245: George Motz

20:37We have two other huge griddles behind us with other guys, you know, cranking out burgers. But I'm going to be right there in front talking to everybody. And if I'm not behind the griddle, I'm going to be at the counter on the customer side. So there's like this like A position that you're going to be in. Oh, yeah. I'm feeling like there might be like a microphone in your head. Like I feel like that. Oh, no, no, no. We're running a classic diner here. Oh, I see. And I'm just going to be, think White Manna, think Apple Pan, all the great places that have the griddle in view. White Manna, yeah, you got the horseshoe style.

21:05Yeah. Really unique. And you're going to be working the shifts. Yeah. I'm going to be there working. I'm going to be helping manage, helping run the merch. Who knows? I'm going to be there for all the good stuff. Are you ready? Are you sleeping? Are you worried? I mean, this is like a big move. Put me in, coach. I'm ready. I keep saying over and over. I said, you know, it's been a long time. We started talking about this restaurant now five years ago. But I like I've told people around me, I'm not I'm you know, I'm not an idiot. I'm opening a restaurant, but I'm not an idiot. I know that because people who open restaurants, they don't know what they're doing.

21:38They're not very smart as far as I'm concerned. You just get yourself in over your head immediately. But what I did was I actually I hired a I hired I asked a restaurant group friend of mine to get involved. And that that saved everything. And a friend of mine who's an investor said, we can get investors involved. He helped me with that. A restaurant group helped me with the details. And they said to me, we'd rather deal with insurance than real estate. I said, great. I'd rather deal with the branding of the menu. Perfect. Here we go. We're off and running. That's the way it works, definitely.

22:03And, you know, it's really unique when somebody who works in media, food media like yourself, crosses over to the restaurant side. But it seems like you've really thought it through. What are some of the mistakes you've witnessed as like a writer, as a writer, reporter, that you're not going to make right now? That's right. Wow. Oh, I don't know yet. We'll see what happens. I'm making sure that we're just doing everything the right way. What we're trying to do is we're trying to build a piece of hamburger history. I'm not just trying to build a restaurant. We're trying to build a place that people want to go to.

22:32And the idea, the short pitch, is that when you walk into the restaurant, we've got you. It's a big hug. You know, it feels great. It looks great. It smells great. We talked about, you know, in a real restaurant, a real hamburger joint in America, there's really no music. No. Most of them have no music, so we're going to have no music. People are kind of like, what do you mean? It's like we're not walking to a party. You're walking to a place where you can get a quick meal or take your time. Who knows? But the idea is you're walking to a place that feels authentic. Instead of having music, you know, we're talking about having, you know, it's going to be a bus tray.

22:59And, you know, people are going to be putting forks and plates in the bus tray. And that's the music. Yeah, or the grill. I mean, the song of the grill. Yeah. The hissing sound of a grill is nothing better than that. The calling of orders. Calling of orders, yeah. The stuff in the bus tray, the sound of the griddle. People talking, like the murmur at the restaurant. That'll be the music. Three burgers on the menu. We haven't discussed the rest. So there's got to be a french fry, I would imagine, maybe not. And then what else are we talking about? Are we talking about what kind of drinks are we talking about?

23:25Because it's really, there's a real art to putting this menu together. It's true. So a lot of what we're doing, I say most of what we're doing on the menu is going to be some nod to something else in America. Whether it's a diner or some other restaurant. The drink menu is going to be interesting because it's almost larger than the food menu. Yeah. We have a weird, I don't know, this came up, somebody else asked me this, but we have a very substantial milk program going on. We don't have milkshakes. So I started talking about egg creams and milk, and someone said, oh, that's a lot of milk. I said, yeah, we have chocolate milk, regular milk.

23:53We're going to have a mocha milk, which is a combination of coffee syrup and chocolate syrup. We're obviously going to have the Rhode Island coffee milk. It's going to be on the menu as well. Chocolate egg cream. We're going to have Yoo-Hoo on the menu. Oh, death, death. We have wine and beer. We have a wine and beer license, but we're only going to have one beer on the menu. It's Miller High Life in a bottle. Wow, that's cool. So, like, you're definitely – that's for those one or two people a day who want Miller High Life. Yeah, exactly. Or more. Or maybe like a couple hundred. Yeah, we're not opening a bar.

