846. - Ben Lippett

32:13That's good. Well, I think Taffer has that sort of no-nonsense vibe, but it comes off more like he's a corrections officer, like I was saying earlier. It feels like he worked in a different – because working in bars is more corrections office than working in restaurants, I think, if I have to make a choice.

32:33Jason Stewart:And he helps them with the business side of it and the margins and the ordering and blah, blah, blah. Like, whereas Ramsey would go in and be like, that's not how you make fettuccine. This is how you make fettuccine. And then the line cooks are like, all right, cool. So our business is going to succeed now? My question for you, Ben, and my biggest Ramsey takeaway is his love for Beef Wellington. A dish that I've never seen served or presented as an option in maybe my entire life. is that actually is beef wellington actually available where you live in the in the way that he makes it out to be no absolutely not no way beef wellington is an incredibly rare thing to come across on a menu and if you do come across it you have to be very careful about where you order it okay i would say probably 70 percent of this this great nation's pubs serve very bad food and I think often you'll find a Beef Wellington on a menu if you're going to get that dish get it somewhere where it's a little bit too expensive and you know it's going to be an absolute home run because it's a pretty hard thing to pull off.

33:45I don't know anything and I could look at that and be like damn that looks hard. That looks like a lot of elements have to come together to make that work and most people cannot do that especially not this person that's worked as a line cook for a year. it seems like a big step it's a huge step i think everyone gets lucky with one time

34:02Jason Stewart:like you'll like like many like one in ten people will just make it for the first time and it comes out perfectly and then never again can you do it have you have you ever made one ben that you're yeah satisfied with that you would hang your hat on i've made a few but i'd say the kind of i don't know whether the juice is worth the squeeze because it's like it's a pretty high stakes thing to make like it takes fucking forever and it also it's expensive everything involved is pretty expensive it's pretty expensive uh and if you if you drop the ball on it and you know everyone kind of focuses on this big reveal moment where you cut into it and you you move it aside and then everyone you're cooking for because you know if you're going to make that it's probably for like 10 people yeah uh and they're all waiting they're like oh come over i'm making wellington so then the bar is exceptionally all right this this guy spent four hundred dollars of his own money and spent the last 48 hours making this dish for me if he cuts into it and it's not perfectly pink in the center i am walking out of here i'm gonna take no i would have been if i was at your house and you made me a beef wellington that wasn't up to standard i would take it over in the pan and put it in the trash ramsey style just let's just let's just smash the plate yeah let's just rip the band-aid off let's do it old school stop roll jason have you have you ever tried i have tried yeah i've tried a couple times and it is it is nice but it also feels you know it's like a little bit of a trick you know like yeah it's roast it's a roast beef with a pastry shell and some and some mushrooms inside but i was gonna ask that was my final question when it is done successfully is it delicious yeah oh yeah i mean it's it's yeah every single element of it is great i mean it is very it's you know it's it's very very rich i mean it's not something i'm not a big fan of the the sunday roast which i'm sure you've heard of which is a it's a very important cultural hey that makes that makes two of us that makes two of us brother miss me with the roast brother fuck the rice it's it's honestly it's like one of the most kind of homogeneously ruined meals it's everything tastes like gravy there's too much on the plate it's not for me But then again, that's very controversial.

36:10All of your British listeners are very unhappy.

36:13Jason Stewart:Yeah, I mean, I'm looking on your Instagram and you're making a fig leaf ice cream at home. So they're calling you a homo anyway. Yeah, you're not beating the charges with that mustache and the fig leaf. But I do want to ask you about that because the fig, it's a seasonal item that everyone enjoys. It's a beautiful piece of fruit. It's only around for a short amount of time. You put it on a bread or maybe a pizza or do some cool stuff with the gelato. Because of the global warming that you were talking about earlier, I feel like the fig's season is much shorter or they'll just die and shrivel up before you can eat them.

36:52Jason Stewart:So the fig leaf, a very fragrant leaf that people use for scents and wrapping, things like that, they're grinding it down and making milks, steeping it like tea. Milk? And then, Ben, you're doing a... Yeah, they'll do like fig leaf lattes, you know, where they take the almond milk and then steep the fig leaf in it. They don't have that. They don't have that. Subtle scent. And his blank street in Camberwell. They don't have that yet. You guys don't even have ice in London, so we're a long ways away from getting the fig. We're working on it. Cold brew? What the fuck do you mean, then? What do you mean, Mike?

