BONUS POD: Ari Talks to Chef Carbone About Cooking, Pasta, NY Pizza, Plus Old School Music with Ish From Joe Budden Pod

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1:30Hey, it's Ari Melber from MS Now. This is the B-side where I go a little deeper and we're off air. But in the studio, I have the one and only chef, Mario Carbone. Nice to see you. Thank you for having me. You know, I don't flex a lot, but I will say some people are trying to get a reservation at Carbone. We got Carbone in the studio. That's pretty good. I come to you. Exactly. We got a table for two. I want to ask you a couple of fun things and then go a little deeper about your journey. But let's start simple. Favorite pasta shape? Pretty good, Tony. Come on, now. Okay. Favorite comfort food, whether it's your restaurant or any kind?

2:04Bowl of cereal. Okay. Yeah. Which type are you eating? I usually go cereal salad, so I mix. Cereal salad. Yeah, I make a mix. Okay. I try to blend kind of a healthy thing with a maybe nostalgic, not so healthy thing. I'm a big fan of Cocoa Pebbles. Sure. Because I want the chocolate milk at the end. It gets chocolatey, yeah. And then with that, I'll kind of put in like a kashi kind of thing just to make myself feel better about it. This might be very simple for you. But my go-to in the dorm was they had the froyo. And then I would put the cinnamon toast crunch in there. And by the end, you've got cinnamon ice cream.

2:43That's how Ronnie came up with Kit Treats. Yeah? Yeah. Okay. A couple more. New York, which is so infused in your restaurants in whatever city in the world you are. And I've been to Carbone, Miami, and it's like, I was like, wait, am I in the village? In a good way. Your favorite restaurant in New York other than yours. Does Katz's count as a restaurant? Sure. Katz's. Respect. And for people who aren't in New York, tell them what you like about Katz's. Katz's is unbelievable because not only has it been around for over 100 years, so often those places are a bit of a letdown, right? Their lure is greater than their product.

3:18Here the product is still somehow even better than the lure like it's it is the absolute Idealic version of that thing. It's the best possible pastrami. It's the best possible corned beef The way they do it with all the cutters. It's so unique the sandwich piles very high though It's a big say it's like yeah. Yeah, it's a big you like that that works I like everything about what they do how long they've been doing it and like the level of excellence. They still operate best New York pizza slice or pie slice gotta be slice slice I'm gonna give love to the new guys I'm gonna go with the industry over over what would traditionally be a Joe's yeah I like Joe's I love Joe's but I really give love to industry your first job in this space my first job in this space was working a raw bar on Northern Boulevard in Queens at like a seafood chain restaurant this is 1995 maybe Shucking clams and oysters which it did not know how to do.

4:22I love that most overrated restaurant trend Caviar everything because it's like what are we doing? It's just like yeah, I can I mean you're just buying a product and putting it on top There's no there's no yeah, you know culinary effort here. It's just kind of a it's kind of a check average Hack okay. This is two part. Yeah in a restaurant Mm-hmm most underrated ingredients something that really you like to work with You know ingredient that I like to work. Yeah, and you're yeah most underrated I mean these days it's like the humble being, you know, like I worked in Tuscany It's like shout out to the beam humble beam.

5:02Yeah, where you been? Okay. No one orders soup anymore Nobody orders. No one orders soup anymore. I used to be like yeah The thing that the substance that kept everybody moving like we live in touch soup anymore I put it on the menu just because it looks good. No one orders it. What about at home? Meaning something underrated that you could just spice up anything with, even if you're not a chef. I keep a lot of kind of like, I'll keep like all sorts of like products that I think just a spoonful will like really enhance things like Italian giardiniera vegetables, which are like pickled Italian vegetables.

5:36You'll find them in like, you know, that like Italian aisle, pickled cauliflower, peppers, carrots. It's all mixed up. You can throw that in a salad. A lot of chili crunch. That's a good one. I'll buy either Dan Chang's. We're coming out with one. Pour that on eggs. Pour it on pretty much anything. Have a great spice cabinet. Do the work to have a great spice cabinet because that's going to bail you out on a really boring, simple thing. Simple question. What makes a good spice cabinet? When you buy the whole thing together or when you go around and piece it together? I like to go around and piece it together.

