225: Sandor Katz

27:55And all around the world, there are these interesting lightly fermented beverages that people drink. One that I really love that I've written about in a few of my books is Mabi. If anyone's ever traveled in the Caribbean, there's this like bittersweet, lightly fermented beverage. English-speaking islands is called Mabi. Spanish-speaking islands is called Mavi. And I was first introduced to it by a woman who was corresponding with me from Puerto Rico. But incredibly delicious, lightly fermented beverage. You know, Russia and other Slavic lands. people drink kvass, which is, you know, just incredibly delicious.

28:35It's basically like old rye bread re-fermented into a beverage. I've seen like hot like DTC companies selling that stuff, like with cool labels and like kvass is here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you know, these things have been part of people's traditions in a lot of different places. I mean, ginger beer is another example of this. Now, I mean, you know, why now? Well, I mean, to me and, you know, the reason why my books have, you know, been as popular as they have been is I just think that, you know, since the Human Microbiome Project, like, you know, when I was growing up in the, you know, in the 1960s and the 1970s, you know, I never heard a good word about bacteria.

29:18Bacteria were dangerous things to be avoided and destroyed. You know, I would say since the turn of the millennium and the Human Microbiome Project, there has been slowly percolating into our popular awareness this idea that actually bacteria are incredibly important for us. Our functionality as human beings has a lot to do with the bacteria that are part of us. All these factors in our modern lives from lack of fiber in our diets to chemical exposure is causing a diminishment of biodiversity. But we need biodiversity. So people – I think that this is the number one reason why there's been so much renewed interest.

30:03In like gut health. Straight up. Gut health and all kinds of fermented things as means towards gut health. Yeah, gut health. I mean, it really does kind of have a ring to it. It sells a lot of books, I'll tell you. Sandor, what's a sneaky, like, skill that you have or interest that we maybe don't know? We know you as the guy, the fermentation guy, the guy who writes about food policy. But, like, give us a point. Well, I mean, you know, my interest in fermentation grew out of my garden. And my garden continues to just be a huge, you know, activity that I love and obsession. I love eating things every day out of the garden.

30:44And so I put a lot of my energy into gardening. Beyond fermentation, I'm just sort of obsessive about using things out of the garden. Maybe I mentioned chestnuts earlier, but, you know, I've got all these chestnuts. I'm really like determined to like find more and more ways to make use of them. So, you know, I have a lot of like food interests beyond fermentation. But, you know, also, I mean, I love nature. And, you know, I love walking and hiking and, you know, climbing and seeing beautiful places. Tennessee is a nice part of the world. Yeah, Tennessee is a beautiful place. Yeah. Have you been to Korea ever?

31:25I have. I changed planes in Seoul once. But I don't think that counts as going to Korea. No, but I'm dying to go to Korea. I mean it's a place where there's certainly a lot of like foods I'm interested in over the years. I've met people I'm interested in visiting there. So, you know, one of these years in the not-too-distant future. It'd be great. I feel I've written a couple of Korean cookbooks with Duki Hong and I think about kimchi, beshu kimchi, the cabbage kimchi, but all the different types of fermentation within Korean cooking, which is different than China and Japan, though – linked, you know, well, and also all kinds of kimchi.

32:04I mean, I've made beautiful, like, stuffed perilla leaf kimchi and stuffed cucumber kimchi. And, you know, there's an incredible variety, you know, just in the world of kimchi. But yeah, also all these gochujang and doanjang and makkoli. And, you know, I'm really quite interested in and I'm sure there's all kinds of, you know, sort of less internationally known fermented delicacies that await. You should make it there. What's the best use of sauerkraut, I have to ask you? I mean, I think of the bratwurst as a great vehicle for sauerkraut, but am I forgetting something? Well, I mean, bratwurst is a fine vehicle, but, you know, I mean, sauerkraut goes with everything.

32:49Really? Sick. Let's go there. I mean, you know, this morning I had fried eggs for breakfast with sauerkraut. Yeah? Did you make those? I mean, I was at my brother's apartment and he fried me some eggs and, you know, there was a jar of sauerkraut in the fridge. And, you know, we had some sauerkraut with the eggs. On any kind of a sandwich, you know, sauerkraut is a condiment. And, you know, it's moisturizing and, you know, gives a beautiful flavor accent, you know, to pretty much any kind of a sandwich. You know, I even eat peanut butter and kimchi sandwiches. Oh, I've had that. That's a good choice.

