287: Pat LaFrieda

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Some of the initial food writers were a little hard on them for having a, at the time, a$27 hamburger. But I didn't see it that way. I saw it as, okay, instead of a$90 dry-aged steak, you now have this$27 burger that has the same dry-aged steak experience. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbart.

0:59Pat La Frida is one of the world's most celebrated butchers and sells ground beef, strip steaks, and ribeyes to over 1 ,000 New York City restaurants alone. On this episode, we talk about the birth of the boutique burger blend, tracing its lineage back to the Minetta Tavern, and dig deep into the meat business. We also talk about Pat's own personal way to cook a steak, roast a chicken, and dress a hamburger with only a couple very specific choices. It was really fun getting to know the one and only Pat LaFrieda, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:41Pat LaFrieda, welcome to This is Taste. How are you, man? Good morning. How are you? Well, good morning to you. It's 10 a.m. on a Thursday, and you just got off work. Yes, I work through the night. That's when the magic happens, so that'll never end. So, yeah, this would be like 10 p.m. to most, I would think. I'm not sure if you drink. Do you do a little shot before bed at the end of a hard day, as many like to enjoy? No, no, no. I like to drink, but on social occasions, not early. Well, I want to first ask you about burger blends, because before you were here selling meat to New York, there wasn't a boutique burger blend.

2:24And I want to get a sense from you, Pat, what was the start of the boutique burger blend, meaning you actually are thinking about ratio, you're thinking about dry aging in the beef, you're thinking more of it than just beef in the hamburger. First part and second part is, did you really, did you expect the hamburger, did you know it was going to be this big in New York? I never did think it was going to be this big, But you really have to look at the DNA of your company or what you do. It doesn't have to be your company. What is it that you do and what is the DNA that builds that and that dictates how you carry yourself, how you perform?

3:00The DNA of La Frida was always when it came to burgers. My grandfather had this strict rule of not using any of the junk, not meeting the trimmings and whatnot. But to control a burger, you needed to have the same ratio of blends of whole cuts for every time. Now, he had one blend. And back then in my grandfather's time, it was, okay, what's this company? What does that company's burger meat taste like? What about this company? What about La Frida? So each meat company really had one burger that represented that company. And in order to get a product that's consistent, because again, it is a repetitive business and you have to make the same people happy.

3:45Those consumers keep coming back and they can be fickle. We decided very early on, I didn't decide anything. It was dictated to me by my dad, Pat II. To me, Pat III, this is how we do things in our business and in our family. We are consistent and we don't take any shortcuts. In terms of the actual blend itself, when you're talking about the definitive La Frida blend before there was the actual boutique, how do you describe it? What's the blend like? Blend is sweet in that American domestic – so it's amazing I have to say American domestic. Yeah. Because we can import meat from around the world.

4:32Once we grind it here, we can call it domestic. No, no. Product that's been raised and grazed in the United States. It's all fed grass. It's mostly finished on grain and corn. and it is the best tasting and sweetest meat out of all of those categories of grass-fed and imported products. So also when you use whole cuts of meat, you're getting a steak experience in an economy cut. And a burger is ultimately the economy cut. When there are no more economy cuts, there are no more cuts to take off. You've taken off the hanger, the flat iron, the terrace major off these side mussels off side mussels, and you've made steaks out of them, center cut entrees with them.

5:24What are you left with? You're left with a lot of trimmings. And so that makes the burger the ultimate economy cut. But when you use whole cuts of meat, it's a little bit more difficult. And I knew early on if I wanted to grow my business, And I wanted to give – since there are many restaurants where there are two or three on the same street, those restaurants don't want to all buy from the same meat company. So I knew that I needed to make a different experience for each of those if I expected them to buy from me. Right. And it really worked. And it was twofold because at the same time, I wanted to make blends based off my grandfather's principles.