24:20We're opening a place that sells burgers that, oh, I'd like to have a beer with my burger. There you go. There you go. But definitely not the drive. Okay, we haven't, you've been, have you been ducking the question about the French fries? No, well, I'm not a big fry guy. I've never, I've always said if you, you know, it's, most people don't get fries right. It's just the way it goes. Yeah. Except for McDonald's. But they actually do get it right. I agree. That was like not, that was like a legitimate statement. McDonald's French fries are the best. They have worked the science behind the fry perfectly.

24:47I agree. There's no question about that. problems to be done. Problem is the rest of the BS. Exactly. But to that end, there's very few places that actually make great fries. So we're going to do our best. I've got a bunch of ideas we're going to do. I'm staying ahead of that. I'm letting my restaurant guys deal with that one. They're going to, and they currently have their own restaurant that has great fries. They own a chain Snippers. Oh, of course. And Snippers makes great fries. So I'm not too worried about the fry part. They also like wisely put their restaurant in the New York Times building, which is like the center of media in the world.

25:18I mean, nice work. Well, I said to them, I said, I want to work with these guys because that's pretty gutsy. I mean, but see, back when they opened, there was not a lot by Port Authority. It's true. They were smart. Yeah, yeah. No, they're very smart guys. They also owned Hale and Hardy Soups as well before that. Oh, man. So these are good guys. Oh, the mighty have fallen. That used to be so good. I know. It's true. It used to be so good. They're great guys. The guys I'm working with are really, really fantastic guys. And I know that I'm working with good guys because they want me to build the restaurant that I want to build.

25:48They're not trying to build their restaurant. They want me to build a restaurant of my choosing with them. I mean that's the best operators. They need to let the chef cook. Let the guy cook. Shake Shack fries are kind of trash, right? I'm not going to get into crap-talking Shake Shack. All right, George. You've definitely not taken the bait. You're a good man. Sorry. But they really are. I mean, really, really a weak link in that chain. I'll just say that at the beginning, they were bad, and they knew it, and they fixed them. So they're better. That's what I'll say. They're not better. I mean, as I said, my number one burger in New York is Shake Shack.

26:23Can't say anything about the fries. No, I actually like Shake Shack a lot. I'm not a fry guy, so. No, that makes sense. One more question about restaurants. Have you done any cool consulting projects recently? I know I've read your bio. You travel probably every continent, maybe. You've been to all over the world. Yes. I've done a bunch. I can't talk about the actual clients I've worked with. Of course. Let's just say they're huge. Yeah, yeah. What are they asking you then? They're trying to turn their corporate products into attainable things that people can understand and really believe in. And that's the hardest part.

26:58That's the hardest part is trying to get a larger company to dial back and think the way, you know, that I would think, which is, you know, sort of grassroots, simple in a way. It's very hard to do for a big company. I won't give you an example, so I'd love to give you an example. I can only imagine the names, the logos, the smells. But I got to ask you, like, for even smaller chains, what's, like, some of the errors that they're making that you're trying to fix when you go in there to, like, be the doctor, the burger doctor? They're just trying to keep the quality up. It's really difficult to keep up quality, I believe, when you start to expand.

27:34And trying to feel like the original location is always the biggest challenge. And Shake Shack did that for many, many years. I mean, I've been to Shake Shack in Japan. I've been to Shake Shack everywhere. And I feel like it's a very similar product no matter where you go. And that's good. But in a good way, it's a similar product, not in a Donald's bad way where it's just a cookie cutter of the same crap, unfortunately. No, I mean, that's the thing. The seasoning level is what I think about Shake Shack. They really nail the seasoning. Yeah, that's Mark. My chef, that's, you know, culinary director, Mark Rosati.

28:04He's very good at that kind of stuff. Oh, yeah, Mark's cool. I met him a few times. Now, I want to transition. So this was all talk about restaurant hamburgers, but there's a whole other universe out there. And it's the burger at home. And my first question, George, is what is more important, the meat or the other things? Ooh. Wow. I mean, I would say definitely the meat is more important because you can have a, you know, sort of a crappy white bun and good meat and still have a great burger. That's the way it goes. Interesting. Okay. So I – You can't do the other way around. You can't have crappy meat.