33:27But, you know, I mean, I would say that fermented vegetables in general are extremely versatile. And people even use sauerkraut in desserts. And fermentation journeys, I have a recipe for sauerkraut chocolate cake. Yeah. I love that idea. It's a, you know, it's just, it's an extremely versatile. It sounds really good. It sounds really good. It is delicious. I mean, you know, what I would suggest is use a fairly plain, straightforward sauerkraut, one that doesn't have a lot of strong seasoning. Yeah. If you want it to just blend into the chocolate cake. We did a white chocolate snickerdoodle with kimchi in our first book, which was pretty successful.

34:03But I would say the sauerkraut cake sounds a little better. Just saying. um sandra we ask all guests on the taste podcast if you could write a cookbook or food culture book without the burden of time meaning you have no deadline or the burden of budget meaning you have all the money in the world what would that book project be i mean that's all right well i mean there's so many places where i've become interested in food traditions that you know that i have not had the opportunity to to sort of you know visit and and really explore. And, you know, one of my like really strong food interests that I have written about in my other books is natto.

34:49So natto is a Japanese name, but, you know, there are natto-like foods in a lot of different places, including West Africa. So, you know, all across West Africa, there are these very interesting condiments not fermented from soybeans, but generally from African locust beans. But in terms of the microbiology, it's bacillus subtilis, the same bacteria that's producing natto. And so, you know, this is something that I intend to explore further. But, you know, if I had a no budgetary limit research project, I would be traveling to like, you know, all the places that have, you know, natto related foods, you know, including different places around West Africa to learn about these foods and the ways that people use it.

35:36I love that. Oh, I hope to read that one day. I think it sounds great. Sandor Katz, thank you for joining the Taste Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

35:54Martha Hoover, welcome to the Taste Podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I'm excited. So first off, what have you been up to in New York? Like I like to ask, you're in from Indianapolis. We'll get to your fine city. But what have you been up to? Well, literally, I landed at noon and I ran to my hotel, grabbed a cappuccino, changed my clothes and came here. So I've not had two seconds to do anything yet. But as soon as we're done, I'm very excited. I'm meeting my daughter and one of her very close colleagues. And we're going to go to the ballet tonight. Nice. And I love doing ballet in New York.

36:29So we're very I'm really looking forward to that. And what about restaurant wise? Are you are you making stops? Do you have a list? Do you have a notes app? Well, actually, I'm meeting a friend tomorrow night at I've never been to the 10 building, which I believe is relatively new. And I happen to be staying down that direction. So we were like, let's go check it out. I've read, of course, Pete Wells's version of it, his his review. So I'm going in with a little bit of bias, but I have a lot of respect for Jean-Georges, and I want to see what he's done with that major project. Well, as an operator of many restaurants in Indianapolis, when you're in New York or any other city, you're just in Paris as well with your staff doing some training in R &D.

37:14Yeah. How do you look at restaurants when you're not in your city? What are you looking for? Well, you know, I have a ton of restaurants in my own city, and I tend to, I think most restauranteurs would agree that their own food, their own restaurants are probably deep inside their most favorite. I would hope so, too. I have a tremendous amount of pride in the restaurants that I own and operate. But when I go to other restaurants, I look at them, I always look at them through a restaurant owner's eyes. And, you know, it's just a trained eye about what works in restaurant and what doesn't work. And of course, I can't help but to be inspired wherever I go.

37:59And we did just come back from Paris. We have this program in my company called Pata Paris. And we take a small group of people once a year to Paris. And, you know, it's a really expensive development tool, but I have found that it has been a really remarkable development tool for a variety of reasons. But all we do is go to restaurants. That's all we do. You're not catching the Musée d 'Orsay up there. No, no. I mean, you know, I kind of, because I think everyone needs to see some of the art, we always go to one of the smaller museums in one of the first days of the trip. The trip is incredibly compact.