6:09Here in New York, there's an incredible store called SOS Chefs. SOS? Yeah, SOS chefs. And their their spice quality is crazy. They're beautifully fresh, they're well sourced. You get all sorts of great stuff there. And like just a pinch of that on something really basic, some eggs. Yeah, changes. And you're there. All right, I got one more of these type of questions that I want to talk a little about your journey. This is selfish. You know, in my business, one of my favorite parts about my job is I get to meet all these interesting people, yourself included. And sometimes I have questions for me, right?

6:40You get to like the top, Like you're sitting there with the guy who ran the CIA and you're like, this is my life? Like that's, you know, I'm like off the record, you know, camera off. Are there aliens? Have there ever been? Like I need to know, you know what I mean? So mine for you is this. What is the equivalent of that to me? Well, now it might be a letdown. This is what I want to know. What is that for me? My whole life, and I'm a lawyer. You look at the rules, you follow them, unless you have a really good reason not to. That's kind of baseline, right? My whole life, it says, oh, you want the pasta?

7:14Cook it seven to eight minutes. You want it al dente? Cook it a minute less. Should we be cooking this pasta, boiling this pasta, the amount of time it says on the box, or, as I only heard recently, like two minutes less than that, and then when you roll it in the olive oil and the sauce or whatever, it keeps cooking. And this is very relevant because now you can go to the store and get the carbone sauce, and we've mentioned that on the show. How long am I supposed to boil this pasta? So, yes, that's a great tip. You want to pull it early. You want to put it... It depends on the sauce a little bit.

7:48Like, if you're just going olive oil or butter, then no. You don't have anything... Okay. Olive oil, eight minutes means eight minutes. Yeah, it needs something to drink it up, right? So if you're making linguine and clams... Great dish. You want to leave your... Once you've steamed open your clams, you want to leave that juicy. You want extra juice in there. Good amount of the white wine, a little bit of stock maybe. but you want to leave that pan really juicy so that when your linguine comes out, if it says 10 to 12 minutes on the bag, go 10, drop it in your juicy linguine pan, turn it on kind of low, medium, low, and just let it simmer in there like it's risotto.

8:22Let it drink it up, toss it, toss it, toss it. As you're tossing it, you're activating the starch. I'm getting hungry, keep going. And then the starch from the pasta is letting itself out into the sauce. The whole thing is getting creamy without ever adding any dairy or any cheese into it. but if I go into a sauce, eight minutes means... If you're going into, like, a tomato sauce, I'd say, you know, eight... I think the bag is probably telling you eight minutes is al dente, so go with that lower number. I would always go with that lower number. I don't like soft. And then tomato sauce, you just want to kind of put it in there, quick toss, toss, toss, little cheese.

8:59So why don't they say that on the pasta box? Because they're worried, probably, that they're going to pick a number. It's not going to be the right number for you. And you're going to call and complain. You're going to want your money back. So they're airing on the higher cook. All right, because I was really confused by that. But I always go low. I have some questions I wrote down because that's what I do when I really like it. Let me make sure I hit something.

9:24New York restaurant culture is a whole thing. And we've seen that spread to other cities. Obviously, other cities have their own thing going on. But the emphasis was always new, innovate, sometimes interesting fusion, sometimes silly gimmicks, but it was always new. Is it fair to say Carbone tapped into nostalgia? You said, we're going to run it back, but for today's customers. And where did that come from? Absolutely. I think at the time when Carbone first opened, we were definitely going against the grain, right? What was what was expected of us as young chefs that were kind of coming up was like if you're gonna play in the fine dining arena You're headed towards like this tasting menu thing.

10:05Yep, and we were going Completely against the grain we were doing burgundy tuxedos veal palm the size of hudcaps like old-school Sinatra playing It was it was it was completely against what was expected of us Because it works as a business model then all of a sudden in, right? Like it's popular, it's busy, that works as a business model. Well, now people are going to try to emulate that, whether it's Italian or other ethnicities or other styles, you're looking at a whole now retrospective of throwbacks, right? Everything is kind of a throwback, which makes sense because it also taps into that customer that, that you want a regular.

