2:10
  cook, could educate and can entertain.
• 2:12
  You're you're you are the Unicorn of unicorns.
• 2:16
  But what are that? That was my answer.
• 2:18
  I'm curious what your thoughts are.
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  I think you actually said it perfectly.
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  Look, I mean, I think there's look, if you're looking at
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  people who make content and I don't even know if I I fucking
• 2:28
  hate that term. I hate make content.
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  What's a better term? I don't know what a better term
• 2:33
  is. And I understand that.
• 2:34
  It's like a it's it's it's a it's a qualifying term.
• 2:37
  It works. It just sounds gross.
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  Like where's our creative fun word, you know?
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  But but anyway, like people who are making content, which let's
• 2:46
  be honest, is the whole fucking world.
• 2:48
  It's the whole world, everybody. Everybody, whether you are a
• 2:51
  restaurant, whether you are an only fans girl, whether you run
• 2:55
  a plant shop, if you're not making content, you are fucked,
• 2:59
  you're fucked. You are not going to succeed
• 3:02
  long term in your business. It is clearly an integral part
• 3:04
  of the world now. So, but that said, so when it
• 3:07
  comes to food and content, there are really two classes, right?
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  And then there's the tertiary, which is both kind of, but
• 3:15
  there's really two classes, 1 and this is 99%.
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  Or more. 99.9 I don't know the vast majority.
• 3:30
  They just want to like you said, they just are making content and
• 3:35
  their sole goal is views, likes vanity numbers, vanity metrics,
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  that is it. That's it.
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  You they they're really good at deceiving you into thinking that
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  they're they use words like passionate about food.
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  They use words like my grandma. This shut the fuck up horseshit.
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  I've heard that fucking story 100 fucking times.
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  Like no one is going to out passion by telling me a story
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  than like some, you know, 19 year old lion cook that's
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  sweating his Dick off fucking breaking down quail for six
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  hours, dude, like incomparable, incomparable, right?
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  So anyway, these people are after like vanity metrics, likes
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  followers, Subs. That's 99%.
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  The majority of them, they're very deceptive.
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  Now there's a very small percent that are after something else.
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  And I think that would be classified a few things.
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  Education, right? They want to educate, they want
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  to show people or they do truly love something, you know, like,
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  like think of like the BBQ guys on YouTube, like chuds.
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  I don't know if you know chuds. No, he's really cool.
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  He lives in Austin. Honestly, I just the only reason
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  he's in my mind is I met him and he was super nice and I was
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  like, oh, sick. And I found his channel and he
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  basically does a ton of BBQ stuff.
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  It's super niche. It's really specific and you
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  know, like really only anyone who loves BBQ is going to tune
• 4:58
  into that. But that's kind of the beauty of
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  it. He just loves the fuck out of it
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  and just like dives deep on it and he shares the the wealth of
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  knowledge of people. That's the second class.
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  It's like more like it's, it's really about the love of, of
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  the, of the craft and teaching people that more or entertaining
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  people with that. And that's like 1% or less
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  because what now why? Why is there such a disparity?
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  The reason is that the 1% class is so much harder to get views,
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  generate a business, generate an audience because it it seemingly
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  is niche. The only way you can do that is
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  if you have the Unicorn. The only way that you can get
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  viewership as as one of the other classes more about you
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  know, where there's real knowledge, there's real meaning
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  behind what's being done. There's a sharing of a breadth
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  of knowledge as you kind of have to have both.
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  You have to be able to figure out how to package things, how
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  to entertain. You have to have it insane on
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  camera presence, but you have to figure out a package.
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  You know, something like this bread, my love, I brought this
• 6:00
  bread for them to eat, but I have a big problem with baking
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  bread right now. I don't know what the fuck's
• 6:07
  wrong with me. Like I, I, it's basically like,
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  oh, if I don't start now, I'm going to be late.
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  So I just fucking just keep doing it.
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  But anyway, you know, like something like this topic wise
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  years ago was very hard to get someone to get into, but if you
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  could package it right, just like marketing anything like a
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  fucking shoe or a cell phone or or a, a, a keyboard or whatever,
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  right. It it's how you package it.
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  And so that's kind of where there's this tertiary that's
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  like less than a fraction of a percent that can package, that
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  can teach, that can entertain all three.
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  And maybe that individual does care about growing a business in
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  viewership too. I care about my metrics.
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  I want to, I mean, I got 10 million subscribers.
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  I want them by fucking accent, I'll tell you that.
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  But I, I won't like give up the things that I care about for
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  those metrics. Do you see what I mean?
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  And so that's why I like when the last thing I'll say is
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  that's why I like when you look at a lot of these like, you
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  know, food fluencers, it all kind of looks the same.
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  So I I'm not familiar with that term food fluencer.
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  What does? What does that mean just for me
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  to? Understand it's just another
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  term for someone who makes content about food.
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  Are you talking to people that go into restaurants and eat or
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  these people that? Literally anybody who makes
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  anyone who makes content about food, I think it's a derogatory
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  term really. Food fluencer.
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  First of all, influencer is already kind of used as a
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  derogatory term. It's you're not a real person.
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  You're just like making money, like doing silly little whatever
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  the fuck sucker shit is that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
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  And so I think food fluencer is kind of a demarking note.
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  It's not very nice. Yeah.
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  But, you know, like, I think whether you're going and tasting
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  at restaurants, whether you're, you know, going in basically
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  content that's like airless. Yeah, but it's done for views.
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  And The thing is, is it works, right?
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  If, for example, like, you'll notice if one restaurant pops
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  off on social, yeah, suddenly there's a ton of videos about
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  it. Why is that?
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  Because everybody wants to go and film a video there to see if
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  their video pops off, Right? That's the whole goal.
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  That's why it's airless, because they're just copying each other
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  to see if they can get views off the back of someone else.
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  Did you see this thing in San Francisco recently?
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  I don't know the name of the chef, but he ended up losing his
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  job because he went off on a, a food fluencer who had gone into
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  the restaurant and she said some bad things about his burger spot
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  or something. And then he kept responding to
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  her like, you know, basically saying fuck you, the burger's
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  good. He ended up losing his job.
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  And I thought about that. I, I, because I did a lot of
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  things about that. I understand how the food
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  influencer world works when you're a chef and you need
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  people to come to the restaurant, but it's a symbiotic
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  relationship. It's a two way St.
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  We need you, you need us. But we existed before the food
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  influencer would come into the restaurant.
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  People were still coming in. It's just a new way to do
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  business. And I, I often think that people
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  that are getting into that game, sometimes it's a, it's a
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  dangerous game to play when when you're in it to hurt the
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  business, the business that you're reviewing, like it's a
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  dangerous game. And I think at some point the
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  chefs could, I'm not saying they will, but they could band
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  together and say, hey, like that influencer is blacklisted.
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  Don't allow them in any restaurant because they're going
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  to trash you or they trashed me. So you're, you're playing with
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  fire if they, if they come in, I'm not sure if that's something
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  on your radar or even if you, if you were aware of that
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  situation, you had an opinion on it.
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  That is less of an issue generally.
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  I haven't seen. I mean, I've seen it happen, but
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  not at a high enough volume that it's like, OK guys, this is a
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  problem. I mean, like, what about critics
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  in the LA Times absolutely fucking thrashing restaurants,
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  right? I mean, critics have been doing
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  that for forever since the critic existed, right?
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  They used worse terms. Actually.
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  I think that people on social are probably more careful
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  because they're afraid of the backlash from the audience if
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  you trash a local restaurant and you're probably going to get
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  shit on in the comments. And I think they don't want
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  that. So I already think there's
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  enough negative reinforcement to avoid that happening at, at at
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  scale. That said, I do think that to a,
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  to an extent, there's a, a point of like, you know, when you're
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  being truthful and trying to give an honest review of
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  something. And, and I guess it depends on,
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  on who it is and, and what the purpose of, of what they're
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  making is, right. And that's, that's the problem
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  that the, what majority of these people are making, there is no
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  purpose. They're not thinking about
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  what's my story? They're not thinking about.
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  First of all, many of them don't even have the context of the
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  industry or being in a restaurant.
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  So how could they possibly have a emotion around how they
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  deliver their message message? Like they're even thinking the
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  word message when they say anything.
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  It's pretty, it's pretty. It's pretty bad.
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  Yeah, I I agree. I'm trying to think of this
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  Marco pure white quote where it's like when you realize that
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  you're being judged by people who know less than you do.
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  You know, what is it? What is it really worth?
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  And unfortunately, like when I was a chef, I got beat up a
• 10:58
  little bit in my, in my years. That's actually what brought me
• 11:01
  to Austin. So I got some really bad reviews
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  in Dallas. My restaurant closed and it was
• 11:05
  funny because it was an it was immediate food credit from the
• 11:09
  Dallas Morning News came in. We got we got a bad review.
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  It's like one day to the next, you know, the restaurant was
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  empty. The critics back then, you know,
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  they, they had power. I don't think that they do
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  anymore so much in terms of like newspaper critics or, or
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  magazine critics. Everyone, I think is now
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  diverted to the voice that they trust online more so than
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  whether maybe they do work for a newspaper.
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  But I think nowadays they don't. Yeah, it's it's an interesting
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  relationship, I think between the food fluencer and the chef
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  and the restaurant tour. But I think what's really
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  interesting about what you do? I find it fascinating.
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  Here's a story. When did you start on TikTok?
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  I'm just out of out of curiosity because it's relevant to the
• 11:52
  story that I'm going to tell. You, I mean, I was well, TikTok
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  was never a part of my business. I added it on very, very, I'd
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  already, you know, built my business out and I had, you
• 12:01
  know, my production company and employees and we were, you know,
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  long form YouTube basically making a television show still
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  are making a television show on on on YouTube.
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  The only reason TikTok came into play was because TikTok was
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  popping off and no one in food was on it.
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  And I was like, OK, that could be an easy leveraging point to
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  to to build upon. So I was like one of the first
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  people on TikTok, 95% of the formatting that's out there.
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  Go back and look at when I posted my videos and go look at
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  the formatting. I mean, basically there were, oh
• 12:33
  God, I don't want to sound like a huge douche bag, but I've
• 12:34
  sometimes I'm like, these are all my children.
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  You know, I'm like, God damn, how many kids do I have?
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  I'm not, I'm not saying I mean that like as respectfully as
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  possible, but like, you know, I, yeah, I was like pretty much one
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  of the first, if not the first on there.
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  So, geez, four years ago. Three years ago.
• 12:52
  So this would have been right before COVID.
• 12:54
  One of my I'm not. I'm not sure when you left
• 12:56
  Uchico. My timeline might be a little
• 12:59
  off but maybe this was like 2017 18?
• 13:03
  I think it was 19. No, I think it might have been.
• 13:06
  Honestly I don't remember anymore.
• 13:07
  I'm I have no, it's on my Wikipedia page if you guys want
• 13:10
  to know. It says when I left and that is
• 13:12
  probably accurate. So one of our food vendors who
• 13:16
  was a mutual food vendor for Uchico that come and was talking
• 13:19
  to me in the back and he's like, hey, have you mentioned your
• 13:22
  name? It's like, have you talked?
• 13:23
  Have you seen this guy on on YouTube?
• 13:25
  I'm like, I'm sorry, on TikTok, like what the fucks tick tock?
• 13:28
  Like I didn't know what it was. He's like, I was like, what the
• 13:30
  fuck is a tick? Tock, this was back then.
• 13:31
  I'm like what you just heard about.
• 13:32
  It yeah, no, no, no, this was like 2017 eighteen.
• 13:36
  He's like you got to you got to go check this out.
• 13:38
  That was like, what's a TikTok? And so he explained to me.
• 13:41
  I remember I logged in. I was like, these are like
• 13:43
  little kids dancing. Like, why the fuck is the chef
• 13:45
  on here? But that's when I discovered
• 13:46
  your content. And then that led me to YouTube
• 13:48
  and there was cool. Yeah, like this is.
