283: Michael Symon

25:42I just wanted to see if you would. Old school. Old school. Is that Grey Koontz? Was that Ariel? It wasn't. No, it was Charlie Palmer. Desert Palmer. This was the chef de cuisine whose name is escaping me right now. I'll think of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, and at the time I was salty as hell. But I did learn so much in those, like, those brief stages. And it taught me discipline, you know. It taught me a lot of discipline. And it taught me that like sometimes you have to, you know, sometimes you do have to run through a wall to get to the other side of it. And, you know, the kitchen business is tough.

26:23I mean, and I think that's one thing that the bearer has done a very good job of showing that, you know, it is TV and it's a little dramatized. But this is a very difficult business, you know, that is high stress. You know, I don't think you could talk to anybody in the restaurant business that doesn't have nightly dreams about the restaurant business. You know, it's like, you know, Liz is a psalm and always ran the front of the house and I ran the back. And I mean, it was hilarious. You know, we wake up in the morning and she's like she'd be like, oh, my God, I all night I dreamed about I couldn't turn table six, you know, and I'm like all night I dreamt about like, you know, I couldn't I couldn't clear the border.

27:06I lost. I lost. Yeah, always. Always. And I think you just have them forever. I still have them. Yeah. I still have them. It's more stressful than doing television, working the line? Yeah, different muscle. Different muscle. I mean, I'm equally as tired, but it's a different muscle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to talk about Simply Simon Suppers, your new book. And I just want to get a sense of you've written several books with us here at Clarkson Potter. But let's get a sense about this book and what do you want your readers to take away from it? I want them to know that the way that I was raised and the way that I continue to live is, you know, I was raised every Sunday my mom cooked and people came over for dinner.

27:45Six, eight, 10, 12, 14, dependent. And it was a Sunday thing. But it was always basically the same dinner. It was, you know, cavatel, Sunday sauce, gravy, whatever you want to call it. We call it sauce. The same salad, garlic bread with cheese. you know Italian and Greek cookies and people came over. What's the salad? The salad was romaine cucumbers tomato feta cheese black olives and oregano vinaigrette. Yeah. So I mean like truly a perfect salad. I mean you gotta have salt. Oh my God. It's like herbs and salt. Briny salt and herbs. Yeah totally. And usually like a bunch of fresh dill in there too.

28:28So we still do it now. It's not always Sunday. But we always have a dinner during the week for friends and family. And it could be, again, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 20. So the basis of the book is 52 meals for the entire year, including holidays. And if you were to come to my house for 52 straight weeks once a week for dinner, you would eat one of the items that are in this book or one of the menus that are in this book. We grouped it into menus. you could cherry pick as you see fit. But these are the ones that we did. Like we actually made the dinner, had friends over, ate. This is going in the book.

29:10I love that. Had the dinner, made the dinner. That was your process. Had friends over, ate. This is going in the book, you know. And then, you know, all the holidays, how we like to do holidays. So this, out of all the books I've done, this is the biggest. It's about 180 recipes. um and but i think this is the book that is if you really want to see an inside look on how myself and liz and my family look at life through food this book is the greatest example yeah and menu planning is so difficult for many i mean me included like it's we can't put things together naturally so to have like menu planning built in is cool yeah and and i love the holiday section.

29:54I love, you know, I love that you could go, Oh, Thanksgiving, here we go. I'm going to make Simon's menu, you know, like, um, and we broke it out through like the times of the year. So there's recipes for when it's hot out, you know, little chill out, colder out, you know, so you could go through it like that too. And, and people are going to develop their favorites. I mean, I'm funny in that sense. I love cooking a different menu theme every week. Um, but you know, Certainly people could find their favorites and go more of the style that my mom went. On Sunday, I make this. My mom was an incredible cook.

30:28But the funny thing is, it's like, oh, Wednesday was lasagna. Sunday was sauce. Thursday was pastichio. Friday was some kind of fish. I always knew what it was going to be. That's great. I can't let this pass. We share a friend and photographer, Ed Anderson, at ShotMyBookFoodIQ. You've worked with him on a lot of books. Let's just shout Ed out. Let's just do it. Ed's the greatest. I mean, he's done, I think it's my last four, maybe five books. Comes, hangs out with us at the house. He's so chill, but just does beautiful, beautiful work. I am, I'm blessed. So Doug Trattner's done seven out of my eight books as my co-author.