28:34I agree with you. I mean, I was thinking this through when I wrote the question. He was like, what would I answer? Because I don't know, but I feel like if you have great meat, you can sabotage it so quickly by a bad bun choice, for example. Well, of course, yes. Yeah. I mean, if you put it on like something silly like Portuguese bread, I mean, you could ruin it. Or the wrong overpriced brioche or something. You can ruin a burger pretty quickly with sugary brioche. But if you're just trying to, you know, if you have cheap mustard, cheap cheese and cheap bun and you have great beef, you still have a pretty decent product.

29:06So let's hear about the best way that you would suggest making at home, which you write about in your books and you've covered on your shows. Let's take me through – I think we will start with the meat because it is the most important. Is there like an ideal meat plan that you want to suggest for an at-home cook? Yes. It's hard to find in supermarkets unless you're buying very specific brands. But a 75-25 ground chuck, chuck primal is the best way to go. Yeah, and we're talking about the lean to the fat. We're talking about the percentages, right? Right. 75 % lean, 25 % fat. And it's usually ground twice.

29:39If you go to a butcher and they have a chuck primal and you want them to grind it for you, if they put the chuck primal right through the grinder once, it's not enough. You have to go through a second time, especially if you're going to be smashing burgers. Oh, definitely. So can you – I mean calling out getting 25 % fat would be amazing. Can you do this at Whole Foods? I don't know at Whole Foods. I actually don't know. But there are – I work with a company called Schweid. Shout out Schweid. And Schweid does do – they have a bunch of their blends – not blends, but their grinds are 75-25 chuck or whatever you want actually.

30:08Yeah. I mean nothing's worse than 90-10, right? You can't do that. I don't know what that's for. I mean a light spaghetti sauce maybe. Maybe. I mean, fat is flavor. It really is where a lot of the flavor is. I mean, beef, it should taste steely, irony, but it really should have that deep, that unctuous, you know, fat in there as well. Yeah, you said the band word of taste. I appreciate it though. I mean, I must say, like strip with that iron blood taste, you need that. You need that like really, or Chuck, you just need that backbone, but it's delivered through the fat. Yeah, it's true. It's that combination, right?

30:45Absolutely, yeah. Rendered fat is a very specific flavor. There is some science behind that too. Yeah, and I'll link to your books in the show notes because we can go into that. What about bun choice? Because, you know, the potato bun has had its moment, obviously. Yes. Is that your choice? It is my choice only because it's a denser bun. Basically, it's a denser bun. It's a better delivery method for the burger because it's going to hold together no matter what. If you have a larger patty or a smaller patty or a thinner patty or a greasy patty, a lot of condiments, it'll hold together better than most buns.

31:20Yeah, those yeasty ones that you get that are like cheaper, oftentimes they kind of – they sog up, right? They're just bad. Yeah, or they sog up or – that's a funny thing. Sometimes they're not cut in the right spot. Oh, yeah, right. Some bun companies will not – so the top is called the crown. The bottom is called the heel. Yeah. And the heel sometimes gets cut too low. If you put your burger on a thin heel, it just, it vanishes. Yeah. It disappears. Your hand, you can like feel the heat of the, that's a bad situation. All right. We're talking cheese. There has to be cheese on a hamburger, right?

31:52Absolutely. Thank you. Confirming. Those cheese on a hamburger, cheese on a cheeseburger. So what's your cheese choice? American. Oh, thank you, brother. This is just, you're my guy. I love this. Well, there's some scientific reasoning behind that. It tastes great. Most American cheese has twice the sodium content of – like if cheddar has half of American cheese, for example, in terms of sodium content. That does actually go a long way to flavoring. People get freaked out by American cheese saying it's no dairy. It's not cheese. Well, it's true. It is a bit of a science project, but it is – it's designed to melt, first of all, which makes your cooking process a lot easier.

32:28It takes the thinking out of, you know, will my cheese melt? You know, Swiss will melt and cheddar will melt, but you have to think about it. You do, and it's a melting—that's the task, right, is melting. Is there anything worse than mozzarella on a cheeseburger? So a lot of people—there are countries in the world that use mozzarella on a cheeseburger, especially in South America. There are—you do find their version of mozzarella. Argentina, right? Yeah, exactly. They also make pizzas, and they also put it on a burger. Yeah. They love their mozzarella, but it's not a great—no. There's not a whole lot of flavor, unfortunately.