37:27Jason Stewart:Cold brew. They make one cold brew a day, and if you go in after 9 a.m., they're like, oh, we're sold out. We're sold out. We only made one cup. no fig no fig leaf flat white so so how's your i want to know how the fig leaf experimentation is going it's going it's going very very well i think it's it's kind of a hangover from my restaurant days i mean it is it is a undeniably delicious thing to eat if anything you know god it's it's so corny but it's kind of better than the fruit i mean i love it i think it's so nice they're everywhere they're all over town they're like hanging over the walls walk down the street fig tree yeah rip rip rip go go mad they're hanging they're just they're hanging over the fucking walls they're everywhere i look yeah i can't avoid things it doesn't matter if they're covered in squirrel feces and and etc just give them a good rinse off and you're good if you go if you go to the you go to the farmer's market there on a saturday and you buy carrots covered in shit i mean what's the difference you know so you have hold on so you guys have farmer's markets in the uk just to be clear we do we do but i mean i'd say i mean especially i live in london and i think there is that there's a handful of markets around me but it's funny because it's usually just a kind of a trailer with a guy making coffee a bakery that's just selling it's it's like they know they're never selling vegetables ever so it's kind of like a little bit fruitless well yeah increasingly increasingly uh there's like vintage clothing stalls at the farmer's market with like just just the worst like you know my two favorite smells are fresh vegetables and vintage clothing kind of rammed up against each other that's my number one we only got one of those is the is the okay so next question is the um is the farmer's market a scene or is it strictly for buying supplies is it like la where everybody puts on their best outfits and their coolest tote bags yeah i definitely say that um the kind of farmer's market is it's definitely kind of a a posturing space you go there's you know there's a lot of frams i'd say well i think there's definitely a kind of an age and age gap between who goes to the farmer's market and so i live up near near a place called peckham and there's a pack and car boot okay so do you know what car boot is yeah i mean it's essentially it's just like people show up with their old stuff and try and sell it to other people uh for like a pound it's crazy business but then again the peckham is famous because a lot of people go with these kind of like brailed items and you'd have to go with like hundreds of pounds in cash to buy like old designer stuff and but you can you can find you can find something good though at the at the peckham boot yeah okay i think it's it's a bit of a needle in the haystack situation but i mean there's people who go it's every other sunday i think every other sunday and um yeah it's like a it's uh people think more about what they're gonna wear to the boot and what they're going to buy so you know so where do you go buy your beautiful produce for your beautiful recipe videos i uh i well i live in a nice little sleepy corner of london called nun head uh and i'm like i'm lucky to have there's some good hold on hold on hold on hold on you said that's what chris gets every night yeah you said head none come ahead none Nunhead?

40:43Bro, that's crazy. Nunhead. I live in Nunhead. I can't get Nunhead. That's crazy, bro.

40:52Jason Stewart:That's very Atlantean. Bankhead. Yeah, that's cool as hell. Hilton Head, Nunhead. Okay, so when you need to go, do you go to the Nunhead Whole Foods when you need to get your Jerusalem artichokes or your French radishes? If only, if only. Jason sometimes I hear you blaming you know feeling tired or bloated on the classic getting older or the even more classic uh being busy or that late night burrito which I know is easy to do in in your uh home borough of Los Angeles a lot of late night stuff but I think it's time uh to get a clearer answer on what the real culprit is and our sponsor tiny health can help you with that yeah Chris I've got uh I've got a big body and a tiny health and it all goes into the gut you know what i mean there it's it's a mystery little factory where all the good and bad stuff in our body is is happening and being controlled we don't really know much about it until now you've heard of listening to your gut but what if your gut has been trying to tell you that chris something is off your microbiome is affecting everything from your energy your immune system your skin your teeth your nails your odor how long you're gonna live etc etc if you've got some bloating, a little low energy, immune system's down, you're getting sick, you're getting a little sniffle all the time, you're just not really ever feeling dialed in.