38:42It's just filled with activity and its immersion in particularly Parisian culinary culture. So what are you seeing right now in 2023 in Paris? I haven't been, it's been like two years since I've been there, or four years before the pandemic. It's the most exciting food city in the world. Well, to me, it still is. Granted, there are a lot of probably wonderful food cities that I've not traveled to, but Paris set the bar for me when I went there the first time as a 17-year-old. I'm almost 69 now, so my first trip there was a long, long time ago. That trip alone determined my food DNA, so to speak.

39:23So what I do, and it was so, that trip was still remarkably inspirational and really impacted the quality of food that I serve. It especially was very much inspiration for me opening up my first restaurant in 1989. Were you born yet? I was born in 1989. You're generous. I was born in 89. I was nine years old in 89. Okay. So when you were nine, I opened up my first restaurant. And I'm the girl who opened up her first restaurant having never worked in a restaurant and not knowing she was pregnant with her third child. When you opened your first restaurant? When I opened my first restaurant. That's my sister-in-law.

40:06It's a similar story. When she opened a restaurant, she was pregnant. What an interesting dynamic. Yeah. Did she know she was pregnant? The timeline is unclear to me. I don't want to say on the record because I don't remember what the timeline is, but I know she was definitely pregnant and opening a restaurant. And that's certainly, wow. How'd it go? Well, you know, I always love to say it was a perfect recipe for disaster. But here I am, 34 years and 14 restaurants later, I think it went really well. I can't wait to get into that. Was that an era when they had the cracker machines for the credit cards?

40:38Those crackers? Oh, for sure. Actually, the first three years I was in business, we didn't accept credit cards. It was cash only. Oh, my. With an old-fashioned till that, you know, you would go beep, beep, beep. It was a Casio. Probably cost, I don't know, 150 bucks that I bought at some, you know, office depot type place. The restaurant world was – my timing was fortunate when I opened in 1989 because I opened as a neophyte in the restaurant world. Having never worked in a restaurant was not a professional chef. You opened without having worked in a restaurant. Not one day. This is Café Pâtissier we're talking about.

41:12Yeah, not one day. And it's still open to this day. It's not only open. We're expanding it. It's thriving. It's remarkably stable. And like, you know, I'm not, it's kind of Sophie's Choice. I'm not allowed to ever say out loud what my favorite restaurant is in my own group. But you can whisper in it. But I'm winking to you. I love it. Let's talk about Indianapolis because I grew up not far from there, but I haven't really spent much time there. And I want to get your initial take right away, like, why should we visit Indianapolis? Well, in the first place, the motto of Indianapolis is Crossroads of America.

41:49So it's right dab in the middle. So it's easy to get to. And why you should visit is also, I think I want to add an additional layer to the question is why you should visit and why you should consider staying. One of the benefits I have in living in Indianapolis is that the barriers to entry of opening up a restaurant or opening up small businesses of any kind, the barriers are just lower. And people are really, really accepting of they want things. You know, they're aspirational for their city. about I opened up my restaurant in 1989 and about 15 years later, there was a real kind of a tick up in the community where people realized, and I think this happened in a lot of tertiary cities, you know, cities the size of Indianapolis that were close to larger cities were very close to Chicago.

42:48Right. And people were just like, we don't want to have to drive three hours or get on a plane. For a good XYZ. For a good XYZ. Third Wave Cafe, a Korean restaurant, French bistro. And so they decided that, you know, they wanted to support what was theirs. Now, Indianapolis, truthfully, does not have a history the way a lot of cities do of strong ethnic neighborhoods, immigrant neighborhoods. So we never really had, and we never had a real history of independent restaurants. In fact, Indianapolis, similar, very similar to Columbus, Ohio, demographically, Indianapolis and Columbus in the 70s and 80s were considered the fertile ground to test these huge concepts that restaurant owners like Darden were, you know, the Olive Gardens of the world.

43:42And - BW3s. Oh my gosh. Got a few of those in there. Yeah. Is that out of Michigan, by the way? Or out of Wisconsin? I think that might be more of like a Wisconsin, Minnesota thing. We're home of like Little Caesars, Domino's. Yeah. That's our pride. Yeah. That's your pride? Yeah. That's it. Fast food pizza. We invented it. Was Domino's the first in that area? I think Domino's, for at least the chains, I think Pizza Hut might be before Domino's, but we have Little Caesars and Domino's from the great city of Detroit. Congratulations on that, Detroit. I love Detroit, but that is not— That's not your city.