6:14But I wanted the input of the chef as far as what steaks did they like? What flavors did they cook with that would resonate and really portray the chef and the restaurant? And I was able to do that in an economical way by using, you know, if a chef told me ribeye, I would use a lot of chuck roll because that – Like it was a similar style. It's the same muscle. Yeah, yeah. It's the same muscle. And it's just where it's cut off. But it continues through the back. Right. And sure, we're not going to put ribeye steaks into the burger blend. However, we are going to use the continuation of that long SMS and spinalis muscle that goes into the front chuck and cut that out and make sure that whatever ratio, and we have several hundred now.

7:10That's amazing. You've won over 100 ratios. Well over 200. Your blend book. I'm sure you have a book or some way. We have several books. Yeah. And really because there are so many different combinations of cuts. But the one thing that has not changed is that it's still whole cuts. And those ratios, we live by them. And then you have this other complexity of dye size. Yeah. So how coarse do you want the burger? You know, that's, you know, what size do you want the burger? So, okay, great. You want an eight-ounce burger. What is the diameter of the bun? Exactly. Well, Pat, why do you need to know that?

7:51Well, because I want to make it an inch further than that. or wider than that. And this way, when it cooks... It'll line up exactly right. It'll line up or maybe hang over just a little bit. Who doesn't want it to hang over a little bit? Exactly. And the bread's very important to the bun. It's vital. But it's the first thing you pick up, and you almost start to judge the burger before you even get the first bite. You certainly do in the age of Instagram. I mean, you're judging it all the way it looks. Come on, let's get real. So and so but you don't want that burger to disappear in that bread.

8:26Like, listener, let's pause for a second. Just like think about what Pat just said and think about the way we look at burgers, because what Pat has done over time. And I want to go back to the early to mid aughts when before this, the Black Label burger was one that was important to to the way burgers are perceived in media. But writers like Joshua Zersky, who I want to talk about, Nick Solaris, and many folks working at Grub Street Eater, Village Voice, Robert Tsitsima. All these guys were writing about burger blends. And you had just articulated something that's important. It's talking to the chef about bun choice, about grind size, about blend and ratio.

9:03It was not like this in 2001, 2002. There was nothing like this. So we as a culture think about burgers now very, very like sophisticated in a sophisticated way. but you revolutionized this with your dialogue. How did you start? Let's go back to Black Label. How did that come about? Well, the Black Label was developed right at the outset of an economical hard time of 2007. And I had always wanted to play around with getting a dry-aged flavor into a burger, but without having to pay for a dry-aged steak. And that experience was, I was able to accomplish that by using New York strip steak once the center cuts ended.

9:50So we still had the dry aged back 18 % has, many call it a vein steak, but it really is a nerve that runs through, it's the sciatica nerve that runs through that cut and it's very tough. But not if you're able to make chop beef out of it. And we played around with some different proportions of dry-aged and also – so that's fresh meat to dry-aged and then also how dry-aged? 30 days, 45, 90? So when I was just developing that, a chef came in to see me, Riyad Nasser. And the guy's a legend and I had him taste it. And he turned around and said to me, what would this cost? I told him and he said, done, but I'm the only one to get it.

10:43And that's Riyadh's choice or your choice? Riyadh's. Riyadh was like dictating those terms. Did Keith McNally have anything to do with this dialogue? I'm sure. I mean, Riyadh was the boots on the ground. Right. But that was always a team. But I wasn't privy to that until the Frank Bruni review came. Right. Which restaurant? Let's give it clarity. Mineta Taffer. Yeah, exactly. So Mineta and Bruni and then Riyad and you talking about exclusivity. And I'm sure Keith is like the puppet master of this whole thing. Of course. But so Frank Bruni had written about it, I think it was about six months after it opened.

11:28Here's another great thing about that story is that Riyad came in to see me, I think four to five months before the restaurant opened. That's key, right? So he was picking out meat that he wanted me to put up on the shelves, on the dry-ed shelves, to have ready for when he was going to open four months from now. Now, in my dad's time, I don't think they had as much trust in chefs because the way our industry works is that we pay for our beef about three days after it's invoiced to us, it's still in the truck coming from Kansas. So, you know, it's very hard to then take that meat and put it on the shelf for two months.