42:15Jason Stewart:Tiny Health is here to dial you in. Start improving your health with real data from Tiny Health. Tiny Health is offering How Long Gone listeners their most aggressive offer yet$50 off your first at-home test kit at tinyhealth.com slash how long that is tinyhealth.com slash how long for$50 off tinyhealth.com slash how long you know i'm in san francisco jason this is kind of the home of the website you know what i'm saying this is i feel like this is ground zero for website creation this is where they all started so i'm feeling extra webby right now i'm typing in urls i'm kicking tires on home pages i'm not just going to social media i'm looking at hard data on the worldwide web you're driving around you're seeing all these billboards for these ai companies with awful names and everything and you're like maybe i'm gonna start coming up with ai website company names what are we gonna do we're gonna sit on those uh urls aren't we chris yeah we're sitting we're camping out where do you buy those urls nowadays i think you can go to squarespace.com and kind of do it all it's an all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online uh which is something we're all trying to do it kind of doesn't matter what your what your discipline is what your industry is they can do it for you can you can take payments you can put up cool pictures you know it's it's everything you need to show up online looking looking right with squarespace they have that blueprint ai technology so design it to look as in-depth or as not in-depth as you want depending on you know if your business is maybe an offshore yachting company or you're just a pet tattoo artist you know everything in between you can dial that in with squarespace there's just so many businesses that need websites.

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44:20Jason Stewart:My name is Dr. Lisa. My name is Paul Brunson. More couples. This could be the start of a very successful marriage and lord surprises or maybe not everything is just not enough you're a little bit crazy i don't know what's gonna happen i want my fairy tale ending married at first sight now streaming new episodes thursdays only on peacock we've got we've got a lovely little grocer we've got it's very old-fashioned we've got a butcher a fishmonger a grocer uh we've got a tesco's oh so you're shopping like you're shopping like the french you're going to get all of your ingredients from the specialist yeah and then he did tesco for any little bad boy treats biscuits you know water yeah loo roll loo roll yeah there's a very very there's a very very cool shop in on it which is uh it's called nisa local and nisa is a kind of chain of convenience stores but this this shop is absolutely bonkers because it not only does it's it's like kind of almost hyper seasonal like it'll sell like a gerald or a really nice black Frigg from Frass, but it also sells like poppers and Zins and shit.

45:23It kind of sells everything and anything that you need. It'll sell you a paper clip. Inside me there are two beasts type vibe is what it sounds like? Yeah, it's the angel and the devil on the shoulder.

45:32Jason Stewart:That's cool. So you can find your leeks and your bluefin tuna and your QP and everything there. Yeah, you bet. Nisa's got you covered. Whatever you need. I bought a QP in Nunhead. Sounds like a good... That's a good song title, Jason. Yeah, I never really put QP together as being a quarter pound. Quarter pound. Sorry, I have a different. Yeah, actually, I'm talking about QP, the Japanese mayonnaise, K-E-W-P-I-E. I started feeling in the last year that I think we're going to have, the pendulum is going to swing away from QP. I think it was overused, too powerful, and people abused it. And I think it's going to swing back to regular old mayonnaise.

46:17what do you think i mean sure i mean i think i mean potentially it did feel like it was on it people were kind of naming it on menus for a while like it was kind of a brand to stand behind and cupid yeah and it does seem to be kind of fading into the hedge can i ask a question because i don't eat mayonnaise uh because i'm a um freak uh but the does it taste significantly different or is the brand just that much cuter there's a big difference it's pretty it's pretty different it's pretty sweet uh i think it has a kind of sweet and sour quality that other i mean correct me if i'm wrong jason but i think that's that's what i kind of associate it with yeah it's it's

46:54Jason Stewart:mayonnaise but it's turned up all the flavors so it has more vinegar more acid more sugar but the main differential is it has msg added to it oh okay okay okay okay so that's the big bigger but i think it'll end up being i think the way that olive oil you know jamie oliver's olive oil is a thing and now we have the finishing oil as well like that's the olive oil for cooking and that's the olive oil for drizzling you know the sizzling and drizzling man that's the mayonnaise for making your tuna salad and this is the mayonnaise for just squirting a little zigzag on top of your let me say something let me say something right now about this olive oil bullshit because i want to i want to be real clear you must if you're cooking at home and you and you're not one of the two guys I'm on this Zoom with right now, you probably don't need two different olive oils for what you're doing.