44:16Those aren't the – I absolutely love Detroit. I would love to have a restaurant or two in Detroit. Wait. So, Martha, let's go there because I think it's a cool idea about expansion. I have a lot of questions about the concepts that you run and the dining tastes. But you think about you might move out of Indianapolis? Yeah. I go back and forth, but mostly forth. Yes. I travel a lot. And what's even more important than my traveling is my customers travel a lot. I have, you know, smart, sophisticated, affluent customers for the most part that have a lot of ability to travel. And the common thing we hear when they come back from wherever they go is, oh, my God, we tried every breakfast place in whatever the city is that they went to and there's nothing like pot of shoe.

45:09And, you know, I started out with no real desire to have a million restaurants. That was not my goal. My goal was to create a restaurant that was an extension of my dining room that was in my neighborhood that I could walk to or ride a bike to with my children that provided what, you know, we now call third place. There was no such phrase as third place, no such phrase as farm to table, all that stuff. We were doing all of that and we were creating that, right? So from day one, I said that my restaurant, I thought it would just be one location, that my restaurant was like a student union for adults.

45:53So, you know, that kind of dates me. I don't know what college kids, they probably don't really hang out at student unions anymore. I should ask a college kid. Do you go to the union? I'm pretty sure those are pretty passe. But at the same time, it meant a lot to me and it's still really short code. So basically, customers come back. I come back and I go, this is bar setting. This is really good. It's really good food. It's remarkably approachable and accessible. It's very neighborhood, very community based. and really what it is is just really good food. So it's really good effing food. Now let's get into your brunch menu.

46:36I want to get a little bit of culinary detail. And as I mentioned, I've not had your food, but like what is Patechew's bag? Like what are you guys known for? Well, we're known for, you know what? If I told you what we were known for, it would sound like every other breakfast restaurant. No, sell it. You can say more. Well, this is what I'm going to sell. It's not enough to just say what my items are. Yes, we're known for omelets. Yes, we're known for beautiful, but we do breakfast and lunch. What we really are known for is the quality that we put into our ingredients and our experience, experience for both customers and for our staff and experience for the entire community.

47:17And that's what sets us apart. Yeah. Well, I wanted to have you in because, you know, we have plenty of we're pitched lots of folks with beautiful food in regional markets that I've never been to. Like I wish I could interview all of them, but we have limited spots. But you are essential to have on the show because of some of the North Stars that you kind of follow. And I think equity is very important. Diversity inclusion is important. You have something called Martha's Book of Rules. Yeah. The first thing is I wanted to specifically ask you about is all employees are paid a livable wage. How do you do that?

47:51Livable and actually beyond thriving wage. We shouldn't really be clapping ourselves on the back for allowing people to have a livable wage. That to me is kind of sad and shouldn't be the benchmark. I can tell you very simply how we do it. We run our organization with a tremendous amount of discipline and we charge what we need to charge for our food and our menu items so that we can pay people thriving wages. I think of Ari Weisenwig at Zingerman's as somebody who also has that ethic and your restaurants are parallel in that way that, you know, at the naked eye, yes, those pancakes are expensive.

48:34Someone might be able to like yelp that. But clearly, and we've had many chefs and restaurateurs on, you got to charge. You know, one of my true disappointments coming out of the pandemic is I made the I was hopeful that restaurants would understand their finances wouldn't, you know, because of the lockdown and covid and that they would collectively say we're not charging appropriately for the food. And this gets to a very complex, and I know that we don't have time to really talk about economic theory and capitalism and food distribution. But the bottom line is, I'll try to be succinct here. The bottom line is our consumers, especially regarding food, value the most for the cheapest.

49:27And when you value the most for the cheapest, people, especially at the bottom of the production scale, whatever that is, the bottom, the people who touch that food product at all levels are not respected enough to be paid appropriately. So, you know, I kind of laugh. I'm always like the people in my world who make the most money and are the most secure financially are the food distributors. They're not the farmers. They're not the, you know, the people who are producing food. Line cooks, too. They're not the line cooks. They're not even the servers necessarily. It's the people who are kind of always, you know, who are really taking advantage of this system, this mousetrap that we've built.