31:05Ed has done four out of my, four or five of my last books with photography. Susan Spungin, who is the greatest food style to ever put two hands on food. There's no one that could style food like her. She sat in that chair. We had her on like a month ago on the podcast. I love talking to Susan. I mean, she has styled most of my cookbooks. She's great. She's incredible, you know. So, like, I've worked hard to, like, work on assembling a good team with Potter. And we just keep the same team because I think we make good books. You really do. And I'm going to link to the show notes. Pick that book up.

31:42Check out Michael's work. Let's close. On This Is Taste, we ask guests about their discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid-fire, fast and furious taste check. Are you ready? I was born ready. You're born ready. The best morning pastry with coffee? The best morning pastry with coffee. Oh, gosh. The Greek cookies, kulakia. The best dessert, hands down. Best dessert, hands down, coconut cake. The best bread? Best bread is an Italian seeded semolina loaf. Man, Italian bread does not get enough credit. It's so good. It's good, man. It's so good. Sandwiches. You have a garlic bread.

32:21I agree. I love all the fancy breads, too, but, man, a seeded semolina loaf. Come on. Yeah, from a nice local Italian bakery. The best. Yeah. The most underrated piece of kitchen equipment. Most underrated. Food mill. The most overrated piece of kitchen equipment. Sous vide machine. Yeah. We can just throw those away. So stupid. Agree. Just because, like, you know what? it's not worth the time for a home cook. No, the reason people use it in restaurants and they should, I don't use it, we never use it in our restaurants because it doesn't teach people how to cook is to protect their cooks from in France they used to use it when the Americans would come over they'd go put this in the bag stick in the water so you don't screw it up.

32:58But I don't know, learn how to cook. Love that. Your favorite cookbook of all time? Oh god. Prune. Yeah. Writing recipes. Brilliant. Do you hang out with her? I do. Gabrielle? Yeah. Or Zuni. Pruner Zuni. Those are my two favorites. Zuni has been mentioned on this show. This is probably the fifth time. Yeah. Why do you like the book so much? Another great storyteller, beautiful recipes, miss her dearly, and I love that restaurant. Yep. A few more. Favorite recent cookbook discovery? I mean, this is very recent, but I've really enjoyed looking through Alex Guanishelli's new book. Yeah, it's really good.

33:38You know, I've known her daughter since she was born, basically. So those two doing a book together is really fun to me, and I've enjoyed looking through it. That's cool. A couple more. Your favorite vegetable? Favorite vegetable would have to be kohlrabi. Your favorite sandwich? Favorite sandwich? Oh, a classic New York egg and cheese on a roll. Yeah. When I moved out here, I'd never had that. It's truly an East Coast. It is. I'm like, how did the rest of the country not get this memo? Love it so much. Michael Simon, thank you so much for joining This Is Taste.

34:23Eric Rinkle, thank you for joining This Is Taste. Yeah, thanks for having me. Well, I mean, your show is like the talk of our podcast, of our industry, and a big part of why the show is so important to us is that you get the details right. And a big part of those details is the set and the cookbooks that we see on the show and how the kitchen looks and how the front of house looks. And you as a set decorator on the bear are responsible for this task along with your team. So I really wanted to have you on. I really appreciate you being here. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. I'm excited to talk about it.

35:02You know, it's it was it's a unicorn experience. It was the best thing I've ever worked on. You know, sometimes I think I don't know if I'll ever work on something that is as great of an experience, you know, just well-rounded. So let's get into exactly how do you what is a set decorator? What are you responsible for? Do you get the scripts well ahead of time? And what's the lead time like? And just take us through what you're actually doing to get these, you know, these sets ready. So it varies project to project on this show, which is kind of rare is we got all the scripts up front, all 10 episodes, which is great.

35:43You know, I work for the production designer and Marie Vesky is our production designer and she works closely with Chris Storer and Andrew, our cinematographer. And they come up with a design and idea lighting for all of our sets, how it's going to look, you know, script by script. And she portrays to me what the design is, what they want it to look like. and then I work closely with my team. I have a buyer, Kathy, my coordinator, Brandy, and my lead, Jeff, and his crew. And we find everything that's needed. We source it, we install it. And we work closely with, this season, we work closely with Coco, who I know has been on the show, and Maddie Matheson.

36:37And we came up with a fully functional restaurant. you know, down to water was running. They were actually cooking on the set. So it's about bringing Chris's world to life and making it, you know, the best it can be. Yeah. I mean, really, it's clear that the actors are given these tools when they're filming and that we're not doing like CGI or anything, you know, too trickery. We're actually seeing like fire lit up and we're actually getting a sense that cooking is happening with these characters and it's coming to life. What's the biggest challenge with cooking and with filming with with real life fire?