• 13:50
  You started down that funnel. That's interesting.
• 13:52
  Yeah, yeah, that was the first time I ever saw it.
• 13:53
  I was like, and they're like, no, he he worked.
• 13:55
  He worked or was working at at Uchico.
• 13:58
  And I was like, OK, there's an Austin guy like, yeah, like
• 14:00
  fuck, this is kind of cool. So anyway, that's that's when I
• 14:03
  discovered your content. I thought it was super unique
• 14:05
  back then. One of the one of the most
• 14:08
  interesting videos that you did was this staying up for 24 hours
• 14:12
  going back to Uchiko. Yeah, this one, this now you're
• 14:14
  on YouTube, Yes. OK, yeah.
• 14:18
  And so I geek out on a lot of details that I think, I mean,
• 14:22
  this is really why I started Chef's PSA was I wanted to say
• 14:25
  like, OK, if you guys don't know how to work in kitchens, like
• 14:27
  let me tell you. And when I watched that video, I
• 14:31
  don't know if you put it in I'm, I'm assuming you put all this
• 14:33
  stuff in there deliberately, but you didn't talk about it like
• 14:38
  the tape cutter with a green tape and like cut short.
• 14:40
  The way you're labeling, the way the delis are all facing forward
• 14:43
  with the tape in the front. The sense of urgency sign popped
• 14:47
  up a couple of times on the wall.
• 14:50
  The way you were organizing your station and prepping.
• 14:52
  I don't know what it was your passion.
• 14:54
  Maybe it was just some herbs or whatever.
• 14:56
  I was like, there's so much that you were showing in that video
• 15:00
  that I geek out about. Like I could care less about
• 15:02
  what that was on the plate. Like it was just all the little
• 15:05
  techniques that I think get slept on.
• 15:09
  And so I wanted to ask you, and I'm sure it was intentional, but
• 15:13
  were you intentionally trying to show that stuff for the people
• 15:17
  that get it? Or was that just, was that just
• 15:21
  a part of the montage that was going into?
• 15:22
  I mean, it was definitely intentional.
• 15:25
  Back when that video was shot, I think that we only had like 3 or
• 15:29
  4 people on our team. And so I was operating as
• 15:33
  essentially like head of production slash producer, slash
• 15:38
  writer slash director. And when I came up with that
• 15:42
  video, the whole point of it was I want people to see.
• 15:46
  The only reason we did the video was I want people to see like
• 15:49
  what it is actually like to work in a restaurant and what the
• 15:52
  life cycle of a restaurant looks like in the 24 hour period.
• 15:55
  Because people have no idea how many people it takes, how much
• 15:59
  labor, physical and mental, how much intentionality and thought.
• 16:06
  And you know, you laugh, you cry, your blood, blood, sweat
• 16:09
  and tears, you know, those kinds of things.
• 16:11
  And I was like, well, what's it again?
• 16:14
  Packaging was that, well, what are people interested in?
• 16:19
  If I go, hey guys, this is how hard it is to work in a
• 16:21
  restaurant, 99% of the plants going to be like, I don't give a
• 16:24
  fuck. I got enough going on my life,
• 16:27
  feed me yeah, fuck you just do your God damn job right?
• 16:29
  And and to be fair, like how would they know otherwise?
• 16:32
  So I packaged it differently and I made it AI made it a this fun
• 16:36
  story that you kind of ride along with me while I get my
• 16:38
  shit kicked in for 24 hours straight.
• 16:41
  But the effort was really around showing all those things and
• 16:45
  showing the difficulty and showing some of the Chevy stuff,
• 16:50
  Although I will say there were some shots know that we probably
• 16:52
  could have swapped that were more noticeable by the general
• 16:54
  public. But yes, I did leave some stuff
• 16:55
  in there for the chefs. I left some stuff in there for
• 16:57
  the people. But I also wanted to show people
• 16:59
  like, Hey, this is, you know, what you see on TV is not what
• 17:01
  you see like, you know, the green tape, the, the core
• 17:04
  containers facing out, the, the, the putting away.
• 17:08
  I don't know if you saw there was like a, there was an order
• 17:10
  that came in and we put the order away together and showing
• 17:13
  that and showing like poking holes in the mushroom bags that
• 17:16
  they deflate a little. So you put more into a Lexan.
• 17:20
  Those are all the things that I, I feel like would have been cut.
• 17:23
  And I was like, well, I have the choice to not cut that.
• 17:24
  So I want to show it. Yeah, I thought it was great.
• 17:26
  It was. It was a really well done video.
• 17:27
  Now, what's interesting about that is you also stayed up for
• 17:31
  24 hours, and a lot of people say they could do that.
• 17:34
  You can't. Like, I used to have really bad
• 17:37
  insomnia, something I don't talk about often, but when I was a
• 17:39
  chef, I pushed myself. Sometimes I'd go like on two
• 17:44
  hours of sleep or three hours of sleep.
• 17:46
  And I wanted, it was stupid of me, but I did that because I
• 17:50
  wanted to be at work more and more, more, more time in the
• 17:53
  kitchen. And what I realized for me was I
• 17:56
  couldn't turn it off. Like, it was one thing to say
• 17:58
  like, I want to have a little bit of sleep, but finally when I
• 18:00
  was like, I could sleep, like tonight I could get 8 hours.
• 18:02
  I couldn't. It's still 2.
• 18:04
  And I know it took me a long time to undo the insomnia.
• 18:09
  But some weird things start to happen for people that don't
• 18:11
  know when you haven't slept. Like for me, like I would see
• 18:14
  people out of the corner of my eye that weren't there.
• 18:17
  You know, just your brain starts playing, playing tricks on you.
• 18:20
  I would start to get nauseous if I was up for too many hours
• 18:23
  straight. Did you experience any of, I
• 18:25
  mean besides besides being tired, but did you experience
• 18:28
  any of the symptoms that come with insomnia after being up for
• 18:31
  usually over 20 hours? I really know I unfortunately I
• 18:36
  sleep really well. I don't really have that
• 18:37
  problem, but I felt not good. You know, I was, I would I
• 18:43
  wouldn't even say tired. I was extremely fatigued and
• 18:48
  your brain definitely does stop working properly and the effort
• 18:53
  behind wanting to make your brain work goes away as well.
• 18:56
  So not only is your brain faulty wired, but even the idea of
• 19:00
  thinking you're just like, yeah, you know, you're a.
• 19:04
  Little bit delirious. Yeah.
• 19:06
  Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
• 19:07
  The jokes are a little looser, right?
• 19:08
  Yeah, Yeah. Like, cut that one out.
• 19:10
  Yeah, yeah, I totally, I will say we did actually stay up for
• 19:14
  24 hours. So that was real.
• 19:16
  We had we. Had and the night cleaning crew
• 19:17
  didn't show up something like. That yeah, they, they showed up,
• 19:20
  they showed up extremely late so we ended up just staying there
• 19:23
  for like 3 hours dude. And I was like I said 24 hours.
• 19:27
  We didn't even include the footage, but it was just the
• 19:29
  principle of doing what I said I was going to do.
• 19:31
  But I had two, I had two different people shooting for me
• 19:36
  that day and they just took two shifts, 1/1/12 hour shift,
• 19:41
  another 12 hour shift. Do you miss it?
• 19:43
  Like, I mean, what you do now is incredible and it's it's a
• 19:46
  business, but do you miss just sometimes being a cook in the
• 19:50
  kitchen? Yeah, I think that there are
• 19:53
  elements to it. I miss what?
• 19:54
  Was the hardest part like when you left?
• 19:57
  Leaving was hard. I mean I tried, I mean.
• 20:02
  I was making a lot more money than than they were paying me
• 20:05
  and I stayed there for took me 5 months four.
• 20:09
  No, no, no, no, no, maybe more like 4 months to muster up the
• 20:13
  courage to, to really leave. Not because I was scared of
• 20:16
  leaving because I didn't want to leave.
• 20:17
  I, I, I, I was always like, oh, you know, there's always
• 20:20
  something to learn. You know, you know that mindset
• 20:22
  you get stuck in real like there's always something to
• 20:23
  learn. There's always something to
• 20:24
  learn, but then the reality is that never ends.
• 20:26
  You can get fucking get 40 and you realize there's still stuff
• 20:28
  and stuff to learn. Hopefully, hopefully you're in
• 20:30
  that mindset. But yeah, that was hard.
• 20:34
  It was hard to just get it out and be like, hey, I'm leaving.
• 20:37
  I cried when I quit because I love that team and that, you
• 20:42
  know, I've worked in a few different places.
• 20:43
  And I would say that the high hospitality team made me feel
• 20:48
  the best emotionally working there.
• 20:50
  And I felt like I owed them for that, even though I didn't.
• 20:53
  But I felt that way. So that was hard.
• 20:57
  But yeah, I mean, like, like I said, the things, the things I
• 20:59
  miss is the camaraderie, the the sort of like, you know, end of
• 21:03
  the night, like, yeah, fuck yeah.
• 21:05
  You know, and yeah, yeah, dude, it's, you know, there's a beauty
• 21:10
  behind that. I think that you could still be
• 21:12
  in love with those parts of the restaurant.
• 21:13
  I think there are some aspects that that are bad that I've, you
• 21:17
  know, been a part of and have lived just like anybody else.
• 21:20
  And I'm, you know, you've had those stories on here plenty of
• 21:22
  time, so I won't give it to you. But but you know that I don't
• 21:24
  miss but but yeah, I, I miss the the grittiness.
• 21:27
  I miss being in the dirt with that.
• 21:29
  But I don't think I'll be out of it for long.
• 21:35
  Yeah, I don't do want to ask you about that.
• 21:37
  Well, it's a it's, it's there's a people will hear about it.
• 21:43
  We'll leave it at that. Yeah.
• 21:44
  You're being mysterious. I've.
• 21:45
  Been trying to be mysterious. Yeah, we're trying.
• 21:47
  You're. Going for the mysterious
• 21:49
  gentleman. Yeah, yeah, keep your ears and
• 21:52
  eyes open for BR coming, yeah. When you left the kitchen,
• 21:58
  there's something about a service like it's intense.
• 22:01
  There's nothing like it. There really isn't like I've,
• 22:05
  I've been out of the kitchen now for three years, but every now
• 22:08
  and again I'll go consult her. I'll do I'll do a pop up dinner.
• 22:10
  It's like, fuck, there's something about just a good
• 22:12
  service when everything's clicking and the intensity, it's
• 22:14
  like a different person in my brain come kicks in.
• 22:17
  It's not it's not the nice chef's PSA.
• 22:19
  Let's have a it's like Chef Andre comes out fucking shark
• 22:23
  looking at everything. I love it.
• 22:26
  But I also realized for me, it's like, I love it, but I don't
• 22:30
  want to do that every day anymore.
• 22:31
  Yeah, that's true. Yeah, Like I, I, I don't mind
• 22:34
  showing up and playing dress up in Halloween Ninjas.
• 22:36
  I like to play, right. Like I'll dress up for Halloween
• 22:39
  every now and again and do it, but it's just once a year or
• 22:42
  twice a year. Like I don't miss it that much.
• 22:43
  So it's kind. Of like the difference between
• 22:46
  like cooking at home and cooking in a restaurant, right So when
• 22:49
  you're cooking at home, you're kind of like chilling, you know,
• 22:51
  it's like this fuck that up whatever, put in the pot, fuck
• 22:54
  it, right. But when you're in a restaurant,
• 22:57
  the fun aspect is when you get into that, that flow state.
• 23:01
  And it's just that extra layer of, you know, I don't even know
• 23:05
  what word I want to use. Like that, That, that the flick
• 23:09
  of the wrist. The, the what's the term I'm
• 23:11
  looking for? You know, like making it nice,
• 23:13
  making it like the, the, the swan.
