296: Max La Manna

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0:31you don't need to add too much to plants to make it taste good if the ingredient the quality is great you get a little bit of extra virgin olive oil and salt with a really nice tomato and that's all you need look at 11 madison park what daniel has done he slipped the restaurant on its head and made it plant-based and it was the number one restaurant in the world this is taste i'm your host matt rodbard

0:59what a fun time it is having max lamana in the studio max is a recipe developer and former new york city and los angeles line cook he's also really big on tiktok and various other social media channels and we get into what makes a great food video we also talk about his cool new cookbook You Can Cook This. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:29Max Lomano, welcome to This is Taste. What's up, man? Matt, thank you so much for having me. This is awesome. I love seeing you. Mazel tov. Thank you very much. You just found out you were Jewish. I know. Mazel tov. Is that the right vernacular? We can go through lots of terms. We can go through smoked fish. I can guide you through all of the Ashkenazi foods. But this is like legit cool that you found out you're Jewish. You did one of the DNAs. Yeah. What does it say? And it goes back to my mom did it as well. So it connects back to my mom. So that's the real deal, right? They say, you know, some say the mother, but, you know, some don't.

2:01But really, now that you know you have some Jewish ancestry, what are you going to do food-wise? You know what? I want to first make some sort of, what is that, babka? Yeah, babka. I want to make all the breads. I want to do challah. I think I'm saying that right? You said it good. Yeah, I got that kh. Yeah, it definitely needs a kh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and some matzo ball. I need to, like, hit the entry-level Jewish culinary dishes. I agree. And this actually dovetails really nicely. Vittles, this great British food magazine, just did a big food story about Jewish food in the U.K. which is great because it really isn't covered.

2:49And apparently matzo ball soup at Claridge's is called chicken noodle soup with dumplings. They won't even call it matzo ball soup. So I don't know what's up with the UK. What's going on there? You guys got to just own. So maybe you're going to bring a little bit of Jewish pride back to the UK. I'd like to bring some Jewish pride into my cooking. Yeah. Growing up Catholic in an Italian Catholic household, I always thought I was Jewish. Yeah. And now I really am Jewish. It's cool. So I can, you know, own it. Well, welcome to the clan. Thank you. You're a brother of mine now. You've been here for two weeks in New York City.

3:25You've been doing a lot for your book, which You Can Cook This. We'll talk about that. What has two weeks in New York been like? It's been pretty cool. And it's also been pretty rainy. It's been very rainy. Yeah. And I apologize to anyone who's experienced the flooding and the rain because I feel like it was partly my fault. the weather has because it always rains you brought it you brought it with you I brought it with me god damn it so it's been a jam packed two weeks for me every day has been filming some sort of recipe video with either a content creator or at a restaurant I went to Momofuku I went to the Osprey I went to Eleven Medicine Park last night oh right on filmed some content there did you have their plant based tasting yeah yeah right yeah yeah oh my goodness pretty cool that they're doing that really cool that they're doing that shout out to To EMP and Chef Hoom and everyone over there, it's amazing what they're doing.

4:19Tell me, in New York, when you're here, you worked here too, so we'll get into history, but what do you seek out? I mean, you've got all these commitments and all the filming, but is there like one spot you're like, yeah, I got to go there? The one spot that I did go to that I needed to go back, my wife and I have started to do this thing where it's folklore, right? You had it once, you leave it alone. It's good. Max, you're so on point. I love that. Why go back? Exactly. Leave it on high. Number two is going to be not as good. It's like vacations, too. Never go back to that great vacation destination.

4:51Nope, because it's just going to leave a sour taste in your mouth. But there is one spot in Brooklyn, in Bushwick, called Ops, the pizza shop out there. So we ended up going out there. It slaps. It's nice. It's so good. It's really good. Ops is an excellent pizza. There's a lot of good pizza here. You worked here. Where did you work? Where did I work? I worked at ABCV. I worked at ABC Cocina. Oh, in terms of my stay here. Yeah. No, you worked in New York. I lived in New York for almost 10 years. No, exactly. So you worked at ABCV. I worked at ABCV. I worked at ABC Cocina under Jean Georges. Dude.