37:22I mean, there's no real challenge with cooking with live fire. I mean, there's Maggie, who is our special effects coordinator, and she I mean, off. So to understand it, this restaurant is built in the middle of a studio. So it's just like a big warehouse in the middle is this interior of the restaurant. And so she ran gas lines. And I mean, we have a fire marshal on whenever we're doing live fire, but we're always making sure it's safe. That's the main priority. I mean, the only thing we didn't have running is a deep fryer because that is probably one of the scariest things in the kitchen from what a lot of people have told me.

38:06and we don't have an actual working ansel system so we always have people around that are ready to put out fires but we always practice uh being safe and if an actor is uncomfortable with someone something i know they try and help them and work through it i mean but there's no hand doubles in the show i mean it's all the cast actually cooking learning from what i understand a lot of them in the off season stodged at actual restaurants yeah yeah i feel like i've heard in talking to coco a bit uh and io about it it seems like there was a lot of a lot of training a lot of method happening with the actors take us to a set that maybe we might as a viewer might not realize how much work went into it like what was one of the more difficult or challenging or involved sets that you built um and to be clear season one and season two oh i mean season one I mean, that whole rest, I mean, besides the pilot, that whole restaurant was built the interior and I don't know if a lot of people know that but we built first season fully functional restaurant.

39:14And a lot went into that because we bought a lot of used equipment so a lot of it had to get serviced and redone this season we got a lot of new equipment. and sometimes it was a little outside of some of the people that we work with purview of how to install this equipment so there was some difficulties with that like I remember there's a day we were trying to use the gelato machine we got but we had all the amperage and electrical messed up on it or season one we I had set dressers who worked for me they dressed the That's installing a functioning soda machine, which is really messy and no one had ever done it before.

39:59Wow, what a challenge. Yeah, so syrup everywhere, really gross. Guys were sticky all the time, running water lines to it, watching like dad YouTube videos. Wait, so wait, back to the soda machine. So, yeah, first, like what is this like Coke or Pepsi or are you just doing whatever? And what's the point of having a working soda machine and having to actually install real soda? We did it because we always wanted the actors to feel like the space was real. So, you know, if Richie or someone in front of house is filling up soda, we want the actual soda machine to be functioning. I don't know if it ever I don't think we ever saw it working, but it was always an option.

40:43I always try to give them the world. You know, I want everyone to have the tools I need, even that there's an ATM machine in the front of the house, which we I hooked up to Internet and it could have been a functioning ATM machine if we wanted it to. There's a real obsessiveness right here in the best possible way, because you are serving the actors and the producers and the directors. And you're just you're putting all this effort into making a real universe. I respect the hell out of it. Yeah, I just want them to have everything they need to make the best possible product. And, you know, in storytelling, I don't want them to come in and be like, why is this thing not working?

41:25It would be great. You know, I'd love this action. It's great to give them everything they need, or, you know, try to think outside the box of what could they ask for, you know, offer options if something's not working. Right. So and that's the best part of the show is it is sort of a collaboration. There's never a time when Chris's door was shut to me. You know, if I had an idea or I wanted to talk to Chris about something, he was always open and loved to look at things and hash it out. You know what? One of the sets that really sticks with me is in season one. It's Carmi's office in the restaurant.

42:04like to me and I've written books with chefs and spend a lot of time in restaurants and and in those offices like working on books with them and it's so accurate just to see obviously the mess a lot of analog like like receipts and invoices on paper but also like you know empty bottles of alcohol like samples like let me take me take us through the the creation of that office space Yeah. So that office space, mostly it was like remnants of his brother, Mikey, you know, and it's I mean, it's a mess. He never cleaned it, you know, kind of walking into this huge mess. And I mean, I have childhood memories of my father owned a pizza place in New York City when I was a kid and going down to the basement to the office and it being one of the scariest places I think I can remember of going, you know, dark, messy.

43:00I mean, this isn't as dark, but it's it's a mess. It's chaos. And part of that is, you know, sugar coming into it and not being able to find the files she needs. And we even went as far as if that breaker box was ever opened, we installed fake breakers that were wired poorly, taped badly. All the conduit runs actually have cable running through them just in the off chance when they're remodeling or something that someone pulls it out. So it was we tried to fill everything in case anyone opened something and everything was pretty intentional. That's amazing. And so you're saying like when they are shooting scenes, you know, the directors would allow the cast to improvise movements once in a while.