• 23:16
  Yeah, the swan. Yeah, that's the word I wanted
• 23:18
  to use. But I was like, oh, do we know
• 23:19
  this word here? Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, this
• 23:21
  one. Yeah.
• 23:21
  It's like the way you based and like the movement in your body
• 23:24
  and like all that when you get into the flow state and you got
• 23:26
  like, you know, whatever, whatever is on order, you got 6
• 23:30
  duck breasts. And you know exactly how got all
• 23:32
  your plate markers right here and you got all your knees here
• 23:35
  and you're fucking in it. And, and your Pickles are
• 23:37
  already over here and they're on the fucking towelette and
• 23:39
  they're, they're dry and they're ready to go.
• 23:40
  And the duck is about to come off and you fucking squirt that
• 23:43
  shit perfect. And you're looking at it, you're
• 23:44
  like, God damn, you know that feeling you won't get cooking at
• 23:49
  home as much as you will in a restaurant.
• 23:51
  It's like that, you know, you never move more than one to two
• 23:53
  steps that that aspect. Yeah, and it's like a flow
• 23:56
  state. Yeah, right.
• 23:57
  What did you think of the recent Michelin Awards in Texas, 'cause
• 24:00
  you were there, right? Yeah, I was there.
• 24:01
  It's great. I mean, I don't know, I feel
• 24:03
  like it's funny that it's under scrutiny at all because it's
• 24:06
  like, guys, look, Texas got Michelin stars, let's all clap
• 24:09
  our hands and be proud. They will be back to give more
• 24:12
  stars later and take some possibly away.
• 24:16
  But, you know, let's be proud of the fact that Michelin has
• 24:19
  decided to come to Texas. And this is something that I
• 24:21
  have always wanted. And in my mind, I was, I've
• 24:24
  always thought, oh, you know, will I ever want to move out of
• 24:26
  Texas? And 2nd that Michelin was like,
• 24:27
  I'm coming to Texas. I was like, I don't think I will
• 24:29
  ever because I think it has, it's overdue.
• 24:34
  And if there were anything to draw me to another city would be
• 24:36
  Michelin. And I think it's awesome.
• 24:39
  I think it's cool that they roped in some places that, you
• 24:42
  know, maybe are unlikely candidates, but it's cool that
• 24:44
  they're in there and Michelin's run by people, not robots.
• 24:48
  They're going to make mistakes. But I do think that they did a
• 24:51
  pretty good job and I think it's cool.
• 24:53
  Were you surprised by anyone that wasn't included in the
• 24:56
  list? I kind of was a little weirded
• 24:59
  out that they didn't. I don't even know if I should
• 25:01
  say I was a little weirded out that like the Uchi group didn't
• 25:04
  have any or the high hospitality group didn't have any
• 25:06
  restaurants in there. I mean like.
• 25:08
  I I agree with you. That was a little weird.
• 25:09
  They don't even get invited. I feel like some of the Texas
• 25:12
  Legends didn't get their opportunity to to shine, and I'm
• 25:15
  not just. Talking about, I agree with
• 25:16
  that. Dallas, Houston, a lot of the a
• 25:19
  lot of the people who even 10 years ago were the household
• 25:23
  names, I felt like didn't get their opportunity, but they
• 25:25
  built the Texas food team. Uchi, I think is one of them.
• 25:28
  Dean Ferran in Dallas, Stephen Pyles, like Kent Rathbun.
• 25:32
  A lot of these guys that, you know, really built Texas.
• 25:37
  Yeah. They they weren't necessarily
• 25:38
  considered for a star, which I'll give them their flowers
• 25:42
  here. It's like I know those all those
• 25:43
  guys are legends and. Yeah.
• 25:45
  I mean also the systems that they've created it have the
• 25:47
  consistency of product for so long and across multiple
• 25:52
  restaurants. I mean, I think people mistake
• 25:54
  how amazing that is. That's a deserving of the star
• 25:58
  alone. Yeah, I had Paul on here, Paul
• 26:00
  Key, I don't know, a couple of episodes back and we were
• 26:04
  talking about how what's really interesting about about Uchi is
• 26:09
  in in Austin, but not just in Austin, but in Texas in general.
• 26:12
  So many heavy hitting chefs and so much talent came from that
• 26:16
  kitchen. And I asked them, I was like,
• 26:17
  what was the secret sauce like, especially in Austin.
• 26:19
  If you live in Austin and you ask someone, did you work at
• 26:21
  Uchi? Most people say, yeah, I work at
• 26:23
  Uchi or Uchi Co, but I've never worked at Uchi.
• 26:26
  What is something that you were there that you thought like, OK,
• 26:30
  did you see anything like This is why so much talent's pumping
• 26:32
  out of there? I've thought about this a lot.
• 26:34
  It's crazy how much talent talent is going to there.
• 26:37
  I mean, that's insane amount across the US, not just Texas.
• 26:41
  I just want to remind everybody, I mean, there's Michelin
• 26:43
  restaurants in, in other states right from, from alum that are
• 26:46
  from Uchi. I mean it.
• 26:49
  I mean, even people like the fermentation R&D guy for for
• 26:54
  Noma and like, I won't go on and on about it.
• 26:59
  There's so much that has to happen to make that happen.
• 27:01
  You know, some of it is like some of it is a little bit of
• 27:04
  just like luck of the draw, right?
• 27:05
  Like, but but what I did think happened that is quantifiable is
• 27:10
  well, for one, they were super on the nose with anything that
• 27:14
  was going on during that time and fine dining.
• 27:16
  If there was like a one stop shop you could go to that had
• 27:19
  all the things from the type of containers that they would use
• 27:21
  to the practices that they would use, to the mixture of
• 27:24
  techniques that they use to the way that they train their
• 27:27
  people. They kind of had all those
• 27:29
  things put together so well and people in the US and especially
• 27:33
  Texas knew that and says like, well, if you want to get an
• 27:35
  overall experience and deep dive in, you kind of got to go here,
• 27:39
  you know, otherwise it's some obscure restaurant over there or
• 27:41
  over there, over there. But somehow Uchi became this
• 27:43
  like name that people knew if you went there, you were going
• 27:46
  to walk away with a pretty good arsenal of learnings.
• 27:49
  Which brings in my second point, which is they're extremely good,
• 27:52
  extremely fucking good at not training people.
• 27:56
  And they are, I mean, I've worked in places that, you know,
• 27:59
  it's like, you suck, you're fired, you suck, you're fired.
• 28:01
  Or yeah, I mean, that's basically the mentality.
• 28:06
  Whereas Uchi will not fire you. Which, you know, I will say like
• 28:09
  when I, you know, was when I got to the point where I was
• 28:11
  training people, I had a hard time with that.
• 28:15
  I was like, I hate this guy. Please get rid of them.
• 28:16
  God, they suck so fucking bad. Please, dear God, make my life
• 28:19
  easier for Christ's sake. But looking back, their refusal
• 28:23
  to do that is kind of what made them great because they were
• 28:26
  like, we don't give up on people.
• 28:29
  We are going to train them. And if they suck, we will make
• 28:32
  them great. Because if we can't make them
• 28:34
  great, we suck. And I think that is a really
• 28:37
  cool mentality. And it forces you to be better
• 28:41
  as a chef, but it also forces you to be more kind.
• 28:45
  It forces you to be more patient and not just be like, well, they
• 28:48
  suck, so get rid of them. It forces you to like look
• 28:50
  within yourself and be like, OK, what am I not getting across to
• 28:54
  this person? Maybe it's not their fault.
• 28:56
  Maybe they just learned differently.
• 28:58
  Maybe I need to take a step back and, and reapproach how I'm
• 29:00
  talking to this person and how I'm I'm directing them.
• 29:03
  And then it made you a better leader.
• 29:04
  So and then not and then not in turn, it made them a better
• 29:07
  chef, a better cook. And they, they live by the same
• 29:10
  motto, right? And you've heard it before,
• 29:11
  which is like, we don't make cooks, we make chefs, right,
• 29:13
  Right. And, you know, that was
• 29:16
  something that they told me when I was a line cook there, when I,
• 29:18
  I had, I was having a hard time and I was kind of like, look, I
• 29:21
  don't understand why you're making me train this guy like
• 29:24
  he's making me look bad, you know, And that that's what they
• 29:27
  told me. They're like, we don't make
• 29:29
  Cokes. We make chefs.
• 29:29
  So fucking nut up and get it done dude.
• 29:32
  Right. The food scene that Austin is
• 29:34
  today is not the food scene that Austin was 10 years ago or even
• 29:37
  15 years ago. And and I think during that time
• 29:40
  Uchi was holding it down for the entire city.
• 29:43
  Yeah. And I so my thought is that they
• 29:47
  were just the talent magnet. If you had talent and you lived
• 29:50
  in Austin, where else were you going to work, right?
• 29:52
  Yeah, people from from out of the country coming to work
• 29:55
  there. I mean, I was training people
• 29:56
  from like Lithuania. Yeah.
• 29:58
  Like it was wild. It was super.
• 30:00
  He was the there was a guy there.
• 30:02
  I don't mind saying I only have good stuff to say about him, but
• 30:05
  he was a sweetie pie. Like, I love this dude and if
• 30:09
  you're watching, you know who you are, but God, it was so cool
• 30:12
  to be exposed to people like that 'cause they had all sorts
• 30:14
  of different opinions and it was cool.
• 30:17
  So recently you I saw a video that you put up where you at an
• 30:21
  alchemist. Yeah.
• 30:23
  I've never been, but I mean, it looks crazy, right?
• 30:27
  7 hours. You said it was one of the best
• 30:29
  dining experiences you've had. Yeah.
• 30:30
  Yeah. I mean, I mean that, yeah.
• 30:32
  I mean, like, yeah. I'll be, I'll be flatter,
• 30:34
  honest. And and I said this to to Chev
• 30:36
  Rasmus myself, right? Like first of all, that dude is
• 30:42
  way more than a chef. He cares a lot about a lot of
• 30:46
  chefs like to talk about how they care about the environment
• 30:48
  and they care about farms. It's a fucking goddamn marketing
• 30:51
  ploy, bullshit fucking lie. You know, it's a lie.
• 30:54
  He actually does care, though. He's like putting real effort at
• 30:57
  a governmental political level. It's pretty crazy.
• 31:00
  And, and, and, and he's like going to children's hospitals
• 31:03
  and like trying to experiment on, on, you know, I, I might
• 31:08
  have said an NBA before I start talking about some of his other
• 31:10
  projects. But anyway, the point is like,
• 31:12
  he's really, he's, he's out there doing stuff like this guy.
• 31:14
  I wouldn't be surprised if the guy wins a Nobel Peace Prize in
• 31:16
  10 years. But anyway, so best dining
• 31:19
  experience. Now I want to be really clear.
• 31:21
  A lot of people are like, it's the best meal Josh has ever had.
• 31:24
  Yes and no, right. Like, is it the best dinner I've
• 31:28
  ever eaten from a culinary standpoint in my life?
• 31:32
  I don't know. Like, no, probably, but I
• 31:36
  wouldn't say. But I would say it was up there
• 31:38
  and the food was delicious. It was excellent.
• 31:40
  There were some dishes that I thought were a little bit too
• 31:42
  obscure from my personal taste that were kind of grossed me
• 31:45
  out. But the majority of the dishes
• 31:48
  were cooked beautifully. They tasted delicious.
• 31:50
  They were seasoned nicely. What's not to like about that?
• 31:53
  But I'm not taking a step back. I'm not saying that food was the
• 31:56
  best food I've ever eaten. It was food cooked nicely,
• 31:59
  delicious, no problem, no notes. But what made that dinner so
• 32:05
  special and made it the best dining experience was that it
• 32:10
  was so. I mean, first of all, 7 hours is
• 32:12
  a big ask. Yeah, it's a long time.