12:12And then, you know, restaurants usually pay between 14 and 60 days later. And it's a big investment to me. But it's one that when you see the chef come in months before the restaurant's going to open, hey, that guy's serious. And we're going to be serious and we're going to devote ourselves to that cause because they care. Yeah, I mean, it's a fragile industry. And certainly many restaurants go under in that first year and can't pay those bills. And you are the one who's going to have to suffer the consequences. And back to Riyad and you're talking about blend and putting dry-aged beef into a hamburger.

12:53You said you had always wanted to do that as a goal. What did Riyadh, what was he able to do on the culinary side in terms of the way he was prepared, the bun? Because that really, the Black Label burger to this day is probably the world's most famous burger. Maybe outside of the McDonald's Big Mac. Sure. Or maybe the Whopper, but I would say the Black Label is up there. Yeah. You know, the economic hardship came right as they opened. And some of the initial food writers were a little hard on them for having a, at the time, a$27 hamburger. But they also had an alternative. They had an amazing short rib blend.

13:33So if you didn't want that dry-aged flavor, and that was about$10 or$12 less. But I didn't see it that way. I saw it as, okay, instead of a$90 dry-aged steak, you now have this$27 burger that has the same dry-aged steak experience. So at the end of year one, we had an after-action review with myself and the entire Minute Tavern team. And they said, Pat, guess how many Black Label burgers we sold over short ribbed burgers? Well, I said you sold 13 ,500. I'm like, how do you know that? Are you in our books? I'm like, guys, I sell you your meat. It's an eight-ounce burger. So they're like, oh, yeah, that's right.

14:25That's a good story. I mean, it's remarkable to think about the scale of just one restaurant, but how many accounts do you have in just Manhattan right now? Just Manhattan, what are you talking about? About 1 ,000. 1 ,000 accounts. I would say in the five boroughs we have about 1 ,000. We have about 1 ,600 active restaurants that we serve every day. In the New York City, in five boroughs. Yes, in the tri-state, about 1 ,600. In the five boroughs, about 1 ,000. That's incredible. So you think about that's a lot going on. And I want to get in the day-to-day of what it's like working in the locker.

14:55But I briefly want to let it just talk about Zerski because he wrote a book about the hamburger. But, of course, we knew Josh as somebody who wrote about whole animal butchery and appreciation for what you do about dry aging. So what do you want our listener to take away from the Josh Zersky legacy? Josh was someone very much like Nick Solaris is and was. Right, Nick as well, who is still writing. I mean, Josh unfortunately passed away in 2016, and we're referring to him in the past for that reason, to be clear. But yeah. He became a very close friend in a very short amount of time. He was one of the few food writers that actually asked permission to come into the facility, shadow me, shadow my butchers.

15:42They all knew him by name. And you just don't get that. So to be able to see what's going on behind the scenes is amazing. Adam Platt did the same. So when you have these great food writers, and it was never because it was about us. I mean, no one wrote about the butchers, right? And we didn't, we weren't looking for that. We just, we knew that if our customers won, we win. If they fail, we fail. And the mentality in my industry before then was very cutthroat. And if a purveyor could get, you know, if they could kill someone on the price for, let's say, lamb racks during Easter, they did that.

16:28We did the opposite. We were always fair and we never exploited any situation like that. But Josh came in and he was a quick learner, of course. The guy was a genius. And he learned and he wanted to learn about every cut of steak. And I cannot tell you how many blends of burger meat that I made for him over the years that I got to enjoy with him. And it was always instant feedback because, you know, he went right home and cooked it. Probably no bun at all. As you should. I mean, let's get real. No bun at all. Let's taste the meat. You know, one of his expressions, which I use to this day, was after eating way too much food in a restaurant, you know, going outside to take an air bath, I thought was hilarious.

17:22Yeah. A real Josh Luzerski term. Yeah. He would take his button down off. He would have a tank top underneath. And I was like, Josh, okay, then we're going a little too far. He goes, Pat, let's go to the facility. It's 36 degrees in there. I hope there's a time and place when we can really get into the Ozerski legacy. Thanks for sharing that. Let's go to the locker. You were there at 6 p.m. last night. What's it like in your facility? Where is it at? Is it in Jersey, I think, you said? You just opened up a place? We were in Manhattan for 95 years. Exactly. Really not the best place for food production.