43:44So you wanted to give them the opportunity or the director to make that decision to open the breaker box and actually have something like look like it's shot. Yeah, we I never we never want. I think this might be the industry across the board is anytime we do a kitchen or any sort of place with cabinets and drawers, we always want to fill those drawers because there is the off chance that the actor is like oh i want to open this drawer and then they open it there's nothing right yeah it becomes like the middle school production of our town where like you're opening drawers and it's not you know nothing's there yeah it's it's it's it's just respect to what you you all put into the show and you know one of the biggest uh takeaways from many of us in in food and we we publish books here is is the cookbooks and we i really wanted to talk to you about you know the cookbooks featured on the show in both seasons you know they're in carmy's um apartment they're in the in the office they're in sydney's apartment so when you were thinking about the cookbooks that you were going to feature on the show first off how did you pick them and second half where did you buy them from so season one uh i kind of you know we i found online, a lot of blogs, a lot of articles written by chefs saying books that inspired them, books they recommend.

45:05I worked closely with Chris and he had a little list. And season one, we kind of just generated these books that we thought he would have. Ones that are kind of flexes at times, you know, something from a collector standpoint, ones that could have been friends of his on and even ones that we were like well he probably wouldn't have bought this but someone was like hey uh i know you like to cook here's a cookbook you know kind of a gift so it we tried to do a wide array oh and then season two we tried to build on that i mean i i read articles by people talking about the cookbooks from season one and things they wish they saw and i then went out and bought those things that they wish they saw uh and then coco and i we would facetime she'd be in la i'd be in chicago prepping and she would go to a rare bookstore and you know she'd show me some books that she thought they'd have and we we get them i dealt with uh now serving in la yeah in chicago we have uh it's not small but it's a it's a used bookstore called myopic where we got a lot of uh like family cookbooks uh so maybe something weird or more local to chicago so uh and then i i purchased a lot of books off eight books ones that uh weren't able to get from those three stores uh so a lot of rare books there a lot of rare books yeah and you know i loved seeing the last course uh claudia fleming's book out serious eater from ed levine franklin barbecue momofuku milk bar there's a josh nyan book in there it really had great taste and of course it was you and chris and coco maddie all the all the guys coming together yeah yeah it was it's it's just a big collaboration and at times it it feels like you're hanging out with your friends all day and you can talk to them about anything about the creative process and you know i would go up to Chris.

47:09I'm like, what do you want for this? You know, is there anything you want? Even the actors, I would, they're so approachable and so nice. I would say, Hey, is there something you would like in your station that would make you feel comfortable, you know, make you feel more at home? So, yeah. Well, Ken Concepcion from, uh, from now serving in LA, he said, he noted in an article, he's surprised he didn't see Harold McGee's on food or the Sander Cats, the art of fermentation, though. I thought I saw that. Um, did you consider these titles? well i know for sure we had art of fermentation uh season one because there's that whole uh scene with marcus and his fermentation station right and i'm pretty sure he's referencing that book yeah uh the other book i can't remember because now it's so many books i i have two excel documents that i've created just with every book we've bought so oh man i think it's close to 500 books So let me ask you, who owns those books and where are those books right now?

48:10So right now those books are in storage and library carts. And I mean, honestly, it's all owned by the studio. So FX, they're probably Bob Iger's books, I guess. Yeah. If he wants to furnish his new mansion soon, once the show's done. But yeah, I mean, it all belongs to the show. in between seasons uh everything comes apart that whole restaurant came apart uh it's in it's just stacked up all the all the equipment is palletized just on shelves just uh waiting for season three waiting for season three waiting for the strike to end let's talk about the strike a little bit i think it we can't let that pass that the writer's strike and the actor's strike affects the production of the show you're you're likely on pause i would imagine or some sort of pause what's what's your take on the strike and and how are you doing yeah i mean it's it it's not just the show i mean it affects so many people i uh i mean we were chatting a little before the interview i mean right now i'm we have a workforce of i think i i saw something it was like 170 000 workers that are not writers not uh not actors that are out of work because of the writer's and all those people are struggling.

49:34I have people hitting me up several times a day because they're about to lose their health insurance because they're not working. You know, we have no money coming in. I know people are actually leaving the business because they can't afford to not to stay. They're selling off their equipment, their tools, looking for other avenues of income because they just can't afford to wait. and it's it's it's rattling it's it's sad uh yeah yeah it's it's a tough situation and you know we hope we hope the parties can come together and get get everyone working again and get everyone insured again um let's get a little into the actual process because i want to know like are you on set when they're filming scenes and and how how does it work if you're on like i think season one was shot relatively quickly like under two months i think is what i've heard but um season two is probably more longer but how does that work like are you are you working ahead of time are you in different sections of this warehouse are you how much location work are you doing so we we film at a studio in chicago it's called cine space uh it's got we have several stages so this season we had two stages that we had sets built on we actually had the old restaurant right across the hall from the new restaurant so while they were building while they were filming on the old restaurant, we were in process of building a new one.