• 32:14
  He's doing something that no one else I don't think can or ever
• 32:17
  will do again. When I walked, when you walk in,
• 32:20
  you see this, the size and the stature of this place.
• 32:23
  From an architectural standpoint, I'm just like, how
• 32:25
  the fuck did they pay for this? Who is for this shit?
• 32:30
  Well, if you did this in a, if you did this restaurant in New
• 32:32
  York, it would be a 30 to $40 million restaurant that that's
• 32:35
  not even a that's not even an exaggeration.
• 32:37
  It would cost you probably 30 or $40 million.
• 32:39
  No shit, maybe more, right? I mean you're talking about, I
• 32:43
  mean, I don't know how many square feet this place is, but
• 32:44
  there's like 5 dining rooms, dude and they've got like 6
• 32:47
  kitchens and they've got like other areas.
• 32:49
  I mean, I don't know, maybe maybe it's like 30 thousand
• 32:51
  40,000 square feet. Like think about how much that
• 32:53
  would cost rent wise here in Austin.
• 32:55
  What, like $700,000 a month? Like I don't know.
• 32:59
  But anyway. But my point is a building like
• 33:02
  that, an Oscar probably cost like 15 to 20 million, no joke.
• 33:05
  Just for the shell, not including all the art
• 33:07
  installations and the lighting and and the kitchens were
• 33:11
  beautiful. It was just like that alone.
• 33:14
  I haven't even gotten to the experience yet, but that scene,
• 33:16
  that alone was kind of like walking into, you know, if you
• 33:19
  were to walk into a museum and see something that only exists
• 33:22
  of one in the world from 7000 years ago, right?
• 33:24
  Like it's like you're looking at something that will probably
• 33:26
  never exist again and was created just for the specific
• 33:30
  experience. That to me was so like, wow, you
• 33:33
  know, and I would have just been fine with just that.
• 33:36
  But great food to couple with that and all these cool
• 33:38
  experiences and they, they really work hard to give you
• 33:41
  constant, you're doing something constantly, you're eating
• 33:44
  something constantly, you're experiencing something
• 33:45
  constantly. So 7 hours went by.
• 33:47
  I would say the first four to five went by extremely fast.
• 33:50
  OK, once you get to the fifth hour, it starts to feel a little
• 33:53
  bit slow because you're like, OK, I've been in the same.
• 33:55
  That's what I was wondering, at what point is it diminishing
• 33:56
  returns? Probably about the 5th hour.
• 33:58
  The last two two hours feel a tiny tiny tiny bit slow.
• 34:01
  But honestly like Nope, no notes.
• 34:04
  Like my my wife who is the pickiest eater of all time and
• 34:08
  somehow I don't know how this is possible.
• 34:11
  She we've been together for almost a decade.
• 34:13
  Somehow she knows nothing about food.
• 34:14
  Having been with me, she she is very good at not absorbing a
• 34:17
  goddamn thing I have ever said about food, probably because of
• 34:20
  the way I am. But.
• 34:23
  And she walked away from that. Did she ever tell you I was
• 34:25
  watching Gordon Ramsay and he said this to call you out?
• 34:31
  Yeah, I mean, it's I don't know what that maybe we have maybe
• 34:34
  they have similar personalities, but like somehow like, I don't
• 34:39
  know, she does not give a shit about what I do at all, which is
• 34:41
  awesome. I mean, she loves me, which is
• 34:42
  great. But but anyway, she doesn't
• 34:45
  really know that much. She's learned a lot about food,
• 34:47
  but again, like dining experiences, the stuff we're
• 34:49
  talking about right now, she doesn't give a fuck.
• 34:50
  She's like it was it good or not?
• 34:53
  And she went alchemist with me and she was enamored and she
• 34:58
  talked about it for a month, how much she loved it.
• 35:01
  And this is coming from if the people out there who have never
• 35:05
  eaten like this or a normal person that's not a chef or or a
• 35:08
  chef, that's that's questioning it.
• 35:10
  Take a normal person in terms of food in the chef world.
• 35:15
  Love this. There you go.
• 35:18
  Right. Like they just won over the,
• 35:19
  they won over the clientele, which is to feed people and they
• 35:24
  won someone over who knows nothing about it.
• 35:25
  She doesn't care about the art installations and the
• 35:27
  architecture and how difficult it is and, and the the
• 35:30
  importance of it. It was just that she was just
• 35:32
  enamored by the experience itself.
• 35:33
  And so to me that they succeeded in that.
• 35:36
  Do you think a restaurant like that, and I'm not talking about
• 35:38
  the $30 million build out, but let's take the build out.
• 35:40
  Well, they didn't spend 30 million there, Copenhagen, but
• 35:43
  yeah, yeah. Yeah, let's, let's just take
• 35:45
  that part out of it. Do you think the United States
• 35:47
  is ready for a restaurant like that, that style?
• 35:52
  I mean, I guess Alinea is probably the closest thing we
• 35:54
  have to that. It's not even comparable.
• 35:57
  Yeah. Not even comparable in my
• 36:00
  opinion. Like I think Alinea's experience
• 36:03
  is cool. I think that the delta between
• 36:06
  Alinea and Alchemist in terms of like just visceral craziness is
• 36:10
  like light years truly. And I'm not, I'm not dissing a
• 36:15
  linear at all. I mean that like with like
• 36:16
  1,000,000%. Like, I mean, a lot of it has to
• 36:19
  do, I'm sure with resources, right?
• 36:20
  So unlimited funding, I mean. I mean, it's just like, God, it
• 36:23
  was so crazy. It was just like, no one is even
• 36:26
  doing anything remotely close to this.
• 36:27
  This was not even about food, you know?
• 36:29
  I mean, even that Dome, the Dome with all the changing imagery on
• 36:32
  the ceiling, like who is going to, you know, you know, they
• 36:35
  have a whole design team that's constantly redesigning that,
• 36:38
  that alone, just the design team just to design it, let alone the
• 36:41
  animations to animators, the people who are programming it,
• 36:44
  the programmers who are physically running it the day of
• 36:47
  while you're in the dining room in on the past while they're
• 36:50
  also dealing with selling food. Like that's just the Dome, let
• 36:54
  alone all the other experiences. Or like when you walk in and
• 36:58
  there's like that thing showing all the historical imagery, but
• 37:00
  they, they, they put your face on all the historical images
• 37:03
  because they take it a high resolution image of you when you
• 37:06
  walk in using like a fucking NASA space camera that then AI
• 37:10
  places it on your face on it before you even walk into the
• 37:13
  restaurant. I mean, like, it's just like,
• 37:14
  dude, this is like on another plane of existence.
• 37:17
  Like restaurants, restaurants could barely fucking, you know,
• 37:22
  get consistent food out sometimes.
• 37:24
  You know, it's amazing that they could do that.
• 37:26
  So I I got to give them props. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely
• 37:30
  right. The level in which they could
• 37:31
  execute that again, from an outside, I've never been, but
• 37:34
  from an outsider's perspective, it almost seems like this is a,
• 37:37
  an art exhibit to to a certain extent, like you said, it's it's
• 37:42
  it is you are, like you said, you're going to see it one of
• 37:44
  one. Nothing else like this exists,
• 37:47
  and maybe for a lot of us in our lifetime, maybe never will.
• 37:51
  I don't know if it ever will again.
• 37:53
  It's so hard. I mean, they weren't even using
• 37:55
  a ticket system. They were using a Trello board
• 37:57
  to keep track of people's dishes.
• 37:58
  Because there's so many courses and so many like things that
• 38:01
  they do with the courses that sometimes don't even have to do
• 38:03
  with just here's your food. Sometimes it was different than
• 38:06
  that. That's wild.
• 38:09
  And they were taking live notes because there's, there's like
• 38:11
  four or five kitchens in there and they're on different levels,
• 38:14
  like like floor one, floor two, floor 3.
• 38:15
  And they're communicating with each other on the Trello boards
• 38:18
  for each table. So they'll be like, diner didn't
• 38:20
  enjoy this dish That changed, you know, dish #3 they don't
• 38:24
  like cinnamon. Change dish #3 Take the cinnamon
• 38:26
  out. That's why I I can't imagine how
• 38:29
  a kitchen like that operates like it it would take me it
• 38:31
  would take me 3 days just watching before I OK I get it
• 38:35
  for the light bulb clicks. I still don't get it.
• 38:37
  I was like, and they let me look at everything and I was like,
• 38:40
  maybe it's 'cause I eaten so much.
• 38:42
  I don't know. There's a lot of people that now
• 38:43
  are coming into the industry. What what's, what's really
• 38:47
  interesting I talk to, I mean, all I do is talk to chefs.
• 38:48
  That's what I do. That's my job.
• 38:51
  And one of the things that a lot of people say right now that's
• 38:53
  difficult when you're getting cooks in the door now is a lot
• 38:56
  of them when I was coming up, you want to work at a
• 38:58
  restaurant, you want to be the chef.
• 38:59
  That's it. Like I have no other aspirations
• 39:01
  other than being the chef and being the best that I could
• 39:05
  possibly be. I noticed this at the latter
• 39:08
  part, at the end of my career as a chef is when I was hiring
• 39:11
  people, they didn't necessarily want to be chefs.
• 39:14
  A lot of them, again, they wanted to go on TV, they wanted
• 39:17
  to go into social media. They want to go, they want to do
• 39:19
  what you do. And I thought it was very
• 39:21
  interesting that a lot of people are going into culinary school
• 39:24
  with the idea of when they come out, it's like, well, I'm going
• 39:28
  to take the culinary skills and see what what doors open for me.
• 39:32
  I think can I just say go ahead, don't do that, that's the wrong
• 39:36
  path. You have no idea what the fuck
• 39:38
  you're doing. Why?
• 39:41
  First stop and ask yourself why do you want to be doing anything
• 39:47
  in front of a camera for or have a show?
• 39:51
  Please answer that because it's not.
• 39:56
  I just think a lot of people are getting in it into it for the
• 39:59
  vanity. They just want to be famous and
• 40:01
  make a lot of money because they go, I love cooking.
• 40:04
  I want to make a lot of money. And then they and then they go,
• 40:07
  does cooking make a lot of money?
• 40:09
  And then they realize that the answer for that they think is
• 40:11
  no, which is not true. You can make a lot of money in
• 40:13
  food. It's just, but they think that
• 40:16
  the clearest path to that is is TV.
• 40:19
  And then they also are lured by the idea of being famous and
• 40:22
  having an audience and, and hear me out, like.
• 40:25
  I'm not going to say like I don't enjoy having an audience.
• 40:27
  I love, I love that I'm, I'm a, I'm a big silly guy.
• 40:30
  I love to make people laugh And, and I love, you know, corralling
• 40:35
  a crowd and getting him amped up.
• 40:37
  And, and that's something part of my passion, but you really
• 40:40
  need to have a reason to be getting into that.
• 40:42
  I mean, you know, the let's look at like I'm not, and I'm not
• 40:46
  comparing myself to any of these people.
• 40:47
  I just want to, I just want to get some different names that
• 40:49
  aren't me for because I almost sound like an egomaniac.
• 40:52
  But like, let's look at like Anthony Bourdain or let's look
• 40:55
  at Gordon Ramsay or let's look at Alton Brown, you know, or, or
• 41:00
  insert name, right? They all had a real reason to be
• 41:04
  on on screen. I mean, you know, Anthony
• 41:06
  Bourdain was passionate about so many things about people, first
• 41:09
  and foremost about travel, about people's stories, about
• 41:12
  politics. He was, he was fascinated about
• 41:14
  this stuff and he developed a show about that.
• 41:16
  That's what he loved. And he, he, he was a the best at
• 41:21
  that because he fucking loved that shit.
• 41:24
  And that's what he wanted to show people or Alton Brown.
• 41:27
  He was like such a nerd about all these like sciency things.