10:42You don't want a diner who's going to come once and be like, I know whether you liked it or not. I know what that place is all about, check. So now they're copying you. Maybe. Well, you know what Drake said. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. He said, if everybody came up on a style that I'd made up, then tell me, who should I be afraid of? I suppose. Carbone, also in Drake's songs, if y 'all don't know. All right, a couple more things. I'm going to let it wrap up. And this is the B-side. We got to get ready for TV, too. Here's what else I wrote down. um spicy rigatoni became iconic fair fair uh naz has a bar about it it is the thing um this is not like a name drop but i happened to go to an hbo event this week think about oh i think about you and they had the mini station at the pool it's a very nice elegant room and they don't have the whole menu but you know they had the spicy rigatoni I gotta have it.

11:44From a creative perspective, because you can bring vision or art to anything. From a creative perspective, and I say this respectfully, same way I talk to people in government, you didn't create the rigatoni. Nope. I don't think you created the spicy. This is Italian heritage, so what did you do or what happened that this became a thing? Or tell me if you view it differently. I think it got framed into a really great um host body of the restaurant right host body yeah like what does that mean like carbone the host body of spicy rigatoni uh you know what i mean like it got to live in this arena this dish and because it checks a bunch of boxes right it's vegetarian it's well known i understand it it's spicy it's it's fun i never thought about it as vegetarian i guess yeah people care and well that was the reason why i made the menu the first time because when we were just about to open I looked at the menu and I realized that I thought I could use one more.

12:41We were too heavy vegetable. We were too heavy seafood and meat. I needed one more vegetarian pasta. Can't be too heavy meat. And so like. Everybody's out here tripping, going to restaurants, being like, I can't eat this, this, this. Well, then maybe restaurant life's not for you. Well, I mean, so then you're. Maybe you should stay home and save some money. Have a salad. So imagine your most famous dishes. Good for everybody. Well, is it good? How many nights a week can you eat pasta? Me? No, should a person. I mean, don't use me as a doctor, but I mean, as Italian-American, you should have pasta at least once a week.

13:15Dr. Carbone says. Dr. Carbone. All right. This is, I asked, you may or may not like this. I asked AI, what question would you have for Chef Carbone? You ready? Would Alan and I have something to say? Chad GPT says, Carbone feels very New York coded, loud, energetic, a little theatrical. How do you make a restaurant feel New York, even when it's somewhere else? And you have what? Vegas, Miami, where else? Carbone, Vegas, Miami, Dallas, we're in London, Doha, Riyadh, Hong Kong. So is the robot right? And if so, how do you vibe for that? I think it would be hard if the original wasn't New York. I think we're transporting the restaurant from Greenwich Village that people know the sound, the smell, the look, the taste of it.

14:13And we're transporting it to these other places. They understand the connectivity there. I think if you were to just kind of do it from scratch and have it not have been born in New York, you're fighting uphill. because then you're almost in that like Disney or like hotel like there's some cool hotels but then some you're like oh this is supposed to be like Vegas I mean Vegas has changed so much and there's incredible restaurants as you know there and there's incredible performances and art there now but having said that the old Vegas of like oh we're at like the Paris River or whatever you know what I'm trying to say?

14:48The Eiffel Tower yeah so you're saying you have you would run that risk if you didn't actually have a New York owner of Pia's Even for us, we were running a risk, but the catapult that we had was the space that Carbone was was already a hundred-year-old Italian restaurant called Rocco that had gone out of business. That space right in the West Village? Yeah, where Carbone is. That was an old Italian restaurant. That was an old Italian restaurant. Has that neighborhood historically always been Italian? Yeah, because on the corner is St. Anthony's of Padua, and on the other corner is Our Lady of Pompeii.

15:18So the Italian-American and the Irish communities were built around the Roman Catholic churches. so that's how that became another pocket of little it'll be interesting because i live in brooklyn and we got a lot of italian neighborhoods you got a lot of churches too yeah a lot of churches yeah respect church in the wild as they say

15:39your ability to build this thing this is the last question i have for this thing of ours yeah this thing of ours the uh for the people you just told us you started what you said shuck and oysters right you I don't know if you put the numbers out there but this is a pretty big international business big company yeah you are how old now I'm 46 years old wild so for someone who has the dream of starting maybe it's a taco truck right maybe it's a little thing on the side maybe it's a restaurant maybe they're hoping it turns into more what is the key advice that you didn't know then obviously you have drive A lot of people have drive and you have some good recipes you had vision But what's the key advice you give man if I knew when I was starting this I think the most relevant advice for today in particular is Location doesn't location matters less now than ever before because of how We can spread the word because of social media because of the way that we can communicate amongst as a society if you make something genuinely great, whatever it is.