32:59Yeah, it's a tough hang. Provolone is definitely a tough hang. I mean, I love that you said American. I think cheddar seems to be the more common choice. Right. But what is American cheese? But American cheese is only unaged cheddar. Exactly. That's all it is. Let's get the one that melts and hits that. Right. Okay. A few things. So we've talked bun. We've talked patty. We've talked cheese. So now we're talking condiments. We've gone over your stance on ketchup. What is – sorry, mayonnaise and ketchup. What should we put on a burger? Mayonnaise is fantastic on a burger. It's wonderful because it does go the same direction as the protein that you're eating, the burger.

33:38It works with the burger. Mustard also works very well. Special sauce. I mean, special sauces do actually – the reason it works is they do have mayo in them. That's why they work. It's why they work. The base is mayo, so why don't you just go for the mayo? Can we talk about a preferred mayonnaise, a brand that you like to put on your hamburger? I definitely can, but no one can get it, unfortunately. It's a food service brand called Admiration. Whoa. What do you mean no one can get it? You can go to a food store. You can go to Restaurant Depot. You can order it from your local distributor, but you can't actually get it.

34:08It's called admiration. Admiration. Yeah, it costs the same price, actually a little bit less than Hellman's, but it's a great, great mayo. It's a little creamier. Oh, yeah. It's called heavy. I think it's heavy mayo. It's a strange name, but I actually gave my mother a spoonful. I can actually eat mayo about the spoonful. Sorry. Oh, I'm with you. Oh, good. Okay. Yeah. I'm with you. Hellman's is a little bit too, sometimes can be a little too, like, almost kind of cheesy. Yeah, I agree. It's a little sweet. I think Duke's is still my choice for industrial. I do think there's a chain in Wisconsin called Cousins.

34:42They did subs. Oh, yeah. Their mayonnaise is, it's special. They might be using admiration. Admiration. I'm, like, definitely going to check this out. Something to know, though, if you're in South America and you're having mayonnaise and you're having Hellman's, it's actually a different recipe. And it actually tastes better, I think. Wow. Yeah. So that South American Hellman's is what you got to get. South American Hellman's actually tastes like admiration mayo. Love that. Okay, biggest burger mistake that you make when making a burger at home? The biggest mistake I always tell people is that if you're making for a lot of people, you're talking about just by yourself.

35:12Oh, good call. I like the follow-up. Let's say like when you're hosting, because I think you're right. Like there's definitely a different scenario when you're hosting. When you're hosting, the biggest mistake is two big mistakes. Number one, you've got to be ready. If you're not ready, you're going to screw everything up, which means mise en place, which means, you know, it's the French word for, you know, things in its place, right? Put in place. And the idea is you want to put everything together so you don't have to think about stuff. You want to make sure you've got a stack of cheese. You've got all the – your grill is going to be the right temperature and everything.

35:39Get it ready. The second thing to do is when you're actually getting ready to make burgers to stop drinking. I tell people all the time, the way you really screw up a barbecue is when you are drunk and you're not paying attention. You overcook, undercook. You forgot the cheese. Oh, no. It was the cheese. And that's where you make your biggest mistakes. when you are not paying attention. It makes perfect sense. You need to be focused. It's also a pretty quick cook time. Yes, thank you for saying that. This is a good point. So if you can put down the drink, you know, for the 10 minutes it takes to make magic, then people are going to walk away going, oh, wow, that was amazing.

36:13How'd you do that? As opposed to being like, oh, he can't cook. He can't cook. The question about grill grates versus flat iron, is there any reason to use a grate? I feel flat top is how I want to make my burgers at home. Flat top is the easiest way. That's the one place where you really can't go wrong. It's really hard to screw up a burger in a pan because think of it as almost like a burger confit. You're cooking the burger in its own fat, and it's not going to go anywhere. You don't get the flame-licked, smoky flavor you get from a grill, but it's much easier to cook in a pan. I tell people if you want the smoky flavor, take a cast iron pan and put it on a grill.

36:48Put it on the grill or just finish it on the open flame if you're going to be like if you're doing corn or doing other things. Yeah, yeah. But like you get those like flare-ups with the fat coming down. You also just don't get the – you don't keep the fat, right? You're not keeping that 25 percent fat. It does stay there, but the fat becomes a different flavoring device. It falls onto the coals and explodes literally and it becomes airborne. If you've got a grill with a cover, what's happening is those airborne particles are falling back onto the burger and making it taste like basically exploded beef fat.