• 41:29
  And anyway, point is, they had a reason to be on screen and they
• 41:33
  wanted to send a message. They wanted to tell message.
• 41:35
  They wanted to tell their story. They wanted to make a show for
• 41:38
  whatever reason. And when I got into it, my whole
• 41:41
  thing was that I missed though that that romanticism, I missed
• 41:47
  that those people. I missed seeing that on
• 41:50
  television. And granted, we'll get into the
• 41:52
  topic of whether TV is alive anymore, but but the point is
• 41:55
  like shows that were like that, I just felt like they were
• 41:57
  airless. There was nothing fun about them
• 41:59
  anymore. They were being run by people
• 42:00
  who didn't know anything about food, which was very clear to
• 42:02
  me. But just based off how the shows
• 42:03
  are written, I was like, I can do a better job than this.
• 42:05
  And I grew up, my dad was a executive editor for movies when
• 42:10
  I was a kid. And, you know, eventually he, he
• 42:15
  had retired and like, you know, I, I, I won't get too much
• 42:19
  details, but we, you know, my family have like a lot of like
• 42:21
  economical struggles and because of there was like the economy
• 42:25
  crash and all this shit and like basically my whole life changed,
• 42:27
  right. But without diving too deep into
• 42:29
  that, the point is I grew up in an environment that would that
• 42:33
  loved entertainment. My brother documentaries.
• 42:37
  He built a production company around, you know, filmmaking.
• 42:40
  So I have this like this, like food part of me where I grew up,
• 42:43
  where my mom loves love, love, love, love cooking and taught me
• 42:46
  how to cook. And I fell in love with it.
• 42:48
  And I had this other passion, which was entertainment.
• 42:50
  And that's just who I am. And so I just was like, these
• 42:53
  two things that I love, I'm watching fall apart as in
• 42:57
  unison, which is the cooking show world.
• 43:00
  And I was like, I want to go in there.
• 43:02
  And I believe I can provide value in these areas because I
• 43:04
  care about this industry and so on and so forth.
• 43:06
  So anyway, I'm just giving you an example of like why I went
• 43:09
  into it is I didn't go in because I gave a fuck about any
• 43:11
  of those details. I only cared about making
• 43:14
  something that was going to bring back life to that space
• 43:18
  because I cared about that space.
• 43:19
  And I think that most people don't care about that.
• 43:22
  And I understand why. And if you don't, stay the fuck
• 43:25
  away from going that route. But at a certain point, a lot of
• 43:28
  people start caring or I want to cook, but then it turns into a
• 43:32
  business because they maybe they didn't get into it because like
• 43:35
  you said earlier, we're all creating content to a certain
• 43:38
  extent. Everyone, if you have a phone,
• 43:39
  you're doing something. At a certain point they get good
• 43:42
  at it and they start to see that maybe this is the path that I
• 43:46
  want to go down for those people that are in it at the very
• 43:52
  beginning stages. And when I say the beginning
• 43:54
  stages, I mean like 23000 followers on social media and
• 43:59
  it's like, OK, maybe I want to do this full time and they want
• 44:02
  to, they want to dedicate their lives to this.
• 44:05
  What sort of guidance would you give those people if there's no
• 44:09
  talking them out of it? I'll say one last thing before I
• 44:12
  get in. Sure, but I do feel the space is
• 44:14
  really over saturated with meaningless bullshit and that
• 44:16
  99% of them are going to go away in the next couple years.
• 44:20
  And if you don't want to be that person, then you better get
• 44:22
  really fucking clear on what you want to give to the space.
• 44:27
  What are you? Who are you and how are you
• 44:29
  going to help the space, right? Don't come in there about
• 44:31
  thinking about how much you're going to take and what you want
• 44:34
  out of it. Make sure that when you're
• 44:37
  coming in, you're coming in for the right reason.
• 44:40
  So that's number one. Number two, I would say that
• 44:45
  adjust your expectations and how much you think you're going to
• 44:47
  work. You're going to work a lot more
• 44:49
  than you think you are and if you if you can work restaurant
• 44:53
  hours for years then you you might be OK.
• 44:58
  But if you think you're going to gas out on restaurant, out
• 45:01
  because the hours on this shit are arguably worse.
• 45:04
  Right. They're arguably worse.
• 45:06
  And you probably work seven days a week.
• 45:08
  You're always actually, you're probably always working.
• 45:10
  That's how you do, yeah. Yeah, and I have a company with
• 45:14
  multiple people that work for me and I'm still working that much.
• 45:17
  You know, I there, there's a lot of things I can't even offload
• 45:20
  yet. You know, I used to do this by
• 45:22
  myself and let me, let me paint a picture.
• 45:23
  I used to do this completely by myself.
• 45:25
  What has replaced me is five editors, head of production, a
• 45:31
  director, a vice president, a post production manager and
• 45:35
  executive assistant who helps with all my stuff.
• 45:38
  Shooters like people who hold the camera, additional editors,
• 45:42
  backup editors, thumbnail artists, SEO people, web people,
• 45:48
  designers. I used to do that shit by myself
• 45:50
  so you can imagine how many hours that took.
• 45:52
  And then even then I still sometimes like fuck, we're short
• 45:54
  staffed so. So what point going back when,
• 45:58
  at what point when you were, when you were building this, at
• 46:00
  what point did you say, OK, I need to add I can't do this but.
• 46:04
  From the beginning, I From the beginning I wanted to build.
• 46:06
  Well, I, I agree with you, like I, I want to hire all the people
• 46:09
  that you have on your team, but I also realize that I can't,
• 46:12
  right. So there's a certain point where
• 46:13
  you say OK I want all this help but as I I can't do without the
• 46:17
  help at this point. I feel like immediately you feel
• 46:21
  that way when you start doing it.
• 46:22
  I'm sure you did too. Like when you start realizing
• 46:24
  how much you have to learn and how much you have to do, you
• 46:26
  start to go, oh, This is why there are companies that do this
• 46:28
  stuff. You'll, you'll figure out what
• 46:30
  you'll need. I think it's a process of of,
• 46:34
  you know, prioritizing what you need the most.
• 46:36
  Usually it's editing is the first thing you'll need.
• 46:39
  And and you know, editors are expensive and, and rightfully
• 46:42
  so. But yeah, I mean, let me let me
• 46:47
  get back to the the second point, though.
• 46:48
  The second point is adjust your expectations of how much you're
• 46:51
  going to work. If you think that this is your
• 46:52
  route to working less, turn around.
• 46:54
  Yeah, do something else. This is not going to be that.
• 46:57
  Yeah. I, I, it's, it's funny because a
• 46:59
  lot of the, the interactions I have with chefs and cooks, a lot
• 47:03
  of people say, oh, well, you're retired, you don't work anymore.
• 47:04
  So I actually, I, I work just as much now as I did when I was a
• 47:08
  chef because I work every day. I don't get a day off.
• 47:10
  Even when people think I'm off, I'm not because, you know, if
• 47:14
  I'm having a conversation with someone, it's usually it's work.
• 47:17
  Yeah. Yeah, I also want to be clear
• 47:19
  though, I'm also I, I also totally recognize what what I
• 47:22
  get to do. And the reason why I work so
• 47:24
  hard is because I love it and I'm so grateful to be doing it
• 47:28
  because I also think sometimes when I get into talking like
• 47:30
  that, people are like, Oh, well, you know, you get, you make a
• 47:34
  lot more money now, so shut the fuck up.
• 47:36
  And it's like, absolutely, you're right.
• 47:37
  I fucking love this shit and it's awesome.
• 47:39
  I'm definitely compensated well and I'm happy about it.
• 47:42
  But I'm just trying to be clear to people who who may think that
• 47:45
  they're coming into this just to have a silly fun time.
• 47:48
  If you're here to have a silly, silly fun time, I'm going to
• 47:50
  steamroll the fuck out of you when you enter the space.
• 47:53
  I'm going to bust your ass. You're not competitive that that
• 47:56
  all then. No, not at all.
• 47:59
  This, this space has come become very competitive.
• 48:01
  And I do want to be clear that anybody who thinks that they're
• 48:03
  going to come into this space and operate next to me, I will
• 48:05
  outwork the fucking dog shit out of you.
• 48:07
  Eat dog shit. At what point did you have a
• 48:12
  hard time or did you even have a hard time?
• 48:14
  Like walking down the street? It's like, oh, that.
• 48:15
  That's Joshua Wiseman. I want to talk to you Like
• 48:19
  everyone wants a little bit of your time.
• 48:20
  Yeah, I mean, well, you know, it's not like I'm Drake walking
• 48:24
  down the street. I would love that.
• 48:25
  No, I'm kidding. But you also hang out in
• 48:27
  restaurants with chefs, so they all know you.
• 48:29
  Yeah, yeah, honestly, look, I'm a people person.
• 48:32
  I love people. I know that you see these things
• 48:34
  about like people lashing out. I love people.
• 48:36
  If someone wants to come say hi to me or they love what I do,
• 48:40
  I'm pumped. I mean, come say hi.
• 48:42
  I actually, I would say so it's it happens every day, all the
• 48:47
  time. But I've, you know, what's funny
• 48:49
  is I in my head, I'm always like, I think there's a lot more
• 48:52
  people than actually the ones that come up to me.
• 48:54
  Because a lot of people I, I see people like pull all their
• 48:56
  phones, they point at me, but they don't ever come say hi.
• 48:58
  And I think people want to be respectful or they're shy or
• 49:01
  they're nervous. And that's really cool.
• 49:02
  But if, by the way, if, if you do want to say hi, just come say
• 49:04
  hi. But what I was going to say was,
• 49:07
  but when people do come up to me, my first thought is like,
• 49:10
  Oh, I, I want to express my gratitude towards this person
• 49:13
  because that means that this person watch my show, they take
• 49:16
  the time out of their day. Maybe they bought my book.
• 49:18
  If they bought my book, immediately I'm like bowing down
• 49:20
  to them. I'm like, not me.
• 49:21
  You, you know, and truly, I really do feel that way because
• 49:24
  I'm like, you know, someone took the time out of the day or the
• 49:26
  money out of their, their bank account to support me,
• 49:31
  regardless of the number of people, it means everything to
• 49:34
  me. So immediately I'm like, let me,
• 49:36
  what can I do for you? You know what I mean?
• 49:38
  So I have no problem with it at all.
• 49:41
  You know, there have been times where I've been swarmed and I
• 49:43
  don't mind it at all. I think it's great.
• 49:45
  You know, sometimes I'm in a rush and I'm like, I gotta go.
• 49:47
  I'm so sorry and I feel bad. But you know, it's, that's,
• 49:50
  that's about the extent of it. So you you enjoy.
• 49:52
  Talking to people. I love it.
• 49:53
  Yeah. And, and, you know, think about
• 49:54
  you got people that are in a good mood, that are happy and
• 49:56
  they want to talk to you about something that they're
• 49:57
  passionate about randomly because they watch your show.
• 49:59
  That's sick as fuck. How could you ever feel bad
• 50:01
  about that? I will say that there are pieces
• 50:06
  that I don't love about it. That is that more has to do with
• 50:11
  like people's misunderstandings about you and how brutal people
• 50:15
  are. You know, I've just, I've just
• 50:17
  learned how to stop looking at comments because I used to
• 50:20
  always go to the comments section for ideas or, you know,
• 50:23
  I'm, I'm good with like constructive criticism, But I
• 50:25
  think that we're in a, we're in a time that is more negative
• 50:28
  than ever before. I think we have more negativity
• 50:31
  and more, and not necessarily more negativity, but people are
• 50:34
  more vocal about negativity and more comfortable with being
• 50:37
  negative. And there's less shame around
• 50:39
  being a negative person in today's society than ever
• 50:42
  before. I think back in the day, people
• 50:44
  would swing their own back, be positive, you know, and like
• 50:46
  people. Where they fucking hit you?