16:45It could be a taco. It could be a smash, but whatever it is in our world. But if it's actually great, they're going to come find you and you're going to get crushed. You're going to have a business on your hands. Because in the year 2000, it would be, you got to be in a good enough restaurant location. Location, location, location. They come from work. You're in your other cool stuff. And you're saying you could actually save money on the rent or the spot. Especially if you're starting off, right? Yeah, of course. We still look for AAA spaces as we're building the company, right? But if you're starting off and you've got an idea and you're going to act, so my advice is focus on the product.

17:19Make something that is better than everybody else's and they will find you. This is the B-side. Chef Carbone, thanks for coming through. Give me a B-side track. I'll give you a B-side track. That's a great question. Title Freestyle by Jay-Z is a B-side, particularly because it's acapella. He freestyled it the way he does his tracks, but at a concert, you can still find it online. And it's just not a radio play, but it's incredible. It's a song where he says, you know, this ain't back in the day, right? You know, people died for equal pay, right? You know, when I work, I ain't your slave, right?

18:00You know, this ain't back in the day, right? And it's like, it doesn't need a beat. It's a great B-side. Thanks for the question. This is a little bit of the B-side where we hang out here in my TV newsroom, but a little more casual. I got Ish from the Joe Budden Podcast. Nice to see you. Same to you, sir. We just did some TV, but I thought we'd talk a little extra because I don't get you in here that much. What was one of your favorite projects in the last year? And related, how important is it where people are listening to music? Because that's changed so much. and I feel like people of basically our age group, it's like in the car or does it get you outside?

18:35In the car. And No Shade, I think music is always moving with younger people, and a lot of younger people have a different lifestyle. I'm not saying they're only inside, but I am saying like, yeah, sometimes it's on streaming, it's on a headphone, that's it. For me, well, two questions. So for me, I think the Chance album was just an underrated project. He's going crazy on that project to me. I like the Chance project. I love the Wale project. And I like the Jid project. And I think all three projects, they came and went. Unfairly almost, and unfortunately, because I think all three of those projects were amazing.

19:17Like the Chance project, I'm shocked he didn't get more acclaim with that particular project. But for me, the lyrical stuff, the more introspective stuff, I got to be in the car. The stuff that the lyrics don't really matter when you hear it out in the club, you're in a strip club, you're in a regular club and it's just going crazy. You could care less about the lyrical content of the song. So I think music serves purposes for us. and so I think the more lyrical the more rappers that I like like I want to hear them in my car because I'm in a zone I'm driving it's just me in the road I can ingest everything that they're saying and I can get an appreciation for the music more than the stuff that's just like boom boom boom boom boom and you know it has a purpose yeah no I feel that for you and listening to the pod I feel that from you do you remember the first album you had in your hand where you were like this is my rap album that you actually had the copy?

20:17The first album I've purchased, I'm older. It might have been Long Live the Cane. Wow. Or maybe Three Feet High and Rising. Della. Like, one of those I bought with my own money, and it was a thing. Yeah. It was a thing for me. One of those, something back then. Yeah, I mean, but that, in the early J La Soul, that is more backpack lyrical than some might have expected about you. No, I, yeah. You know, there's a lot of stereotypes in the comments. It is, it's a bunch of them. So, listen, and this is the funny part. Like, I'll call Mark and be like, yo, Chance is going crazy. I'll call Mark and be like, yo, did you hear what J Electronica said on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?