47:46Let me be very clear. Let me tell you something. Because if you got bread, you got the expensive olive oil, use it on everything like a fucking grown-up. And if you don't got bread, get the knock-off squeeze bottle and use it on everything. Stop this. There's a difference, Chris. I hate to do this. No, I'm not saying there's not a difference. I'm saying that, as usual, most people cannot tell the difference, but they want you to think they can. that's all i actually i'm kind of with you chris yeah i think i i actually come kind of with you i use basically the same olive oil for almost everything there's a kind of myth that you can't cook with it which i think is absolute rubbish i've got it with you man well i also think that uh we are now we're now seeing because we're obviously six months behind everything that the states are up to we've now finally got squeeze bottle olive oil congratulations like you know but it was uh yeah i mean but it is it's a straight straight rip off of i can't remember what the brand's called that you guys have but it's we don't say it we don't say it on this show

48:43Jason Stewart:because um it's a no i'm joking it's called grazia no it's called graza graza oh graza okay yeah that's how much respect i have a bottle of it in my kitchen i'm not gonna front but i don't respect it and then they have one to drizzle and one to sizzle there that's it yeah yeah because Like you said, there is a myth that you should never cook with olive oil, and I think you can cook with certain olive oils. Some are more regular and processed. Some are special and fragrant, and adding heat to them will destroy it as well as the delicate fresh ones have a lower smoke point. I believe all of that, but Graza offering, too, is the perfect example of a trick to get consumers to spend more money, which is fine.

49:30That's what they should be doing. That's their business. They're doing a great job. But if you're using Graza to finish, then you don't know what finishing is, bro. Open that third eye. That's what I'm saying, bro. I need some shit from Shorty's Greek family's farm to finish with. I ain't finishing with some shit from the grocery store.

49:50Jason Stewart:I need Eddie Wong, Shorty, olive oil. I need it to come to my house in an emptied out five-gallon Arrowhead water jug. My boy, our boy from Copenhagen with the psych olive oil, like the one that comes in the bag. Have you seen that? It's like, have you seen this? Oh, yeah. It's cool. I mean, the distribution is cool, but I just don't, all this shit feels like a scam to take money out of our pockets. And I'm fine with that. I just want to be clear that that is what's happening. I think it's, I mean, I think it's all, I mean, it's delicious. And there are big differences from like sorts of sorts, like Italian and Greek.

50:25And I realize Spanish olive oil is delicious. But I think, you know, for the kind of everyday cook on a Wednesday night cooking dinner, like don't sweat it. But if I'm coming over with a fresh Jolene baguette and you want to kind of stunt, you want to stunt on me, you got some olive oil in the cellar that you can pull out and be like, this is for you and all your haters to kind of dip in.

50:46Jason Stewart:I'm opening the 17 Lippet Reserva. Everyone and their nan seems to be starting an olive oil business at the moment. I mean, somebody came around to mine the other day, a friend of mine, and dropped off that their dad's brother's cousin has got a small holding in Greece. And I've just decided to start up this little horrible brand. I mean, listen, I'm sure it's very delicious. I'm sure it's very delicious. But it is maybe, I mean, even more so than hot honey, maybe one of the most crowded markets on planet ever. I'll say this about your little hot honey business, though. i feel like it probably took a long time to come to the uk you jumped you were smart and kind of got on the bandwagon well i lived in new york i lived in 2015 i lived in new york for a year i was out there studying and um i had it for the first time uh hot honey uh at a place in crown heights and i ordered this pizza that landed on the table and they just like popped a little pot of honey next to it and i just jumped out on the pizza what are you talking about uh and uh i tried it and i was like it's pretty good and then i got back okay and nobody was doing it nobody but then i worked in restaurants for ages well i worked in restaurants for ages and didn't have time to do anything about it i quit and then we started yeah dr stings yeah dr dr stings is a good name i want to give you props up front for that i like that a lot the sting of the bee and the sting of the heat it's smart yeah you got it it's a double entendre but is dr stings like how how are we doing because it's hard to have a cpg brand even with a profile like yours walk us through a pnl ben being a small business owner you know it's tough it's tough i mean it's fine i do my my my mate jamie and i and i run it together we've been we've run it for a few years now it's funny because it's about to take a bit of a turn because we've um we've got a big rebrand on the way that's i think it's launching a couple of weeks but it's it was always like something on the side that we did uh we never relied on it financially so it's always just kind of like ticking over in the back you know smart burner stuff um smart and now now now now the book is that's like that's the how long gone that's the how long gone approach and now look at us see just let it you can eventually marinate in the back see what happened i mean now the book's done and i've got a bit more time um we're giving it a bit more attention so hopefully we sell some more is it really difficult to get stuff like that in retailers in the uk or because in america that's usually a challenge you know like the mom and pops you can walk in and kind to sell them on it but if you want to get into whatever you know whole foods or or the equivalent you know i'm sure it takes a little more time yeah for sure and i think well you know the kind of vetting process is that's the hardest thing you gotta say you send them all your accounts you send them like your entire life story basically and i think well and it's it's not what it used to be or it's maybe not quite the love story that everyone tells because i think the margins just get like razor razor razor thin so jamie and i jamie and i really i mean we're kind of focusing on b2c and just like getting it on uh digital marketing and selling straight to the customer because then you don't have to worry about any of that you know because that's kind of what we're good at you know yeah yeah i mean i think that's where we where we can win yeah that's smart that's smart i just i'm a sucker and love um being able to attach my name to failing establishment kind of businesses so i i don't know if i could resist the the pull of of you know a large chain grocer i mean hey we'll see i mean we just got the book into sainsbury's so uh we'll see what doors that open they sell books there yeah man i mean actually they i mean supermarket shift they're like kind of might you know jamie 70k he's gonna sell a hell of a lot more in sainsbury's and tesco's and waitress and they sell books i did not know that because jason whole foods doesn't sell books do they i know they have a few magazines still at the checkout but i think some of them some of them might have a little they might have a few experimental locations.