37:18Oh, man. That's where the flavor comes from. I mean, yeah, it's a more skilled proposition or a proposition for a skilled cook to cook in an open flame. Not easy. No, people think it's the easiest way to go. Your weekend warrior, oh, I'm going to cook on the grill. And I'll tell you right now, if you can cook on a grill and it tastes fantastic, you have unlocked something that most people can't do. Most people can't. And it's a total misfire, misjudge. I love this. George Mutz, I could ask you so many more questions. I appreciate your time. I really do. I want to close by asking you, you're obviously a hamburger tastemaker.

37:47You're a tastemaker. You know what you're talking about. Is there another food or an item or something you collect? Is there something you have a passion for that you consider yourself a tastemaker? Whoa. Tricky question. Yeah, I know the question is tricky, but I feel like you have a lot of interest. So the reality is that I cannot travel anywhere in the world without going to a supermarket and going shopping. And I'll buy everything. I will buy – I just bought a crawfish plate that says something like pinch, suck, shuck or something. I forgot what it said. What does it say now? Well, I bought the crawfish plate, but I also got the crawfish seasoning that you only get.

38:28You love souvenirs I'm hearing. I come back with – I mean I'll post on Instagram stories posts with everything I come back with. People go, what is wrong with you? I'll come back with a separate bag just for food items and food things and food books. And I cannot get enough of the stuff from supermarkets or from friends that give me food on the road that you just can't get anywhere else. So, I mean, but do you have like a collection? Do you – Well, I mean a lot of stuff is – you know, it's perishable. Oh, right. We have to eat it all. But then we're actually forced to relive that moment that we had on the road or try to mix the ingredients with something else.

39:02I've gotten to the point where I do actually travel with Ziploc bags and bubble wrap. And sometimes I do travel. If I'm on the road in a car, I'll travel with my vacuum sealer. Oh, that's so smart. And coolers. Really smart. What time did you schedule this summer that you're traveling? Well, we're starting to work on the next book. So I'm not supposed to talk about it yet, but I will. The next book is Hamburger America. It's the fourth version of Hamburger America. So I do have to get on the road and do that sort of thing. I'm going to Maine a couple of weeks from now. And I'm sure we're going to eat the stuff you can get up there inexpensively, like lobster.

39:32Yeah. But you'll hit some burger spots too, I'm sure. Oh, we have to. Way up and way back down. Well, that'll be exciting. I can't let you leave without talking about the Food Film Festival. You founded this. I attended maybe two or three times. I thought it was so fantastic. Oh, thank you. I wish it would come back. Can it come back? It can come back. The story, the short story is that we were obviously during the pandemic, it was impossible. Yeah. The three things that we needed were audience we couldn't have, chefs from around the world we couldn't have, and then we needed the cooperation of restaurants.

40:02Yeah, yeah, of course. Which we didn't want to ask. Real fun parties, too, you would always throw around those events. Yeah. Very, very complicated, but so much fun. And when people were in sync and it was working, it was perfect. It was so much fun. But unfortunately, we got sidelined during the pandemic and then after even. And now I'm opening a restaurant, so things have slowed down. We haven't forgotten about it. People like you have told me that we need to have it back. Someone just told me yesterday, you know, where did it go? They asked me where to go. But we're going to bring it back somehow, somehow soon, hopefully.

40:31Yeah. Not this year. I mean, a lot of the content, a lot of the directors that you featured, I recall, were folks that would go on to produce beautiful films. I remember a couple that I saw on Netflix. I was like, wow, I remember these doing shorts at the Food Film Festival. Yeah. We try to find the people who are making films who are not young, but they're young in the business and they don't really know where they fit in just yet. And we like to say that we ourselves, the producers of the festival, are a band of misfits. and we try to find the filmmakers and the chefs that are their own band of misfits.

41:03And it works well with us. We play well with them. We're not trying to support corporate stuff. It really is a very sort of grassroots moment that involves the intersection of food and film. It's really exciting. George Motz, thank you for joining This Is Taste. Thanks for having me.

41:24This Is Taste is hosted by Eliza Abarbanel and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumber. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things that are happening.