18:00Yeah. Yeah, the condos kind of went over that equation sometimes. So we moved right over, or I should say under the Hudson River into North Bergen, New Jersey. So we are just as the crow flies, I think maybe three and a half miles from the center of Manhattan. And so great location wise, we bought a building and we built it. We knocked everything down that was there and we built it from the ground up. And then we did it again 10 years later from. So that was 2010. And then in 2020, we did the same thing. It was a little thing that got in our way. And so when all restaurants closed, which was 95 percent of my business on March 16th, 2020, we were only 85 % done with the second facility, which we desperately needed for space.

18:56So finishing that facility fell on my lap after my dad couldn't, you know, we didn't want to expose him to a potential risk of getting sick. So I worked all night overseeing production and then all day overseeing a job site in which many were sheltering at home in place. But we were put under presidential mandate on the same day, on the 16th. So we were given a federal order not to close. And I would face federal prison time if we were to have closed as part of the critical food supply chain. You were on a list and someone from Washington called you. We're inspected. So we have federal inspectors in our building every day.

19:46Yeah. So to restaurateurs or chefs, that means that it would be like the health department coming every day. Yeah. But that keeps our industry very safe. Yeah. And the USDA does a great job of that. So they didn't really have to call or send a letter. Like they were there anyway. Yeah. Pat, we need a meeting. And so we were given that notice. We would never have closed anyway. But it made things a little bit more real. Yeah. Like, hey, I said, I asked, are my staff members also under mandate? No. Now, it didn't matter. How does that work then? Yeah. How do you actually butcher without the butchers?

20:29And Pat, get that other facility running. The administration wants everything running. They don't want any food shortages, which, you know, there are those times during your work year that something different happens. And it's almost fun. Like there's a sense of urgency there. And I have to say, like, I think it was born for those moments because to me that's the most fun I ever had was making sure that everyone and anyone that I could possibly get to had me. When consumers were on lines for five hours to find out that there was no food inside the grocery store. That broke my heart. And we had 50 trucks.

21:14So our fleet is 50. So we took most of them and distributed them. We dispersed them throughout the tri-state to whatever chef would want one. And we retained 12. And we used those 12 to resupply those trucks that had separate units for the refrigeration just so that chef could, if they wanted, they could sell meat to the general public as long as they didn't gouge, which no one did. That's good. It was awesome. And then we felt that was our way to reduce panic on those lines. That was what, before this whole thing got political, which happened very quickly, I don't think I've watched the news since that.

22:00That first day I remember it going sideways. But that was the mentality. That's what we thought. Like it was for us to make sure that we could – the pandemic may not kill us, but panic will. Yeah. And we – Then that's the message you got from the government I would imagine too. That type of like the panic is what we know to avoid. Yeah. No. No. That really – I saw that happening quickly. Yeah. Especially with the influx of phone calls of very affluent friends that – all my friends. But especially to hear the desperation, I told everyone there's no meat shortage. Take what you need. Don't take any more.

22:45Don't freeze too much. It was the first time in my life that the unit of measure when civilians were ordering meat from us was given in inches. So, hey, my freezer is 48 by 20 by 16. I need you to fill that space. We need to fill it. We need to go to the level. Okay. Just to remind you, there's no meat shortage. Yeah. If that freezer goes bad, which that happened a few times, there were plenty of power outages during this time period, you lose everything. When we knew the meat industry is more efficient than it's ever been, and that has to do with distribution also. Throughout that entire period, I was short pork tenders, I believe, for two hours before that truck came.

23:42I mean, that was it. Fulfillment rate, I would say, was 100%. It's remarkable that when you talk it through, when you talk about how you handled the pandemic and subsequent, it's amazing that you were able to keep a level ahead and keep the city running. Back to my original question, though, I want to hear when you're walking into this facility, what is it like? Take us there. Do you have, you know, are we talking about whole animals is hanging and you're butchering? I mean, what's the scale like? The future of meat does not include hanging anything. Love that. I've heard that. Hooks and rails above your head that can be dangerous and also the rust peels off of them.