54:36I know that Kroger and Publix do not. And you're talking about that level of grocery store right now.

54:41Jason Stewart:I think now that Amazon bought it, Amazon originally a bookstore, I think they use it, they'll play around as a brick and mortar space. Take Barnes and Noble down. So you got the book into Sainsbury's. That was on the target list from you and your publisher. We got to get it in here. It's funny. It's not something that I... I've taken a bit of a backseat as far as the kind of sales side of the book goes i mean obviously i shout about it and um i talk about it as much as possible try to sell a bit as far as the strategy of where it goes where it lands i mean i kind of let them do the thing it's harper collins and they're there you know they know there are onions as they say so i kind of let them crack on with it i mean um you know i it's nice to pop into a sainsbury's and see it pretty cool yeah for sure and then all of your friends parents will send you a photo on uh whatsapp exactly yeah why don't you know absolutely why don't you buy it instead of send me a photo grandma what did you um did you go buy you know sometimes it's at least in the music business back in my day it was good luck to go buy a copy on release day you know go go to the record store you know plunk down your 20 for the cd did you buy your book for good luck or yeah i actually placed an order on amazon like six months ago for my book so that arrived that that arrived on on publication today which was um actually no it came like two days later but i did i did go and buy one and um what was a very cool experience actually is that there's a great little bookshop in camberwell um called la la books uh and i walked in and it was in the window and i walked in and as i walked in somebody was at checkout buying the book and that was very that was a really cool moment and my wife was like go say hello go say hello um but it's like it's a very, very, very small little bookshop.

56:28And I thought, I don't know, I kind of clammed off. I was like, I can't do it. I don't want to go make a scene. Well, look, it's both cool and obnoxious to walk up to someone buying your book and be like, oh, do you want me to sign that for you? It is, I see both sides. Yeah, it felt very wrong. So people are finding you on Instagram and then they are, because of the power of the cookbook, they're going to buy it. Is that, I mean, that's simply what the approach, correct? i mean i guess that's the funnel i mean i think it's interesting i mean increasingly this idea you know like short form content you know tiktok wherever you youtube whatever you know the content is very rarely the last stop on the train like you're usually getting funneled somewhere sure and i think that uh yeah i mean it's nice because i i've been writing a substat for a few years um and it was that uh of the same name and now um And now it's a kind of physical product.

57:23But you got the book deal because of the Substack and the Instagram. It's fair? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I kind of was road testing the idea of the book on the Substack. And it's kind of a proof of concept. I just took it to publishing and was like, look, this works. People are into this. I like that. Ben said, I'm getting paid while I ideate. You know what I'm saying? We don't work for free.