50:16So I do. I agree. Ari and I both are on the exact same page. We have talked about this several times that we have had conversations. I think we are both unapologetic about our need to charge what we need to charge to create profitable, sustainable businesses that treat their employees with respect, dignity and pay them what they deserve to be paid. More Martha's book of rules, use of gender pronouns as part of extensive inherent bias training. Yep. And that's a topic that I think in the restaurant world, particularly outside of the major cities, is probably pretty rare. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's rare still in 2023, but we've been doing this for a long time.

51:01I know that there are a lot of companies and I'm assuming there are a lot of restaurants that try to check that, you know, became acutely aware the summer of 2020 after George Floyd's homicide that they needed to have some program or they needed to do something. And I'm like, oh, boy, if you're just checking off a box, it's not good enough. And we really we view everything we do, whether it's a higher of a higher promoting people, what vendors we use, who we decide to bank with, everything comes through the lens of diversity and inclusion. It's great that you do that and great that you speak about it because I think it's a topic that, yeah, 2020 brought a lot of light to this, but then the pandemic happens and it kind of fades away and all this fades away.

51:54And my final question about Martha's Book of Rules is, I mean, you offer health insurance plus to your employees. How do you make this work with rising costs? How do you make it all work? It all goes back to what we charge for our food. I cannot make it. I mean, we are, I believe, a really well-run organization. We're really careful and we're very disciplined. We actually were like that before the pandemic, but coming out of the pandemic, we have tightened up everything. But there are certain things we will never not honor. It's the quality of our food, the quality of our premises, and the quality of how we treat our people.

52:39And those things come at a cost. You know, it always amazes me. No one bats an eye that Apple, they have an Apple phone. No one cares that Apple phone is$1 ,200 now. $1 ,200. Now it's$1 ,200. And, you know, no one cares about that. No one cares that Apple is, you know, mint billionaires, right, that they have all these people that have become extraordinarily uber wealthy. But people seem to begrudge a restaurant that is making money. And that's a good point. The bottom line is restaurants are businesses. They're not there. They are meant to be profitable. And I do think there is a great area of conversation that could be had about the profits that restaurants make.

53:31You know, I don't have investors, and I'm certainly far from being a publicly traded restaurant company. And I don't even have a board of directors. I do everything myself, right? I'm a sole owner of my business, which means I get to do exactly what I want to do. And one of the things I started doing in 1989, and don't forget, in 1989, restaurant profits were between 20 and 30 percent across the board. That's the margin? Right now it's like six, seven? You're lucky to have a restaurant that's between five and 10 percent or even over 10 percent, right? So, you know, it kind of all starts with that.

54:16I think to your point about the public perception and why Apple doesn't get shit for minting billionaires and having like, you know, hundreds of billions of cash on hand. But like you see a successful restauranteur is charging like thirty nine dollars for a dish and people grumble because maybe they come back from that era when like people were maybe rich who ran restaurants wealthy. And I also think there's this false premise that that$39 that people do this weird calculation where they think they can buy all the ingredients and do it for X amount of dollars. And they assume then that all this money goes into the restaurateur's pocket.

54:59Here's the truth. If you understood the number of people who touch a plate before a plate gets served, and I'm not just talking about a line cook. I'm talking about along the food chain, every person who has a fingerprint on that food, I'm like shocked. When people complain, for instance, about a pound of coffee being$17 or$18. You're talking my—this is my language. Seriously? I write a lot about coffee and have had many on coffee, but yeah, let's go. You continue, continue. So I'm always like, wait a minute. Are you telling me that you're complaining about this agricultural product that is grown—choose your continent, right?

55:50In zones of conflict, too. Zones of conflict. Let's get real about that. You know, drought, climate change. Civil war. All this stuff. Human rights violations. And then how complicated it is to actually grow coffee plants and to do it properly. And then the process of picking and drying. And then you've got to ship it, sort it and ship it. And then you ship it and it gets somewhere and some green bean buyer buys it. And then it goes to a roaster of some kind and then a roaster does all their roasting and packaging and then they ship it out. And then it gets eventually to a restaurant or a coffee shop or then ultimately to the end user, the customer.