51:02And they would come over from time to time and shoot scenes of the actors in the process of this new restaurant. But for all intents and purposes, we were installing a real restaurant. And Chris and I, one day, we were just staring at each other and we're like, if people knew that we opened a restaurant in two months they would it would be crazy because that's how long it took us to build this new restaurant i mean we didn't have actually have to follow codes and inspections but it was still the way yeah the way it came together was real fast and normally for a half hour show the studios they it's kind of on a schedule you know if you're doing a half hour show it's usually four and a half days of filming so with no breaks in between so it's fast yeah you know once you start going there's no stopping uh and we did two more episodes this season so it was a little longer but uh still it it's fast it goes by real fast well that's that's probably part of the the intensity and it lets the actors like really you know dissolve into this world and and feel like they are opening a restaurant the fact that you film that quickly and um right you know one one one scene i love from from episode from season two is when i think it's uh sydney's entered entered the new restaurant space and she's talking to carmy and like the walls drop oh yeah that that must have been hardest film that was a really cool scene yeah uh it was it was cool i mean that that's all something we you know we talk about ahead of time we prep it uh i mean There were times when there was a couple of guys they work on the weekend come in and set it up, but film videos, show it to Chris.

52:53As long as everyone's happy, you know, work with stunts. And there were scenes where Richie's actually using a saw and cutting through the wall. We tried to make everything as practical as possible for them. Yeah, I'm sure the noise of a saw with the actors, it really helps them get into the mood, into the vision of that director. Yeah, and they were all so great about it. I mean, even season one, I mean, we did that one shot and it's everyone knows what they're doing when they show up. Chris shows up an hour early every day. He's so dedicated to it. He goes through the script. I mean, they were doing maybe eight to 10 hour days, which is usually unheard of in our industry.

53:35Those are short days, right? Short days. But everyone's happy. You know, people have a life outside of it as well. Yeah. And it's all about that work-life balance, which is sometimes hard, which is why my union almost went on strike. What was it? Almost two years ago, because they were fighting for that work-life balance and getting rest. Let's talk about that one shot. It's season one, episode seven, I believe. And, you know, we've got the ticket machine that's really going crazy. That's a huge moment for the set decorator and the prop team. How did you get that to work? Were you involved in that scene?

54:15Oh, yeah. So I guess I never answered your question earlier, but usually I'm not on set. You know, I I am always prepping the next day. And for this specific thing, you know, for this shot, we came in on Monday. They did a actor rehearsal. Kim Tuesday did a tech rehearsal. On Wednesday, we shot it three times and they were done before lunch or four times. and uh i was behind the set on an ipad working the receipt printer so i was the receipt printer and we were just going to town i mean this is based off an actual thing that happened with coco but uh yeah it was nuts i mean we hooked we hooked everything up on a network and tried to make it as real as possible and i'm just sitting behind the set at a little folding table with an iPad just pressing buttons over and over again hitting print hitting print hitting print yeah and I mean you can hear it throughout the thing how crazy it is how intense and I mean the few times they did it I mean he actually slaps that uh that receipt printer and I think it was dead by the end of the fourth oh yeah he probably knew his last take so he's like really smashing that guy up I mean yeah and the only reason we did that fourth take uh which is the one that made it to screen is because the actors went to chris and they were like hey we want to do one more we think we can really kill this one and it was i'm not usually on set but it was great to be on set that day to see everyone working together and they're they knew they were doing something really cool so it was a true one take so you're saying there was little editing when you were on set for that there was a real one take essentially yeah yeah there was There was no editing.

56:05Yes, it was all one take. I mean, Gary, who camera guy is a beast, he did it and it was flawless. I mean, we had guys, I had two on set dressers, Anthony and Michael, and they were, there's a scene where they had to move that deli case. that's in between the front of house and the back of house. And that was on wheels. And they had to wheel it back into place as the camera walks by. So it was all like a big dance. You know, there were tables moving, things moving as the camera's moving around behind the camera. So for like a, for a level of flow, you mean when the shots just to like follow the track?