57:47Jason Stewart:Yeah, but Ben's doing the same thing that everyone tells everyone to do. But Ben is just one of the people who actually did it. Every week, baby. Because everyone is like, I mean, I've had, I was like, oh, yeah, I'll just write a recipe every week on Substack. You get paid. And then, you know, a year later, the book is done. Jason. That was two years ago. I haven't done it. I remember you launching your Substack. I'm a longtime listener of this podcast. and i remember you launching uh that sub stack and and uh getting on it and reading you did a couple of posts they were good i always thought that you you had a similar uh strategy to me in so far as that you wrote about music alongside your food output which i which i enjoyed that was cool his two his two his two loves besides obviously the art form of podcasting but yeah i mean music music and food are more easily paired yeah i'd say so true unfortunately the art if podcasting took too much time but i'm more than happy i mean i love i love to pod it's all good but i'll you know i'll write something again one day who even knows i mean i do think that like at this point the only reason anybody's doing anything giving you money to do anything is because you have a proven audience is really all like the skill the skill matters but the audience matters more which when you have something like you've done it's pretty clear that there's an audience that wants something from you yeah yeah no one's gonna line them up if the product is shit but of course of course of course but i'm saying getting the foot in the door is about sort of having an audience yeah i think getting the foot in the door but then also like making sure that once your foot's in the door the next step you make is like as effective as possible and also the people who like are paying attention are like wow that's this guy's you know proper or like serious or doing good stuff or the people who buy it and read it are into it and will buy another one and they'll you know listen listen again yeah so what restaurants did you work in because i know a lot of bozos in your position that never set foot in a goddamn kitchen you know and it's nice to have a guy that's got some cuts on his hands oh boy yeah i mean i i actually started in that year i was in new york i used to work at a base called donna which was on broadway right down by the uh williamsburg bridge uh that was kind of my first i'd say kind of proper a cooking job like line cook gig okay i since closed how much coke how much coke were you doing my mom will probably listen no comment uh um what do you mean coke i've never done i don't know what that is i then returned to uh the uk uh i well it's good i've traveled a lot with me i lived in melbourne for a while i was in australia big fan of that country i love it so much great food city one of the best food cities in the world one of the best in the world i mean australia is a country it's kind of like deeply under celebrated place i think it's just brilliant a beautiful place we agree we we agree we agree here on how long ago we talk about all the time yeah but i mean my wife i try and get over there i mean every kind of every other year if not trying to she works in music so it's kind of a good it's a good kind of one too if we go and you know i can kind of do something with a restaurant or she'll go out there for a festival or conference or something so we do managed to get there a lot but my last uh my last kind of proper cooking job was at a place in notting hill in london called orisay with a guy called jackson box oh i've eaten i've eaten there before great great restaurant what's it called again sorry it's called orisay it's named after a scottish island oh okay actually you know you know i should probably mention that it is it's now since changed the it's called dove he had to change the restaurant basically because it was a seafood restaurant um hence the name a lot of great fish comes from that part of the world um and fish is now like it's uh unbelievably expensive to put on a plate um so he had to ship the business because i mean the menu was getting crazy crazy expensive so it's now uh i thought the whole i thought the whole point of nodding hill was people got money for that what do you mean i mean television never been pricier they got that much money hey it is uh It's England, after all.

1:01:50We're not in the States. I ate there years and years ago, and it was good. I had lunch there with my friend Callum, who lived in the neighborhood at the time. I hadn't thought about that place in a long time. I may well have cooked you lunch, Chris. Yeah, honestly. But that's owned by a chef that's pretty known, correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's called Jackson Boxer. He's had a very successful career in London. He's had heaps of places. his uh his other place is called um runswick house which is in a which is in a kind of antique shop in boxall i mean which is which is amazing but it's funny i mean yeah that was crazy i mean it's funny too because it's kind of this like kind of last box was a really interesting neighborhood because i mean it is just it's this last bastion of kind of old london surrounded by all of these huge kind of hulking glass buildings have you seen the have you seen the picture of the swimming pool that's suspended between two high-rises in london no is that there yeah yeah they've got a floating they call it the sky pool and it runs between two to the two of these giant kind of apartment complexes that's in the same neighborhood as the restaurant in the antiques uh shop so you know it's a it's a broad church um but yeah jackson's brilliant um he's he's got very very very very good food brain like the way that he writes a menu is is pretty unique good guy to work for what was your what was your station what what where did you well i spoke well i mean it was just i was on the grill i mean i was uh it's a small it was a small kitchen so i mean it was only we had pass so somebody was running the kitchen basically pass and then pastry they've got bread and snacks and starters and stuff and then grill and and it was uh it was it was tough because you'd have I'd have uh most of the menu would come from my section so it was it was pretty punishing but uh it's fun I mean I to be I mean it did break me I quit put the industry up but it was fun it was it was great until I lost my mind and had to quit but it was