24:26When we built our facilities, we got away from that. That was my dad's generation and everything comes in a combo bin. So it's the most efficient way to transport meat. and it took away a lot of the danger. But a meat facility is a dangerous place. I discovered a bandsaw that was impossible to get more than a few stitches if the worst accident happened. Very expensive, made for the wood industry, but it's another example of that operator. So at 6 p.m., that's when we start production. Any of our bandsaw operators, and we have about 21 of these machines, they actually have a cord that comes from the machine.

25:13It goes into their butcher's coat, and it sits on their bare love handle. And it picks up the electric current that we naturally have going through our body. So if their hand was to touch the bandsaw blade, that finishes the circuit, and a pneumatic break slams in 0.002 seconds. Meaning the pulse of the bandsaw operator, if it changes, if there's a change. Not the pulse, but we have an electric current that naturally flows through us. You complete the loop, if you were to touch the bandsaw blade, it sets off this pneumatic break and it stops immediately. I see. That's if your hand touches it. But before you touch it, that's like if your hand's under the meat and it can't see your glove.

26:04The green gloves that we use, they pick up. It's the only color that's not really in meat. So every other color is. So when the sensor sees the green, it also knocks off the pneumatic brake and stops instantly. And that idea of getting rid of that part, the most dangerous part of cutting, it was expensive.

26:39We didn't even look at that. Yeah, but it ultimately pays for itself too. I mean, there's altruism there. You want your staff to be safe, obviously. But there's obviously an efficiency and you're not having accidents. And that's bad for business. I'm the one saying this. You didn't lead with that, but that's kind of the way it works. It's worse than that. It's bad for morale. Yeah, exactly. And when you have someone – so working these hours all night, we're one big family. And there are a lot of companies that may say that. But I think the biggest comment from someone taking a tour is, wow, Pat, you have that many people here working throughout the night.

27:17I don't hear fighting, arguing, raising their voices. No, it's this family. This is everyone's living room. This is everyone's dining room. But we get the job done. Yeah. And the last thing you want to do is be on that ride to the hospital with someone. That's interesting. Let's talk about the farms. You mentioned Kansas, and you work with farms all over the country. What's your relationship with farms? Are you outside of New York visiting the farms that you're buying from? We have 125 different growers for beef. Beef alone and you do everything else. Yes, beef alone. Yes, we try to visit with as many folks as we can.

28:03We have procurement people that do that for us. And then that product is then shipped to a USDA facility that oversees, as we now say, harvesting. Yeah. Harvesting of the animal. So, but we maintain that relationship. The growers need to know what to grow. They need to know that when that animal, when it's at 22 months of age and it's ready to go to the harvest facility, that there's a demand for it. So I'm usually about four or five months out on my guaranteed purchases, my purchase orders. You know, so I am not bidding, but I have product that is put to the side to me, put to the side for me.

28:54But that product still got four legs and is walking around. Yeah. You know, you have to have that much diversity in where the product's coming from in the United States because different sectors, different areas will have tornadoes, droughts, floods, disease. Try to tell a New York City chef that, sorry, we don't have steaks for a month. No, no, no, no. And at the price that your – the range that your sales folks are kind of promising them essentially. I mean they can't structure their menus if the price is going to triple. My favorite – the growers are the best because they don't seek fame. I love when a chef will ask me, Pat, what farm is this from?

29:40I'm going to tell you the name of the farm. I'm going to give you the farmer's phone number. You're going to call them. But don't ask me about the website. They don't have a website. I'll tell you, right? Right. Why is that? They don't want it. That's what they do. They raise animals according to the raising and finishing protocols that we lay out for the accolades that we need to hit. So the great thing about the USDA is that whatever claim you have on a package that's from the USDA, that claim has been confirmed and traced back to the grower to make sure that whatever claim you're putting on there is consistent and true.