• 50:47
  Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, totally.
• 50:51
  But there's like this group sadness that's going on and I
• 50:53
  feel bad that people are facing that.
• 50:55
  But you know, it's just like, you know, the comment section is
• 50:57
  now like who can get the biggest razz, who can get the biggest
• 51:00
  negative? You know, who can get the big,
• 51:02
  you know, who can catch you in this?
• 51:04
  And that kind of sucks that you know, that that can kind of suck
• 51:08
  or you know, the disrespect around that.
• 51:10
  It's it's me. It's definitely my eyes that and
• 51:12
  then the other thing is like maybe a little bit lack of
• 51:14
  privacy. You know, I've had like, people
• 51:17
  coming to my house and like, knock on my door and take
• 51:19
  pictures of me several times. Like fans that found out where
• 51:24
  you lived and showed them. Yeah.
• 51:26
  That's fucking terrifying. Yeah.
• 51:28
  How'd you not like? Yeah, yeah, I was nice.
• 51:32
  No, that's weird though. It's weird.
• 51:34
  Yeah. I listen on one end, I'm like,
• 51:37
  wow, you know, this person loves the show so much and they're
• 51:41
  watching and I don't know who they are, but they know me
• 51:44
  really well and they love the show so much.
• 51:46
  They feel such a connection that they feel that we are like good
• 51:50
  friends. And in a way, we kind of are,
• 51:52
  right. Like if I met you on the Most of
• 51:54
  the time when I meet people, I do feel that way, But when they
• 51:58
  come to my house, I'm like, oh, but I don't know who you are.
• 52:00
  I don't actually know who you are.
• 52:01
  Like I've never. They know everything about.
• 52:02
  You, they know everything about me.
• 52:03
  And so it's like it's a one way connection.
• 52:05
  I don't know that person yet. And so that that's where it gets
• 52:07
  weird for me. And, you know, I, I, yeah.
• 52:10
  I mean, this is Texas. Remember that.
• 52:12
  Yeah. Thank you for saying that.
• 52:14
  This is Texas, Yeah. If you guys want to come to my
• 52:16
  house, remember this is Texas. Yeah, so.
• 52:18
  Well, it's funny because my podcast, I did my first 100
• 52:22
  episode solo like I didn't have yes, I just like wanted to give
• 52:25
  advice to chefs and cooks and so many people.
• 52:29
  I did short little episodes, 20 minutes you drive to work on the
• 52:31
  subway, whatever. Let's talk about whatever is in
• 52:34
  the industry for the day. And a lot of people you know,
• 52:37
  when I start interacting with like, how do you remember you
• 52:39
  said this? Like quoting me back.
• 52:40
  I don't remember saying that. That sounds like something I
• 52:42
  would say. And I realized it was it was an
• 52:45
  interesting moment for me to go through is like I'm your best
• 52:49
  friend, but I've never met you, right.
• 52:51
  But you hear me every day because we we ride to work every
• 52:54
  day and have this great conversation.
• 52:55
  I've never met you. But to them, they know
• 52:57
  everything about me and I, I get where they're coming from.
• 53:00
  But it, when it first started happening to me, it was a little
• 53:04
  bit uncomfortable. Yeah.
• 53:07
  And obviously on your level, it's, it's much different.
• 53:09
  I was in Whole Foods the other day.
• 53:10
  There's a Whole Foods and I was getting something and I noticed
• 53:14
  this people were following me and like my spider senses are up
• 53:17
  because I'm a little nervous. Like, why is this guy following
• 53:19
  me? And then all of a sudden he just
• 53:22
  turns to his friend and says he's that chef guy.
• 53:24
  I was like, OK, that's why they were following me.
• 53:26
  I thought like, OK, are you gonna rob me in front of Whole
• 53:28
  Foods? Like, that's scary.
• 53:30
  Yeah. It's it's just a little
• 53:31
  uncomfortable. Yeah.
• 53:33
  One thing I do love but does startle me at times, but I do
• 53:36
  love it is this, this happened to me so many times.
• 53:38
  I don't know why, but I'll be walking down the street and
• 53:41
  people will like come to a screeching halt in their car and
• 53:43
  be like, yo, Josh. And I'm like, yeah, you know,
• 53:46
  But it always scares me because like, if someone comes to the
• 53:47
  screeching halt next to you on the street, you're like, yeah,
• 53:49
  I'm like, am I about to get shot?
• 53:52
  What's going on? Because this is Texas.
• 53:54
  Am I about to get drive bite over my bread?
• 53:56
  Like what's going on? So, you know, but that can be
• 54:00
  fun that that I do enjoy. It's always like college kids
• 54:03
  and they're so hype. Yeah, I love it.
• 54:05
  Well, it's it's funny because a lot of a lot of college kids, a
• 54:09
  lot of young chefs, I was consulting at this place and
• 54:13
  there was a guy, there was a line cook at the place where I
• 54:15
  was doing consultancy. And he's like, I'm going to go
• 54:17
  to your book signing. I think maybe you were doing a
• 54:20
  Laurel. I think.
• 54:21
  Yeah, Yeah. And he's like, I can't wait.
• 54:23
  I got my book. I'm going to get him to sign it.
• 54:24
  And you know, he was he was a college kid.
• 54:26
  And it's like you have a fan base of teaching people how to
• 54:31
  cook. What I think is great about your
• 54:33
  content, by the way, you know, I want, I want to make sure that
• 54:35
  I, that I tell you this while you're here, what I think is
• 54:37
  great about your content is someone that is not a
• 54:40
  professional chef can watch it and learn.
• 54:42
  And someone that is a professional chef can watch it
• 54:44
  and learn. And I think that's, I think
• 54:46
  that's a very unique position to be in because a lot of people
• 54:49
  can't play in both worlds. Yeah.
• 54:51
  So kudos to you for doing that. I.
• 54:52
  Appreciate that. I've tried to.
• 54:54
  It's a hard balance to strike because, you know, how do you go
• 54:58
  deep without going so deep that you lose the average person?
• 55:03
  But I, I feel, I feel like we've done a pretty good job of it.
• 55:06
  I also think sometimes you just have to let people who don't
• 55:08
  know that shit just be like, hey, look, this is just the way
• 55:10
  to do it. It's not a matter of this is the
• 55:13
  hard way to do it. It's just this is the way to do
• 55:15
  it. It's like sort of like, oh,
• 55:16
  people be like, teach me how to make this loaf of bread.
• 55:18
  It's like OK. I will.
• 55:20
  By the way, can you tell us about the loaf of bread?
• 55:21
  Yeah, this is 20%, 2020, 25%. Barton Springs Mills, Yokora
• 55:28
  Rojo. It's a 27 hour ferment, 80%
• 55:34
  hydration, 78% hydration, and that's it.
• 55:37
  Super simple. Thank you for the gift.
• 55:39
  Yeah, enjoy it. It's really it's, it's good once
• 55:41
  you by the way, don't forget to wrap it in plastic wrap pretty
• 55:43
  much today. If you don't eat it today
• 55:45
  because it will get, it'll get hard.
• 55:47
  But but, but like if someone would be like, hey, I want to
• 55:49
  learn how to make this. I think the beauty of teaching
• 55:52
  someone who is like a regular Joe, not a chef, how to make
• 55:56
  this is to tell them exactly what the fuck it takes to make
• 55:58
  it. It's like A + B equals this.
• 56:03
  Got it. You want to make this, just do
• 56:05
  these things. I'm it's not really that
• 56:07
  complicated. It's a lot of time, but it's not
• 56:10
  really that complicated. Like you could do this at home.
• 56:13
  It's not really that complicated.
• 56:14
  It's just, it'll take you several hours.
• 56:17
  You might be at home all day and you might end up hating it.
• 56:20
  But hey, motherfucker, you want to make this shit?
• 56:21
  That's how you make it. Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful, by
• 56:26
  the way. I like.
• 56:29
  It's a good one. Wow, Yeah, it's a good one,
• 56:31
  dude. Yeah, that smells great.
• 56:33
  And you can do that in a home oven.
• 56:34
  You don't need, you don't need a deck oven with steam injection
• 56:38
  and you know, Italian ceramic plates on the bottom.
• 56:42
  You can do it in a in a home oven with a cast iron pot.
• 56:46
  I want to ask you, where do you think this is going?
• 56:51
  And, and when I say this, I, I don't necessarily mean your
• 56:54
  business. I I mean this video content food
• 57:01
  chefs. I personally think Food Network
• 57:04
  is dead. I think they've been dead for
• 57:06
  quite some time. I'm curious what's next.
• 57:09
  I'm not sure what it what is next.
• 57:11
  Some people think think Netflix. We're in the next.
• 57:15
  You're what is next? Yeah, we're in the next.
• 57:18
  Like we're in the the infancy of the next.
• 57:20
  Yeah. It's not a matter of what is
• 57:22
  next. It's a matter of look around
• 57:24
  you, you know, to me. And I think that if you really
• 57:30
  look at the space and look at where the eyeballs are,
• 57:33
  transitions already happened. It's done.
• 57:36
  There's no going back. It's YouTube.
• 57:38
  It's done. And So what it Well, it's not
• 57:41
  just YouTube. It's just like everywhere else
• 57:44
  in the entertainment space. But the best way I could say if
• 57:45
  we're just looking at food, because I might, I might be
• 57:48
  going a little too abroad here. If we're just, you can also go
• 57:50
  abroad. Yeah, I mean, well, it, it kind
• 57:53
  of applies broadly as if I if I were to talk about food without
• 57:57
  stating the rest of the industry, it kind of applies
• 57:58
  broadly. But let's let's look at food
• 58:00
  because I know that one the best.
• 58:01
  SO timeline is this cooking show era, right?
• 58:08
  Think Gordon Ramsay, Einigart and all those people, right?
• 58:10
  Cooking show era. That was the only place in the
• 58:13
  world to get cooking shows and you wanted to learn how to cook
• 58:17
  or you wanted to see visually how to cook.
• 58:19
  You'd have to tune into Food Network or Cooking Channel or
• 58:22
  something like that, right? Where else you going to learn
• 58:24
  it? That's the easiest.
• 58:25
  And it was fun because you can't see that anywhere else.
• 58:27
  You only see it on those shows. That was the only thing that
• 58:30
  brought you there was the scarcity of that.
• 58:32
  That's it. There was, there was no other
• 58:33
  draw to it than it was new, you know, And so people watch that.
• 58:39
  It was fantastic. That made Martha Stewart a
• 58:41
  billionaire. So it was pretty, pretty good
• 58:42
  business. Then things started to change a
• 58:46
  little bit. Then the Internet comes along.
• 58:48
  OK, cool. Then blogs start happening,
• 58:50
  right? People who are passionate about
• 58:51
  food start posting about their experiences or they share their
• 58:54
  family recipes. OK, now, now it's diffusing just
• 58:57
  a little bit, but still, the cooking shows are still where
• 58:59
  it's at. But blogs were kind of like a
• 59:01
  fun place to go get recipes and diffuse that a little bit,
• 59:03
  forums, things like that. So the Internet is now kind of
• 59:05
  starting to encroach a little on that, but not by much.
• 59:09
  Now Fast forward a little bit more.
• 59:11
  Now YouTube launches. This is arguably the most
• 59:16
  destabilizing thing in entertainment history because
• 59:20
  now you can publish something long form just like ATV show for
• 59:25
  free and anyone can do it. There aren't a million passes
• 59:29
  through director, producer, writer, green lighting by the
• 59:32
  studio, by the studio head, so on and so forth, right?
• 59:36
  You could just be like, I want to talk about Brad and make a
• 59:38
  video about Brad, right? So now it's been entirely
• 59:42
  democratized, the creative process and the the broadcasting
• 59:47
  process. And this is the fucking kicker
• 59:49
  about YouTube. With television and things like
• 59:52
  that, you're broadcasted to specific regions at different
• 59:55
  times. Some regions you're not
• 59:56
  broadcasted to at all, right? That's pretty commonly known.