5:26Let's talk about ABCV. For real, I think I went to breakfast there like 25 times, only because it was convenient. It was a great place to meet people. I think for the first two years of taste, it was great. Man, I love that restaurant. I wish it was back, the breakfast part. Yeah. They don't do breakfast anymore. God damn it. Yeah, Chef Neil's great. I think he's excellent at what he does. And he does it in such a calm. Yeah, Neil's cool. Yeah, he does it. He just lays it out. He's like, this is just plants. But he does it in such a really interesting kind of twist, but simple. You read in the menu, you look at the dish, the dish hits the table, you go, oh, okay, I think I could probably do that.

6:07but then you know all the hard work that's happening back in the kitchen. What about the Rupert eggs? Do you remember that dish? It was scrambled eggs with broccoli and this cheese from Vermont from considered Bardwell Farm. I think that was before my time. Called the Rupert eggs. That was my go-to. Do you know Io Debra used to work there? The actress from The Bear? No. Yeah, yeah. What? She worked there a couple years, I believe, she told me in an interview. Yeah, you missed that. I missed that boat. You missed the Rupert eggs in Io. Yeah. In front of the house. Well, anyways, it's a great restaurant.

6:39Yes, it is a great restaurant. It's lovely. I love the decor of the restaurant is something else. I have one of those types of eyes, too, that just seeks out interior space. If I wasn't cooking, I'd probably be an interior designer. I love that every corner of the restaurant, there's a different chandelier over every table. There's different plates. The mix and the matching of different cutlery is beautiful. Let me ask you about coming up in the industry. So did you go to culinary school? So you started just working the line at these restaurants. How did you get into that world? So I've always been around food.

7:14Yeah. I've always been around food. My father had some quick service fast food restaurants growing up as a kid. So I was always around food and around the restaurant scene a little bit. That's cool. But never thought I'd wanted to be a cook. Yeah. And my very first job, I worked at a pizza restaurant in Connecticut, in Middlebury, Connecticut. and I was the dough boy. So it was literally birth by fire. They throw you in there. Yeah. You got to make the dough from scratch and you got to roll it out and you have to keep an eye on it. And I'm 16 years old. That's great. Never cooked a meal in my life.

7:47Mom and dad made food for us. Dude, dough is hard. Dough is hard. You got to get it right. You got to get it right too. Physically it's hard. It's a science. Yeah. You were the dough boy. What did you, did you get like into like doing the actual pizza cooking too? No. So that was, there was just this one guy who, that was his, that was his job. Yep. So I'd roll out the dough and then I have to call out the order. And back then they would abbreviate the toppings. So it was all letters. So C was cheese. Pepperoni was P. If you wanted peppers, it was PX. Yeah, so literally it was just sausage. Is it S-A-U?

8:24Yeah, it was probably S-A. But they would just abbreviate letters. So you'd see literally just a scrambled letter alphabet on menus. And I was, you know, you're slinging these pizzas. I'm doing about 300 pizzas a night. So my mind is getting scrambled with what I'm calling out as an order. But you had to, you know, I was yelled at hundreds of times because spots of the dough were smaller or thinner than other spots. So when they bake, it is art. But I'm really grateful for that experience because it showed me how food is taken really seriously. We know when you go to a restaurant, you know when food is taken seriously.

9:02You can taste it, and you know the opposite of. Yeah. Tell me about back to New York, some other gigs you had. You had 10 years in a while you lived here. Did you work many of those years in the industry? I only worked in these restaurants. I only worked in those two restaurants, Cocina and ABCV. That's so great. Yeah. Those are good restaurants. So you end up in L.A., right, at some point. You've done your homework. I tried to research those questions. You know, you didn't look at them ahead of time. I love this. little inside baseball listener. I send some questions ahead of time, but Max is like, I'm an open book, so let's go.

9:34Yeah, let's go. No, I appreciate it because I think you're a cool guy and I love your book and I want to get into that, but man, back to LA, acting happens. Yes. But then it doesn't happen, but then it happens. You go back and forth, right? I go back and forth with it. What do I do? Am I going to, is this something I really want to do? I've always been told, people have said to me, you should be an actor, you should be an actor. Yeah. I don't listen to what everyone says, But then I start questioning myself. Is this something I really want to do? So I applied to acting school and took classes and spent four years here in New York City studying in the morning, working at night in the restaurants.

10:14And then eventually I thought, I'm going to take my career out to Los Angeles. Like, go for it. I'm always, I'm a yes man. I'm a go-getter. Yeah, clearly. If the door hits me in the face, I'm going to look for another door to go. So you hit some doors. I definitely hit some doors. Because you're an actor in L.A., obviously. That's how it works. Yeah, you get a thousand no's before you get a yes. So I'm used to it. I think there's nothing wrong with it. It just makes you stronger. So the opportunities came and went, and I had one opportunity where I was on television, and that was within a few months of landing in L.A.