56:50Yeah. Get things out of the way. make it so it's one fluid shot. Well, that's the thing. And that's why we were crazy. That's why everyone, you know, when you see most kitchens on TV, they look weird and different because they don't look intimate because, you know, many don't realize you have to fit camera and you have to fit audio and a lot of people between, you know, in the shot or outside of the shot, sorry. I mean, so that's like amazing that you could actually make it feel intimate. it yeah we we that was part of the design marie talking with drew and coming up with the idea of how and where the camera is going to be and how much room we need to to leave for it so that's all part of the design i mean it's it's when you're in there in person it's a little bigger than a restaurant would normally be but on camera it feels so much smaller right uh it's a lot more packed but uh it was still really tight uh once you get all that equipment in there and even with the new restaurant that was a big thing uh placement placement of the island and all the equipment i mean we went through probably two weeks with maddie coco and the construction and all my vendors i was getting equipment with with getting everything so it fit because we wanted to we cheated a little, but we wanted the restaurant to be the same size.

58:15So making everything similar size to the original restaurant with fitting all this new equipment, this new Island, everything that they wanted and not feeling all on top of each other. Wow. And it even got to a point where we made a cardboard cutouts of the equipment before it arrived and we were placing it to scale and maddie and coco were going back and forth to the island of the equipment placing it to how it should be in an actual restaurant under the hood well yeah i think anybody in the industry sees how the brigade is set up and how the the you know chef working the past be it carmy or cousin it feels like there's an accuracy there let me ask you about the the second season's restaurant uh the last episode is the opening how did you decide on the aesthetics of this restaurant um and also just like the kitchen there did you have uh a mood board from with the director and with chris about the style of restaurant you wanted to build yeah we went through a few different versions and it kind of we tried to stay in the budget of what they actually had.

59:27And we tried to make it look like it was something that they actually did. We worked with a lot of local vendors who, of course, helped us out and cut us deals on things. So things that these people would actually do. And so we pulled the aesthetics from all over restaurants Chris loves, restaurants Matt, Maddie loves, restaurants I love and Marie loves. So Coco and I sat down with plateware. We would have Zoom calls before they were in town, and I would have samples of plates just out, and we'd go through it. We had the chefs from Kusama come in, and we talked about plateware. we even we filmed it ever this past season and we got the front of house manager to come in and kind of consult with us for a few days on on making it realistic the front of house flow where people would stand how much you know silverware we needed and glassware this is for the spoons episode with richie you're talking about that episode where yeah that the way that restaurant is set up, right?

1:00:42Yeah, so I believe her name's Amy, is front of house there. And she came on the set and was helping us, you know, helping us with calling out orders, making sure everything was authentic to how it would really be in that kind of environment. Wow. I mean, it's remarkable. And really, I love the aesthetic of the new restaurant that you opened in the last episode of season two. And I think there's a real growth there. And I want to close by asking you, I know you can't spoil anything with plot points, but like, what do you want to, what do you want to see on this, on this show of yours? Like, what do you want to see season three?

1:01:18Oh, season three? Yeah. I just want to see chaos. I mean, I want it to be pure chaos, which I, I mean, I'm hoping it's going to be because, you know, we, this season, this season mood wise, I feel like it was a lot different from the first season. Yeah. I think a lot of, some of the biggest complaints I got from people that were sometimes chefs were like, you know, I work at a restaurant full time. I don't want to go home and watch a show about a restaurant. I mean, some people loved it, felt that, you know, they could really relate to it. This season, I feel like was a lot more family drama, which I had people that work on my crew that, you know, would tear up when they were on set because there would be a scene that really hit close to home.

1:02:07and then you know it'd be nice to see maybe a culmination of those two worlds uh season three you know that uh the balance between family and work and the chaos between all the characters so that's what i'm hoping for well eric it's a remarkable show and so much credit to you and your team for making the the universe feel like a universe we recognize in in the food world and restaurant world and such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for joining. This is taste. Yeah, it was great talking to you. And, uh, you know, before I go, I just want to ask you, uh, we have a mutual friend Garrett and I've owed him pizza for over 15 years.

1:02:49If you can slip him some pizza for me, that would be amazing. Oh my God, Garrett. Yeah. I'll definitely shout out to Garrett. Uh, a good, a good dude in the, in the, in the cookbook world and the backboard. Yeah, I certainly will do that. I'll see him sometime. I'm sure maybe Sadie Light's diner too. Buddy, great talking to you. Great talking to you too. And we'll talk again.

1:03:15This 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 Gumbert. 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.