• 59:59
  But YouTube was broadcasted, is broadcasted globally for free.
• 1:00:08
  That was like, no, that wasn't a nail in the coffin.
• 1:00:10
  That was like the fucking bullet in the gun.
• 1:00:14
  You know that was the old yeller in the back.
• 1:00:17
  People just didn't know it yet. So slowly people, you know, it's
• 1:00:20
  like, oh, it's YouTube. It's whatever.
• 1:00:21
  Anyway, Fast forward again. Now people are starting to
• 1:00:23
  transition and there's all this stuff being made on YouTube
• 1:00:26
  that's kind of surpassing the greatness and the knowledge on
• 1:00:29
  all these other shows. Now the eyeballs have shifted
• 1:00:31
  over there a little more, a little more, a little more, a
• 1:00:33
  little more, a little more. Now it's diffuse between TikTok,
• 1:00:36
  YouTube, social media, blogs. Everything is completely
• 1:00:39
  transitioned to where it's easily the most easiest
• 1:00:43
  accessible for the public. So now instead of having to wait
• 1:00:46
  for episode 2 on your favorite cooking show to come out, you
• 1:00:50
  can just Google exactly what you want, when you want it, give it
• 1:00:53
  to yourself instantly and be done with it.
• 1:00:55
  So why would you ever go back? You can't.
• 1:00:57
  It's done. And so the end title to my
• 1:01:02
  thesis is we are in it now. This is just the beginning.
• 1:01:06
  Now it's a matter of where. Where will the attention go and
• 1:01:11
  why? And right now, I don't see the
• 1:01:13
  attention really going anywhere else unless there's substantial
• 1:01:16
  more value added to where they're going.
• 1:01:18
  And, and frankly, I don't know what that is yet, But to me,
• 1:01:22
  we're in such an infancy that now it's all about this growing
• 1:01:26
  and this becoming bigger and the rest of the world figuring that
• 1:01:30
  out. The rest of the world needs to
• 1:01:31
  catch up to what's already happened.
• 1:01:34
  The advertisers, the brands, the companies, the studio heads, the
• 1:01:39
  studio execs, etcetera. All of them just need to catch
• 1:01:42
  up on what's going on and just be like, this is the new thing
• 1:01:45
  now. Yeah, let me ask you this
• 1:01:49
  because I find it interesting. In my world, I deal with this a
• 1:01:51
  lot, and I'm sure you do as well, is that I've noticed that
• 1:01:56
  advertising and brand deals and things like this are in my in my
• 1:02:01
  world, they're a little slow to accept social media because they
• 1:02:03
  want to. I mean, I'd say they're an
• 1:02:05
  hourly employee that has a boss that has a boss.
• 1:02:08
  And it's almost like they're afraid and they don't realize
• 1:02:10
  that print to a certain extent, or TV's dead.
• 1:02:16
  Yeah, the beauty of that statement is that they don't get
• 1:02:18
  to make that decision. The market will make the
• 1:02:20
  decision. The only time the companies and
• 1:02:23
  businesses will will start making decisions like that is
• 1:02:25
  when they realize they're losing enough money and that's their
• 1:02:29
  they can feel it. Yeah, yeah, they feel certainly.
• 1:02:32
  Can and when the sting becomes too unbearable, they will be
• 1:02:34
  forced to look at it. Yeah.
• 1:02:38
  Or they'll die. Yeah, many of them.
• 1:02:41
  We're seeing it happen in real time.
• 1:02:43
  Yeah, there's going to be, I mean, if I were to say what's
• 1:02:45
  going to happen over the course of time, I think there's going
• 1:02:47
  to be a ton of mergers in big global companies in
• 1:02:51
  entertainment. I think that there's going to be
• 1:02:53
  some, you know, TV is basically becoming radio and all the food
• 1:02:58
  shows are essentially radio. They're already radio.
• 1:03:01
  And so now I think it's all about how to make YouTube and
• 1:03:05
  these other shows and the things that I'm doing bigger and
• 1:03:08
  broader and more interesting to people.
• 1:03:11
  And we're already here doing it. We already have the attention in
• 1:03:14
  the eyeballs. Now it's just a matter of like,
• 1:03:16
  you know, I asked myself this all the time is like, how can I
• 1:03:18
  provide more value? How can I bring better, more
• 1:03:21
  exciting entertainment to people?
• 1:03:22
  How can I add to people's lives? How can I make food more
• 1:03:25
  accessible, more easy to understand and and doing that at
• 1:03:30
  a bigger scale? What what are you working on
• 1:03:32
  next? Like are are you able to share?
• 1:03:34
  You know what is What is the next few years look like for
• 1:03:36
  you? Yeah, I mean, one big thing that
• 1:03:39
  we're doing is we're we're. So this is something we're
• 1:03:41
  working on for over a year. I've had this idea for two
• 1:03:44
  years, but I really started cranking down on it as launching
• 1:03:48
  a second YouTube channel that's just purely dedicated for just
• 1:03:50
  food people. This is the first time I ever
• 1:03:53
  thought to have to delineate between the two.
• 1:03:55
  And frankly, the only reason I'm doing it is because my main
• 1:03:58
  channel has grown so big that I have too many people to answer
• 1:04:02
  to. I have too many people in.
• 1:04:04
  The audience is so amorphous. And by that, I mean, like, you
• 1:04:06
  know, I've got chefs, I've got home cooks.
• 1:04:09
  I've got random kids at home who don't give a fuck about cooking.
• 1:04:12
  I've got random adults at home who don't give a fuck about
• 1:04:14
  cooking. And then I have, like, moms who
• 1:04:16
  love to cook for their family. And then I have dads who are,
• 1:04:19
  like, grill masters. I mean, I've got like all these
• 1:04:21
  people and I'm like, how do I answer to everybody while also
• 1:04:25
  making new stuff that I want to make, right?
• 1:04:28
  And the question is, well, now I need to start delineating a
• 1:04:30
  little bit. So the second channel is going
• 1:04:32
  to be really dedicated towards just pure recipe cooking
• 1:04:35
  content, how to stuff like that, so that all those people know
• 1:04:40
  exactly where to go to find that stuff.
• 1:04:42
  And it's going to be awesome. I'm pumped because that I'm also
• 1:04:45
  part of that audience. I love stuff like that and then
• 1:04:48
  the main channel can continue to grow and be this really cool
• 1:04:52
  source of entertainment and showing things that have never
• 1:04:54
  been shown before on food and doing things that have never
• 1:04:56
  been done before on food. Big sort of think like I don't
• 1:04:59
  want to say Hollywood, but like, you know, TV show production
• 1:05:02
  making ATV show over here, you know and basically and so that
• 1:05:08
  I'm interested in doing a lot of different things with streamers
• 1:05:11
  and you know we we've really I'm I'm so the main thing I'll say
• 1:05:17
  is I'm in it for the long game. I love the hustle.
• 1:05:24
  I love building a business. I love building the build
• 1:05:26
  building the biggest building. I think that's really cool, but
• 1:05:29
  really what I'm in it for is I want to do this forever.
• 1:05:32
  I don't want to just play this game so I can show how big my
• 1:05:35
  metrics and how big my numbers are, you know, or like
• 1:05:37
  metaphorically, you know, it's like how big is my professional
• 1:05:40
  Dick, you know it's cool, but I don't know if you're big.
• 1:05:43
  I don't know if I could say that.
• 1:05:44
  I don't know if I could say that.
• 1:05:45
  But like, but really what I've always cared about is I want
• 1:05:48
  it's, it's great to build the biggest building, but it sucks
• 1:05:51
  if you only build it for so long.
• 1:05:53
  Do you, do you ever see yourself though, as maybe putting someone
• 1:05:57
  else up front will there? I mean, maybe there will be and
• 1:06:01
  you just don't know it yet. But is it in your mind that at a
• 1:06:04
  certain point, like, OK, I just kind of want to be behind the
• 1:06:06
  scenes and maybe move someone else up front?
• 1:06:08
  Has that ever crossed your mind? It depends on what you mean by
• 1:06:11
  upfront. I don't think I could replace
• 1:06:12
  myself on camera. I mean, you know.
• 1:06:14
  That's what I mean on camera. I don't think so no, I don't
• 1:06:16
  think I want to do that. I I love being on camera.
• 1:06:19
  I think that, you know, my wife and I are, you know, we want to
• 1:06:22
  start a family and so I, I'm sure that we'll want to find
• 1:06:25
  more balance, but I think that'll be done by, you know,
• 1:06:28
  hiring proper, you know, bringing on ACFO, bringing on a
• 1:06:32
  Co CEO or, or a, you know, something like that, building a
• 1:06:36
  bigger corporate structure to take as much load off of me as
• 1:06:39
  possible. So I can just come on camera
• 1:06:41
  and, and be who I am and have fun and, and entertain people
• 1:06:45
  because that really is the core of my business and I enjoy that
• 1:06:47
  part. So I don't think I'll ever step
• 1:06:49
  away from that, But I think it's about minimizing my time
• 1:06:53
  everywhere else though. So because I'm fascinated by the
• 1:06:57
  subject, how has, if at all, has AI crept into what you do in
• 1:07:04
  your day-to-day and maybe change the changed either your
• 1:07:08
  efficiency, your scaling, or the way that you're looking at doing
• 1:07:12
  content or videos? I know you don't like the word
• 1:07:14
  content. No, no, it's fine.
• 1:07:16
  It's descriptive. It's a good word.
• 1:07:18
  It's it feels like a dirty word, but it is a descriptive word.
• 1:07:21
  It's fucking dirty. I like AII.
• 1:07:24
  Fucking love AI by the way, I. Think it's great?
• 1:07:27
  I mean, look, if it kills us all.
• 1:07:31
  I'm hoping for sex robots before it kills the sex like.
• 1:07:34
  Like give us the sex robots. First, we're going to do that
• 1:07:36
  actually at the same time, unfortunately, and they'll be
• 1:07:40
  weirdly, they'll they'll weirdly coincide actually, they're going
• 1:07:43
  to RIP that thing right off. No, but like, you know, I think
• 1:07:46
  a lot of people are scared of AI and they I think they have a
• 1:07:49
  good reason to be, but I think the reality is, is it's just not
• 1:07:52
  going to go away. You cannot stop it.
• 1:07:55
  It's too late. So, you know, it's it, you kind
• 1:07:58
  of, that's the way I feel about it.
• 1:08:00
  So I'm like, well, let me just use it while I can before my
• 1:08:01
  head gets blown up by some robots.
• 1:08:03
  So, you know, while while I'm in, I guess for us, we use it
• 1:08:07
  for anything to expedite processes.
• 1:08:10
  We use it to, you know, I'm not great at writing like
• 1:08:17
  professional emails because I don't have enough time to sit
• 1:08:20
  down and, and, and map out all the words I want to say.
• 1:08:22
  And I send out a lot of people would be surprised how much of
• 1:08:26
  an operator I am as as a business owner.
• 1:08:28
  I'm not just like, you know, Google Gaga in front of a
• 1:08:30
  fucking camera. I'm, I'm, I'm operating my
• 1:08:32
  business. I'm creating systems and
• 1:08:34
  structures in my business all the time.
• 1:08:36
  I'm still doing that. But like writing at a big long
• 1:08:39
  e-mail with all that, usually there's like someone's whole job
• 1:08:41
  is basically doing that. So I would use AI to write that
• 1:08:44
  kind of stuff. And I'll prompt it with like,
• 1:08:46
  these are all the things. These are all the notes that
• 1:08:48
  I've written on it. This is how I need it to look.
• 1:08:49
  Please write a formal e-mail, e-mail around this or right.
• 1:08:52
  And it'll build out a whole thing.