10:48What were you doing? I was on a TV show called Days of Our Lives. Yeah, I'm familiar with that. I actually knew that answer, and I was like, not going to lead with that because maybe there was another show. Listen, respect. You were getting scripts like probably 30 minutes before you filmed. I know that there's like a real like quick pace to filming soaps, right? Yeah, it's so quick. And that was, it's quite, you spend all these, you spend the years of going into school and working and studying and devoting yourself to this art, this craft. And then you show up on set and they hand you the script and you're like, okay, cool.

11:21All right, all right, all right. Yeah, I'm in it. I'm in it. I'm in the character. Let's go. And then we do a walkthrough, and then they film one, and then they do a backup. Yeah. And they do the backup, and then it's done. And then it's done. It's over within 30 seconds. Who is your character? That was a scene. My name was Brian. Hey, Brian. Hey. Let's go in character. Oh, God. What's up? So, Brian, tell me about who – what's your life like in fake world, real fake world? In fake world? Well, I don't know what that is. but you know I'm 18 I'm just you know life's cool I'm a good I think I'm a good guy the ladies love me and school's alright I don't know what I want to do after school but you know life is cool oh by the way we're having a party tonight so if you want to come through we'll see you there alright back to Max I love that thank you Brian Max I love it thanks for doing that you worked in the industry too in LA right you worked at some restaurants I did Tell me about that I worked at the Tasting Kitchen Oh Tasting Kitchen on Abbot Kinney Yeah right And I worked there for a little bit I say oh and clearly Listener This isn't like an oh like Man crazy shit went down there Maybe it did But I don't know I just said oh because it's a good place Yeah it is a good place I I I just ask Same thing like coming to New York I ask friends What restaurant should I work at?

12:42Yeah And people said Oh go here And when I went Landed in LA And they said Oh go to the Tasting Kitchen Yeah You'll love it And it was just like And maybe they received an award maybe the year before, so every night was packed. And I said to them, hey, you know, I worked at Jean-Georges. Can I, you know, do you need someone on the line? Do you need a bartender? Do you need a waiter? And they're like, nope. But do you mind answering phones? I was like, really? I got to answer. I'm going to be a maitre d'. Yep. You're going to be a maitre d'. You're going to answer phones. You're going to handle the books.

13:15And you're going to seat people. Okay. So I did that for about three months. Oh, cool. And then literally like worked my way up. And then I was a bar back and I was pressing ginger and going in on random days of handling and filling up bottles. And then was actually in the bar working with the team back there and wanted to get into the kitchen, but they were so solid. They were like, who's this guy? See, for me, Matt, I'm when an opportunity is there and if I see an opportunity, I go right at it. and sometimes I don't think people appreciate that and they feel almost like their character their self is being attacked I see an opportunity I'm gonna go for it this is you know the saying goes YOLO I have this one life I'm just gonna go for it and if I fall flat on my face I fall flat on my face I'm just gonna go for it but they were pretty locked up in the kitchen yeah I'm sure and in a world that's like run by the brigade and you have all these like very like you know of static roles having like the go-getter in the front of house or like fuck this guy i'm sure but clearly you were there for months and you you worked your way through the you know the bar program yeah and and the the his his nickname was froman um the the the the head bartender um who's also from connecticut so he and i had this we he took me under his wing but we again it was I didn't work there that long.

14:48I was there for about eight or nine months and again I'm there. What am I here for? I'm not here to work in a restaurant. I'm here to be an actor. So I this is this is a first insider scoop here. I've been holding on to this. This is truth. I said to my manager at the time I said look I've just landed a role in a movie so I'm going to have to give you my two weeks notice because we're going to start filming pretty soon and didn't have a job didn't have a role i just pretended that i had it i had the had the job and the manager was like okay fine yeah sure really sad to see you go i'm like yeah you know we're gonna be filming for months so i can't you know see you later so two weeks ends i leave still don't have a job but a month later i ended up booking days of our lives so that and then that was like a reoccurring character and that was a reoccurring character for a few episodes.

15:45So for me, it was okay, great. Um, but after that was so anticlimactic that here I am, here I am on the show for a little bit and then everything starts kind of, uh, peeling back. Everything started to disintegrate around me. My manager left me, my agency left me, everyone dropped me. I just felt kind of tough, man. It is tough. It's tough industry, Matt. It is tough. And, and there's a few people, especially, you know, there's people who are working right now, there's a reason why they're working because they've hung around or because they're really good at what they do. They had the luck, but there are people who are still kind of grinding and seeing if they can make it.