21:05Yeah, yeah, yeah. And people don't think I'll listen to that. Like, I'm a nerd. So, when J Electronica's going nuts, I'm all for it. Again, it's in my car. I'll tell you, my most, since you bring it up, my most slept on Jay Electronica song is Shiny Suit Theory with him and Hove. Jay-Z went crazy. And talking to his therapist. Let me say, I love Jay Electronica. Yeah. He can't do an album with Jay-Z ever again. Because he's out, because he got shown up? Went crazy. But that, you don't think Jay-Z went crazy? I love that, yes. Yes, and it's so funny how what you call something still matters. That was a joint album.

21:48I know. So everyone, Jay-Z this, Jay-Z that, that was a joint album. The Future Drake Project was obviously a joint mixtape, right? But they're not on every song together. They created something together, and the majority of the tracks they did together. That's that album. It's so funny to me people don't treat it like a joint album. And Jay to me, well, I, you know, talk about music. Music is feeling, right? So yes, I'm Hove biased and I'm Hove coded. Me too. And I wouldn't want it any other way. Unfortunately. Me too. But if I try to put that aside, I'm still pretty sure that substantively Hove was the driving energy of that project.

22:36I agree. A thousand percent. I agree. and yeah you know me there there are a bunch of narratives and they call me jay-z karaoke and jay-z stan and all of those things i just i appreciate greatness and i don't even like all of jay-z projects by the way can we talk let's talk about this and then i'll just tell the people like this is real we only got like three minutes then i gotta go back on the news um it is so crazy for people to hate on loving something that is amazing true so you it's way if you're just like imagine coming up someone and being like like imagine when ice cream first came out that dropped at some point yeah and you're like this is so good and then all the kids are like yes and then they got ice cream trucks going out and everyone's like can we yeah there's nothing to talk about this and then someone comes up and being like, oh, you're so into ice cream.

23:26Like, that's such a crazy take. Misery. Right, it's like a culture, it's like some people are like that, or they think something got so much acclaim. Yeah, okay, you could pick Beyonce as an example related to Jay, but you could also pick Taylor Swift, and it's like, she's bringing joy to all these people. If you don't think she's the best songwriter, that's fine. But all these people love this music, and that's how I feel with Hove. Hove is the greatest lyricist across genres. In rap, to me, there's nothing even to talk about. But across genres, you start saying, oh, but I'm also, this Coldplay song moved me like a breakup, cool.

24:01And this Dylan song is amazing, cool. I love Bob Dylan. Bar for bar, Dylan is doing about 15 to 20 % of just the number of bars of words. So Blowing in the Wind was a great idea, and it's like this short, right? And then I could show you God Did, and it's like this. 15 albums of this. So I'm in agreement with you. I think people, just humans in general, you can have 100 people, right? And 97 of them will like a thing. The three other people that don't like the thing, they may not even dislike the thing. They just don't want to be on the side of the other 97 people. Which is silly because now you're only defining yourself by being reactive.

24:47I agree. And I think it's a misery thing. Me personally, I think. Explain what that means. You can't look at Beyonce. You don't have to be the biggest Beyonce fan. You can't look at what this young lady has done over this period of time. Get on a stage, don't stop dancing, singing without auto-tune and without lip-syncing and not say, wow, that's great. By the way, to that point. You can't say that, in my opinion. If you, and the Beyonce, and when you watch, like, anytime you see the footage of them setting up a show and the choreography and the practice and just the sheer exemplary precision that she brings to everything she does.

25:24And in a very different way, thematically, I was watching the Taylor documentary. And whether or not it's your cup of tea, it's like Olympic-level athlete. Yeah. Choreography, practice, delivery. Two hours. And just night after night after night after night after night. You can't look at that level of excellence and say, uh. So when you say misery, so I interviewed Lior Cohn. Okay. And he said, young people, you know how he talks, young people, they want to test. They are new, they want to test. He goes, so they like to try to bring down big things. That's true. And then he goes, he pauses and he goes, that's what we call a hater.

26:10Misery. I started with misery, yeah. And then he says, but if you, because he's talking about building businesses, is like if you build it and they can't tear it down, they'll move on to something else. But they'll still throw rocks at it. And throwing rocks at it to me is just, because they can't necessarily break down somebody as talented as these people are, right? Like these people will bounce back regardless of what they go through or whatever tribulations they go through. They'll bounce back. So you can't tear them down, but why throw rocks at some greatness? That's nuts to me. Again, I'm the Jay-Z fan.