56:32And you're complaining that all those hands have touched it and it's$15 a pound. I'm like, I just don't get how the world works. I don't get pricing. Let's layer on that you're willing to buy an Amstel Light at a bar for$14. Yeah. Like you're buying really bad macro beers and you're not complaining, but then you complain about coffee. Yeah. Is that crazy? Well, we can link to like the 18 app. We can go on and on and on. Coffee is a – I try to on the show elevate coffee and have a conversation similar to what you said. But you can relate that to a lot of things. You can relate that to agriculture and produce.

57:09You can relate that to cooking oils. Well, speaking of coffee, we are actually creating our own roastery. Okay. So you're in the biz now. I'm in the biz. And I'm in the biz not to wholesale, not to sell it, not to outsource it. I am a very proud control freak. And I find that whenever we have control of a product from start to finish, we do better. And I mean, not only is our performance better, but the quality of the product is better. I trust my people. I trust our systems. I trust our ability to deliver on promise of quality better than I do other people. Wow. Coffee's hard, though. Coffee is hard.

57:57It's really hard, and there's a lot of competition. You know what? We're only roasting it for my own restaurants. As you said, so there you go. We're doing it as a vertical to control the product as vertically as much as possible. And that's a cost-saving measure. I mean, we make our own bread. Why shouldn't we also restaurant coffee? Yeah, and you run restaurants that are all-day cafes and brunch, and you go through a lot of coffee, and you started seeing that wholesale coffee bill, and you're like, let's do it ourselves. Makes perfect sense. It really—the bill is one thing. What really bothers me is the quality.

58:33Yeah. You know, we have a tremendous amount of volume and there are not a lot of small roasters who could handle our volume. And what we saw, especially around 2008 or so, was the consolidation of roasteries. We were working at that time with Stumptown when it was in Portland and was like a small roastery. We started working with them years ago. And then all of a sudden, all these venture guys and equity people start coming in and buying up. They came for Blue Bottle. They came for Intelli. They came for all of them. For Counterculture. They came for all of them. And so we, you know, this has been a process where I'm like, we've got to do this.

59:17We've got to own this ourselves. I love it. I can't wait to taste it. To go back to the point you made about all the different steps in a dish, have you ever been on Andrew Friedman's podcast or talked to him? No, I have. I've talked to him, but I've never been. Good guy. Well, his next book is exactly that. So I just have to give him a plug. His book is called Literally the Dish and it follows a restaurant in Chicago. Well, at the beginning, I'm sorry to interrupt. No, no. I'm a horrible interrupter. No, we're excited to talk to each other. I love it. So at the very beginning of COVID, when we were, of course, you know, I am loathe to use this word ever again.

59:52But when we were pivoting and trying to save our asses and all that kind of stuff, we created a poster that we used on. We used everywhere we could, but we used it primarily in social media that talked about the number of hands that touch a dish. And it was really well received. People, I had restaurateurs from across the country reach out to me to see if they could use it. I was like, of course, you know, I was happy that they were excited enough to want to use it. And then it also spoke volumes to our customers who were like, wow, I had never thought of it. It's a really good practice for a restaurant group to do that.

1:00:32Well, it also was amazing for my employees who, you know, were very siloed sometimes in their view of what their impact is or what they do for the company. and a server may not necessarily realize all that goes into making a loaf of bread that we make. Let me ask you, Martha, if you go back in time and dine for a weekend in any era with a notebook or an iPhone and capture it and bring it back into the current time, I know. I wonder how many people talk about post-World War II Paris, But I and I love that idea. And French food is really a child. That was her favorite period of being in France. And I always think how it's so romanticized and sitting in a cafe and talking philosophy, smoking cigarettes, drinking brandy.

1:01:27And, you know, I envision Ernest Hemingway going to the Luxembourg Gardens and poaching a partridge so he could eat that night. As much as I would love to do that, I really think, okay, this is going to sound kind of crazy. I would like to have been for the weekend in the south of France with the Rolling Stones in the 70s when they were living there. Oh, yeah. Was that some girls? Yeah. Yeah. I think if I could go back and live wherever they were living in that beautiful, beautiful, I'm sure, exquisite estate, and if I could have done all the food for them and then been there to eat the food and enjoy it, just what I think would be so amazing.