16:23So what do you do then when you decide to leave acting? Or maybe you haven't. Oh, I left acting. You left it. I had very long nights of looking in the mirror going, is this what you want? Do you want to go down this long? What are you filming at for TikTok? Yeah. It was way before TikTok. That was your first TikTok. There's going to be an app in a few years called TikTok. And let me just, let me just, let me hang on to this. No, I ended up meeting someone in Los Angeles who was Australian and she had a chocolate business. So I instantly fell in love with chocolate and her. And she says, come back to Australia with me.

17:00And at that time I was quite like floating in the air. Melbourne? This is Sydney. Okay. I don't know if that's even an Australian. No, it sounded good. It checks me, but I'm just one guy. Audience can judge. Now, what's it like in Sydney for you? Every day working in a windowless kitchen making chocolates for 15 hours a day. Wow. Yep, nine months. Didn't see, went to the beach twice. Oh, my goodness. Yep. That's love or that's your indentured servitude? It was hell. It was hell. It was the darkest, toughest time of my life. Is this woman your wife now? No, she's not. I was lost. Yeah. And as you know, I'm 27 at this time I'm lost and she's five years older than I am at And she says to me, how are you going to support me?

17:50Like, how are you going to support our family? And I was like, oh, at 27 You know, there's some people who got their shit together at 27 I just came out of, you know, coming out of something That I thought was going to be my life And, you know, three nights I didn't sleep Eventually I did fall asleep And when I woke up, this idea came to my mind. What do you want to see yourself doing every single day? And it doesn't need to be, don't put the pressure of work or making money. Just what are things that you can see yourself doing every day? And cooking was one of the things that were on that list.

18:25Oh, yeah, I remember cooking. It brings me joy, and I'm satisfied with it. And I love the looks on people's faces when they get to enjoy my food. And let's play around with this for a little bit. So I ended up moving back to New York, and that's when I went back to ABC. That's when you went back to ABC. Went back to ABC and, yeah, went back to there and just put my head down and went to work. Max, this is— Full circle. I need to get to your book, but thanks for sharing that. Really, that's cool that you shared that, and I think maybe some of our listeners are at a dip in their lives. I know we all have them, and you're an inspiration that you can come out of it and now have a cookbook.

19:06You're married. You live in London. things are not always that bad. No. Yeah. This too shall pasta. I mean, this too shall pass. You're good. Tell me about plant-based eating. Your book is, that's the general vibe. What is a big misconception that we have as fans of food, as fans of cookbooks about plant-based eating? That's a great question. You don't need to add too much to plants to make it taste good. If the ingredient, the quality is great, You get a little bit of extra virgin olive oil and salt with a really nice tomato. And that's all you need. Look at 11 Madison Park, what Daniel has done.

19:45He slipped the restaurant on its head and made it plant-based, and it was the number one restaurant in the world. Yeah, and, you know, plant-based is, it has a lot of, there's multitudes. It's not a monolith at all. So you've got, like, the Impossible Burger version of plant-based, and then you've also got the Amanda Cohen version, the Dirt Candy version, which isn't about meat proxies, but it's about its own thing. Do you follow either of those schools or are you somewhere in between? I like to follow all schools. Yeah, right on. I'm at a crossroad in my career. Where do I go next? What's the next thing?

20:18What's the next chapter for me? Do I want to continue down the path of simplicity, of making a tomato sauce in 30 minutes for the busy housegoer, house cook, home cook? or do I want to make a, you know, 24-hour tomato sauce that is, you know, marinating overnight? You know, do I want to go down those paths? Do I want to make dishes that are more elevated or do I want to go down the simplicity? I thought you were going to say 24-hour beet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, yeah, flip it on its head. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It's cool, man. Let me ask you about a couple of dishes. I was instantly drawn to a smoked pea carbonara.

21:03I like that dish a lot, and I like the way you're taking bacon and guanciale, and you're not using bacon or guanciale. How is it actually good? I believe you when you say it's good, because you say it's good in the book. If you squint your eyes, this is what you got to do. You got to squint your eyes and just— Is that the way— Yeah, that's— Yeah, I think that's good. That's a great blurb for a cookbook. Like squint your eyes and it might be good. And hope that it's good. Look, I've been plant-based and I've always worked with plants. Anytime I was working in kitchens from when I was 15, 16, I was always handling vegetables and dough.