1:03:45Jason Stewart:awesome how how fast how fast does a does those a four-hour period go by when you're just in the weeds on the grill not as fast as you think Jason I mean I feel like it well not not as fast as you want not fast enough not fast enough well i think crucially i lived a long long way away from the restaurant i used to ride a bicycle because i just moved to london when i got this job and i would ride i'd get on my bike in the morning and ride like seven or half six and ride 10 miles to the restaurant across like like i'm literally like i was in southeast london the restaurant is in northwest london i would ride my bike all the way there do a what 15 16 hour shift and then cycle home and i did that for a year and then i mean i mean i don't know what the hell i was thinking obviously i quit at the end of it how romantic that is impressive commitment though that's like pretty crazy i've never been fitter in my life i don't think was it a fixed gear bike hopefully hell no had gears baby okay that's good that's good impressive okay um i want to i want to talk about um recipe writing okay when uh you know on the average how many times do you have to test a recipe before you feel that it's ready to be printed in a book oh i mean the book the book is uh the books are different because i write every friday for the substack and that's just tested by me i don't get anyone else to test that um but the book was a different beast like i kind of shot the the recipes are around different testers and also a different kind of calibers i suppose like some testers are like actually kind of chefs right and they're like very very good at cooking and they're like pick apart the technical aspects of things and then you send you might send another recipe to somebody who you know like a friend or somebody who isn't a chef who's going to read it like your audience will and they're going to be like i don't understand what laminate means or what do you mean I need to make a cartoon.

1:05:38But it depends on the recipe. If you're going to make, there's a recipe in the book for a brown sugar tart. It's quite a challenging recipe. That went through quite a lot of tests. But then again, there's one for a green salad. I can test that. I know it works. I think horses for courses.

1:05:54Jason Stewart:Horses for courses, of course. Okay, well, I'm sure you had some recipes where you nailed it first try and said, all right, off to the presses. But if you had to put a number on average from the green salad to the brown sugar tart you know how many times do you went did you go over it before it was i'd say probably approval probably three an average of three okay yeah and there's there's a hundred and almost 120 recipes in the book okay so it's a good chunk of cooking and like when you write a book write a book um a recipe book i mean it is it's a hell have a lot of cooking yeah the house gets transformed were you doing it at home or did you have a place you were going um i did it across so i thought it'd be a good idea to i live in a flat in london and i thought it'd be a good idea to towards the last three months of my um writing window to renovate my kitchen um so i and yeah i know this is absolutely cursed behavior and then so i actually was kind of running around london testing different people's kitchens i ended up moving home for a while to my folks place on the south coast um okay so it got bad yeah got it the actual it did get pretty bad with actual writing portion of it all the rest of it done but you know there's quite a lot of words in this book around um kind of technique and and and um the kind of hows and whys of what you're doing that's i think what sets it apart and that all took place uh in one chair in portsmouth where i'm from with a little romantic though that's This all sounds pretty, you know.

1:07:26Besides the renovation, that's your bad. The renovation was a fucking nightmare. But I think writing a cookbook is a very romantic thing to do, and not many people get to do it. So I'm very pleased to have done it. And I'm looking forward to you seeing it, Jason. I hope you like it.