1:02:22I mean, think about it, to have eaten with like Bob Marley or eat with the Beatles back in the day when what they were doing was really seemed very subversive. Yeah. Do you remember? You're not old enough to remember. The Stones. I mean, I've read, of course, Keith Richards' book, which covers that era extremely well. Hard to trust that narrator, I have to say. My Life is a little bit of a suspicious memoir, but that's my caveat about that book. But Stones is definitely, yeah. Well, you know, I have a grandson who's five years old and we were vacationing and Keith Richards happened to be at this hotel.

1:03:05Turks and Caicos? It was Turks and Caicos. Yeah, he lives there. He lives there and he and his wife or significant other, I don't know his marital stuff, but with his French bulldog would walk up and we told my grandson that he was a pirate. I love that. And at age four, he totally believed that Keith Richards was a pirate. But I think, you know, there's so many great areas of history, but I kind of like going forward, not backwards. Good answer. I think I love that you're – it's a little view into your past. I think this is Stone's anecdote. Yeah. You saw some shows back in the day? I have seen them once, and it was a real treat.

1:03:51Yeah. And it was many years ago. I have kind of refused to see them as 70 and older. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just, like, retired already. I can't do this anymore with you. And now that Charlie's gone, it's tough to see them. I used to, you know, get into these arguments in college, whether the Stones were better than the Beatles and go back and forth and back and forth. And we happened to have somebody on our staff back in the day who was a professional musician, a bass player, played with the Lemonheads. And we would have all these conversations. And he actually was our music curator for years at my little listening bar, Bar 114, that I started, I don't know, seven years ago.

1:04:40So fun. Very fun. I got to come hang out in Indianapolis, man. Oh, my God. This is an 18-seat great. It's kind of— It's a record bar? Yes. But I didn't know record bars were—do you want to hear the whole story of how it started? Yeah. All right. So I have this—my flagship location. My original location is in an area in Indianapolis I will refer to as 49th and Penn. Totally irrelevant and meaningless to anyone listening probably, but 49th and Penn is the corner. And I had a little space there. And originally I created a little gelato store. Well, it was like long enough ago that people were in Indianapolis.

1:05:21people are very conservative, especially financially, and they didn't think spending $5 for the world's best gelato was, that was like not cool. This is like seven years ago? So, oh no, it was even longer. That was maybe 10 or 12 years ago. It's a tough one. It's a tough one, right? And I got it. So I was like, okay, we're not going to do gelato. What am I going to do? I'll put my office in here. And I was like, I don't want to do that. Well, eventually my father, who I had a very tense relationship with. My father died. He was 90 and he died. And here's the thing. I know this is so off topic.

1:05:58No, this is good. But here's the thing that I think is fascinating. My mother is from Brooklyn. My father was from the Bronx. And they moved to Indiana to go to college as a young married couple. And the reason they chose IU, Indiana University, was because of the School of Music. My parents were huge opera fans and huge classical music fans. And trained as well? And I'm sorry? Were they trained? Oh, no. They were not students of music. They just loved. Wow. They just went because they wanted to be able to go to a school where they could go and listen to opera. So my father was a huge audiophile, collected albums, vinyls.

1:06:41Now we call them collected. That's all he did on his day. What incredible New Yorkers your parents sound like. They were pretty cool New Yorkers. Displaced New Yorkers moved to Indianapolis, Indiana for education and a job. So my dad dies, have a very fraught relationship. My brother and sister inherit everything with the exception of his vinyl collection, which gets dumped on me. At the same time, I'm thinking, what am I going to do with this little space? And I'm like, you know what? There are thousands of vinyls. I'm not kidding you. thousands of vinyls and I start going through them and my father god love him saved every record that my sister and I ever bought so every the birds the animals I mean you you name it these old bands um and some of the albums were barely touched so the the disc was just pure and I thought oh my god I'm gonna take this little 350 square foot thing this room I have and I'm going to put some amazing equipment in.

1:07:45I'm going to create a little bar. And even if I'm the only one who listens, I'm going to listen to all these vials. And so this was a service bar. So there would be actually a bartender there working? Yeah. Yeah. Were you aware of like the Japanese culture? I had no idea. Absolutely nothing. This was just like truly all in a vacuum of naivete and whatever. That's the best sometimes. So like the second day I was open, some customers of mine walked in and they happened to be the very high up with a speaker company that was based in Indianapolis called Klipsch, major worldwide known for sound quality.