21:42So everything's plant-based. I don't really know how to cook meat. So for me, this is my everyday. I don't tend to label ingredients vegan. You won't see anything in the book labeled vegan. I think you see it once in the whole entire book. So it's inclusive and open for everyone to come to the table. So for me, tempeh has a nice meaty texture to it. It's fermented soybeans. So for me, like if you char it nicely and you add the flavors of, you know, liquid smoke and smoked paprika, you're going to have a nice smoky flavored, meaty textured piece of tempeh. And that's what the carbonara is getting, it's guanciale from smoked, liquid smoky tempeh.

22:29Cool. I'm into that. I like this book a lot. I think there's a lot of personality in it. You have a nightshades chapter, which I like drawing those together, the tomatoes, eggplants, peppers. Why make that its own chapter? this is this the whole kind of spine of the book is about using the food that you have at home during lockdown i asked my following on social media which foods they were throwing away the most and over those two years i collected tens of thousands of responses of ingredients have a very large excel sheet yeah and it's cool i i found out that most people are throwing away peppers and eggplants and tomatoes.

23:13And I thought, let's break this down into segments because I think you could replace tomatoes, some dishes. You can replace tomatoes for red peppers and some dishes, not all dishes. And I will mention that. I mentioned which one's in the book. You can't make like a pepper, fake a tomato sauce and make it with peppers. Yeah, you can't always do that. It's about using the food that you already have. So it was more of a breaking each kind of ingredients into chapters. Max, are you sent here from the future? Because zero-waste cooking, it's like not the sexiest topic, right? It doesn't like jump off the page, but it's like essential.

23:56And I joke about that question because obviously in our lifetime, there will be a time when we are mandated to cook this way. Whoa. You think that's the same? Yeah, I mean, maybe I'm from the past too, because I think maybe some listeners, parents, or even yourself were brought up to use the whole ingredient. Refrigerators are still like a new invention. It's maybe 100 years old. So what did our ancestors do when they had these ingredients? They had to preserve them. They had to use everything they had because when was the next time we were going to get these ingredients? So for me, it's let's use everything.

24:38Why go through the hassle of working a job that you probably, for the sake of this conversation, a job that you like. Fill in the blank. A job that you, and you earn money to then spend money on food. And then you bring that food home and then you waste it. Most of it, 80 % usually, typically from grocery stores. That's a stat that pops into my head. And 80 % from, yeah. And, you know, when we bring those bags of groceries home, about a third of the bags, one third. So every three bags of food, you're throwing away one bag of food that you bring home. So it's this real disconnect. Let's appreciate the food because when we appreciate the food, we make delicious meals.

25:22We're not wasting our money. We're not wasting our time. It's cool, Max. I like going back to the past. It's a smart way to reframe that weird question. Before we get to the last section, I have to ask you about your ink journey. It's like I look at videos of you and you've got one sleeve and you got a half a sleeve and then you had I mean What's the story because it's really cool and it's definitely you? Thanks, I When I was 18 my parents said, you know for the 18th birthday you got to do something big really like okay Maybe I get a tattoo jokingly. Yeah, my parents said yeah go for it get a tattoo Okay, I think they want they're trying to see if I'd you know call their bluff or yeah I went for it, and I just started to build off that.

26:04And I don't have to – there's moments in my life where, oh, that's an ex-girlfriend. That's a memory of an ex-girlfriend back here somewhere. That's a memory of an ex-girlfriend, and this is a moment when I was in Paris, and that was like a time where I was – this right here is from when I was in Paris. This is London. You're pointing to your elbow. But it's definitely a unified theme, I'd say. Maybe not. I like the lines. If you can see, like, nothing's filled in. So it's kind of, you know, if you have a Sharpie or crayon, you can color in if you want to. Oh, yeah. No, it's cool. I just noticed it.

26:43Are you going full sleeves eventually? Yeah, I'd like to fill up the other side. Get that next book advance. This one right here, you see it's a little heart, outline of a heart. It's red, and I did a scavenger hunt in Berlin where I left my book in Berlin, and I said, you have to go and find it. And if you find it, you win the book. And so within 20 minutes, someone found the book and they tagged me on social media and said, found the book. And I look at the profile and she was a tattoo artist. So I wrote back to her and said, congratulations on winning the book. Are you a tattoo artist by any chance?