1:07:44Jason Stewart:I hope I do, too. I'm sure I will. He won't. He won't. But, I mean, it's not because he likes you. But it's just based on his track record. I have some questions. you know just in you know just to peek around there see how engage my interest level yeah yeah obviously i mean i was actually thinking about this earlier today when i was walking around naples about you know you know brain rot and slop and the the end of innovation and how we don't you know nothing we just duplicate fashion and music and art and film and television and remake everything how often in have you found yourself are there any recipes in the book where you feel like you have invented something and how many of them are you know your version of the this well i think that's a good question i think there's uh there's a good chunk of kind of like the classics in the book because i think i mean my cooking is certainly is not out there to reinvent any wheels i think it's all of the great flavor combinations have already been found i'm not about kind of like being this groundbreaking cook i think it's really for me about getting people to understand the hows and whys and like how you like cook prop you know properly at home it's not about using a fucking air fryer or like cutting corners or but as far as kind of like original original ideas i like to think that there's a good chunk of them in there i mean there's a recipe for uh a recipe for uh it's called peppered clam frites basically like more more free but you make a a kind of steak sauce like an i kind of poivre sauce and you put clams in it and dump it over fries it's i mean it's delicious um and you know i suppose different different things like that but i mean i'm not you know i'm not out here kind of breaking like new ground culinarily it's more just kind of really showing people how to nail the classics Well, I mean, I was only saying that because I think even out of 120 recipes, if you have one dish that you have originally created, that's a win.

1:09:47Jason Stewart:I think most people, most chefs, you know, 99 % of the time, you're not doing anything new. It's just hammering down on the basics, which I think is good. I mean, that's how I cook as well. yeah i think i think you know i think i i'm not kind of under any illusion that it's all like brand new and i think you know all the best things to eat are there already and you're just kind of riffing on that that's kind of the best way to cook i think yeah i would love to hear both your takes on the hamburger if you have time but i guess we're kind of we're getting close well i think i've noticed with my you know with my age and i would hear like bourdain talk about it i think when a chef has kids that greatly alters the direction of the future of their cooking because suddenly they have a captive audience and they just end up cooking for their kid so that brings them back to the basics but when I was younger I think people have more of a desire to have something to put their flag into have an identity like I'm the person who invented this kind of thing have an identity versus you know when you get older you like you said all the great dishes and combinations have already been discovered over thousands of years so i'm just going to practice making the best version of that and i think that's where you really win yeah i think i mean you know to respect the classics is is probably the smartest thing you can do in cookery and not try and kind of yeah not try and cut any corners that's the smartest thing that's smartest thing you can do in life with everything that's literally the the hill i'm gonna die on yeah amen amen mom yeah but i you have to leave 10 of the window open for the possibility of creating something because even like we've all every once in a while you taste something that you've never had before and you're like motherfucker like i didn't think that oh look that's cantaloupe and chorizo were gonna dance like that but shiver me timbers that's how i felt when i first heard playboy cardi i totally get what you're saying it's just like a whole new form has been created and i this shouldn't work and it doesn't but something about it no that's i think i think respecting the classics is is something that is maybe lost on on certain generations but hopefully it'll come back around we'll keep fighting the good fight all right keep fighting the good fight all right ben how i cook is in stores everywhere where you get books at your local grocer at amazon.com amazon.co.uk bookshop.org can you get me a gosney for free ben sorry for interrupting chris yeah no worries leave it with me mate i'll sort you out leave it with me also a lot of people claim they're gonna get me one but i'm realizing i'm realizing across the lawn after looking at you for an hour that you're sort of giving straight pedro pascal have you heard that before you know i've heard this i if i had a penny dress black for every time i've heard that in the past so i did this i quickly i did this show you look like hetero pascal there's a there's a there's a uniquely british show a uniquely british show called saturday kitchen in uh where i'm from and it's it's a it's a live it's a live uh piece of television where you go on and you cook and you chat and you it's it's absolute chaos but the first thing the first as soon as the little red light went on and we were live the first thing he said was he's giving pedro pascal i'm hearing it a lot but you know you're not the first chris won't be the last and i whip this this thing off it'll be it could be a lot worse a lot worse yeah people love him i hear i look like jack osborne you know it's not this like you're winning bro yeah people tell me i look like a racist quarterback i saw i i i saw a comment recently

1:13:24i saw a comment recently said that pedro pascal was the universe's apology for all other men see that's a bit it's crazy that's a bit much that's a bit much but you should take dine out of it I know you're married but you know do what you can all the way to the bank take it yeah exactly take it

1:13:40Jason Stewart:bravo Ben thank you for chatting with us we had fun we hope you did too thank you for joining us it was a pleasure last one guys and we'll see you we'll see you soon alright cheers guys see ya later

1:14:06Jason Stewart:I guess I've been hidden away When I found her All drowned in grey I might have drowned her