• 1:08:53
  I'll edit it and send it stuff like that, that it's just kind
• 1:08:57
  of like an assistant. We use it for mocking up
• 1:09:00
  imagery. We use it.
• 1:09:01
  I use it to visualize things for my team.
• 1:09:03
  If I if my description's not making sense, I'll be like, it
• 1:09:06
  looks kind of like this. This is the kind of thing I'm
• 1:09:08
  looking for. But do you use it for video at
• 1:09:11
  all? Like like Sora?
• 1:09:12
  I saw one yesterday. It was by byte dance.
• 1:09:17
  So the TikTok company, they put out their their new AI video.
• 1:09:21
  But you could, the people were talking and so it was cloning.
• 1:09:24
  The voice was moving the mouth In Sync with what they were
• 1:09:26
  saying. And it looked, I mean, pretty,
• 1:09:28
  pretty close to real. I don't know if you've seen
• 1:09:30
  that, but have you, have you, have you experimented with using
• 1:09:33
  that? Or is that even something that
• 1:09:34
  you're even thinking about or would want to do?
• 1:09:38
  Maybe, maybe not. I don't know it it.
• 1:09:41
  I like being in front of a camera.
• 1:09:43
  So I guess the question is like where, how?
• 1:09:45
  How is it helping me? If it's going to help me provide
• 1:09:48
  more value and in a way that's not problematic, then maybe
• 1:09:52
  we'll look into using it. I think we're always smelling
• 1:09:55
  and, and making, you know, keeping our eyes on it.
• 1:09:57
  But as of right now, we're not using that and but we may in the
• 1:10:01
  future. I don't want to say never say
• 1:10:02
  never, sorry. I don't want to say no because
• 1:10:05
  it's like, right, Never say never.
• 1:10:06
  But I do feel like a little weird about that.
• 1:10:12
  But like I said, if there's a world where I'm like, hey, I'm
• 1:10:14
  in Wyoming and we need this VO bit and I don't have my
• 1:10:18
  microphone and we need me on camera, can we AI that if we
• 1:10:22
  could, that would save us loads of time and everyone would be
• 1:10:26
  happier to have that in the video.
• 1:10:28
  And why would we not, you know, so that's kind of how I, I, I
• 1:10:31
  look at it. So normally when I'm closing the
• 1:10:34
  show, I ask people like some random questions.
• 1:10:37
  So I want to ask you if you had a Mount Rushmore of chefs that
• 1:10:41
  that you think should be on there specifically for you that
• 1:10:44
  influenced you the most, who would be those four chefs that
• 1:10:47
  you would want to make sure that you gave your your?
• 1:10:50
  Flowers. Yeah, I love that Gordon Ramsay.
• 1:10:57
  Why? Why Gordon Ramsay?
• 1:10:58
  Just curious. I think Gordon Ramsay is like a
• 1:11:00
  Jack of all trades. I mean, he's actually worked.
• 1:11:02
  He's probably the only person with his much like entertainment
• 1:11:07
  presence that has actually been a practitioner for years in
• 1:11:10
  restaurants, and you will forget that.
• 1:11:12
  He's legit. He's legit as fuck and and he
• 1:11:16
  still continues to run several multi, you know, hold multi
• 1:11:19
  Michelin stars across multiple restaurants.
• 1:11:21
  It's not easy to do. I mean, it's pretty incredible.
• 1:11:24
  And this guy's a one-of-a-kind and so, so definitely him.
• 1:11:29
  And also he was the meshing of the two things I love, which is
• 1:11:31
  food and entertainment, right. And so that would be Gordon
• 1:11:36
  Ramsay Renee red Zeppy, which is the cool thing is, I remember I
• 1:11:41
  used to always want to work at Noma and it is like impossible
• 1:11:45
  to talk to them because they were like, you know, Noma Noma.
• 1:11:48
  But now it's like, it's cool because like I have his number
• 1:11:50
  and we like chat every once in a while, which is wild.
• 1:11:54
  And he's he's a very nice guy. But anyway, Renee red Zebby for
• 1:11:58
  sure. I mean, it's undoubt.
• 1:11:59
  I don't think anyone could argue that what he's done for food and
• 1:12:03
  fine dining. It's unbelievable.
• 1:12:05
  And also I think that he's he's just openly giving away all
• 1:12:09
  their secrets to everybody, which is awesome.
• 1:12:10
  Like, I like that. I like the democratization of
• 1:12:12
  information. Can I ask you a question on on
• 1:12:14
  Renee? Yeah, because I noticed this.
• 1:12:17
  I've never met him, but I, I, I, I do think he's a genius.
• 1:12:22
  I want to make sure I say that, but I also think he's probably a
• 1:12:25
  troll. And and it's and it's disguise
• 1:12:28
  when I see things like whale sperm emulsion labeled and
• 1:12:31
  that's what or or reindeer Dick salad, right, Not reindeer.
• 1:12:36
  He did a reindeer penis salad. It was one of those things and I
• 1:12:39
  remember thinking like that is that is like the most brilliant
• 1:12:41
  marketing move I've ever seen for a chef.
• 1:12:43
  It's like. Yeah, I think there's a mix of
• 1:12:46
  like shock value, you know, like I think as a chef you're like, I
• 1:12:50
  can make this taste. It's it's dangerous, though,
• 1:12:52
  because every sous chef across the country is like, I'm going
• 1:12:54
  to make rain beer Dick salad. Like I can put some ranch on it.
• 1:12:57
  I'm going to put my My Texas Twist with jalapenos on it.
• 1:13:02
  Grinder jalapeno salad. Yeah, there you go.
• 1:13:04
  Yeah, I like that. I think he's brilliant, but I
• 1:13:06
  also think, like me, I'm a troll and I love, you know, sarcasm
• 1:13:10
  and funny shit. And I look at him as like, I
• 1:13:12
  think he's the same. Totally.
• 1:13:14
  Yeah, totally. I agree.
• 1:13:17
  Yeah, those so. OK, Yeah.
• 1:13:19
  Renee Red Zippy Gordon Ramsay, I mean Anthony Bourdain because
• 1:13:25
  again, like the I think he's like another side of chef dumb.
• 1:13:28
  He's like the story side. And, and, and if it wasn't for
• 1:13:32
  him and the stories that he told, I, I wouldn't romanticize
• 1:13:36
  food the same way. I think I look at it through a
• 1:13:39
  slightly different lens because of him.
• 1:13:42
  And I, you know, that affects everything I do, from eating to
• 1:13:48
  telling my friends where to eat to, you know what I mean?
• 1:13:51
  Like all those things. It's not always about fine
• 1:13:53
  dining. Sometimes it's about a badass
• 1:13:54
  experience. And I think that part of my
• 1:13:56
  brain always keeps me from going a little too crazy, you know, So
• 1:14:01
  I would definitely say Anthony Bourdain.
• 1:14:05
  She's there's so many chefs. I, I almost feel like bad
• 1:14:08
  leaving anybody out. I'm, I'm thinking through all
• 1:14:14
  the chefs that I that I know in like New York and LA and.
• 1:14:24
  Yeah, I would, I would say Eric Repair again, like similarly to
• 1:14:30
  Gordon Ramsay, but not, not in the entertainment space that I
• 1:14:33
  love his personality, but also like he's such a Gee, I mean,
• 1:14:37
  everything he's created has been really powerful.
• 1:14:40
  And you know, so many classic dishes from him.
• 1:14:43
  I think that he's brought French cooking to the forefront in a
• 1:14:46
  really big way and also shown people again, the secrets like
• 1:14:50
  democratization of information. See, what is that for?
• 1:14:54
  I got one more. Oh, God, Like part of me is
• 1:14:58
  like, oh, I love Jose Andre. But then there's I'm also
• 1:15:00
  thinking of like all these other like, I mean, you know, do I do
• 1:15:03
  I sell like a total douchebag if I say if I say some of the more
• 1:15:07
  historical chefs, you know, and it's like, Oh my God, here we
• 1:15:09
  go, you know, fucking scoffy on the fucking list.
• 1:15:14
  All right, douchebag. We get it.
• 1:15:15
  Like mother sauces. I don't know, I don't know
• 1:15:18
  enough about Escoffier at large to put him on the list.
• 1:15:21
  I would say, I would say Jose Andre because of what he does
• 1:15:24
  for the for the industry. So I I've got living chefs,
• 1:15:27
  except for Anthony, most of them are living and most of them are
• 1:15:30
  still affecting the world today. And honestly, Anthony Bourdain,
• 1:15:34
  I would argue, affects the world today equally as much as these
• 1:15:37
  guys, even even, you know, obviously having passed
• 1:15:40
  incredible how much of an impact he had too.
• 1:15:42
  So yeah, I feel, I feel good with that list.
• 1:15:45
  If if you had a chef's PSA out there of that you would tell
• 1:15:49
  cooks either stop doing this or start doing this or both what
• 1:15:52
  what advice would you give to to cooks out there, professional
• 1:15:54
  cooks? Don't skip going deep with what
• 1:16:00
  you're doing in food because I think that that is becoming less
• 1:16:04
  and less of a thing. And if we lose that, then we
• 1:16:07
  lose the foundation of everything.
• 1:16:11
  Teaching people, the foundation of getting people excited about
• 1:16:14
  food, the foundation of making good food, the foundation of
• 1:16:17
  understanding food. You know, it's sort of like if
• 1:16:21
  you can't explain it simply, then you don't know it well
• 1:16:25
  enough. And I think that there, there's
• 1:16:27
  a lot of that right now. There's a lot of not explaining
• 1:16:29
  it, simply not knowing enough about it.
• 1:16:31
  Everything's shallow, shallow, shallow, shallow.
• 1:16:33
  And everything in life is like a pendulum event.
• 1:16:36
  You know, shallowness might work now, but when it comes time to
• 1:16:39
  go deep again and you can't do that, your shit out of luck.
• 1:16:43
  If you want longevity, you need to know this game from a high
• 1:16:48
  and low level. So I would say don't be afraid
• 1:16:50
  to go deep. Keep going deep and and learning
• 1:16:53
  the depths of culinary food. It's history, the culture
• 1:16:57
  getting with some of these people like go and re watch
• 1:17:00
  everything that Anthony Bourdain never had to say.
• 1:17:03
  And that'll probably fast track you on some of the stuff that's
• 1:17:05
  important so that you know what to focus on.
• 1:17:07
  But yeah, I mean, I, I think that that's something that we're
• 1:17:10
  going to lose in the future if we don't start saying that more.
• 1:17:13
  You know what I mean? Everyone's looking for the
• 1:17:15
  shortcut. Don't look for the shortcut.
• 1:17:18
  Well, congratulations on all the success.
• 1:17:20
  I would normally ask people like where can they find you?
• 1:17:22
  But you'll find them. Yes, I'll find you.
• 1:17:25
  You'll. Find them all right, Chef.
• 1:17:26
  Good seeing you man. Good to see you too, man.
• 1:17:27
  Thank you. Thank you for having me.
• 1:17:29
  You're welcome. Well, I hope you enjoy the show.
• 1:17:30
  You know what you do. If you're watching on YouTube,
• 1:17:31
  hit the like and subscribe button.
• 1:17:33
  If you listen on Spotify or Apple, make sure you leave five
• 1:17:35
  stars. Nothing less than five stars.
• 1:17:38
  Go to chefspsa.com where you can check out everything that we're
• 1:17:41
  doing. And if you want early access to
• 1:17:43
  episodes, you could sign up and become a premium member on
• 1:17:45
  Spotify and Sub Stack. We'll see you next week at the
• 1:17:49
  Porno Music. No small Drake in the kitchen.
• 1:17:52
  Mix it. Drop the chef knowledge.
• 1:17:53
  No fiction stirring up the beats.
• 1:17:56
  Heat enough the session. Listen.
• 1:17:57
  Close classes in session.