1:08:26Oh, I had the catalogs when I was young growing up. I know exactly what those are. If you've ever been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or even the Barclays Center or wherever, Klipsch speakers are everywhere. And they walked in and they went, we like your speakers. We don't love your speakers, be here at two o 'clock the next day. Two o 'clock the next day I show up and they pull up and they bring on the most insane set of vintage Klipsch speakers. And so what we've done every year since, this is like 10 years ago, we just keep improving the quality of our... What's the restaurant called or the bar?

1:09:04It's called Bar 114. 114 is the address. And it's an 18-seat little bar, and we're just open Thursday, Friday, and Saturdays, and it is a shrine to vinyl. Listener, listener, get to the Midwest. It's like to have a rest, to have it open only three days, too. Esquire, Jeff Gordnaya came in, and he named us in 2020 one of the top bars in the United States, top 10 bar in the United States. Nice. Jeff's got great taste. I like Jeff. Yeah, well, you know, he not only has wonderful taste in food, but he also is, he knows his music. So I was really happy that he came in. I love that story. Now, have you been to Japan ever?

1:09:47I haven't, but I'm going this August. You have it booked? Oh, dang. I'm going. I've got it all booked. You just have to smoke inside there because all those jazz bars, it's the only place you smoke. So you've been? Yeah. Okay, well. They're great. We are going to have to give me a lot of recommendations. I love this. I feel like we could talk about your concepts, the Rolling Stones life. I love it. But I got to ask you my final question. Yeah, ask me restaurant stuff. I get it. No, no. I want to ask you this final question. We asked all guests on this podcast. If you could write a cookbook or food culture book without the burden of time, meaning you have no deadline, or the burden of budget, meaning you have unlimited funds, all the money in the world to create this book, what would that book be?

1:10:25Oh, wow. Well, you know, I'm going to start with my premise that the world doesn't need another cookbook. Oh, don't say that. I'm sorry. This is the halls of Penguin Random House. We make cookbooks. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Let me just say. Listen, I love the honesty. They need, I have to be honest. Hey, bring it. I, at one point in time, was the owner. I was so proud of my cookbook collection. Now, I don't collect them so much anymore. I buy cookbooks that are more like art coffee table books. But here's the truth. If I were to create a cookbook, it would be for a limited audience of my family and friends.

1:11:05People I have had in my home and I have actually cooked for. Those recipes are the ones that my son actually just texted me. He's a chef in Los Angeles. And he said, would you please send me your matzo ball recipe? which I think was hilarious. Those are the kind of cookbooks I want. I am a little over cookbooks today that expect people to create restaurant quality meals in their own kitchen. I get to people's homes for dinner parties and they're so wiped out from preparing food for three days. And And I'm like, no, give me that perfect roasted chicken. And I'm the happiest girl in the world. And that's the cookbook I would write.

1:11:57It would be one for my friends and family. I respect that take. I like it. I like that you are caring about your friends and family. Where's your son cooking at? I hear LA chef. I'm like, who is, what's going on? He cooks at a, he's a chef at a restaurant called Lolo in Silver Lakes that is fabulous. And I encourage everyone to go. It's a beautiful wine bar and the food is truly excellent. Lolo, L-O-L-O. Yeah, Silver Lake, what a place. Yeah, it's great. I love it. So you've got your daughter here in New York. Well, I have a daughter in New York. I have a daughter in Indianapolis who actually is our director of sustainability.

1:12:32So there's one who's in the business. She's in the business. I love that. Which is really nice. Do you watch Succession? Yeah. Of course. I mean, it's to me like Shakespeare. It is. So there's no battle. It's going to be the one working. I love it. I will tell you, having my kids, two of my three, very involved in the restaurant industry has really, I think, helped me beyond. I learned a long time ago that I learn more from my kids than I can ever teach them. And I will maintain that having at least two of the three so involved in the restaurant world really helps me keep fresh. Martha Hoover, thank you for joining the Taste Podcast.

1:13:13Thank you so much for having me. it's truly been a joy.